Anna Rosa
LIVA
Anna Rosa
LIVA
Anna Rosa Liva, then aged 30 years, was an Italian national who was in Australia, travelling. She was last seen alive walking north along Hutchinson Street, Coober Pedy, SA around midday on Thursday 28 November 1991. She had just visited the Coober Pedy Council Office. She did not attend an appointment at 2.00 p.m. for a tour. Ms Liva has not been seen since this time.
Anna was an experienced traveller and was backpacking around Australia. Her disappearance was out of character. Police suspect she has been murdered.
If you have information that may assist police in Anna's disappearance please call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.
Rewards up to the amounts shown will be paid by the Government of South Australia, at the discretion of the Commissioner of Police, to anyone who provides information leading to the apprehension and conviction of the person or people responsible for crimes posted.
REWARD $200,000
SUNDAY AGE
Saturday May 9, 1992 - Catharine Lumby
AS A place to dump bodies, Coober Pedy is hard to beat. Abandoned mineshafts stretch in a 40-kilometre radius around the town. Just 100 metres below the surface lies an unmapped labyrinth of tunnels, blast holes and dead ends. As one local says: ``If you want to bury someone out here you just drop them down a hole and follow them up with a stick of gelignite. There are a million shafts and it's impossible to search every one." Murder isn't new to Coober Pedy. Locals will tell you that plenty of arguments have been settled with explosives in the past. But this time it's different. This time the possible victims are those of two young women. And their suspected murders have released a flood of anger and grief in the town.
Karen Williams, a local Aboriginal girl aged 16, was the first to vanish. As far as police know, she was last seen at 5am on 4 August 1990 by a young local boy. The pair had been out with a group of friends, dancing at the local disco.
An attractive outgoing teenager, Karen was living at home and studying in a local TAFE course. There was no reason for her to leave town unexpectedly. The local Aboriginal community has contacted communities all over Australia but she has not been seen since.
Anna Rosa Liva disappeared 14 months later in equally mysterious circumstances. The 30-year-old Italian tourist arrived in Coober Pedy by bus at 10pm on November 27, 1991. Next morning she booked a 2pm tour of the opal fields and headed off to the council chambers to inquire about local church services.
As a Jehovah's Witness, Anna was thrilled to discover that the tourist information officer was her resident pastor. They talked, and she promised to attend a meeting scheduled for 7pm that night. She walked out of the council building, on to the main street and was seen no more.
When she failed to board the 10pm bus to Adelaide that night, a search of her room revealed a neatly packed suitcase containing her ID. Her passport and bank accounts have remained untouched and she has not contacted friends or relatives since.
Unlike Karen's disappearance, Anna's has sparked a wave of police and media attention. Over the past six months, the closely knit community has been subjected to unprecedented scrutiny. Resentment peaked this week at a public meeting called by investigating police and attended by hundreds of residents. For the first hour the detectives fielded accusations that the town of Coober Pedy itself had been put on trial by the media and that police had helped them.
``We're not murderers here: if anyone did it they came from outside," said one man, echoing the thoughts of many others.``Why are you going on TV and calling it murder, why are you saying we know something about someone here we aren't telling? Do you know what this is doing for Coober Pedy?" His anger and disbelief echo throughout the town, bespeaking something more than the usual resentment at media inaccuracy and intrusion. Behind such feelings lie a deep frustration and fear about the way life in Coober Pedy is changing.
A collection of corrugated iron, stone dugouts and red dust, Coober Pedy from the air looks like rubble swept out to the edge of the desert. The sense of abandonment is heightened by the open-cut mines which ring the town, lending the surrounding landscape a surreal, lunar appearance.
Since 1985 the isolation of Coober Pedy has been illusory. The sealing of the Stuart Highway, a long streak of bitumen running from Adelaide to Darwin, puts the town in reach of thousands of tourists _ and a new, transient class of resident.
Most Coober Pedy residents settled in the 1960s and '70s, coming from all over the globe to try their luck in the opal fields. Forty-four nationalities co-exist in a population of 5000. Greek, Italian, Serbs, Croats, German, Anglo-Saxons _ even an Eskimo, the locals proudly point out in the pub.The town is now dominated by a core of long-term residents proud of the way their town has grown and flourished in such a harsh environment.
Eric Malliotis, an ebullient Cypriot, is the mayor. When it comes to government he takes his cue from the landscape: less is more. Over a beer at the fish restaurant he runs with his family, he warns me that he punched the last journalist who denigrated the town. Law and order, he says, is dispensed in the same way.
``It's safe here; you can walk about and no one will touch you. We don't need the police. If a woman is raped everyone knows and we get the man: I'd kick his head like a football." But the Wild West tag no longer sticks. There are few Charles Bronsons at the local pub.
The reality is an ageing resident population of miners who are losing a two-year battle with the recession. The price of fuel and explosives has jumped, making it increasingly costly to work claims. And even when opals are found they are not fetching the prices they have in the past.
The town's sense of identity is being eroded in other ways. A growing transient population _ mainly single men who stay one or two years _ is regarded with suspicion by older residents. Coober Pedy is no longer a town where everybody knows everybody.
The disappearances have exposed many of these underlying tensions. The most common reaction, relayed through rumors, is denial: they don't want to admit the possibility that the girls were murdered by someone in the town. Ricky, a young Italian boy who was born in the town, repeats the most common rumor. Karen Williams, the Aboriginal girl, was, he says, killed in a panic by four of her own people. The police need not worry because the elders will deal with the boys. Anna Liva, the Italian girl, staged her own disappearance. Or perhaps Anna wandered into the minefields and fell down a shaft. Or maybe Karen simply took off with some friends. None of these stories is consistent with police evidence about the young women _ but they are retold with vehemence.
Contrary to local rumours, the police believe the women were murdered: neither had a reason to leave town unexpectedly and both were close to their families. They say it is unlikely that either fell down a mineshaft. Karen knew the area well and as I saw, contrary to popular perception, the
mineshafts are marked out by big mounds; you'd have to be blind drunk to fall into one in broad daylight.Ricky's uncle, Sergio, a miner who came to Cooper Pedy 32 years ago, tells me with conviction that an out-of-towner must be responsible.
``Truly it's someone outside. I know this place is wild _ I call it the mental hospital without a roof _ but it's not bad." Anger in the Aboriginal community has a different source. The search for Anna Liva has been extensive: locals conducted a dangerous three-day search of mineshafts and police were prominent. In contrast, the search for Karen was left largely to Aborigines. One community member, Mr Robin Walker, said: ``It's very hard for us: we are part of Coober Pedy but when we saw the helicopters and the dogs we said: `Why didn't they do that for us?' "
Police believe 30-year-old Italian tourist Anna Rosa Liva met with foul play in South Australia’s outback opal mining town Coober Pedy on 28 November 1991.
The experienced traveller, who arrived in town on a bus the night before, was last seen near the council offices at the corner of Hutchinson and St Nicholas streets near the centre of the bustling township. From there she simply vanished and has never been seen again.
Detective Sergeant Paul Ward, from the SA Police Major Crime Investigation Branch, said police believe her disappearance was as a result of foul play for a number of reasons
“We know she had plans for the days ahead – she was booked on a tour of the town that afternoon, she’d made plans to attend a Jehovah’s Witness meeting that night and she had made inquiries about attending a similar meeting in Ingle Farm, Adelaide,” he said.
“The dangers of open mine shafts in the area had been made clear to her and there is no indication that she was in any personal strife or difficulties.”
Newspaper reports from the time show that police also searched the area extensively, with the help of both Aboriginal trackers and police dogs, without success and her younger brother Constantino travelled out from Italy to help in the search.
“Also in more recent years police – with the assistance of local mining experts – have searched 12 or 13 mine shafts within 500m of where she disappeared as part of a separate inquiry,” Detective Sergeant Ward added.
“We’re confident she hasn’t just fallen into a nearby mine shaft.
“Unfortunately, we believe she may have got into someone’s car willingly, given that we have no reports of any disturbance in that area.”
Dtv Sgt Ward has conducted a case review of the investigation as part of the Major Crime-led cold case campaign, Operation Persist.
“We’ve had very few calls on this over the years which suggests very few people know what happened to her,” he said.
“But someone knows what happened to Anna and any information in relation to her disappearance would be helpful to us.”
Media coverage of cold cases is just one avenue being explored by police through Operation Persist. Others recent strategies include reviewing forensic evidence linked with unresolved cases, and the distribution of playing cards highlight outstanding cases – and the rewards offered in connection with those – to prison inmates.
In relation of Miss Liva’s disappearance, a reward of $200,000 is on offer for information that leads to the recovery her remains and/or the apprehension and/or conviction of the person, or people, responsible for the suspected murder.
Anyone with information about her disappearance is asked to call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or report online at https://crimestopperssa.com.au/ – you can remain anonymous.
LITERALLY without a trace, Italian tourist Anna Rosa Liva vanished from an SA desert town 25 years ago. Could her faith in God have been used to lure her to her death?
Ms Liva, from Pordenone, in northern Italy, arrived on a bus from Alice Springs at 10pm on November 27. At the time, Coober Pedy was a bustling tourist destination. She booked into Radeka’s Dugout, in Olive St, off Hutchinson St, the main thoroughfare.
That night, Radeka’s was busy, full of backpackers eager to explore the Outback town. It is unknown whether she left Radeka’s that night but, at 8am the next morning – November 28 – Ms Liva ate breakfast at the Last Resort Cafe a few hundred metres from Radeka’s and left around 8.45am.
By 9.15am, she had returned to Radeka’s and had a cup of coffee and spoke to staff, including owner Ivan Radeka.
Major Crime Task Force case officer Detective Sergeant Paul Ward said Ms Liva told staff that she planned to go “noodling’’ for opals. “She must have had a conversation with a local to use that term because it is quite unique to Coober Pedy,” he said.
There was an unconfirmed sighting of Ms Liva at 9.30am when a local saw a woman matching her description in Edward St, off Hutchinson St. There was a confirmed sighting – the last of her – at 11.30am at the council chambers, at the corner of St Nicholas and Hutchinson streets.
She was seeking tourist information and while there had a conversation with a worker about a common interest – the Jehovah’s Witness religion. “At that time, Anna made plans with the employee to go to a meeting of Jehovah’s Witness’ at 7pm that night in Coober Pedy,’’ Det. Sgt Ward said.
“While was there she also collected information about a Jehovah’s Witness establishment at Ingle Farm and obtained a map of Coober Pedy.’’
Det. Sgt Ward said he believed those two things were significant, in light of the fact she had booked an opal tour for 2pm that day.
“One would suspect if you were going to go on a tour, which also left from your hotel, you would return there and leave the map and religious material in the room so you did not have to take it with you,’’ he said.
“I suspect once she has left the council chambers she has disappeared shortly after that. I don’t believe she has made it back to her accommodation, which was only 300m or so down Hutchinson St.”
If that scenario is correct, Ms Liva was either abducted from Hutchinson St or got into a vehicle willingly. Detectives feel the latter is more likely. “The conversation at the council chambers certainly indicates she had made plans that she intended keeping,” Det. Sgt Ward said. “She had booked in the opal tour at 2pm. She did not make it to the appointment.”
Det. Sgt Ward is confident two other murders at Coober Pedy – that of Karen Williams in 1990 and German tourist Anne Neumann in 1993 – are not linked to the Liva case.
In the initial stages of the Liva inquiry, detectives closely scrutinised one local resident, who is now deceased, but Det. Sgt Ward believes he was not involved in her death. No other suspects have emerged. Detectives also believe it is unlikely Ms Liva would have wandered off and fallen down a mineshaft.
During searches for Ms Williams’ body, more than a dozen shafts near where Ms Liva was last seen were searched and nothing located.
“If you exclude the possibility that she has fallen down a shaft, that she has made positive plans that day and beyond, there was no indication she was in any personal difficulty, it is hard to look beyond that she has been the victim of foul play,” Det. Sgt Ward said.
“It is most likely she engaged in discussion with someone and went willingly with that person and that person has then killed her.”
Frustratingly, over the past 25 years, police have received very little information concerning Ms Liva’s disappearance. This indicates whoever abducted and then, presumably, murdered and disposed of her body most likely acted alone and may take their sinister secret to their grave.
Ms Liva’s father, Vincenzo, died in 2006 and her mother, Luigia, 87, is in poor health and still extremely distressed about losing her daughter. Another sibling, Serge, 48, is also longing for closure in the case.
When Vincenzo died, the brothers wanted to include something on the tombstone about Anna, but his mother found it too painful.
Like police, Mr Liva also has his theory on what happened to his sister. He feels her faith may have, in part, been responsible for the chain of events that resulted in her death.
“She was a beautiful woman. At the time she was a devout Jehovah’s Witness and she placed a lot of faith in other worshippers,” he said.
“It would not have taken much for someone to say they were a Jehovah’s Witness and for her to go with him and to meet with foul play like we all feel,” he said.
“One of my most difficult memories I cannot come to terms with is the day the police in Coober Pedy gave me Anna’s belongings, her suitcase full of her things. That is a very difficult memory.
“I sometimes unrealistically hope that she has just gone off with somebody never to be found, but I know that isn’t a plausible scenario,” he said.
There is a $200,000 reward for information into the disappearance of Ms Liva.
Contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000
22 OCT 2018 7:33 PM AEDT
Italian citizen Anna Rosa Liva arrived in Coober Pedy on a bus on the evening of 27 November 1991 and was last seen alive about midday the next day in the main street.
An experienced traveller, she was last seen near the council offices at the corner of Hutchinson and St Nicholas streets near the centre of the bustling township.
The 30-year-old had plans for the days ahead – a tour of the town that afternoon and attending a Jehovah’s Witness meeting that night.
Investigators are confident she didn’t just fall into a nearby mine shaft, but may have willingly got into someone’s car given an absence of any disturbance reported in the area.
A reward of $200,000 is on offer for information that leads to the recovery her remains and/or the apprehension and/or conviction of the person, or people, responsible for the suspected murder.