Jew World Order

A pool of blood on the carpet was the only clue that Elisabeth Membrey had disappeared.

At first glance all appeared normal in her suburban Melbourne flat.

Washing sat on a clothes horse and a mug was in the kitchen sink. In her bedroom her ballet shoes hung from a handle on a cupboard door.

But a few metres away in the hallway, the bloodstained carpet suggested something sinister.

The only other clue that something may have been wrong was that Ms Membrey’s doona was missing – most likely used by the killer to wrap her body in.

But there was no motive, no reason why the popular and vivacious 22-year-old would be killed.

On December 6, 1994, Ms Membrey left the Manhattan Hotel in Ringwood where she worked part time behind the bar and was never seen again.

Nearly 18 years later the quest for answers continues.

On Saturday, a Victorian Supreme Court jury had their say, finding that former Ringwood local Shane Andrew Bond, 45, did not murder Ms Membrey.

Their verdict leaves many questions unanswered.

During Mr Bond’s two-month trial jurors were told Ms Membrey’s housemate was away when she returned home from work to the Ringwood East flat they shared.

Ms Membrey was attacked and blood spilled on the carpet and walls, the jury heard.

She was then wrapped in the doona and driven in her car to a location where her body was disposed of.

Only Ms Membrey’s killer witnessed her final moments.

There is no dispute that she was killed, only who the person was.

The killer left no fingerprints and no DNA evidence that could be matched to help solve the crime.

No one has seen or heard from Ms Membrey since.

Her parents Roger and Joy Membrey have hoped every day for answers.

But even a guilty verdict would not have answered the most pressing question Ms Membrey’s parents Roger and Joy want to know – the location of their daughter’s body.

The Membreys’ search began after phone calls to their daughter on December 6, 1994, went unanswered.

Elisabeth was to have seen a doctor and they had expected to hear from her that day.

They went to her flat, knocked on the door and there was no answer.

With the help of Ms Membrey’s boyfriend, Jason Lee, they got into the flat.

Mr Lee wailed when he saw the blood on the carpet.

The Membreys called out their daughter’s name, but no one answered.

More than 17 years later, the couple sat side by side in the courtroom for almost the entirety of Mr Bond’s trial.

As the verdict was delivered they clutched each others hands.

Mrs Membrey dabbed at tears with a tissue.

Elisabeth Membrey was an attractive and outgoing young woman who had recently graduated from La Trobe University where she majored in politics.

Friends described her as friendly, someone who was always willing to talk to people and who always had an opinion.

She dreamed of becoming a broadcast journalist, but would never receive the job offer that was on the way from Channel 10.

Instead the station reported on her disappearance.

Police investigations in the Membrey case would last the best part of two decades.

Several people have been suspected of killing her.

One man, a former workmate, remained the prime suspect until 2005 when the Director of Public Prosecutions ruled there was not enough evidence to charge him.

The workmate called Ms Membrey his substitute wife and regularly flirted with her.

He even once placed his testicles into her hand while she was standing behind the bar at the Manhattan.

The workmate was eventually discounted after police accepted his alibi for the night.

Another man was once heard to say to someone outside a hospital in 1995, “I’ll do exactly the same thing to you as I did to Elisabeth Membrey”.

He also once made reference to having disposed of Ms Membrey’s body in a mine shaft.

Police determined the large, tattooed, goatee-bearded man did not fit the description of a man seen arguing with Ms Membrey on the day she was last seen.

The man committed suicide in the late 1990s.

A call to police in 2006, the year a $1 million reward was offered, gave the investigation a new focus.

Mr Bond had been one of a number of people interviewed by police in the weeks after Ms Membrey’s disappearance.

He was a drinker at the Manhattan in 1994.

In 2008, detectives travelled to Western Australia, where Mr Bond was working in the mines, to interview him again.

The video recorded interview would give jurors at his recent trial their only real glimpse into the personality of the man whose fate they were deciding.

The thickset Mr Bond wore a singlet and had his sunglasses on his head during the interview conducted around an oval table in a room at a police station.

Detectives Ron Iddles and Tim Peck sat either side of him.

Det Peck quickly cut to the chase and asked Mr Bond why police should believe he did not murder Ms Membrey.

“One, because I didn’t do it, two, I might have known her as a barmaid, once or twice that’s it,” Mr Bond replied.

As the 56-minute interview continued, Mr Bond grew frustrated as detectives continued to press him. At one point Mr Bond said: “This is getting beyond a joke”.

“I didn’t do anything to Elisabeth Membrey,” he said.

Mr Bond told the detectives his only memories of Ms Membrey were the pictures he had seen of her in the newspaper or on television.

After his first court hearing on April 20, 2010, the Membreys told reporters they hoped the arrest might lead to their daughter’s remains being found.

She deserved the dignity of a funeral, they said.

Mr Bond’s trial began in February this year.

Prosecutor Geoffrey Horgan SC presented a circumstantial case with many elements to the jury.

It included an alleged confession from Mr Bond that he had cut Ms Membrey’s throat.

There were also witnesses who claimed to have heard him talk about dramas with a girl in Melbourne and how he “got rid of her”.

Mr Bond’s former housemate alleged Mr Bond came home covered in blood around the time Ms Membrey disappeared.

Mr Bond told the housemate he had an epileptic fit.

The next day, the housemate said, Bond told him he “might be in a bit of trouble over the Elisabeth Membrey thing”.

A cell mate of Mr Bond’s, while he was on remand for the murder, told the court of an incriminating conversation.

The cellmate said to Mr Bond: “Hopefully they will find her body”.

He said Mr Bond replied: “They’ll never find her f***ing body”.

Mr Horgan told the jury how Ms Membrey was seen arguing with men three times on the last day she was seen alive.

One of the witnesses said the man had a limp. At the time Mr Bond had a leg injury and was limping.

The man she argued with was Mr Bond, Mr Horgan said.

During the trial Mr Bond sat in the dock, usually dressed in a dark suit and tie.

His face was scarred by acne, something his barristers said would have been noticed by the witnesses who saw the men arguing with Ms Membrey.

His parents sat on a long bench seat nearby listening to every minute of the evidence.

Like the Membreys, who sat not too far away, they also hoped for answers.

Mr Bond’s barrister Michael O’Connell told jurors they would not be satisfied of Bond’s guilt because there was no physical evidence against him.

“The fact is, very little is known about what happened to Elisabeth Membrey in the unit on that night,” he said.

“Virtually nothing is known about how she died or indeed why she died.”

Perhaps Mr O’Connell’s most telling statement came in his opening address.

“… there is much that is still unknown and that is so despite the fact that there has been an investigation that has spanned something in the o