Dad finds chilling new clues in Mozambique’s mysterious death of his daughter Elly Warren

It is the moment when chills ran down the spine of the man investigating the mysterious death of the Australian Elly Warren, 20, his own father Paul Warren.

Trapped in Victoria at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, Warren was immediately unable to do anything when the strange contact from a woman he did not know came to him via Facebook Messenger.

The woman had a strange story to tell and more chilling details would ensue as Paul Warren, locked up, began to learn about crime, corruption and cover-ups from Africa to Melbourne.

It would put him on a path of inquiry regarding his daughter that he couldn’t have predicted.

But by 2020, he was used to twists and turns that no suburban parent or even a retired engineer could have anticipated.

This month, four years ago, Paul Warren and his family had received the terrible news that Elly, an adventurous, hardworking and confident young woman, had been found dead in Mozambique.

Her lifeless body had been found face down in the sand, bikini bottoms around her ankles, behind a toilet earlier on November 9, 2016, in the coastal town of Tofo.

Elly Warren, who was due to return home in two months to study marine biology, had volunteered for a marine conservation project.

Tofo, bordered by coral reefs that are world famous for their migratory stingrays, whale sharks and humpbacks, is a magnet for international divers.

Although the town of Tofo is actually a collection of resorts scattered among tin shacks along dirt roads, Elly was enjoying a vacation in a place that she had told her father that she finally wanted to make home: Africa. .

The night before her body was found, she had been out with friends at Casa Barry Beach Lodge and dancing in the street.

At some point after 2 a.m., a man saw her walk from the Parangio Beach Motel to the Hotel Tofo De Mar and a street lined with bars.

Three hours later, a fisherman found Elly’s body near the toilet block, the location of the only public freshwater taps in the city where fishermen went daily to bait their boats.

Multiple forensic examinations revealed that the fit and healthy young woman died of suffocation, after inhaling sand into her lower airways, and had no drugs in her system.

However, it would prove that the sand was a golden yellow, the kind found on the beach, and not the black sand around the toilet block.

Elly’s body had been moved. The fisherman who found her had taken a clear photo that indicated a fight.

But at the time, despite the Mozambique autopsy finding that she had been murdered, the police and Tofo authorities told Paul Warren that there was no homicide.

They said that he had simply fallen into the sand and that his death was an accident.

Despite two visits to Mozambique itself and spending time and money investigating Elly’s death, Paul was still flying blind until he got the message from the woman out of nowhere.

“He didn’t want money. He didn’t get in touch with me right away, but it took over his mind,” Warren told news.com.au.

“It was an indirect tip and I was able to identify with her.”

What the women had to tell her was that on a vacation to Tofo, her teenage sons had come across an unsavory character.

The man, Tony, had alarmed the teens enough to tell their mother about him, and she had questioned the caretaker of the premises where they were staying.

The caregiver warned the woman not to allow her children to come near the man because it was dangerous.

This was the woman’s initial communication with Paul: “One night our children came home from the market and asked our caretaker, do you know a guy named Tony?

“The … caretaker put this expression on his face and said, ‘I can’t say anything except that Tony is not a good man. Stay away from him.’

“The next day, I asked the caretaker more about Tony. He said ‘do you know about the Australian girl?’

“And he said, ‘Tony and his gang were behind it. I’m pretty sure you already know. ‘

“It’s more of a case of making the authorities act on it. He’s a dangerous guy and he has tattoos all over the place, apparently the teardrop tattoo on his face as well.”

“I think his name is Antonio. We saw him a few times. Tony was hanging out in a little pub next to Branco’s pizzeria.

“I think he is a drug dealer. They told us that they chop tourists’ drinks and rob them.”

Paul Warren already had indications that his daughter’s death was far from accidental, but he had run into brick walls of bureaucratic indifference, incompetence, or worse.

Convinced that his daughter was murdered, he had traveled to Tofo on a personal fact-finding mission last year.

But confined to confinement this year, he would learn that, far from finding his daughter lying on the ground, she had in fact been in a Muslim prayer position.

A local businessman had helped move his body or had asked for it to be moved from the beach because an unnatural death and possible murder were detrimental to business in a city that relied heavily on tourism.

As he delved into the known and unknown facts about Elly’s death, Paul would discover that there was a clear picture of his daughter’s body.

Before that, all he knew was of a blurry photo sent to the Melbourne doctor who was performing a third post-mortem exam on Elly, after the autopsy in Mozambique and another in South Africa.

He was disturbed to discover that the Australian Federal Police (AFP) had known of the clear image for approximately two weeks after Elly’s death, but had not informed him.

Warren has shared the haunting but vital clear photo of Elly’s body on-site, showing her black T-shirt ripped from her right shoulder as the rip exposes her right side.

“The AFP and DFAT [Department of Foreign Affairs] I knew that the Mozambican authorities were covering it up, “he said.

“When I disputed the autopsy of [a Melbourne doctor] who said Elly’s cause of death was ‘undetermined’ we had a meeting.

“There were … three from AFP there. They didn’t say anything about the photo.”

Paul Warren’s own investigation led him, incredibly, to infiltrate the gang led by the man implicated in Elly’s death by caretaker Tofo.

He found himself in the unusual situation of hiring a local woman, on the advice of a German private investigator, to make clandestine recordings of “T” and his gang.

The plan was for the woman to bring up Elly’s death after seeing the photo memorial that Paul had erected in the public restrooms where her daughter’s body was found.

This would allow the woman to casually mention Elly with T, but an unknown person had broken the photo and that plan was foiled.

While there was no irrefutable evidence, T nevertheless stood out for the crimes he had committed, leaving Warren with recordings that could fuel a local police investigation into him.

Warren admits that his efforts may result in nothing, that the murder of Elly Rose Warren may never be properly investigated in Mozambique, or that a perpetrator will be charged and convicted.

He said he and his family were pushing for a new federal agency to be established for when an Australian was killed abroad.

And now a briefing hearing has been scheduled at the Victoria Coroner’s Court for December 17, and he awaits an investigation into Elly’s death.

Abrasions were found on Elly’s neck, as well as bruises on her mouth and on the muscles on the left side of her neck.

Warren said her daughter had not been sexually assaulted.

He said his investigation into Elly’s murder has not been easy for his wife, Nicole, and their other daughter, Kristy, but “it has to be done and people need to know.”

Warren’s investigations into Elly’s death and the crime scene thereafter include crucial details that local law enforcement investigators missed or dismissed.

He is still searching for his daughter’s torn black T-shirt, which is clearly visible in the fisherman’s photo of her, but is not packaged or labeled by the police, who did not keep evidence or photos from the crime scene.

“Since Elly’s black t-shirt is clearly ripped, why hasn’t this vital piece of evidence been packaged and labeled as evidence, which is vital evidence that there was a fight?” I ask.

Instead, he received a report from Mozambique police last month saying that Elly’s cause of death “may have been merely accidental.”

In a statement, Warren has expressed his disappointment, and displeasure, at the inaction of Africa and Australia over Elly’s death.

“When my daughter died of a suspicious death in a foreign country in 2016, I had no idea of ​​the circumstances that were going to occur over the next four years,” he said.

“I am very disappointed with the effort and lack of support from the Australian government and its relevant agencies.

“Elly was a young Australian citizen and she and her family deserved a much better commitment from all concerned.

“I am also very disappointed in the doctors who performed the autopsies.”

Warren has pages and pages of evidence, videos and his recordings of Tony that he hopes to present to the Victoria Coroners Court.

If you can’t fully prove what happened to your daughter and see justice, you don’t want it to happen to any other Australian family.

“We are pushing the government to set up an independent team, to take care of people whose loved ones have been killed abroad because it really is not good enough as it is,” Warren said.