Melbourne couple facing eviction found mysteriously dead in home

A couple found dead inside a home in Melbourne’s west in a suspected murder-suicide had been facing eviction. On Tuesday, police tape remained sprawled on a wooden fence outside the Melton Close property in Werribee, west of Melbourne. While it remains unclear how the pair died, a neighbour told the Daily Mail he had made the discovery with the dead man’s brother. The neighbour, who hid his face as he talked, said he was reluctant to talk about the deaths while police were still investigating. ‘They’ve only been here ten months. They were renting. She was here first and then he moved in,’ he said. A For Sale sign remained outside the property on Tuesday despite the sale swiftly being pulled from the market after the deaths.

The home sits in a notorious patch known by Wyndham locals as ‘Birdsville’ due to most of the streets in the area being named after Australian birds. It is also known by police as ‘The Bird Cage’ because of an unusually high number of local criminals in the area. A night light remained switched on outside the property on Tuesday, with an old car still parked out front. There was nothing to see through an open window at the property to suggest any sign of the weekend tragedy. No furniture was visible in the front room, with just a cat litter tray seen. A Victoria Police spokesperson told the Daily Mail on Tuesday that the investigation remained ongoing subject to autopsy reports on both victims.

On Saturday, police were told a 31-year-old man and 29-year-old woman had been found dead inside the property. ‘A postmortem will be conducted to determine the cause of death,’ a statement read. ‘Detectives are not looking for anyone else in relation to the deaths and it is believed the parties are known to each other.’ The neighbour said he was unaware if the couple had been told they were being evicted from the property. ‘The For Sale sign only went up Friday,’ he said. ‘The police said they are not looking for anyone else.’ The man revealed he had opened the home’s front door after becoming concerned something was wrong.

‘We were on the phone to police because his brother was here and I had a key,’ he said. ‘So we opened the door and I went, “Nah, we don’t need the police – we need an ambulance”. ‘The ambulance lady said, “Someone has to go in there and see if they’re alive”. They weren’t.’ Other neighbours described the couple as being ‘Australian in appearance’, but otherwise knew very little about them. ‘I don’t know what went on. I’m as baffled as everyone else,’ one woman said. ‘I didn’t really know them. But we waved when we saw each other and things like that, but otherwise … they seemed like a normal couple.’ The incident comes six weeks after police found the bodies of Aaron Hammond, 46, and Chamindika Jayawardena, 47, inside their home at Hernes Oak in Victoria’s Latrobe Valley in March after another suspected murder- [self-murder]. It’s understood that the pair died when neighbours heard two gunshots within 30 seconds of each other.

Another murder-suicide also rocked Tasmania over the weekend. Police said a woman in her 60s died in a ‘very confronting’ apparent murder-suicide at a remote home in Tasmania on Friday before her suspected killer took his own life. But when Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was challenged by former Home and Away actress and radio host Christie Hayes about the need for a royal commission on violence against women, he ruled it out immediately. ‘Well, there’s calls for a royal commission about everything,’ he told the Hit100.9 Hobart Dan and Christie for Breakfast show on Monday. But Hayes – who starred as Kirsty Phillips on the Australian soap from 2000 to 2009 – fired back: ‘I think deaths of women are pretty paramount, wouldn’t you say?’

Albanese responded: ‘Yeah, they are, but you gotta work out what does a royal commission do, besides fund lawyers.’ After the on-air confrontation, Hayes told the Daily Mail the Prime Minister’s comments were ‘very tone-deaf and so out of touch’. ‘Does he want our women to be killed?’ she said. ‘No. Does he want to do anything about it? No.’