EXCLUSIVE
A grief-stricken Melbourne dad is urging homicide detectives to ‘get off their ar**s’ and interrogate a prime suspect he has uncovered in his daughter’s brutal murder.
Paul Warren is convinced he has identified the man responsible for his daughter Elly’s mysterious death after hiring a sex worker to infiltrate the potential culprit’s African crime gang.
‘The town where Elly was killed, it’s a small place, and nothing happens there without this guy knowing about it,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
‘Either he’s murdered my little girl, or he knows who did.’
The retired industrial engineer said he had been forced to conduct his own covert investigation into Elly’s death after years of ‘inaction’ by the Australia Federal Police.
The 20-year-old had been enjoying a night out with friends in the tourist town of Tofo, in southern Mozambique, in 2016, before she disappeared about 1am.
The aspiring marine biologist, who had been in the country on a volunteer program working to save its endangered coastal reefs, was found dead the following morning.
Paul Warren has spent seven years investigating the death of his daughter, Elly
‘My greatest regret is that I didn’t jump on a plane the moment I found out she was dead, instead I trusted that the f***ing AFP would do their job,’ he said.
‘Looking back at those first few weeks after Elly’s death, I’m totally disgusted with their incompetence and their inaction – and I’m still disgusted by it.
‘It’s been seven years now, and I’m still the only one doing anything. It shouldn’t be up to me to be conducting investigations and interviewing suspects.
‘The AFP haven’t done a f***ing thing and it’s about time they did: they need to get off their a**es and help solve Elly’s murder.’
The AFP said they were engaging with the Mozambique investigation through all appropriate channels.
‘The investigation into the death of Elly Warren was the jurisdiction of Mozambique authorities,’ a spokesperson said.
‘The AFP … has continued to engage Mozambique authorities regularly since Elly Warren’s death in 2016.’
Final farewell
Mr Warren is still haunted by the final moments he spent with his daughter before she headed overseas on what was supposed to be the trip of lifetime.
‘I remember Elly’s boyfriend picking her up to take her to the airport, she was so excited,’ the 63-year-old said.
‘She reached in and gave me a big hug and a kiss on cheek and said, ‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll be safe’.’
‘She knew I was worried about her going somewhere dangerous, but she said, ‘Where I’m staying, it’s with a group of scientists who have been living and working there for a while now, so I’ll be safe. I’ll be ok.’ And, of course, she wasn’t.
‘But that’s the thing about Elly. She was super smart and super committed.
An aspiring marine biologist, Elly was helping save endangered reefs before she was murdered
Never far from the water, Elly spent six weeks diving off the coast of Mozambique
‘Once she had made up her mind to do something, she was doing it. There was no way me – or anyone else – could stop her from following her dreams.’
After arriving in Mozambique in October 2016, Elly spent six weeks diving off the coast of Tofo with marine research group Underwater Africa, documenting the local reefs and the species that call them home.
She was out celebrating the end of the volunteer program on November 8 – just four days before she was due to fly home to Australia – when she disappeared.
She had been drinking on the beach with friends at a popular Tofo night spot, called Victor’s Bar, when she was last seen heading inside about 1am to get another drink.
Her body was discovered four hours later by a local fisherman laying face down in the dirt outside a public toilet block across the street from the bar.
She had cuts and bruises on her neck and mouth, her singlet was torn open, and her skirt pulled up with her underwear down around her knees.
Elly’s body was found dumped outside this gritty public toilet block near the heart of Tofo
Elly was just days away from returning home after the trip of a lifetime when she was killed
Staged crime scene
The initial police report into Elly’s death claimed she died from a drug overdose before two separate toxicology reports revealed there were no drugs in her system.
‘It was immediately obvious it wasn’t a drug overdose,’ Mr Warren said. ‘The whole investigation was tainted right from the very start.
‘This is when the AFP should have been there – as soon as it was obvious something funny was going on.’
Forensic examinations eventually revealed Elly had choked to death after inhaling sand.
But the sand in her lungs was gold-coloured, while the dirt around the toilet block was black, suggesting her body had been moved after she was murdered.
Mr Warren suspects Elly was killed in a bungled robbery attempt on the beach before being dumped by the toilet block and the scene staged to look like a sexual assault.
‘We know from the autopsy that she wasn’t raped … but whoever killed her wanted it to look like a rape,’ he said.
‘They knew there’d be a tonne of international attention if a foreign tourist just went missing or was found dead on the beach.
‘But if it looked like she was raped, the local authorities would want it hushed up so it didn’t destroy the place’s tourism business.’
Dad’s desperate sting
The distraught father has since made two trips to Mozambique and poured his life savings into conducting his own private investigation into Elly’s death.
‘The AFP kept telling me not to worry, that the Mozambique police would be conducting a proper investigation and I shouldn’t go over there and get in the way,’ he said.
‘But the local police simply weren’t equipped to deal with a murder investigation, and I soon realised that the AFP didn’t want to get involved. That’s when I knew I was going to have to do it myself.
‘I reckon I’ve spent about $80,000 easily on this, and I’ve been diddled a lot too.
‘I know people over there take advantage of me sometimes. They say they have photos or some evidence or something that can help me – but it always comes at a price.
‘One guy told me he could get hold of some evidence that had disappeared from the crime scene, and that he could get it for me if I gave him $4,000.
‘So of course I gave it to him but, when he sent me pictures of the supposed evidence, straight away I knew it was fake.
‘I said, ‘You’ve diddled me.’ And he said, ‘Yeah, you’ve got me.’ I said, ‘Yeah, I have,’ but it was too late – he already had the money and I never heard from him again.’
He is convinced they haven’t all been false leads. In 2020, he got a tip off that a local crime lord had been overheard boasting about Elly’s death.
The man had distinctive tattoos and was known to hang out at a pub just around the corner from where Elly was last seen.
With the world in lockdown, he was unable to return to investigate the lead himself, so teamed up with a private detective to investigate remotely.
Together they hired a sex worker from a nearby village, and paid her to move to Tofo and infiltrate the gang in a bid to try to glean more information about Elly’s death.
The sting ran for about a month before the sex worker began to fear for her life and they brought the operation to a close.
Paul Warren says he will never stopping fighting for justice for his murdered daughter, Elly
Murder confession
Since then, thanks in part to Mr Warren’s dogged pursuit of his daughter’s killer, Mozambique authorities have finally conceded Elly was murdered.
The admission came last year, after AFP officers travelled to the African nation and met with the local investigators.
‘Now, they’re finally saying, ‘Yes, this is a homicide’,’ Mr Warren said.
‘Well, they’ve known that it’s been all along – but it’s a big breakthrough that they’re finally admitting that.
‘They’ve also confirmed that they’ve got a couple of suspects but that they don’t have enough evidence to charge any of them.
‘That’s the same situation I have. The suspect I’ve identified is a dangerous guy and we’ve collected a lot of intelligence on him.
‘But it’s all about getting that crucial bit of evidence that can link someone to the murder. We need either the evidence or a confession.
‘That’s why we need professional AFP investigators – or Interpol investigators – to go over there and interrogate these suspects properly and purge them of information.’
The shrine Paul Warren has built in honour of his daughter Elly in his Melbourne home
Plea for help
‘The AFP has been telling everyone they can’t get involved … but the Mozambique government indicated last year that a joint investigation is possible.
‘What (the Mozambique authorities) have really been trying to say – without being too obvious – is ‘we need help with this homicide’ . They need the AFP to help them solve this murder.’
And it is not only the Mozambique authorities that need the AFP’s help, he said.
After seven years of anguish and heartache, he desperately needs their assistance too.
‘I’ll never stop fighting for Elly, as difficult as it is, I’m never going to stop,’ he said. ‘But I really need the AFP’s help here. It’s all I think about.
‘I’ve erected a little shrine to Elly in my home and I talk to her every morning and every night.
‘I tell her, ‘We’re on the right track, Ell, we’re getting close, we just need a little help’.’
