Body In Lake Case: Mother Weeps For A 'loving And Respectful' Girl

The Age

Wednesday November 8, 2006

DAN OAKES

ONE day early in September, Naomi Bernaldo rang her mother Annemarree Burke. Naomi said she and her boyfriend were going to Halls Gap for a couple of days, and would drop a Collingwood Football Club door chime at her grandmother Val's Ararat house on the way.

"I said 'Ring me and let me know how you are' and she said 'OK, love you heaps, Mum.' I said I loved her too. That was the last time I spoke to her," a distraught Mrs Burke said yesterday.

Last Thursday, 19-year-old Naomi's naked body was found floating in St George's lake, near Creswick, 20 kilometres from Ballarat. She had been shot and stabbed, and her body wrapped in chicken wire and weighed down with rocks.

Naomi's boyfriend, Darren Ellis, 35, has been charged with her murder.

It is understood that somebody heard arguing in the Creswick house the couple shared, and when Naomi was not seen for a couple of weeks and the body was found, they called police.

Mrs Burke is horrified that people might think she and her daughter were estranged because she did not report Naomi missing during the six weeks between them speaking last and Naomi's body being found. Sitting in her lounge room in Maryborough yesterday, surrounded by her brother, sisters and her husband, Jim, she said Naomi was a "traveller" who often went a few weeks without calling her, but always got in touch eventually.

"We hadn't had a 'living' mother and daughter relationship over the past couple of years, but we had a relationship," Mrs Burke said. "She always made sure she kept in contact. She loved her little sister, Melanie, she was constantly ringing up to see how she was, writing letters to her, sending her birthday presents.

"I don't ring my mum on a weekly basis, it's not an unusual thing for a daughter or son not to ring their mother, they don't have to ring every day. To say we weren't in contact because I hadn't heard from her is unfair."

When Mrs Burke spoke to her mother last week, she asked her if she had heard from Naomi. Her mother said she had not and that she was concerned, but Mrs Burke said they shouldn't worry because "that's Naomi".

Naomi left school when she was 15 and lived with her sister in Melbourne before moving to Bendigo, then on to Cairns, Ballarat, and eventually Creswick. She attended educational courses, most recently on computers.

She met Ellis in Ballarat when she began doing the books for his motorcycle business.

Mrs Burke was concerned that Ellis was almost twice Naomi's age. But the two were together for almost two years and seemed happy.

Mrs Burke describes Naomi as an attractive, loving girl who was respectful and polite.

"She loved life, but she wasn't a party animal," she said. "She didn't smoke, she'd have a drink occasionally, she was a bit reclusive, she didn't mingle a lot, she liked to be by herself." Naomi will be buried in Ararat, alongside her father, who died 17 years ago.

© 2006 The Age

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