People involved in the murder of Karlie Pearce-Stevenson texted her family from her mobile phone to reassure them she was OK years after she and her toddler daughter Khandalyce disappeared, police have said.
They also accessed Pearce-Stevenson’s bank account to claim wages, welfare and other payments that totalled more than $90,000.
The ruse meant there was no investigation to find the pair after they were murdered. Pearce-Stevenson’s mother withdrew a missing person’s report she filed in 2009 because the texts gave her reassurance her daughter was alive.
Pearce-Stevenson’s body was found dumped in the Belanglo state forest in New South Wales in 2010 but was identified only this month after her daughter’s remains were found in July in a suitcase 1,200km away beside a highway in South Australia.
South Australia police superintendent Des Bray said police believed the pair died in December 2008, and were killed in different places.
“People who we believe may be the offenders, and others, have taken over Karlie’s identity,” Bray said.
“Her telephone, her bank accounts, her Centrelink and family payments. In relation to the telephone, her mobile phone, I can tell you that it appears that those involved in her murder, and I say ‘those’ only because we don’t know whether there’s one or more at this stage, but they have retained her phone and it was used until mid-2011.
“We believe that the phone was kept by the offenders and used to provide some proof of life and to mislead family, friends, law enforcement by suggesting that Karlie was still alive because of activity on her phone.”
Whoever was using Pearce-Stevenson’s phone even convinced family members to deposit money into her bank account, which was then withdrawn.
The account was used until 2012 to handle welfare payments and money from other sources. More than $90,000 was deposited and withdrawn after Pearce-Stevenson’s murder.
A woman in a wheelchair, accompanied by a man, used Pearce-Stevenson’s identity documents at a bank in South Australia in 2010. Police believe the same woman used identity documents for both Khandalyce and her mother to claim payments at a Centrelink office in 2010.
The bank account was accessed from four different states and territories after Pearce-Stevenson’s death.
Bray said police were still investigating whether the fraudsters were also involved in the murders.
“It’s clear that some of the people involved in the frauds knew without a doubt that Karlie and Khandalyce were dead and continued with their role,” he said.
“The focus of the financial investigation is around determining the role of those people that were involved in those frauds and to see whether they were involved before the deaths, during the deaths or after the deaths. And if they weren’t involved in any way with the deaths of Khandalyce and Karlie they need to pick up the phone and ring Crime Stoppers.”
At least one man and two women were involved in the frauds, Bray said. They all lived in or were connected to people who lived in the north Adelaide suburbs of Davoren Park, Hillbank and Holden Hill, as well as Charnwood in Canberra.
Asked how many people were being interviewed as suspects in the case, Bray said: “Lots. From the start to now, there’s a significant number of people looking to be interviewed.”
Bray said there was no evidence that a serial killer was the murderer, but police had not ruled it out.
“It’s something that you keep in the back of your mind as to whether this person could be responsible for something else, given the terrible nature of the crime but there’s nothing to indicate that at the moment,” he said.
