EXCLUSIVE
A desperate father who hired a sex worker to investigate his daughter’s murder threatens to resume his unorthodox investigation unless Australian authorities help solve her murder.
Paul Warren has demanded Australian diplomats provide him with a comprehensive update on the investigation being carried out by local detectives in Mozambique into the death of his daughter Elly before the end of the month.
Melbourne’s father warned that if he was not satisfied with his progress, he would have “no choice” but to return to the southeast African country and renew his own investigations.
“I’ll give them three weeks (and) if there’s no response, I’ll review it,” he told Daily Mail Australia.
Warren’s daughter was just 20 years old when she was murdered during a night out with friends in the coastal resort town of Tofu on November 8, 2016.
The aspiring marine biologist had been celebrating the end of her six-week volunteer program documenting the country’s endangered coastal reefs when she disappeared while heading to a bar for another drink around 1am.
His body was discovered by a local fisherman four hours later, lying face down on the ground outside a public toilet across the street from the popular nightspot.
She had cuts and bruises on her neck and mouth, her shirt was torn and her skirt was up with her underwear pulled down to her knees.
Elly, an aspiring marine biologist, was helping save endangered reefs before she was murdered.
Paul Warren says he will never stop fighting for justice for his murdered daughter, Elly
Local police initially ruled Elly’s death due to a drug overdose before two separate toxicology reports revealed that there were no illicit substances in her system.
Mozambique authorities finally ruled his death a murder last year, but said the country’s homicide detectives had been unable to identify the killer.
The grant came on the eve of an inquest into Elly’s death held in her home state of Victoria.
Coroner John Cain found that Elly may have consumed two or three alcoholic drinks on the night she died, but it was unlikely that she would have been intoxicated.
He said the popular young environmentalist had died of asphyxiation in the sand, but he could not determine how it entered her throat and lungs.
The sand in his lungs was gold, while the soil around the toilet block was black, suggesting his body had been moved after his murder.
Never far from the water, Elly spent six weeks diving off the coast of Mozambique.
Many of the key circumstances surrounding his death remained unknown because the coroner’s court, the Australian Federal Police and the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade had not obtained the summary of evidence collected by Mozambique’s national criminal investigation service.
As a result, Cain said he was unable to determine whether Elly had died outside the toilet block or had been moved after she was killed, whether she had been sexually assaulted on her last night alive or even confirm whether she had been murdered.
Caine said it was now up to the local investigating judge in Mozambique to determine whether there was enough evidence to continue the investigation into Elly’s death or abandon it.
“Without knowing what the investigating judge and the investigating police in Mozambique are saying, I do not know if there is a person or persons of interest identified, (if) an active investigation is being carried out or if all possible leads have been followed and “The investigation is stalled,” he stated when delivering his conclusions last December.
Warren said her family had been devastated by the lack of cooperation between Australian and Mozambican authorities since Elly’s death and feared investigators were not interested in finding her daughter’s killer.
Elly’s body was found lying outside this gritty public toilet block near the heart of Tofo.
The retired industrial engineer said he had repeatedly asked DFAT for updates on the status of the Mozambique investigation in the wake of the investigation – most recently on Monday – only to have his emails ignored.
“This time I am expecting a response from DFAT with my recent email,” he said. ‘If not, I will have no choice but to return.
‘They thought that after the investigation he would disappear and the family would give up. The thing is, there is still an investigation there because I haven’t heard anything else.
“Now I feel it’s time to visit Mozambique again and ask to speak to a government official to get the data for myself.”
Despite being warned not to disrupt the official investigation, Warren made two trips to Mozambique and invested her life savings (about $80,000) into conducting her own private investigations into Elly’s death.
Elly was just days away from returning home from the trip of a lifetime when she was murdered.
He now suspects Elly was murdered in a botched beach robbery attempt before being dumped in the bathroom and the scene staged to look like a sexual assault.
In 2020, he received a tip that a local crime lord had been heard bragging about his death.
The man had distinctive tattoos and was known to hang out in a pub around the corner from where Elly was last seen.
“The town where Elly was killed is a small place and nothing happens there without this guy knowing,” he told Daily Mail Australia.
Either he murdered my little girl or he knows who did it.
He was unable to return to investigate the lead himself due to strict coronavirus lockdowns at the time, but he teamed up with a private detective to investigate remotely.
The shrine that Paul Warren has built in honor of his daughter Elly in his Melbourne home
Together they hired a sex worker from a nearby town and paid her to move to Tofo and infiltrate the gang in an attempt to try and get more information about Elly’s death.
The operation lasted about a month before the sex worker began to fear for her life and the operation was ended.
He is now imploring the AFP to offer to help Mozambican authorities in a full re-examination of the homicide, fearing that local detectives were not well prepared to handle the investigation.
“The AFP constantly told me not to worry, that the Mozambican police would carry out a proper investigation and that I should not go there and get in the way,” he said.
“But the local police were simply not equipped to deal with a murder investigation, and I soon realized that the AFP did not want to get involved.
“That’s when I knew I was going to have to do it myself.
“My biggest regret is that I didn’t get on a plane the moment I found out she was dead, but instead trusted the AFP to do its job.
Paul Warren has been investigating the death of his daughter, Elly, for eight years
‘As I look back on those first weeks after Elly’s death, I am totally disgusted by their incompetence and inaction, and I am still disgusted by it.
‘It’s been more than eight years and I’m still the only one doing anything. It shouldn’t be up to me to conduct investigations and interview suspects.
The AFP said they were cooperating with the Mozambique investigation through all appropriate channels.
“The investigation into Elly Warren’s death was the responsibility of the Mozambican authorities,” a spokesperson told Daily Mail Australia.
‘The AFP, through our Senior Liaison Officer, has continued to engage regularly with the Mozambican authorities since the death of Elly Warren in 2016, including offering significant levels of support to the Mozambican authorities through on-site meetings and communications periodic.
“The AFP is committed to engaging with the overseas law enforcement community and will continue to leverage the AFP’s extensive relationships and capabilities to support Australians at home and abroad.”
