On the fifth anniversary of Melissa Caddick’s disappearance, a criminologist reveals how it’s very possible the Sydney conwoman is still alive.

Xanthe Mallet tells Woman’s Day that despite the NSW Coroner finding in 2023 that Caddick is dead, she believes the financial advisor is far more likely to have had a “plan B” than taken her own life.

“Suicide was always the least likely option, given her personality,” says Xanthe, who is an associate professor at Central Queensland University.

“She was a very, very intelligent woman. She would have not expected to get caught. She would have always expected to stay ahead of the game.”

Melissa Caddick conned around $23 million from investors. (Credit: AAP)

The 49-year-old disappeared from her east Sydney home on November 12, 2020, the morning after her home was raided by the Australian Securities and Investment Commission (ASIC).

At the time Caddick was being investigated for defrauding clients. It was later revealed she’d been operating a sham investment scheme, raking in around $23 million from at least 65 people, including family and friends, and promising them huge returns.

Three months after vanishing, Caddick’s decomposed foot was found on a remote NSW beach, leading police to believe she had possibly jumped to her death from the Dover Heights cliffs near her luxury house.

So if she isn’t dead, what could have happened to the woman who left behind her now 19-year-old son as well as her second husband, hairdresser Anthony Koletti?

“Could she be out there alive without a foot? It’s certainly possible,” says Xanthe. “At the end of the day, you can live without a foot. I don’t think it’s likely. But it is literally physically possible.

“She could be out there – she’s got $20 million if she is out there, to help her.”

There has been all kinds of speculation as to where Caddick could be hiding if she is still alive. In 2024, there were reports that a woman who looked like her and had a limp had been spotted at a beach bar in Bali.

But if she is still alive, criminologist Xanthe warns that Caddick will be exhibiting the same kind of behaviour that led her to steal from friends and family.

“You’re going to behave to type,” she explains. “Psychopath’s brains are wired a certain way so they’re going to be behaving in a certain way. There will be elements of manipulation, control, power, dominance.

“It still hurts,” Anthony said last year. (Credit: Phillip Castleton)

“We’ve seen that with other repeat fraudsters. They go from one group to the next. They don’t change. They can’t change.”

And, heartbreakingly, the criminologist explains that even if Caddick is alive, it’s unlikely she will ever reach out to her remaining family members.

“Psychopaths tend not to form strong social bonds. The fact that somebody could defraud their own family and friends shows a level of detachment,” explains Xanthe, who was appointed to Queensland’s Centre for Domestic and Family Violence Research earlier this year.

“It’s much easier for them to walk away.”

Caddick’s husband, Anthony spoke to Woman’s Day on the anniversary of his wife’s disappearance last year, laying flowers near the spot where it’s assumed she took her own life and just a 20-minute stroll from their former home.

“It still hurts,” he told Woman’s Day at the time. “It’s been a difficult road.”

“I’ll never get over the way I lost Melissa,” said Anthony, who accepted that his wife was running a fraudulent scheme, but was critical of the way ASIC treated her. “ASIC should be ashamed of themselves,” he said.

In fact, in his coronial submission, Anthony said he offered suggestions to the coroner to “prevent such a tragedy ever occurring again”, but said he “was ignored
and belittled.”

Following Melissa’s disappearance, he suffered intense scrutiny from authorities, including from Coroner Elizabeth Ryan, who called him an “unimpressive and unreliable witness”. She also added that she had a “strong suspicion” he withheld information about Caddick’s movements in the hours before she was reported missing.

But the 42-year-old denied this last year, saying that he, too, was a victim, and continued to feel the heartache of all the lies and loss.

There was and remains no evidence that Anthony knew anything of his wife’s scheme.

“You don’t know what you don’t know,” he said last November. “It’s as simple as that.”

Left with little to his name after Melissa’s death, Anthony, a hairdresser by trade, returned to working full-time, and now works in a salon in Sydney’s East.

“I had to start my life again at 40,” the part-time DJ and amateur music producer revealed last year. “But I’m doing OK.”

At the time, Anthony was the main carer and provider for Melissa’s son from her first marriage. The now 19-year-old lived exclusively with him in an apartment in Vaucluse, in Sydney’s east, and was, at the time, studying at university.

The boy, who Anthony wanted to remain anonymous, was just 14 when he heard his mother leave home at 5.30am on the day she vanished.

“He’s doing well,” said Anthony. “It’s been hard on us.”

In 2022, Anthony declared that he didn’t believe his wife took her own life as was assumed at the time.

“I don’t believe that she committed suicide. Her love for her son, myself, her family and friends was far beyond that,” he said in a media interview. “I know why she died. Someone got greedy and wanted her dead.”

Police did not investigate anyone for the fraudster’s murder and other theories about her being harmed by a third party have been explored and dismissed.

During the hearing it was revealed Anthony took 30 hours to report his wife missing, and the inquest heard how police initially believed he was shedding fake tears. The investigators were also struck by his “extremely strange” behaviour after he declared himself “too busy” to make a missing person’s report at the police station.

Sergeant Trent Riley, who was one of the first officers to visit the Dover Heights home the day after Caddick disappeared, told the inquest that at the time he suspected Caddick was “safe and well” but Anthony was withholding information. The inquest heard that police initially believed he may have aided his wife in her disappearance somehow.

Anthony has always denied any involvement.

Caddick’s 55 victims shared a $4.25 million compensation payout in August 2024, following the sale of her assets, which included the mortgaged $9.8 million Dover Heights home. With other compensation payments, it brings the amount recovered so far to about 32 cents in the dollar for each victim, according to reports.

But Anthony, who walked away with little following his seven-year marriage, said his loss can’t be measured in money. “The emotional pain is a million times harder than anything else I lost,” he said on the fourth anniversary of his wife’s vanishing. “I’m still not over it.”

Caddick’s parents, Barb and Ted Grimley were forced to leave their million dollar apartment. (Credit: AAP)

The family home he shared with his wife was sold in October 2022 for $9.8 million to Tongha He, who was later photographed tying a bag of red chillies to the front door after taking possession of his new home. Red chillies are believed to ward off evil intentions and burglars in Chinese tradition.

“At the end of the day, it’s just a house to us,” a woman who accompanied the owner told the Sunday Telegraph around the same time.

Just three blocks back from the Pacific coast, Caddick’s contemporary-style mansion – where she was last seen – featured five bedrooms across two levels at the time of its sale. It had a rooftop terrace with views of the harbour and bridge, a garage that once housed her sports cars, and a glittering pool.

Several victims of Caddick’s fraud spoke to Woman’s Day in 2023 on the understanding they could remain anonymous.

One was an Australian widowed pensioner battling through her retirement and suffering “severe stress” after losing her life savings to the financial fraudster.

A woman using the pseudonym Alice, was a 71-year-old mum and grandmother who worked in education. She had invested her superannuation with Caddick’s financial services company in the hope it would provide a comfortable retirement for herself, and an inheritance for her adult children.

“It gets worse every day,” said Alice, at the time. “The worry is pulling my health down. After working hard for many years, my capacity to enjoy my senior years has been destroyed.”

Caddick used Alice’s and other victims’  life savings to fund a lavish lifestyle.

“When I met Melissa, she was empathetic and interested in me and my problems,” says Alice, who was recommended Caddick by a friend. “She was horrified to learn I had been widowed, and wanted to help me financially. I felt like she was someone to be trusted.”

After transferring her superannuation nest egg of $475,000 to Melissa, Alice received what looked like monthly statements from CommSec, the Commonwealth Bank’s online stockbroking firm.

Anthony now works as a hairdresser in Sydney’s east.

But it was all an intricate scam of lies and false documents. Caddick was using the savings of hard-working Australians like Alice to fund a life of luxury that included her harbourside mansion, a $300,000 Audi sports car, designer dresses, jewellery and skiing trips to the US.

When ASIC began investigating Caddick following a tip-off about her practices, Alice scoffed at the idea her “financial adviser” had done anything wrong.

“I thought it couldn’t be true,” says Alice. “I trusted Melissa.”

It wasn’t until Alice’s bank cards no longer worked that she realised she had fallen victim to a supreme con artist.

“All my money was in her name, so my accounts were frozen,” she says. “I felt utterly hopeless.

“My kids had to cover my living expenses. One of my kids borrowed money for me. It was hard and humiliating.”

At the time of speaking to Woman’s Day, Alice was at a loss to understand why Caddick’s parents Barb and Ted Grimley, who were also victims of their daughter, continued to live in the Sydney luxury apartment that Caddick helped purchase using stolen funds.

Caddick’s victims argued that the apartment, estimated to be worth $4.5 million at that point, should be sold and the funds be added to the pool for the out-of-pocket investors.

The Grimleys, who are in their 80s, had reportedly offered to vacate the apartment for $950,000, which would be a much higher return than the other compensated victims.

The couple later said they paid their daughter almost $1.2 million toward the mortgage on the apartment on the condition they could live there rent free until they died.

That luxury penthouse was finally sold for an undisclosed sum in March 2024.

The proceeds were used to pay back some of the money stolen.

The apartment, at the top of the Eastpoint Tower at Edgecliff in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, was listed for auction on October 10 for an estimated $5.5 million.

“I feel very sorry for her parents, but they should be treated the same,” said Alice.

She’d heard Caddick’s crimes had fractured the Grimley family, due to her relatives also investing with the fraudster.

“Melissa has broken up the whole family,” she said. “The relatives are not talking to the parents any more.”

In 2023, Alice wondered if Caddick herself is still profiting from her crimes.

“Until the inquest, I felt that she was dead, but today I feel that maybe she’s somewhere overseas,” she said.

“I search on the internet to see if I can see an appearance of her somewhere overseas. Other victims are looking into it, too. People are hurting and clutching at straws.”

“Melissa Caddick’s actions have caused me severe stress,” she said. “I’m ashamed  of it. I will never understand what Melissa has done. I don’t trust people like I did before.”

Last April it was reported that investors defrauded by Caddick would recoup a portion of their losses after settling a class action lawsuit with her auditors.

They had already been repaid $7.25million after liquidators of the declared dead fraudster sold off her assets in 2023 and 2024.

The 32 investors also launched a class action in September 2023 seeking damages from the five firms who audited Caddick’s accounts between 2012 and 2020.