05 Lies in Lismore | Confessions

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Join for just $20 at bj's.com/maskeet and save 10 cents per gallon for six months, open soon limited time offer new members only. BJ's home of the save. There are a lot of perfectly sensible reasons to start a war. Territory, resources, pigs, wait what? You've got to pay for that pig. Yes, a pig, a pastry shop, a football game, sometimes even birds. They don't seem to be easy to kill. History is filled with some stupid wars. From the No One Suric coming podcast, we are diving right into them. With me, Mark Vannell. Search No One Suric coming podcast on ABC Listen, or wherever you get your podcasts. ABC Listen, podcasts, radio, news, music and more. When the German backpackers drove into Lisbon on that day in 2005, they weren't looking to stay long. They were passing through. They just needed a cheap place to rest their heads for a night. So they chose the Lisbon tourist caravan park. Among the trees and sports fields, right next to Lisbon's town centre. It's in a broad strip of green space that separates the town's shops from its residential suburbs. It all adds to Lisbon's relaxed semi-tropical vibe. But what the German group probably didn't realise was that this area could sometimes be pretty rough too. Lisbon had its darker side and its share of lost and troubled souls. More than a few of those troubled souls were in and around the caravan park that night. Heath Tunstall was one of them. I was struggling with my mental health and alcohol and found myself living at Lisbon caravan park. Not the greatest place to live felt very unpredictable. A lot of people, if not in the same situation as myself, very similar, quite lost sort of people. But yeah, it was a dodgy place to live. It was a dodgy city. And it was all open like anyone could walk in and out at any time. So you never really knew who was lurking. Heath remembers the group of German backpackers arriving that day. You just noticed new people coming and going, like, that was in my environment and yeah. What did the group look like? Like backpackers just, you know, cruising to their own dance, yeah. I remember there being like what I thought was two couples. Do you remember hearing them at all? That night I do vaguely remember hearing yelling. I believe I must have been in bed a half awake sort of situation and kind of like startled me to wake. But it wasn't uncommon to hear a bit of yelling in that sort of or, you know, loud music or loud laughing so we kind of didn't really acknowledge it as anything out of the ordinary. After that night, Heath says he started to see signs that something bad had happened. The police presence would have been what would have been my first awareness. The nature of the caravan park was that the police car came in. Everyone, you know, took a notice of it. And what were the police doing? They were at the camp, the Germans camp at their van. Heath says the rumor mill in the caravan park started churning. People knew a German girl was missing and they saw police and SES searching the drains around the caravan park. Then Simone's body was found behind a wire fence at the old Botchy Club just over the road in an area where he'd seen people drinking before. He says he never personally drank there. But he remembers it being a messy place where you'd find old beer cartons. There's palm trees there. Mostly just like a grassy sort of area with a bit of like recreational infrastructure around it here. Sometimes there would be like 10, 15 people there. Too many all on the piss, not a good combination, so yeah, it was something I would avoid. I found passing, that drinking crowd intimidating. So I'd walk on the other side of the road or, you know, keep my eyes down or keep my eyes away sort of things from that area while they were drinking. The sports fields near the drinking spot had a reputation for being dangerous too. A woman was assaulted by a stranger on one of the ovals about a month after Simone was killed. And there were some violent types staying inside the grounds of the Caravan Park. I knew that police had initially looked into several people who'd been in the area that night and ruled them out. But when I started to look into these people more, I was kind of shocked. Remember at the Inquest in 2007, how it came out that multiple people were said to have confessed to killing Simone? Well, it was a high profile case, as sick as it seems, made up confessions aren't uncommon. But here's what shocked me. There are witnesses placing no less than four of those people around the area where Simone went missing. All four of those people were seen right there that night, in or around the Caravan Park, the sports oval or the botchy club where Simone's body was found. Four people seen near where Simone's body was found were reported to have confessed. That's a lot of people, allegedly admitting to murder. In Australia, women are way more likely to be assaulted by someone they know than by a stranger. So it made sense that police were looking closely at Tobias Moran. But the locals say, if you got assaulted by a stranger in Lisbon, it wouldn't be a huge surprise if it happened there in that dark area of trees and sports fields. For now, I want to know how and why police ruled out these four other people who were allegedly there that night. Is there a chance that any one of them really could be Simone's killer? I came to Lisbon to try to find them and the people who say they heard them confess. And what I heard was disturbing. I'm Richard Baker and from unravel, this is lies in Lisbon. So, it just turned off the road up a driveway that's kind of just cut into like a field of grain. It's pretty interesting. I'm glad it's not too wet here because I don't think the key is so high a car. I'm going to handle it. I'm on my way to meet a man who says he heard one of those confessions. His house is about a 30 minute drive out of Lisbon. His place belongs to Phil Lenton and he's could be a very important witness in the Simone Struggle story and I can see we're about to be greeted by a dog. Hello. I think we might sit up outside. If that's cool with you in the shade here, that'll be lovely. Phil's a knock about beef farmer and in the early 2000s, he met a bloke called Gavin Parker, who everyone just calls Gus. We're having a beer at the hilltop and you walk in the hilltop. It's the local pub? Yeah. Michael, pop up the hilltop at Lisbon. Gus and Phil headed off. They got chatting and realized they rode the same motorbike. He was riding the Kawasaki and I was riding Kawasaki and he's also got me Kawasaki 900, you know. And I just said, "I'll make it right in the cracker," and he's like, "Yeah," and it sort of started from me. The two became friends, and they'd catch up for Arvob is about once a week, but they had one catch up that Phil says was really weird. It was February 2005. He says the exact times and dates can be hard to remember since it was so long ago, but it was shortly after Simone Strobel went missing. Local media was full of stories about what might have happened to her. Phil tells me he was at home when he heard a knock at the door. He opened it, and there was Gus, with some kind of tree branch between his legs, and instead of coming inside, Gus ran off into the front yard. He took off out the front of the house with this thing between his legs like a broom, just what was wishing it on the thing going, "Oh, it's my dragon's towel." Phil had a closer look at the so-called dragon's tail. It was a palm front. The same type of distinctive plant leaf used to conceal Simone's body. He was really excited, and I just went, "This is what? Any guy's always, he's me dragon's towel, it's, well, what do you say, good karma?" The peace offering. That's Phil's partner, Charelle. She was also there when Gus turned up that day. "Yeah, yeah, that's right, he said, I didn't know it was a peace offering, and I'm like, 'Well, what do you want a peace of gimme, a peace offering for, mate?' 'Well, you know, we're all good.'" Phil says the palm front was decorated with ribbons and other bits and pieces. He didn't know what to make of it. "Yeah, you had glitter paper on it, you shouldn't like that, you know, bottled hot lids and just, no, yeah. I don't know if there was bits of hair on it too." The other thing Phil says concerned him was that Gus turned up without his car. He said Gus had recently hit a rough patch and was living out of his car and couch surfing. "No, my Jesus, where's your car?" "No. He went, "Yeah, my car's fine." I said, "Well, do you want me to drive you to your car, Gus?" Because I said, "I don't know, that's your life's in that car, mate, you know, there's everything going, isn't it?" But Phil says Gus told him he'd hidden his car and that no one would ever find it. Eventually, Phil says Gus put down the palm front and came inside. Phil says they had a couple of beers and then the conversation took a dark turn. And then I just said, "Who, what have you been up to?" And he goes, "I've been down bar and bar." And I'm like, "Well, yeah, and what have you been up to down there all by sleeping at the cemetery?" And I'm like, "What the fuck, you've been just sleeping at the cemetery?" He jank me and he's like, "No, no, no." I said, "What, some of your work can't get there sleeping on some of your work, are we?" In case it's a bit hard to hear, Phil says he asked Gus if he'd been sleeping on some of his work at the cemetery. Phil meant it to ask him if he'd been sleeping on the grave of someone he'd killed. It was supposed to be a bit of dark humour, but he says Gus took the question seriously. "And he goes, "Yeah, and I'll end." "What, and he goes, "Yeah, and I'll end." And he's for real, you know, it's just that, mate, you know. And I was like, "What did you do, Gus? Who? He goes or some woman?" I said, "Well, what did you do that? Oh, she deserved it, sort of, you know." I went from joking, talking around, to he was feeding him. It's just the whole manner of the whole room changed, you know, I mean. Phil says Gus was talking about a different woman in Byron Bay. He didn't know if Gus was talking about a real person or just making things up. Gus wasn't known to be the most reliable storyteller. But something about the way he was speaking was worrying. At this point, Phil says it made him think about the German girl he'd seen in the media. So he asked Gus about Simone. Yeah, and that's when I said, "Well, did you know that that girl didn't, was more you, didn't you?" He didn't do that, and he's like, "Yeah." And I was like, "Cus." And he's like, "Yeah." Because he said, "Oh, don't worry, I'll never hurt you. I wouldn't hurt you guys." Then Gus said something that put Phil on the back foot. You know, I've been sleeping on your ass. And I was like, "What? You're being broken, you're one man." And he says, "I've been sleeping on your ass, and it was pretty loud." Just remembers, like, "There's the door, so you're late, mate." When Phil and Cheryl checked under their house, they say they found blankets and other things to indicate someone had been staying there. Like, I just, I didn't know what to do. I was like, "Fuck, what do you do?" You know, and it's like, "For all his time, he's admitted to shit to me." And it's like, and he wasn't joking, he was, he was feeding him. And I didn't want to really get too involved in it. So I thought, "Well, this thing I could do is ring crime stoppers." So I ring crime stoppers, I reckon. It was that night. Phil says he called crime stoppers twice in 2005 to report this encounter with Gus. But he says he didn't hear back. I leave Phil and Cheryl's house thinking about why police wouldn't have followed up with them at the time. Doesn't make sense to me. I know Gus worked at a car repair shop in Lisbon, so I decided to give that place a call. The guy who answers the phone tells me, "I need to find a bloke called Tomo." Tomo's full name is Glenn Thompson, and Gus stayed with him for a short time in 2005. I don't have a number for him. My only clue is to look for a house in Lisbon with a distinctive motorbike out front. I walk around in the heat for two hours looking for the house. And I'm just about to give up when a guy with long grey hair pulls up in front of me. It's got to be Tomo. Hey, are you Tomo? I'm looking to have a chat to you. I sat into the guys down at the repair shop. I'm a reporter with the ABC, and I've been sent up here to have a fresh look at the Simone Strobel case from 21 years ago. He's friendly enough, but understandably taken aback being approached by a sweaty stranger. He says he doesn't want to be recorded. But he invites me inside, and he'll tell me what he remembers of the night Simone disappeared. Tomo says around 11pm he saw Gus at a repair shop, not far from the caravan park. It would have been about 400 metres away from the spot where Simone's body was found. He says he didn't see Gus again that night. Then, the next morning, Tomo says Gus told him he'd been out doing men's business with some "crazy" pricks. Tomo also noticed Gus didn't have the car that he lived out of. He too thought that was odd. When a news story about the search for Simone came up on the TV in the following days, Tomo says Gus piped up, saying they'll find what they're looking for behind the devil stones. Tomo wasn't sure what Gus meant by the devil stones. He was often rambling about religion, so he let it pass at the time. According to Tomo, Gus said God must have told him. Weird as it sounds, this was pretty on brand for Gus. Both Tomo and Phil Lenton said Gus talked a lot about religion, but also sex. The search for Simone's body continued for a few more days. Tomo says he was shocked when six days after Simone disappeared. Police announced they'd found her body. He realized the location of Simone's body was about 70 meters from a piece of public art, an arrangement of painted stones called the totem forest. Tomo says he asked Gus if they were the stones he was talking about, and Gus said they were. Simone's body had been found right in the area where Gus said it would be. In the days that followed, Gus was spotted at the makeshift memorial to Simone, making offerings. Lee's more police even stopped Gus and questioned him. They searched his bag and found a collection of items that seemed strange for him to have. There were some clothes, and also personal lubricant, condoms, duct tape, a face mask, and a pocket knife. Tomo made a statement to police too, and police did interview Gus as a result. He said he wasn't involved in Simone's death, and he denied ever confessing to killing her. He's never been charged with any crime related to this case. Still, I've got questions for police. What can they tell me about the items found in Gus's bag? Did they test them in any way to check if they belong to Simone? Why wasn't Gus explored further as a potential suspect? I put those questions to them, but they declined to answer. So, if I want answers to those questions, I've got to talk to Gus myself. I find a phone number and give him a call. Hello, is that Gus there? He doesn't want to talk about the Simone Strobe case. Other than to say, he's sick and tired of being linked to it, because he had nothing to do with what happened. And then he hangs up. When the inquest into Simone's death was held in 2007, for some reason Gus Parker wasn't asked to appear. I find this really hard to understand. As far as I can tell, there was no mention of Phil Lenton, or Tomo's information at the inquest. Seems to me that if Gus was a worthy line of police inquiry at the time, at the very least, it's something that should have been put on the table in that inquest. It feels like an oversight. So, I've just spent an hour or more at doing a bit of work at the cafe near the police station in Lisbon. After a few people told me that was where some of the detectives go to get their morning coffee and I was hoping to bump into Dave Mackey, the detective who has been involved with the Simone Strobe investigation since 2005 and who arrested and charged Tobias with her murder in 2022. Because I really want to just sit down and have chat to him and see if he'll talk for this podcast. He's a pretty important person in the story. No luck he wasn't there, really want him to have the opportunity to have his say. And I have some questions that I need to ask him about certain decisions that were made during the investigation. The terms of who to look at, which suspects to put the most hate on. I try going to the police station to talk to Detective Mackey as well, with no luck. I'll have to try to contact him again after I leave Lisbon. So I keep looking into the other people who allegedly confess to killing Simone. The next two are actually brothers, Alan and Thomas Green. Now I'm going to go for a drive in Lisbon. I am driving to the home of one of those other persons of interest. To see if they're the guy called Alan Green. The police did get some statements back in the day from a quite a few people alleging that he and his brother had admitted involvement in Simone's death. He's denied that when he's been formally interviewed. I should say so. See how that goes. This is what I know about Alan and Thomas. On the night Simone disappeared, Alan and Thomas had been drinking. Alan admitted to taking drugs that day too. They were in their late 20s and were at a notorious block of units well known to local police. Alan Green says he and Thomas were part of a group that walked into Lisbon's CBD. Down the road running past the botchy courts, the drinking hangout and the totem forest stones. According to the Germans, Simone left the campsite at around 11.30 to 11.45 pm and walked towards the road running alongside the caravan park. The Green brothers had arrived in the CBD by 12.30am because they show up on CCTV cameras outside night spots in Lisbon from that time onwards. So if the Greens are thought to be walking in the area sometime late in the evening, it's possible they could have crossed paths with Simone on their way into town. If the Green brothers were in the area at that time of night, I really want to ask them what they were doing and what they saw. To begin with, I drive past the place where I'd heard one of them lives with a plan to go back later and knock on the door. But when I mention my plan to a few locals, they warn me to be careful as the Greens have serious criminal records. I decide it's probably best to take the safe option and keep trying to reach them on the phone. I manage to get a hold of Thomas Green's number. We don't talk for long. When I mention I want to talk about the Simone Strobel case, he tells me to go away and hangs up. After all that, I'm not able to get answers from either of the brothers about that night. So all I have is what other people have said about them, and it's pretty interesting. Police got a report from a man who claimed to have run into them at the Oval behind the Bocchi Club. This man said the brothers told him they'd run into a German girl and killed her. He added that they'd warned they'd kill him too if he told anyone about it. At first he said it happened the night Simone went missing, but when he went to give a formal statement to police later on, he said his conversation with the Greens happened the weekend after Simone was found. And initially he'd mixed up the name of the Oval with another one nearby, but he maintained the brothers had said they were involved. In the days, weeks and months after Simone's death, police continued to receive reports from the public alleging the Green Brothers were involved. On the night in question, Thomas Green hitched a ride out of Lismore around 4 a.m. Thomas said his brother was meant to go too, but he didn't. Alan Green stayed in Lismore, and Alan told police, handed up sleeping at a friend's tent at the Caravan Park. When they were questioned by police, both Thomas and Alan Green denied killing Simone. They were suspects in the early days of the investigation. Detectives followed up on the reports, and they interviewed the brothers more than once. They also bugged one of their phones, but say they didn't find anything to incriminate them. In the end, police said Simone didn't have any injuries that were consistent with what the Greens had reportedly said, and they concluded that the brothers had been drunkenly big-noting themselves. Police said they were both regular drug users at the time. The brothers denied ever saying they were involved at all. On Disappointed, I couldn't get in contact with the Greens to ask them about all this myself. I've now tracked down or exhausted my leads on three of the four men who were seen in the area on the night and allegedly said they were involved. So far, I haven't had much luck getting any of these men to talk to me. I guess that's not really surprising if they're worried about having the finger pointed at them. There's still one man I'm yet to try and speak with. His name is Jamie Viddler. Of all the men who were reported to have made confessions, I find the story around Jamie Viddler the most disturbing. Two days before Simone went missing from the caravan park, Jamie was arrested in Lismore's CBD after two women reported him and another man to police, saying they'd been stalking them. The women sought refuge in a cafe, while Jamie, shirtless and seemingly drunk, waited outside with the other man. Jamie was already on bail at this point in relation to another incident and police charged him for breaching his bail conditions. He actually had a criminal record stretching back to 1996, including a decent stint in jail for a violent attack on a man outside a pub. But after the stalking report and the breach of bail arrest, he was allowed to return to his tent at the Lismore tourist caravan park. He was living there at the time Simone was killed. Remember Heath? The guy who was saying the caravan park was a dodgy place. He'd been seeing Jamie around the park in the days before Simone went missing. The day after police found Simone's body, Heath saw Jamie sitting with a few of the other park dwellers. So he decided to sit down and have a drink with them. From where they were sitting, the group could see Lismore residents placing flowers and lighting candles at the place where Simone's body was found. What we talked about was Simone, you know, the speculation, you know, the uncertainty of what had happened. That was the conversation I recall. Heath said Jamie started talking about seeing the Germans after they arrived. He told us that he'd moved his tent away from the Germans. And that's probably why I hadn't noticed him so much until one said moved his tent with more in predominant spot. And I was also in a spot where we could see all the action could be seen from as far as the search goes. He said, Jamie told him he'd seen Simone and Toby fighting and then Heath says Jamie came out with something that still haunts him about killing Simone. He pretty quickly went in and said, "I killed the Nazi bitch, my family's from Hungary and I hate Germans." He was enraged, he was like the corner of his mouth sort of thing like emotional, it was quite really angry and really shooting off at the mouth, I guess you would say. And then I, well three repeated that he killed her a few times, he started bawling his eyes out. I was just like, "Oh gosh, maybe he's actually really has done it." You know, I'm sitting with someone who's potentially a mirror. A few days after that conversation, Heath Tuxtall gave a statement to the police. Another guy who was there also reported it and made a statement. But when Heath went back to ask Jamie about it again, he says Jamie denied ever saying it. Heath even tried bringing up how Simone's family must be feeling to try to get a response. I remember him, "What's the word you would use?" "Wincing?" Like, his face kind of like tightened up and then I remember moving the subject like trying to remove the subject away and he was just stonewalling basically. I think he may have forgotten what he'd said. If not forgotten, push it to the back of his mind sort of thing and when I first asked I could see, it was like a bit of a startled, "Oh yeah, that's right, I'm out for the night." On the night Simone went missing, Jamie was seen on a CCTV camera in the Lisbon CBD just before midnight. So Heath could have also crossed paths with Simone after she left the caravan park. And there's something else. The morning after Simone went missing, Jamie saw Katrin sookful standing at the camp of Anne outside the caravan park and approached her. She was by herself while Yen's and Toby had gone to the police station to report Simone missing. Jamie went up to Katrin and propositioned her for sex, which made her feel really uncomfortable. She rejected his advance and he moved on. This all sounds quite disturbing. But by the time of the 2007 inquest, police no longer considered Jamie a person of interest. They thought that he, like the Green Brothers, was trying to look tough by saying he'd killed Simone. Jamie actually knew the Green Brothers. Remember Alan Green said he'd stopped by a friend's tent the night of Simone's death? Well, that was Jamie's tent. There were other people who say they were at Jamie's tent that night. One of them gave him an alibi. Although Jamie hadn't initially mentioned that person being at his tent when he was interviewed by police. None of this answers all of my questions about Jamie. So I find his number and give him a call. Hello, is that Jamie? My name's Richard Baker, I'm a journalist with the ABC, I apologise about calling her late hour, but I didn't want to disturb you if you're at work. I was entirely ready for him to hang up the phone. The others hadn't wanted to talk to me, not even if I wasn't recording. But to my surprise, Jamie stayed on the phone. He didn't agree to be recorded, but he talked to me briefly about the case. Jamie said he understood why police had to look into him at the time, because he'd been in trouble with the law. But he said local police had told him pretty early into their investigation that they didn't think he was responsible. He said he wasn't involved in Simone's death. Jamie denies ever saying he killed Simone, or any of the things Heath-Tunstall claims he did, and says Heath is making it up, including the bit about calling Simone a Nazi bitch. He also said he might have said something about shooting Germans in a video game he'd been playing, but he wasn't talking about Simone. He told me he'd always believed Toby was responsible, since the first day she was missing, when Toby went to Jamie's tent to ask if he'd seen Simone. I tried to line up her face-to-face interview before he has to get off the phone. I could come and grab a coffee with you tomorrow if you want, if you got time. I leave Lizmore Friday afternoon. Jamie agrees to meet me for a chat. Finally, I'll have the chance to put some of my questions direct to him. The morning we're supposed to meet, I text him, and at first I don't hear back. When I do, it's bad news. This is proving to be a very, very frustrating road trip in Lizmore. I just got a very short text from him saying I've decided to give it a miss. That's really frustrating. I'm not sure what's happened there, but I just wrote back to him and said, "That's a shame. Can you tell me what changed your mind but haven't heard anything back?" I called him again and he didn't pick up, so yeah, not sure of my chances. You know, from their point of view, I guess they're going over what's the upside in talking to me. But yeah, it's pretty frustrating. Without being able to talk to a lot of these alleged confessors, it's hard to go further and investigating them. In the end, I've found nothing to prove that any of them were involved in Simone's death and neither have police. Maybe, as police think, some of them were lying or at least exaggerating. Like Toby, police weren't able to link these people to the crime scene. But what I can say is, after spending some time in Lisbon, I feel totally mystified about how all these people were confidently ruled out by the police. How were they completely eliminated as suspects so early? Why did none of them even appear at the 2007 inquest? Why was so little evidence heard by the coroner about them? Made the police so confident that Toby and his sister were considered the only real suspects. The only way to get answers is to ask the detectives themselves. This next on "Lies in Lisbon." This season of Unravel is intended to be listened to as a whole. If you haven't heard all the episodes, you shouldn't draw any conclusions because you haven't heard all the sides of the story yet. If you saw anything that night in Lisbon, or if you know someone else who did, get in touch, unraveled true crime at abc.net.au or you can call Crime Stoppers on 1-800-triple-3-0. You've been listening to an ABC podcast. Discover more great ABC podcasts, live radio and exclusives on the ABC Listen app.