EXCLUSIVE
A grieving Melbourne father is urging detectives to ‘stand up and question the key 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. He hires a sex worker to infiltrate the potential perpetrator’s African criminal gang.
“The town where Elly was murdered is a small town and nothing happens without this man knowing about it,” he told Daily Mail Australia.
“Either he killed my daughter or he knows who did it.”
The retired industrial engineer said he was forced to conduct his own secret investigation into Elly’s death after years of “inaction” by the Australian Federal Police.
The 20-year-old was out with friends in the tourist town of Tofo in southern Mozambique in 2016 before she disappeared around 1am.
The ambitious marine biologist, who was in the country on a volunteer program to save the endangered coastal reefs, was found dead the next morning.
Paul Warren spent seven years investigating the death of his daughter Elly
“The only thing I regret is that I didn’t jump on a plane as soon as I heard she was dead. Instead I trusted the f***ing AFP to do their job,” he said.
‘When I look back on those first weeks after Elly’s death, I am utterly disgusted by their incompetence and their passivity. And I am still disgusted by it.
“It’s been seven years now and I’m still the only one doing anything. It shouldn’t be my place to do investigations and question suspects.
‘The AFP has done absolutely nothing and it is high time they did: they need to get off their lazy asses and help solve Elly’s murder.’
The AFP said it was pursuing its investigation in Mozambique through all relevant channels.
“The investigation into the death of Elly Warren fell under the jurisdiction of the Mozambique authorities,” a spokesperson said.
‘The AFP … has maintained regular contact with the Mozambique authorities since the death of Elly Warren in 2016.’
Final farewell
Mr Warren is still haunted by the last moments he spent with his daughter before she left for what should have been 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 reached out and gave me a big hug and a kiss on the cheek and said, ‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’m safe.'”
“She knew I was worried about her going to a dangerous place, but she said, ‘Where 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 OK.’ And of course she wasn’t.
‘But that’s the thing about Elly. She was super smart and super dedicated.
Elly, an aspiring marine biologist, helped save endangered reefs before she was murdered
Never far from the water, Elly spent six weeks diving off the coast of Mozambique
“Once she decided to do something, she did it. There was no way I – 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 the marine research group Underwater Africa, documenting the local reefs and the species that call them home.
She was celebrating the end of the volunteer program on November 8, just four days before she was due to fly back to Australia, when she disappeared.
She was drinking with friends on the beach at a popular nightspot in Tofo called Victor’s Bar when she last went in for another drink around 1am.
Four hours later, her body was found by a local fisherman, lying face down in the ground in front of a public toilet block, opposite the bar.
She had cuts and bruises on her neck and mouth, her top was torn open and her skirt was hiked up, causing her underwear to fall to her knees.
Elly’s body was found dumped outside this grim public toilet block in the heart of Tofo
Elly was just days away from returning home after the trip of a lifetime when she was murdered
Staged crime scene
The initial police report into Elly’s death stated that she had died of a drug overdose. However, two separate toxicology reports revealed that there were no drugs in her system.
“It was immediately clear that it was not a drug overdose,” Warren said. “The whole investigation was tainted from the beginning.
“This was the moment when the AFP should have been on the scene, as soon as it became clear that something strange was going on.”
Forensic investigation eventually revealed that Elly had suffocated after inhaling sand.
But the sand in her lungs was golden, while the soil around the toilet block was black, indicating that her body had been moved after she was killed.
Mr Warren suspects that Elly was killed in a botched robbery attempt on the beach, after which she was dumped by the toilet block and the scene staged to look like an 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 that there would be a lot of international attention if a foreign tourist went missing or was found dead on the beach.
“But if it looked like she had been raped, local authorities wanted it covered up so the town’s tourism industry wouldn’t be destroyed.”
Daddy’s desperate sting
The distraught father has since travelled to Mozambique twice and invested his entire savings in his own private investigation into Elly’s death.
“The AFP kept telling me not to worry, that the Mozambican police would conduct a thorough investigation and that I shouldn’t go there and get in the way,” he said.
‘But the local police were simply not equipped to handle a murder investigation, and I quickly realised that the AFP did not want to get involved. That’s when I knew I had to do it myself.
‘I think I easily spent $80,000 on this, and I got ripped off big time.
‘I know people sometimes take advantage of me there. They say they have pictures or evidence or something that can help me – but that always comes at a price.
‘A man told me that he could get evidence that had gone missing from the crime scene, and that 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 knew immediately it was fake.
“I said, ‘You tricked me.’ And he said, ‘Yes, you got me.’ I said, ‘Yes, I did,’ but it was too late — he already had the money and I never heard from him again.”
He is convinced that it was not all false leads. In 2020, he received a tip that a local criminal had been heard bragging about Elly’s death.
The man had distinctive tattoos and was known to hang out in a cafe around the corner from where Elly was last seen.
With the world in lockdown, he couldn’t investigate the case himself, so he decided to hire a private investigator 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 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 stopped.
Paul Warren says he will never stop fighting for justice for his murdered daughter, Elly
Murder confession
Since then, Mozambique authorities have finally admitted that Elly was murdered, thanks in part to Warren’s dogged pursuit of his daughter’s killer.
The confession was made last year after AFP agents traveled to the African country and spoke to local investigators.
“Now they’re finally saying, ‘Yes, this is murder,’” Warren said.
‘Well, they knew that all along, but it’s a big breakthrough that they’re finally admitting it.
They also confirmed that they have a few suspects, but that they don’t have enough evidence to charge any of them.
‘That’s the same situation as me. The suspect I identified is a dangerous guy and we’ve gathered a lot of information about him.
“But the point is that we get that crucial piece of evidence that can link someone to the murder. We either need the evidence or a confession.
“That’s why we need professional AFP or Interpol investigators to go there, thoroughly interrogate these suspects and extract all the information from them.”
The shrine Paul Warren built in his Melbourne home in honor of his daughter Elly
Request for help
‘The AFP has told everyone not to get involved, but the Mozambican government indicated last year that a joint investigation is possible.
“What (the Mozambican authorities) have basically tried 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 fear and sorrow, he also desperately needs their help.
“I will never stop fighting for Elly, no matter how hard it is, I will never stop,” he said. “But I really need the help of the AFP here. That’s all I think about.
‘I have set up a little altar for Elly at home and I talk to her every morning and every evening.
“I tell her, ‘We’re on the right track, Ell, we’re getting close, we just need a little help.'”