Simone Strobel inquest: Farmer Phil Lenton’s tearful testimony that man confessed backpacker’s murder to him

A man confessed to a farmer that he had murdered German backpacker Simone Strobel and another woman years earlier but reports to Crime Stoppers were not followed up by NSW Police for more than 13 years.

In sensational evidence given in Lidcombe Coroners Court in Sydney to the coronial inquest into Ms Strobel’s death, farmer Phil Lenton broke down in tears as he recounted a conversation with the local man identified as ‘Gus’.

Mr Lenton and his partner Sharelle Gregor told the court about the night Gus, a friend known to them and police, came unexpectedly to their house one evening.

They asked how and where he had been recently and he said he had been sleeping on a grave in Byron Bay of a middle-aged woman he had strangled some years earlier. He demonstrated how he had choked her to death after walking in daytime hours into a random house in Byron.

The stunned farmer couple then asked whether he had had anything to do with the death of Ms Strobel in Lismore days earlier to which he allegedly said “yeah” in a low voice and “with a grin on his face”.

“When he told me about Simone things got very dark in the house and I just wanted him out,” an emotional Mr Lenton told the court.

“He wasn’t big-noting, he was fair dinkum, he was for real.”

He described how he asked the man questions about both apparent murder confessions but he “clammed up” before saying ‘I know I have done bad things but I wouldn’t hurt you guys’.

“His face had changed ... he really looked like Ivan Milat (when he said that),” Mr Lenton added.

Mr Lenton broke down in tears as he said he reported both claims and the identity of the suspect to Crime Stoppers three days later but no police ever followed it up with him.

“I just thought Crime Stoppers would get on to it, I rang them twice … I’m cruel on myself,” Mr Lenton said when asked if he had ever reported it directly to a police station.

Police only ever took a statement from Mr Lenton and his partner 14 years later in 2019, and only 18 months after another farming couple contacted police following Mr Lenton’s recounting the Gus tale to them.

Gus, known to have been sleeping in his car off and on, had a history of behaving strangely and around the time of Ms Strobel’s murder also turned up at the couple’s farm house with a palm frond decorated with bottle caps, ribbons and straws that he called his “dragon tale”.

Days later it was publicly revealed Ms Strobel’s naked body, dumped in a disused bocce court in Lismore, had been covered in palm fronds.

Simone Strobel, 25, was murdered on 11 February 2005 with her body found six days later.

Police suspected her German then-boyfriend, now Perth local, Tobias Moran of the killing because, the inquest heard, of inconsistent statements and multiple lies he told after Ms Strobel’s murder.

Mr Moran was charged with murder three years ago after more than a decade of investigations, but the charges were suddenly dropped in 2022 and a second inquest into the death ordered.

The hearing continues.