A man reported as “an acquaintance” to 20-year-old mum Karlie Jade Pearce-Stevenson has been charged with her murder.
The Daily Telegraph reports that Daniel Holdom, who was known to Karlie and her daughter, Khandalyce, is expected to face court today.
Holdom faces trial over the murder of Karlie, whose skeletal remains were found in the Belanglo State Forest in 2010. He has not been charged over the murder of Khandalyce, whose remains were found in a suitcase by the side of the road in South Australia earlier this year and is believed to have been two years old at the time of her death.
The Telegraph says the link between Holdom and the vulnerable Mum and her little girl isn’t yet clear, although “there was an unconfirmed sighting of the pair in the ACT in 2008, only hours from the notorious killing grounds of Backpacker Murderer Ivan Milat.”
The Australian reports police believe that Karlie and her daughter were “murdered at separate times and places.”
Karlie and her daughter “took off from the family’s home in a 1996 Commodore station wagon in 2006 after a dispute with her mother Colleen Povey.”
Ms Povey has since died, believing that her daughter was alive, but did not want any contact.
Earlier this week, police revealed that a fraudster impersonating Karlie phoned her mother and asked for money.
A woman in a wheelchair impersonated Karlie during a Centrelink interview in Adelaide in 2010.
Almost $100,000 has been withdrawn from Karlie’s bank account over the past few years. Much of it was Centrelink payments, but some was money from relatives who deposited the money for Karlie after receiving texts from her mobile phone.
Detective Superintendent Des Bray said on Tuesday: “We know tragically that some of those SMSs were sent to family members to again suggest that Karlie was still alive and on at least a couple of occasions that a woman falsely represented herself to be Karlie in communication with either family or friends.
“Certainly some of those communications induced some of Karlie’s family to forward some money and that money was later withdrawn by the offenders.”
Karlie’s bank account has been accessed more than 1200 times since she went missing.
