Isla Bell, the 19-year-old whose body was found in a Melbourne tip 18 months ago, has been remembered as a loving, courageous and open-hearted young woman with a green thumb and an “exquisitely beautiful soul”.
Friends, family and supporters gathered outside the Victorian state library on Saturday to honour the teenager and protest against prosecutors dropping a manslaughter charge against the man who had been accused of killing her.
Marat Ganiev, 55, who was originally charged with murdering Bell on 7 October 2024, had his charge downgraded to manslaughter and, this week, withdrawn, with prosecutors saying they had insufficient evidence for a trial.
Ganiev has instead been charged with attempting to pervert the course of justice, devastating Bell’s family and prompting them to demand changes to the system meant to protect victims of crime.
Justine Spokes, the mother of Isla Bell, outside the State Library Victoria in Melbourne. Photograph: Jay Kogler/AAP“My mind was prepared for that outcome, because my expectations were low,” Bell’s mother, Justine Spokes, said of the decision as she addressed the vigil on Saturday.
“[But] I just couldn’t prepare my heart for that. And they didn’t prepare my heart for that.”
Spokes spoke of her grief and frustration with the legal system – which she called “sick and perverted” and “not a justice system” – and the flaws in the system designed to protect vulnerable women and girls.
However, Spokes said she wanted to honour her daughter by ultimately choosing love over “everything else”.
“It’s this revolving door of really hurting men whose hearts are stone, and there’s sort of no real social consequence,” she said.
“We tackle this systemic cultural problem of misogyny in Australia from the inside out, you know? And … the heart is the doorway.”
Sign up for the Breaking News Australia emailSpokes said her daughter had endured other “horrors at the hands of really unwell men” before the experience that resulted in her death, but despite this pain she “just kept sharing her exquisitely beautiful soul”.
“See, the essence of my baby was palpable wherever she went,” Spokes said.
Bell’s remains were found inside a fridge in a rubbish tip in Dandenong in Melbourne’s south-east in November 2024, about six weeks after the night police believe she died.
In addition to Ganiev, Eyal Yaffe, 59, was originally accused of assisting an offender and attempting to pervert the course of justice, but prosecutors withdrew the two charges and he walked free from court.
Spokes said there had been “all these chemicals around” her daughter’s body, meaning she could not touch her or brush her hair one last time.
Bell’s disappearance galvanised a community search that lasted for weeks but Spokes on Saturday said she knew her daughter had died the moment it happened.
She said she had felt her daughter come to her after her death.
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