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The concluding chapter of a mini-series based on the life of Sydney fraudster Melissa Caddick has left viewers divided after exploring some of the more bizarre theories around her disappearance.
Underbelly: Vanishing Act part two aired on Monday night and picks up after 49-year-old Caddick’s $6.8million Dover Heights mansion was raided by authorities.
Australian Securities and Investments Commission officers did raid the real Caddick’s home on November 11, 2020 after they had cracked open her $30miilion Ponzi scheme fraud.
The show begins with actor Kate Atkinson as Caddick putting on a brave face to enjoy dinner with her son Josh, played by Otis Dhanji, and husband Anthony, played by Jerome Velinsky, assuring them she will ‘sort everything out’.
Melissa Caddick (pictured with husband Anthony Koletti) vanished a day after her Dover Heights house was raided by corporate watchdog ASIC
The story is fictionalised in the new installment of Underbelly starring Kate Atkinson (pictured)
At one point in the evening, however, while alone in a bathroom the scope of the raid and possible prison sentence sinks in and her cool facade crumbles into frantic panic.
Caddick vanished after that evening and has not been seen or heard from since, with authorities assuming she had ‘done a runner’ with some stashed away cash.
Her husband didn’t report her missing until two days later saying her son heard her ‘go out for a run’ and he figured she was out trying to sort through her legal woes.
It wasn’t until a severed foot washed up on a NSW South Coast beach months later, which testing confirmed as Caddick’s, did police then conclude she had jumped into the ocean from cliffs at The Gap near her house.
While her movements the day after the raid are speculation, this is where the show plows on, showing Caddick leaving her house before Josh and Anthony wake and going on her normal jogging route.
At one point she pauses at a lookout on The Gap cliffs which is where authorities say Caddick, in a state of shock, committed suicide with a leap into the ocean.
But this is where the dramatised version really takes a creative leap, showing Caddick stepping back from the edge before exploring some of the more bizarre theories surrounding her disappearance.
The official theory is that Caddick jumped off cliffs near her Sydney house but the show (pictured) take a look at some other scenarios
Viewers on Twitter were less than impressed by the storyline (pictured)
The yacht theory:
Caddick did not have a passport in another name and all five of her known passports were handed over by her husband in the days after she disappeared.
This would make leaving the country via plane highly unlikely.
But one theory the show puts forward is that Caddick had given a mysterious yacht captain a payment to ferry her out of the country as her ‘plan B’.
In the show this falls apart when her husband holds a press conference and she becomes the most high profile missing person in the country.
There has been no suggestion of any such yacht in the official investigation.
The characters of George and his bodyguard (pictured) as gangsters Caddick owed money to were completely made up
A scene in which Caddick sizes up chopping her foot off to throw off police (pictured) was abandoned in the mini-series as quickly as it was introduced
George the underworld figure:
Caddick having a safe house on the NSW South Coast where she is found by one of her former clients George who turns out to be a gangster is entirely made up.
The shows writers invented the character to spice up the story. George also serves as a plot device to allow for dialogue in the scene where Caddick is in hiding.
There has also been no evidence turned up of an off-shore Cayman Islands account holding millions of dollars.
The show also explores the theory Caddick escaped on a yacht (pictured) but there has been no evidence to suggest this
Viewers were divided over whether the show was a worthwhile dramatisation
That Caddick severed her own foot:
Another theory the show explores is that Caddick cut off her own foot to throw off detectives while she went into hiding or skipped the country.
In the story she implores George and her bodyguard, already established as fictitious, to do the dirty work.
Aside from questions about whether Caddick could have survived such a procedure alone and without proper medical attention, a woman even slightly matching Caddick’s description with one foot would have surely caught attention but no sightings have ever been reported.
Caddick (pictured with Anthony Koletti) stole more than $30million in an elaborate Ponzi scheme and fraudulent investments
The show had mixed reviews (Pictured: Kate Atkinson playing Melissa Caddick)many ripping into the ‘pointless’ and ‘rushed’ plot veering into different theories only to have them scrapped as a fantasy
While the mysterious case continues to grip the public, the show itself was largely panned on Twitter.
The general reaction was less then impressed with the majority of viewer comments ripping into the ‘pointless’ and ‘rushed’ plot veering into different theories only to have them scrapped as a fantasy.
‘So this is what? A guess at what happened. This is poorly done, yikes,’ one fuming viewer wrote.
Source: DailyMail
