The Murder of 17-Year-Old Gabe Meyer | Murder Calls | Australian Crime

our phones are now the center of our Lives they track our every mood our every call police emergency and for police they have become the key to solving crimes this series is about the unique calls that cracked open Australia's most shocking murder cases it's taken a Sinister turn Voices From Beyond the Grave cause you've never heard before the amazing stories of how today's telephone calls brought Australia's most horrific murderers to Justice it's horrible thank you police emergency hello hello this is Police emergency hey um I just got this guy rocked up on my door uh it's got blood everywhere Fair income they say love makes us do crazy things she told us she met this guy and she thought it was nice but in Far North Queensland it's astonishing what one sick mind is prepared to do to feed an obsession he was trying to think which child he could take out tonight the calculating cold-blooded murder of Gabe Meyer we all just loved him so much his brothers and sisters adored him a much-loved son and Schoolboy with not a single enemy it was one of the most difficult tasks I'd ever done in my life who became the target of a deranged mind they said the body of a young boy had been found and the five key phone calls ring the police ring the police this bloke's trying to kill me that led detectives to the killer with a deadly desire we know that he will kill again on release it's just a matter of time I saw something in me walk last night and smelt something really does smell like a dead pig I just hope it's a dead Peak [Music] foreign [Music] in Far North Queensland Doug and Sherry Meyer were anxiously waiting for their 17 year old son Gabe to return home for dinner so it was school holidays he was getting ready to start grade 12. he was a responsible kid that would always let us know wherever he was when he didn't come home by about 7 30 8 o'clock we'd already had dinner and I just thought well this is really strange David never done anything like that before and as it got dark we started getting a little nervous we didn't want to panic we did try to lay down and I was kind of up and down through the night checking his bed seeing if he'd come in and I didn't hear him [Music] Carrie said we have to do something here we have we have to start calling hospitals and just see if there were any car accidents which we did and we're numb the last time Doug had seen his son was when he dropped him off at the local gym the afternoon before Gabe's Gym buddy Damon kalanka was there at the time as soon as first lay came we weren't getting more and more anxious so we drove over to kalanka's house I thought it might not be a bad idea to find out if he knew anything and I go Gabe didn't get home last night do you know anything about this because she was here last night and when he left it was about dark he told me he was going to go over the Pontoon I think he was going swimming that was something I knew he wouldn't do especially at dark so Damon and Doug headed there immediately so we went to the Pontoon there was nothing there there's absolutely nothing around none of Gabe's belongings or anything there so I told him I said look I think I need to go talk to the police that's when it all started [Music] 18 months before Gabe disappeared Doug Meyer a boat builder moved his young family to Innisfail from Miami Florida in pursuit of a quieter life we managed to buy a house on the river how nice can it be a Great Barrier Reef just not sure Magic Place 600 kilometers from Brisbane in his fail was an idyllic spot for Gabe and his five siblings to grow up k-popped his family and we all just loved him so much as brothers and sisters adored him especially his older sister Fawn they were inseparable he was kind of the instigator for our family kept life for us exciting and hmm sorry when Doug reported his son missing the police honed in on the last person to see Gabe before he disappeared I was working that morning with two other detectives when the initial missing person report came in when Doug told us about seeing Diamond clankert that morning we've immediately had concerns the name kalanka rang alarm bells for the police the last time they'd heard his name had been 14 months earlier when they'd received a call from a local farmer well I just got this guy rocked up on my door he's got blood everywhere I received a phone call at the office from uniform police I then immediately went out there he's got a knife he's claiming someone's trying to kill him I spoke to the victim a fellow bonado Paul Malik and he had the look of death in his eyes hacker was Damon kalanka melick was dating kalanka's ex-girlfriend and he wanted her back the two men had gone for a drive that night to sort it out he said we got out of the car I was doing the pasture side I turned my back on him for a couple of moments and the next thing I know kalanka had a knife and he'd stabbed me in the back and then kalanka's hand had slipped down the knife he'd actually cut his hand on the knife dropped it Mella grabbed the knife and just ran for his life and then kalanka got back in the car and then chased him tried to run him down [Applause] [Music] just lucky enough that he jumped out of the way of the speeding car and kalanka crashed the car is Bush and that's when Malik then ran to The Farmhouse nearby and told them ring the police ring the police you know this bloke's trying to kill me he's not looking good after investigating the instant charge kalankin with the attempted murder but when it went to court unbelievably the prosecution downgraded the charge kalanka was only given community service and he was a free man now 14 months later he was part of another potential murder investigation told police that he was with Gabe at the gymnasium and was working out with him for a while assisting him in weight training then Gabe went to his flat later in the afternoon where they were both looking through magazines bodybuilding magazines and kalanka had supplied him a drink of sustagin to assist in muscle growth during the training period suck it um and after this Kalinka told police that Gabe had left the flat and stated that he was going for a swim in the Johnson River if what kalanka said was true then Gabe was probably dead the Johnson river is infested with crocodiles it's an extremely dangerous area to swim in Abe had grown up around water often helping his father Doug with his boat building business gay blood the water but he was also very respectful of the water because it's a well-known spot for crocodiles we just didn't think he would have gone swimming but we were just so dumbfounded we thought anything was a possibility we certainly had the SES search the river in vessels if Gabe had been taken by a crocodile perhaps the body had been left in somewhere engros frog does in general if they take a person or a carcass or whatever they will then hide it under nearest Mangrove and then go back to it to finish digesting it later but there was no sign of Gabe's body on the Riverbanks however 48 hours later there was a phone call Doug and Sherry Meyer were living their worst nightmare after 48 Hours their 17 year old son was still missing Gabe was tall for his age he's just a beautiful boy and very slender very sporty and that if he wasn't fishing he was swimming or um you know he was he was out there but where out there was a mystery you know we always had to think he's 17 maybe he had run away the police of course would have to investigate that [Music] we just like to tell him that we love him and we just um yeah we just wanted to let us know if he's safe give us a call no matter what I really love him we love you Dave the response from the public was huge there were different phone calls coming through on on many clothings in Cairns possible sightings at the Gold Coast but one phone call in particular brought the investigation back to the crocodile infested River foreign yeah so my boyfriend and I went down to the Pontoon recently and I did see some stuff down there there was uh some shoes definitely a bag and possibly a towel the description given sounded like they were games they then um threw them into the river sorry that action frustrated the police but they learned from the caller that those items were seen on the 12th of January the exact same night that Gabe disappeared the police rang and we were told they had been by the Pontoon which is where kalanka had said Gabe would have gone swimming we were still really dubious that he did go swimming but we did have to consider it we decided to have a search of of the actual River itself we did this in k-scape was silly enough to go for a swim and had been taken by a crocodile and the only way we could do this properly was to utilize police divers the Johnston River was so dangerous that police had to set off explosives to scare off any man-eating Crocs before the divers could go in quite amazingly within 30 seconds of the divers submerging to commence their grid search one of them surfaced holding a watch it was quite extraordinary and I immediately returned to the Innisfail police station where Gabe's parents were and I could see their faces as soon as they were shown the watch they they faces fell and we went in there and they had Gabe's watch obviously Gabe's they also found his shoes and knapsack washed up on the shore near the Pontoon so it opened up many questions for the police was Gabe alive somewhere in danger or dead the only thing they knew for sure was that his last known whereabouts was with Damon kalanka age where you're growing tall and not filling out quite enough and Kalinka was a weightlifter so it was pretty easy to talk game into doing weights Gabe's sister Fawn also hung out at the gym but for a whole different reason she told us she met this guy and that he'd kind of followed her around a bit and she thought it was nice you know and they talked at the gym he was a good looking guy muscular healthy clean-shaven neatly dressed took care with his appearance he didn't drink alcohol and he didn't do drugs and the two began to date he was 26 Fawn was 19. [Music] but we felt he was really intense he was there was I don't know he was just being too nice you're in line for all kinds of surprises with a daughter you know you kind of have to go along with her decisions in life so her parents were pretty happy when three weeks later Fawn flew off to the United States to start her three-year University degree not so Damon kalanka he was shattered it was right on Christmas and it wasn't the present he was expecting he actually went to the airport with us he was devastated we discussed that we should invite this guy to Christmas [Music] [Music] so he did come on the Christmas and stayed for about an hour or so I think that's probably the last I saw him but it wasn't the last time Fawn heard from him kalanka's New Year's resolution was to convince Gabe's sister to come back he was writing letters she said sometimes you get two letters in a day letters that indicated that the relationship still had a chance and when was she going to come home and that kind of thing he was having difficulty handling the rejection or the breakup in one letter kalanka had claimed to be suffering from throat cancer he wasn't he was trying anything to trap Thorne his latest Obsession into returning to Innisfail it looked like we may have a problem developing and then he was a little bit too clingy so we said to her Fawn you're gonna have to really strongly say you can't contact me anymore she needed to cut it off however she had to do it and we left that up to her he was a very spiritual person very responsible and a very trusting person one of those Gabe trusted Damon kalanka was of great interest to the police not only because he was the last person to see Gabe before he disappeared but because of his fixation with Gabe's sister fawn KO became very obsessed with her you know he wanted to be with her all the time wanted her to be the only person in his life when Fawn moved to the United States The Love Struck Jim junkie didn't get the message that the three-week-old romance was over and kept bombarding her with letters begging her to come home it was difficult for her being 19 she wasn't sure what to do how to handle this guy's full-on attention so taking the advice of her parents she bit the bullet and made a phone call you've got to stop calling me Damon I'm not coming back no I've got my studies here and you have to move on kalanka then realized he would have to do something drastic to get fawned back and she said something to the effect of I would only come back if my family was hurt or something happened to my family a short time later gay went missing 14 months earlier police had arrested kalanka after he had stabbed a man who was seeing his ex-girlfriend now detectives were struck by the chilling similarities between that case and the obsession he had with fawn peers that kalanka has some issues with relationships with females and when those relationships break down bad things happen so with a violent history and the bizarre thought that kalanka may have kidnapped or killed Gabe to get Fawn to return to him the police took a closer look at kalanka's Alibi for that night kalanka stated that he had hired a utility with the intention of taking a roll of carpet to his sister in Tully the country town of Tully is 54 kilometers south of Innisfail [Music] the first thing we did was to seize the rented jute and the carpet police immediately thought that was rather odd because the carpet was old certainly not something you would give as a gift to somebody it was rather deteriorated to end 30. but the story was corroborated by one of kalanka's Neighbors Mr narinder Singh was interviewed and stated that he saw kalanka loading a roll of carpet into the rear of the utility at that time Narendra passed for a lifted down to the pub so he could cash a paycheck I'm so glanco did that and Narendra did tell police that clanker stated that he was driving to Tully to see his sister after driving the exact same distance that kalanka claimed he had it just didn't add up there was immediately a gross inconsistency between the mileage that we traveled and the mileage that was reported on the higher vehicle that immediately told us that he had certainly gone somewhere else but establishing where he went and if Gabe's body was there was proving difficult then a phone call came through that suggested the answer and surprisingly it was from a 15 year old friend of kalankas and I'm a Potter contacted police by telephone and he gave us some information about a place called poly Creek which was in Bushland near to Innisfail I don't know if this will be open I know you've been talking to Damon kalanka anyway a couple of weeks back Damon took me down to poly Creek it was January the 10th two days before Gabe went missing this young lab had traveled to Holly Creek with kalanka and glanca had marked a trail leading into this Bushland with two cross sticks iconx to Mark the Spot and he said he was going to remember the spot it's pretty weird at the time is there anything else that you can tell me a little while later Damon asked if he could borrow a shovel when detective benstead learned about the shovel his mind returned to the attack on Paul Malik 14 months before there was alarm bells in my mind well and truly in the boot of the car the Clank was driving he had a shovel plastic bags there was plastic all spread out in the boot it looked like someone was going to put something into the boot and didn't want to contaminate the boot carpet I thought to myself well if Malek had died he was going to get buried somewhere so when the Potter rang up said kalanka had asked if he could borrow a shovel from him I then had an eerie feeling that there's something very sinister's going on we identified the cross sticks and then we walked into the bush area approximately 30 meters from the trail where police located a large mound of palm fronds we removed the palm fronds and located a a hole in the ground [Music] appeared to be a newly done grave it was six seven feet long two feet wide foot deep it was Macabre looking at an empty grave hide Goosebumps at the time it was just very very freaky it was exactly the same size as what a human being would go into knowing that Gabe was a reasonable height yeah it was close to his size but there was no sign of Gabe in it or in the other two small grave-like holes that were discovered beside it we did go out there and have a look it was very disturbing and shocking to see that two of them were small children-sized grapes and it brought me back to the Christmas dinner palanket was picking the children up and putting him down and I had this chilling thought that quite possibly at that point he was trying to think how he could Target our family which child he could take out to cause the most damage to the rest of us we just thought oh my God was he gonna kill one of our other kids too that's horrible so not knowing if Gabe was still alive or had been murdered and buried elsewhere the police decided to use his Twisted fixation with fawn to their advantage they asked her to play a cat and mouse game with her ex-boyfriend one of the Avenues of investigation that we used was what's called a pretext phone call we'd contacted foreign in America with the intention of her ringing kalanka and raising the issue of Gabriel bear missing with the hope that kalanka would tell Vaughn some information that we did not have really scared for fun she was just a beautiful young girl and we just knew how devastating this all was for her we didn't even want to ask her but Fawn wanted to do it so Fawn ran kalanka from Miami and the police recorded it what's going on over there putting me through the ringer over here why I feel at the moment I feel really depressed problem was we didn't know where Gabe was and we were really frightened that if we pushed him too far he might kill Gabe this Gabe was alive my parents are too upset to talk and I'm just I'm just thinking you know I wouldn't go back there until like I I wouldn't go back there until I had proof that he didn't run away I think their Fawn was really trying to put a bit of pressure on him to to say something stay there until he until they find like you know being dead or you know if he's being murdered or whatever point of it is don't come back you know he'll turn up he will don't worry yeah I hope so she just tried in her own way to get him to think well she'll come home if I if I give her something but he didn't so kalanka was hauled back in for questioning about what happened at Polly Creek but he was as cool as cool could be [Music] said last time father June I don't remember where to go there again because it was the upper two pieces of wood but that was about it when asked kalanka didn't deny digging the holes at Polly Creek [Music] to say that it could be used for growing marijuana was was just farcical if someone wants to grow marijuana plants into Innisfail you don't have to try very hard just planting a seed in the ground a couple of inches is certainly sufficient to start growing plants so with his so-called willingness to tell the truth the detectives asked him a direct question [Music] [Music] his life then the forensic results came through on the Ute and the carpet that included soil testing of the vehicle fingerprints from the vehicle and also a polylike check on the interior which was a revealed bodily fluid traces all tracers were negative there was nothing to link Gabe to the utility or to the carpet find anything in kalanka's flat we conducted various searches of the flat polylike was used in the flat to determine if there was any spatter patterns unfortunately nothing was identified so after two weeks of searching for Gabe it was decided to wind down the investigation it was disheartening for all of us at the time always is in this sort of Investigation did you feel for the families but unless we got further information we had nothing further to proceed on we were angry I remember my husband died just saying what are you doing you can't be serious you can't possibly do this and I said you will never convince me that kalanka is innocent it was Australia day but in the town of Innisfail no one was celebrating except Damon kalanka two weeks had gone by and while police knew his obsession with Thorne Meyer had turned deadly they lacked enough evidence to prove he had killed her brother Gabe we're feeling discouraged in the office we didn't have a lead we didn't have anything what we needed was a member of the public to come forward and say hey we've seen something happening it's suspicious and find his body and then I think it was around 11 30 in the morning I received a phone call and it was the most significant call we got hi it's Margaret Carmichael here I just want to give you a call because I saw something on me walk last night and smelt something really bad and she told me there was a possible grave on the creek Bank near where she lived it does smell like a dead pig I just hope it's a dead Peak it wasn't outridulation but it was okay we've got to do this let's go down there when Mrs Carmichael told police her address they realized this was the missing piece of the puzzle I'm in one of the cane directs on the farm ours is the first lot and the second Barracks Frank kalankets his parents uh resided in a small house immediately beside Mrs Carmichael so he was raised in that area he knew that area like the back of his hands he wandered around there he had knowledge of the area the family home at martyville was only 12 kilometers from Damon's flat and Innisfail the last place Gabe had been seen alive to this where it was and this this area was covered up in small broken off tree branches and Bush and there was lots of flies over it and it appeared to be a shallow grave police then carefully began to dig moments later their worst fears were realized it was a young man and he was wrapped in a blanket with the red and white rope there was little doubt that this sadly was the body of the missing 17 year old Gabe Meyer I can still remember as if it was yesterday it just rattles me to the core even now you know we just felt so sad and then detective Sergeant Mick Jacobs he actually notified the family that was just heartbreaking for him I'd become quite close with him it was one of the most difficult tasks I'd ever done in my life is to attend that residence on that day and advise them that we believe we'd found this undeceased I think Doug and I both knew as soon as that car pulled up into our driveway and the two detectives got out and they said the body of a young boy had been found and they said [Applause] they said that we had to tell our little ones and fun she lost a real friend somebody who she's shared all her childhood with [Music] me back at martyville Margaret Carmichael had seen something else that supported the notion that kalanka was the cold-blooded killer police had long suspected him to be the day before on the 25th of January she saw kalanka positively identify him as David Clancy writing a girl's pink push bike from down that area on the cane Farm Carmichael had already walked past the gravesite that morning when she saw kalanka heading down the trail towards that area when she returned home that evening she noticed the mound had changed the amount of dirt appeared to have more leaves placed over it since she initially saw it which would be interpreted as further attempts to conceal the mound this sighting of kalanka confirmed what the police already knew bad Detective still needed concrete evidence and they needed to determine how Gabe had been murdered it was absolutely no science no signs whatsoever of any forced trauma stab wounds or anything else nothing whatsoever and that puzzled the investigators greatly as to what had happened [Music] the 17 year old School student's body was found on Tuesday two weeks after he disappeared detectives are especially anxious to find out who owned this blanket found near Gabriel's body not long after one more damning call came through and it was from kalanka's ex-wife it's here for me that purr and kalanka had a very similar blanket when they were married she had last seen the blanket when she left him he still had the blanket then there was the rope that had tied Gabe's wrists and ankles kalinka's flatmates identified similar rope that had been stored in their kitchen and when they tried to locate that rape it was found to be missing found a combination of drugs and these drugs can be found in the cold and flu capsules experts told us that due to the concentrations of chemicals in the blood Gabe would be unconscious or deceased shortly after taking that amount of drugs police then remembered kalanka's first interview detectives believed kalanka had lured Gabe to his flat and then trusting his gym buddy Gabe drank the deadly cocktail [Music] um an innocent comment all of a sudden had Sinister connotations while there was no trace of the drugs in the tin They seized detectives did locate the final piece of evidence they needed we did conduct inquiries with various chemists throughout Innisfail and fortunately a chemists did remember kalanka purchasing two packets of Cold and Flu tablets and she even produced a receipt the receipt not only showed the purchase's name as D kalanka but the date was startling to the detectives it was the 6th of January the day after Fawn had broken off her relationship with kalanka I'm not coming back you have to move on the only way I'd come back to Innisfail is if my family was hurt if something happened to my family it was like a switch was flipped I think he needed to have a relationship and when that relationship was denied him he became angry and full of rage and I think as soon as he knew that the relationship wouldn't go ahead he started to plan Gabe's death that received certainly provided us with enough evidence to implicate Palanka in this murder and the decision was made to to arrest kalanka and when guy arrested him it was as if I invited him out to go for coffee he was very non-plussed extremely calm no tears no emotions shown whatsoever I immediately said that I'm looking at a total sociopath here this guy just does not care he just gave Gabe no chance he he just literally was going to kill him and he did but in killing Gabe kalanka slipped up and had to make a split-second decision police believed his original plan was to take a drowsy Gabe to poly Creek I believe what actually happened is that kalanka overdid the dosage of colon flu tablets and he had an unconscious or dead body on his hands and he had to make alternate Arrangements in that moment he chose the place he knew best the spot where he grew up call detectives were at a loss to NAB kalanka we did not have enough evidence at that time and because of her sighting and her call to the police it led us to a successful arrest kalanka was sentenced to life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 13 years every year since then he's been able to apply for parole each time we played with the parole board and try to point out what we know which is that he will kill again on release it's just a matter of time diamond kalanka is a calculating cold-hearted conniving human being and honestly should never be released period ever to gain the affection or love of two beautiful young women and then to try and kill Malik to get to the first one and then to murder Gabe Meyer to get to his sister from so wrong so so wrong add kalanka got in the sentence that he really needed in the Paul Malik case he would have been doing time in jail at the time of Gabe's murder it would have been a completely different story for us okay I said when this happened that our family would try our best to make sure that this never happened to another person and to another family we made that promise to Gabe and we'll stay committed to that promise we do not want to see kalanka kill someone else [Music] foreign foreign

Channel: Australian Crime

Views: 110,757

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

Id: jZfEyYe80Qk

Length: 40min 35sec (2435 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 01 2023