Melissa Caddick

Early life Melissa Caddick was born Melissa Louise Grimley on 21 April 1971, and grew up in Lugarno, a southern suburb of Sydney.

Career After initially working in NRMA's investment division, Caddick joined the Sydney branch of an unidentified boutique investment bank as an office administrator. In 1998, six months after taking the job, she was discovered to have stolen less than A$2,000 from the company by forging her boss's signature on several cheques. Rather than pursue prosecution, the company gave Caddick the option of leaving immediately without the police being summoned, or the matter being escalated; she chose to leave.

Disappearance and death Caddick vanished on 12 November 2020, the morning after ASIC agents and the Australian Federal Police raided her home in Dover Heights, Sydney. She was last heard from by her son, who detected a door shutting at around 5:30 am and presumed it was his mother going for her daily exercise. Caddick left behind all of her possessions, including her mobile phone. Although there was an extensive review of CCTV footage, her exact whereabouts after leaving her house were not known, as the footage did not cover the entire area from where she disappeared.

On 21 February 2021, a shoe containing a decomposed human foot was discovered washed up on Bournda Beach on the southern coast of New South Wales, just south of Tathra, some from where Caddick was last seen. The shoe matched her size and description of the footwear she was seen wearing during the raid of her home on 11 November 2020. Subsequent DNA testing of samples gathered from her toothbrush, as well as from family members, confirmed the foot belonged to Caddick.

The foot's location matched the tidal and drift pattern modelling undertaken by the marine police, raising the possibility that if a body had entered the water near Dover Heights around the time of Caddick's disappearance it would likely reach the shore somewhere near the south-coast town of Bermagui, which is just north of Tathra.

Hypotheses It is not known how Caddick's foot ended up in the ocean. In an October 2021 interview, Koletti claimed that Caddick never stole any money and that someone killed his wife. Other theories included Caddick going into hiding or cutting off her own foot as a red herring. Alternatively, it has been theorised that Koletti was assisting her in hiding. In February 2023 an inquest was told that the police concluded she had probably died after jumping from the cliffs at Rodney Reserve, around from her home.

Coronial inquest and findings In May 2023, the deputy state coroner declared Caddick deceased after a coronial inquest but was unable to determine how she died. The deputy coroner said that there was a delay by Koletti in reporting his wife's disappearance and there were significant discrepancies in his accounts to police which gives rise to the strong suspicion that he was aware of his wife's movements over the previous two days but chose not to disclose them.

Aftermath In April 2021, after Caddick's presumed death, ASIC dropped 38 criminal charges against her. In November 2021, the court found that Caddick, through her company Maliver, had fraudulently appropriated tens of millions of dollars of investors' money, and operated without the required financial services licence between October 2012 and November 2020. It was announced that Caddick's possessions, including her A$6 million Sydney house, would be sold to partially reimburse the 72 clients who claimed that they were owed more than A$23 million. In February 2022, Koletti objected to the sale of the house, and the Federal Court gave Caddick's family six weeks to stake their claims over Caddick's house and a penthouse apartment in Edgecliff where Caddick's parents resided. Caddick's parents made a claim on the basis of handing their daughter $1.03 million on the understanding they would own part of the Edgecliff apartment and have life tenancy. In April 2022, Caddick's parents said in a statement filed in the Federal Court that "Melissa dishonestly and fraudulently" took their money.

In April 2022, Koletti made a claim through the Federal Court for a share of Caddick's assets, including her Gucci wedding dress, $7 million in shares, $2 million worth of jewellery, two properties he claimed were valued at $20 million and the proceeds from the sale of their luxury cars. In May 2022, the Federal Court ordered Koletti to vacate their house so it could be sold by liquidators; the house, purchased in 2014 for $6.2 million, was sold in October 2022 for a price reported in January 2023 to be $9.8 million. In December 2022, clothing, art, luxury goods and jewellery belonging to Caddick were sold at auction for $860,000.

In popular culture Caddick's life was dramatised in the Nine Network's television miniseries Underbelly: Vanishing Act in 2022 with Caddick played by Kate Atkinson. When the miniseries was shown on Hulu in the U.S., it was called Vanishing Act.