01 Lies in Lismore | The backpackers

The police interview

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00:38A heads up before we start. This podcast contains some strong language. This is an electronically recorded interview between Detective Sergeant Andrew Campbell and Tobias Frederick Suckfield. At the Lismore Police Station. A young German backpacker. is sitting in a police interview room What is your purpose for being in Australia? Well, actually, for learning a lifestyle. I finished university, so... and I like to travel, I like to learn different lifestyles, different cultures. Tobias Silkfall came to Australia for the trip of a lifetime. But now he's come to a police station in country New South Wales. He says his girlfriend is missing. And police are asking him questions about what's happened.

01:31The purpose of this interview is to record... your version of Simone Strobel going missing. Okay. It's February 2005. For the past six months, Tobias and his German girlfriend, Simone Strobel, had been travelling the east coast of Australia. He's 24 and she's 25. But last night, He says Simone walked away from their campsite at a caravan park. And she hasn't come back. I don't know where she is, man. I'm really, really worried. And I'm, I don't like mental sick when she's not coming back. I don't know what I can do. We're in a different country. We're not really, we don't speak this language very good. And so we know nobody. Okay. We're not at home. Tobias is lean. He has light brown hair with sun bleached tips that kiss his shoulders.

02:31He's got a small goatee beard and he's wearing a beaded necklace. He says he and his girlfriend had been having a great time doing the backpacker thing across Australia. Our players still travelling together and yeah, we had such a good time together and we're going deeper and deeper in life. At the moment, they have two others travelling with them, Tobias' sister has come over from Germany with a friend, and all four of them were staying at the campsite in Lismore together. But last night, Tobias says he and his sister started arguing. Something to do with their family back in Germany. My sister says some stuff, that verse. We had just a conversation, and then she says something. I don't know actually what she said, but I had a different opinion.

03:23Tobias says his girlfriend Simone tried to break up the argument and She said, stop, stop saying, stop saying, that's boring stuff. Let us talk about... bad things or funny stuff or something like that and then she stand up and she walked away. And on time that she took none of her personal possessions with her. She had nothing. She stands straight up and walked away. And she had just a shirt, a skirt and no shoes. The detective listens quietly as Tobias recalls the argument with his sister... and how Simone walked away after she told them to cut it out. The detective wants to know more about how Tobias and Simone have been getting along. Your relationship was quite strong, was it? with someone is

04:15What do you mean, strong? It's close. Good, yeah, very good, very close. He keeps pushing the point. Have you had any problems? No, no problems. And circling back to what was going on between them that night. So was it an argument? Between yourself and Simone? No, nothing. Why are you asking these questions five times? Tobias is getting riled up. He leans in closer to the detective,

04:45hand gestures. It's only toward the end of the interview that the detective lands a question he's been building up to. I'm investigative journalist Richard Baker. I first heard about this story years ago. The young German backpacker who disappeared into the darkness from a caravan park in Lismore. Like so many before her, Simone had packed her bags and set off on a big life-changing trip overseas. The case always stuck with me because of how tragic that was. that she probably set off with such hope for the future, but she never made it home.

Introducing the case

05:51Then, in late 2024, I heard that one of the key figures in this mystery, someone who was there that night, wanted journalists to take another look at the case.

06:08me. It's a story that's tangled with lies. It shocked the city of Lismore, caused a trail of damage over decades, and seen police take extreme and desperate measures. But despite all that, 21 years later, there's still no justice for Simone. I want to know why. From Unravel, This is Lies in Lismore.

Who was Simone Strobel

07:00Simone Strobel's trip to Australia was by far her biggest adventure. She'd travelled in parts of Europe before, But she'd never been this far from home. Her parents were pig farmers in Bavaria, Germany. She grew up on the farm with her brother and sister, Simone went to church. She was part of the local music club. And she went to house parties and gigs too. After high school, she studied at a teacher's college and was working as a kindergarten teacher before she set off overseas. When Simone arrived in Australia, She was in awe of the landscape and the wildlife. She travelled with Tobias from town to town, doing jobs along the way, making new friends with the people she worked with. She was on a life-changing adventure.

07:51That is... Until February 11, 2005. when she arrived in the inland city of Lismore in northern New South Wales.

A missing backpacker in Lismore

08:06To find out more about what happened to Simone, I went to the town where she spent her last day, I found myself standing on the main street with a Lismore local. Cath Adams. So we're in Woodlark Street in the middle, and there's more CBD, and just heading towards... Keen Street. She grew up in this town. And she's been a journo and photographer here for most of her life. She's taken me to an intersection. where you can pretty much see all the places the four Germans were that day. There was an Irish pub here where the two men had lunch. and right nearby, a hotel called The Golem, where they had drinks that night. Uh... Simone and Tobias and they're traveling companions. I look at the CCTV footage of them outside the Golan Hotel. It looks vastly different now than what it did then. It's been flooded, so now it's

09:00closed. From here we can also see the caravan park. where the backpack has stayed. It's probably about 100 meters, I think. A little bit more than that. Yeah. And how long has that caravan path been on that site? Oh, God, I can't remember. It's been there as long as I can remember. gets flooded there so you know it's known that that's always gets evacuated during flood time.

09:27Lismore is well known for its floods. We see signs of that everywhere in town. Back at the ABC studio. Kath tells me about the day she found out about Simone. It was Sunday afternoon. I was in the office filing the photos that I'd taken earlier in the day. She worked at the local paper she'd grown up with, The Northern Star. It was, you know, a paper people love to hate, but, you know, they also loved it a lot. And it was a daily newspaper. Six days a week it came out. Late in the afternoon, says the newsroom got a call from police. You know, we were winding up and then we got this message come through to the newsroom and it was telling us that there was a backpacker who was missing in the Lismore CBD

10:11and we didn't really take it terribly seriously at the time. Lismore isn't a very big place, so we were a little bit incredulous, like how can somebody go missing in the Lismore CBD? But the Chief of Staff sent the journalist and I down to go and have a look and ask some questions. It was a bit unusual. Lismore wasn't exactly a number one destination for backpackers. The town was an odd mix of uni students, hippies and more conservative farming types. There were far more popular places nearby. It's probably more of a town that people are travelling through on their way somewhere else. You know, Nimbun's just up the road, Byron Bay, it's only about 45 minutes away. The police told Kath and her journo colleague

10:56that the missing backpacker had been staying at the caravan park on the edge of Lismore's CBD. On the way over there, they saw something that made Kath feel uneasy. SES workers who were looking through the drains that were near the caravan park where the group had been staying, Lismore has, you know, as well known as being a flood town, so it has these really deep concrete drains running through the CBD that channel the water coming down off the hill. So they were there looking in those drains for any sign of this backpacker. And I guess that was the first inkling that maybe it wasn't just a lost person for me. When Kath and the journo got to the caravan park, they went straight to the kiosk.

11:40The person there directed us towards a van, a white van and a little tent that were parked inside the park. We went over to the van. There was a girl and a man sitting kind of in the van in the doorway. They had the door open and they looked a bit stressed. The man in the doorway was Tobias Sookful, Simone's boyfriend. He just looked like a bit of surfy, blonde hair, blonde-longish hair. The woman was his sister, Katrin. We approached them and introduced who we were and asked if they would talk to us about their missing friend. And they seemed pretty confused. They seemed a bit upset, but the girl, she told us to fuck off. Katrin said Simone had only been missing for a day When the journalist and I walked away though we thought that was an unusual reaction to people offering you know to get the word out about their missing friend

12:39By Monday morning, it seemed like all of Lismore was talking about Simone. That front page of the Northern Star had the photo of Simone and the headline, Where's Simone? Kath can vividly recall the photo of the young backpacker. She's standing on a beach facing the camera with wavy shoulder-length hair. Pretty beautiful, big smile, you know. She was probably closer to my age at that time. I could see myself in her a little bit. Rumours about where Simone might be and what might have happened swept through town. Had she gone, you know, gone to Nimbin, had she gone to Byron, you know, down to the bay to get away. Turns out, police had been wondering the same thing on the first day she was reported missing.

Tobias's account of the night

13:25It seems they were considering the possibility that Simone might have found her way to another town. So they tried to find out more about her from her boyfriend, and more about what happened that night, in that recorded interview at the police station. By that time, Simone had been missing almost 24 hours. Could you explain to me Simone's situation at home, her family's situation? Oh, she lived at home to her family. She had a very, very close relation to his parents. He says they each lived in small villages, not far away from each other. We're not just a couple. We are very, very good friends. So we know us six, six and a half years. and our first date and the whole thing was growing like a very love story,

14:20like a movie that was very romantic. Yeah, and I'm falling in love and I still live in love with her. She's a very nice girl. They'd arrived in Lismore from another campsite about two hours down the coast. There were four German travellers squeezed into an old Toyota Hi-Ace van. There was the couple, Tobias and Simone, and then their temporary travelling companions, Tobias' sister Catrin and their friend Jens. They set up camp at the Lismore Tourist Caravan Park. Simone and Catrin went to check out the shops and have some lunch Tobias and Jens did their own thing and had a feed at the Irish pub Later at night time they all met up at a pub in the centre of town the Golan Hotel, not far from where they were staying.

15:13So I'll take you back to, you went to the Golan Hotel about nine o'clock. Did you drink? Yeah, I'm not sure. I found mine a lot, yeah. And then we had four beers. Each of us had four beers. The detective wants to know exactly what type of beers. Four is the right one. Is the Gold Stars the right one? Four X Gold? Gold, yeah. So you were drinking Middies? Middies. And Simone had four of that? Four Middies, yeah. Was she an intoxicated drug? No, no, not me. four light beers. Nobody's struggling with these four light beers. So you left the Golan. At what time do you think about it? I never wear a Glock, so I'm not built in... I reckon above my land in the Glock. He says they all headed back to the caravan park together.

16:14They grabbed another beer and sat around their campsite. At some point after that, Tobias says the argument broke out between him and his sister about that family matter back home in Germany. He says Simone tried to get them to stop. So she said, oh, come on, guys, let us stop from different things. But I said to her, wait a minute, we finished that, and then she stayed up, and she said, oh, yeah, I'm not sure what I said, actually. I'm very confused right now. And he says that's when Simone walked away. And that was actually the last moment where I saw my love. He says Simone was wearing a black sleeveless top, a skirt that was mainly black with red flowers and no shoes.

17:04When they realised she'd been gone for about 15 minutes, he says Katrin and Jens went looking. Tobias says he checked the toilet block and stayed at the van in case she came back. But none of them could find Simone. After a lot of looking, he says they thought Simone might have walked further away than they'd searched. But they figured she come back to the van when she was ready so they went to bed Tobias says he fell asleep waiting for her What did you think when you woke up at seven o and Simone wasn home I was shocked. I go out and I wake up the night. I say, hey, Simone, it's not here. And then we set up our camp and all these things and take a shower very quick and then go straight to the police.

17:54Tobias says they parked the van outside the caravan park and went to report Simone missing. Then they searched the city for hours and checked the hospital. Eventually, they went back to the police station, which is when this interview happens. Do you have any idea what's happened to Simone? I have no idea. I have a little bit of a bad thing in my brain, you know what I mean? maybe she's kidnapped or some stuff like that maybe she walked away five minutes and coming back and it's easy but she's still gone she's she's not she's not a person who's traveling without all no shoes and going hitchhiking to nimbino or to byron or something like that you know she has nothing she can't pay she can't get some food she can't get some drinks and the next main reason is

18:49she don't contact me and that is very mysterious mate very mysterious Toby is there anything you wish to tell me about this matter? No yeah please bring my girlfriend back if there's anything you you wish to tell me I will provide you with my details do you understand that? yeah but I have nothing to tell you I told you the truth I told that 10 times today I understand. And I have enough. And we will try and do our best to locate Simone for you. That's fine, then. That's very fine. Thanks, Tobias. The interview has concluded. The time is 10.45pm.

The body is found

19:36Tobias's sister, Katrin, and their friend, Jens, also recorded interviews with police. They all told similar stories. Kath Adams says Simone's disappearance had people fearing the worst. A lot of rumour then started about that perhaps something untowarded happened to her. Just across the road from the caravan park, groups of people would go. to drink and they would be there, you know, pretty constantly drinking. It was not, I wouldn't have regarded that as a safe place to be hanging around. Kath didn't really buy the idea that Simone would have taken off on her own to a nearby town. She was a kindergarten teacher. She wasn't really the kind of person who would just take off without, you know,

20:26taking anything with her, her wallet or her shoes or her bag or anything like that. That was conversations I've had with my colleague at the time that it wasn't, this wasn't something that you would do as a young woman, just take off like that without anything. It wasn't the first time a woman had gone missing in the area. Speculation started to sort of swirl around town that, you know, maybe there was a serial killer here at play. An Aboriginal woman named Lois Roberts had gone missing from Nimbin in the late 90s. And she turned up, she'd been murdered, so that murder still remains to this day unsolved. Her cousin went missing as well, who lived probably, you know, five minutes up the road from where Simone had been staying.

21:15So, you know, while it was a sleepy country town, there had been these unsolved cases that really kind of, people just started to get pretty scared. As the week went by, concerns about Simone's fate grew. More extensive searches were done by police and the SES close to the caravan park. Simone's disappearance dominated local media. Tobias wanted police to use a dog to help the search. By the time Kath was ready to start her Thursday shift the search for Simone was into its sixth day On her way to the newspaper office she noticed a lot of police activity across the road from the caravan park near the grounds of a club where people played bocce an outdoor bowling game I was starting on a slightly later shift

22:09I remember driving through the CBD By this time, you know, it had become a real mystery about what had happened to her. But as I came to that intersection of Uralba Street and Dawson Street there just was a feeling that something had happened There was sort of a real urgency to the police and very quickly they were starting to put up some plastic around one area And so I drove up the road a little bit and pulled over and called work and said something's going on down here and that's when they said to me, yeah, they found her. The worst had happened. Police had found Simone's body on the grounds of the bocce club over the road from the caravan park. The van and tent she shared with Tobias were less than 100 metres away.

23:01It was really distressing to hear that. You know, we'd all had that hope that she was in Byron, that she was in Sydney. We'd all been hoping that that was the case. Though, you know, I remember being upset in the car hearing that she had been found and she'd died. The general area around the bocce club had been searched several times already but Simone's body was hidden in a fenced off area They found her on the same day they brought in a police dog Police couldn't see any obvious cause of death but they were pretty sure this was no accident because she'd been found naked her body covered with palm fronds Someone had killed her To have something like that happen in the heart of Lismore, it did really shake people's feeling of security and safety.

23:59There was a sense of grief that that could happen to a visitor to our town and, you know, a sense of responsibility about that. It's one of those moments in hindsight that really changes the place. Simone's boyfriend, Tobias, seemed to be overwhelmed with emotion after her body was found. He ended up at the hospital and was given a prescription for Valium. He said he was angry about the search and how long it had taken police to use a dog. He was ready to lash out. So he put a call into Kath's newspaper. Tobias called the editor to express his concern about the police investigation and he called them kindergarten cops. That became the headline the next day with a picture of Tobias. You know, he, the kindergarten cop, was very large bowl type.

24:53So it really stood out on the newsstand Police were not happy with that headline It was a sharp insult toward the police But the officers helped Tobias and the rest of the group with all the formalities that had to come next. Things like selling their van and finding a place to stay until they could go home. The whole of Lismore started to rally behind these travellers. Prominent people in town felt they had to do something to help and to honour this young woman who'd lost her life in the centre of their town. This wooden statue is carved with angel wings. It's of Simone in her favourite dress. I'm with Jenny Dow at her house in a suburb of Lismore. We're surrounded by birds and trees. She's showing me a picture of an angel figurine from Simone's grave,

The town rallies

25:49one of the keepsakes sent to her by the Strobel family. Jenny's been in touch with them over the years since she helped them set up a memorial for Simone in Lismore. The dress itself has on it the church she used to go to in Germany and five sunflowers, the Australian flag. Jenny helped lead the community of Lismore for years, first as a city councillor and then as the mayor. she says a wave of grief passed through her town after Simone's death. I think the fact that this young woman had no family here, many of us felt like surrogate family. So there's this deep connection and then this deep feeling that this was where this young woman's life ended and that we had a duty of care to her to do what was right for her

26:41and never forget her. Jenny says some people were worried a local could be responsible. Particularly when her body was found in that spot. It had a bocce field that was not used. An Italian, like a little club, sports and recreation and music club, hadn't been used for ages. It was very run down and at night time it was known it was not a safe place. When people found out where Simone had been found, they started leaving flowers and candles for her. I've seen pictures from the time. There were tributes with handwritten notes stacked all along the chain link fence. The local paper ran articles almost every day about Simone and the investigation And then Jenny says people turned their sympathy for the backpackers into action It all started with a chance encounter at the travel agents

27:38Jenny just happened to be there helping out with a school fundraiser. People would come in, they knew to buy their tickets at the back and of course I knew, well it would have been about 10 days before that Simone had died and her body had been found. And the police brought Tobias in. Tobias needed to get back to Germany. Katrin had a ticket and their friend Jens was already gone. Jens was due to go home a couple of days after Simone went missing and had taken his pre-booked flight before her body was found. It looked to Jenny like the officers had brought Tobias in to help him find a way home. He was in the middle. Best of my recollection, there was a police person either side of him. He was slumped as the person, the travel agent,

28:32was sitting opposite him and explaining, you know, costs and whatever. And he just looked... I couldn't... I could only see the side of his face, but he looked despairing. He looked, you know... It looked as if the police were supporting him. The owner of the travel agent said, that's Tobias, she's quietly doing. He's struggling because the amount of money it will take to get him and the body home is mind-blowing and they don't know. She said, how about we start something to help fund him? Jenny and the owner of the travel agent started a fundraiser to help get Tobias home to Germany. The local paper described how some people were in tears as they dropped off their money to support the grieving backpackers.

29:30The article said a single mum had donated the last $5 in her wallet and kids were donating their pocket money to the fund. In the end, the community raised far more than what Tobias would need for his airfare home. The rest was given to Simone's family to help with other costs. It was like the whole town of Lismore had shared the grief of the German backpackers, and the community had tried as well. it could to show love and support in whatever way possible. But all that support for Tobias and his fellow travelers was about to start draining away. Because as the investigations continued and details found their way into the media, it emerged that all three backpackers had been lying to police. That's next episode on Lies in Lismore.

The lies revealed

30:39Jenny Dow sadly passed away just a month after the interview she did with me. She's remembered in Lismore for her remarkable commitment to the community and social justice.

30:55This season of Unravel is intended to be listened to as a whole. If you haven't heard all the episodes, you shouldn't draw any conclusions, because you haven't heard all the sides of the story yet. If you saw anything that night in Lismore, or if you know someone else who did, get in touch. Unravel True Crime at abc.net.au,

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