Murder Calls Australia: Mar 16

This week Murder Calls Australia explores the 1993 murder of Gabriel “Gabe” Meyer,
one of Far North Queensland’s most cold-blooded cases.

The victim was 17-year-old schoolboy Gabriel “Gabe” Meyer who had his whole life ahead of him.

On January 12, 1993, Gabe did not return home. Alarm bells rang for police upon discovering the last person to see Gabe alive was Damon Calanca – a suspect in a violent assault and stabbing of a man who was dating Calanca’s ex-girlfriend at the time.

Now just months later, Calanca’s latest romance was with Gabe’s older sister, Fawn, but it had ended badly when she moved to the United States to go to university and told Calanca she would not be coming back and the relationship was over.

But Calanca’s twisted obsession with Fawn was overpowering and it became deadly after Fawn broke off the relationship. He was incapable of accepting rejection and in his deranged mind he was prepared to do anything to get Fawn to return from America to Far North Queensland – even if it meant killing a member of her family.

However, seeing Calanca as a prime suspect, and proving the textbook sociopath was the evil killer, was a difficult job for the Queensland detectives.

Their appeals to the public would lead to many significant calls that had them diving in croc-infested waters, finding eerily empty graves in a rainforest, as well as asking the object of Calanca’s desire – Gabe’s sister – to help trap him in a recorded telephone conversation.

It seemed Calanca was about to get away with murder. And then a phone call came through on Australia Day that would crack the case wide open but also break the heart of a mother.

“They said a body of a young boy had been found,” explained Gabe’s grief-stricken mother, upon learning that her son’s remains had been found near Calanca’s parents’ house.

The calculated killer, Damon Calanca, was sentenced to life in prison with a non-parole period of 13 years.

Had he been convicted for his violent crime of assault, Gabe would be alive today.

Murder Calls Australia, narrated by Leila McKinnon, explores murder cases that were solved by the power of one of our most innocuous devices – the phone.

Murder Calls Australia is produced by Screentime Banijay for the Nine Network.

8.40pm Wednesday on Nine.