Melissa Caddick’s family face a series of grim choices in the days ahead
Melissa Caddick’s grieving family face wrenching decisions in the coming days with a looming financial timebomb – as a senior forensic expert reveals what will happen next with her remains.
The fake financial planner, 49, had paid her mortgage on her $6.1million Dover Heights mansion in advance up to March 2021, allowing her husband Anthony Koletti some breathing room following her November disappearance.
But Caddick’s once big-living family now face the issue of her $19,000-per-month repayments – as well as the likelihood her receivers could sell her property to recoup investors’ funds.
Meanwhile, a court recently scrapped an allowance for Mr Koletti to pay for his usual living expenses – funds which had covered everything from the food they ate, the electricity they used and their $1,300 per month pet insurance bill.
The mounting issues come as Caddick’s family were given the harrowing news that her foot had been found washed up on the NSW South Coast last week.
Soon there will also be the question of what happens next to her remains – a matter for the State Coroner, a NSW Police spokeswoman said.
Caddick vanished from her $6.1million Dover Heights home about November 11 last year. She had paid the mortgage in advance up until mid March
‘There’s not really a rule book’ for this sort of situation, said Professor Jo Duflou, the former longtime clinical director at the state’s Department of Forensic Medicine.
Generally speaking a person’s remains would be released to loved ones once they’re no longer required for investigative purposes.
But Prof Duflou said there likely wouldn’t be a problem with the remains staying in the morgue until the rest of Caddick’s body – or as ‘much of it as can be’ – was found.
Forensic pathologists are working to confirm whether other remains that have washed up along the coast in recent days are linked to Caddick.
Police revealed late on Tuesday that a ‘discoloured’ torso found at a beach at Mollymook on Friday belonged to an unknown male. The DNA profile will be compared against the missing persons database,’ a police spokeswoman said.
Theories rage about what happened to Caddick in the meantime. One victim, who knew Caddick for two decades, told Daily Mail Australia he was open to the popular but extremely unlikely theory she was still alive.
‘Everyone thinks she is alive and just kicking with one foot,’ he said. ‘She would have had an exit plan set up ages ago.’
Criminal psychologist Tim Watson-Munro told News Corp: ‘I believe she had a plan. It’s unlikely on impulse she would have ended her life.’
Superintendent Joe McNulty, commander of the NSW Police Force Marine Command, has said Caddick’s shoe ‘needs extensive analysis to see how long it was in the water.’
The search expands: In the coming days, when the seas are calmer, police will search the ocean off Dover Heights for clues to Melissa Caddick’s disappearance
Caddick’s decomposed foot was found in a grey and white Asics Gel Nimbus 22 at Bournda Beach, near Tathra on the NSW South Coast, the Sunday before last
‘It’s a vital clue where hopefully marine biology can provide some answers,’ he told the Daily Telegraph.
Supt McNulty has cast doubt on whether Caddick’s Gel Nimbus 22 sneaker could have been in the water for three months and said he had never known remains to travel so far south.
Assistant Commissioner Michael Willing has likewise suggested Caddick may have been on the run prior to her disappearance.
That’s even as police said their drift modelling appeared to show that her body could have hit the water at Dover Heights and travelled as far south as Bermagui, not far from where her body was found.
Police will once again search near Dover Heights when seas are calmer. ‘They (the searches) will occur in due course,’ a spokeswoman said.
At this point, police suspect Caddick has likely died by suicide, but aren’t ruling out foul play.
Daily Mail Australia revealed on Monday that Caddick had taken out a $120 per month life insurance policy prior to her disappearance.
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