The last time Louisa Ioannidis's boyfriend says he saw her alive, she was fleeing into the night in her pink dressing gown.
The next day, he reported seeing the same pink robe floating in a nearby creek.
But he didn't go to investigate.
It still baffles Louisa's older brother, Tass Stouraitis.
"I'm thinking, 'You saw Louisa's nightgown and what, you didn't go and approach it and get a closer look at what was going on?'" Tass says.
Eight days later, Louisa's body was found in the creek.
She was wearing the pink dressing gown.
The questions, the doubts, and the what ifs have haunted Tass ever since his 24-year-old sister's body was found in Darebin Creek, near Reservoir in Melbourne's north, on October 11, 2011.
Based on an autopsy and police brief, a coroner found Louisa's death was "consistent with drowning" with no suspicious circumstances.
The case was closed without being formally assigned to the homicide squad and without an inquest.
Tass was devastated.
"I didn't believe that she just fell in the creek and drowned," he tells Australian Story. "I just don't buy that story."
In a bid to understand the circumstances of Louisa's death, Tass sought the help of podcasters who last year highlighted poor police work, inconsistencies in statements from her boyfriend Joe (not his real name), and evidence that Louisa was trying to leave the volatile relationship.
Now, a report by independent forensic pathologist Professor Johan Duflou, who reviewed the autopsy material, has raised doubts about the cause of Louisa's death.
Having identified possible bruises on Louisa's neck, "I don't think manual strangulation in this case can be excluded," Duflou says.
That report is now with the Coroners Court of Victoria. A team of lawyers working pro bono for Tass submitted it in July, along with other concerns and new evidence, with the aim of having the coronial finding overturned and an inquest held.
"In the hope," says Tass, "that if Louisa was met with foul play, they can get to the bottom of it."
'Immense scars' that shaped Louisa's life
On October 2, 2011, the last day she was seen alive, a bloodied Louisa rejected a neighbour's attempt to take her to a doctor after a fight with Joe and instead made her way to Melbourne International Airport.
Julia Robson, a private investigator who produced the podcast Troubled Waters with journalist Clare McGrath, believes Louisa was trying to "get as far away as possible from the situation that she was in".
But she had no money.
"She had this charm about her," Robson says. "I'm sure she would have thought, 'as long as I get myself there, I can figure it out' ... Unfortunately, this time, it didn't work out for her."
Thwarted, Louisa left the airport and got into a taxi. The driver said she was distressed and asked to borrow his phone.
She called Joe.
Louisa met Joe when she was a teenager. Joe, who would not speak to Australian Story, was older and offered freedom and fun, something that had been robbed from Louisa at the hands of her father.
When Louisa was a pre-teen, her father took her, her younger sister, and her mother, Helen, to his home country of Libya on holiday. Once there, he told Helen he was staying — and so were the girls.
For two years, Helen and her daughters lived in virtual captivity as Helen worked on an escape. Finally, says Tass, Helen organised "gangsters with good hearts" to get them out of the country, travelling at night through checkpoints, sometimes hiding in car boots.
The traumatic experience "left immense scars" on both girls, says Tass.
Back in Australia, and with new-found freedom and a young love, Louisa began to experiment, using alcohol and drugs and missing school.
Then, in 2009, Helen, who had done her best to curb Louisa's rebelliousness, suffered an asthma attack and died.
"Losing mum at such a young age had a really bad effect," Tass says.
Keeping jobs became difficult as Louisa's drug use continued and her relationship with Joe deteriorated. Neighbours and friends heard and witnessed violence.
"Things were getting really bad with the physical abuse," says Tass, who accompanied Louisa on one occasion to report the abuse to police.
Tass says spending time alone with Louisa became almost impossible as Joe's control grew.
"He wouldn't allow her to do anything, wouldn't allow her to go out on her own and visit other friends … she couldn't make her own decisions."
Timeline of Louisa's final hours
Louisa and Joe were back at their Reservoir unit by 4pm on the day she went to the airport. They were fighting.
A neighbour, Cazz, overheard them as she hung out the washing.
"Louisa is begging him, 'Please Joe, don't hurt me. Stop,'" Cazz recalls. "And I heard the door slam and then that was it."
At 8:44pm, Louisa emerged from her unit, with blood in her hair, asking to borrow another neighbour's phone. Louisa was overheard saying, "Joe, where are you? I'm waiting for you."
He arrived at about 9:45pm. Joe told police he had asked Louisa to put his things in a pile outside the unit – he had broken up with her.
“I told her that I didn’t want to be with her anymore,” his police statement reads. “I told her that she had ruined my whole life.”
Soon after getting to the unit, Joe said he went to pat the dog. When he returned, Louisa was gone.
He went to the street corner and saw Louisa running in her pink dressing gown towards Darebin Creek.
“I looked left and right and I saw her all the way to the end of Tyler Street,” his statement says.
“I whistled but she ignored me. She was bolting ... I didn’t go out of Seston Street and I didn’t chase her.”
That scenario piqued the interest of the podcasters, Robson and McGrath. Could a woman in a pink dressing gown be seen in the distance in the dark?
Twelve years to the day of Louisa's disappearance, Robson donned a replica gown and, at 9:45pm, stood at the end of Tyler Street, where it meets the entrance to the creek parklands.
McGrath took up Joe's stated position, about 370 metres away, and looked for Robson. She could not make out anything pink.
"I can't even tell it's a human," McGrath said.
Only when Robson was much closer could McGrath see the pink robe.
The duo became more curious when they cross-referenced Joe's statements with those of a friend of Louisa's who had asked Joe what happened that night.
"Joe said he had chased Louisa all the way down to the creek," Robson says.
Just how deep the creek was at the time of Louisa's death also intrigued them. They hunted down figures from Melbourne Water and learned the depth was 40 centimetres, conflicting with the police report.
Experts say drowning can occur in very shallow water, but Robson and McGrath had doubts.
"Why couldn't she have just stood up and walked out?" Robson asks. "We couldn't work out how you would drown in that unless you were already unconscious."
The deeper they delved, the more questions they had.
Street chase a 'glaring area' for re-examination
Dr Vince Hurley is a retired NSW detective inspector who served for 29 years and now lectures at Macquarie University, with a particular interest in domestic violence policing.
Australian Story asked Hurley to review the police brief into Louisa's death.
In Hurley's view, the investigation was not thorough and Louisa fell victim to social profiling.
"My gut feeling is that because she came from a low socio-economic background, that that would have influenced the police."
Hurley emphasises there's no evidence to link Joe to Louisa's death, but he does raise some questions about the case.
The first question is whether the police followed up with Joe to establish if he chased Louisa, as her friend claimed.
"To me, that's a glaring area that needs to be investigated," Hurley says.
Also of interest was a statement from the neighbour, Cazz, that in the days after Louisa's disappearance, she was woken in the night by the headlights of a white van.
Two men, dressed head-to-toe in "painter's uniforms", went into Louisa's flat. One of them was Joe, Cazz says.
Hurley can find no evidence that the police questioned Joe about this. If they didn't, they should have, he says.
Hurley is also concerned that Joe did not mention any violent conflicts with Louisa on the day she disappeared.
"Why didn't he raise it?"
It's clear from the police brief, Hurley says, that Louisa "lived a life of misery" as a result of violence. She suffered fractured ribs, was choked, punched and allegedly had boiling water poured on her by Joe. An assault charge against Joe was before the courts when Louisa died.
Hurley believes Louisa was also the victim of coercive control, a concept not widely understood 14 years ago but now a criminal charge in many states.
As for Joe’s account of seeing Louisa’s pink dressing gown in the creek the day after she ran away but did not go to fish it out, Hurley is flummoxed.
“A natural reaction would be for someone to go down and at least have a look or pick the pink dressing gown up,” he says.
“It just doesn’t make sense.”
Strangulation can't be excluded, forensic pathologist says
Victoria Police says the investigation into Louisa's death was "particularly comprehensive" and that an open mind was kept throughout.
Asked about the conflicting accounts of Joe's actions after Louisa ran away, it says: "The available evidence is insufficient to determine suspicious circumstances in this case and fails to meet the legal standard for the arresting or laying of any charges for any person."
It says the homicide squad was called the night Louisa's body was found and consulted during the investigation.
But criminal lawyer Felix Ralph, who assembled a team of five lawyers to work pro bono for Tass, argues the homicide squad should have handled the investigation.
"They'll examine and chase down every single inconsistency," he says.
One of the most compelling elements of the legal team's report to the Coroners Court of Victoria comes from forensic pathologist Professor Johan Duflou's review of the autopsy results.
Duflou points out that "consistent with drowning" is not an absolute statement that a person has drowned. In Louisa's case, "the evidence for her having drowned is slight".
He adds that because Louisa's body had been in the water for multiple days, deterioration had set in, making an autopsy more difficult.
Duflou says the examining pathologist did a thorough autopsy — but Duflou differs on what should have been recorded as the cause of death.
After examining photographs taken of the outside and inside of Louisa's neck, Duflou identified potential internal abnormalities.
"To me, they looked like they could have been bruises," Duflou says, meaning that strangulation cannot be ruled out.
If strangulation did occur, Duflou says he could not say if it would have resulted in death. His report records Louisa's cause of death as "unascertained".
Ralph says Duflou's finding that strangulation cannot be ruled out was surprising — and heartening for his team's attempts to have the case reopened.
"It's certainly something that the coroner would want to examine very, very closely."
Tass will never stop fighting
The dead woman found in a creek in a pink dressing gown only rated a small article in the local newspaper back in 2011.
Since the podcast, the name Louisa Ioannidis and her story have prompted more than 22,000 people to sign a petition calling for an inquest.
The response has buoyed Tass, who never accepted that Louisa, a good swimmer, drowned in the creek by accident, and he has never accepted that it was suicide.
“She still loved life,” he says. “Not once did she ever give me any inclination that she was even thinking that.”
Louisa was a fighter, Tass says. And so is he.
“I haven’t stopped,” Tass says, “and I don’t think I will until I get justice for my sister Louisa.”
Watch Part 2 of Australian Story's 'Say My Name', 8pm, on ABCTV and ABC iview. Catch up on part 1 now on ABC iview.
