The phone call that would end the search for Eimable Manirakiza came on day 72.
A voice on the other end of the phone delivered a breakthrough clue into the whereabouts of the beloved 24-year-old Melbourne soul singer and musician.
Two teenagers had spotted Eimable’s backpack, containing his mobile phone, while canoeing along a river in Melbourne’s west. Cybersecurity expert Mike Monnik, who volunteered to help Eimable’s family search for him, had sent a missing device recovery alert to the phone, enabling whoever found it to contact him. The teens called the number and spoke to Monnik.
When he hung up, Monnik noted down where the backpack had been found, knowing where the search effort needed to focus.
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When Eimable’s mother, Benine, heard her son’s phone had been found, more than two months after he disappeared, she instinctively knew he was not alive.
“In my heart, I say, ‘No, he’s no longer,’” she recalls.
The day after the phone call, Monnik and Eimable’s brother, Bien, set out on the river in a dinghy. In the calm waters, they found Eimable.
His body was discovered about a five minute drive from his mother’s house, where he fled during what his family believes was a mental health crisis.
How Eimable died is a question a Victorian coroner – who next week will consider the scope of the upcoming inquest – will attempt to answer.
More than four years after he was found in September 2021, Benine wants the coroner to investigate issues including how police made decisions about the use of phone triangulation data and how police responded to Eimable’s disappearance.
Benine hopes the inquest can help limit the trauma for the loved ones of the more than 50,000 Australians who are reported missing each year.
She believes without the help of Monnik, Eimable “could still be rotting in that water by himself”.
‘Very difficult’ communication
On the day Eimable went missing, Bien drove him to their mother’s house after his housemates alerted the family that he was struggling to sleep, eat and speak.
When they arrived, Benine could immediately see that Eimable, the oldest of seven children, was not himself.
“Eimable is someone who loves to hug … But that time he did not want to hug me at all,” she says.
Eimable had been hospitalised for a manic episode about five years earlier and Benine recognised similarities in his behaviour. As she called an ambulance on the afternoon of 23 June 2021, Eimable took off to Gordon O’Keefe Reserve, about 500m away, with Bien following.
When the ambulance approached the park, Bien headed towards the road to hail the paramedics. When he looked back a few minutes later, Eimable was gone.
“I was panicking. I knew he wasn’t OK,” Bien says.
Bien tried to call Eimable multiple times and about 45 minutes later the phone stopped ringing.
Benine assumed police could easily track Eimable as he had his mobile phone with him when he went missing.
“I never knew it would be very difficult,” she says.
As a migrant born in Burundi, with English as her second language, she says she found it challenging to get answers from police.
Eimable’s friend Kendra Keller, who was liaising with police on behalf of the family, says for weeks she asked about access to phone data. She says it was not until 17 August 2021 – more than seven weeks after the disappearance – that police disclosed details to her about where Eimable’s phone had last pinged. Police conducted at least three ground searches and a flyover, according to Keller.
About a week before Eimable was found, Keller connected to Monnik via a non-profit organisation, The Missed Foundation (then named Missing Person Advocacy Network).
Monnik, who runs a drone open source intelligence company, met with Benine and Bien. Alongside his wife, Fedora, who works in cybersecurity, they accessed Eimable’s laptop and sent a customised safety beacon to his phone, alerting whoever found it that he was part of a missing person case.
He says the pair used the information about phone tower pings that police relayed to the family, overlaid with their own research about the range of the towers and the timing of Eimable’s phone calls after he went missing, allowing them to estimate if he was travelling in a vehicle or on foot.
They were left with a broad search area of where they believed Eimable had been. But it was the device recovery alert they sent that provided the clearest picture of where the backpack had been found.
“I think it’s really important that people contribute to these types of things when there’s a clear need and there’s a desperate need,” Monnik says.
Benine describes Monnik as an “angel” and wishes the family had connected to him earlier.
A Slater and Gordon lawyer, Naty Guerrero-Diaz, who is representing Benine, says the family hopes the inquest can investigate whether police ought to have made attempts to access Eimable’s phone location data in the first few days after he disappeared.
A Victoria police spokesperson says the agency is unable to comment on Eimable’s case until the inquest’s findings are released.
At the time of Eimable’s disappearance in 2021, if Victoria police believed there was a “serious and imminent” threat to the life or health of a person, they could apply under the commonwealth Telecommunications Act to access information held by a telco. Triangulation involves determining an approximate location of a mobile phone using data from a telecommunications provider about which cell towers the device is using.
The “imminent” qualifier has since been dropped, prompted by recommendations from a New South Wales coroner. But civil liberty groups at the time warned there was the potential for misuse of location data.
A Victorian coroner, investigating the death of transgender woman Bridget Flack, last year called for police to overhaul the way they deal with missing person cases, including urgently implementing an internal recommendation to develop a risk assessment matrix to provide greater clarity about what constitutes a “serious threat” when making decisions about triangulation.
Police accepted this recommendation, noting the request for mobile phone triangulation form had been redesigned and requires an authorising officer to review a missing person risk assessment.
As Benine prepares for the inquest, she is left with so many questions but holds on to the tender memories of her son.
“I remember his laughter, his gentle touch, his beautiful words,” she says.
In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. In the US, the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline is 1-800-273-8255. In the UK, Samaritans can be contacted on 116 123. Other international suicide helplines can be found at befrienders.org
