In December 2010, 24-year-old Phoebe Handsjuk died the most brutal death.

Fourteen years after Phoebe Handsjuk died at the bottom of a garbage chute in her Melbourne apartment, people are still coming forward with information.

They're either approaching investigative journalist Richard Baker — whose podcast Phoebe's Fall brought Handsjuk's story (and all the questions that remain) — into the limelight, or her forever grieving family.

"Some of it may be irrelevant, but some it appears to be very relevant," Baker told Mamamia's True Crime Conversations.

"Phoebe's family believe and I believe, there are people out there who know a bit more, who she may have come across or was involved with in that final week of her life, who, for whatever reason, weren't questioned by police… I think there'll be one or two more twists or turns before too long," he said cryptically.

On December 2nd, 2010, 24-year-old Phoebe fell 12 stories down the garbage chute accessible from her apartment floor, before landing in a wheelie bin at the bottom.

We know she survived, because there was blood spread across the room that indicated that the young woman tried to crawl towards an exit before succumbing to her injuries.

She was found at 7pm by the complex's concierge, and from that very night, police were treating her death as suicide.

As Baker explained, "ambulance officers didn't check for signs of life, which I found troubling… but the police had already made the assessment that she was gone".

Within days, the Homicide Squad had confirmed Phoebe's death as a suicide, which Baker says is something he had "never seen happen so quickly in any other high profile death in a suspicious circumstance involving a woman in a de facto or intimate partner setting".

Phoebe had been living in the luxury apartment with her boyfriend Antony Hampel, who was 20 years her senior. He says he arrived home before Phoebe's body was found, but saw her handbag on the kitchen counter along with her apartment keys and security swipe card and their home in disarray.

Phoebe Handsjuk was living with boyfriend Antony Hampel. Image: Sydney Morning Herald/Phoebe's Fall.

There was broken glass on the floor, a ripped cushion and blood found on Phoebe's laptop.

The scene, however, was never properly scrutinised. Computers weren't seized, glasses on the kitchen bench weren't tested for fingerprints or their contents, and no CCTV was taken by authorities from around the building from the hours around her death. The CCTV hard drive later went missing.

Baker was contacted by Phoebe's devastated family as they fought to have Phoebe's death investigated by a Coronial Inquiry, which — after some pressure from the media — it eventually was. But that finding only led to further anger and disappointment.

In 2013, Coroner Peter White ruled that Pheobe's death was 'accidental,' going against his own Counsel Assisting's recommendation of an open finding based on there being not enough evidence to rule in favour of suicide, accidental death or foul play.

The evidence that has never added up.

Phoebe's last known movements on the day of her death were captured on the CCTV from her building. She left just before midday with her dog as a fire alarm went off, and returned six minutes later.

We know that at some point over the course of the afternoon and evening, she consumed enough alcohol to put her three times over the legal alcohol limit, and there were traces of the sleeping pill Stilnox also found in her system.

Once intoxicated, the Coroner said Phoebe took herself out of her apartment and shimmied her way down the garbage chute feet first in an accidental act. But the police never actually tried to re-enact this feat, something Nine's Under Investigation did years later with great difficulty.

WATCH: There are too many questions remaining about Phoebe's death.

No fingerprints were found on the garbage chute either, which, watching the re-enactment, would be near-impossible to do without help.

As well as failing to properly investigate her apartment, police also didn't photograph or test the blood found on the level 12 chute door, check all the bins in Phoebe's apartment, or try to identify the footprints found outside the apartment.

Phoebe's body was found with her jeans around her knees, another strange detail that wasn't properly scrutinsed.

"Going down, I don't know how that that might happen, you're more likely to have your pants sort of pull up as you're going down," Baker noted.

Other inconsistencies include bruising on her arms consistent with grip marks, which suggest she may have been grabbed prior to her fall. This evidence wasn't picked up until the detective completing the brief of evidence for the Coroner looked at the medical examination photos of Phoebe's body.

As one of Victoria's most experienced forensic pathologists, Byron Collins told Phoebe's Fall that the presence of unexplained bruises on Phoebe's body — which may have occurred before her fall — meant an open finding [in the inquest] was the safest outcome.

In fact, based on all the evidence shared at the inquest, "several" Melbourne barristers and QCs told the podcast and The Sydney Morning Herald that an open finding was the obvious conclusion.

Phoebe's final week.

Phoebe and her boyfriend of 18 months had broken up four times in the six weeks before her death. According to Phoebe's pyschologist, who spoke to her in the days before her death, her mood was extremely low.

But neither the psychologist or Phoebe's family, who she was very close too, say she was suicidal.

She did have a Skype call with her mother Natalie Handsjuk on the Sunday before her death, who asked her how things were going after reconciling with Hampel.

Phoebe Handsjuk died in 2010, age 24. Image: Sydney Morning Herald/Phoebe's Fall.

Natalie told Baker that Phoebe had silenced the conversation by putting a finger to her lips, indicating he was in the other room.

The day before her death, Phoebe sent a strange text to her family and Hampel that read:

"HI FAMILY, I am in bed about to sleep and when I WAKE I will transform into the most incredible human bein [sic] you've ever seen! … (not) I will go to hospital. It's safer there and I hear the special tonight is tomato soup … Delicious! Nutritious! I love you all very much but not enough to send an individual text. Sorry about that but time is sleep and I must b on my way … Merrily, merrily, merrily. Life is but a dream. Xo.''

The text felt "off" to her family, and after struggling to reach her, they were reassured by Hampel that she was fine, and was sleeping off a 'bender' from the night before.

There is no suggestion that Antony Hampel was in any way involved in Phoebe's death, and the coroner specifically exonerated him in his 2013 findings.

Hampel's father was a Supreme Court justice, and his stepmother was a Country Court judge, which prompted Baker and his podcast to question if they were the reason Phoebe's case wasn't investigated more thoroughly.

"I guess it's human nature. People often, rightly or wrongly, tread a bit lightly around powerful people. You've got to wonder whether or not that happened fehere, because the point of doing this podcast was to actually put the justice system on display and ask the question, 'Did it give Phoebe a fair go?' I think it failed," he told True Crime Conversations. 

Where does Phoebe's case stand today?

In 2013, when the Coroner's findings were initially handed down, the state's narrow appeal grounds made it near-impossible to challenge the decision, with substantial costs to pay if they failed.

As Baker's podcast and investigation caused uproar in 2016, Victorian Attorney-General Martin Pakula asked the Coronial Council to review the rights to appeal "against the evidence or weight of evidence".

The Victorian Government passed laws allowing this to happen in June 2018, and extended the appeal window from 28 days to three months.

As of 2024, the finding in Phoebe's death remains as 'accidental' in the eyes of the law, and it will remain that way unless new evidence or facts emerge in the case.

Feature image: Phoebe's Fall.