Police also failed
to take samples of
mysterious, large
shoe prints
leading away from
the apartmentFormer boyfriend Antony Hampel
referred to Phoebe’s drinking problem as
“the monster”. They met in 2009, when
he was almost 40 and she was 23 and
working as the receptionist at Linley
Godfrey’s hair salon in South Yarra,
where Hampel had a regular cut. Hampel
is the son of retired Supreme Court
judge George Hampel, QC, and stepson
of serving County Court judge Felicity
Hampel, SC. He is handsome, smart and
an events promoter, with money and
glamorous friends.
Linley Godfrey, who had known
Phoebe and Hampel before they started
dating, didn’t expect the relationship to
last. “I thought Phoebe was just going
to shag him and flick him,” he says.
They went out for five months before
Phoebe moved into his St Kilda Road
apartment in October 2009. They
seemed an odd couple. She was a home-
girl, dressed in a singlet and jeans. He
was always at social events. She loved
painting and creative clutter. He “wanted
the apartment to look like nobody lived
there”, according to his cleaner.
Phoebe left the salon early one
day, stressed about cleaning an ink stain
from the apartment’s carpet before
Hampel came home. She told psycholo-
gist Joanna Young, who was concerned
Phoebe was potentially suicidal, that
Antony put her down and made her
feel stupid. Hampel told the inquest she
was self-destructive and “struggled
every day to do the simplest things”.
Natalie says her daughter drank to
overcome her social insecurities around
Hampel and his friends, who were older,
attractive and wealthy. She once called
her mum in distress. “She said: ‘Mum,
I just don’t know what to do. I love Ant
but it’s not working.’”
Phoebe walked out on Hampel four
times in the six weeks before she died,
only for him to convince her to return.
“He was a very controlling person and
he was a friend of mine,” says Godfrey.
“I felt sorry for him because I feel he was
in love with her and he was losing her.”
I ask Godfrey what he thinks is
the truth behind Phoebe’s death.
He takes a deep breath,
“I don’t know,” he says.P
hoebe loved
life,” says Lorne
Campbell. “Not
a day goes by
when I don’t think of her
and the horror of it,” he
says. He was planning to
see her on his 70th birth-
day in December 2010. Instead, he
went to see the garbage chute at her
apartment. He was staggered by how
small the disposal hatch was; it meas-
ured only 37cm by 22cm and was more
than a metre above the floor. There’s no
way Phoebe could have climbed inside
in her condition, he says. She was
uncoordinated after only two drinks, but
toxicology reports revealed she hadtaken the prescription sedative
zolpidem, known as Stilnox, and had a
blood-alcohol level of 0.16 – more than
three times the legal driving limit.
Then there were no fingerprints on
the chute door or steel surrounds, which
appeared to have been wiped clean, says
Campbell. “Right from the start,
I believed she had been murdered.”
Campbell was a police officer for
more than 30 years and was like a “dog
with a bone” when it came to catching
criminals. So when homicide detectives
decided within five days that Phoebe
had likely committed suicide, he started
his own investigation.
To see if Phoebe
could have climbed into
the chute, he attached
safety harnesses to two
of her friends and tested
them on a replica. They
were sober and athletic,
but could only climb in
with great difficulty.
He also pointed
out faults in the police
investigation, such as the failure to
examine CCTV footage, the failure
to seize computers in the apartment or
to test two drinking glasses left in the
kitchen. Police also failed to take sam-
ples of mysterious, large shoe prints
leading away from the apartment. “They
just missed so much,” he says.
A full inquest into Phoebe’s
death was held in 2013, despite themarieclaire.com.au 59TRAGIC ENDING
Above: Phoebe and Antony Hampel. Phoebe
walked out on Hampel four times in the six weeks
before she died. Hampel said “she struggled
every day to do the simplest things”. Above
right: the St Kilda apartment block where Phoebe
plunged to her death. Left: Phoebe’s grandfather,
Lorne Campbell, a retired police detective, who
started his own investigation into her death.