 Tracey Ann O'Brien Maw is believed to have been badly bashed. Her body was discovered on Monday. Source: Facebook |  Tracey Ann O'Brien Maw killed in Fiji. Her partly decomposed body has been discovered in bushes beside a road by a local farmer. Source: Facebook |  Tracey Ann O'Brien Maw’s badly decomposed body was discovered in bushes beside a road by a local farmer. Source: Facebook |
POLICE in Fiji have arrested a man in connection with the death of an Australian woman.
The body of Tracey Ann O’Brien Maw was found on Monday, badly decomposed and hidden in bushes.
Police believe she was murdered and have been hunting a suspect who was known to Ms O’Brien Maw.
This afternoon they confirmed a man was in custody and was being questioned.
EARLIER
IN the months before she was killed in Fiji, Australian woman Tracey Ann O’Brien Maw told friends she felt “hurt, used, ugly and embarrassed” after losing tens-of-thousands of dollars to her Fijian lover.
Ms O’Brien Maw told friends in a closed Facebook group of the pain she’d endured when her relationship with a Fijian man soured and of how she felt used by him.
She suspected he was still in a relationship with his wife.
Her badly decomposed body was found by a farmer on Monday. Police believe she was bashed to death and revealed to news.com.au earlier today they had identified a suspect who was known to Ms O’Brien Maw.
The suspect knew police wanted to speak to him but was “on the run”, a source close to the investigation said.
A spokeswoman for Fiji police tonight confirmed they were aware of the messages.
“A friend of the victim has come forward and we have taken her statement. She has provided information that the victim was unhappy about a number of things.”
The contents of the numerous emails were being examined by detectives, who are treating her death as a murder. The spokeswoman refused to comment further.
The messages, provided to news.com.au by a member of the Facebook group detail how she left her home in Shepparton, Victoria, earlier this year to go to Fiji to be with her partner of four-and-half-years.
In August she realised the relationship was over.
“Don’t fall in love cause you will only lose EVERYTHING!” she wrote, before later revealing she’d lost $42,000 and her house.
The online group is mainly women in relationships with Fijian men and Ms O’Brien Maw told them of how she was unsure what her partner was doing when she wasn’t there.
“..when you come home to Aussie you really DONT know what they do when your not there. sad hey when we give them honesty and they just laugh at us in there lingo, even while we sit with then! How do we know what they saying?”
She claimed she was sending money to him every two weeks for food and suspected he was spending it on his wife.
She said to one friend: “ ... yes there are true relationships there I just didn’t find the right one but don’t want one now. I just have to work out what my heart n head says. I don’t know how to now, I feel ugly, used, hurt, embarrassed, stupid etc.”
And then: “It must be a tears day for me cause I can’t stop the tears from falling.”
Ms O’Brien Maw purportedly told the group of how lonely she felt when she was home in Australia.
“I feel the same when I come home to ... so LONELY. I lost my family n friends cause they could see what was happening ...
She said she felt naive and went onto the Facebook page because she had no one else to speak to.
“It’s really bad for someone to do extortion to innocent kind hearted people ... They take advantage of our kindness.”
It has been reported that Ms O’Brien Maw was in Fiji to reconcile with a man and that she had been staying with him.
She was last seen on Thursday night at a party in Sigatoka close to where her body was found by a shocked farmer walking his dog.
Farmer Etuate Senikau, 47, was on his way to a rugby match at Nasama Village, on the island of Viti Levu, when he made the gruesome discovery.
It was the smell that first got his attention.
“I was on my way to a shop at Nasama Village with my dog when suddenly my dog ran off into the bush,” he told Fiji Sun website.
He was terrified when he then saw the feet of the decomposed body sticking out from the bushes. There was also a terrible smell.
Mr Senikau said the body was covered with grass and could not be identified because the face was badly damaged.
Fiji police Commissioner Ben Groenewald has confirmed Ms O’Brien-Maw’s brother, Rodney Maw, identified her body on Tuesday.
It’s believed Ms Maw was beaten so badly her brother could only identify her body by a distinctive tattoo.
Commissioner Groenewald promised the Maw family a thorough investigation. He said Ms O’Brien Maw’s body had to be cremated “due to the extreme stage of putrefaction of the victim’s body”.
However that has alarmed her family in Australia who are reportedly worried that happened too quickly and without proper investigation.
A family member in Pine Lodge, near Shepparton in rural Victoria, told AAP they did not want to comment.
Officials from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade are providing consular assistance to her family.
Story by ANDREW KOUBARIDIS CRIME REPORTER news.com.au; source: http://www.news.com.au/world/tracey-ann-obrien-maw-dead-australians-body-found-in-fiji/story-fndir2ev-1227121688650
The body of Tracey Ann O’Brien Maw was found on Monday, badly decomposed and hidden in bushes.
Police believe she was murdered and have been hunting a suspect who was known to Ms O’Brien Maw.
This afternoon they confirmed a man was in custody and was being questioned.
EARLIER
IN the months before she was killed in Fiji, Australian woman Tracey Ann O’Brien Maw told friends she felt “hurt, used, ugly and embarrassed” after losing tens-of-thousands of dollars to her Fijian lover.
Ms O’Brien Maw told friends in a closed Facebook group of the pain she’d endured when her relationship with a Fijian man soured and of how she felt used by him.
She suspected he was still in a relationship with his wife.
Her badly decomposed body was found by a farmer on Monday. Police believe she was bashed to death and revealed to news.com.au earlier today they had identified a suspect who was known to Ms O’Brien Maw.
The suspect knew police wanted to speak to him but was “on the run”, a source close to the investigation said.
A spokeswoman for Fiji police tonight confirmed they were aware of the messages.
“A friend of the victim has come forward and we have taken her statement. She has provided information that the victim was unhappy about a number of things.”
The contents of the numerous emails were being examined by detectives, who are treating her death as a murder. The spokeswoman refused to comment further.
The messages, provided to news.com.au by a member of the Facebook group detail how she left her home in Shepparton, Victoria, earlier this year to go to Fiji to be with her partner of four-and-half-years.
In August she realised the relationship was over.
“Don’t fall in love cause you will only lose EVERYTHING!” she wrote, before later revealing she’d lost $42,000 and her house.
The online group is mainly women in relationships with Fijian men and Ms O’Brien Maw told them of how she was unsure what her partner was doing when she wasn’t there.
“..when you come home to Aussie you really DONT know what they do when your not there. sad hey when we give them honesty and they just laugh at us in there lingo, even while we sit with then! How do we know what they saying?”
She claimed she was sending money to him every two weeks for food and suspected he was spending it on his wife.
She said to one friend: “ ... yes there are true relationships there I just didn’t find the right one but don’t want one now. I just have to work out what my heart n head says. I don’t know how to now, I feel ugly, used, hurt, embarrassed, stupid etc.”
And then: “It must be a tears day for me cause I can’t stop the tears from falling.”
Ms O’Brien Maw purportedly told the group of how lonely she felt when she was home in Australia.
“I feel the same when I come home to ... so LONELY. I lost my family n friends cause they could see what was happening ...
She said she felt naive and went onto the Facebook page because she had no one else to speak to.
“It’s really bad for someone to do extortion to innocent kind hearted people ... They take advantage of our kindness.”
It has been reported that Ms O’Brien Maw was in Fiji to reconcile with a man and that she had been staying with him.
She was last seen on Thursday night at a party in Sigatoka close to where her body was found by a shocked farmer walking his dog.
Farmer Etuate Senikau, 47, was on his way to a rugby match at Nasama Village, on the island of Viti Levu, when he made the gruesome discovery.
It was the smell that first got his attention.
“I was on my way to a shop at Nasama Village with my dog when suddenly my dog ran off into the bush,” he told Fiji Sun website.
He was terrified when he then saw the feet of the decomposed body sticking out from the bushes. There was also a terrible smell.
Mr Senikau said the body was covered with grass and could not be identified because the face was badly damaged.
Fiji police Commissioner Ben Groenewald has confirmed Ms O’Brien-Maw’s brother, Rodney Maw, identified her body on Tuesday.
It’s believed Ms Maw was beaten so badly her brother could only identify her body by a distinctive tattoo.
Commissioner Groenewald promised the Maw family a thorough investigation. He said Ms O’Brien Maw’s body had to be cremated “due to the extreme stage of putrefaction of the victim’s body”.
However that has alarmed her family in Australia who are reportedly worried that happened too quickly and without proper investigation.
A family member in Pine Lodge, near Shepparton in rural Victoria, told AAP they did not want to comment.
Officials from the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade are providing consular assistance to her family.
Story by ANDREW KOUBARIDIS CRIME REPORTER news.com.au; source: http://www.news.com.au/world/tracey-ann-obrien-maw-dead-australians-body-found-in-fiji/story-fndir2ev-1227121688650
Cold case murders: Suspects in mum, daughter killing named
Wednesday Nov 5, 2014
The men have been charged with the murder of “Jojo” (pictured) and her mother Mubarak Yusef. Photo / Supplied
The men have been charged with the murder of “Jojo” (pictured) and her mother Mubarak Yusef. Photo / Supplied Name suppression has lapsed for two South Auckland men implicated in the killing of a mother and her daughter.
Papatoetoe panel beater Kamal Gyanendra Reddy, 41, pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mubarak Yusef - more commonly known as Pakeeza Faizal - and her daughter Juwairiyah Kalim, also known as "Jojo", after human remains were discovered under the Takapuna overbridge last month.
At the High Court in Auckland this morning, Bal Krishna Naidu, 65, also denied a charge of being a party to the murder.
Court documents allege he knew of the crimes and assisted Reddy to avoid arrest.
Ms Faizal and 3-year-old Jojo were killed in late December 2006 or early 2007, at their Howick home, police believe.
Police said Reddy was known to the victims.
He was remanded in custody until April while his co-accused remains on bail.
The provisional conditions of Naidu's bail ordered him to surrender his Fijian passport.
Ms Faizal Pakeeza and Jojo were not reported missing to police until last January and an investigation revealed the pair had been subject to foul play.
Human remains were found under the Takapuna Landing Bridge on October 18.
The defendants will be back in court in five months and a trial date was set for September 7.
It is scheduled to last four weeks.
Papatoetoe panel beater Kamal Gyanendra Reddy, 41, pleaded not guilty to the murder of Mubarak Yusef - more commonly known as Pakeeza Faizal - and her daughter Juwairiyah Kalim, also known as "Jojo", after human remains were discovered under the Takapuna overbridge last month.
At the High Court in Auckland this morning, Bal Krishna Naidu, 65, also denied a charge of being a party to the murder.
Court documents allege he knew of the crimes and assisted Reddy to avoid arrest.
Ms Faizal and 3-year-old Jojo were killed in late December 2006 or early 2007, at their Howick home, police believe.
Police said Reddy was known to the victims.
He was remanded in custody until April while his co-accused remains on bail.
The provisional conditions of Naidu's bail ordered him to surrender his Fijian passport.
Ms Faizal Pakeeza and Jojo were not reported missing to police until last January and an investigation revealed the pair had been subject to foul play.
Human remains were found under the Takapuna Landing Bridge on October 18.
The defendants will be back in court in five months and a trial date was set for September 7.
It is scheduled to last four weeks.
Cold case: Death of 'angel' devastates dad
Tuesday Oct 21, 2014
Faizal Kalim spent years looking for his "little angel", hiring a private investigator and continuing to pay child support - but now he is devastated knowing his daughter was killed and her remains buried alongside her mother's in an Auckland swamp.
Mr Kalim lost touch with his daughter Juwairiyah, known as Jojo, when his estranged wife, Mubarek Yusef, known as Pakeeza Faizal, left him nearly a decade ago.
Although he did not have custody of his daughter, the barbershop owner never thought it would be tragedy keeping him from seeing his little girl again.
On Sunday, he was given no choice but to face that reality. Police informed him of the discovery of Jojo and her mother's skeletal remains in a muddy creek under the Takapuna overbridge near Rosmini College.
Mr Kalim expressed his anguish on Facebook, asking, "Why would somebody kill [an] angel like that?"
A 40-year-old Auckland man was charged with both their murders - which police believe occurred between December 2006 and early 2007 in a Howick home where the victims were living - and appeared at Manukau District Court yesterday.
His identity, with that of a 64-year-old male acquaintance accused of being an accessory after the fact, was suppressed. Both were remanded in custody.
Jojo would have been about 3 when she was killed, and her mother about 25.
Mr Kalim was devastated to be told of the police's discovery, and that the last time he would get to see his daughter she would be dead.
He was being comforted by family yesterday and was not at his Glendowie home.
A sign posted on the door of his business, The Barber's Room, on Dominion Rd in Mt Eden, read:
"Dear Customers, Due to the recent discovery of my daughter's death the shop will be closed for the next 2 days. Thanks and regards, Faizal."
Mr Kalim's brother, Irshad Kalim, told the Herald the police's discovery had been hard on his brother.
"He's broken. We don't really know how to handle it at the moment. It's been a very long time. We haven't seen her since she was about 3 or 4 and then about a year later my brother started looking for her and just couldn't find her.
"She was a cute girl. She was very close to the family so I don't really know what to say. At the moment it's still pretty much a shock, up until [Sunday] we all had that hope that she would be alive."
Ms Faizal grew up in Auckland where she met Faizal Kalim.
The Fiji-Indian couple were married for about five years before the relationship dissolved, Irshad Kalim said.
"They had issues with their marriage, she split up and just disappeared and took the baby and didn't want anyone to know where she was.
"It was hard for him, she just did it and didn't tell our family and her family. No one knew where she was.
"After she left we didn't know where she was or who she was living with. The only person who knew, I think, was her mother. She wasn't even talking to her own family, so we didn't know."
Tuesday Oct 21, 2014
Faizal Kalim spent years looking for his "little angel", hiring a private investigator and continuing to pay child support - but now he is devastated knowing his daughter was killed and her remains buried alongside her mother's in an Auckland swamp.
Mr Kalim lost touch with his daughter Juwairiyah, known as Jojo, when his estranged wife, Mubarek Yusef, known as Pakeeza Faizal, left him nearly a decade ago.
Although he did not have custody of his daughter, the barbershop owner never thought it would be tragedy keeping him from seeing his little girl again.
On Sunday, he was given no choice but to face that reality. Police informed him of the discovery of Jojo and her mother's skeletal remains in a muddy creek under the Takapuna overbridge near Rosmini College.
Mr Kalim expressed his anguish on Facebook, asking, "Why would somebody kill [an] angel like that?"
A 40-year-old Auckland man was charged with both their murders - which police believe occurred between December 2006 and early 2007 in a Howick home where the victims were living - and appeared at Manukau District Court yesterday.
His identity, with that of a 64-year-old male acquaintance accused of being an accessory after the fact, was suppressed. Both were remanded in custody.
Jojo would have been about 3 when she was killed, and her mother about 25.
Mr Kalim was devastated to be told of the police's discovery, and that the last time he would get to see his daughter she would be dead.
He was being comforted by family yesterday and was not at his Glendowie home.
A sign posted on the door of his business, The Barber's Room, on Dominion Rd in Mt Eden, read:
"Dear Customers, Due to the recent discovery of my daughter's death the shop will be closed for the next 2 days. Thanks and regards, Faizal."
Mr Kalim's brother, Irshad Kalim, told the Herald the police's discovery had been hard on his brother.
"He's broken. We don't really know how to handle it at the moment. It's been a very long time. We haven't seen her since she was about 3 or 4 and then about a year later my brother started looking for her and just couldn't find her.
"She was a cute girl. She was very close to the family so I don't really know what to say. At the moment it's still pretty much a shock, up until [Sunday] we all had that hope that she would be alive."
Ms Faizal grew up in Auckland where she met Faizal Kalim.
The Fiji-Indian couple were married for about five years before the relationship dissolved, Irshad Kalim said.
"They had issues with their marriage, she split up and just disappeared and took the baby and didn't want anyone to know where she was.
"It was hard for him, she just did it and didn't tell our family and her family. No one knew where she was.
"After she left we didn't know where she was or who she was living with. The only person who knew, I think, was her mother. She wasn't even talking to her own family, so we didn't know."
Mubarek Yusef and Jojo.
When a rumour surfaced that she had moved to Australia with Jojo, his brother hired a private investigator to find his daughter. "We'd been looking for her for the last six years ... nobody could find her.
"He was paying child support for the girl, so you'd think someone was claiming the child support. You don't think these awful things."
Ms Faizal's mother also grew concerned, and it was her approach to police in January 2013 that prompted their investigation.
The families had been in contact with each other since police told them of the grisly discovery and were yet to make funeral arrangements.
Police had told them the identities of the murder accused, but Irshad Kalim said they had never met him.
Detective Inspector Dave Lynch would not reveal details of the relationship between the murder accused and the victims, but confirmed they were known to each other. He also would not be drawn on how police were led to the bodies, but said they were found on Saturday and due to the difficult terrain it could take some time to recover them.
"He was paying child support for the girl, so you'd think someone was claiming the child support. You don't think these awful things."
Ms Faizal's mother also grew concerned, and it was her approach to police in January 2013 that prompted their investigation.
The families had been in contact with each other since police told them of the grisly discovery and were yet to make funeral arrangements.
Police had told them the identities of the murder accused, but Irshad Kalim said they had never met him.
Detective Inspector Dave Lynch would not reveal details of the relationship between the murder accused and the victims, but confirmed they were known to each other. He also would not be drawn on how police were led to the bodies, but said they were found on Saturday and due to the difficult terrain it could take some time to recover them.
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