Kellie-Anne Levitski inquest: Day Two

The second day of an inquest into the disappearance of Kellie-Anne Levitski involved the testimony of her father and several witnesses. 

Aged 38 at the time, Ms Levitski vanished from her family's property on Mount Darragh Rd after going to bed on the night of Sunday, March 30, 2014. 

An inquest into her disappearance began on Tuesday, July 24 at Bega Court House in front of Deputy State Coroner Magistrate Teresa O’Sullivan.

On day two, July 25, Ms Levitski’s father John Levitski said he had several different scenarios of what may have happened to his daughter.

These included having gone for a walk down the road and been hit by a car then dragged into the bushes; had an encounter with a neighbour or gotten a lift with someone and possibly ended up in the ACT. 

He also said she may have wandered off and become disoriented, had an epileptic fit then died and been eaten by wild pigs, or maybe there was “somewhere she is kept captive and used as a sex slave”.  

Mr Levitski said his daughter had moved to his property in mid-March and was living in a caravan. Their average daily routine was her staying up late at night, sleeping in until 10.30am, then Mr Levitski would bring her a smoothie, tablets and her cigarettes for the day. Later they would have lunch in the house, then work in the garden in the afternoon. 

He said the only argument they had during that time was during a conversation when he told her she was smoking too many cigarettes so was going to ration them out due to concerns for her health. 

He knew she missed her mother, had told her grandmother she “wasn’t happy” in a conversation over the phone and said her lifestyle at his property was very different to what she was used to, coming from the city. 

“We live in a remote area,” he said. “She was like a fish out of water.” 

Mr Levitski described his daughter as an intelligent yet troubled woman. 

“She was a respectful girl, she had a big heart,” he said.

But he said “there was another side to her” and he “didn’t know her life”.  

Earlier in the day, witness Melanie Schmidt said she was driving on Mount Darragh Rd from Bombala to Eden between 10-11am on a day around the end of March 2014 when she passed a woman walking along the road in the opposite direction who was being followed by a car. 

It was about 3km from the Levitski property – which Ms Schmidt checked later – and she slowed down enough to notice the car was a white Toyota HiLux utility, had a crate, camping gear and a tarp on the back “much like a pig hunters’”, was driven by a man and had maybe two more people inside.

She said the woman was a “big lady, not huge” who had dark hair with blonde tips in a ponytail. 

Ms Schmidt said the woman was walking in front of the car, looking back like she was talking to someone on its passenger side. 

She recorded the car’s number plate and texted it to her daughter when she came within reception, but then “thought no more of it” until September 2015 when she reported the incident to police. 

She attempted to find the text with the registration plate number, but said her phone had deleted it. She said her daughter may still have it on an older phone. 

But after checking the records of her telecommunication service police had said no messages were sent from Ms Schmidt’s phone to her daughter around midday from March 28-April 10. Although in court she said she had a second phone and was “pretty sure” she gave both numbers to police. 

When she spoke to police, Ms Schmidt also talked about her friend Sylvia Pajuczok, who went missing from the Bombala area in 2008. 

While she said she had considered stopping and going back to check on the woman being followed by a car as the incident bothered her, she had a young child in her car. 

“I feel terrible that I didn’t turn around,” she said emotionally. 

She also said she had seen the woman walking along the road several times before. 

Neighbour to the Levitski property Thomas Knowles said while their houses were far enough apart not to be able to hear conversation, one night he woke up around midnight to the sounds of an argument between a man and a woman coming from that direction. 

He could not confirm the date or who the voices belonged to, but thought it was around the day Ms Levitski had gone missing.

“I just woke up to raised voices,” Mr Knowles said. 

Another witness, who was living on Mount Darragh Rd at the time, said he was aware police had been interested in a storage unit he kept at a family member’s house on the Monaro, but said it contained “household items”.

The inquest continues.