03 Lies in Lismore | One traveller speaks out

He's never spoken publicly about the night Simone disappeared, until now. Breaking his silence in an interview with journalist Richard Baker, he answers questions about what happened that night, and why he didn't tell police the full story. Credits Host and reporter: Richard BakerProducer and fact checker: Romy SherSupervising producer: Alicia BridgesSpecial thanks: Chiara Holzhaeuser; Joanne Shoebridge and everyone at ABC North CoastAdditional reporting: Cath AdamsTheme composition and additional music: Martin Peralta and Ashley CadellSound design: Tim SymondsExecutive Producers: Tim Roxburgh, Eric GeorgeHead of Audio on Demand: Jessica Radburn

• 0:00Speaker 00

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  Everyone needs to turn their phones off to Simon.

• 0:43Speaker 04

  I have, yeah.

• 0:48Speaker 04

  I'm sitting behind a microphone while my producer, Alicia, fusses with chords and headphones. On the other side of the table is Tobias Sukful.

• 0:59Speaker 04

  After two decades of refusing to speak to journalists about what happened that night in Lismore, he says he's ready to talk. So here I am at his kitchen table. So we're good, we're on now, Alicia?

• 1:12Speaker 03

  Just started recording.

• 1:13Speaker 04

  All right.

• 1:13Speaker 03

  Just so everyone knows.

• 1:14Speaker 04

  Okay, we're on. All right.

• 1:18Speaker 04

  So my first question's a really broad one. Is why do you feel like doing this?

• 1:24Speaker 05

  You know, it's been obviously on my mind for a while to somehow get my story across. Because a lot of people still point fingers and say, oh, he's the guy. So it'd be nice to clear my name a bit and put some light on the story to actually have people knowing that what's written in the paper over 20 years is mostly rubbish.

• 1:52Speaker 05

  I would like that I and my family can make some closure and that the whole world knows that I'm innocent.

• 2:09Speaker 04

  Tobias says the police got it all wrong and so did the public. I've got to tell you, I was sceptical about this whole thing. This guy has never subjected himself to questioning in a courtroom at an inquest. He lied to the police about what happened the night Simone was killed. He said that he and Simone weren't fighting when they were. Why would the police stay focused on him for 20 years without good reason? But now Tobias is telling me he can explain it all.

• 2:41Speaker 05

  This entire case has been based on a theory and crucial evidence has not been considered. They've been on the wrong track for 20 fucking years. I think, I think the Australian public has a right to know that this is a full muppet show.

• 3:00Speaker 04

  I'm Richard Baker and from Unravel, this is Lies in Lismore.

• 3:31Speaker 04

  Since I started working on this story, I've spent hours watching police interview footage of Tobias Sukful from 2005. Back then, he was a boyish young man with blonde tip locks and a whippet-like build. The man I'm about to interview is in his 40s with a stubble beard and short scruffy brown hair. He goes by a different name these days, Toby Moran. From now on, I'll call Tobias Toby.

• 3:59Speaker 04

  His new last name Moran comes from his wife, Sam Moran. Toby and Sam met in South Africa in the years he lived there while he was lying low after Simone's death. They got married in 2012. They now have three kids. Toby runs a construction business and he lives in the one place you'd think he'd never want to return: Australia.

• 4:25Speaker 04

  We're doing this interview in Perth. He's lived here for about 15 years because Sam's family's from here. Sam's at the house too, to listen in on the interview.

• 4:36Speaker 05

  So yeah, we can do, we can move this table in the middle, we can do whatever.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  I first heard from Toby and Sam in 2024. They knew I was an investigative journalist, so they got in touch because they wanted to get Toby's story out into the world. I have to admit, at first I was uneasy about hearing the story of a man suspected of killing his girlfriend. Judging from what had been reported in the media about Toby over the years, I didn't have a lot of sympathy for him. But some of the details of what he was saying made me curious. He claimed police had botched the investigation from the very beginning and Simone's killer was still out there. So here I am across the table from Toby because I want to know more.

• 5:21Speaker 04

  Toby told me his story over two and a bit days. To start, I got him to take me back to Germany, where he and Simone grew up.

• 5:31Speaker 05

  Oh, I grew up in a small place called Altesbingen.

• 5:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, very like 500 people live there on the bottom of the Alps in Bavaria. Sort of farming village with rolling hills and fields and meadows of flowers.

• 5:50Speaker 04

  Toby says his village was like small-town Australia. It sounds pretty and like the kind of place where everyone knew each other's business.

• 6:00Speaker 05

  Simone was in a similar village, just like a notch bigger, called Reden, which would be sort of like five, six villages over, like 15, 20 k's driving. And yeah, very similar upbringing. She played the horn in the band and, you know, her parents were farmers. Then eventually we went on a date and from there it became a relationship.

• 6:26Speaker 04

  As their relationship grew closer, they became a bigger and bigger part of each other's lives. They got to know each other's families. Toby says Simone's parents made him feel welcome. They both studied after school. Simone got a job as a kindergarten teacher while Toby was studying in a different town. This meant they often had to spend the week apart. By 2004, they'd been together for about six years. Toby says a friend came back from a trip to Australia and told him and Simone all about it. That conversation lit a spark.

• 7:01Speaker 05

  He's like, oh, man, it's so cool over there. Come before you get serious. I was like, oh, why don't we do one year of travelling in Australia, buy a van, drive up and down. Visas are super easy to get for us back then. And then we were like, yeah, let's do it.

• 7:19Speaker 04

  Toby took a short contract at a factory to save money. When that was over, Simone took extended leave from her kindergarten job and they set off. They landed in Brisbane in August 2004. Toby says Australia was unlike anything they'd experienced.

• 7:36Speaker 05

  Everything was different, smell different, different plants, different everything, you know? I thought I speak a bit of English till I got here and I was like, what is everyone on about?

• 7:45Speaker 04

  Toby says they stayed with some family friends in Brisbane and looked for a van which would become their mobile home over the months ahead.

• 7:54Speaker 05

  These Toyota hires, way more than we wanted to spend. But what we wanted to spend, everything was like an absolute like shit box. Simi put all the pictures up and put her sarongs in, the sarongs in there. And then, yeah, we were good to go. We went up to Rainbow Beach and the Sunshine Coast. I bought a surfboard, I paddled out, got so hammered, had no idea how powerful the surf is down here.

• 8:21Speaker 04

  Every day had a natural rhythm.

• 8:23Speaker 05

  Having a swim, running around, getting firewood, making a fire. We were like, this is it. This is what we wanted to do. This is the great adventure. Felt free, young, yeah, it was, it was the best feeling ever.

• 8:37Speaker 04

  They worked odd jobs along the way to keep funding their trip. Toby says the whole thing was paradise for a couple in their 20s. He says they were having such a good time that months in, Simone decided to resign from her job back home. Toby remembers they wanted to keep on travelling and maybe even go to New Zealand or South East Asia.

• 8:57Speaker 05

  We were going like, oh, while we're on this, we might never have this opportunity again once we go back to Germany. We talked about this so many times. You know, we were madly in love. We were on this crazy, great adventure. We were like, okay, when we get home, we wanted to move in together. We had our lives planned out.

• 9:15Speaker 04

  They'd been on the road for about five months when Jens and Katrin arrived. Katrin's Toby's sister, who he sometimes calls Katie, and Jens is their mutual friend from Germany. They were going to be travelling together for a few weeks. Toby says he and Simone were so excited to show their visitors all the special places they'd found.

• 9:36Speaker 05

  Katie loved snorkelling. That was one of the highlights. We went, took another boat trip out to the Great Barrier Reef.

• 9:44Speaker 04

  Everything was going great until they got to a place called Sandon River on the north coast of New South Wales on February 9. This was their last stop before Lismore.

• 9:55Speaker 04

  This part of the story is important because this is where the lies started. The ones Toby initially told to police that made them suspicious. There were three main lies. The first was about how well he'd been getting on with Simone. The second was about how much they'd drunk. The third was about whether they'd smoked pot. So to the first one, how well was Toby getting on with Simone?

• 10:24Speaker 04

  Well, you've already heard that Simone and Toby started arguing at Sandon River. The two of them were camping in their Hiace van. Katrin and Jens were sleeping in a tent.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  I asked him to take me back to that day and tell me the truth about what happened. He says the weather was terrible.

• 10:43Speaker 05

  It's become real windy. And then it started to rain proper. And there we were in the tent all night. And I remember when I woke, when I in the morning, the tent was kind of like, it was so windy that the tent was kind of like half flat, bending over those eglouton dens. And yeah, things got wet. It was horrible. It rained sideways and I was, I was still in my bed, all rocked up and cosy. And the girls were like, they were just saying, oh, you've got to get up. We want to come in and have, want to do breakfast. And I was like, oh, I want to sleep a bit longer. Just come in from the back, cook your breakfast from the back. And it's like, oh, man, it's raining, it's pretty miserable. Get up. And so that's sort of like the dialogue back and forths a bit.

• 11:28Speaker 04

  That's how Toby says the tension started. Simone and Katrin wanting to rattle pots and pans to cook their breakfast. And Toby wanting quiet to sleep some more.

• 11:38Speaker 05

  Eventually I got up, but did so in a, in a bit of a mood, you know? And then it kind of like, probably me and, me and my sister sort of bigging away a bit. And then that's kind of set the tone. Simi was like, oh, don't be so selfish. You've got to get up. And, and then I was a bit pissed off. That's definitely when the dynamic in the group had a sort of like a bit of a change. And the weather stayed crap all day. It had more an effect on me and Simi because we normally were always pretty harmonious and talked about stuff. But when, when other people are around, you can't really just have these chats you normally have as your partner.

• 12:20Speaker 05

  So it kind of started to sit there and sort of fester away.

• 12:25Speaker 04

  This interaction is what caused Simone to write fuck you about Toby in her diary. Toby actually had a journal at the time too. And he also wrote about his frustrations that day. This is what he wrote. He said, this was a fucking day. Simi got on my nerves right off in the morning. I wasn't even quite awake. It's really getting too much. It can't go on like this. He wrote that he, quote, hardly spoke with Simi. In the same journal entry, he also wrote that, quote, this day was downright stupid. On top of which, Katie also came across as completely strange. I can't work her out. The next day was Friday, February 11, the day they went to Lismore.

• 13:11Speaker 04

  Toby made another entry in his diary. He wrote, mood is still rock bottom and I don't even know what's going to happen in the coming days.

• 13:29Speaker 04

  With that cloud hanging over them, they packed up and headed to Lismore the same day.

• 13:34Speaker 05

  Jens was sitting in the front with me driving the van. I was driving and Katie and Simi in the back. He sort of like carried that stupid vibe from Sandon River into Lismore.

• 13:48Speaker 04

  The group arrived in Lismore and set up camp at the Lismore Tourist Caravan Park. This is where the timeline of Simone's last hours in Lismore begins. You'll remember that Toby and Jens spent most of the day separate to Katrin and Simone. But they all ended up together at a pub called The Gollan.

• 14:08Speaker 04

  With them was another backpacker friend, a guy from Japan who they knew by his nickname, Gunn. Simone and Toby had met Gunn before on their travels along the coast. They found out he was also staying at the caravan park and invited him to join them at the pub later on.

• 14:30Speaker 05

  It was definitely like an old school sort of New South Wales country pub.

• 14:34Speaker 04

  Do you remember it being busy, like with Friday night, like people knocking off for the weekend and?

• 14:38Speaker 05

  From memory, it was fairly busy. I think we were sitting a bit towards the back on a separate table in more of a quieter corner towards the toilets. But as you come in along the actual bar and the tables opposite, I did remember it being fairly busy. We did have a few rounds in there and I remember we all sat first on one table. But I think I started to have a bit of a go at Katie on the table. And a couple of things came up, you know, like I was annoyed by. And then we talked about a few things at home.

• 15:12Speaker 04

  Toby wasn't very specific in the police interviews about what the family matters were that they were fighting about. Now, he says it was something to do with a family member who'd eloped. And there were differences of opinion about that. So there was that argument going on with Katrin. On top of that, he and Simone still hadn't made up after the problems at Sandon River. At some point in the night, he says he and Simone moved to a table in the Bistro area to talk privately.

• 15:41Speaker 05

  We were obviously talking about the Friday morning, how it all started. And I was saying like, look, you could have made breakfast from the back. And then Simi was saying, yeah, but it was raining. You could have been less selfish and let us in the van. You use the van so we can get a, we can have a breakfast. Then it went on and we, we, you know, I said, sorry for sleeping longer. And she said, like, yeah, you know, could have been avoided if you would have gotten up, that sort of stuff.

• 16:09Speaker 04

  Toby tells me they managed to resolve the tension between them. Remember, he told the police Simone had cried happy tears.

• 16:17Speaker 05

  We came, we came to a point where we both sort of like, we both ready to move on and resolve this. And then it's gotten a bit lighter. Everyone set their bits and we hugged each other towards the end and joined the group again. And it kind of felt that we were moving on from there, you know?

• 16:44Speaker 04

  He says he thought the Sandon River argument between him and Simone was over. After this conversation, he says they went back and joined the others.

• 16:52Speaker 05

  We went back to the group, had a few more beers. And yeah, I would say that the dynamic was then heading into, into the different direction again, what we normally used to, you know?

• 17:12Speaker 04

  This brings us to the second of Toby's lies. The amount of alcohol they drank that night. In his first interview with police, Toby said specifically and emphatically that they'd only had four light beers at the pub, four X gold. Later, he admitted to the German police he downplayed how much they'd all had to drink. And he admitted Simone was drunk. I wanted to know exactly how much he remembers them drinking that night.

• 17:41Speaker 05

  I would say each of us poured around. Well, I would say we were all, we were all getting there. We were a bit, we were not heavily intoxicated, but we weren't just tipsy on a scale from one to 10, maybe six and a half or something like that.

• 17:59Speaker 04

  So they've all had multiple rounds of full strength beer in bigger glasses than what he initially described to police. They left the pub just after 11pm. I've seen the CCTV and it shows Toby having a few words with a man in the doorway after they'd been told off for taking beer glasses outside. It also shows Simone, Toby and Jens looking a bit stummly on their feet. At one point, Toby briefly puts his hand on Simone's shoulder as they step down from the curb to the road. Then they separate a little as they walk away. Toby sparks up a ciggy. Simone follows a step or two behind before they go out a shot.

• 18:44Speaker 04

  Toby says now he didn't go to the other pub, the Metropole, after they left The Gollan. And the CCTV footage doesn't show the group there either.

• 18:58Speaker 04

  Toby says they went straight back to the caravan park and they were there in no time.

• 19:03Speaker 05

  It was a bit of six sack walking, you know, after a few pints, but it was really just up the road.

• 19:08Speaker 04

  So what do you do when you get back? Was everyone in the mood to sort of like grab, grab a beer or?

• 19:13Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that's what we did. We did. We just sat out the camp. We had a few beers left because the girls, I think, bought beers in the afternoon.

• 19:23Speaker 04

  The Japanese backpacker Gun was there too. Toby says it was a good night to cool off with a beer.

• 19:28Speaker 05

  It was hot. It was a February night in Lismore. It was stinking hot. It wasn't windy or anything. One of those nights where it does barely cools off from the day.

• 19:38Speaker 04

  And here's the third lie. He initially denied using drugs that night. But actually, he'd smoked a joint. He says they all did.

• 19:48Speaker 05

  I reckon what made me pretty intoxicated was that doobie back at the caravan park. Because you know how that goes after six beers.

• 19:56Speaker 04

  Gun was still hanging out with them. He'd learned to play a didgeridoo.

• 20:00Speaker 05

  Gun bent over to his tent, brought the didgeridoo out. Well, we all just sat there and had a couple of beers. We smoked a joint, I remember. And everything was, was, was actually pretty good.

• 20:18Speaker 04

  That was until a neighbouring camper came over to complain about the noise. Toby says the neighbour wasn't impressed.

• 20:26Speaker 05

  Obviously, yeah, I mean, playing a didgeridoo at 11.30 on a campsite, 11.45 would wake a few people up. She was definitely being pretty aggressive and yelling at us.

• 20:37Speaker 04

  He says this is when the mood in the group started to turn again. And he says it all happened very quickly.

• 20:43Speaker 05

  With her coming over complaining about the noise and in that sort of aggressive way she was and that, that changed the mood in the group. Gun packed up.

• 20:56Speaker 04

  Then, the argument about the family thing flares up with Katrin again. He says even though he'd made up with Simone about Sandon River, him and Katrin were still fighting about that too. And he also says he was getting tired of being the tour guide, deciding where to go and what to do because he spoke the best English.

• 21:16Speaker 05

  And then meanwhile, I'm a bit further over talking to Katie. And that, that gotten a bit heated and I was sort of like, it got back to the fright, to the thirst Thursday morning in Sandon River.

• 21:28Speaker 04

  He says this is where Simone came in. She was backing Katrin up.

• 21:32Speaker 05

  And then Simi came in and she took Katie's side a bit. I felt again that they're ganging up on me. It was like, look, I'm, I'm not fucking responsible for everyone having fun. I'm not the bloody tour guide. And then I said to my sister, and I do regret saying that. I said to her, you wouldn't even be here if it wouldn't be for me. And that's, that upset Simi and that's when she walked off.

• 22:05Speaker 04

  Toby says he was still angry as Simone was walking away.

• 22:09Speaker 05

  And I said then, well, walk, yeah, walk away. That doesn't change anything or, you know. And then I called her like, I think, a silly call or something. And then that was it.

• 22:26Speaker 05

  It's been pretty, been a heavy struggle because most days I sort of see her walking down that path, you know. And, and think if I could bloody only could have stopped her that day.

• 22:47Speaker 04

  The last image Toby says he has of Simone is of her disappearing behind the toilet block at the caravan park.

• 22:55Speaker 05

  I have huge regrets that I, I should have grabbed her on the arm or, you know, it's that, that was the sort of catalyst of her

• 23:07Speaker 05

  because she said something about, this is so dumb, we're on, we're on holidays, we, we, you know. And then, so whatever I said there, I would say upset her and triggered her to walk away. Which it's hard to live with probably. If it wouldn't be for me, she wouldn't have walked away.

• 23:27Speaker 04

  He says she was walking towards the exit, towards Dawson Street, a busy main road running through the middle of Lismore.

• 23:38Speaker 04

  Toby says it was quiet for a while after Simone walked away. Nobody said a thing.

• 23:43Speaker 05

  Gun had left and Jens was sort of backing up and I don't know what Katie does.

• 23:50Speaker 04

  Toby says at first he thought Simone just wanted some time alone.

• 23:54Speaker 05

  I think I sat in the van door, in the sliding door and the side door of the van. You know, I had, had between my hands.

• 24:02Speaker 04

  Is there a point in the night where you remember with Jens and Katie where someone raises like, hey, she's been gone for a while. You know, should we, what should we do?

• 24:16Speaker 05

  Yeah, so from, from memory there, I think Jens was the one who said after 10, 15 minutes or something, he said, oh, I'm gonna go and have a wander to look for her.

• 24:30Speaker 05

  And then I think Katie said, oh, I come with you.

• 24:35Speaker 04

  While Jens and Katrin went to look for Simone, Toby decided not to go.

• 24:39Speaker 05

  I said, I'll stay back in case she comes back. And then I sat there, I was sulking for a while. I was pretty pissed off with that, with the situation itself. I saw it in the pub, it was going bad. So, yeah, I wasn't, I wasn't happy.

• 24:57Speaker 04

  At one point, Toby says Jens and Katrin circled back to see if Simone had turned up at the campsite, then went searching again when she wasn't there. Toby says he left the van briefly to search for Simone in a toilet and laundry block about 15 to 20 metres away and walked around one of the caravan park roads calling her name. But there was no reply and he went back to the van. This is when police said Toby could have had the opportunity to kill Simone if she came back to the campsite while the others were out searching. Toby says his memory of this part of the night is fuzzy.

• 25:34Speaker 05

  You've got to understand, we were all a bit tipsy. I would say we were quite intoxicated, we were stoned and so, so that sort of is a bit of a blur right, right around that part. And I sat in the door. I passed out, sitting like this against the one side of the sliding door at some stage.

• 25:56Speaker 04

  But he says at that point, he wasn't worried.

• 25:58Speaker 05

  I did not have the doubt, the slightest doubt that night really that she would come back. Do you know what I mean? I thought she would go somewhere and sit on a park bench and then needs a, needs a bit of Simi time, needs a bit of alone time after all this. And when you're travelling in a group, it's, you know, and the dynamic isn't that great. It's kind of normal that one seeks a moment for, for itself and has a break.

• 26:23Speaker 04

  So that's basically how Toby says the night ended. He fell asleep and the others did too. I've contacted the others who were in their group that night. I sent Jens a letter and contacted his lawyer. It took a few months, but the lawyer finally replied. He said Jens wanted to be left in peace after what he described as the painful experiences he'd had with the justice system.

• 26:50Speaker 04

  Jens declined through the lawyer to say anything else for this podcast.

• 26:55Speaker 04

  The ABC also managed to find the Japanese man with the nickname Gun. But he didn't want to be interviewed either. Katrin, Toby's sister, she did agree to be interviewed. You'll hear from her a bit later in the series.

• 27:16Speaker 04

  The morning after Simone walked off, Toby says he woke up feeling seedy.

• 27:21Speaker 05

  The beer's worn off, the joint's worn off. It's also stinking hot again. I'm sweating in this van. I'm hungover. And then I was like, oh God, fuck what, and then you try to piece last night together. Then I realised Simi wasn't there.

• 27:38Speaker 04

  Toby says he went to tell Katrin and Jens that Simone was still missing. Then he asked Gun if he'd seen her. But still, nobody had. It was then Toby says he noticed something that gave him chills.

• 27:51Speaker 05

  I walked back and that's when I saw her. Her thongs, sort of like ducked half under the van on the sliding door. And that's when I started to really started to worry a bit. This is like, fuck, she's got no shoes. She hasn't come back last night. Then while I was sort of getting dressed inside, the wallet was there, our wallet was there. So she had no shoes on. She had no belongings as such, just the clothes she was literally wearing.

• 28:22Speaker 05

  She's in a, she's in a town where she doesn't know anyone.

• 28:26Speaker 04

  Toby says he was trying to tell himself that Simone would be back by 10am. Because that was the time they had to be checked out of the caravan park. They'd only paid for one night and they were planning to move on to the next town that day. So if she was okay, she'd be back by then. But 10am went by and there was still no sign of Simone. So he says they checked out, moved the van outside the caravan park entrance and started walking to the police station.

• 28:55Speaker 05

  As I walked up there, I was like, fuck, you know, I'm really starting to, to worry now. Because like, that was so out of, out of character for her. So I go up there and I sort of, I had to wait a few minutes to speak to the lady at the front desk. I pretty much told her that.

• 29:19Speaker 05

  My girlfriend didn't come home last night, she left. I'm pretty sure I told her that that was an argument. And Simone has left. She had nothing, she had no shoes with her and no wallet. She doesn't know anyone and I'm concerned.

• 29:41Speaker 04

  Toby says the officer told him they'd have to wait until Simone had been missing for 24 hours before they could file a missing persons report. But he left some information. And in fact, he ended up talking to the police a fair bit throughout the day. He remembers some officers trying to reassure him that things would be all right. According to him, they were saying people in the area take off all the time and then show up a few days later, particularly after a big night. He says he heard this multiple times that day. And the more he heard it, the more frustrated he was becoming. He says he was desperate to get the police to take him seriously. It riled him then, and it riles him now to retell it.

• 30:24Speaker 04

  He gets fired up as he talks about this part of the story.

• 30:27Speaker 05

  People run away after a fight and then they stay away over the weekend with some mates or down in Byron Bay or up in Nimbin. And then they come back and I kept saying, well, she doesn't have any mates. She doesn't know anyone. We foreigners.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  Toby took this response as basically saying, she'll be right, mate.

• 30:44Speaker 05

  They go, look, we know you had a fight and then she had enough and she's going away for a couple of days. Don't worry, she will be coming back. And I go, and then I go, fuck, we had no fight and where's she gonna go? Oh no, she is pissed, man. And I was like, well, hang on a minute. Because I wanted, I needed some help, man. I didn't know where to go. I needed some help. And then I was saying to my sister and Jens, fuck, these guys think we had a fight and Simi run away, she's in Byron Bay or in Nimbin.

• 31:16Speaker 04

  Toby says he did most of the talking because he spoke better English than Katrin or Jens. That evening at around 10pm, police recorded an interview with him about Simone's disappearance. That's the recording you heard in episode one, where he says they hadn't been arguing. They'd only had light beers and they didn't use any drugs. Toby says he was frustrated by what he saw as a lack of urgency in the police response. He felt like they weren't listening and weren't taking Simone's disappearance seriously enough.

• 31:48Speaker 05

  I did not feel I'm in good hands. That's, that's really what it was. I really didn't feel that that's got taken serious and I didn't feel I'm in good hands. So that's why I was not giving him the respect he maybe deserved because I also didn't feel hurt. And then I get asked, did you harm your girlfriend? And I'm like, why don't you do your job and get a dog and find my girlfriend because she would be back if she could. Instead of reassuring me that it's all good, no worries, mate. I mean, is that professional police work?

• 32:22Speaker 04

  He says their efforts to reassure him that Simone was probably okay only made it worse. I sent a long list of questions to New South Wales Police about Toby's claims that at first, they didn't take Simone's disappearance seriously enough and the time it took them to get a police dog. But they didn't answer any of the questions.

• 32:47Speaker 04

  It's an interesting experience to be sitting here now as Toby retells what happened. The way he gets worked up talking about this reminds me a bit of the way he acted in those interviews with police back in 2005. Angry and exasperated.

• 33:03Speaker 05

  I thought I'm talking to absolute num nuts who telling me all the time, nah, mate, don't worry. I fucking hated it. I could have decked that guy one. I was so close because he kept tapping me on the shoulder and always reassuring me. And I kept telling him, you never met this girl. It's so out of her character. She would never do such a thing. Tap me on the shoulder. That pissed me off the most. This mate buddy, oh mate, don't worry.

• 33:30Speaker 04

  Now, he tells me this is why he lied to police. He says he first told the lies when he spoke to them in an unrecorded conversation at about 4pm in the afternoon. And then he told them again in the recorded interview that night. Starting with what he said about how much they'd all had to drink. I played that part of the interview back to him.

• 33:53Speaker 06

  So you were drinking midis?

• 33:54Speaker 05

  Midis.

• 33:55Speaker 06

  And Simone had four of those?

• 33:57Speaker 05

  Simone had four midis, yeah.

• 33:59Speaker 06

  Was she intoxicated, drunk?

• 34:02Speaker 05

  No, no, not me. Four light beers. Nobody struggling with four light beers.

• 34:09Speaker 04

  What's it like watching yourself?

• 34:11Speaker 05

  Yeah, pretty shocking. The, the, the, you can see that my English was not to scratch, obviously. So, um, yeah, but not, not, not too, um, yeah, not too good, not a great feeling seeing myself there, to be honest.

• 34:30Speaker 04

  So you've given them that account there of the four midis. What's going through your head when you say, say that?

• 34:39Speaker 05

  You know, I should have probably been honest then because I do have lots of regrets not being truthful there in the beginning. Because obviously it came around and bit me in the ass. But at that time I was that desperate and I needed help and I, I felt like I don't get any.

• 35:00Speaker 04

  Toby admits he spoke to Katrin and Jens after his interview, asking them to tell the same story.

• 35:06Speaker 05

  I kind of went back, explained myself to the others. And I said, look, this is what I said. This is where I lied. I didn't want to say about the dope. Because, you know, it's obviously was illegal, it's still illegal. And then the argument, yeah, that's, that's when I asked them to stick with, with this, with these lies. I explained why I did it and everyone agreed, as far as I remember.

• 35:38Speaker 04

  There are differing accounts of what happened with Toby's lies that day. One police officer said Toby lied about how much they'd all had to drink in his first interaction with police around 10am, when he went to the station to report Simone missing. The officer said Toby had told them about the four light beers. And this was before he'd had enough contact with police to get frustrated about their response. The officer didn't write anything about beers in their notes from that conversation. But they did mention them in a statement a few months later. Jens also said at the inquest in 2007 that Toby had told him and Katrin to lie before he went to the station the first time.

• 36:23Speaker 04

  But Jens says in a different interview with police that it happened after Toby had already spoken to the cops. Toby denies lying about anything the first time he spoke to police. He says the lies started in the late afternoon. He thinks the officer got mixed up about when he talked to them about the beers by saying it was in the morning when it actually happened later. And he says he only asked Jens and Katrin to lie after his first recorded interview. Regardless of when the first lies were told, they formed an important part of the police theory that Toby killed Simone in the caravan park, along with his behaviour after Simone's disappearance.

• 37:05Speaker 04

  Police felt the lies he told were suspicious and the arguments gave him motive to kill Simone.

• 37:18Speaker 04

  Toby says he's not proud of the way he acted in his interviews with police when he got worked up and frustrated.

• 37:25Speaker 05

  I reckon I was a hated man in the Lismore Police Station after that interview, 100%. So that interview, which I thought, um, do these lies to try to get more help, but the way this all came across, um, I think it probably actually went the opposite way.

• 37:46Speaker 04

  He's not surprised he was treated as a suspect in the early days because he was her boyfriend. But he thinks police got tunnel vision because of his behaviour after Simone's disappearance. And he thinks they were outraged and embarrassed when he highlighted what he saw as a major error in the police response. The time it took to use a dog in the search. He'd been asking for them to use one in the days after Simone went missing.

• 38:15Speaker 05

  The sniffer dog would have found that body on Sunday. Let's bring that sniffer dog over to my van, sniff the shoe and try to, it hasn't rained. The grass hasn't been mowed. It was pristine campsite grass. That sniffer dog would have followed that lead.

• 38:31Speaker 04

  Then on the sixth day of the search, the first time a police dog had been used, Simone's body was found not far from the campsite in an area that had already been searched. Toby says he was watching on from the caravan park. They'd checked back in after reporting Simone missing.

• 38:50Speaker 05

  I saw the German Shepherd. I saw it was mine. I was dragging the handler straight over there, straight to where the body was.

• 38:57Speaker 04

  What were you thinking when that was happening, when you're watching it unfold? Are you like going?

• 39:02Speaker 05

  Oh, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't really know what was going on. Five minutes later, the cops drive into the caravan park, pick me up and Katie, and they said, you've got to come with us. And then I started sort of yelling at them. Because I asked for a sniffer dog and I saw the sniffer dog dragging that guy over and then, um, you know, I said, you're bloody incompetent kindergarten cops. I asked for the sniffer dog. On Sunday, why you keep lying to me?

• 39:33Speaker 04

  He says that's why he called the newspaper and called the police kindergarten cops, which ended up being in the headline. Police have said they got a dog to Lismore as quickly as they could. And they tell a different story about what happened that day. Saying the dog was back in the van when Simone was found and the handler was the one who found Simone. But Toby sees it as a mistake they would want to cover up.

• 40:00Speaker 05

  They still don't have, none of them has the guts to say, we fucked up, none of them.

• 40:16Speaker 04

  Toby stayed in Australia until about three weeks after Simone was killed. By the time he boarded a flight back to Germany, he says he couldn't wait to leave. He turned 25 on the flight home.

• 40:31Speaker 04

  Simone's body was in the cargo hold.

• 40:38Speaker 05

  You know, we had setting off on the big adventure and ask me to bring her daughter home safe and I brought her home in a coffin on my 25th birthday.

• 40:48Speaker 05

  Pretty devastating.

• 40:55Speaker 04

  Do you want to take a moment?

• 40:56Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think I need one.

• 40:57Speaker 04

  Yeah, that's cool. There's no rush, mate.

• 41:12Speaker 04

  When Toby first went back to Germany, he and Simone's family supported each other as they grieved. A memorial was held for Simone in a local church. They played "It's My Life" by Bon Jovi at the service. Meanwhile, the police in Australia continued their investigation. They'd been talking to their counterparts in Germany, who did their own interview of Toby when he got home. It was their first interview with him and they got the same lies he'd told the Australians. Then he decided to leave Germany and get away to South Africa.

• 41:46Speaker 05

  I mean, no one knew me in South Africa besides a few of my surfmates and, you know, I was all more like a couple of local guys.

• 41:54Speaker 04

  He did have to go back to Germany when he was named a prime suspect by German police. When they questioned him again, he admitted to his lies. But they didn't have the evidence to lay any charges and Toby returned to South Africa. He managed to live a relatively anonymous life there, even though media coverage of the case continued in Australia and Germany. He says he was rattled when that Australian journalist, Charles Miranda, tracked him down and hired actors to attend his surf lessons in 2007.

• 42:25Speaker 05

  I didn't talk to him. My response was, don't you have anything better to do? It's a nice day, leave me alone or some sort. That's what I said. Even though he twisted it completely afterwards in his story and said, I said that it was too nice to talk about Simone, which I never said. He said, he wrote, it was too nice of a day to talk about Simi and I never said that.

• 42:46Speaker 04

  In one article, the journo wrote Toby had told friends the media attention was because he was a soccer star. Toby says now he did talk about playing soccer, but denies saying he was a star player.

• 42:58Speaker 05

  I was going by the same name. I didn't change my identity. I wasn't all of a sudden Mark Wayne or something.

• 43:06Speaker 04

  This was around the same time as the 2007 inquest he didn't go to. That was one of the reasons the journalist approached him, to ask why he was refusing to go and answer questions. I also wanted to know about that. It struck me as odd that Toby hadn't agreed to participate. Because if you had nothing to do with it, wouldn't you do everything in your power to help? Even if it put you at some risk? Was there a rea— what was the reason you decided not to go to the 2007 inquest?

• 43:38Speaker 05

  It was legal reasons. My German lawyers said, look, you're under investigation here in Germany and no one tells us why. I haven't seen any evidence. They haven't given me any documents. My recommendation to you is do not go over there. You don't know what you're walking into. It's a differential restriction. We don't know. So he recommended me not to go. And yeah, I took his recommendations and I didn't even know what an inquest was because we don't, we don't have, we don't have that such, you know, an inquest.

• 44:15Speaker 04

  He thought the Australian police could try to arrest him and he knew they believed he was involved.

• 44:21Speaker 05

  I mean, should I have gone? I probably should have. But in hindsight, I'm kind of glad I didn't. I would have probably walked into an open knife.

• 44:33Speaker 04

  Toby does think his decision not to attend the inquest was the beginning of the end of his relationship with Simone's family. He says they'd always supported him. But after the coroner in Australia said he strongly suspected Toby was involved, Toby says he noticed a change in the tone of their emails in the months following the finding.

• 44:55Speaker 04

  He says they were starting to question his actions the night that Simone disappeared.

• 44:59Speaker 05

  No, you didn't look for Simone. You know, I can't remember every single bit, but it was like, how could you, how could you fall asleep that night? Or why didn't you, why didn't you try to mobilise more help? You know, and yeah, stuff like, stuff like that. Why I wasn't, why I wasn't honest from the beginning to them.

• 45:27Speaker 04

  Eventually, Toby says he stopped communicating with Simone's family. He says he knew he could never answer their understandable questions.

• 45:38Speaker 04

  I wondered if he thought they believed he was telling the truth now. Can you say why her family have doubts?

• 45:46Speaker 05

  Yes and no, but yeah, I can because I did make mistakes in the, in the, in the days after. I should have been straight away honest and not make these false statements. I do understand that there would be doubts. I don't understand that they're so firm. They did know me for six years before. They backed me up for a while.

• 46:12Speaker 04

  Simone's parents have provided a statement to us talking about why they believe Tobias' account isn't truthful and responding to various issues raised throughout this podcast. They wanted their statement read in full, not in part. So you'll hear me read their whole statement in episode seven of the podcast.

• 46:42Speaker 04

  I've covered a lot of ground with Toby Moran so far. It hasn't left me convinced of anything. To me, the reasons Toby gives for why he lied to police aren't completely implausible. To be honest, the 25-year-old me would have probably downplayed the drinking and denied the drugs. But it seems like police saw the lies differently. Right from the first days of their investigation, they'd focused on Toby. And over time, they only became firmer in their belief that he'd killed Simone. Until one morning in 2022, when police cars rocked up at his house. After 17 years of investigating Toby, police were about to pounce.

• 47:27Speaker 05

  He came up and said Tobias, you're under arrest with a murder of Simone's driver.

• 47:35Speaker 04

  That's next episode on Lies in Lismore.

• 47:58Speaker 04

  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.

• 48:10Speaker 04

  If you saw anything that night in Lismore, or if you know someone else who did, get in touch. Unravel true crime at abc.net.au or you can call Crime Stoppers on 1-800-333-000.

• 48:33Speaker 04

  You've been listening to an ABC Podcast. Discover more great ABC podcasts, live radio and exclusives on the ABC Listen app.