Morbid - Episode 73: The Mysterious Death of Phoebe Handsjuk Part 2

Episode Date: June 15, 2019

In our really long conclusion to this head scratcher, we can't promise a neatly tied up ending, but we can promise that you will be much better equipped to formulate your own thoughts about what happened the night that Phoebe Handsjuk met her tragic end. We discuss the night of her death further, the reactions of those closest to her and dive into the most bonkers police investigation and coroner's inquest that you could ever imagine. This is a crazy ride, mates.  Sources: Into the Darkness: the mysterious death of Phoebe Handsjuk by Robin Bowles https://members.huntakiller.com/blog-articles/2017/11/1/the-garbage-chute-mystery-the-near-impossible-death-of-phoebe-handsjuk https://www.stuff.co.nz/world/australia/101500170/phoebes-fall-baffling-ruling-in-garbage-chute-death-of-aussie-woman-prompts-change https://www.smh.com.au/interactive/2016/phoebesfall/CoronerFinding.pdf Check out the Podcast Phoebe's Fall See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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That's W-O-N-D-E-R-Y-P-O-D. Audible.com slash wandery pod or text wandery pod to 500-500 to try audible for free for 30 days. Angie has made it easier than ever to connect with skilled professionals to get all your home projects done well. Just bring them your project online, or with the Angie app, and answer a few questions. With Angie, you can book instantly at an upfront price, or request and compare quotes from multiple pros, so you can find the best price for your project.

So the next time you have a home project, just Angie that and start getting the most out of your home. Download the free Angie mobile app today or visit Angie.com. That's ANGi.com. Hey weirdos, I'm Elena, I'm Ash and this is an Australian morbid. Again, again. We're bringing you back to the Lama Nanda. We are here for part two of Phoebe Hans' Jack. And I know everybody has been waiting with Beaded Breath to find out the conclusion, because I am too. I'm waiting. I need to know.

We're still waiting, actually. This one's not going to be tied up in a neat bow, unfortunately. But we're going to have a lot more information at the end of this than we did in the beginning of Part 1. Or, yeah, Part 1. So I was saying, how do you count? I think it starts with one. I think it's one first. So I think we, I did a little poll on the Facebook page to see what everybody was thinking if it was an accident so far, if it was suicide or if there was some foul play. And it looks like the majority of people were going for foul play and accident. Yeah, I don't think anybody voted for suicide. I agree. And I think after we hear this part

two, I think that's going to like firm that up more. And I think it really wasn't more people are going to lean toward one side. I think so too. But before we jump into it, because we're not, we don't have a lot of business because this is going gonna be a long one. So we wanna jump right in. But we do have a few quick things. Yes. First of all, thank you guys so much for all of birthday wishes. That was bananas. I really was.

So many people commented on your Facebook and Instagram posts, and I'm still reading all of them. I know. It's amazing. So thank you guys so much. I had an amazing birthday because of you. I guess rock. I love you guys. Some serious socks. My socks. I hate socks. I never wear socks. I love socks. I literally never wear socks. I

can't continue. Probably got my feet smell. Probably. Sorry. We want to do a quick murder apparel shout out because they make us merch and we don't know them. You should go get our merch from them and any other merch that they have because all their merch is cool merch. It is merch. merch. So if you head on to Instagram or if you don't have an Instagram you can just go to www.merderapparel.com and you can scroll through all their stuff and if you use our code morbid mo rid ID. Oh, I feel like you were doing a cheer. Oh gross. Okay, I insult my people. I know I had to do that. You're an ass. I'm not sure later anymore. It's fine. So yeah, use our code at checkout and you can get 25% off. I like it. That's the first time I've ever looked into it every episode I continuously guess.

I don't want you to ever look into it at 25. I just want to continue using that. 25. And it's all awesome horror themed and true crime themed stuff that you guys will love. I'm going to go on there later on with my birthday mula. Hell yeah. And spend it all. Yes.

But I'm also going to use our code Morbid. M-O-R-B-I-D to get 25% off. Do it. Thank you. In the last bit of business is we have some exciting news. We are officially part of the audio boom network. We're very excited because that means we are on the same kind of docket as case file, which Mama loves case file. Also, and that's why we drink, which we all know how especially as, as, as excuse me. We all know how as feels about this. We all know how especially as feels about that, but we both love them. And then Christine, do you want to be friends now?

I'm just wondering. We might be listed next to each other now. They're like these girls are stalkers. And we're also with two girls one ghost, and I love that podcast. And like so many other fucking crazy awesome podcasts. So we feel very honored and very excited to be a part of the audio boom network. And we want to tell you guys, because yay. So without further ado, let's just jump into Phoebe

Hansjuk because there is a lot to cover. Where did we even leave off last time? So when we left off last time, we kind of just talked about, we talked about Phoebe's, you know, obviously her upbringing. We've talked about her life right before. We talked about the few days leading up to her really tragic and really bizarre death. In those few days were super bizarre. Oh, bizarre, yeah.

The whole thing was bizarre. And we talked about the concierge Beth Ozzalaux, I believe her name is, yes, finding Phoebe and the direct aftermath of that. Right, right, right. So where we are now is we are going to go back to that we're gonna stay on that same night when they found Phoebe, where Eric, the hotel manager, he's the one that he was leaving because he had to drive his,

I think he had like his kids music lesson or something like that. Yeah, I think that's what he was saying. That's what he said last time. Well, and she called him back and he came right back, obviously. He's a big part of it. So he's the hotel manager. While this is all going on, all the investigators are there because remember, we also said that the investigators immediately, you know, corded off that room, wouldn't even let medical personnel in there.

No medical person touched Phoebe's body, which is just very strange. Weird, bizarre, totally awful, and who knows? She could have been slightly alive. Like they have no idea. No one touched her, so no one would have known. So, and not like that's not typical. Yeah, it's very bizarre. So there's all this craziness and weird stuff going on.

So Eric finally realized he goes, oh my God, we have a CCTV camera set up around this area and he said it might be helpful. Who knows, we could see somebody coming in out, we don't know, but he said we've recently had issues with the system. So it was taping over itself too quickly. Oh, no. So he said to the, he said, I went right to the police immediately when I thought of it, which was that evening. And he said, I quote, I suggested to the police that if they needed any CCTV, they should start downloading now. He said they just kind of brushed them off.

Are you fucking kidding me? And they ended up losing that footage. So there probably was footage of something. They said they never, and we'll never know because it was taped over. And he said, he said, I told them that it was taping over itself and that it was going too quick.

And if you want it, you're gonna have to get it now. And every investigator they talked to later about this case was like, that is one of them what first thing You would do is look at a CCTV footage real So I could give you all the answers you need and it's just you know You wouldn't let that evidence just float in the ether somewhere like you go get it It's right there really what is an ether? I always love saying that just like the the atmosphere Oh, I like just into the ether float in the ether. I always love saying that, just like the atmosphere. Oh, I like to send to the ether.

Float in the ether. I'm gonna add that to the list of things you taught me. Such a long list. Yeah. I'm just kidding. I know what it is. All the life lessons with Alina. That's me.

So at 8.45 pm, Detective Sergeant Mark Butterworth. Love that. I don't think he's related to Mrs. Butterworth, but don't, Jim. Uh-huh. That was funny. He was from the piranha task force.

He was the one who took control of the scene at that point. Okay. 8.45 pm. His report of the scene says, when he got there, he saw the body of a young woman. She was lying face up. Really? Her genes were pulled down below her knees. And she had obviously received a very severe,

very gruesome injury to her right foot. He said he also saw that the, the, the bins in that like garbage shoot system at the bottom. It's like a carousel system. Mm-hmm. I think it would happen was there's five wheelie bins that rotate under the rubbish shoot, and so all the rubbish falls into those bins,

they rotate as they fill out. He said one of them was knocked over and was lying on the floor beside Phoebe's body. Around the carousel, he said he could see, quote, a smeared blood trail. So she was just trying to stop it and steady herself around the room to try. Yeah.

They also said there was blood on the door on the inside of the door. So she had got to the door and was trying to open the door. That's so horrible. Yeah, that's the worst part for me. Yeah, I really hate that. Clearly she was trying to get out and nobody could hear her.

And it was pitch black in there. No. Yeah. So now, as all this is going on downstairs, remember, last week we talked about how Aunt got takeout for himself. Right. From the restaurant that they were supposed to go to with her dad.

Exactly. And that's Phoebe's favorite restaurant. It was like the golden triangle or something like that. And he got takeout for one. Just for one. Before he, and this was when Phoebe was missing, he was just like, oh, she'll probably show up. He instead of ordering two things of takeout

to be like, oh, she'll probably show up. It should be hungry. He just ordered it for himself. I'm just going to go ahead and say that if this situation ever happened to me, I would totally be in the clear because they'd be like, oh, she ordered it for himself. I'm just gonna go ahead and say that if this situation ever happened to me I would totally be in the clear because they'd be like oh she ordered for two people This is definitely she was expecting company. Yeah, there's no way while I'm upstairs shoveling chicken fingers into my mouth You know what's same? I'm like I wasn't expecting anybody. They'd be like wow. She was expecting like a party

Yeah, like 10 wow. Yeah, when she did much food, if it was just two of them, no way. Well, so when when the delivery guy came to the building, that's when aunt got a call from this kid who was outside and was like this police everywhere. Right. I don't know what to do with your food, man. I can't get up there. So aunt said, so he told Ant, you know, some shits going down at the apartment building. After the delivery guy told Ant about all the commotion, Ant went down to the foyer and approached a detective. He said, I live here, what the hell is going on? So the policemen who was acting senior sergeant

Andrew Healey told him that they had found a woman's body in the compactor room. So Ant said, oh my god, my girlfriend's been missing. Could it be her? And obviously he's like, I don't fucking know. So he's like, okay. And he was like, you're going to have to give me some more information about your girlfriend. Well, and then Ant was like, oh, I've been at work all day, but I checked on her via the phone all day.

She's been depressed. Here's the medicine she's been taking like immediately went into that. Right. And he was like, yeah, I don't need to know all that. Like I need to know what she looks like. Yeah, and he was like, it's weird that you're telling me she was depressed like immediately. Yeah, it's like you're covering your eyes. Like, by the way, also, I was at work all day. Yeah, I was at you're covering your eyes. By the way, also I was at work all day. Yeah, I was at work all day, but I checked on her all the time. Now let me just quickly be clear, we are not blaming anyone for this.

No, we're just simply speculating. We are not saying that aunt is to blame, we are just calling out the information. People are to take what they want from this. We are not going to give you any, you know, at the end, we're not going to be like, who did it? No, I don't know who did it. I don't know what happened. So I have feelings for just putting, you know, the stuff out here.

So that police officer was like, okay, does Phoebe have any, your girlfriend? Does she have any distinguishing features? Right. So Ant said she has a tattoo on her right arm or right wrist, which matched one on his own wrist. Oh. He showed it to the detective and he was like, okay. And then she's also said she has a stud in her upper lip. So then the police officer said, okay, does she have a does she have a tattoo on her stomach? And it was like, yes, she does. Oh, so it was like, yes, she does.

So he was like, okay, can you go up to your place and get a recent photograph of her? So when they got the photograph, they confirmed that we think that's her, the facial features match up. So now the detectives went back up to Ants apartment and were like, we need to take a look in your apartment. So obviously ants like a mess because they're like,'re pretty sure that's your girlfriend. So this is what they

observed in Ant and Phoebe's apartment. There was broken glass and some blood on the floor. Okay. There were the post-it notes that Ant had described that were like he said had scribbled stuff all over them. Like he said Phoebe used to do when she was nebriated. There was outside the apartment, but on the same floor, the 12th floor, they found blood on the floor in the room that contained the rubber shoot. Okay.

They also found a bit of blood on the door handle of that room. Okay. Now, and I think we'll go over this more later, but not a lot was done here to take evidence here. Why? Like they kind of like they didn't immediately swab this stuff. They didn't immediately like it was it's this whole investigation was

Lodge watched. Oh, so Aunt was the one to now call Len who was Phoebe's father in case you don't remember. And he had to break the news down that God was dead. So Len said later, quote, I was in shock at this and just sat there on the floor. And he said he got changed for dinner to a room. He was like ready to go to dinner. He was like, I got changed and like got ready.

Because I knew she was gonna turn up. He was like, I just assumed she was doing something. And because he said she wouldn't miss a dinner. Yeah, like she wouldn't miss a dinner. Yeah. Like she wouldn't miss this. Yeah. And it's in that kind of comes back a little later when that when the whole thing of suicide comes up. People are like, no, she didn't, she wouldn't have done this. And because they weren't there like big things coming up in her arms.

Yeah. And we'll get into that. Which we'll get into. So Len called his son, Tom, who was Phoebe's brother, who she was the closest to. That was like her best friend. Yeah. And he was in tears. And he said he didn't want to tell him over the phone. So he just told him, please just come here.

Like, please come here. Oh, God. So Tom immediately left his girlfriend's house in East Malvern and headed right to Lenshouse. Len ended up having to call Natalie, who was Phoebe's mother on the phone. Natalie answered and immediately said, what happened? Have you found Phoebe? Because of again, remember, she was missing.

They weren't all freaking out too much, but they were like, they were nervous. They were nervous. And Lynn said to her, quote, I hope you're sitting down. She's dead. They found her near the rubbish bins at the apartment. Jesus Christ. Natalie said she fell to her knees next to her car and just screamed no, no, no, it's kids. Not true. I can't talk like just screaming it. She said she hung up the phone in her partner, Russell Marriott had to come and pick her up off the ground and carry her inside.

Oh, that just made me like so emotional. Now, Russell was the one to call Jeanette the grandmother. Oh my God. Why do we have to play telephone right now? So Russell called Jeanette the grandmother. And remember, Phoebe was extraordinarily close to her grandmother. Yeah. And she was actually coming to Melbourne from Malacuda that day because her other brother,

Nicolai, her is a joint birthday party, was happening the following day. And that was something that Phoebe was excited to be planning and decorating for her, remember. So again, this is another thing that was happening immediately after this that she wouldn't want to miss. Right. So Jeanette said her first thought when she answered, the phone was, it's Phoebe, okay. Mm-hmm. And Russell just told her you have to come here.

And she said when she got there, Natalie was the one to tell her. And she said she was just absolutely devastated and immediately couldn't understand it. She was like, what are you trying to tell? Like, how did this happen? Right. Because again, when you find out she was found next

to a garbage shoot, it just doesn't make any sense to you. Like, how did that happen? It's like 12 floors up. She went in the garbage. It looks none of it makes sense. No. So at around 10 p.m. that night, Detective Butterworth met with the forensic crew that came, and leading senior

constable Bernard Carrick was now in charge of processing the scene. Again, Phoebe's body was lying on the floor. Her most severe injuries were from the waist down there, mostly to her legs and her right foot. And they also found a single lens from a pair of Prada sunglasses, which did belong to her. And they said in her family members said she wore them a lot when she was going out. Okay. That's interesting because maybe she was going somewhere. That's one of the things. And we're going to see a couple of more things that point to her going being on her way out. Right. Which doesn't make sense. But she did leave her person back at home, right? Or she did. She did. But that's something.

She left her purse in the apartment. And the purse had her phone charger in it, which indicates that she was going somewhere. Okay. Something could have, there was broken glass and blood in the apartment. Something could have happened. Right, right.

Before she could leave. Oh, shit. Yeah. Then, Karen looked at the compactor, which was at the bottom of the shoot, which obviously inflicted most of the damage. This thing had a big blade that was on it that was usually set to automatic. But it could be set to manual operation. If you needed to like control it more, like they would set it to manual if they if one of the bins got stuck or something.

And they need to set it to manual, get the bin out and then set it back to automatic. Right. Because automatic was like you come down the, anything that comes down the shoot, it's going to compact with that giant blade. So photographs were taken after Phoebe's body was, and it showed that the switch to the compactor was set to automatic mode at this point. So whatever was coming down, that shoot was getting compacted.

Oh. And that's important. So there was blood inside the compactor and on the inside of the compactor room door, like we said. So she was trying to get out. Character swabs from all of that upstairs on the 12th floor, where they lived and where she supposedly went into the garbage shoot. In the garbage, you room, they also saw the several drops

of blood on the concrete floor. And that's when they took samples of these. Finally, then they went to Anthony's apartment in the master bedroom. They found Phoebe's journal on the bed, so they bagged and tagged that. They went further into the apartment. They found blood on a door, more on a wooden study table, and computer mouse. Okay.

In the hallway, we're broken glass pieces. In the kitchen, there was a blister pack of Simbalta, which is an antidepressant. Yep. There was some other medications and some post-it notes, like Anthony had said. Then he went to another room and he found some more documents, a little bit more blood, and Carrick specifically made no mention or observation of a shrine-like setting, how Ante described it. Because in part one, you don't remember,

I know it might be hard to put these all together. Ant said that when he got home and noticed that Phoebe was missing, that it seemed like there was a shrine on the bed. With pictures, candles lit, like just weird stuff. And he specifically said it looked like a shrine. No one else makes mention of this shrine. Like, I mean, a shrine is a fucking shrine.

Exactly. And he's saying candles are lit. There's pictures and stuff. Like it's all laid out. Like she's doing some weird fucking African voodoo to make him like her. that was a mean girl's reference it was I didn't want anyone to be like what what now that was a mean girl's reference so at this at this point the apartment and this is nuts the

apartment had never been secured at this point oh good and the entry and exit points of the entire building had not been secured at all. You could just come and go as fucking police. Yeah, people were just bonkers coming in and out. All they wanted. Good. So possibly vital evidence was not protected here. Right.

During the Inquest Later, which we're going to get into, a police officer at this scene said that during the search of ants apartment, his parents and friends were in there, and he had no idea how they got in there. He was literally like, oh, yeah, they were just in there. They just showed up. That's how unsecure the scene was. They just walked in there without anybody knowing. How was there like no one at the door?

Like, well, that would be securing the scene. Right. I know. I just, I can't even run my head around. They had no idea how he got in there. Yeah. So at 2.45 a.m. this is when Detective Butterworth had another look at the body and he recorded more detailed observations. He said, you know, she had a slim build, she had spiky black hair and a pale complexion. Her jeans were blue jeans with a studded leather belt. They were undone and pulled below her knees, but her underpants and brow were where they

should be. Okay. She was wearing a gray t-shirt. She was barefoot. Her right foot had been almost completely severed. My God. It was literally hanging on by a couple of tendons. No.

They also saw that she had a bunch of lacerations on her legs back and buttocks. Oh, God. This is when her body was taken to the Western General Hospital in Futscray, and she was officially declared dead at 4.30 AM on Friday, the December 3rd. This was nine and a half hours after she was found.

Wow. Yeah. That's when she was taken to the coroner's office in South Melbourne. Again, without anyone medically attending to her ever. I just don't understand that. Her body lay there for nine and a half hours. Well, no one checked to see if she was alive, perhaps.

Yeah, I don't know. That shows fucked up. Any vital function at all. That's blows my brain apart. Because there's no way that the scene should have immediately been quarantined off as a crime scene. Right.

It should have been an active scene and they should have allowed medical professionals to go in there, check her vitals and declare her. And do what they're supposed to fucking do. And then they could have called the coroner immediately to come out and declare her dead at the moment. Right. That's what a coroner does.

That's what a medical examiner does. And which we'll get into, at that time, if they had called the medical examiner to come declare her at the scene, one, the medical examiner would have been able to see her in the situation, see her in that scene, which is a totally different thing and be able to make more observations to help their report later. Right. And two, be able to take an accurate, not an accurate, but a more accurate time of death. Which would help. Which would help a picture together. Yeah. So at 4.55 a.m. a fingerprint expert senior constable Martin Kuslovsky arrived. He tried to get fingerprints from a ton of places on the 12th level. He tried the door to the rubbish room,

the door, like to the bin that goes actually into the shoot itself. And it's like a placard above the shoot door. He tried to get from all there. Downstairs, he tried the door to the actual compactor room. And some pipe that was running through the room. He said, quote, no fingerprints of any identifiable value or located on any of the items that I examined at the scene. That doesn't make any sense.

And we're going to talk in a little bit that if she climbed into that, shoot herself. Her fingerprints would have been all the fuck over. Literally all over it. Like it was stainless steel, I believe. Like so it's like any of y'all got a stainless steel refrigerator. And if they didn't, they and we'll talk in detail about this, but they did a recreation of this trying to see

if you could put yourself in a rabbit's, it would be all over it. It all over it. It doesn't make any sense. Like multiple points of impact. It's very bizarre. This is when another forensic officer came and they took 148 still photos of the scene,

you know, ants apartment around the garbage shoot, all that good stuff. Again, none of these photos showed a shrine. Mm. And I know I'm like harping on this, but that's a very weird thing to lie about. Sure is. It's just a very weird thing.

Another shady thing was how we talked about the police completely failed to get the CCTV footage from that hard drive, even though they said they needed it right away. It was also Monday, December 6, before a new crew was brought into the investigation to keep processing the scene. Right. These were detective senior constable Jason Wallace, detective Sergeant Gerard Clanchey, and the two of them were from homicide. But everybody knows, and this is universal. This is not just like America, where we have the show, the first 48.

The first 48 hours after a death, an unexplained death, are the most crucial. Right. And they waited until, this is what three days later. Literally. So 72 hours. They waited until December 6th to even have more people come into try to look at this scene. That's insane. So they've just lost so much, it's just crazy. Three days. Well, it's just like simple things that you that are just like very normal and like a normal investigation that you're like, yep, like that standard practice. That's just like 101. And then a lot of investigators like, I'm a hairdresser and I know a lot of like a retired investigators and homicide detectives

that looked at this case were like including Phoebe's own grandfather. Yeah, they all said afterwards and even people not even related to Phoebe who have no skin in this game at all are like, yeah, no, like so many things weren't done here and I don't understand it. So police also didn't take statements from Eric, the hotel manager, until January 10, 2012. What? Yep. More than a year after. Okay. And it was also months before police took statements from aunt's staff, like his cleaning people, and also people that worked with him. Or Ant, himself. To confirm his movements on December 2nd.

They didn't take statements from these people who could confirm his movements that night until months after this. Like, one staff member was interviewed four months after the event and two other ones were not talked to until 11 months later. What? Yeah. Police didn't have detailed discussions with the manufacturer of the garbage shoot, either,

to figure out if her injuries were one consistent with what happened happened. And two, they didn't even ask like, can someone, you should see them fit in there? Like without even even they never even ask that question of like should we maybe make sure that she actually fell? Nothing. Well, it just it's very, I mean, this is a horrible thing to say and a horrible thing to picture, but it's just interesting that she was able to get out of there without

being totally well, exactly. And actually, that's something later that we'll talk about because the manufacturer of the shoot is very adamant that he said, if this was set to automatic mode, she wouldn't have. It was gonna do a lot more damage. Like this doesn't make sense that she came through that unless it was on manual mode and someone let her come out of there.

Yeah. And now also pertaining to the blood and broken glass found in the apartment, they did figure out that the blood was Phoebe's. Okay. Some of this blood was on the computer, on the computer mouse, was like weird. What?

They never seized the computer to find out what was on what was she doing. What was she doing? And seeing what she was doing to the computer to find out what was on what was she doing what was she doing and this and seeing what she was doing on the computer right before all of this would have what a very like tell tale would have helped piece together maybe even a time of death because we have no idea when she even died right because she was missing for a while so we don't know when this happened a little bit I'm not exactly sure when after her death, her brother Tom cracked into her email and found that her entire email, all the messages had been

deleted and wiped clean. What? Yep. Yeah. Okay. That in and of itself points to foul play. Sorry, not sorry. They had just seized that computer, they would have been able to see everything. Maybe there was a ton of evidence on the computer. I mean, they had to have been. Yeah. And while else would her entire email have been deleted. And either way, it's like, you just will never know now. It's just like, you do it.

Right. So it's done. It's all been wiped. Did they ever find her phone, do you know? They did, yes. And like, did they look through it? Yeah, I believe they did. I think we'll mention that. Okay. I've never find her phone, do you know? They did, yes. And like did they look through it? Yeah, I believe they did.

I think we'll mention that as well. At about 11, 15 a.m. on Friday, December 3rd, so directly the morning after this, Phoebe's family went to the morgue. It was Natalie, Len, Tom, Nikolai, and Jeanette, along with Natalie's brother, Matt, and Len's friend, friend, Chilly, I believe. They did attempt several times to see if Aunt wanted to come, but his mom said, no, he's resting, he's too upset, he won't come. So when they got there, Natalie and Len

were taken into the room. Oh my God. And that's when a member of the coroner staff asked, said to them, they are going to do an autopsy. Okay. So Len, which this is like to be expected, Len's a doctor, he's a psychiatrist. So he was a doctor. He knows what happens during an autopsy and he said he immediately said, I can't let my daughter be carved up.

Like no. Okay. So he immediately was like, nope, I don't want it because he just wasn't thinking. Right. And they were like, yeah, the police requested it.

So like you don't have a choice. Like this is one of those things where we have to do this to happen. It just has to happen. And then they also told him, we all, you also need to be the senior next of kin to object. And they were like, we're her mother and father, we are the senior next of kin. And they were like, oh, no, aunt already registered as senior next of kin because he was in a de facto

relationship with Phoebe. What? So Natalie was like, excuse me? Because immediately they were like, are you kidding me? Were her parents? Yeah. And again, they hadn't been in a relationship that long. No, it had been like 80 months. Yeah. That's not that long. No, not to be overstepping parentos. For like, you know, autopsy consent. Like, that's crazy. So he gave the consent for her to be autopsy? Well, he did. He had, because so now Natalie decided to call him to see if he did agree with the autopsy. And after they chatted, he said, all I want to know is what happened. So they're like, okay. So they all agreed. I think there was Len's initial response was like, I don't want that to happen to my daughter and know what happens, which now knowing what I know, nope, I would consent.

Yeah. But it would be very difficult to picture that, you know, to put that in any kind of personal context. So, I understand is immediately like, oh God, no. That's like what nightmares are made of. It really is. So, the next step was obviously the toughest. They were asked to identify her

and they made a positive identification, which identifying a body is not like, they don't, it's not like you're all like clean and perfect and everything you're looking at it as is. I think they pull a sheet up to your chin basically. Oh my god. But that's gotta be the worst thing ever and especially how she was, you know. So on December 3 at noon, Dr. Matthew Lynch of the Victorian Coronial Services

Center, he was the medical examiner, began his autopsy. With him were some, how many two forensic photographers and Justin Tippett of the homicide squad. So the doctor noted that he said her genes were extensively bloodstained and he said, quote, the waistband is just below the knees. The right leg of the genes is extensively torn. The black leather belt with studs is looped through the first and second belt loops at the front on the left.

So it wasn't even looped through all of the loops. Which is kind of odd. She had a pierced upper lip with a stud, and she had a belly button ring. Above her pubis bone was a tattoo with the messages, not, I'm probably gonna kill this, Noscay Tate Ipsum, which means know thyself. And then on the other side, it said Audaceus,

Fortuna Oavat, which means fortune favors the brave. So there were also some symbols tattooed on it, left arm and some down her spine. And then she had the wrist one with it. The autopsy was a little over three hours. He said that her injuries were consistent with a fall down a narrow shoot over approximately 30 meters. He said the injuries to her lower body and legs

were obviously way more severe than any of the other ones. And her right foot had been, like we said, virtually amputated. It's just below the joint between the tibia and fibula. Oh my God. It was attached by only a couple of tendons. All the major arteries that deliver blood to the feet had been severed, including the poplidial artery, which is the lower branch of the femoral artery. Now, if you ever were to nick your femoral artery, you'd die. You'd die.

Do it down in a second. That's the main artery that supplies blood to the lower limbs. It's not like right behind your knee. No, it's up in your thigh. I mean, it goes down there. But mainly it begins up there on your thigh. I remember hearing that one, and then like being nervous to shave my legs. They would take some force to do that. Okay. He said that the injuries in that area appeared to be inflicted by blunt force, which makes sense to falling down a sheet. The wounds did have regular edges in some places, but the ends of the tibia and fibula were like jagged. So basically if an artery is severed like cleanly, just by like surgical means, it will retract

and those, the ends of that artery will create kind of like a plug and that will stop the blood from flowing. You know, it sucks. It cauterizes itself almost. Like it just keeps it from flowing. But if it's like raggedly severed, then it's just gonna keep pumping every time your heart beats. It's just gonna spur it out blood. And that's basically what was happening there.

Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondries Podcast American scandal. We bring to life some of the biggest controversies in U.S. history, presidential lies, environmental disasters, corporate fraud. In our newest series, we look at the Kids for Cash Scandal, a story about corruption inside America's system of juvenile justice. In Northeastern Pennsylvania, residents had begun noticing an alarming trend. Children were being sent away to jail in high numbers, and often for committing only minor offenses.

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What would you do? I'm Whit Missaldine, the creator of this is actually happening, a podcast from Wondry that brings you extraordinary true stories of life-changing events, told by the people who lived them. From a young man that dooms his entire future with one choice, to a woman who survived a notorious serial killer. You'll hear their first-person account of how they overcame remarkable circumstances. Each episode is an exploration of the human spirit and personal discovery. These haunting accounts sound like Hollywood movies, but I assure you this is actually happening.

Follow this is actually happening wherever you get your podcasts, you can listen to ad free on the Amazon Music or Wondery app. So there was a, um, Bruce, a sub-dermal hematoma on the left side of her brain on the surface of the parietal cortex, which is the upper part of the brain towards the rear. The doctor speculated that this could have been caused when the brain was removed during the autopsy. And I can say from personal experience, because I take out a lot of brains that definitely

could have had. Please say that one more time. I take out a lot of brains. Savage. Who the fuck Can you say that one more time? I take out a lot of brains. Savage. And the devil like else can say that. Like that was so cool. That is a crazy, super gross. You fucking nasty.

It's just true though. I take out my brains. No, I know. That was like so great and so horrific all at the same time. All of my weekends are just taking a lot of things. Never in my life will I say that. No, I don't think. I in my life will I say that. I don't think.

I mean, hopefully not until I'm a zombie. That would be a lot. Diggled brains. But I can say that that is definitely possible because when you remove a brain, it's really hard, right? It is, it's pretty hard. And I mean, it's a simple process,

but it's kind of like hard manual labor because you have to reflect back the scalp, which is easy, say. Because you just cut it away from the skull. And then you use a bone saw, which is very heavy. Sure. And really intense to cut the skull cap off. But what you have to remember is parts of your skull have different thicknesses in different spots. So you have to know what kind of pressure to put down to not just bang right into the brain

and cut the brain. Because although you can, it's not like a huge deal if you do that. Neuro pathologists don't necessarily like when you give them a brain that's been chopped from your bone suck, because that skews their findings, but it can happen. So if you banged into it with the bone sigh, you could cause a subtermalhemitoma. Number one, thank you so much

for all of your insight to information. You're welcome. You. And number two, I wish you all had seen the hand gestures that she made while talking about cutting open your fucking skull and scooping your damn brain out. Thank you. I'll never sleep again. Continue. I know. I gave you a whole like puppet show. You were like, don't like don't you? You're loving explain. Okay. I can't help it. I have a headache from like thinking about

my brain being sought open. I mean, hopefully you won't feel it. Oh fuck mortality is real. It is real. Oh yeah. That is coming. Oh my God. And fuck everybody. Wow. Okay. Whatever. I don't like to think about that. So there was also an area where Phoebe was bleeding on the left side of her head. I guess too. So those are all just injuries that he noticed. He said at the end that she died from multiple injuries resulting in significant blood loss. So she bled out. So again, oh god, that's horrific. She could have been slightly alive. Like a couple transfusions and maybe we could have,

I don't know, you know, it's possible. Somebody had been able to look at her. She also had a ton of broken bones, but he did note that there was no evidence of neck trauma or any kind of sexual trauma, and no diseases were detected. The tox reports revealed quite a bit. She had her blood alcohol content was 0.16 grams per 100 milliliters, which is more than three times the legal driving on it.

It also said that her blood contained the drug, Zolpedem, which is known as still-knocks. That's the sleeping pill that they end up blaming this whole thing on, by the way, which is crazy. He also wrote, quote, the consumption of ethanol alcohol in patients taking zolpa-dem is absolutely contraintigative, Duke to described side effects, which include complex sleep related behaviors. So still Knox has been apparently, it's got kind of like a mad breath, an ambion, not really.

It's just got like an ambion rep kind of, how like people say like they sleep eat or like sleep drive or sleep clean So it can make you do things when you sleep. I wish my ass would sleep clean Which I guess sleep eating is like a big one. That's horrible. I wish that I could sleep exercise. Yeah, I mean you imagine Maybe who knows maybe it's been reported. Oh my gosh. I'll try ambient for that Don't do that whatever Because then you know because some people like walk out the door and get in their car and drive you know

No, thanks. I just want the exercise part I'm not saying that happens to everybody who takes ambient. I'm not trying to like knock ambient like You need it. It works for you. That's great. It's just that is reported. I'm not making this up so the other drugs in her system were quinine, which is used for treating muscle cramps. And it also is used to treat malaria. Wow. That's interesting. But I'm assuming she took it for muscle cramps. The antidepressant de-loxatine, which is sold as Zimbalta, and then a cough medicine called Dextromethorphin, which can also have some weird side effects on its own. When you mix it with alcohol, it's probably even worse.

And like Ambien. Yeah, exactly. So, Dr. Lynch's report was reviewed by Professor Coordner, who's the head of the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine on December 9, 2010. And it was sworn as a statement on November 23, 2011, which is almost a year after she died. Dr. Lynch, he also was trying to figure out the likely time of her death, obviously, but he couldn't be very specific about it because seven hours had gone between when she was last seen alive, like when she went missing. And when she was found. Right.

So that's a lot of time. And he hadn't, which is crazy to me, he had an attempt to take a rectal temperature, which can help you figure out the terms. Somewhat determined. Now, there are actually three different times of death. There's the physiological time of death, which is when the vital functions have stopped. There's the legal time of death,

that's the time recorded on the death certificate, and then there's the estimated time of death, and that's the death, the medical examiner estimates. Okay. Now to find this out, you look at body temperature, liver mortis, rigor mortis, stomach contents, degree of putrefaction, corneal cloudiness, vitrious potassium level, corneal cloudiness, vitrious potassium level, and sometimes insect, you know, friends who have come if the scene is outside mostly, it can happen inside too. They're not friends. But the most important and the most, you know, recognizable,

one is body temperature, rigour mortis, and levity. Those are the ones that are really used mostly. Right. And they're the most, you know, accurate and relied upon. Body temp is the best one because a dead body loses 1.5 degrees per hour after death until it reaches equal or very in with the environment. So like, we're in temperature. Yeah. And then it'll stay where it is. The formula for hours is hours since death equals 98.6 minus the corpse's core temperature divided by 1.5. Just in case any of you want to do that, you are a psycho. Now what you want to do is you want to take the body temperature, I mean you probably

don't want to do that. I don't want a good examiner's want to do this. You want to take it rectally or you want to take it by measuring the liver temperature, which that's a more accurate temperature because it's core body temperature. But what you have to do with this is you have to make a tiny incision in the upper right abdomen and then you just pass the thermometer into the tissue of the liver to take that. Okay. It's very quick and easy. They do it all the time at scenes. No, no, this was done.

Why? It makes me nuts. So Phoebe's clothes were also sent to the forensic police forensic services lab, along with the photos taken at the autopsy by the forensic photographers. Now what they were trying to do was look at her injuries and look at the damage to her clothes and just make sure it all matched up because you never know.

Somebody could dress her afterwards, who knows? My upside-down. Now, the blood in the tears on her clothes, her jeans specifically, did seem to suggest that the jeans were being worn as usual when the injuries were inflicted. Okay. But they were found injuries were inflicted. Okay. But they were found down in her knees.

Right. And ankles. So they said there were two long rips in the jeans, and neither of them had gone through the fabric, and they didn't line up with any of her injuries. Okay. So that's weird. Yeah, like, one of them. Because one of them even mean.

It's like, so her pants were, because if you think about it, if her pants were up around where they should be, around her waist, and she went in the shoot, they wouldn't ride down if she was going down the shoot because she went feet first. Right, they would ride up because of like gravity.

So how the hell did they get down there? And then there were injuries that didn't line up with a couple of the rips in her jeans. Right. It's just again, these are things that can be, I mean, not the writing up, I don't get how they ended up at her ankles. And nobody did.

Nobody's been able to explain that. But I can kind of understand if like a couple of the rips didn't line up because maybe she was wearing ripped jeans. Or like, I don't know if this is stupid, but like maybe she realized that like her, her her foot was almost severed and maybe she was like going to take her pants off and like use her pants to, I don't, I don't know, you know what I mean? Maybe.

I don't think so. But like maybe in like your wildest dreams. Because I don't think you would try to pull your pants over your foot that's hanging by a tendon, because you would just rip your foot off. That's true, but I mean, she was like drunk. So yeah, but she'd also just found 12 floors out of a garbage shoot. That's true. So I don't think she was trying to clot anything.

I think she was just trying to get out. Oh my God. But again, who knows? Yeah, you don't know. So at this point, this is interesting, just saying, Aunt put in a claim to receive the death benefit payment for Phoebe. And he used the whole thing that they were in a de facto relationship. So he was next of Ken. What does that mean? A de facto relationship? It just means like it's a proven, really, a romantic relationship. Like they lived together they had for a fucking year and a half. Yeah.

You know, the parents deserve that money. Well, in his father, George, the judge, remember, signed a statutory declaration to support this claim. But the problem here was whether intentionally or unintentionally, I'm not blaming anybody. George didn't exactly give the correct information on this, especially about the length of Phoebe and Ann's relationship. He said they were together six

months before they even met and had them living together before they even met on this declaration. So that obviously made it look like they had a longer relationship and we're living together longer. Yeah. There was obvious tension about this. Is this like life insurance? Yeah, basically like a benefit payment. There was obviously tension with her family about this, but he ended up getting like $113,000.

Wow. And after a lot of like, I think there was like some fighting and stuff. Um, he did end up giving it to her, I think giving it to her brothers. Yeah, he didn't fucking need it. He was working with like celebrities. But it's just the fact that like he made the point to do that. I don't know. It's just like quote unquote power moves.

So this is when they start getting into the logistics of like weight a second. Could she have even gone through the shoot? So on December 7th, Neil Bone, who's the managing director of Wasteech, that's the company that made and installed this whole system. He was brought to the scene and he was brought onto the south, the 12th floor, where she apparently went into the garbage shoot, with him with the detectives on the case in the medical examiner, Dr. Lynch. Dr. Lynch said in his report that he said he thought a person, a Phoebe size, could fit in that garbage suit, but he said only obviously if they were able to put

their legs in first. Right. Which is how he said no matter what she went in legs first or her head would have been gone. Mm-hmm. So Neil Bone, the manufacturer, he was like, I don't know. Like I don't know. This doesn't make sense to me. He said, not only does he not really think that she would have like comfortably fit through

this, like at all, but he said she wouldn't have been able to survive going through that compactor if it was on automatic. And he said, obviously, she survived for a period of time. Yeah, we all agree on this. It's true. Like it's obvious. So he said, when it's on the automatic setting, it chopped the garbage and compressed it into 400 millimeter blocks

before it even allowed it to pass through. And this was to make sure like consolidate space in all the rubbish bins. Yeah. He said there's no way Phoebe would have passed through that compactor without getting way worse injuries. Like he was like, I know that foot is really bad in this obviously some bad ones.

She would have gotten way more like chopped into bits. He said the only way that he sees what happened happening is if that was on manual. Somebody else involved here that set it to manual. Okay. And then set it back. Now the police were like, oh, I don't know. I don't even know what setting it was on.

And they were, and he was like, we don't know what setting it was on. Now, there were photos from the crime scene that showed what setting it was on. OK. But obviously they didn't even pay attention. The same day, Phoebe's parents were still struggling with the idea that they were not senior next to Ken, which would mean the body would not be released to them. It was going to be released to Ant. What?

Yeah, because senior next of kin, right, right, right. But they spoke through attorneys with Ant about this and he agreed to have the body release back to them, but he said he would not give up his status as senior next of kin. Like cool, go fuck yourself. So he was literally like allowing them to have their child's body. Now later that same day, and this is still on December 7th, Aunt posted on Facebook, quote, for those of you around the world who don't know the sad news, my partner Phoebe struggled terrible depression.

That's much of her life. She took her life on Thursday to ease her pain to be at peace. There will be a memorial next week. People were like, um, it hasn't been officially ruled a suicide. Right. Why would you say that? Like, immediately was like, she took her life on Thursday. Like, he didn't say like, she tragically died.

Yeah, like, she took her life. Like, hey, everybody, she was depressed. She struggled, she took her life. It's almost like the whole how like, Courtney Cobain did all those things. Yeah. Excuse me, Courtney loved. She's Courtney Cobain.

Courtney loved it all those things to be like, he was so depressed. Oh, that's so depressed. All of a sudden, which was she struggling for sure, obviously, by a lot of us. But no one, like the police were treating it as a homicide at this point. But they were not, they, it was never,

it was not ruled a suicide at this point. Right. He was writing that on Facebook. Like, what? So, and I don't, like, if this happened to somebody that you loved, you would think that you'd be like, no, like, something happened. Well, and you'd also just, I think I, you would be like, she tragically died on Thursday. Yeah.

You don't have to tell everybody. She struggled with depression and she ended her life. Like, you don't need to die. You don't need to say that. Especially when you do a fucking no. So the next day, December 8th, Aunt wrote a long email to Len and Natalie. And on it, he cced Tom, Nikolai, Jeanette, George Felicity,

which are his parents. George is his father. Felicity is a stepmother and Sue is his mother. He said that he was deeply hurt that Len and Natalie were challenging his position as senior next of kin. Why? Because they had lodged a application with the coroner to be treated as the senior next of kin. And he said, quote, without the courtesy of consulting me, like I'm'm litter, like, I would be like, I'm her parents mother. Like, are you kidding me? And he said, he, he said, you know, I'm working with them. I don't understand this. He said that he told the coroner's

office that he had no objection to having them listed as interested persons, quote, so we all receive the same information. And he said he didn't want to fight over anything, he didn't want to fight over the body, but he said he would, quote, permit Len and Natalie to organize funeral directors and make arrangements for a cremation. Oh.

He said, I will permit them to do that, to make arrangements for their own child. Am I allowed to say he's a real doo shirt? Oh yeah, like I'm not again I'm not saying he's a murderer or anything. But he's a douche. He sounds like an asshole. And he even wrote a letter to the coroner to defend his position as senior next to Ken. And in it he said quote, my pain over their conduct, meaning Lenin Natalie, is insignificant compared to the pain Phoebe would feel if she knew they had taken this course. So he's literally seeing to this, to the corner, their child Phoebe, the dead one, would be horrified that

her parents were trying to take control of her arrangements. I doubt that because they were the ones she went to when you were like me to her. How awful are you that you were literally being like your daughter would be horrified by you right now. Like your dead daughter. Like you're the worst. Yeah, what an asshole. Yeah.

Oh and so he also was really mad because Lenin Natalie in their letter to the coroner had mentioned that they would like a coroner to be handling the death that didn't have any association with his parents. Yeah. Felicity and George who are both judges and are very influential. So they had said like they didn't like that this coroner, Dr. Lynch, did have an association with Felicity, his stepmother. Right. They were like, I don't know. I don't like that she has a special interest in this. It's not. Well, I feel like that shouldn't even be allowed regardless.

It shouldn't. It really shouldn't. It ain't referred to that as a slur. And he couldn't believe that they would even suggest that there was improper influence. Like, how dare you? Now, it's just a bonkers to me. And also said that he thought that he was doing everything right. He said, he thought by allowing them to, allowing Phoebe's body to be released to them, that he was demonstrating how, you know, I have a lot of integrity. I'm doing this correct.

Like I think by doing that, I've demonstrated that. I'd be like, yeah, thank you so much. Yeah. Also go fuck yourself. He also said quote, that their actions, them doing this writing the letter to the coroner and trying to become the senior next of kin as our fucking parents made him quote,

lose all trust in dealing with you in making any further arrangements to commemorate Phoebe's life. We will be arranging a private memorial, Jeanette and the boys, or of course welcome to take part. And her parents aren't her mother and father not saying it directly, but implying you guys aren't welcome. And he said he wouldn't talk to them any further. First of all, what a nightmare to lose your daughter. And first of all, what a nightmare to lose your daughter. Second of all, in that tragic of a way.

And third of all, then to have to deal with this asshole. And for him to be sitting there being like, yeah, and we're gonna have a memorial and you're not invited pretty much. You're not directly invited. That's cool. And Phoebe's relationship was obviously not stable. Right. What we have shared with you last week.

I mean, she was in and out of that relationship every five seconds. And said he was controlling, which is very clear. Exactly. And her friends and family said he was controlling. And they were actually very, they said that she was really worried that he was gonna ask her to marry him when they went to Paris, that trip that she was excited about. She said, I'm actually worried he's going to ask me

because I don't want to. It's awful. They believe she loved him, but they said she was feeling very controlled and suffocated by you. Right. And I think she was also feeling like she didn't really belong in his world.

Like, well, because he made her feel that way. Well, and he would like patronize her and kind of talk down to her and make her feel stupid. And then she also had to like borrow dresses from people to go to these fancy events and stuff. So she just didn't feel like she belonged here. And he made her get a whole new job because he said she couldn't be a receptionist.

Exactly, because he was like, that's not an okay job. Like, that's mean-y-o. I'd be like, your mean-y-o. Yeah. Now, the same day that that nasty email where he was like, I can't believe any of you Barbara. The same day that that came, about six days after Phoebe's death, the detectives that were

working the case pulled Lennon Natalie aside and they said, after only three days of investigating, Phoebe's death was not suspicious and was a homicide. Yeah. Excuse me, and was a suicide. Yeah, not suspicious at all. No, I don't know. Going down a garbage shoot from the 12th floor, not suspicious.

Total typical suicide. People do that all the time. Yeah, every day. Phoebe's grandmother made the point that none of that makes sense. And she said, Phoebe one would not have committed suicide at all. She just didn't believe that. And she said definitely not around so many happy family events, like we were mentioning earlier.

Phoebe's grandfather, Lauren, who we're going to talk to a lot, his 70th birthday was coming up. Her brother, Nikolai's big party, was coming up in the next day for his 18th birthday party that she was really excited to decorate and set up for. And then also she was gonna be celebrating her dad's birthday with him at dinner that night. And I think she had like a best friend's birthday. She did. Yeah. So she had all these birthdays and happy events coming up and she loved that shit. Yeah. They were like she just and they were like she wouldn't have

done that. She wouldn't have like made these all dark moments for us now Now this is when her grandfather Lauren the old homicide detective could not Take this he was like I'm not taking this conclusion that she it's not It's just that's just not what happened. Yeah, so he made an appointment with Sergeant Clanchi who had taken over the case At the homicide department on Friday, December 10th. So this is only a few days later. Before the meeting, he compiled a long list of things that he thought that the police should have done but hadn't. In that, he said the thing about the CCTV footage that they would take.

He said they didn't interview the building manager about the security systems or asked anything about him watching anything that day, any weird movements that day. They didn't seize the computer. They didn't seem to find it weird that even though she was a compulsive writer and wrote all the time that she didn't write a suicide note. Yeah. And they didn't even look to see if one was on the computer. They had an interviewed aunt staff to verify his movements on the day she disappeared for months. And he was like, that is literally like one of the first

things you should do. Because she died under strain circumstances, regardless of what actually happened here. He said it was weird that they brushed aside all the broken glass and bruises on Phoebe's wrists and upper arms and the blood in the apartment and on aside all the broken glass and bruises on Phoebe's wrists and upper arms and the blood in the apartment and on the computer and on the doorframe. And he said, they immediately had said, oh, well, we figured out that Phoebe dropped a glass and she probably just cut herself. No. But they were like, well, no, she could have dropped a glass in a in like a fight. Oh, yeah. Or she could have thrown it. She could have done it.

Anything could have happened. And why didn't you find the rest of the glass? Exactly. And also, and he said, most important of all, they didn't even confirm that it was possible to commit suicide by going down the garbage shoot. Like, you didn't even check if it was like a possibility. Like, could she fit down there?

Yeah. And he also brought up Phoebe's iPhone. He said, if Ant had taken the iPhone to be repaired on Wednesday morning when he left for work, like he said. Right. Then Phoebe couldn't have sent that weird tomato soup text message that she sent.

That was like bizarre to everyone. Super weird. Because that was on the morning at, in the morning at 1032. And he said the phone was working at 6.25 pm the previous day because aunt had used it to message brand Heshin looking for Phoebe. Mm-hmm. So the detective said yeah, like we know all this We're satisfied with the investigation. I'd be like cool. I'm not like and he was like satisfy with the investigation. I'd be like, cool, I'm not.

Like, and he was like, so none of that seems weird to me. Almost didn't do that. I think those probably like 10 different literally. And they were like, yeah, no, it was a suicide. And he even pressed more being like, you didn't even interview any of Anne's friends or family or coworkers from the day it happened. And they were like, yeah, no, that's it.

Done. Like, can you sue a police department? Well, and smaller details bothered Lauren too. Like he said, those Prada sunglasses that were found next to her bought the lens. Why would she just be wearing those? Why would she bring her sunglasses with her while attending the killer's self? And she had, again, she had packed her phone charger in her bag and they found straight her straightening irons were plugged in and on the floor.

Like she was getting ready to go out. Right. No one on the investigative team even acknowledged any of that. Like they weren't like, oh, this is strange that it seems like she was getting ready to go somewhere. Her keys are here with her bag, her phone charges in her bag. The straighteners are out like she was getting ready. Right. Like what? It just doesn't make any sense. And then also they were like, isn't it weird that someone would try to like kill themselves in a garbage shoot? Like when is another instance of that? And they couldn't find another instance of that.

No, that's just... It's never happened. No, Jeanette, her grandmother remembered also that aunts' parents were kind of weird after her death when the two families got together. His father George kept saying to Len that Phoebe was a troubled girl obviously, and at one point he said, quote, well of course it was suicide. I'd be like, oh you want to tell me about my daughter's death? Cool. And she was like, what? And she said, Len said he wouldn't even look at him.

But at least three or four times that night said, quote, she was depressed and it was a tragic suicide. I like, you don't know my kid. And this was supposed to be a night where the two families got together just to kind of like grieve together and like comfort each other. And that's not there was literally sitting there being like,

well, of course it was suicide. That's what it was. It was tragic suicide. And Len even says, I think on, again, the podcast Phoebe's fall, whichever one should go listen to, because they did, they talked to all these people. And they did great job. They did an amazing job.

And they actually have Len. And he was saying, like, you know, he's like, I wanted to say, like, who the fuck are you to diagnose someone? Like he's a psychiatrist. Right. So he's like, I wanted to say like, who the fuck are you to diagnose someone? Like he's a psychiatrist. Right. So he's like, are you kidding me? And then he said Felicity, George's wife, his mother, stepmother, she was just going along with all of it being like, yeah, it was a tragic suicide totally.

Like that's it. And Phoebe's parents had gone into this whole night thinking they were all just going to be like hugging each other and like talking about and like maybe like telling some stories and like yeah, and it and he's like and then it turned into this weird thing where they're like trying to convince us right that she was you know like it was very weird. Now his parents weren't the only ones that were acting weird. Detective Justin O'Brien later said that aunt was really weird when he first talked to him after this whole thing. He said that he observed notiers, mucus, or red eyes during the time he'd been around Ant. So he was like, he's talking about how he's crying and being upset, but like, I didn't see any of that.

I didn't see anything about that. And they were in the middle of taking his statement, the police. And Ant was like, do you want me to type that out? Because he was like, you're writing really slow. Do you want me to type my statement out? What? Like, he offered to type out his own statement. And Ant's, because he was like, it'll be faster.

And he ended up typing out his own statement. That's strange. Yeah. Now, Vanessa Levin is one of Ann's oldest friends. She said that she was with him a lot following Phoebe's death, and she said that, and this was brought up at the inquest later, which we're going to mention, she said that he would quote, access his Facebook and act normally, but then when visitors came, especially the handjucks, he would quote, get very upset.

She said, you would cry and curl yourself up on the couch. And she said that these emotions seems like they were being controlled based on who was around. Okay. And when Ant was asked about this at the inquest, he was like, no, that's ridiculous. Like, how dare you say how I grieved, but she was like, I'm just saying I was with you a lot and you weren't upset and you'd be sitting there like scrolling through Facebook and then the hands up when it was, and you could curl up on the couch crying.

Yeah, convenient, weird. And again, as we've seen in a lot of these cases, you can't judge people for how they grieve obviously because everybody does. But that is a little weird. I'm just saying. No, no, no. Now, this is when her grandfather and her mother were like, okay, we're going to take matters into our own hands.

So remember, aunt didn't allow the parents at his memorial service. That's fine. I don't want to go to your dumbass memorial service. That's fine. I don't want to go to your Donaspa memorial service. His was on December 12th and her old friends that went to the service said when the ones that did go said that it didn't seem to be about her. It seemed to be about how he wanted her to be. And they said like even the pictures that he had up of her, he was like they were like I didn't even recognize recognize her. It just wasn't her. It wasn't Phoebe. And they said they ended up leaving feeling like sick. Like they didn't. It just did not. That's at all. And some of her friends like Bren were not even invited to come. And obviously she was very close with him.

And Len and Natalie's memorial service was on December 16th. And this service, everybody said, was much more Phoebe. And friends said this was like a very compassionate and loving ceremony where everybody was just trying to love each other and, you know, help each other. The day after their service, Phoebe was cremated at Springvale Crematorium. Her ashes were brought to Malacuda, because that's the place she loved the most, because that's where Grandma-to-lift, to a lake she loved.

Lenn, her father, his father is actually Norwegian, and taught him how to bend wood to create a Viking boat. Oh, wow, that's cool. Yeah. And to do a like crazy awesome send-off for Phoebe. Oh, I love that. So they said about 40 people gathered on the beach. Her ashes were put in the boat, along with letters from Fenns and Family, that they wrote

to her. Ooh, I could feel my hands. I know, right? It was covered in marigolds, and they lit the boat on fire and pushed it out and just watched it burn in the lake. Wow. Like a Viking funeral. I really, like, you know that lump in your throat

when you're gonna cry. I know. Here I am. Isn't that crazy? I just love that. I was like, feel like she would have loved that. She was like so creative. And she was like a free spirit. I feel like very attached to this case.

I feel like I just feel, I know, I feel like you and Phoebe had like some soul sister so I'm going on with that. Some of it. I was just, yeah. No, I just mean your free spirit. The very free spirit. So December 22nd, Natalie actually

met with Aunt at a coffee shop near his apartment. They, because she wanted to, like, she was like, I just want to like talk about her final moments. Like, you know, I mean, like, you were with her. Like, yeah. So they talked about it. And she said they actually had like a nice conversation, she felt, not in that.

Yeah. And they they talked about, you know, the last days and everything. And she felt like they had a good conversation. He gave her a box of Phoebe's belongings because she had requested them. And he said he only kept the things that they jointly owned. Mm-hmm.

So she felt good about the meeting, but then she got home and opened the box. Oh. There were some things missing that she was like, excuse me, such as her passport, her Medicare card, her laptop, her camera, her birth certificate, and her recent journals, which she wrote in every single day.

So what did he give her exactly? And I don't exactly know, but apparently, Phoebe carried her current journal with her literally everywhere. So the fact that that wasn't in there, she was like, yeah, that's weird. Yeah. And she was like, all these other things are like, things I should have, like her birth certificate.

That's like, I was there that day. Like I was pretty important in that. Now, she contacted Ann about this and she said that the laptop and wallet were returned, but the wallet was almost empty. There was no license or credit cards. There was like membership cards and a passport photo of Ant. And there was no sign of Phoebe's passport or any other official ID documents. He didn't know where they were. No. And her journals were missing. Yeah.

You just misplayed. I'm sure she had tons and tons of journals and you just misplaced them. Yeah, exactly. On January 24th, police brought in, and again, just to talk to him again about the day. This was at Lauren's request. Yeah, good.

Because Lauren, the hair grandfather, is like doing the damn thing. His story did change a bit. Because now he said he wasn't sure if he had taken Phoebe's iPhone to get repaired on that day. He originally said, or if he did it the next day. Oh, okay. He also wasn't sure why there was no record on his key fob of him coming in the middle

of the day like he claimed to check on her. Yeah, that's just like super weird. Yeah. And he kept just claiming I did come in. I did come in. I checked on her. I don't know why it wouldn't check on her. Yeah, that's just like super weird. Yeah, and he kept just claiming I did come in, I did come in, I checked on her, I don't know why it wouldn't be on there. You didn't though. Now Phoebe's grandfather decided to do a test

with the detectives to see if someone Phoebe's size could put herself in the garbage shoot. They even had one of Phoebe's friends, Sarah, who was about her size, attached to a safety harness to really like get them, to actually do this. That's wild, but she was able to do that. I know, because that was my best friend.

I'd be like, nope, I can't. In there's a video on the Phoebe's Fall website, I believe, about this, and she's like really nervous. She's like, do you have me? Do you have me? Like it's very hard. Not even not, but it's like also that's just like, yeah, that's not exactly, that's like very emotional.

Yeah. On 29 28th is when they did this on the 12th floor so you have to pull down this really heavy spring loaded door with one hand and then you drop the garbage in with the other that's how this thing works yeah it has a built-in mechanism that ensures it closes really quickly and that's to stop big things like people from getting into the garbage. Almost like a mailbox, like how you would open a mailbox, put a letter in and then it checks. Exactly, but this thing it was huge. Spring loaded too. So you pull this down and it doesn't just like go back up. You like going it. You have to hold it open to put anything in it. Now, the shoot door is 67 centimeters off the ground

at the bottom hinge. And so it has a stainless steel door that opens at the flap with supporting side panels and again heavily spring-loaded. So around it is a smooth steel frame that's like coming out about a centimeter I believe off the wall, not any like a centimeter so you can't hold on to it right like it's nothing that you could actually grip on to. There's nothing else in that room that you could hold on to to get into that shoot door you just have to hold on to the shoot door. Yeah. So Sarah had long legs like Phoebe and so she could get one foot into the door but the problem was the other leg.

The other leg took forever to get up and actually took a ton of work to get in there. When she did get both legs into the door, the door snapped shut and slammed her into her back and pressed her against the wall kind of like squeezing her, like immediately spring loaded back at her. Yeah. Her other friend that was there recording the whole thing, then swapped places with her and tried it and had the exact same kind of issues. And also you would think that that would have created some kind of bruising. Exactly. Like that door might have slapped on you. You would think it would leave at least something. And it's just like that's a lot of work. Lauren also said that both of the girls literally put their hands all over the hatch and the crown to get in. But none of Phoebe's fingerprints were found anywhere on these.

Right. And he said they literally put them everywhere. And if you look at the video, they are everywhere. Yeah. He also said Phoebe wasn't sober at the time that she did that she apparently did this and two sober girls couldn't even barely manage to do it. How could this drunk one? Right. She was like basically incapacitated. Yeah. And the police after all this, the police were like, yeah, it looks like it's hard, but it's possible. Like, no, it's not though. No, we're the fucking

fingerprints. That's not possible. So Lauren then went to see Neil Bone, the manufacturer. And when he talked to Neil Bone, Neil Bone said that the police had come to talk to him, but he was very upset that no one had given him a chance to show that the machine wouldn't have done what they're saying they would have done. Because now it's making him look bad. Like somebody can just climb into the shoot. Yeah. And he was like, I'm really pissed.

So Lauren was like, I want to give you the opportunity to like clear this up here. And he said, would you be willing to create a replica of the shoot? To wow. So we can attach it to the same kind of material, the same kind of shoot, lead it down to a soft mattress so we can really do the entire thing. Because obviously we're not going to send people down the actual shoot.

Right, right. But he was like, can you make an exact replica of this? And he was like, hell yeah, I can. On February 18th, Lauren went to this place that Neil Bone had set up this replica shoot with Natalie Russell Jeanette Viv and Sarah were the two friends that were the people they were using as Phoebe's standard. Sarah went into the shoot first. Again, she managed to get into the shoot with difficulty like before, but her shoulders were too wide to go to the show.

To slide down. Yeah. So Viv had to go. When she was trying to get herself into the shoot, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's like, she's This made the flap tilt backwards and that left her holding the frame by her fingertips So they were like this all could have again, they are sober Right, and this is what's happening. They're having this much trouble

She's like holding on by her fingertips like barely in this thing having to like And it's breaking underneath her and it's like breaking She slid into it with one arm extended up behind her to stop the spring from closing the door on her arms before she got through because that's the other thing. You can't put your arms down because it's going to be too wide. You had to put your arms above your head. Right. And if you did that, the door was going to shut on your hand. Right. Slam shut on your hand. So she was having to like hold the door. All very bonkers. your hands. So she was having to hold the door.

All very bonkers. And she said, as she moved into the shaft, the weight distribution changed, and the door started closing before she was through. So it would have slammed on her hand, causing issues on her hand. So when she finally got through this all, she flew down the shaft onto the mattress,

but her hands had to go above her head. So they noticed there was no way that it could happen the other way. Neil Bohn said that if Phoebe had gone down the same way, again, her hands would have been injured by that spring door that closed on them before she fell. There's no way they wouldn't. It just had to happen. It had to slam shut. There's no way her hands would. It just had to happen. It just had to slam shut. There's no way her hands wouldn't have been hurt.

Even a little. And Lauren also wanted to see if it was possible for another person to put someone into the shoot. If that was what happened. So he had Viv kind of pretend to be unconscious and he had Russell pick her up, put her over a shoulder with her head dangling down his back, and then he put her into the shoot feet first. Russell had a free hand to hold the flap open,

and they said that was very easy to open the door with his throw hand in the throw her in. It definitely would have been beyond Phoebe's capacity because they had trouble doing it. Right. It just didn't make sense. And even if somebody had thrown her down the shoe, it doesn't make sense that it didn't chop her up. Yeah.

Well, that's Neil Bone was very adamant. It had to have been switched to manual for that to not happen. So he was like somebody else was involved here. Somebody had to have been. So this was all getting much more frustrating for everybody because they're starting to see like, come on, this wasn't a thing. Yeah. So soon after this, a witness came forward who had been to the elevator that day that Phoebe went missing. And they said shortly before 4 p.m. In there, she said, was a male stranger, In there, she said was a male stranger, stocky, with dark brown hair.

He was wearing a light colored top and dark pants, and he was carrying an object about 20 centimeters long and 10 centimeters wide. He got into the elevator, he pressed 12 without a key fob. And today in this witness said he must have been buzzed up by someone on level 12. Uh-huh. So, this witness later told Eric the building manager about this whole thing.

But he said when he told homicide, they were just kind of like, eh, whatever. Why? Are you kidding me? So, it was only later on that police released a photo taken from They could recover like tiny bits of the CCTV footage Right, so they were they did release a photo taken from this and it was to identify a stocky man in a light blue t-shirt who'd shown up on the footage So they thought maybe she Head buzzed him up who is this person? Right.

Could he be involved here? They interviewed all the apartments on level 12 and none of them had buzzed anybody up that day. Okay. So if he had buzzed him up, if he had buzzed him up while she was still alive, they never went to look what happened after that. Right. Like that was it.

Like that was that was the end of the fire. That one. They were literally like, who is this guy? No one can tell. No one buzzed this guy up. Huh.

Okay. She must have done it. And it's like, that doesn't mean anything like, who's this guy? What if he was like, I mean, what if he was a drug dealer? What if he was somebody she was getting?

You know, me like, you don't know. Right. How is this dude? Like, we don't know. And nobody went to tell. And even weirder in the weeks after the death, this guy who worked with Ant Christo, he worked with Ant at his company. His name was Christo. Christo. Yeah. He kept visiting Beth the concierge who found Phoebe. Because Beth had taken like a couple weeks off after that.

Yeah, because it's fucking traumatic. When she came back to work, he said he would like show up with like flowers for her. And when he kept visiting her, he kept saying to her, yeah, like Phoebe was really depressed and anted everything he could for her. And like, she said, and oh, and he kept saying like Phoebe couldn't be saved. She didn't want to be saved. And for, she said for two weeks, he came every other day to visit her.

And like, and she said she felt like he was trying to convince her. And wash her, like she was literally trying to be like, remember, she was depressed, anted everything he could for her. And be like, yeah, I already took a few weeks off to try and move on from this. Maybe you could fuck off, Christo. Please, and thank you.

So obviously the family wanted more investigation into this act of it. So the Victorian Coroner's Act of 2008 sets out the criteria that make it necessary to report a death in Victoria to the coroner. The first thing is that it has to appear to be, to have been unexpected, unnatural, or violent, or have resulted directly or indirectly from an accident or injury. So once the death is reported, the coroner basically has to come up with the cause.

If everybody agrees with the medical examiners assertion of cause of death and everything involved in it, then there's no inquest that needs to be held. There's nothing that needs to be done after that. So the other side of that is an inquest has to be held if the coroner suspects that the death resulted from a criminal act like homicide. And then there's also this area of discretion where the coroner can decide whether or not a hearing is required, and if so, whether it is going to be an open inquest. The coroner can rule that a hearing can be done quote on the papers, which means the determination is just based on written reports from police medical staff and, and anyone else that was basically hearing oral evidence. An open inquest is a public investigation, which witnesses are cross-examined, and they have to answer questions about the whole thing. That's an open inquest. That's what the family wanted.

So now the task was to get the coroner to agree to an open inquest. This is when everybody can ask everything that witnesses can come up and ask the corner, things the corner can ask witnesses, things. It's just basically to get more information about what happened. Phoebe's parents obviously didn't know a ton about the legal system because every day people usually don't. And they were told that it would be like $60,000 for a good legal council. And aunts' parents were both judges and they were having trouble finding literally

anyone who had not interacted with them in law enforcement to be impartial. So they were already at a like, you know, disadvantage. So before an inquest can take place, police have to prepare a brief for the coroner. And the officer that they chose to do this for this case was Detective Senior Constable Brendan Payne. He did a ton of shit for this case. On March 10, 2011, he went back to the Bollancy Departments and he executed a warrant to take possession of Ants computer. Phoebe's own computer showed no record of activity since October, two months before she died.

But there was one item of interest that showed up on Ants computer. It was a coroner's office form 25. That's the form for the release of a body, which was shown as being downloaded from the website on October 19th, 2010, months before he body. Okay. Just saying. That's strange. So he was like, you don't just go look in that up. So he was like, that's weird. But devil's advocate, maybe the time stamp was off or something, but he said, that's odd, but okay. So detective pain poured over everything and was definitely starting to believe that it might not have been a suicide. It was a fun fact. And it actually came to light during all this

that a mysterious phone number had been found in Phoebe's jeans when she died. They just figured that out. It took seven months for this to be brought up. The number was under, the number was under the name Tina Smith. And when they further investigated, the name was fake, and the address didn't exist. Like the phone number didn't exist? It was just a weird, scrap piece of paper with Tina Smith phone number. Nothing. That's really super creepy. Exactly.

Pain even talked to the repairman about the iPhone. Yeah. And the repairman said he had no paperwork to show when the phone was brought in and did not have a receipt. Pain and some of his investigators analyzed the phone records from Phoebe's two phones, Ants Phone, and the apartment landline.

They couldn't check Phoebe's emails or text messages because all of them were erased. Yeah, that's not normal. Yeah. I mean, they looked into the swipe records, like the key file records. And Paine also talked to the medical examiner, Dr. Lynch, and he asked about weird bruises on Phoebe that were not mentioned in his original report. What? Pain himself was looking at pictures and was like, what are these?

Are you kidding me? And he was like, yeah, he didn't mention them in his original report. And he said it was just some blunt force trauma that he couldn't pinpoint. Oh, just some casual blunt force trauma. Yeah, casual blunt force trauma. So he asked him to make another report

He was like you need to make another report pain also Asked a forensic physician dr. Morris O'Dell about his opinion about whether still knocks mixed with alcohol could have had anything to do with this And he asked him for his report too for the inquest right so finally after a ton of work Natalie her mother found somebody to represent the family in this whole thing. It was Simon Moglia. He obviously needed to be paid. So Phoebe's friends put together benefit in Malcuda

and raised like $16,000. Oh, shit. Tom also put up a fundraising site, and her friends Alice put together a benefit concert, which is like at this huge venue and it raised $5,000. So they were able to fund this whole thing. The hearing was December 5, 2012. Ant was represented by Elizabeth Breimer, who was also, who happened to have a very close working relationship with George Hample. Oh, okay. She said, you know, she did. She originally said that she would agree to an inquest, but then said it wasn't necessary

because there was no basis to determine anything other than suicide. Oh, okay Elizabeth. Yeah. They ended up being really frustrating because they all had all this stuff to present to the coroner. It ended up being really frustrating because they all had all this stuff to present to the corner. And then the corner was like, yeah, instead of hearing oral submissions of all this, why don't we just, why don't we have you all just like prepare written submissions and just give it to me that way.

So they got all this stuff together and then he was like, I just write it down and give it to me. So this is when they're trying to decide when an Inquest date is going to be set. Yeah. So while they're waiting for this decision, Lauren was going crazy sending letters around Bolencia, asking residents if they saw anything weird that day.

Like he was doing the job. He's only fucking doing. He also talked to Channel 7, who broadcasted videos of Lauren's experiments with the girls in the rubber shoots. Yep. And on March 26, 2013, the coroner senior in-house solicitor

wrote to say that the coroner had reached a decision. He was going to hold an opening quest into Phoebe's death. Okay. So the hearing was scheduled for May 1st, 2013, and then the inquest was going to follow in August. So after three weeks of inquest, like of witnesses talking and all that good stuff, they adjourned for October. So witnesses were like, they also, witnesses included a police telephone analyst and a police computer analyst. The telephone analyst said the software program used by the police when Phoebe died

was not able to read her iPhone SIM card properly. Uh-huh. So he said what the program they had now would be able to, but he said the phone handset and SIM card were handed by the police to Anthony Hamble a few days after her death. Anthony Hamble said the hand said is now in the possession of one of his work colleagues and he claims he cannot locate the SIM card. Oh, casual. Yeah. That's such a bummer that you just, I can't find a, yeah. And that you gave it to your friend, you fucking weirdo. Now, October 9th, the corner declared the Inquests closed. Corner white, who was the one presiding over this, didn't give any

of his findings until Wednesday, December 10th, 2014, one year later. So they had to sit there and just wait for this. So what did he find? He concluded that Phoebe's death was an accident. No, it wasn't. He said that under the influence of still-knocks in alcohol, she climbed into the twelfth floor garbage shoot while deeply confused and disoriented. No idea about the danger to her life. And when she sustained the, you know, injuries to her foot from the fall, she later died because of blood loss. So these findings ruled out suicide or the possibility of a third party involvement. So he's saying she did it herself, but it was an accident. Okay. So they concentrated a lot on the still knocks. Also, it took you a fucking year to come up with that. Exactly. And like we said, that it's like the ambient

kind of thing where you can sleep, eat and sleep drive and all that, but they say you don't usually do things that you don't normally do. Like you sleep drive, you sleep eat, you sleep, you know. So I definitely would have sleep exercise. Exactly. So even the doctors at the inquest said the mixture of that and alcohol wouldn't make it possible to do what they were suggesting she did. Right. And Lauren laid out why none of this made any sense. He said, the finding that

she climbed into the shoot herself and that she, because what they had claimed was that she climbed in herself and that she didn't free fall because they said she must have tried to hold herself against the sides of the shoot, like controlling the fall of it. And Lord said, no, that can't happen. He said, this is literally, you couldn't get your arms down to do that. Your arms had to be- Her arms would have had to be above, yeah.

And also her clothes and her arms were not dirty and the inside of the shaft was filthy. Yeah, it was fucking trash. So that doesn't make sense if she had put her hands against that, she would have had tons of dirt on her hands. Right. And Dr. Lynch, the original pathologist, So they were like, that doesn't make sense if she had put her hands against that, she would have had tons of dirt on her hands. And Dr. Lynch, the original pathologist, even agreed that this wasn't the likely scenario. No, it just doesn't make any sense.

Yeah. And also, he brought up the head injuries. She had the one centimeter abrasion and the bruising on the right side of her jawbone. And what the pathologist said was a subdural hemorrhage present over the left parietal cortex, the upper left side of the brain. They said this injury is capable of causing unconsciousness and the pathologist made no comment

how that could have happened. And that was the one that he said, oh, it could have been an artifact of brain removal. Like what may be during the autopsy. But his report put a question mark in front of the comment, but the coroner said it in an affirmative statement that it was caused during their injury. Nope. So they were like, nope, that's not what the evidence says.

The evidence is him saying, I don't know. It could have been caused. Maybe exactly. That's not what the evidence says. The evidence is him saying I don't know. It could have been cost me that. Maybe. Exactly. There was also a cent one centimeter abrasion on the outside of her head above her left ear and it looked like it was consistent with striking something. Like someone hit her in the head. And there can also, these can also be said about the, quote, circular and ovoid bruises on her right medial upper arm, which looked like grip marks. And also bruising to her left wrist and her neck. Dr. Lynch, the pathologist, in the

autopsy report said, quote, I am not in a position to exclude the possibility of involvement of other parties. So he's literally saying, I can't say that other people were involved here. Right. There was also another pathologist who agreed that those marks resembled finger grips, like someone was holding her. And this is something the pathologist literallyed in the original exam. Now, Detective Payne had asked Ant to make a secondary statement for the inquest, and he came to the station with his dead.

Oh. The judge. Payne had tried to get a private statement from him, but George wouldn't allow it. The witness who was in the elevator, with a dude that was buzzed up to the 12th floor was never brought up. Detective Senior Constable Howles, one of the police at the scene, said there was a trail of dirt marks apparently left by footwear of either a tall person or someone running along the 12th floor hallway.

They were never photographed, sampled, measured, or examined it all further. What? Yeah. The corner, the corner just assumed and said that she was drinking out of the glass and it was broken by accident. No suggestion that the glass could have fallen, been thrown, anything. Uh-huh. He also said that she must have put the glass pieces in a bag and that's how she cut her hand, but there was no glasses found in any of the bags or wasmens. Right. There were also two glasses in the apartment. One was broken and one was on the counter.

Neither were fingerprinted. Oh. Find out who that was. That's good. And so Miss Debra C. Menzma, who was the council assisting the coroner during this whole thing? She produced for the coroner a closing submission comprising 68 pages. It had a detailed analysis of the evidence and a clear thought process throughout.

She said her overriding advice was that coroner white on the evidence before him could only return an open and finding, which would mean at the end of the inquest instead of him saying, this was an accident. There's no way that this was suicide or homicide. That an open finding would say, we're still not sure. And if further evidence is brought to us, we will still investigate this. She specifically advised him against making a finding of suicide, a finding of misadventure, a finding of death caused by borderline personality disorder, a finding which determined that a third party was involved or not involved, a finding which specifically exonerated Anthony

Hample from complicity. And they said it's very rare for a corner to completely ignore his counsel's recommendation. Phoebe's friends and family believe she was about to go out that night because of the sunglasses, the phone chargers, hair strainers. So they wanted an appeal. But a top law firm agreed, initially agreed. They said, we'll do this for you pro bono because these findings are crazy. It needs to be an open inquest. But they didn't recommend that they do it

because they said if the appeal was lost, they would be charged hundreds of thousands of dollars. Yeah. So at the time in Victoria, coronal findings were near impossible to appeal for families. This meant that even if many people found issue with coroner whites findings and conclusions, there was really no way to appeal it because after he closed the Inquests, that was it.

In Victoria, you would have to find a quote perverse error in law to open it again. And that's really difficult. So a huge call was put out to amend the Coroner's Act and to make it easier for appeal. And in December 2016, the Victorian government announced that due to a public outcry about the case, there would be a review of the current Coroner's Act. An attorney general, Martin Pacula, said that they would basically be seeing if that change is made in the 2008 law, that limited appeals were too strict, which obviously they are.

They clearly are. This would also, if they changed this, we'll also add special units in the corners court to help grieving families to better understand, thus better participate in this process in the future. Everything I looked for, I couldn't find any updates to whether this has happened or not. I'm sure it's probably going through a lot of processes. A lot of processes.

But either way, this is where it remains. Wow. The Inquest was closed. It was determined that it was an accidental death. It wasn't though. Who, sorry, I just don't believe that. In my opinion, some foul play happened here. Somebody else.

You don't accidentally fall down. Was it a garbage shoot? No. And you don't kill yourself by jumping down a garbage shoot. Because it's literally never happened. No. And it just, none of it makes sense. So that's my thoughts on the whole thing

is that someone else is involved. A hundred percent. And some weird fucked up. Like, I don't know how you would even go about planning this. Like, I don't know if something happened. And I mean, it seems like something happened in that apartment. Some of the else was there. And then they put her in the garbage shoot. But the only thing is that somebody would have had to been in the garbage you waiting to turn it to manual. Yeah. That's the part that really felt so. That's the other thing. Yeah. I so it's almost like two murderers had to be involved. Exactly. It's all so bizarre. This is the most bizarre case. It truly is. And that's why this is so long guys Wow So that's that's Phoebe hands-juck. That's where we are now guys

Thank you for listening and if you are more still interested definitely go listen to Phoebe's fall because they have like Interviews with these people Natalie. Yeah, my podcast is so interesting. Yeah, they have first-hand accounts of all this and They dive way D you thought this was a deep dive girl. Yeah, they have first hand accounts of all this and they dive away D You thought this was a deep dive girl. Yeah, they did an amazing job. They really did So we just want to quickly thank a couple of few patrons. All right, so thank you to number one Don Mills Don Mills. Thank you so much. You are always chit-chatting with us on Twitter and you are the nicest person And I just love you Don. Thank you so much. Love you a whole bunch. Thanks, Don. Next is Melancholia Adams. Melancholia Adams. That is the greatest name I've ever heard

in my life, A+. Thank you so much for existing. We love you, girl. We love you. Next is Brenda Kathleen. Brenda Kathleen. I love your name because Kathleen is my mom's name. Yadis and I love it. So thank you so much Brenda. Thanks Brenda. And then we have avant garde mutt. Avant garde mutt.

What do I even say to that? That's amazing. You say girl. Girl. Or boy. Or boy. Well, like I just say like girl. To like any, I say that to boys too. I say to journal the time. Thank you, Evan Gardman.

Thank you, Evan Gardman. And then we have Chantelle Fitzsimmons. Chantelle Fitzsimmons. Um, the last name. Chantelle. Fitzsimmons is just so fun to look at. It is fun to look at. Like Fitzsimmons. Thank you, Chant two. Oh, Fitsimins is just so fun to look at. It is fun to look at. Fitsimins.

Thank you, Shantel. Thank you. I'll also like your first name. Then we have a Madonna. Cindy. Cindy. So hot right now. Is it Cindy Lopper?

It is. Thank you so much, Cindy Lopper. Thank you. Thank you, Cindy. Then we have Corey, another Madonna. Corey, so hot right now. Corey with a C. I love you Corey. And an eye at the end. Corey with a C is the usual way to spell it I think. Yeah, but you can use a K. But with an eye at the end, that's different. Yeah, an eye at the end. I like that. Thank you Corey. And then we have Goulin Rouge. Goulin Rouge.

Goulin Rouge. Oh my damn. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. And thank you. Goulin Rouge. Because Moulin Rouge is a great movie.

Zemaharasha. Zemaharasha. That's meanliness favorite thing to say from Goulin Rouge. So Goulin Rouge, Thank you for bringing that back. Yes, thank you. Thank you to all our patrons. We're going to thank some more of you next week. If you haven't heard your shadow yet Stay tuned because we're going to say your name at some point in an episode someday We are marking them all off. We're going down the list and you will hear it. No future is bright. I promise And the meantime while you're waiting for us to call your name out,

you can follow us on Instagram at morbidpodcast. Find us on Twitter. A morbidpodcast. Send us an email. morbidpodcast.gmail.com. Join the Facebook group, I think we have moderators now. We do in their great morbid, comma, nope, morbid,

semi-col, nope, morbid. Semi-cult, nope. Morbid colon, a true crime podcast. Are you sure this time? And then, where even were we Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, email? You can also check out our website at morbidpodcast.com. We hope you keep listening. And we hope you keep it weird. I'm not gonna do it for this again. No way. Too much too much.

Bye bye bye bye. Hey, Prime members, you can listen to Morvid, Early, and Add Free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen Add Free with Wondery Plus and Apple podcasts. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey at Wondery.com slash survey. you