Backpacker’s Body Was Found Naked Under Palm Fronds — 20 Years Later, No One Knows Who Killed Her By Christina Coulter

Six days after she vanished from a campsite during a night out, her body was found hidden under palm fronds — and two decades later, a coroner has formally ruled German backpacker Simone Strobel was murdered. But her killer remains unknown.

This week, New South Wales state coroner Teresa O’Sullivan ruled Strobel, 25, “died as a result of homicide by a person or persons unknown,” and urged fresh testing of two unmatched DNA samples — a hair found on a fence and male DNA found on Strobel’s black shirt, The Guardian reported.

Strobel, a Bavarian kindergarten teacher, had been traveling Australia’s east coast with her then-boyfriend Tobias Suckfuell — who now goes by Tobias Moran — along with his sister and a friend, per The Guardian. The group drank at a nearby hotel before returning to the Lismore caravan park where they were staying, the outlet said.

Witnesses reported an argument, and Strobel left the campsite “alone and upset.” She was last seen around 11:55 p.m. on Feb. 11, 2005 crossing a nearby roundabout as several witnesses reported hearing screams, according to The Guardian.

Moran reported Strobel missing the next morning. After a multi-agency search, a police dog handler found her naked body concealed under palm fronds at a sports ground just beyond a wire fence near the caravan park — six days after she was last seen, the newspaper reported.

O’Sullivan rejected a 2007 inquest’s “very strong suspicion” that someone in Strobel’s traveling party was involved, noting current law bars coroners from naming an offender and that alleged lies by Moran did not, on balance, prove guilt, per The Guardian.

The coroner did not determine a cause of death, disagreeing with the earlier suggestion of suffocation; neither Australian nor German pathologists could establish one, the outlet reported. O’Sullivan concluded it was more likely than not the killer had a sexual motive and that Strobel was sexually assaulted before she was killed — and that she was likely killed outside the caravan park, according to The Guardian.

Moran, who lives in Western Australia, was charged with murder in 2022; prosecutors withdrew the charges the following year. He has maintained his innocence and later received about $190,000 in legal costs, the Associated Press reported.

O’Sullivan recommended the case be referred to NSW Police’s Unsolved Homicide Team and that investigators revisit the DNA with modern techniques. A A$1 million reward for information, announced in 2020, remains in place, per The Guardian.

Addressing relatives who watched from Germany, O’Sullivan called the family’s ordeal “extremely difficult” and said she hopes they will one day learn the truth of what happened to Strobel, the outlet reported.

Strobel’s sister Christina, speaking at the inquest last year, said her sister’s loss changed her family “in the most radical ways,” and that their parents have “be[come] mere shadows of themselves… sinking deeper and deeper into despair,” per the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.