Mystery of missing girl Quanne Diec unsolved as NSW coroner says she died by homicide
A missing Sydney schoolgirl died by homicide but where or precisely how remains a mystery after an inquest, as her body has never been found.
Quanne Diec, 12, was last seen walking from her Granville home to catch a train to Strathfield Girls high school almost 23 years ago.
She never arrived and her family reported her missing on the evening of 27 July 1998.
The New South Wales state coroner Derek Lee on Monday said she had died by homicide.
“However, the available evidence and the absence of any postmortem examination does not allow for any finding to be made as to the precise cause of death Quanne’s death,” Lee wrote in his inquest findings.
He recommended that the case be referred to the state’s unsolved homicide squad for further investigation as per protocol.
The inquest had focused on the acquitted suspect in her death, Vinzent Tarantino, who was found not guilty of murder by a NSW supreme court jury in 2019.
Quanne’s devastated family who struggled to understand this decision were acknowledged by Lee, who called their anguish indescribable.
Tarantino had made a number of “confessions” to abducting then dumping the schoolgirl’s body in bushland, including to police in 2016 when he walked into a police station.
No new evidence surfaced at her inquest.
The day the “well-liked and wellrounded” child disappeared, a neighbour said she had seen a young foreign-looking girl speaking to a man in a white van.
Shortly afterwards the vehicle, which was marked with blue and white stripes, drove away with the girl inside.
Other alleged sightings and persons of interest dropped away to leave Tarantino as the remaining “significant” person of interest.
His then-girlfriend, Laila Faily, was reporting domestic violence incidents in October 1998 when she disclosed that her boyfriend had admitted strangling Quanne on his bed before dumping his mattress.
She later told police he said he had “fucked up” and strangled the girl when she would not stop screaming, and that he had dumped her body near Wollongong.
In late 2011 Tarantino made another so-called confession to another one of his girlfriends.
After calling the missing persons unit in 2003, saying he had information regarding Quanne’s whereabouts, then withdrawing this, Tarantino called his two brothers in 2016 saying he was going to tell police what had happened.
“When I was out of it on drugs I did a horrible thing … I have to go in and open up … I killed a fucking kid,” he told his family.
Throughout his statements he also said his life was being threatened by bikie gangs after he witnessed a shooting, a reason his defence gave the jury as to why he believed he would be safer in jail.
Police never uncovered any evidence to say outlaw motorcycle gangs were behind this fear.
Tarantino led police to an area of bushland south of Sydney where he said she had been buried, but her body has never been found.