Suburban True Crime by Emily Webb

Author:Emily Webb
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Big Sky Publishing
Published: 2022-10-15T00:00:00+00:00

CAMPAIGN OF TERROR

It was a Friday night in Melbourne, 10 February 1984, and 41-year-old Nanette Ellis was planning to go out after work with the girls from the office.

Nanette was the advertising manager for the Free Press Leader, a Belgrave-based newspaper that was part of the Leader Community Newspapers group in Melbourne. The team was a small and tight-knit group, made up of editorial and advertising, who produced the paper for the residents of villages in the region known as the Dandenongs – one of the most picturesque areas in Australia. Nanette was a hard worker, well respected and loved by her colleagues.

A strikingly beautiful woman, Nanette had been a single mum to her two sons Greg, 16, and Craig, 18, for several years, since she and her husband divorced. She was paying off her house in Manuka Drive, Boronia – an outer-eastern suburb not far from her workplace – and had devoted herself to raising her boys. Apart from a regular aerobics class she did with a friend and a few drinks out with her workmates, Nanette lived a very quiet, modest life. Her looks were so arresting that Nanette was often asked to model for advertisers and had appeared in several fashion and lifestyle photo shoots for newspaper features.

But things had been quite unsettling for Nanette in recent weeks. On four consecutive mornings, her car had been pelted with rocks as she drove along Monbulk Road on her way to work. The first time it happened on 31 January 1984, Nanette wasn’t even fully aware that a rock had been thrown at her 1976 Corolla sedan, but it had lodged under the bonnet, piercing the radiator, which caused the engine to boil. She called Craig, who met her, and then organised a tow truck.

The next day, a rock was thrown at her car as she travelled to work between 8 a.m. and 9 a.m., and this time it shattered her windscreen. The rock throwing happened again the next two mornings at the same time. Was someone targeting Nanette?

What happened next left Nanette and her sons in no doubt that someone was victimising her. Sometime during the evening of Saturday, 4 February, Nanette’s car, which was parked in her driveway, was vandalised. Paint – a water-based fawn colour – was tipped over the roof, cascading down the boot bonnet and driver’s door.

Nanette discovered the damage at around midnight. It was frightening for this hardworking suburban mother who ‘didn’t have an enemy in the world’, according to her son Craig. Was it kids making mischief by vandalising cars? There had been a few reports of car vandalism in the neighbourhood that weekend. Or was it someone who had more sinister motives?

Then, unbelievably, Nanette’s car was targeted again. On Monday evening, 6 February, someone slashed her car’s tires, ripped off a numberplate and aerial and bent back the windscreen wipers. The police patrolled Nanette’s neighbourhood and escorted Nanette to work and back home for the next few days. Nanette’s boys kept an eye out too.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.