New hearing into Simone Strobel death

The five day hearing is due to be held in the NSW State Coroners Court at Lidcombe from November 11-15. State Coroner T O'Sullivan has been assigned to the case.

Simone Strobel was a 25-year-old German backpacker who was holidaying in Lismore in when she was killed. She was travelling with her boyfriend Tobias Suckfuell, his sister Katrin Suckfuell, and friend Jens Martin.

Ms Strobel went missing after a night out at the Gollan Hotel, and was last seen at the Lismore Tourist Caravan Park on Friday February 11, 2005.

Her body was found six days later concealed under palm fronds at the Italian Continental Club's bocce courts, less than 100m from the caravan park.

At a coronial inquest in 2007, then-State Coroner Paul McMahon ruled there was insufficient evidence to lay charges over Simone Strobel's death. A second inquest scheduled for February 2021 did not go ahead.

The NSW Coroner's Court has scheduled a hearing to look into the death of Simone Strobel in Lismore in 2005.

The family of murdered German backpacker Simone Strobel said last year that they were devastated when the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions dropped charges against a man relating to her death.

Tobias Freidrich Moran (nee Suckfuell), Ms Strobel's boyfriend at the time of her death, was arrested in July 2022, and faced a charge of murder and a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice. Those charges were withdrawn at Lismore Local Court on Wednesday, June 14, 2023.

The Strobel family, who live in Rieden in the Wrzburg district of Germany, had been waiting 18 years for answers on how their daughter died.

The family did not accuse Mr Moran of the murder, but had hoped an arrest and trial might give them answers as to how, and why, she died.

"Our disappointment is of course huge," Gustl Strobel said last year. "After eighteen years, we seem to have come no closer to solving Simone's death."

Neither Tobias Moran nor his sister Katrin Suckfuell attended the 2007 inquest into Ms Strobel's death.

After the charges were dropped last year, Mr Moran gave statements to the media calling for a cold case review of Ms Strobel's death.

He said the police focus on him as a suspect was another "lost opportunity for justice for Simone".

Mr Moran believed the "investigational bias" against him had prejudiced the truth of Ms Strobel's death from being revealed and hoped a cold case review, something his legal team said he has been requesting for many years, would finally be granted.

Following Mr Moran's statements last year, the family said they expected Mr Moran and his sister Katrin Suckfuell to fully cooperate and then appear as witnesses if a further inquest was held.

"Our hope now rests on the fact that the new investigation, which was launched shortly before the indictment was brought, can now proceed without delay and that Tobias and his sister will fully cooperate and appear as witnesses there," Gustl Strobel said.