JUSTICE FOR ELLY

AUSSIE DAD PAUL WARREN WON’T STOP FIGHTING FOR HIS MURDERED DAUGHTER UNTIL HER KILLER IS BEHIND BARS

- Kylie Walters

Paul Warren has gone through every parent’s worst nightmare: outliving one of his precious children. And adding to his torment, more than four years after his daughter Elly was murdered on a beach in Africa, his family are still waiting for police to begin investigating the crime.

“She was confident, headstrong and full of life,” Paul tells WHO of the aspiring marine biologist, who was killed while on vacation when she was just 20 years old. “She was a daughter any dad would be proud of. And I am,” he says.

A seasoned traveller, Elly was volunteering with Underwater Africa in 2016 when she visited the picturesque seaside village of Tofo – a resort town in Mozambique. She’d spend a blissful six weeks diving and working alongside a team of scientists on an ocean conservation project. “She’d work four or five jobs, so she could save up every six months to go over there,” Paul explains. “Elly loved Africa and African people. She always said she wanted to move there one day.”

Just six days before she was due to fly home to begin studying marine biology at uni, Elly went out for a celebratory farewell with the other volunteers. Witnesses have said they saw the vivacious blonde dancing in the streets having a ball. “By all accounts, Elly had a fabulous trip up until the end,” explains Paul. “It was just meant to be a fun night out with friends and she just ended up in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

Hours later, around 5am on November 9, 2016, Elly was found lying face down in the dirt near a toilet block by a local fisherman. An autopsy report showed she died from asphyxiation after inhaling sand and no drugs or alcohol were found in her system.