Inside Australia's most unbelievable houso murder mystery: Barbara's body was left sprawled naked on the communal stairwell. Now jury hears questions about dog-poo thrower who once spat in her mouth but was 'playing Pokémon' at the time

EXCLUSIVE 

A cowardly crook who once bashed and spat in murder victim Barbara Chabaud's face was discounted as a suspect in her horrific slaying during a police investigation branded by legal experts as 'a veritable dog's breakfast'. 

A Supreme Court of Victoria jury this week found Daniel Waters, 43, not guilty of murdering his 63-year old neighbour in a city housing commission complex in leafy South Yarra, just outside of Melbourne's CBD, in May 2021. 

He had been Victoria Police's only suspect in a case Waters' barristers claimed had been bungled from the outset. 

A jury cleared Waters after hearing evidence another neighbour, Christopher Mark Oates, could have been the killer. 

Like Waters, who was captured on terrifying video abusing Ms Chabaud in the hours before she died, Oates too had reason to loathe Ms Chabaud. 

In January 2016, Oates, who is now aged in his 30s, attacked his neighbour after she intervened in a violent domestic dispute. 

The jury heard Oates 'flew into a fit of rage' spitting in Ms Chabaud's mouth and striking her in the face. 

Ms Chabaud was taken to The Alfred Hospital for her injuries while Oates' girlfriend was left battered and bruised after he choked and headbutted her. 

Oates spent 112 days in jail over the savage assaults on the women and had a two-year intervention order placed against him to protect Ms Chabaud. 

The battered body of Ms Chabaud was found dumped upside down on a stairwell within the South Yarra commission housing complex she lived in. 

In closing the Crown case, prosecutor Ray Gibson, KC said Ms Chabaud's body had been stripped naked in an act of pure hatred.

'This attack was savage and indeed very personal. He inflicted severe and fatal injuries upon her. The murder would have only taken minutes,' Mr Gibson alleged in court.

'Following his infliction of injuries upon her he dumped her body in the concrete stairwell. 

'He defiled her body removing articles of clothing, exposing her breasts and genitals. He pulled her pants down and pulled up her top.'

On the day of Ms Chabaud's murder, Oates was captured on a policeman's body worn camera telling him he was 'capable of violent crime' but couldn't have committed the murder because he'd been inside his apartment playing video games with his mate. 

The pair had been partners in crime for most of their wretched lives, robbing, stealing and bashing people to support their drug addictions. 

Oates had a criminal career going back to his childhood, with multiple convictions for committing violence against women. 

By his own admission, 'two-thirds of the crime rate in the Dandenong area went down when he left the postcode'.

Oates admitted to breaking into homes in the middle of the night armed with knives to steal money for drugs. 

The court heard his criminal record included convictions for inflicting serious injury, recklessly causing injury, unlawful assault, failing to answer bail, dealing property suspected to be the proceeds of crime and destroying property. 

Oates admitted to having a furious temper, which was brought on by anxiety attacks. 

Among his other victims were police officers and a paramedic who had attended his property to try and save a friend who had overdosed. 

'I am going to slit your throat, you c**t,' he warned the paramedic during the 2014 attack before smashing his face in. 

An another occasion, Oates bashed a Menulog delivery driver after refusing to pay the $45.90 bill. 

During an intense grilling by Waters' defence barrister Rahmin de Kretser, Oates was accused of spitting on Ms Chabaud's back is she walked down the street and throwing dog faeces on her balcony. 

He was also accused of murder. 

'Did you strike her to the face outside her apartment just like you had done back in January of 2016?' Mr de Kretser asked. 

'Did you grab her by the throat like you grabbed (your previous two girlfriends)?

'Did you completely lose control and bash her until it was too late?'

Oates denied every accusation tossed at him, including the suggestion he cooked-up his alibi by inviting his mate over while he cleaned-up the mess. 

The court heard CCTV footage captured beneath Oates' balcony showed a tissue descending from his apartment around the time his friend arrived at the complex. 

'Did you kill Barbara Chabaud and clean up and then drop that tissue or towelling over the balcony moments after you buzzed in (your mate)?' Mr De Kretser continued. 

'Did you get rid of the shoes and pants you were wearing when you came back from your Saturday afternoon outing because you were worried they might implicate you in the crime? 

'Or did you get rid of items when you went out of the building at 5.37 pm? Did you go out of the building to buy items to assist you in cleaning up a crime?

'Did you provide a false alibi to police because you're the one that had something to do with Ms Chabaud's death?'

'No,' came the answers. 

The jury heard Oates was a rampant boozehound, who regularly took cannabis and had been on antipsychotic medication. 

Oates admitted he was known to lose control and act out violently at the drop of a hat. 

'Yeah, um, in the moment, I don't know why I'm doing it,' he told the jury.

'It's only after the fact that I realise what's happening and, ah, that's basically why I've been forthcoming and pled guilty to all of my assaults because it's only after the facts of the assault happening that I can calm down and see things for what they were.'

He further admitted to carrying out brutal assaults against women. 

Oates maintained he had been playing Pokémon and Mario Kart with his mate when Ms Chabaud was murdered. 

'I was inside with him playing Nintendo Switch for hours, yeah. We'd been hanging out just for the night and just playing Nintendo Switch and, like, showing each other games, and, yeah, we've been, you know, drinking a bit of wine,' Oates said. 

The court heard Homicide Squad detectives failed to check what happened to Oates' discarded pants and shoes, which he was captured on CCTV wearing before inexplicably stripping off when cops arrived at the scene. 

'It's a pretty cold night to be wearing shorts and no shoes, isn't it, Mr Oates?' Mr De Kretser asked him. 

'What happened to the pants and shoes you were wearing in the lift earlier that evening?'

'I'm not sure. I must have changed out of them,' Oates replied.

Police came under fire for failing to carry out a single forensic procedure on Oates or demand to see his missing clothes and shoes. 

In closing the defence case, Waters' other barrister Moya O'Brien savaged the police investigation, accusing them of failing to properly investigate Oates' alibi. 

'It was a sloppy investigation, a veritable dog's breakfast,' she said. 

'You would have no difficulty in reaching the view that this was a bumbling, sloppy, half-baked investigation.

'If the Rolls-Royce is the desired standard, you would have no difficulty in accepting that this was an investigation like a 20 year old Hyundai clapped out Getz missing the back tyres.'

Ms O'Brien told the jury police had settled on Waters as the killer and failed to follow any lead that might result in other persons being investigated. 

She painted Ms Chabaud as a confrontational woman, who was estranged from her own family. 

'Ms Chabaud was flying off the handle that day. You've heard the taunts yourself that she was dishing out to Daniel Waters, "change your nappy, s*** licker", those sort of things,' Ms O'Brien said. 

She claimed a swag of others within the building complex may have had cause to harm Ms Chabaud. 

'Barbara Chabaud had other enemies in the building we say. She was someone who fell out easily with people. She'd speak out of school and she'd shoot from the hip. It's not the sort of environment, members of the jury, that you think you might want to go about making enemies. 

'None of her other enemies have been properly investigated nor excluded. Not even a door knock.'

Ms O'Brien argued the jury ought have had a reasonable doubt someone else was the killer. 

'There was a cursory investigation into the other residents of the building, but no real tangible follow-up.

'There's no restriction on the potential killers there might be from residents or associates at Surrey Road or people in the immediate vicinity,' she said. 

'Does this environment raise the reasonable possibility of someone else? Someone else in that apartment complex who could have killed Barbara Chabaud. We say, yes.'