The housemates of missing Australian teenager Phoebe Bishop have been charged with murder almost a month after she vanished.
James Wood, 34, and Tanika Bromley, 33, were both charged with one count of murder and two counts of interfering with a corpse.
Wood, the last person known to have seen Phoebe alive, was initially arrested on Wednesday before being released just hours later. However, he and his partner Bromley have now been re-arrested and formally charged, three weeks after the teenager was last sighted.
The charges follow an extensive search effort, which police called off just days ago. Phoebe, 17, from Gin Gin, north of Brisbane, was last seen on Thursday, May 15. No sign of her body has yet been discovered.
Police said: “Detectives continue to investigate this matter, and physical searches will continue as needed as information is provided.”
The arrests were made in the Bundaberg area, and both Wood and Bromley are expected to appear in court on Friday.
Wood previously spoke to the Daily Mail, claiming Phoebe had been “complaining” and experiencing emotional outbursts prior to leaving for the airport.
He told the publication: “She gets like that sometimes and usually we can calm her down but she was escalating and then she smashed the TV.”
Wood said tensions flared during the drive to the airport because Phoebe wanted the car to stop so she could do her makeup, despite there being bathrooms available at the airport.
According to Wood, he pulled over less than a kilometre away from the airport to give her space. He said: “We wanted to give her five minutes, give her her own space to do what she needed to do.”
He claimed he and Bromley left Phoebe alone with the car for five minutes. When they returned, he said, Phoebe and her bag had disappeared.
Wood insisted he had nothing to do with her disappearance, adding he assumed she had boarded her flight after failing to locate her. But authorities confirmed that Phoebe never entered the airport and never checked in for her flight to Perth, where she was due to visit her boyfriend.
A family member said: “Her phone has been switched off from this point. She hasn't contacted anyone at all, no one has seen her.”
The trio had been living in a derelict property together, which police have now declared a crime scene.
Phoebe’s mother, Kylie Johnson, has made emotional appeals, begging anyone with information to come forward and saying her daughter's disappearance was completely out of character.
