The agonising wait for Aussie backpacker’s family
The family of missing Aussie backpacker Britt Lapthorne are still waiting for the results of an autopsy on a body found floating near a popular fishing and swimming spot in front of two of Dubrovnik’s luxury hotels, with the body so badly decomposed the gender cannot be established.
The body was recovered on Monday afternoon and Britt’s father, Dale, has provided DNA sampling in an effort to rule out that it is his daughter, 21, with the find, reported to police by a fisherman, though by Croatian police “almost certainly not” Britt.
Police said the body was too badly decomposed to have only been in the water for 2½ weeks , although forensic tests, including DNA samples, needing to be completed before any conclusions could be drawn.
Three years ago a British tourist, Peter Rushton, disappeared from a nightclub in the northern town of Porec and was found in the sea, with initial forensic reports suggesting the body had been in the water for more than eight months and police insisting it could not be Rushton, but tests later showing that it was Rushton and that he had been tied up, murdered and his clothes filled with stones.
Mr Lapthorne described as “extraordinary” the coincidence that a body was found within the timeframe of Britt’s disappearance, but police said it was not rare for bodies of refugees attempting to enter Europe from Albania to be washed up on the Croatian coast.
Mr Lapthorne said, “It is your worst nightmare in many ways, with this body we almost had some closure you know, some closure. I [could] at least say ‘I’m going home with Britt’.”
A Report by The Mole from assorted media sources.
John Alwyn-Jones
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