GUILTY Australia - Michelle Leng, 25, found slain in Snapper Point blowhole, NSW, Apr 2016

[they'll get you]

This is a LOT of deaths! How many since 2014?

(April 25, 2014)

A rock fisherman who drowned trying to save his girlfriend is one of at least 10 anglers who have died in the past two years at the same area on the Central Coast.


http://www.theherald.com.au/story/2241588/rock-fisherman-drowned-trying-to-save-girlfriend/

 

[Estelle]

Can you find any murders that have occurred at Snapper Point? I can't.

 

[sleepinoz]

Can you find any murders that have occurred at Snapper Point? I can't.

No murders that I know of, many fishermen are washed off the rocks and swimmers drown. It's not a patrolled beach and has very strong currents, it's really dangerous. I'm fairly local to the area.

 

[sleepinoz]

Snapper Point is a part of Lake Munmorah State Conservation Area - here is a 2014 article that gives a bit more info on deaths in the area.

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/14-die-on...-stretch-of-central-coast-20140429-zr13p.html

[h=1]14 die on deadly three-kilometre stretch of central coast[/h]

​

 

[ms madge]

The last Instagram picture she took is of children enjoying a man blowing giant bubbles in front of St Mary’s Cathedral in Hyde Park.

Friends and family have left dozens of messages next to the photograph, which is time stamped “1 week ago” and was likely taken on Thursday April 21, the day she was last seen.

The University of Technology Sydney student, 25, kept in contact with friends into the evening of April 21 before both her social media accounts and her phone went silent.

I cannot understand how these two accounts fit the picture.

Thursday 21 - it sounds as if she was already reported missing and friends left messages next to this picture but at the same time, Michelle was contacting friends until late in the evening?

Then this:

Earlier in the week, Ms Leng's aunt told an Australia-based Chinese-language news site her niece's Facebook chat records revealed that, unbeknownst to them, she had recently met an Australian boyfriend.

"We looked at those photos, blonde hair, white skin, his eyes were very fierce, he didn't look friendly, lives in Wollongong," she said on Thursday in an interview that has been translated.

"If this boyfriend did something bad to her, Michelle would fight back, plus she never had a boyfriend before, this is her first."

So did Barrett create this false profile of this guy to put everyone off track?

No I think people began posting memorial-type comments on her final post, after it was found that the body was her.
And yes I think Barrett would have done stuff like that, create a fake profile and pretend she was meeting up with someone shady. He is an unemployed IT guy, I would guess he thinks he is a lot smarter than the police tech unit. And I bet he definitely thinks he is a lot smarter than his wife and all those around him. They married in 2012? So 20 yr old student Mengmei was already living with her 44 yr old Aunt, when 22 yr old Barrett married the 44 yr old Aunt......................................................................................... hmmmmmaybe I watch too much Maury and Dr Phil but........................ I think the complaining about the accomodation at the jail is hilarious too, fits the profile I'm getting of him....

 

[they'll get you]

Can you find any murders that have occurred at Snapper Point? I can't.

No murders to speak of considering Michelle appears to have been murdered in Campsie.

I noticed written in several articles of how notoriously dangerous the rips are there and I wondered if he'd hoped those rips might take Michelle's body out to sea. He apparently knew the area well enough to drive that distance.

 

[peacehope]

How can an IT guy be unemployed? Is there a high unemployment problem for IT sector in Australia?
Can any locals comment on this?

 

[Eloise]

How can an IT guy be unemployed? Is there a high unemployment problem for IT sector in Australia?
Can any locals comment on this?

The IT market isn't great right now. It's probably not as bad as some but it's definitely not booming. Salaries have been in stasis for a while. If you have good contacts you'll get and keep a job but it's hard to break in if you're not a networker* - it goes against the image, but you have to actually be good at socialising and making connections in the IT industry. He's pretty young, he might be having trouble making those contacts. If you've just graduated you need to start at the very bottom and a lot of IT grads aren't willing to do that, they think they're above help desk, but it's what you have to do.

Source: partner has been in IT in Sydney for ~15 years

*I mean social networker, the face to face kind.

 

[peacehope]

The IT market isn't great right now. It's probably not as bad as some but it's definitely not booming. Salaries have been in stasis for a while. If you have good contacts you'll get and keep a job but it's hard to break in if you're not a networker* - it goes against the image, but you have to actually be good at socialising and making connections in the IT industry. He's pretty young, he might be having trouble making those contacts. If you've just graduated you need to start at the very bottom and a lot of IT grads aren't willing to do that, they think they're above help desk, but it's what you have to do.

Source: partner has been in IT in Sydney for ~15 years

*I mean social networker, the face to face kind.

Thanks Eloise for your input.

 

[Estelle]

The IT market isn't great right now. It's probably not as bad as some but it's definitely not booming. Salaries have been in stasis for a while. If you have good contacts you'll get and keep a job but it's hard to break in if you're not a networker* - it goes against the image, but you have to actually be good at socialising and making connections in the IT industry. He's pretty young, he might be having trouble making those contacts. If you've just graduated you need to start at the very bottom and a lot of IT grads aren't willing to do that, they think they're above help desk, but it's what you have to do.

Source: partner has been in IT in Sydney for ~15 years

*I mean social networker, the face to face kind.

I am not sure if I am allowed to post this but there is another forum talking about this case. One of the posters on there claimed that she worked with him until near the end of last year and he was retrenched. She was not part of his team but thought he was an unassuming nice guy. From what I have gathered he was not a recent graduate.

BIB Does that mean that his partner, Michelle's aunt, has been working in IT for 15 years? It has to as he would have been too young. Maybe they met through work if both in the same industry. May be he decided to be a stay at home Dad supported by his wife? How old was their child?

 

[Estelle]

No murders to speak of considering Michelle appears to have been murdered in Campsie.

I noticed written in several articles of how notoriously dangerous the rips are there and I wondered if he'd hoped those rips might take Michelle's body out to sea. He apparently knew the area well enough to drive that distance.

Yes I realise that the murder took place in Campsie but i wondered if there had been any other bodies dumped into the sea there to give him the idea. He had lived in the area so, I guess, that gave him the idea.

Do you think he will claim not to have been there or that he was there all weekend?

As he has pleaded not guilty, I am interested to hear what he will claim happened and where he was. What on earth could his defence or alibi be? Maybe he will now claim that she attacked him first.

 

[Estelle]

Mother of dead student Michelle Leng speaks of her loss

http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/you-can-n...f-her-loss-20160505-gonhi0.html#ixzz482Ypjp9T

I feel so sorry for Michelle's mother. In 2008, she lost her husband in an earthquake and now her only child has been murdered by her sister-in-law's husband. She had entrusted her daughter to her sister-in-law's care in Australia when Michelle was 20yo and now this has happened. How devastating!

 

[Estelle]

I am not sure if I am allowed to post this but there is another forum talking about this case. One of the posters on there claimed that she worked with him until near the end of last year and he was retrenched. She was not part of his team but thought he was an unassuming nice guy. From what I have gathered he was not a recent graduate.

BIB Does that mean that his partner, Michelle's aunt, has been working in IT for 15 years? It has to as he would have been too young. Maybe they met through work if both in the same industry. May be he decided to be a stay at home Dad supported by his wife? How old was their child?

Correction: Too late to edit now that I have found it. This person said that Derek had married an older woman and was made redundant in June 2015. He consistently joked about Asian schoolgirls but she thought it was innocent.

Mods Please delete if not appropriate as it is not MSM.

 

[Eloise]

I am not sure if I am allowed to post this but there is another forum talking about this case. One of the posters on there claimed that she worked with him until near the end of last year and he was retrenched. She was not part of his team but thought he was an unassuming nice guy. From what I have gathered he was not a recent graduate.

BIB Does that mean that his partner, Michelle's aunt, has been working in IT for 15 years? It has to as he would have been too young. Maybe they met through work if both in the same industry. May be he decided to be a stay at home Dad supported by his wife? How old was their child?

No i meant my partner. So I am somewhat familiar on a second-hand-info basis with the IT job market here.

The accused being retrenched would not be surprising for the state of the job market right now. His ability to get another quickly would have depended on his social network and his willingness to do a job with a lower pay. Its an employer's market at this time.




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[Estelle]

Do you think the cousin mentioned is the biological son/daughter of Derek? Does anyone know how old this cousin is? Could the auntie have been a single parent? I doubt that she would have had her first child around the age of 44yo plus. I noticed a young boy at the court in the video who looked about 12yo. I had previously assumed he was Michelle's brother. But when Michelle's mother spoke to the media, she said that Michelle was her only child.

 

[Xantara]

I had assumed Derek's wife is the sister of Michelle's mum - but she's the sister of Michelle's late father then?

I had also been assuming that Derek's wife had been a single mum prior to marrying Derek. I've seen some pictures where this boy already looks to be about 10 years old on a wedding photo of Derek and the aunt, so I'm fairly sure he would have pre-dated her meeting Derek.

Coming into this fairly late in the piece, but just wanting to confirm that there was no incidence of sexual assault? Think I've read all the newspaper articles I've been able to pull up, and at no point has a direct sexual motive been mentioned. Just the stabbing. But why???

 

[Xantara]

Yes, even after death, he wanted to humiliate her.

I took the dumping of her naked body in the water as wanting to make it look like some random date she'd met online had sexually attacked her.

I reckon lots of people knew she was on dating websites. That's why there was so much speculation initially about this being related to her murder. In fact even the aunt weighed into all of that, referring to some guy with blonde hair and fierce eyes or something like that. So Derek would have been aware of her being on dating sites as well. Maybe that gave him ideas that she could be up for something with him?

Just strange that, while there has been speculation about a sexual motive, I do not appear to have found any direct reference to a sexual assault in any media report. Just the copious stab wounds.

Strange. You'd wonder whether, even if he made a move on her and she rejected him, rather than go straight to stabbing her, someone like him would have raped her anyway? You'd hope of course he didn't, but he'd already overpowered her so, playing devil's advocate, why not rape her as well?

Wonder whether there was another issue. Not a sexual motive, but something else??

 

[Xantara]

What was he doing in those two days?

Thursday - I now don't think anything happened this day as the police have said Michelle was on her mobile talking to friends until the late hours.

Friday - ? No activity on Michelle's mobile phone or on social media so she must have died this day.

Saturday - ? Bundled her body into the car and cleaned up?

Sunday - He drove to Snapper Point early and dumped her body.

I wonder if his car has been forensically examined by now?

I also wonder when he told his wife that Michelle was "missing"?

Yes I am also curious about the time lapse.
Did he hold her captive, bound and gagged, on all of Friday and Saturday?
He would have had to have bound and gagged her, as living in a unit block you are surrounded by people...
If the stabbing was a quick deed early on, then he held her body in the unit for the best part of two days and waited until Sunday to dispose of it??
What's the point of that? What if someone had come to the unit in that time, wife came back early, anything could have happened and the body could have been discovered...
Besides, how can you stab someone so many times and then clean up 'so well' that wife comes back from weekend away and has no clue?
I can't quite picture a stabbing, but it seems a bit risky to stab her in the unit and assume that no forensic test will pick up evidence of this somehow?
On the other hand, if the whole thing was protracted over two days, that is, whatever abuse he subjected her to - that also seems hard to imagine. For a novice murderer.
Not suggesting I don't believe what has been reported in the news, but am still finding there are lots of unanswered questions.
As to the wife, wonder if she had no clue at all that this was going to happen? She's not been mentioned as an accessory in any way. Curious about that though.

 

[Estelle]

They have not ruled out further charges including sexual assault and are awaiting results of DNA tests.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-30/man-charged-with-murder-of-woman-found-in-blowhole/7372736

 

[Xantara]

This long after the murder, if they've done further tests, I'd imagine they'd have the results by now. It's not like her body was badly decomposed, so (apart perhaps from it being in the water), I'm thinking they may have results then. Maybe they're not revealing anything publicly at this stage as it's part of the prosecution case and the defense don't want Barrett to know what they know?