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EXCLUSIVE
A grieving Melbourne father is urging homicide detectives to “get off their arses” and question the prime suspect he has uncovered in his daughter’s brutal murder.
Paul Warren is convinced he has identified the man responsible for the mysterious death of his daughter Elly after hiring a sex worker to infiltrate the potential culprit’s African crime gang.
“The town where Elly was murdered is a small place and nothing happens there without this man knowing about it,” she told Daily Mail Australia.
“Either he murdered my little girl, or he knows who did it.”
The retired industrial engineer said he was forced to conduct his own undercover investigation into Elly’s death after years of “inaction” by the Australian Federal Police.
The 20-year-old had been enjoying a night out with friends in the southern Mozambican resort town of Tofo in 2016 before she went missing at around 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 biggest regret is that I didn’t get on a plane the moment I heard she was dead, but instead trusted the bloody AFP to do its job,” he said.
‘Looking back on those first few weeks after Elly’s death, I am totally disgusted by his incompetence and inaction, and I still am.
“It’s been seven years and I’m still the only one doing anything. It shouldn’t be my responsibility to conduct investigations or question suspects.
‘The AFP has done absolutely nothing and it’s about time they did: they need to get off their asses and help solve Elly’s murder.’
AFP said it was cooperating with the Mozambican investigation through all appropriate channels.
“The investigation into the death of Elly Warren was the responsibility of the Mozambican authorities,” a spokesman said.
‘AFP… has continued to regularly contact the Mozambican authorities since Elly Warren’s death in 2016.’
Final farewell
Mr Warren is still haunted by the last moments he spent with his daughter before she left abroad on what was supposed to be the trip of a 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 came up to me, gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek and said, ‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll be safe.’
“She knew I was worried about her going somewhere dangerous, but she said, ‘The place I’m staying is with a group of scientists who have been living and working there for a while, so I’ll be safe. I’ll be fine. ‘ And of course, that wasn’t the case.
“But that’s the thing about Elly. She was super smart and super committed.
Elly, an aspiring marine biologist, was helping save endangered reefs before she was killed.
Never far from the water, Elly spent six weeks diving off the coast of Mozambique.
“Once he made up his mind to do something, he did it. There was no way I, or anyone else, could stop him from following his 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 inhabit them.
She was celebrating the end of the volunteer program on November 8, just four days before her flight back to Australia, when she disappeared.
She had been drinking on the beach with friends at a popular Tofo nightspot called Victor’s Bar when she was last seen going in at around 1am for another drink.
Her body was discovered four hours later by a local fisherman, lying face down on the ground outside a public toilet block, across the road from the bar.
She had cuts and bruises on her neck and mouth, her T-shirt was torn and her skirt was riding up with her underwear pulled down to her knees.
Elly’s body was found dumped outside this filthy 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 murdered.
Prepared crime scene
The initial police report into Elly’s death stated she had died from a drug overdose before two separate toxicology reports revealed there were no drugs in her system.
“It was immediately apparent that this was not a drug overdose,” Warren said. “The entire investigation was tainted from the beginning.”
“At that moment the AFP should have been there: as soon as it was evident that something strange was happening.”
Forensic examinations eventually revealed that Elly had suffocated to death after inhaling sand.
But the sand in her lungs was golden in colour, while the dirt around the toilet was black, suggesting her body had been moved after she was killed.
Mr Warren suspects Elly was murdered in a botched robbery attempt on the beach before being dumped in the toilet block and the scene staged to look like a sexual assault.
“We know from the autopsy that she was not raped…”But whoever killed her wanted it to look like rape,’ he said.
‘They knew there would be a lot of international attention if a foreign tourist went missing or was found dead on the beach.
“But if it appeared that she was raped, local authorities would want it to be hushed up so as not to destroy the tourist business there.”
Daddy’s desperate bite
The distraught father has since made two trips to Mozambique and spent his life savings on conducting his own private investigation into Elly’s death.
“The AFP kept telling me not to worry, that the Mozambican police would do a proper investigation and that I shouldn’t go there and get in their way,” he said.
“But the local police were simply not prepared to handle a murder investigation, and I soon realised that the AFP did not want to get involved. That’s when I knew I would have to do it myself.
‘I estimate I’ve easily spent about $80,000 on this, and I’ve been ripped off a lot as well.
‘I know that sometimes there are people who take advantage of me. They say they have photos or some evidence or something that can help me, but that always comes at a price.
‘A guy told me he could get some evidence that had gone missing from a crime scene and he could get it for me if I gave him $4,000.
‘Of course I gave it to him, but when he sent me photos of the supposed evidence, I immediately knew it was fake.
“I said, ‘You’ve scammed me.’ And he said, ‘Yes, you’ve scammed me.’ I said, ‘Yes, I have,’ but it was too late: he already had the money and I never heard from him again.”
He is convinced that not all of them have been false leads. In 2020, he received a tip that a local mob boss had been heard bragging about Elly’s death.
The man had distinctive tattoos and was known to frequent a pub around the corner from where Elly was last seen.
With the world in lockdown, he was unable to return to investigate the trail himself, so he 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 an attempt to try and gain 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 shut down.
Paul Warren says he will never stop fighting for justice for his murdered daughter, Elly
Confession of murder
Since then, thanks in part to Warren’s dogged search for her daughter’s killer, Mozambican authorities have finally admitted that Elly was murdered.
The admission came last year after AFP officers traveled to the African nation and met with local investigators.
“Now they’re finally saying, ‘Yes, this is a homicide,'” Warren said.
‘Well, they knew it all along, but it’s a big step that they finally admitted it.
‘They have also confirmed that they have a couple of suspects but that they do not have enough evidence to charge any of them.
‘It’s the same situation I have. The suspect I have identified is a dangerous guy and we have gathered a lot of information about him.
“But the important thing is to get that crucial piece of evidence that can link someone to the murder. We need the evidence or a confession.
“That’s why we need professional investigators from the AFP – or Interpol – to go there and properly question these suspects and purge them of information.”
The shrine Paul Warren has built in honour of his daughter Elly at his home in Melbourne
Request for help
‘AFP has told everyone it cannot get involved… but the Mozambican government indicated last year that a joint investigation is possible.
“What the Mozambican authorities have really been trying to say – without being too obvious – is ‘we need help with this murder’. They need the AFP to help them solve this murder.”
And it is not only the Mozambican authorities who need the AFP’s help, he said.
After seven years of anguish and pain, he too desperately needs your help.
“I will never stop fighting for Elly, no matter how difficult it is, I will never stop,” she said. “But I really need the help of the AFP here. It’s the only thing I can think about.
‘I have erected a small shrine to Elly in my house and I talk to her every morning and every evening.
‘I tell her, ‘We’re on the right track, Ell, we’re getting there, we just need a little help.’
