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Beneath a disused armchair and buried in a swag for almost a year lay missing man Ashley Lunn, until a neighbour went looking for sewer pipes.
Lunn, a 25-year-old man from the Geelong suburb of Norlane, had not been seen in months, but there had been no missing person notifications to police or appeals to the community for help to locate the church volunteer.
Then in September 2019, a man began excavating his backyard in Geelong when he made the grisly find.
The man who found the remains said he first discovered a skull with shoulder-length hair when it fell from the swag before other bones, including a femur and hip, were also unearthed.
The neighbour took the bones to a police station, which prompted a homicide investigation.
On top of the swag-wrapped body were newspaper catalogues and a purple armchair, seemingly dumped on a shared fence line along Sparks Road in the city’s north.
At the time, neighbours said a man and woman who lived at the nearest property, and delivered catalogues for a living, had suddenly vanished months before the discovery.
It’s believed that Lunn, who lived with an intellectual disability, died between August and December 2018.
Almost eight years later, the Coroners Court of Victoria will hear on Wednesday that a woman who purported to be Lunn’s girlfriend – an unemployed asylum seeker named Maria Phillips – will be compelled to give evidence after authorities learnt she was living with Lunn for years before his death.
Amy Johnstone, the counsel assisting the coroner, previously told the court Lunn lived with the support of NDIS funding and a support worker which, in 2016, enabled him to move out of home and into a rental property.
Soon after, a woman named Bree, who said she was Lunn’s girlfriend, asked to be added to the lease but was refused.
“We understand Bree to be an alias … of Maria Phillips … who has also gone by other names, including Ashley’s name,” Johnstone told the court.
“The nature of her relationship with Ashley is uncertain.”
Police believe that from 2016, Phillips was living or staying regularly at the Norlane home. In June that year, Lunn told his disability support worker that the woman had taken his bank card and withdrawn a considerable amount of money from his account. Lunn asked for help to buy food, but refused to take the issue further.
Phillips was later seen at the house telling the real estate agent she was the cleaner.
Lunn told his support worker in 2018 he no longer needed their services before, in August that year, he was last seen alive in CCTV footage with Phillips at an ATM.
“This appears to be the last confirmed sighting of Ashley,” Johnstone told the court previously.
“Though neighbours said they may have seen him around Christmas that year.”
Lunn’s last rental payment was made in May 2019, before police attended the home in August to repossess the home.
Johnstone said that in September 2019, a neighbour was performing excavation work in his yard against a shared fence when he discovered skeletal remains.
In January 2021, further remains were found by a new resident clearing vegetation.
A postmortem was unable to determine the cause and time of Lunn’s death. No charges have been laid, though the coroner heard the facts raised the possibility his death was the result of a homicide.
An inquest is expected to begin on June 22.
Johnstone said Phillips was later convicted of using Lunn’s disability support pension until he was found dead.
“It doesn’t appear Lunn had had regular contact with anyone else in the months leading up to death,” the counsel assisting the coroner said.
At a recent directions hearing, Phillips appeared via an audio link and told the coroner she was in poor health at a NSW hospital where she was being treated for mental health-related issues.
She said she had contacted lawyer Zarah Garde-Wilson to represent her.
“I’m an asylum seeker, I think you already know that. I’ve had issues getting good consistent medical support, therefore my condition worsened,” Phillips told the court.
“I’m wearing a mask because I have TB, and I am in the TB clinic right now.”
Despite her objections to appearing in court in person, state coroner Liberty Sanger ordered Phillips to attend.
An inquest is expected to examine the circumstances of and leading up to Lunn’s death. The coroner heard there was no family present at the most recent hearing.
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