On February 21 this year, a running shoe containing a foot was found on a remote NSW beach 400km south of Sydney. DNA tests confirmed it belonged to Caddick.
Since then, rumours about what really happened to Caddick have abounded. Anthony, who married Caddick in 2013, believes that his wife was murdered.
“No-one vanishes – I don’t think it was an accident at all. Someone got greedy and wanted her dead,” Anthony alleged to reporter Michael Usher on 7News Spotlight.
“If the police came to me and said Melissa was murdered, I’d be like, ‘It makes sense.’ From what I’ve learnt I wouldn’t say that it was impossible, because people love money more than human life, apparently.”
The former hairdresser who met and fell in love with Caddick when he was her stylist, added, “My suspect list is long.”
Asked if the culprit could be a disgruntled former investor who had lost their money in Caddick’s elaborate scam, Anthony replied, “Yeah, among many of other people.”
He refutes any suggestion she took her own life due to guilt. “I don’t believe that she committed suicide,” Anthony said. “Her love for her son, myself, her family and friends was far beyond that.”
Former detective turned acclaimed true-crime writer Duncan McNab believes that the most crucial insight into the case will come from determining how Caddick’s foot managed to wash up on a beach so far away.
The former hairdresser who met and fell in love with Caddick when he was her stylist, added, “My suspect list is long.”
Asked if the culprit could be a disgruntled former investor who had lost their money in Caddick’s elaborate scam, Anthony replied, “Yeah, among many of other people.”
He refutes any suggestion she took her own life due to guilt. “I don’t believe that she committed suicide,” Anthony said. “Her love for her son, myself, her family and friends was far beyond that.”
Former detective turned acclaimed true-crime writer Duncan McNab believes that the most crucial insight into the case will come from determining how Caddick’s foot managed to wash up on a beach so far away.
“I am compelled by working out how that shoe and its content managed to become detached,” he says. “Are there tool marks showing surgical intervention, or was it because of something like a shark? That is where the mystery will have some light shed on it.”
As for Anthony’s theory of foul play, Duncan responds, “Absolutely, but it wouldn’t be over the money as that was all pretty much gone, so it would be more a case of revenge.”
A date is yet to be set for a coronial inquest, and even so, Duncan believes the case will be difficult to crack.
“You just don’t know what happened as she disappeared completely,” he says. “The only bit of evidence we do have washed up a couple of hundred kilometres away. That foot, and how it managed to make it there, will give the best indication of what really happened.”
