Pod Insights The Case Of Isla Bell: Why her alleged murder case collapsed About this episode Isla Bell met a man, never came home, then her body was found in a tip. But now, no one will face charges for her death — why?
Reporter Kristian Silva explains the timeline of the Brunswick teenager's death and the investigation that followed, leading to a shocking change from the Office of Public Prosecutions.
If you have any questions you'd like Kristian and Stocky to answer in future episodes, please email [email protected] mailto:[email protected] .
The Case Of is the follow-up to the hit podcast Mushroom Case Daily, and all episodes of that show will remain available in the back catalogue of The Case Of.
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0:46 Speaker 04 Isla Bell was nineteen. She loved gardening and dreamt of becoming a marine biologist. But one night in 2024, she met a man in Melbourne and never came home. The murder charge he faced has now been dropped and her family is coming to terms with the possibility that no one will be held responsible for a death. I'm Stephen Stockwell and today we find out why. And this episode comes with a content warning. There may be some details you find distressing, so take care listening. This is the case of Isla Bell.
1:16 Speaker 05 Victoria Police have charged two men in relation to the suspicious disappearance of a missing Melbourne teenager.
1:22 Speaker 06 Isla, then nineteen, was last seen leaving her home in Brunswick.
1:26 Speaker 07 Six weeks later, a grim discovery, with Miss Bell's remains found at a Dandenong tip.
1:31 Speaker 00 A fifty-three-year-old man has been charged with murder and a fifty-seven-year-old man has been charged with assisting in a murder. This is a very difficult day, to see the charges have been dropped.
1:42 Speaker 04 And the rage in me, I just, I promise, bub, I fought hard. I fought with my every breath.
1:54 Speaker 04 On Saturday, at this rally, hundreds of people angry about the decision to drop charges against the men alleged to have been involved in the killing of Isla Bell, gathered outside Melbourne's State Library. Murat Ghaniev had been charged with Isla's murder, Yael Yafi with helping him, but... Now, Ganyev is accused of attempting to pervert the course of justice and Yafi, nothing. It's a shocking development for Isla's family and the reason for this rally. And in court for the hearings around this case and following along as it fell over has been Christian Silva, the ABC's court reporter in Melbourne and a very familiar voice on the pod. Thank you for joining us to help us understand how this happened, Christian.
2:32 Speaker 07 Thanks for having me, Stocky.
2:33 Speaker 04 This is a story that a lot of people in Melbourne were following, certainly in the inner north where I live. I've had a heap of messages from people surprised to see these charges dropped. Does this mean that no one's going to be held responsible for Isla Bell's death?
2:47 Speaker 07 At this stage, Stocky, that is what it looks like. There's no charges in relation to the death as things stand.
2:56 Speaker 04 Two men were charged at the time in November 2024. This is Murat Ganyev and El Yafi. What were they originally charged with?
3:05 Speaker 07 So, police charged Murat Ganyev with the alleged murder of Isla Bell and Yafi was charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice and assisting an offender.
3:18 Speaker 04 So we've got these two guys, Christian. Who are they? Do we know much about them? Do we know much about how they knew Isla Bell?
3:24 Speaker 07 It does seem like a bit of a strange story, Stocky. What police said at the time when charges were laid was that Isla Bell had known Ganyev maybe for about 48 hours before her death. And what prosecutor said was they've come into contact around the St Kilda East area where Ganyev lives. Isla Bell has then gone to his apartment and there's CCTV footage which captures her going into the apartment, but there's no footage of her ever coming out.
3:56 Speaker 04 Right. So she never leaves and I guess this is sort of how prosecutors allege that El Yafi gets involved at this point, right?
4:04 Speaker 07 What the prosecution was saying was about four days after Isla Bell entered the apartment, this second person, Yafi, is seen arriving with a four-wheel drive and he's towing a trailer which has got a fridge on it. Um. What prosecutors said was that the fridge was moved to the back of Gagnev's apartment. And then they're alleging that there was a fridge swap effectively. And that Yafi is seen placing the old fridge onto the back of the trailer. And taking it away. And what police said at the time was that this fridge. Um. Appeared to be wrapped in a clear plastic and there was black tape around the edges of the doors.
4:48 Speaker 04 Right. And the, I guess the allegation or suggestion from prosecutors is that Isabella's body is inside that?
4:55 Speaker 07 That's correct. And the allegation is that over the space of um several weeks. This fridge was moved around Melbourne, uh Melbourne South East. Um. It went to several locations. Just left on the side of the road. Um. And eventually, there there's a bit of a story about. The fridge's movements, but ultimately what happens is Isabella's remains end up. At a tip in the southeast of Melbourne.
5:24 Speaker 04 Okay, so who's alleged to have done what?
5:28 Speaker 07 So what the prosecution said was that Yafi was the person who took. The fridge away from Gagnev's St Kilda Rees apartment.
5:38 Speaker 04 Mm hmm.
5:39 Speaker 07 Um. And then has moved it to a nearby suburb. And over the the next few days, what prosecutors alleged was that Gagnev would come. And move this fridge from location to location. It's probably important, just jumping in before I continue on. Um. What the defence for Yafi always said was that he didn't know there was a body in a fridge. That's always been his um, his defence is that. Didn't know, didn't know what was in there. Um. So what police said, going back to the timeline. Is that this fridge was moved around um Melbourne South East over the course of of several weeks.
6:23 Speaker 07 So after about three weeks, what the police alleged was this fridge. Was put in the back of a removalist van. So then what police said was a man um.
6:37 Speaker 07 Entered the van. He smelt something foul coming from the fridge.
6:42 Speaker 07 Um, he opened the fridge and there was a bag inside which contained the body. But but this man um didn't realise it was a body uh of a human. He thought it was an animal's body. Um, so this person has dumped the fridge on a street corner. And then the bag with Isabelle's remains have ended up in a residential rubbish bin. It it's pretty harrowing stuff. So that's how the body ended up at the tip because this bin was collected by a rubbish truck.
7:15 Speaker 04 Yeah.
7:16 Speaker 07 Um, this third person who found um the fridge and the body is not alleged to have committed any crimes. It's just stumbled across this, um, not realising what it was.
7:27 Speaker 04 Right, and we originally have Murat Ganyev charged with murder. Then that's kind of downgraded to manslaughter in between a couple of court hearings. And now he's charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice. We have Iyayafi charged with initially attempting to pervert the course of justice. And now no charges at all. This seems like a pretty dramatic turnaround. How did it fall over?
7:50 Speaker 07 Absolutely. I mean, the case has dramatically changed. There's there's no way to to deny that. How did it fall over? Well, we don't know exactly why the Office of Public Prosecutions changed tact so drastically. In between a committal hearing last year when they were adamant that Murat Ganyev was guilty of murder to a court hearing in the Supreme Court last week where they said they're now dropping any charges in relation to her death. We don't know the forensic decisions that have gone on in the Office of Public Prosecutions.
8:26 Speaker 04 Hmm.
8:27 Speaker 07 But I think what we can do is talk about some of the arguments we heard in the committal hearing where the defence was very critical of the prosecution case and was poking holes in this case. Ultimately, a magistrate did decide to commit uh Ganyev on the murder charge and send it up to the Supreme Court. But we know the defence was very unhappy about this.
8:49 Speaker 04 Yeah, and I want to talk about this committal hearing because, yeah, this went, as you say, to a committal hearing last year, twenty twenty five. And, yeah, you know, there was a, basically, you kind of get an idea of what the case uh that's going to be presented to a jury could be. And then also the challenges to that. I mean, before we get to the challenges, what was the case the prosecution was putting forward? Or what did it look like it was going to be?
9:09 Speaker 07 This was a circumstantial case that was, it had a few limbs to it. There was no direct, clear evidence that Murat Ganyev murdered Isla Bell. But what the prosecution wanted to do was take several elements and they wanted to put it in front of a jury and say, "Look at this and in our view, beyond reasonable doubt, you can put all of these elements together. They may not fit perfectly, but they prove he's a murderer."
9:36 Speaker 04 Hmm.
9:37 Speaker 07 That was the plan anyway. So they were relying on a few things. They were going to rely on some CCTV footage that they claimed to have, which was said to show an attack on Isla Bell committed by Murat Ganyev. We have not seen that footage, so we can only go off what the prosecution has claimed. According to police, that footage is taken from across the road from Ganyev's apartment, looking into the kitchen window. And a prosecutor said it showed Ganyev striking Isla Bell to the ground and then pushing her head downwards during some kind of struggle.
10:16 Speaker 04 Hmm.
10:17 Speaker 07 That's what the prosecution said anyway.
10:18 Speaker 04 Yep.
10:19 Speaker 07 And the prosecution was also going to rely quite heavily on what's called the post offence conduct. So they were going to rely on the fact that this body was put in a fridge and then moved around Melbourne to imply that Ganyev knew he was guilty. And they were also going to point to some of the other things that these men did. Police alleged that they lied to investigators who had been looking into the case for several weeks. They'd been on the police radar for a while before Isla Bell's body eventually did turn up at the tip.
10:55 Speaker 04 Yeah, right.
10:55 Speaker 07 I think they were also going to look at some phone tower evidence too. I don't, we didn't really hear in too much detail what that is, but there's again, something to do with mobile phones used in the evidence.
11:07 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. What did you hear in that committal hearing about Isla's cause of death?
11:14 Speaker 07 This was a massive point of contention.
11:18 Speaker 07 Because forensic experts were called in to examine Isabella's remains after they were found, and several experts said they could not determine a cause of death. Part of this was down to the, what was described as advanced decomposition of the body, it had been six weeks or so. And it's quite gruesome and graphic, but when the body ended up at the rubbish tip, it went through rubbish compacting machinery, and that meant that there was damage to it.
11:56 Speaker 07 So that again hampers forensic experts' ability to analyse the body to try to conclusively point out what caused the death. The other thing that was detected was what can only be described as a cocktail of drugs in Isabella's system. And what the defence said was, you can't exclude the possibility that there was a drug overdose.
12:25 Speaker 04 Hmm. What were some of the other points that the defence raised? You know, during the committal hearing, they're kind of making a case for this basically not to go to a trial, you know, kind of calling into doubt some of the evidence that's been presented. What were they saying through this process?
12:37 Speaker 07 Well, if we focus on Gagne first, who was charged with murder at the time, his barrister, Sally Flynn, yeah, she said that a drug overdose can't be excluded as the cause of death. She also said that the various injuries found on Isabella's body could have happened post-mortem, i.e. during either the body being put in the fridge or the process of it being shifted around and then ultimately, you know, through the rubbish compacting machinery.
13:13 Speaker 07 Sally Flynn also said that the CCTV wasn't conclusive. And this is something that I guess we don't, we can't say as, as independent viewers because we haven't seen it. And the lawyers obviously have. So the prosecution reckons it's strong. The defence reckons it wasn't. We may never get to see it to judge for ourselves. And Sally Flynn also said that Gagnev's post defence conduct didn't prove that he committed murder. So he may have moved things. He may have put the body in the fridge. He may have lied to police. But it's an argument we've heard in many other cases.
13:56 Speaker 07 Just because people do these things after an event, it doesn't prove that they actually committed murder or manslaughter or whatever it is. And this is often the competing arguments that you'll have in a trial between the prosecution and defence where they're using the same actions of the person and telling the jury, this is how you should interpret it. And then the other side says, no, you should interpret these actions a different way.
14:22 Speaker 04 Yeah.
14:22 Speaker 07 And often that is a decision that the juries have to, have to make if it gets to that stage.
14:27 Speaker 04 Yeah. And I mean, you know, you go through this committal process, the magistrate at the end of it says, okay, I think there's enough evidence here for a jury to make that decision. You know, that there's enough evidence here, you can put this in front of a jury, they can make the call on this. And at some point between then and now, the, the Office of Public Prosecutions has decided, no, we're not going to run this case anymore. Did that surprise you?
14:50 Speaker 07 It surprised me in the sense that they had been so strong last year. And then to see a capitulation months later, that is, that is strange. We don't know what happens behind the scenes in the Office of Public Prosecutions. We don't know the forensic legal decisions that take place. We don't know how their trial preparation was going and whether there was any issues with that. And I suspect we never will. They don't tend to publicly comment in great detail about why they changed charges or dropped charges. And, and even it's quite frowned upon for even judges to go asking that question. I mean, it's a question we all want answered.
15:34 Speaker 04 Yeah.
15:34 Speaker 07 Why did this case fall over? Um. I suspect we won't really know.
15:39 Speaker 04 Yeah. Who is it making that decision? Is it the Director of Public Prosecutions? Is it a team of people? Do we even know how?
15:45 Speaker 07 Some, some cases go up to the Director for Review.
15:48 Speaker 04 Hmm.
15:49 Speaker 07 Um. Again, we don't know exactly what happened. What the Office of Public Prosecutions did say after uh the court hearing last week was that there was what they described as insufficient evidence for the manslaughter charge to, to proceed.
16:04 Speaker 04 Hmm.
16:05 Speaker 07 Um. And, and one thing with the Office of Public Prosecutions is that they are expected to act as model litigants. They're not supposed to kind of chance their arm. They're supposed to um look at the evidence that they have and they have to be confident that it meets the threshold.
16:24 Speaker 04 Hmm.
16:25 Speaker 07 Um. They really shouldn't be running cases and, and hoping for the best. They should be going in thinking that the evidence that they have is strong and meets the requirements for, for the charge.
16:35 Speaker 04 Yeah. Um. How's Isla Bell's family, you know, with this decision?
16:39 Speaker 07 They were just gutted, absolutely gutted. And it was really hard to watch that Isla's mum, Justine Spokes, uh came to the Supreme Court last week and I thought she was pretty brave in, in speaking to reporters afterwards and, and she just expressed how crushed she was. She was very critical of the Office of Public Prosecutions. Uh. She accused them of leading her up the garden path and telling her that they believed they had a strong case quite recently. Um. So for then things to fall apart was, was really crushing to her. And you can imagine what this family's been through, not only losing Isla, um but then in the justice process
17:22 Speaker 07 thinking that there's a murder case against the person accused of killing her, then it's dropped to manslaughter and then it's dropped to a charge that's not related to the death. Um. That must have been very, very difficult for them.
17:34 Speaker 05 My expectations in our legal system were low,
17:40 Speaker 05 but obviously not low enough.
17:45 Speaker 05 Truth and justice are omitted. And what is communicated is the words that we don't speak, but what passes in a written brief. Even the OPP referred to our legal system as a legal system, not a justice system.
18:07 Speaker 05 When did that happen? Well, I pay my taxes and I vote.
18:13 Speaker 05 And Ila Belle's story deserves to be told. My story. Let the jury decide.
18:22 Speaker 04 That's Ila Belle's mother, Justine Spoke, speaking outside court last week, talking about how she has no faith in the legal system now. She also spoke at the rally on Saturday. She is clearly frustrated, upset with the Office of Public Prosecutions. Christian, is she right to be frustrated?
18:37 Speaker 07 Well, I mean, putting aside the legal side of things, just as a human being, I think she is. Because when something horrible like this happens, families turn to the police in what they hope is a quest for justice. And in serious cases, once the police have gathered the brief of evidence, it then gets passed on to the prosecutors and it's in the hands of the prosecutors. So they put their faith in the prosecutors to deliver an outcome that they want. And then when that doesn't happen, they're incredibly disappointed. And when a case reaches this stage,
19:20 Speaker 07 they're powerless as families, supporters. The case is purely in the hands of the Office of Public Prosecutions. And they get to make the call really on what happens next and the future of it. There's really no way for the family to intervene or step in.
19:39 Speaker 07 So it's taken out of their hands. And when it goes in a direction they don't like, they get very upset. Ila Belle's family is not the first to be put in this situation. Sometimes you have cases where prosecutors strike a plea deal. And the charge is downgraded, a deal is struck, a trial is avoided, the person pleads guilty and the case is over quicker. Um. And that saves the justice system a lot of time and money. But the the victim's families are very unhappy. So every case is different.
20:12 Speaker 04 Yeah. And I guess, can you remind us what the bar of of murder and manslaughter are, Christian? Like, what is, what would the prosecutors need to reach to to convince a jury that, you know, Murat Ganyev is the is the man who murdered or was responsible for the manslaughter of of Isla Bell?
20:28 Speaker 07 There, as everyone who listens to this podcast knows, it's a really high bar to to meet the threshold. It's beyond reasonable doubt. And when you're talking about a murder charge or a manslaughter,
20:43 Speaker 07 this is, this has got to be a very high bar that's reached. So to run through some of the elements of the charge, for a murder charge, you've got to prove that the accused person caused the death of the deceased. Um. You've got to prove that they did so deliberately and that they also had an intent to kill or cause really serious injury. And the final element of murder is that there's not a lawful excuse for their actions, i.e. self-defense.
21:13 Speaker 04 Hmm.
21:14 Speaker 07 So you've got to tick all four of those boxes to meet that charge. So obviously, the Office of Public Prosecutions felt that the evidence they had could not reach that threshold. I think that's a fairly safe guess.
21:28 Speaker 04 Hmm.
21:29 Speaker 07 So then they've gone and charged um Ganyev with manslaughter. And this manslaughter is a bit more complicated. Um. There's different types of manslaughter. Um. But there's, I suppose, the the version of manslaughter that people think about, um, an unlawful act that kills someone, but it wasn't intentional.
21:50 Speaker 04 Hmm.
21:51 Speaker 07 Um. So that one is, yeah, you've got to, of course, the death. Um. Your actions were deliberate. You did something unlawful. You know, push someone or punch somebody or something like that.
22:02 Speaker 04 Yeah.
22:02 Speaker 07 And and your unlawful action was dangerous.
22:05 Speaker 04 Hmm.
22:05 Speaker 07 So that's, those are the elements for that particular manslaughter type. But then you have another type of manslaughter called negligent manslaughter. And this is really complicated, um, really technical. But it's around somebody having a duty of care to somebody um who has found themselves in a bad situation.
22:25 Speaker 04 Right.
22:26 Speaker 07 Um. And around you being negligent. Um. And um, basically, your negligence or your inability to do something has caused their death.
22:37 Speaker 04 Yeah, got it. Um. And we're now in a position where Murat Ganyev has been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice. Is is that the trial that's now coming forward?
22:49 Speaker 07 That's right. So the murder and manslaughter charges are gone. Um. All that's left is this one new charge that the prosecution's team has laid against Ganyev, attempting to pervert the course of justice. This basically relates to hindering police investigations and doing it deliberately. It is a um, it can be a technical charge, so I don't want to try to go into all the details and try to explain it. Um. Also worth noting that the alleged co-offender, the one who was also at the committal, um, uh, Iyal Yafi, his charges were dropped completely. So at the committal, he had attempting to pervert the course of justice and assist an offender.
23:33 Speaker 07 At some point between the committal and the court hearing last week, the assist offender charge was dropped. And then um, last week, it was confirmed that his attempting to pervert the course of justice charge was dropped. So he's a free man. Um. He didn't exactly walk free from court because he was on crutches, so he uh, he limped from court, but he um, now has no more alleged criminal links to this case. He's obviously part of the timeline.
24:02 Speaker 04 Hmm.
24:02 Speaker 07 But prosecutors are not. Alleging a criminal charge against him.
24:09 Speaker 04 What are we looking at as far as timelines for court? When do we think this will be back in court?
24:15 Speaker 07 This is going to be tough to say, really, Stocky, because we were supposed to have a trial this month on the manslaughter, which obviously is not happening now. So we're going to have to go back to timetabling again, indictments being filed. The prosecution's going to have to give the defence court documents. I think it's going to go for a while over the next few months before we see sort of any meaningful action in the court front, anyway.
24:44 Speaker 04 Yeah, yeah. Christian, thank you so much for joining us for this episode of The Case Of. We've had a heap of emails about it. I've had people come up to me personally and asking me about it. We had the rally on the weekend that Isla Bell's family was a part of, still calling for kind of more action on this. So, yeah, really appreciate you making the time and joining us on the pod.
25:01 Speaker 07 Thanks for having me, Stocky.
25:03 Speaker 04 We're back in your feed tomorrow. On Tuesday, we'll have the second episode of the series that we were talking to Thelis Siganto about from Brisbane on Marie Crabtree. There's a lot in that as well to unpack. So make sure you grab ABC Listen. We'll be back in your feed tomorrow.
25:24 Speaker 04 The Case Of is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News. This episode was reported by Christian Silver and presented by me, Stephen Stockwell. Our supervising producer is Greg Muller and our executive producer is Claire Rollinson. This episode was produced on the land of the Rarangiri people.
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