Two young women in their early 20s on a holiday to the NSW south coast, picked Mr Miller up near Warragul and unwittingly helped him escape, while a white-collar worker on a night-out shared a drink with him just hours before Ms Lau lost her life.
The young women spotted Mr Miller sheltering from the rain under an underpass last Sunday morning and took pity on him. It was a day after a jogger found Ms Lau's body in the Kings Domain.
"At the time we thought he was just a bit of a free soul who doesn't fit into society," one of the young women said. "He wasn't threatening, he seemed genuine and nice."
He introduced himself as Scott from Western Australia and told them he wanted to go north.
"He said, 'I just decided to get away from Melbourne. Maybe I'll go to Byron Bay'," one of the women said. "I didn't think he was homeless, he just seemed like he did what he liked to do, that it was a lifestyle choice that he liked to live and be free and not be locked down to anything."