DNA links new suspect to Elisabeth Membrey murder

A five-year reinvestigation into the murder of Elisabeth Membrey, who disappeared from her Ringwood unit in 1994, has unearthed fresh evidence identifying the likely killer and found police previously charged the wrong man.

Elisabeth Membrey was murdered in 1994. There has been a breakthrough in her case.Credit:Digitally altered image by Richard Giliberto

A DNA match to samples collected in the victim’s car has now been linked to the brother of Membrey’s housemate – a Melbourne man convicted of rape in Queensland.

Another man, Shane Bond, was charged with the murder in 2010 and acquitted two years later by a Supreme Court jury. He has always maintained his innocence and said that while he drank at the pub where Membrey worked, he did not know her. There was no forensic evidence linking him to the Ringwood unit or Membrey’s car.

The new suspect, who cannot be named because of a Supreme Court suppression order, was a witness at the trial.

He testified that he had been to the Bedford Road unit to visit his older sister (who owned the property) “five or six times, maybe not even that”.

Shane Bond outside the Supreme Court in 2012, when he was acquitted of Elisabeth Membrey’s murder. A new investigation concludes he is innocent.Credit:Craig Sillitoe

Membrey, 22, drove her Mazda to the nearby Manhattan Hotel to start work at 5pm on December 6, 1994. She drove home after her shift at 11.45pm and went to her bedroom to set the alarm for an early morning doctor’s appointment.

Police say someone she knew entered the home between midnight and 3am and killed her in the hallway.

Detectives concluded the killer must have known she was home alone at the time of the attack, despite the cars of both housemates visible parked side by side in the driveway.

Membrey’s housemate had broken her ankle days earlier in a horse riding accident and was staying at her boyfriend’s Safety Beach home, a fact known by only a handful of people, including the suspect’s parents. The brother was living with his parents at the time of the murder.

The suspect, now 48, told police he once moved Membrey’s car that was blocking his sister’s vehicle.

But the sister told police he had not driven either car and she would never have asked him to move the vehicles, which were always parked side by side. The unit had parking for three cars with direct street access.

The killer tried to clean the bloodied crime scene, bundled the body into the boot of Membrey’s car wrapped in her doona and took her to an unknown location. Her body has never been found.

Forensic tests established the dust and soil found in the wheel trims and doors came when the car was driven on a dirt road at speeds between 60 and 70 km/h for at least four kilometres.

There were traces of her blood in the car and witness sightings of the vehicle driven in Bedford Road between 3.30am and 4am on December 7.

As Membrey didn’t drive her car off bitumen, police reasoned it was the killer. Tests showed the soil was consistent with the Kinglake and Silvan areas – leaving detectives to conclude the body was left less than 100 kilometres from the unit.

Police found a bucket filled with wet rags, no toilet paper in the house and the toilet roll and holder missing.

Witnesses told police the suspect would refer to the Membrey case, saying “Liz is in a safe place” and “They won’t find the body, there is a lot of bush around there”. A relative said when the suspect was asked about the missing woman he said: “She’s in a river.”

In one of several accounts he gave to police he claimed to have been at the Bedford Road shops on December 6 to visit a woman working at the hairdresser’s, but she was too busy to see him.

Police checked with the hairdressing staff from the time and none recognised him.

Detectives were told that three days before the murder he turned up unannounced and Membrey refused to let him in.

He denied he had been there on that date saying he went there “one of two weeks before Elisabeth disappeared … to say hello to my sister” who was not home. He said Membrey had allowed him to use the toilet. Detectives surmise that with the toilet paper and holder missing, he wanted to produce a credible reason why his fingerprints or DNA might have been at the crime scene.

Witnesses told police they saw a blue Holden parked in the driveway around the time Membrey was attacked. The suspect told police when he visited he drove a gold/brown V8 Commodore, but others said he drove a blue Torana to the unit.

The man testified at Bond’s trial that he was in the street the day Membrey went missing and saw two men walking down the driveway near a purple or maroon sedan. One, he said, “had a T-shirt on – it was black with a white eagle on the front like a Harley-Davidson T-shirt”. Police have always believed this was a fabrication.

The suspect left Melbourne with a mate days after the murder, without explanation, cutting off many friends and family.

He appeared to have suffered an arm injury that required medical attention. When he left Victoria, he had his arm in a cast.

‘It is there every day, like an undercurrent’: Joy and Roger Membrey in 2005.Credit:John Woudstra

The suspect, then an apprentice plumber, told a friend just before he left he needed to use a backhoe to fill in a hole for his boss. He was on Workcover at the time. At the Bond trial he gave his occupation as “excavator”.

As they left for Queensland the man insisted on driving past the Bedford Road unit where Membrey had been killed 10 days earlier, although it was a detour from their planned route.

During his testimony at Shane Bond’s trial he was asked about a woman’s wallet found in the glove box of his car after he left Melbourne. Under questioning, he denied telling another woman it belonged to a friend named “Liz”. The suspect would later say he handed it in at a Caloundra roadhouse next to the police station.

The woman who found the wallet in the car said it was black leather. Membrey’s wallet and keys were missing from her unit and have never been found. Her wallet was black leather.

More than six times concerned relatives and friends of the suspect contacted police to nominate him as Membrey’s killer, saying he was obsessed with her, had a history of stalking and had made incriminating admissions.

Membrey and the housemate were friends for years and members of a dance club. The brother said “we used to go and watch them dance”.

A woman who lived in the same street as the suspect found him knocking on her window asking to be let in. Another time she woke to find him standing in the bedroom doorway. He was also blamed for a series of small burglaries in the area, suggesting he was accomplished at breaking into homes.

Twenty years after the murder he was convicted of a Queensland rape of a woman he knew. His DNA was put on the national database and matched a sample from Membrey’s car – the vehicle driven by the killer into bushland to hide the body.

Police interviewed more than 3000 people as part of the Membrey investigation.

The man was one of four main suspects in the murder. Bond was acquitted by a jury and two others were subject to elaborate undercover operations that led them to being cleared by investigators.

In one sting operation the target denied having anything to do with the murder, adding that he “gets it in the neck every anniversary” in the media.

The case against Bond was based on witnesses’ claims he spoke about the murder, including one testifying he said “they will never find the body”. A former housemate said Bond came home in the early hours of December 7 covered in blood. Bond said he had bitten his tongue during a seizure.

A relative of Bond’s told me: “The police charged the wrong man, which means the real killer is still free. Cold case detectives should have another objective, look and try and arrest the offender, for the sake of the Membreys.”

Without additional information the new suspect will not be charged. There remains a $1 million reward for information that leads to the arrest and conviction of the killer.

Membrey’s parents Roger and Joy have campaigned tirelessly for nearly 30 years for their daughter. They have been aware for years about this new investigation.

The Membreys have behaved with quiet dignity under unbearable stress. Roger told me years ago he feels he has failed his daughter by not being able to find her and lay her to rest.

They sat through the eight-week trial of Bond. “There is anger and frustration, but the worst is the sense of total exhaustion as it drags on over the years,” Joy Membrey says.

Joy and Roger Membrey face reporters outside court after Shane Bond was acquitted in 2012.Credit:Craig Sillitoe

Roger Membrey says: “It is there every day, like an undercurrent.”

Elisabeth Membrey, a La Trobe University politics graduate, had been offered a job as a trainee journalist with Channel Ten. She was a regular letter writer to The Age on subjects that remain current, such as US trade relations and the treatment of the mentally ill.

Legal sources say the Coroner is considering holding a fresh inquest to examine the new evidence.

Anyone with information should contact Crime Stoppers on 1300 333 000.

Most Viewed in National

From our partners

Source: Read Full Article