Six days after disappearing from a campsite during a night out, her body was discovered hidden behind palm fronds — and two decades later, a coroner has decided that German tourist Simone Strobel was killed. Her murderer, however, has yet to be identified.
According to The Guardian, New South Wales state coroner Teresa O’Sullivan determined that Strobel, 25, “died as a result of homicide by a person or persons unknown” and called for new testing of two unmatched DNA samples — a hair discovered on a fence and male DNA found on Strobel’s black shirt.
According to The Guardian, Strobel, a Bavarian kindergarten teacher, was traveling along Australia’s east coast with her then-boyfriend Tobias Suckfuell — now known as Tobias Moran — his sister, and a friend. According to the site, the group had a drink at a nearby hotel before returning to the Lismore RV park.
Witnesses reported a fight, and Strobel exited the area “alone and upset.” She was last seen traversing a nearby roundabout about 11:55 p.m. on February 11, 2005, when multiple witnesses reported hearing screaming, according to The Guardian.
Moran reported Strobel missing the following morning. After a multi-agency search, a police dog handler discovered her naked body hidden behind palm fronds at a sports field just beyond a wire fence near the caravan park, six days after she was last seen, the newspaper stated.
O’Sullivan dismissed a 2007 inquest’s “very strong suspicion” that someone in Strobel’s traveling party was involved, stating that present legislation prohibits coroners from naming an offender and that Moran’s claimed lies did not, on balance, prove guilt, according to The Guardian.
The coroner did not determine a cause of death, despite earlier suggestions of suffocation; neither Australian nor German pathologists were able to do so, according to the outlet. According to The Guardian, O’Sullivan decided that the perpetrator had a sexual motive and that Strobel was sexually assaulted before she was slain. She was most likely killed outside the trailer site.
Moran, who lives in Western Australia, was charged with murder in 2022, but prosecutors dropped the allegations the following year. He has maintained his innocence and has since collected over $190,000 in legal fees, according to the Associated Press.
O’Sullivan suggested that the case be forwarded to NSW Police’s Unsolved Homicide Team, and that detectives use contemporary DNA procedures. According to The Guardian, the A$1 million prize for information offered in 2020 remains in place.
Addressing relatives watching from Germany, O’Sullivan described the family’s suffering as “extremely difficult” and expressed hope that one day they would find the truth about what happened to Strobel, according to the source.
Strobel’s sister Christina, appearing during the inquest last year, stated that her sister’s death impacted her family “in the most radical ways,” and that their parents have “be[come] mere shadows of themselves… sinking deeper and deeper into despair,” according to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
