On December 2, 2010, the body of Phoebe Handsjuk, a 24-year-old Australian woman, was found at the bottom of a garbage chute. Handsjuk’s death was ruled a suicide by the local coroner, despite suspicion on her much older lover, Antony Hampel.
Antony Hampel, aka Ant, drove his Range Rover into the Balencea building’s basement car park at 6:05 p.m., using his security fob to open the gate. Having been out early at the gym at 8:15 a.m., Hampel left the home around 9:00 a.m. for a busy day at his events company in Richmond, interspersed with meetings off site.
Using his personal key fob, which only gave Hampel access to the access where he lived, took the lift and let himself into his twelfth-floor apartment. Unable to remember if he locked the front door upon arriving, he was greeted by his American Staffordshire bull terrier, Yoshi. Yoshi didn’t show shame for the mess he made pulling cushions from the couch and general chaos. Ant disliked messes, but allowed Yoshi the latitude in an avuncular way.
Upon entering the apartment, there was no sign of Hampel’s flatmate and partner, Handsjuk.
Hampel and Handsjuk’s relationship was in the rocky stage with Handsjuk threatening to on again/off again moves, as well as Handsjuk’s abuse of alcohol. Handsjuk often disappeared, spending time with, in Hampel’s opinion, “low-lifes”, tearful returns, and prescription drugs to help Handsjuk sleep it off and begin soon.
Hampel noticed Handsjuk’s keys and handbag on the kitchen counter, which was weird because, while you could leave Balencea without keys, you couldn’t get back in. Hampel wondered where Handsjuk could have gone without her handbag.
The kitchen counter also had strange Post-it notes with weird scribbles, and they were new because the cleaner had wiped the benches down the previous day. Heading into the bedroom, Hampel found what appeared to be a “shrine” consisting of a photo of himself and Handsjuk, a photo of Handsjuk cat, along with notes with ramblings Handsjuk writes when she’s drunk and don’t make sense. Candles were burning and Handsjuk hair-straightening tongs were lying on the floor plugged into a socket in the bathroom.
Forty minutes after Hampel arrive home, Handsjuk father, Len, called her iPhone. Len and Ant have different recollections of that night. According to Len’s memory of numbers from his phone bill, Ant answered the call on Handsjuk iPhone but didn’t’ hear Len call the phone, instead calling him at 6: 52 p.m. thinking Handsjuk went to see Len.
Len called Phoebe because she had arranged for the three of them to meet at her favorite restaurant, the “Golden Triangle,” for Len’s birthday two days earlier, to find out when they were supposed to meet.
After telling Len that Phoebe wasn’t home, Len became worried when he and several family members received a strange text from Phoebe’s iPhone:
“Hi family, I am in bed and about to sleep and when I WAKE I will transform into the most incredible human bein you’ve ever seen … (not), I will go to hospital. It’s safer there and I hear the special tonight is tomato soup … Delicious! Nutritious! I love you all very much but not enough to send an individual text. Sorry about that, but time is sleep and I must b on my way … … Merrily, merrily, merrily. Life is but a dream. Xo”
Handsjuk sent the message to Len, Ant, her boss, Michelle Silvana, her mother, Natalie, her brothers Tom and Nik, her grandmother, Jeanette Campbell, and Natalie’s partner, Russell Marriott.
Natalie received the message while boarding the plane in Alice Springs flying home after a nine-week stint working in the Western Desert. Concerned, she called her mother, Jeannette, in Mallacoota, a coastal township in eastern Victoria, checking on Phoebe.
Jeannette called Ant at 10:35 a.m. checking on Phoebe. Claiming he hadn’t seen the message, Ant said Phoebe was sleeping peacefully and would check on her later as his office was near their home. Jeannette sent Natalie a text reassuring her, via Ant, that Phoebe was okay. When Natalie arrived in Melbourne, she texted Phoebe to call her when she woke up.
Worried about Phoebe, Len urged Ant to report her missing, but Ant, not keen on the idea told Len that they don’t do anything for 48 hours and was positive she’d be home before then.
Len, a psychiatrist, called his son, Tom, from his car outside his office after work, asking Tom to call friend who might know where Phoebe may be.
Len then called Natalie, who told him she still hadn’t heard from Phoebe. Reassured by Jeannette’s texts, she was preoccupied by preparations of Nik’s eighteenth birthday party the next day.
Natalie called a few of Phoebe’s friends, including Brendan (Bren) Hession. Bren claimed he hadn’t seen Phoebe since Monday night when they went for a drink together, mentioning that Phoebe had been a bender.
Len decided not to drive to St. Kilda Road to look for Phoebe, and went home to have some tea and change for dinner.
At Balencea, Ant ordered from the Golden Triangle a delivery for one. After 8:00 p.m., the delivery boy was buzzed to the twelfth floor. The delivery boy told Ant that police cars, ambulance were in the building, which was rare at Balencea. After the delivery boy left, Ant approached a detective asking him what was going on. Acting Senior Sergeant, Andrew Healey, told Ant a woman’s body as found in the rubbish compactor room.
Ant asked if it might be his girlfriend, since she was missing. Ant told the police officer that he’d been at work all day but kept checking on her every few hours on the home phone because Phoebe’s phone was broken. He went to tell the officer that Phoebe was depressed and taking medication. Ant went on to claim that he had made several calls after arriving home to locate her, but said he usually returned home by herself. He also said that Phoebe left several Post-it notes, but no clues where she could have gone. The officer asked about any distinguishing features, to which Ant told him about a tattoo on Phoebe’s right wrist that matched his wrist and a stud in her upper lip. The officer told Ant to find a recent photo, then viewed photos of the body from another officer.
After Healey followed Ant to the apartment, Ant confirmed Phoebe had a tattoo on her stomach. Based on the photo of Phoebe, he matched facial features of the dead girl in the rubbish room. The detective, with no reception in the apartment, left leaving Ant, later returning with another detective to search the apartment and the surrounding area.
Noting several things of interest, like broken glass, blood on the floor, the Post-it notes left by Phoebe, and the dog ripping up a cushion. Ant, too depressed to see the body, as detectives continued searching Level 12 and the outside area. They found blood on the twelfth-level refuse room of the rubbish chute as well as a spot of blood on the door handle.
Left alone again, Ant called his mother Suzanne Owen and stepfather Robert. Ant never called his father, retired judge George Hampel, and stepmother, Justice Felicity Hampel, as they were out of town.
Ant called Len to tell him Phoebe was dead, suggesting Len call her brothers and come to Balencea. Len, in shock, called his son, Tom, who left his girlfriend’s home in East Malvern, unaware of what was happening.
Len tried to call Natalie who didn’t answer. Natalie later called after noticing two missed calls from Len, who confirmed that Phoebe as dead. Then Len called Phoebe’s mother, Jeannette to come soon. After Jeannette arrived at Clifton Hill, she was told by Natalie that Phoebe was dead. Closer to Phoebe than anyone, Jeannette was devastated. She showed Natalie a text from Ant after asking him how they were:
“Thx Marm, she is sleeping beauty right now and not the beast she was! Resting well n I’ve explained now is the time to heal, then when she feels OK we’ll work out a plan.”
With no plan to work out, Phoebe’s family was left to nurse their sorrow at Clifton Hill, waiting for further news.
The scene at Balencea was a chaotic one since Beth Ozuup’s frantic Triple-O call.
The emergency dispatch service, Intergraph, allocated the job to South Melbourne Police Unit 303, the afternoon shift van, at 7:14 p.m., and the shift supervisor’s car, Unit 251, attended. South Melbourne is close to St. Kilda Road, so the building saw the first team of police—Acting Senior Sergeant Healey, Detective Senior Constable Paul Thomas, Senior Constable Justin O’Brien, Constable Clare Hocking, and Sergeant Graeme Forster, the shift supervisor.
They were met by Beth who gave them the keys to the rubbish room.
Telling the officers she couldn’t go in the rubbish room, she was comforted by female residents who saw Beth’s distress, looking after her in the office until her sister, Baau arrived. After Banu took Beth home, police told them not to worry, but that the girl committed suicide by putting herself down the rubbish chute. Eric Giammario and Tony Basile, the managers of the company of the apartments, arrived soon after police around 7:15 and 7:30 p.m. Never going to the compactor room, but instead, Eric went to the office and immediately saw how upset Beth was. He noticed a “distraught” Ant Hampel come in with police, who asked for a room to do the interview.
Eric, trying to be helpful, thought the security cameras might help police, but knew they’d have to act fast because of trouble with the CCTV. The looping time for recording was too short and the machine was recording over the top of new tapes.
Seven minutes after the ambulance arrived around 7:20 p.m., the foyer and small corridor to the rubbish compactor room was already chaotic.
Kristie Cooke, a paramedic focused on a doorway along the corridor where a body was visible. But a police guarded the door telling Cooke that it was crime scene and she couldn’t enter. From the doorway, Cooke noticed a female lying on her back with cuts to her right thigh and hip and her right foot in an unnatural position, leading Cooke to believe the female had a fractured ankle. She also saw the body have generalized cyanosis (a bluish tinge), no spontaneous respirations and appeared deceased.
Cooke, not happy that medically trained personnel was allowed to assist in helping the female, checking to see if she was still warm or even see if the girl was indeed dead. Crimescene specialists were the first to enter the room after it was declared a crime scene. Crimescene investigators revealed that according to blood trails, Phoebe survived the fall and apparently crawled around looking for a way out of the room.
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