In a new TVNZ+ series, John Campbell investigates the mysterious death of 30-year-old Auckland woman Rachel Molloy and talks to her mother for whom the case is far from closed.
Watch this story on our home for news, in-depth and consumer stories TVNZ+.
In May last year I received an email from a radio producer named Nikki Carrol.
Carrol works at Coast Access Radio, normally in Waikanae. But in early 2023 she was doing a show from the Levin studio, in the town’s main shopping mall. It’s a lovely thing – parked right next to Farmers, the station is, as its name would suggest, literally accessible. People can pop in with information and story ideas, which is what happened when a woman approached Carrol with an abbreviated version of a strikingly sad, unsettling story. And she said, “you have to meet my sister”.
A few days later, the woman brought in her sister, whose name is Mandy Molloy. In 2022 Mandy had lost her 30-year-old daughter, Rachel, in what was decreed by police to be a tragic accident – a fall from her own front porch to the foot of ten concrete steps, resulting in a catastrophic head injury from which she died a day later.
But it wasn’t just that huge loss that consumed Mandy. It was her sense of the police handling of the case, and a restless, troubling sense of doubt. A feeling that her treasured daughter had unresolved question marks around her death.
Nikki Carrol decided Mandy’s story needed to go wider than Coast Access Radio and sent me an email. “I was told on good authority that John Campbell always answers his TVNZ emails,” she said.
On that small detail, I have to admit, she was mistaken. I’ve never before confessed to how bad I really am at clearing my inbox. I’m very male in my inability to multitask and I view every email as a potential foot-trip in my already chaotic day. But for some reason, I read this one. Then I called Mandy and said, “tell me the story of Rachel”.
It was the first of hundreds of conversations between us.
The first time I met Mandy she reminded me of my childhood – like the mum of a friend whose house you want to go to because there’s always baking in the pantry. The kind of mum who’ll apply some Dettol when you scrape your knee, but won’t hesitate to tell you when you’re being a little sh*t.
Mandy runs a swim school specialising in nervous or phobic children and adults. She trains swimmers for the Special Olympics. She’s deeply entrenched in the local Levin community and absolutely loves the place.
I never got the chance to meet Rachel Molloy but I suspect she shared many traits with her mother – she too was feisty, wilful, singular, kind. But like a lot of smalltown kids Rachel couldn’t get to the big city fast enough. And in Auckland, after a few false starts, she began building an exciting adult life. She got an office job she loved with colleagues who adored her, she got tattoos, dyed her hair platinum blonde, downloaded all the apps, dated, posted it all on social media.
“She was larger than life. Beautiful, inside and out. Kind to a fault,” says Mandy.
Sadly, it was Rachel’s kindness that led to a horrible thing happening to her, almost breaking her, two years before her death.
The night that changed Rachel
It was June 2020, and Rachel was outside the foyer of the high-rise central-city building where she had an apartment, when a woman, apparently distressed, approached her for help. Many of us, meeting a stranger at night in central Auckland, would politely scuttle to the other side of a locked door. Rachel however had a generous spirit. “She was a quirky girl, crazy sometimes, but we all loved that about her,” says Mandy. Rachel invited the woman up to her apartment.
What happened next has now been relayed in police stations and court rooms, watched on CCTV footage, and kept on files. Some of it remains alleged, but what’s established as fact is that the woman Rachel let into her apartment then let in four more people, who robbed Rachel of many of her possessions – clothes, makeup, electronics, her phone. Some of these people have appeared in court for these crimes and pleaded guilty.
Rachel knew none of what was going on. After letting the first woman into her apartment, she remembered nothing until waking, some hours later, to find her home emptied of possessions.
One of the co-offenders, who pleaded guilty to property charges, talked of Rachel being “wazzed” with “G”. Rachel believed she was somehow given the date rape drug.
What is “alleged” is that Rachel was also sexually assaulted that night – for that charge there was a pending court case, which didn’t happen because just weeks before it was due to take place, Rachel died.
For Mandy, those two dreadful nights – June 2020 and May 2022 – are linked.
“This crime was significant,” she says of the drugging, the burglary and the alleged sexual assault. “This had ruined her life. She had no quality of life after that crime. It devastated her. It changed her.”
After the crime, Rachel began taking medication for depression and anxiety and was known to be self-medicating with alcohol. When she died, normal medication levels were found in her system, as was a high level of alcohol, more than four times the legal driving limit. Meds and booze – a potent combination, but was it enough to cause Rachel, a regular drinker, to fall backwards from the top of ten steps and land at the foot of them, smashing her skull and causing fatal injuries to her brain, but with no other injuries or marks to her body?
For Mandy and her partner Leon, Rachel’s stepdad, her death was initially accepted as an accident. From the chilling knock on their door at 4.45am that morning in May 2022 – a policeman informing them Rachel had fallen and wasn’t expected to survive – through the grim drive to Wellington, the anxious flight to Auckland, their final moments with Rachel, Mandy didn’t question that her daughter had had an accident.
The words Mandy can’t unhear
But then, Mandy says, while Rachel was still on life support, prior to donating her organs, something unexpected happened. She says a police constable at the hospital told her they were treating Rachel’s accident as a possible crime, that a forensic examination of Rachel’s flat was being done, “as we speak”, and that a detective would be in touch.
Mandy has never been able to unhear those words. They changed her life, and her daughter’s death.
Mandy says the constable texted her the name and number of a detective who would be in touch.
I asked her to show me that text message and there it was: sent at 1.13pm, May 5, 2022.
Check out John Campbell’s in-depth investigation on TVNZ+ (Source: 1News)
After Rachel died, Mandy went to her beloved daughter’s flat to clean it up. There she found what she believed could be signs of a struggle, broken glass throughout the flat and – most surprisingly – Rachel’s phone on the couch. “That really confused me, because she never left it,” says Mandy. “She didn’t even go to the bathroom without a phone.”
The detective who Mandy was told to expect to hear from never did get in touch. The police closed Rachel’s case, deemed it an accident, put it to rest. But Mandy, who had unanswered questions, was not able to do the same.
You have to be grateful to Levin Mall, and radio stations with public-facing windows. How else would a journalist in Auckland meet a mother in Levin, a mother grieving a daughter who died in what police have decided is an accident? Police who opened Mandy’s mind to other possibilities and then appeared to exclude them without persuading her it was reasonable to do so.
After I hung up from Mandy that first day, I put in my first request for an OIA and started digging. The result is the six-part series on TVNZ+, The Woman at the Bottom of the Stairs.