The New South Wales deputy state coroner Elizabeth Ryan has concluded that the fraudster Melissa Caddick is dead while savaging the credibility of her husband, finding he withheld information from police.
But the court but has been unable to make any definitive findings about her fate, saying suicide was a possibility.
In 2020 Caddick, then 49, disappeared from her home in the Sydney suburb of Dover Heights after a raid on her property by officers from the corporate regulator and federal police on 11 November that year.
Police were investigating allegations she ran a Ponzi scheme for about eight years, taking between $20m and $30m worth of funds from investors, friends and family.
Caddick was accused of falsely posing as a financial adviser and pretending to have placed the money into investments using fake CommSec portfolios and falsified trading documents showing profits. She instead used the money to fund a lavish lifestyle.
About three months after her disappearance, a foot was found on a beach on the NSW far south coast. The foot was connected by DNA analysis to Caddick.
The coroner’s court has been exploring the circumstances surrounding her disappearance, including the adequacy of the police investigation, her psychiatric condition, and the behaviour and evidence of her husband, Anthony Koletti, who was delayed in reporting her disappearance.
Ryan concluded that Caddick is deceased. She said, among other things, Caddick would have contacted her son, whom she loved dearly, since her disappearance.
“I have concluded that Melissa Caddick is deceased,” she said. “However, a more problematic issue is whether the evidence is sufficient to enable a positive finding of how she died and how and when it happened.”
Ryan described the inquest as deeply painful for Caddick’s family. She also described the fraudulent scheme used by Caddick to cheat her family and friends out of huge amounts of money, which she used to fund a “very expensive” lifestyle.
“Ms Caddick’s clients were shocked and felt a profound sense of betrayal when they discovered the money they invested with her had gone. The financial and emotional harm they have suffered will continue to reverberate for many years to come.”
Ryan was also highly critical of Koletti’s evidence to police and the court. She found he had information about her movements but had chosen not to disclose it.
Koletti’s various statements to police, the court and the media were inconsistent. The discrepancies remained unexplained.
She said his evidence gave rise to “strong suspicion” that he knew more about her movements between 11 November, the day of the raid on their home, and 13 November, when he reported her missing.
“I have concluded that in the period [immediately before he reported her missing] he had some awareness of Ms Caddick’s movements over the previous two days, but he chose not to disclose it,” Ryan said.
She said Koletti’s lack of candour was “regrettable”.
“He did not give a full and frank account to the court of what happened,” the coroner found.
The court also found that suicide was a possibility, and that Caddick may have seen it as the “only escape from the personal and professional catastrophe that overtook her on 11 November 2020”.
“It is certainly possible that Ms Caddick died in this manner,” Ryan found. “The oceanographic evidence establishes that had she jumped from the Dover Heights cliff line, her remains could feasibly have travelled by sea to Bournda Beach within the period November 2020 to February 2021.”
But the coroner found she could make no positive finding that Caddick had died by suicide. She said it was also not possible to determine whether Caddick died by “misadventure” or whether someone else was involved.
“I regret that positive findings cannot be made as to the cause and manner of Ms Caddick’s death,” she said. “Ms Caddick’s husband, son, parents and brother must surely feel a strong need for finality. Melissa Caddick was a wife, mother, daughter and sister. Her disappearance from her family in traumatic circumstances must be a source of deep and ongoing sadness for them.”
Ryan found there were “shortcomings” in the police investigation of Caddick’s disappearance.
One of the issues explored in the inquest was the adequacy of the investigation by NSW police, particularly in its early stages.
Ryan said police had dismissed the possibility of homicide too early, meaning they did not involve the homicide squad, and also delayed conducting a review of CCTV footage from the area.
She said it was difficult to say whether those shortcomings had changed the course of the investigation or meant that additional information had been lost.
But she dismissed allegations that investigators who conducted the raid acted improperly or were somehow responsible for the death, something Koletti had alleged.
• In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is at 988 or chat for support. You can also text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis text line counselor. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
