Australian conwoman Melissa Caddick vanished before she was infamous. She was also gone before most of her clients knew they had been defrauded out of more than $23m.
Caddick almost certainly would not have become such a figure of mystery and intrigue if she’d had her day in court.
Instead, in November 2020, when many Australians had spent much of the past year in Covid lockdown, Caddick disappeared.
A new sheen of cunning was instantly applied to her crimes: not only had Caddick managed to con dozens of people out of millions of dollars, but she had escaped before she was caught.
The truth,…