Caddick must have known her world was about to come crashing down as she stood there in black gym gear and running shoes as she watched the police confiscate her computer, high-end clothes and open countless black suitcases containing diamond and sapphire necklaces, Earrings, rings and bracelets – all bought with stolen money.
The 49-year-old disappeared at 5.30am the next day, leaving behind her mobile phone, car keys and wallet.
Melissa Caddick’s husband Anthony Koletti and Caddick’s mother Barbara Grimley arrive at the NSW Coroner’s Court. Credit: Kate Glady
The coroner said she accepted evidence from a forensic psychiatrist that Kadik’s narcissistic personality may have prompted her to accept the crime “when faced with the stigma of exposure and the potential loss of family, friends, career and reputation”. her treatment. my own life.
The coroner said Caddick’s husband, a hairdresser and part-time DJ, and her parents, Barb and Ted Grimley, believed “Ms Caddick died as a suicide by jumping from a cliff near Dover Heights in the early hours of December 12. November 2020”.
Despite hundreds of “sightings” by the public, no one has seen Kadik since.
From the beginning, police were disturbed that Koletti waited until 11:45 a.m. on November 13, 2020, to report his wife missing.
Also concerning was his refusal to report to Rose Bay Police Station “because he had too much work to do”, the coroner said.
One of the first officers to speak to Colletti that day was Sergeant Trent Riley, who told investigators that Colletti was emotional, babbled, slurred and “sweating profusely.” Koletti initially did not mention to Riley that his wife was the subject of a major investigation or that their house had been searched.
Reilly also said he thought it was “extremely unusual and strange behavior for a person to not see their wife for a few days and then not want to see or speak to police immediately”.
All three officers who spoke to Colletti that day were disturbed by his behavior. “Strangely, he seemed indifferent to his wife’s disappearance,” said the coroner, who often contradicted himself when describing what had happened over the past two days.
Melissa Caddick’s former home in Dover Heights. It has been sold.Credit: Oscar Coleman
He told police he hadn’t left the house the day before, and officers knew he had left the house multiple times.
Reilly can be heard asking Colletti in police body camera video if he had been anywhere the night before. “As far as I know,” Koletti replied.
This is not true. The night before, Koletti went to a friend’s house to smoke drugs at 8 p.m. and deleted a text message about the arrangement before handing the phone over to police. He did not mention his wife’s disappearance to his friends or his wife’s brother Adam Grimley, with whom he had spoken that night.
At the end of the day, Riley said, he didn’t believe Colletti had hurt his wife. However, he believes Colletti “may have known where she was and withheld information”.
Melissa Caddick’s property in Dover Heights during the AFP raid.
The 30-hour delay in reporting his wife’s disappearance, as well as significant discrepancies in his statements to police, raises “strong suspicions” that between 11 and 13 November 2020, “he had information about his wife’s disappearance but withheld it from investigating police killed it,” the coroner found.
Ryan also took note of the assisting attorney’s closing statement, which called Colletti the “most inconspicuous and unreliable witness” who lacked candor and thus could not determine the cause of his wife’s death.
As well as providing inconsistent statements to police, the coroner said the evidence he gave at the inquest was “ridden with similar inconsistencies and opacities”.
“His explanations for the many inconsistencies between and within the various accounts simply don’t make sense,” Ryan said.
Koletti’s lawyer, Judy Swan, said her client’s inconsistencies were due to his “limited intellect” and “minimal literary and numeracy skills”.
Melissa Cadic and Anthony Colletti.
However, the coroner argued that Koletti’s differences were “too numerous and too persistent in nature to be attributable to stress and lack of intellectual maturity”.
The coroner also dismissed Koletti and his mother-in-law Barbara Grimley’s insane allegations that ASIC’s cruel and inhumane treatment on the day of the raid led to Caddick taking his own life.
Since her disappearance, 55 family members and friends have discovered that Kadik stole more than $23 million from them, pretending she was investing in stocks on their behalf. Instead, Kadik used their money to maintain an extremely lavish lifestyle.
One investor told the inquiry: “I sold my company because I felt my money was safe and I retired in 2017…to add more salt to the wound, she also stole from my mother , wife, mother-in-law’s money, son, brothers and sisters… exhausted the savings of three generations of my family.“
Aside from her husband and teenage son, the last people to see Kadik alive were members of the commando who left her home at 6:22 p.m.
Three months later, on February 21, 2021, her right running shoe washed up on a remote beach on the NSW south coast, containing part of her remains.
While the investigation heard that the decomposing remains matched Kadik’s DNA, there wasn’t enough material to determine whether her feet were dislodged from decay or blunt or sharp trauma.
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A forensic pathologist noticed a broken foot in the foot, which she said would not be fatal, but she could not determine whether “it could have been a deliberate jump, a deliberate push, or an accidental fall from a height” or if the fracture was caused by the foot. caused by direct impact.
“Consequently, the autopsy itself did not prove that Ms Cadik had died,” the coroner found.
However, the coroner found that the evidence did “lead to the conclusion that it is unlikely that Ms Caddick’s foot was the result of deliberate amputation of it, either by herself or with the assistance of others”.
The inquest heard a body was likely transported from Sydney to Bournda Beach within 100 days of her disappearance.
In her findings, Ryan experienced criticism of the initial police investigation, which included failing to notify of the homicide and failing to collect CCTV footage from surrounding properties.
There was a brief scuffle outside the courtroom at the end of the trial. Koletti pushed the reporter away while his brother-in-law, Adam Grimley, kept honking his car horn. Koletti climbed into the backseat as Melissa Caddick’s family sped away.
