A Murder Case that was IMMENSELY Frustrating | Murder Calls | Case | Australian Crime

foreign keep it from leaving the house that night and finding the young woman's mobile was key to solving her murder Kelly's phone's out there who's got it tonight the tragic tale of 26 year old Kelly Hodge a young woman who grew up without a mother my sister she was exquisitively sensitive emotionally and very physically too and was brutally killed and dubbed on the side of a road like garbage the things that have happened nobody deserves that a sex crime that had countless suspects and many dead ends so you go from the priests of the troughs with her killer free to strike again it was pretty scary on the streets at that time the detectives chased one phone call after another it's our job to find the culprit and give the family answers and we make [Music] police emergency I think I found a body but can you get the police here I'm on Sydney Road August 26 2003 a motorist heading home made a grim Discovery he's come across what he thought was a piece of some sort on the side of the road he believes it to be a body it's wrapped up in some type of material and with that he ran the police he's saying it's a red blanket is that right yeah look I haven't gone right up to it as I say at first I thought it was a bundle of times that I think I saw some hair so I think there might be a body in it the body was found in the rural town of Beverage 42 kilometers north of Melbourne at this stage we don't know what we've got we haven't even seen the body because the body is wrapped up in a blanket and outside the blanket is rope that's keeping it all together we've already spoken to the pathologist we're not going to wait till the morning we'll get the postmortem done then and there because one of the major issues for a detective is has a crime been committed when the body was brought here the body was weighed weighed only 50 kilograms and we noted of course that the body had been wrapped with rope there were a large number of blunt force of injuries to the Head in addition to injuries over the head like that we found areas of bruising grazes tears lacerations in the skin they involve the face the arms really a large area of the body was injured and the first thing we've got to do is try to work out who is this person and what we did in this case was check the fingerprints to see if this person was in the police fingerprint system and as it turned out she was down to the police Kelly Elizabeth Hodge 26 years of age of a Coburg address [Music] Stacy no Kelly had been murdered I was about five in the morning and I hear this banging on the front door and I thought it was one of my obnoxious friends from uni and I'm like who is it and they say please and then he says about Kelly and I said she's dead isn't she they said yes I set up a drug overdose and they said no no she's been murdered now I can't believe it I knew she was dead I kind of could feel it before that but um I never thought she she would have been murdered Kelly Elizabeth Hodge was born in 1977 the only and adored sibling of older sister Stacy my sister's the only person I know who could pick up a snail Pat it and say aren't you beautiful she loved animals and animals seemed to respond to her she was a very delicate child exquisitively sensitive and emotionally and very physically too she had almost white hair with these big blue eyes and she just looked adorable oh two girls lost their mother when she died of pneumonia when they were only five and six years old my mum was not in the best of health and she has passed away and my grandmother is organized for us to be placed in her care the girls were well looked after she indulges shamelessly and were given tips from a young age as to boyfriend material if Michael Jackson came on TV she'd say this is the kind of man you girls should marry when you're older because he doesn't drink he doesn't smoke he can sing and he can dance so for her that's you know fine [Music] instead Kelly fell hopelessly in love with a man who hooked her on drugs and then pimped her on the streets of Saint Kilda to feed his own habit and that's where she went on the night of August 18th it was the last time her grandmother had seen her and eight days before her body was found my grandmother called me princess that Kelly was not home and had not been home and I thought immediately that was very out of character after about a day I was so crossword Kelly and I start ringing Kelly [Music] thanks I start leaving a series of really angry and I phone calls telling us that she needs to call home that we're worried that she's wearing our grandmother that I won't forgive her while Stacy wanted to call the police her grandmother didn't my grandmother was no no no because she'll be so angry if she's not really missing and by that stage I thought there has to be a problem so I said look I'm going to go to St Kilda and look for a body because there's no way she wouldn't have come home a week I went to bed and then that's when the police have come to my home to let me know that they found her over a week had passed since Kelly disappeared and her body being found and the police were now under the pump experience has taught us about the magic 24-hour window if you're going to solve it that's the period you're going to solve it in but we were eight days behind it we'd already started behind the plane evidence gets destroyed the weather might have a play in it Witnesses aren't recalling things as they would when we make the immediate appeal did someone see this person eight days ago well hard for people to reflect back as opposed to if you see this person yesterday so we were behind the April thanks for coming ladies and gentlemen the lady has been identified as Kelly Elizabeth Hodge the purpose of today is to try and get as much information as we can relation to her movements she would have made her way to the area of Gray Street and Gurner streets in Kilda where Kelly began selling set three years before I used to do Street Outreach on a Tuesday night and I was used to see Kelly standing there she was sort of a bit of a lone figure really she was supporting pretty expensive habits and she did the work she needed to do and then returned to Coburg to her grandmother I think that's where she retreated to and felt safe and clearly very loved we want a picture of her working environment did anyone see her at the time to see anything until ward has she been abducted by someone did you get in the car that she knew these were all the questions we needed to get answers for where Kelly stood it was pretty quiet there's a bit of lighting there and you've got the street corner on the other side but if no one was working that other Corner Kelly would have been quite an isolated figure so we start doing a door knock I think they see girls who work on the street as very separate to the girl walking to the office block or you know to the shop to work on the checkout whatever they're not some of the reactions was I'm not surprised or I knew it she was living at grandmother's place in Coburg North it was very reassuring when we met Charlie bazina he reassured us that they would work around the clock to find who has done this and if they would investigated the way they put any other murder we don't care the status of a person with loss of life it's our job to find the culprit and give the family answers and that's what it's all about the family need answers Charlie why was my granddaughter murdered and we hopefully bring someone to Justice and get them off the streets before they kill again appealing as a father as an uncle appealing to everybody out there that have chilled children if they know something the please come forward because nobody deserves to go the things that have happened nobody deserves it when Kelly was found her clothes phone and treasured denim bag were nowhere to be found and police hoped someone may have seen them since the morning she was murdered Kelly was carrying a blue denim bag actually that bag had initially belonged to me and she was using it to write number plates down when she was doing these transactions my crocheted blanket that my mother knitted with Kelly she would keep it in the bag and use it as something to sit down on or keep warm with and as the security blanket as well [Music] Kelly also never went anywhere without her mobile it was her work and Lifeline hi it's Kelly sorry Mr Cole um if you name a number and I'll get back to you as soon as I can thanks knowing that she had a phone that was significant to us we needed to track that phone down not having it physically is a problem for us but we can go to what we call call towns records and we were able to track down a phone call about midnight [Music] and as it turned out it was one of our regular clients clients spent 45 minutes with Kelly and he'll certain a person of good repute no issues with him and we're more than confident that he wasn't involved with Kelly's death so police knew live at 12 45 that they were at a loss as to where she went who killed her and dumped her body 40 kilometers away from where she had last been seen if the people are watching this or whoever done this we have faith in the police and you'll be looking over your shoulder all the time and it won't be long before the police apprehendia foreign Kelly's fellow sex workers were hoping that was true it was pretty scary on the streets at that time and pretty distressing for the ladies some of them left that you know they just couldn't cope with it their fears were heard that if he wasn't caught could they be next but then a call from a psychologist gave the investigation the Breakthrough it needed I might have some information that could help about this sex worker that was killed killed it was quite hesitant to speak to us on the phone because I think he was grappling with the the Dr Klein privilege type of thing he told us that he'd been treating a client and this male person made certain comments to him that the psychologist married up to the media reports of of having found a sex worker murdered climbed coming who who closed that he'd done a bad thing to a sex worker they think he placed himself in the situation could I be treating the killer of Kelly Hodge it must have gone through his mind enough safe for him to pick up that phone and call us your investigation and I think the conscience was if I don't say anything and this is the offender I'm treating and this is the person that may kill again can I live with myself and I think he took the appropriate action gave us a call and gave us his person's particulars it was a bit of a Eureka moment for us as investigators I think we might have our guy armed with a war detectives headed out to search the premises of the psychologist's client the man in his twenties lived in a caravan at the back of his mother's house going into this Caravan you know you're bewildered by what you see as an investigator there was numerous cuttings out of pornographic material there was handbags there in one bag there was an identification Badge of a receptionist from a brothel the adrenaline starts pumping up and uses the same right we really got our guy here I think let's move on with it and then we start the investigation going back to identifying this receptionist in a brothel she'd been assaulted and you start building up confidence are we on the right track do we have our man but police also had another suspect under their magnifying glass the ex-boyfriend who had put Kelly on the streets me if I knew of anyone who may have a vendetta or a reason to harm Kelly and I didn't nominate a couple of people mum was an ex-boyfriend who Kelly had testified against and he was serving time for murder the fact that she was implicit in giving evidence against him was something quite significant so he becomes a particular suspect and you might say to yourself well hang on a minute how can you be a suspect if he's in custody which he was but that doesn't mean the fact that he could have got someone else to commit the murder going to this guy's Caravan you start talking to them he readily makes admissions his fantasy was to assault and rape a police woman take of what you will with just the off the cuff comment but you know this person's got a problem so he is a firm suspect but as the investigation progressed we find out that he's got an alibi that's a good alibi he couldn't have been our guy he fitted the profile beautifully but at the end of the day what your ledge you've got to prove so you go from the piece of the troughs and we discard that person from the investigation but that doesn't put you off the scent you keep going you're driven even more on the streets of Melbourne's red light district sex workers were scared have they caught him yet that was a daily thing the ladies would say they were fearful because we had nothing to give the most album so all we could really say to the ladies was look just proceed with caution they needed to because when detectives looked at the calls in and out of the jail where Kelly's ex-boyfriend was imprisoned there was nothing Sinister to suggest he had put a hit on her it was another dead end but it only the frustrations take over your efforts we know the Killer's still out there and we keep moving on detective see ing Louise quite early on a lot of them unfortunately turned out to be red herrings but they were always very good about letting us know where they were at even if there wasn't anything new just to reassures that we're not forgotten and that they are still working very hard it was now a month since Kelly had been murdered and longer since Stacy had last spoken directly with her sister the last time I spoke to Kelly we had a massive fire and I told her I hated her told a guy hang herself called her a junkie I shouldn't have done it and I was totally in the wrong and I hope my sister knows how sorry I am new house area maybe every day suits Kelly's fellow sex workers were also hurting it's important to grieve a lot of the ladies of course were upset I wanted to give them something of Kelly and there were a lot of tears that night we all walked up to the the corner of gray and Gurner and we all had candles and this was in the very spot that the Kelly used to work it was absolutely the atmosphere was was palpable I can't think that one person there couldn't remember Kelly standing there and weren't visualizing it I would have done anything to keep her alive I probably would have run her over and broken over the weeks to keep her alive keep her from leaving the house that night [Music] then a new suspect Kelly had sold her car to pay for her drug debts to 34 year old Justin degrucci whose name rang alarm Bells this particular fellow was a suspect in the assault of another sex worker but unfortunately the rape Squad didn't have a statement from the victim they were very scared and so the squad were hampered and races are taking the matter any further the kidnap and assault happened two months before Kelly's murder the chatter around the streets was very much getting louder and louder about this individual and I think the girls were starting to really think that the person that had committed this really serious assault could potentially be the one that murdered Kelly we then executed a search warrant and we found clothing shoes and a handbag similar to Kelly's let me see he's got some significant rings on his fingers and we reflect back to the postmortem When We examined the body there was clearly evidence of a very large number of injuries To The Head and some of these injuries had some rather unusual appearances so there were literally areas of the skin that had been punched out almost as if they had been cut out by a sharp object the peculiarity which is not usually seen in weapons that we would commonly come across in our practice we picture those injuries and we've got them in our head of what they look like we then look at these rings that this guy's got on and you know what we come to a conclusion these Rings could have caused a particular injury the concave injuries in the face of Kelly Hodge again our Euphoria is growing and as the search goes on we find blood at his particular house then degrucci surprised the detectives and put up his hands for the assault on the sex worker two months prior to Kelly's murder I'm not involved I'm no murderer I'm no killer charge me with this assault but I'm not part of the murder but the detectives weren't prepared to take his word for it so while he was reminded in custody for the assault they waited for results on the blood in his house to see if it was Kelly's we weren't convinced let's see what the science tells us out of the blue the her missing phone had become active again major breakthrough for us Kelly's phone has just been turned on it's lit up Kelly's phone's out there who's got it police traced the signal to a young man we take this guy down and we speak to him we go to his door we're investigating the murder of a sex worker called kelly Hodge do you know this person no I don't do you have a mobile phone yes I do he produces a phone how long have you had this phone I I bought it off a guy who was this guy a fella called Jack him off so who's this jacking my fellow detectives Tracked Down Jacob's address and checked his police record he's got no criminal history we learned that he's a bricklayer you know he lives in the west matters address which is not far from where Kelly Hodges body was found appears to be a legitimate person living in this normal suburban area another lead we've got to tidy up and account for this person because he's a link when police went to novica giacomov's house there was no answer so they left a calling card and not long after the 34 year old called them and I was here with this other guy on you and we met so he basically gives us the story that the three of them go back to his home in West Meadows they had consensual sex with Kelly Kelly then left with this friend of his and lo and behold when they leave he discovers that she's left her phone behind and I sold it I didn't need a phone oh I don't know what happened to Kelly nothing to do with me she left with this guy mate that's the guy you got to be talking to not me detectives now had three suspects Jack him off the man they'd just spoken to the friend he claimed left his house with Kelly and degrucci the man with the Rings currently in custody for assault who told detectives he didn't kill Kelly this guy with the Rings and the clothing and the blood ticked all the boxes when the results came back on the blood into Gucci's house it wasn't what they expected it's not Kelly Hodges DNA it is not Kelly Hodges blood Justin degrucci was ruled out of the murder of Kelly Hodge but he was found guilty of the assault and kidnap of the sex worker and sentenced to nine and a half years imprisonment the ladies were very relieved when he was taken off the street but the end of the day we'd still lost Kelly if Kelly had been murdered the person that had committed this crime was still about there the Victorian police had now been chasing the murderer of Kelly Hodge for two months for Stacy and the family it was tough so wait for them to find the person responsible is excruciating you think they're never going to find them and in my more wacky moments I came in a little paranoid and I would see someone out in the streets and think maybe it was you detectives still had two strong leads thanks to Kelly's reactivated phone and they had now Tracked Down The Man Jacob off claimed had left his house with Kelly the night she was murdered and I'm finding him the reaction we get was overwhelming absolute crap that didn't happen I wasn't at the casino I wasn't with a girl called kelly Hodge I wasn't with Jack him off so we need to go back to Jack him off and say sunny I don't think you were quite honest with this [Music] Jacob off was now their Prime Suspect a search warrant was obtained on his rented house but again he wasn't home so as they waited for the real estate agent to let them in the detectives went door-knocking and spoke with the next door neighbor they said we heard a distressed female screaming thumps going on like someone's being assaulted and they put it down to a domestic dispute that's why they didn't report it as such eventually went away and they thought nothing more of it agent arrived lets us in house is vacant not a stick of furniture in there we start walking through the place and we start seeing repairs to the plaster wall particularly in the hallway about the size of a football basically not painted just repaired said you know what that may have been Kelly's head going through that wall examination of the head revealed that there was a fracture at the back of the skull now that's something that can certainly occur where a person falls over and Strikes their head however the multiplicity of the injuries across the body let us know that this is not an accidental injury pattern this is an inflicted injury pattern it's the sort of injury pattern that you see in an assault and when the forensic team was brought in and they used their luminal the empty house became a scene of Horrors we may not see blood but this test reacts with blood or where blood is been so in the darkness as scientists go through start spraying the luminum particularly in the hallway why is this where our damage was and this luminous iridescent and it lit the whole hallway up basically basically found a handprint on the wall and a footprint on the floor our adrenaline starts pumping that might have been Kelly's handprint on that wall her footprint on that floor but we needed confirmation through DNA that was going to be the Clincher but in the meantime we want to speak to Jacob moth where is jacamole the detective called me and mentioned that they'd spoken to someone who admitted to having been with my sister the night before she died and then when they've gone to re-interview him he's gone and I guess at that moment I knew I suppose they knew too they've got their guy so I've got they've got person responsible but he's um done a runner jacomov had up and left but while his house was empty it was filled with vital evidence things started to fit the crime scene started to fit based on what we found at the autopsy based on what we've found now at the jackhammad house what we needed to doubly confirm for us is Kelly's blood or DNA in Jacob moth's house but in the meantime we want to know where this check them off is I wondered how they would find him but the detectives almost immediately put an item in Crime Stoppers in their Herald Sun so we go to the media it's prompted someone in the community the all Crime Stoppers [Music] he's working in a pizza shop this call comes and identifies that a person fitting jackomop's description is working in a pizza shop at Lorne oh Lorne is a Seaside Town 142 kilometers Southwest of Melbourne and a two-hour drive from giacomob's rented house of horrors in West Meadows we notify the local police who go down there to assess is this the right person [Music] and once the police go to the pizza shop I speak to this person whose description fits Jack them off and it is Jacob off he's working under a false name and living out of his motor car so we instruct the local police to take them into custody and they bring him up to Melbourne with his motorcar [Music] we start the interview with him and he maintains the same in relation to what he told us earlier I was at the casino with Kelly Hodge with this mail and he maintains that throughout the Victorian detectives were convinced jackomov was lying but could not yet charge him they needed that crucial bit of evidence and they found it in his car as part and parcel of investigating him we then go through his ute we formed paperwork in his car and there's paperwork there that is applying for looks like a false passport maybe an indication of flight indication of guilt can we also find some paperwork of a storage unit in Ballarat same time that he would have left the West Meadows address at the same time of Kelly's murder interestingly Ballarat was in a completely different direction from Lorne and the rented house in West Meadows so it looked as though jacomov was purposely scattering evidence so we go up to Ballarat we open up a storage unit we find furniture there in doing our search we can visually see blood on the sofa is this Kelly's blood once we then have the DNA bank is that enough for us to charge him we are acting upon reasonable grounds is there risk power we've got the scene we've got the neighbors we've got the luminol chick there's a judgment call and we make that call and we charge him with the murder we were confident enough to know we had the right man confident enough to go to Kelly's grandmother to go to a sister and give the good news he promised us that they would work really hard he promised us that they would find a person and he kept every promise he made to us that day and we've said it but I'd like to say it again thank you to the detectives and I happen to be at the local pub and I shouted jugs of beef for everyone but the joy was short-lived you pleaded not guilty it was going to fight it and you can maintain whatever story he likes he maintains that story throughout right up to his trial and the DNA comes back from the house the DNA is Kelly's irrefutable and then blood comes back from the couch that was in a storage unit that was linked back to the ticket that was in Jacob moth's car in his name that blood comes back as Kelly's job done it looked like a straightforward case while jacomov claimed he was completely innocent of the murder the evidence stacked up against him we do not want to give the jury any room to move and prove it Beyond reasonable doubt if we do anything less the jury can come back with either hung jury or an acquittal and that was what giacomov's defense team were hoping for and surprisingly enough for the trial he went into the witness box opened himself up the cross-examination and then he claimed self-defense he he was very burly bricklayer my sister weighed 50 kilos ringing wet it just didn't hold water here we have a bricklayer upper strength arms wrist hands some 78 kilos and you compare that with probably less than 50 kilo female but by giving his version of events it answered one of the questions posed by the police and pathologist whilst we never found any weapons in the house we learned about an umbrella being used by Jacob off giacomov claimed he used the umbrella to protect himself and struck her with it when Kelly attacked him over wanting drugs the unusual punched out lesions on the skin of the head had a peculiarity as if a small tiny cake cutter had literally punched out a piece of skin so when we later found out that it was a broken umbrella that caused these injuries we were able to go back and look at them in the context of what sort of damaged the body is caused by a broken metal object with that sort of circular irregular Edge the jury listened to giacomov's version of events and came back with their decision jury didn't believe it convicted and sentenced jakamov was found guilty of Kelly's murder and sentenced to a maximum of 19 years he is eligible for parole next year I don't think the sentence was anywhere near sufficient as far as I'm concerned that man should never ever see daylight again at the time I viewed the sentence Through The Eyes of a law student as well as the sister of someone who's been murdered as a little student in high school that it was a very good outcome it was a reasonably lengthy sentence for what he has done however as the sister of someone who was hurt like that his it's not enough Jackie Roth killed Kelly and he didn't just kill her in her last moments he set out to degrade her scarred someone a human life on the side of the road is incomprehensible to me after she's died you know you hear me if they're on the side of the road like she's garbage and maybe she was garbage to him she wasn't garbage to us my sister you know like everyone just wanted to matter and our worst nightmares we never imagined our loved ones being murdered we imagine perhaps they get sick or something happens and there's an accident but you never imagined that your loved ones last moments I like that I've struggled to articulate this I think when I die I want to be surrounded by kind faces when my sister died the only face she saw was the face of her murderer how alone she must have felt how angry he must have looked foreign

Channel: Australian Crime

Views: 285,859

Keywords: Australia, Australian Crime, Australian crime documentary, Australian crime series, Gangs & Mobs, Stalkers, child crime, cold case, con artists, crime, crime documentary, crime series, disappearances, family crime, ivan milat, murder, podcasts, police, renae marsden, revelle balmain, roger rogerson, serial killer, true crime, true crime documentary, true crime series, kelly hodge, murder calls, cals, 911 calls, 911 phone calls, emergency, australian, aussie, killer, ivan, milat

Id: lO5yo9-W_OQ

Length: 39min 44sec (2384 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 24 2023