Mystery acid burns covered body of mother-of-three before death
Sydney: A nurse and mother-of-three, Monika Chetty, was found in bushland near a suburban street in southwest Sydney with mysterious acid burns to most of her body.
Now, a decade later, a coronial inquest has concluded that the case is a mystery. On January 4, 2014, an anonymous caller contacted emergency services about the welfare of a woman lying in bushland in West Hoxton.
Chetty, 39, was taken to Concord Hospital suffering acid burns to 80 per cent of her body, so severe she could not be identified. Doctors hypothesised nearly eight litres of hydrochloric acid was used in the attack. She died in hospital three weeks later.
Before her death, Chetty told police that she was lying on a park bench in Liverpool when a stranger poured acid on her because she would not give him cigarettes and money. Police, however, believed this was untrue. At Burwood Local Court on Thursday, Magistrate Elaine Truscott found Chetty’s death was caused by the burns and was the “result of homicide by person or persons unknown”. While the inquest heard evidence Chetty “was involved in activities and had associations which would give rise to persons having motive and opportunity to cause harm to her”, how she was burned and who burned her remained unknown.
The only recommendation made by Truscott, the former deputy state coroner who heard the inquest’s evidence in late 2020, was that police continued to investigate the unsolved homicide. “I truly regret that this inquest has not been able to resolve the many questions about Monika’s death and has brought no person to justice,” Truscott said. The inquest found Chetty, a former nurse who separated from her husband in 2009 due to financial woes stemming from her gambling problem that was significant by 2005, was likely attacked three weeks before entering hospital. Despite her burns being deemed as nonsurvivable, she told doctors she wanted to be kept alive.
While her wish could not be granted, police discovered she had likely kept herself alive for weeks after suffering the burns. She was seen in public throughout December 2013 with tracksuits and bandages covering her burns, catching buses, hosing herself off and asking for money.
But it was far from the first time she was burnt.
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