An anonymous tip claiming missing backpacker Theo Hayez was buried in Bryon Bay bushland has led investigators to a dilapidated squatter house where they found links to a dead woman named Thea.
A private investigator for the family of Hayez, a Belgian traveller who mysteriously vanished in the NSW coastal town two years ago, has probed the online tip for the past 12 months.
The anonymous message was shared to the looking4theo.com website last year.
The tipster claimed to have overheard a conversation at a pub in which two patrons were quizzing a man about a missing Belgian backpacker.
'Quickly I realised that this conversation was in fact becoming an interrogation by two female patrons on another male patron,' they claimed.
'All I could hear was the females ask him "where is he then? You lot are a bunch of dogs if you don’t tell anyone where he is".'
An investigation by a celebrated Australian private detective has unearthed new clues in the hunt for missing Belgian backpacker Theo Hayez (left). Investigating the new clues led to an amazing discovery linking the case with the death of the similarly named Thea Liddle, 42 (right)
The tip led to an amazing discovery linking the Hayez case with the death of the similarly named Thea Liddle, 42.
Private detective Ken Gamble - who recently tracked down convicted conman Peter Foster - has since launched a pro bono investigation for the missing teen's family.
He found a man identified by the witness who claimed to have overheard him make the dramatic bar-room confession in a pub south of Byron.
Pings to his mobile phone revealed Mr Hayez may have gone on to Cape Byron lighthouse (pictured)
The post on looking4theo.com website a year ago revealed the man had broken down in tears when challenged about what he knew about Hayez’s disappearance.
He is said to have claimed Mr Hayez's body had been hidden in dense bushland in Byron.
But when Mr Gamble and police tracked down the man at the centre of the claims, he was found to have an alibi for time of Mr Hayez's disappearance.
In the pursuit of that lead though, Mr Gamble was tipped off that some of Mr Hayez's possessions had been dumped in an abandoned cottage near the hippy town of Nimbin, close to Byron Bay.
