04 Lies in Lismore | An arrest

Decades on, police make an arrest and lay charges for the murder of Simone Strobel. But what is the new evidence they've found? Richard Baker tries to figure out what led police to this dramatic arrest years into the investigation. 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

• 0:01Speaker 00

  When you want to be stopped in your tracks.

• 0:04Speaker 01

  I'm running to shoot it. It's 50/50. You can catch his gun or he'll shoot you.

• 0:13Speaker 00

  When you want to know the truth.

• 0:14Speaker 02

  She was brainwashing him from the start.

• 0:17Speaker 00

  We're here to investigate.

• 0:18Speaker 03

  Something's going wrong, big time.

• 0:21Speaker 00

  Search Background Briefing Podcast on ABC Listen or wherever you get your podcasts.

• 0:30Speaker 00

  ABC Listen. Podcasts, radio, news, music and more.

• 0:38Speaker 04

  By the 2010s, Tobias was living his new life in Perth, under his new name, Toby Moran. His life was mostly normal, but behind the scenes, the police were continuing to investigate. And their focus was on Toby. They were hoping new evidence might emerge. New evidence that might finally solve the case. And one of their best hopes was DNA.

• 1:09Speaker 04

  In the early 2010s, DNA technology was getting better. Samples that were previously not able to be tested could suddenly yield results in the new machines. If police could use this technology to place Toby at the crime scene, it would change everything. Then, in 2012, a breakthrough. Lab testing in Germany found a match for part of Toby's DNA at the crime scene. It was found on one of the palm fronds used to cover Simone's body.

• 1:49Speaker 04

  After years of being held back by a lack of evidence, a breakthrough like this was exactly what the police needed. But any excitement among the detectives would have been short-lived. Because in that same report was a bombshell.

• 2:05Speaker 04

  There was a risk that the test had been contaminated by a forensic officer who worked at the lab. It's hard to believe, but part of the German forensic officer's DNA just happened to be extremely similar to Toby's. And they weren't able to tell for sure if the DNA found in the sample belonged to Toby, or if the results had been compromised. After all that, science still couldn't prove that Toby had been at the crime scene.

• 2:37Speaker 04

  Despite the disappointments of this whole DNA saga, the police hadn't given up. They believed there was a chance this match wasn't just from contamination, and that Toby's DNA really was at the scene. So they kept trying to establish a link. Maybe if they could do more advanced testing, they could finally work out once and for all if Toby's DNA could be linked to the crime scene. And in 2021, 16 years after Simone's murder, police were ready to try again. Toby was asked to provide a fresh DNA sample. He complied. Police were silent on the results.

• 3:19Speaker 04

  Then, early one winter morning, more than a year after he'd given that sample, something totally unexpected went down at his house in Perth.

• 3:30Speaker 05

  Normally, everyone sleeps a bit longer than me. I get up around 5.30 or so, and I'm a builder. So it'd be normally me at 7 on site. I get up, have a small breakfast or something, and I make a coffee, get ready for the day, and off I go.

• 3:47Speaker 04

  July 26, 2022, starts like any other day for Toby Moran. He walks down to his car, and he's about to drive off for work, when he remembers he's forgotten to do something. He hasn't taken the rubbish out.

• 4:02Speaker 05

  So I walked back up into the house. It was just sort of like dorny, dawn morning is sort of like just about to get light. So the street lights were still on because it was a cold, cold morning. It's winter. And as I walked back up to the house, all these cars starting to rock up.

• 4:28Speaker 05

  And I turn around and yeah, within a few seconds, there was, I don't even know, six, eight cops.

• 4:39Speaker 04

  As the officers approach him, he recognizes one of them, a detective called Dave Mackey. He's from Lismore and has been on Simone's case since the start. He's one of the police Toby called kindergarten cops.

• 4:53Speaker 05

  And then this other guy came up and said, Tobias, you're under arrest for the murder of Simone Strobel.

• 5:10Speaker 04

  For 17 years, police have thought Toby was probably Simone's killer. Now detectives are on his doorstep. Do they finally have the evidence to prove Toby's guilty? I'm Richard Baker, and from Unravel, this is Lies in Lismore.

• 5:55Speaker 00

  A man is to be extradited from Perth to New South Wales after being arrested in relation to the murder of a German backpacker in 2005.

• 6:04Speaker 05

  Tobias Friedrich Moran appeared in Perth Magistrates Court today following his arrest by New South Wales detectives and WA officers.

• 6:13Speaker 04

  News that Simone Strobel's former boyfriend had been arrested spread quickly in the local media. The acting premier of New South Wales at the time, Paul Toole, spoke to reporters and commended police for never giving up on the case.

• 6:27Speaker 05

  Today does mark a significant milestone and a breakthrough. We are a step closer to having answers for the community, the family and the friends of Simone Strobel. I also want to thank people like detective David Mackey, who has worked on this case from the very beginning, and he's still involved in this case, and also wants to see some closure with it.

• 6:48Speaker 04

  Police shared footage of Toby's arrest online. The video showed Toby being bundled into a police car, wearing a brown jacket and a yellow beanie. He says he was stunned.

• 7:00Speaker 05

  Nearly pissed my pants, to be honest. My knees were super shaky. My blood just gushed downstairs and I was sort of like, whoa. I was straight away got handcuffed and all this, and I kept asking, what is this arrest based on? And yeah, no, they wouldn't talk to me. But yeah, my mind was going all sorts of places. And yeah, it was a horrible feeling. I remember it clearly.

• 7:27Speaker 04

  Police let Toby back inside the house briefly to tell his wife Sam that he was being arrested. Toby was taken to a jail cell at a police watchhouse in Perth. He says there were two other guys in there who overheard he was being charged with murder.

• 7:44Speaker 05

  These guys were obviously like, oh shit, man, you know, you're in for some heavy shit. You're going to be in jail for a while. And like, they're starting to freak me right out, you know? I was shattered. I was absolutely devastated. I was like, I'm based on what bloody evidence? You can tell me a hundred times that you arrested me for the murder of Simone Strobel, but why and based on what?

• 8:10Speaker 04

  Toby was in jail in Western Australia, but the charges were actually being laid by New South Wales police. The day after he was arrested, he was extradited back to the state where Simone was killed. After Toby arrived in Sydney, he ended up at a prison called Parkleigh Correctional Centre. Police held a press conference about the charges. Superintendent Scott Tanner addressed reporters.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  On Tuesday, a detective from Richmond Police District attended and addressed in Perth and arrested a 42-year-old male. He has been extradited back to Sydney and will appear in court today and has been charged with murder. We would like to thank the community and the family of Simone, especially, for persevering with the police and assisting the police in what has been a very, very lengthy investigation. I'm happy to take any questions.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  The first thing the reporters want to know is how police have finally been able to press charges after all these years.

• 9:10Speaker 03

  Did a new witness help you make an arrest? Any new evidence of DNA? So this matter has been continually investigated since 2005. A plethora of information and investigative strategies have been undertaken. So based on all the evidence available, we presented that case to the DPP, and they found sufficiency to present the charge of murder to the court.

• 9:30Speaker 04

  What Superintendent Tanner said just then is important. He's pointing out, it's not just the opinion of police that they've got a decent case. He says the case has also been shared with the public lawyers who prosecute these cases. And they also believe it's strong enough to put a murder charge in front of the court.

• 9:50Speaker 03

  How did the Strobel family react to this news? They are still very distressed by the events that have occurred. And they've gone through the last 17 years, wondering what's happened. So there is a sense of relief from the family, and we have been part of the journey with them and will continue through that journey through the court process. How are police feeling? Some of them have been working on this case for...

• 10:10Speaker 02

  Seventeen years. How are they feeling at this stage?

• 10:14Speaker 03

  Yeah, certainly. The police that have been involved in this have taken real personal involvement in it, and there is a sense of relief.

• 10:22Speaker 04

  A journalist asks the superintendent if police are looking at any other suspects.

• 10:27Speaker 03

  We are in the process of talking to our German authorities in regards to two arrest warrants for two persons currently in Germany.

• 10:35Speaker 04

  The journalists at the press conference follow up with more questions about the suspects in Germany.

• 10:40Speaker 02

  Those arrest warrants in Germany, are they for the two other people that were travelling with the accused and the victim?

• 10:49Speaker 03

  The other two people that are currently the subject of your arrest warrants have been persons of interest from the very beginning. And we believe they've got information that will be able to assist with the investigation.

• 10:59Speaker 04

  He's talking about Toby's sister, Katrin Sukful, and their friend Jens Martin. Superintendent Tanner says the two Germans are suspected of being accessories after the fact and for perverting the course of justice.

• 11:13Speaker 03

  There's a lot of, obviously, administrative work that does come with extradition and so forth. So at a suitable time, we'll be able to inform people about the results of those arrest warrants.

• 11:22Speaker 04

  Having tried to ask about DNA once, the journalists follow up again. They're keen to know what DNA evidence the police have. One journalist asks if improvements in DNA was a factor in the arrest.

• 11:37Speaker 03

  Certainly, this murder occurred in 2005. And obviously, 17 years later, there has been quite some substantial advancements in the DNA technology. DNA will play a part in this investigation, as it does with most investigations that we currently undertake.

• 11:50Speaker 02

  Does that include material on palm fronds that were covering the body?

• 11:54Speaker 03

  Includes a variety of evidence that we've obtained.

• 11:57Speaker 02

  I know when there was the first coronial inquest, the coroner complimented police on the thoroughness of their investigation. But the finding was there wasn't enough evidence to go to the DPP. What's changed?

• 12:10Speaker 03

  Look, it's just been an ongoing investigation. And I can just say that the evidence is of sufficient standard now to present a case of murder to the courts.

• 12:30Speaker 00

  There's never been a moment since meeting Toby up until this day that I've ever doubted that he's innocent of killing Simone.

• 12:38Speaker 04

  Through all this, Toby's partner Sam says she never had doubts about him. She says right from the start of their relationship, Toby had been upfront about the murder investigation. He told her about it a few days after they met. It was 2008. They were both in South Africa.

• 12:58Speaker 00

  He was smoking cigarette after cigarette and he was shaking. Yeah, and he told me everything. He told me the whole story. I did have some questions. You know, I did. You know, I had a legal background and a psychology background. And I definitely, you know, my

• 13:18Speaker 00

  that logical part of my brain was trying to, you know, ask some questions, but be sensitive.

• 13:23Speaker 00

  But yeah, I mean, I really trusted him. I believed everything he said. He was very authentic and earnest. And yeah, I just, I wanted to help.

• 13:34Speaker 04

  Do you remember what sort of questions you had?

• 13:41Speaker 00

  I think they were more, more questions about putting the pieces together. You know, who is Jens? Is Jens friends with Katie? Were they together? They're not together.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  I think more like putting the pieces of the puzzle together rather than, you know, any specific questions. You know, I never, for example, asked him, you know, were you involved in her death? I didn't ask anything like that, but just sort of.

• 14:10Speaker 04

  Did you want to?

• 14:12Speaker 00

  No, because he told me very clearly, you know, I had nothing to do with it.

• 14:19Speaker 04

  By the time police arrested Toby in 2022, he and Sam had been together for 14 years. At the time, they had two young children. And Sam was pregnant with their third. She says she woke up that morning to see Toby at the bedroom door.

• 14:37Speaker 00

  He opens it just a short way. And he says, Sam, Sam, you know, come here, come here. And I said to him, shh, you know, be quiet, the boys are still asleep. And I opened the door and that's when I could see him. And he was in handcuffs and there was two officers with him. And I said, what's going on? You know, what is this? And Toby said, I've been arrested. And I said, for what? And he said, for the murder of Simone Strobel.

• 15:13Speaker 00

  If Toby did it, I want to know. I want to be the first one to know. You know, I would be out of there immediately. I want to protect my kids. But

• 15:23Speaker 00

  there is no doubt in my mind Toby was never there.

• 15:28Speaker 04

  Instead of starting to doubt Toby, Sam just got to work. With her legal background, it seems like she felt it was up to her to take this on.

• 15:37Speaker 00

  I was literally at my computer for 20 to 23 hours every day. I had my best friend, she pretty much moved into my house. She was doing all my laundry, cooking. All my friends were dropping off groceries. Family was dropping off meals. I don't even know who was picking up the kids and taking them to school and dropping them home.

• 15:57Speaker 04

  Sam knew police didn't have enough to charge Toby in the past. And yet, he was now behind bars.

• 16:04Speaker 00

  And I had thought, wow, maybe Toby's DNA was on the palm fronds.

• 16:14Speaker 04

  She thought back to that potential DNA match from 2012, the one that was inconclusive. Sam knew that Toby had recently given a fresh DNA sample to be tested at a lab in Austria. This round of testing would be the most sophisticated yet. In Sam's mind, the new evidence had to be something to do with that DNA. Even so, she was convinced that could be explained easily. Because Simone would have had to have had Toby's DNA on her.

• 16:45Speaker 00

  We had been advised that there is no way that Toby's DNA would not be on Simone. That his DNA should be, his mitochondrial DNA especially, should be all over Simone. They lived in a van together. And if the perpetrator had touched Simone and touched the palm fronds, a transference is very, could be very possible.

• 17:13Speaker 04

  More than a week after Toby's arrest, Sam said she still wasn't seeing anything about the DNA results in any of the legal material she had at the time. Neither was Toby's legal team. They said they didn't have all of the police documents because New South Wales Police didn't have to share all the evidence they had yet.

• 17:41Speaker 04

  Soon, there would be a hearing in court to decide whether Toby would be let out on bail.

• 17:47Speaker 00

  We were not very hopeful because we know a ex district court judge here in Perth. And he said, look, you don't get charged with murder and get let out on bail. Or it's very rare that you get let out on bail when you're charged with murder. They're such serious offences, you know, he's from Germany. So we were told, kind of by, and all the lawyers also said, you know, don't get your hopes up.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  I remember calling my best friend Sophie, she was in Canada at the time. And I was really fearful that, you know, I wasn't eating, I wasn't sleeping. And I was really scared that I was going to lose the pregnancy.

• 18:32Speaker 00

  I thought I'd lose my baby girl.

• 18:37Speaker 04

  While Sam had been grappling with the upheaval at home in Perth, Toby was in a Sydney jail cell. He was waiting for a court appearance to decide if he should be let out on bail. He knew Sam had been able to hire big shot Sydney barrister, Tim Game, to represent him. Eight days after he was arrested, the hearing got underway at the court in Sydney. Toby was watching through a video link at the prison. He says it wasn't always easy to understand what was going on in the courtroom.

• 19:10Speaker 05

  Tim speaks very soft and I couldn't understand what he was saying. And I was like, fuck, what is this guy doing? What is he saying? I was trying to work out what was said and where this is all going. And the line was shit or the video or whatever. I couldn't understand what he was arguing.

• 19:28Speaker 04

  Police were opposing his application for bail. They said he was a flight risk because he had the financial means and a passport. He could go back to Germany. After so many years, everyone was wondering what evidence was against Toby. So here's what the police put to the magistrate.

• 19:49Speaker 04

  In a letter to the court, Detective Dave Mackey wrote that it was a strong circumstantial case against Toby. He said Toby's lies were significant and that they were evidence of a consciousness of guilt. There were some other things that police emphasised about what happened that night. They thought it was suspicious that Toby, Jens and Katrin had initially all provided similar descriptions of what Simone was wearing when she walked away. But they were all wrong. They all said she was wearing a black top and a skirt with flowers. But Simone's skirt didn't have flowers on it. None of them mentioned the white pants she wore underneath.

• 20:34Speaker 04

  And they each got the colour of her skirt wrong. Then, there was the evidence of two witnesses, a couple, who said they saw Toby yelling at the campsite. They described Toby yelling aggressively into the van.

• 20:50Speaker 04

  Police also thought it was suspicious that Toby didn't say anything to the caravan park manager about Simone being missing when he checked out the morning after. And investigators also questioned why nobody had heard Katrin and Jens calling out to Simone in the early hours of the morning when they said they were searching for her.

• 21:13Speaker 04

  In answer to these points, Toby says he just mixed up what Simone was wearing at the pub with what she was wearing earlier in the day, and corrected himself as soon as he saw CCTV from the night. He can't answer why Katrin and Jens were also wrong about what Simone was wearing. He says he might have discussed her clothing with them, but he can't remember doing it, and calls the whole thing an honest mistake.

• 21:43Speaker 04

  Toby doesn't dispute he was yelling at the campsite that night. In fact, he says the witness evidence lines up with what he told police, that he was shouting out for Simone, looking for her. He says it's possible he shouted into the van to see if she'd returned, but that he wasn't yelling aggressively, just that he was intoxicated, stressed out, and shouting in German, and that might have come across as harsh to non-German speakers.

• 22:13Speaker 04

  As for the caravan park manager, Toby accepts he probably didn't mention Simone was missing when he went to check out.

• 22:21Speaker 04

  He says by then he was focused on getting to the police station.

• 22:33Speaker 04

  Most of this evidence wasn't new. Police had known about almost all these things, and Toby's responses to them, for years. So what was new? Was it the latest DNA test? It seemed that hadn't been decisive either. The police put to the court that the new DNA testing hadn't ruled Toby in or out as a suspect. So why had they charged him now? Well, it wasn't clear. I've tried to work out what other new evidence police might have been relying on to charge Toby at this point. To be honest, I can't find a lot.

• 23:16Speaker 04

  At one point, the magistrate does refer to some fresh statements about Simone and Toby's relationship that led to the charges. I've only found two statements that fit that picture. I'm thinking, if these led to the charges, they must be pretty strong and compelling. So here's what I found out about them.

• 23:38Speaker 04

  The first statement is from someone who spoke to Simone at the kindergarten where she worked in Germany. It's from a parent who says she talked with Simone about her relationship with Toby before they left for Australia. In her statement, which was taken in 2021, the woman says Simone had said she was worried she could end up travelling alone if she and Toby split up, and she said the relationship with Toby had become more difficult over time, because Toby had been smoking more dope, and that led to arguments.

• 24:11Speaker 04

  So that's it for the first statement. It's useful evidence, but it wasn't going to make or break the case. What about the second new statement? Well, this one was from another woman in Germany, who said she met Toby in South Africa in 2009. She said he didn't seem to show a lot of grief for Simone. This woman had a story about Toby's sister Katrin too. Apparently, one day she heard Katrin say something about the case. According to her, Katrin said, if anyone ever asked her about what happened that night in Lismore, she wouldn't say a word about it. So basically, the suggestion here seemed to be that Katrin was keeping a secret, that

• 24:55Speaker 04

  she knew something about that night that she wasn't letting on.

• 25:05Speaker 04

  This isn't the first time someone's told a story like this about Katrin. In fact, Simone's dad has been quoted in a local German newspaper, claiming that Katrin said something similar to him. In the article, he said Katrin said she wouldn't talk about that night, even if she was being tortured. On the face of it, it's pretty interesting. That's two separate conversations in which Katrin says she doesn't want to talk about what happened that night. But that's not how Katrin remembers the conversations. I actually spoke to her, and you'll hear more from her later in the series.

• 25:46Speaker 04

  Katrin says these conversations have been totally distorted. She says what she actually told Simone's family members was this: even if she was being tortured, she can't admit to something she didn't do.

• 26:00Speaker 05

  Wenn ich gefordert werde, kann ich keine Sachen zugeben, die ich nicht gemacht habe.

• 26:07Speaker 04

  Simone's parents have more to say about this incident. They wanted their statement read in full, not in part. You'll hear their full statement in episode seven.

• 26:19Speaker 04

  As for the other woman in Germany, Katrin denies ever saying anything like that. She says she barely knows the woman, and only said a quick hello to her on the day in question. Toby has also pointed out that the woman in Germany gave her statement about a week after a $1 million reward for information about Simone's murder had been offered by New South Wales Police. So, that's it for the two statements. It's all evidence that would be important to include in an overall case.

• 26:55Speaker 04

  But from what I can tell, it's nothing earth-shattering. The magistrate at the bail hearing, Margaret Quinn, seemed to agree. She said it was, quote, "not the strongest case she had seen." She let Toby out on bail. He was allowed to go home to Perth while he awaited trial. Sam had been told not to get her hopes up, but the magistrate made the rare decision to release a murder suspect. I was just so relieved he was, you know, home and safe and where he belongs with his, with his family.

• 27:35Speaker 04

  But the relief didn't last long. They now had to get ready for a murder trial.

• 27:42Speaker 00

  I think the prospect of a murder trial is really, really scary, because it's long. They can be six weeks, they can be months, and they're expensive. We lost our home to fund all of this. We had a limited amount of money, and we knew that we wouldn't be able to fund a murder trial. All those things that, you know, are very, very scary. Trying to map out how it's going to look like, you know, we're going to have to tell the kids. How are we going to tell the kids that their father's on trial for murder? You know, how are we going to do the school drop-offs without complete, you know, shame, you know, the media?

• 28:22Speaker 04

  Sam delivered their baby with the prospect of a trial looming. Still, they didn't know why police swooped to charge Toby in 2022, after all those years of not having enough evidence. Around four months after Toby's arrest, he and Sam say they got their hands on the full DNA results. The results they originally thought were the reason police charged Toby. They'd been waiting to find out what was in them. Sam was stunned. There was no DNA linking Toby to any of the exhibits.

• 28:57Speaker 00

  And that's when we found out that he had been excluded.

• 29:00Speaker 04

  At the bail hearing, police suggested DNA had neither inculpated or exculpated Toby. Sam assumed the DNA test had been inconclusive, but now, she was finding out that Toby's DNA had definitively not been found on any of the exhibits. You must have been happy to say that he's excluded as well as...

• 29:23Speaker 00

  No, not happy. I was furious. We were so angry.

• 29:29Speaker 00

  There's no, there's no happiness in this, you know what I mean? It's not, there's relief, sure, but it's infuriating. It's, it's, um...

• 29:40Speaker 00

  How can, I mean, there was a press release. Superintendent Tanner came and inferred that the DNA had inculpated Toby.

• 29:50Speaker 04

  Meaning that Sam thought Superintendent Tanner's press conference suggested the DNA results were incriminating for Toby. Tanner didn't specifically say there'd been a DNA link to Toby, but he did say that DNA technology had improved, and it would play a part in the investigation. He also said, "The Office of the Director of Public Prosecutions supported the charges."

• 30:14Speaker 00

  That's the only information we had, was from the press conference that Tanner did. And so, when we actually saw that was complete nonsense, that was absolute bullshit, there was no DNA that inculpated him.

• 30:28Speaker 00

  Yeah, it's just anger. All we felt was anger. How can this happen?

• 30:32Speaker 04

  Toby and Sam also found out police were aware of the DNA results before they charged him. I was able to confirm this, and that the officer leading the case, Dave Mackey, also knew the results before he arrested Toby.

• 30:47Speaker 00

  We just couldn't wrap our head around how this could have happened. He knew his case against Toby had become significantly weaker, and he charged him anyway.

• 30:56Speaker 04

  They started trying to fight the case on the basis police didn't have enough evidence to charge Toby. His lawyers made an application to have the charges withdrawn. Meanwhile, they were waiting for his case to come before the court again. That would be in June 2023, almost a year after his arrest. When that date came around, what happened made national headlines. A man accused of killing his backpacker girlfriend 18 years ago in northern New South Wales has today been cleared of murder. Tobias Moran was accused of killing Simone Strobel, whose body was found after she went missing in Lismore in 2005. In an extraordinarily rare move,

• 31:38Speaker 04

  the Director of Public Prosecutions backed away from the case, deciding not to pursue the charges.

• 31:45Speaker 05

  It was absolutely massive because imagine going through a murder trial and you know you're innocent. Everyone was so happy for me and Sam. I guess it felt a bit like a win, even though, you know, still no justice for Simone was done or anything like that. But at least I was off the murder charge, which, I mean, yeah, it was a huge relief.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  Toby was free from a charge that could have put him in jail for the rest of his life and left his wife and children facing a very different future. You'd think the pressure would be off.

• 32:26Speaker 05

  I shouldn't have been happy, right? But I wasn't because I was like, why the fuck did I got arrested then? And what is this all about?

• 32:34Speaker 04

  The Morans were angry about the public humiliation they'd been through and the impact on their family. They started to question some of the things that police did when they arrested Toby. There were two things said in that police press conference that seemed to be wrong. The first was that two people in Germany were subject to arrest warrants. But Katrin and Jens were never arrested. German prosecutors told me they'd never even received a formal request from Australian police to arrest anyone.

• 33:09Speaker 04

  The second was they said they'd run the case past New South Wales prosecutors. But when it came down to it, the prosecutors completely backed away from the case. So what happened?

• 33:23Speaker 04

  I was able to confirm that police had never checked in with them before charging Toby.

• 33:29Speaker 04

  So why did police say Jens and Katrin were being charged? And why did they say they'd checked the strength of the case with prosecutors? Was this some kind of mistake? I asked New South Wales Police about this, but they declined to answer.

• 33:47Speaker 04

  Toby and Sam took legal action and they won. The court accepted there was no reasonable basis for the charges to have been laid. Four months after the charges against Toby were dropped, New South Wales prosecutors were ordered to pay Toby and Sam $190,000 to help cover their legal costs.

• 34:19Speaker 04

  Toby and Sam have a theory about why police charged Toby in 2022 when they didn't have reasonable grounds. But they can't prove it. It goes back to the day Toby was arrested, when he was put in the cells with those two men at the watchhouse in Perth.

• 34:36Speaker 05

  I mean, I didn't click straight away what was going on in that cell. It only came to me later on, do you know what I mean? So I sort of like, I like,

• 34:47Speaker 05

  most likely that was all part of the whole scenario, you know, so.

• 34:53Speaker 02

  Undercovers.

• 34:53Speaker 05

  Undercover cops, yeah.

• 34:55Speaker 04

  Toby found out later that the two men in the cell had been planted there by police to strike up a conversation with him. And he says he took the bait.

• 35:04Speaker 05

  And they wanted to know, you know, what happened, you know? So, and I kind of first didn't want to talk to him, but,

• 35:14Speaker 05

  you know, I'm bloody obviously sitting on three square meters together or whatever it was. And I was also pretty rattled and shocked and whatnot. And yeah, I actually ended up having a fairly in-depth discussion with those two guys.

• 35:34Speaker 04

  But Toby didn't admit to anything. Actually, he said he was trying to argue his innocence. Toby believes police charged him not because they had any important new evidence, but instead because they wanted to use the arrest to make their case stronger. He thinks the police plan was to hold off on telling him the DNA results, arrest him and then put him in a cell with a couple of undercover officers in the hope he'd confess. It's the only explanation that Toby can think of. I asked police questions about this too. But again, they declined to answer them.

• 36:19Speaker 04

  Simone's parents, Gabby and Gustav, were disappointed when the charges against Toby were dropped.

• 36:27Speaker 04

  They released a statement afterwards saying they were shocked and saddened at the news. They said after so many years, it seemed they were still no closer to finding out what happened to Simone. They'd always been confounded, they said, by the multiple and conflicting versions Toby gave to police about the events surrounding Simone's death. And even though Toby had said he'd told them the truth before their relationship broke down, they said Toby and Katrin had never given them an account of what happened the day Simone died.

• 37:02Speaker 04

  But Simone's parents said they did remain grateful to investigators in Australia and Germany who'd been working so hard to provide justice for Simone.

• 37:13Speaker 04

  During my interviews with Toby, as I listened to hour upon hour of him explaining why he didn't kill Simone, I thought of Simone's family. And I felt the need to ask him directly if he had harmed Simone and look him in the eye as he answered.

• 37:31Speaker 04

  And I've got to ask you this, did you do anything like that?

• 37:35Speaker 05

  No, no, I would never do anything like that. I absolutely loved Simone and I did make mistakes afterwards, but I'm not a murderer. I did not, I did not do it.

• 37:49Speaker 04

  Did you kill Simone?

• 37:51Speaker 05

  No, Richard, I didn't. I didn't. I absolutely loved that girl. And yes, I admit mistakes afterwards, but I did not kill Simone.

• 38:09Speaker 04

  Interviewing Toby has been one of the most intense experiences of my time in journalism. I leave Perth confused about why police stayed so focused on Toby for almost two decades. It makes sense that police heavily scrutinised Toby and did whatever they could to work out if he was responsible. It seems they put a lot of weight on Toby's lies and the details he fabricated way back in 2005.

• 38:38Speaker 04

  Maybe that was enough for them to keep looking for evidence that could confirm he was involved. But shouldn't they have been focusing on other possibilities as well? It all makes me wonder about the other people who were out there in the dark near the caravan park that night in 2005. Could one of them be responsible?

• 39:03Speaker 01

  The way he spoke that night when he confessed and when he spoke about it, it still sends shivers down my spine.

• 39:11Speaker 04

  That's next on Lies in Lismore.

• 39:35Speaker 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.

• 39:47Speaker 04

  If you saw anything that night in Lismore or if you know someone else who did, get in touch. [email protected] or you can call Crime Stoppers on 1-800-333-0000.

• 40:11Speaker 00

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