How a discarded coffee cup helped solve a 24-year murder mystery

Two houses, three break-ins, violent attacks and more than $100,000 stashed away.

Those circumstances led to the brutal killing of 72-year-old grandmother Irma Palasics.

It was one of Canberra's longest-running cold cases, until a DNA match brought down the attackers.

In 1999, two masked men broke into this Canberra house.

The couple who lived there, Irma and Gregor Palasics, were bashed, gagged, and tied up.

By the time the men left, Gregor was badly injured, and Irma was dead.

Gregor later told police the intruders had separated him from his wife, but he could hear her "terrible" screams from a different part of the house.

That was until the screaming stopped.

Irma had so many injuries that the doctor who wrote the post-mortem report said he could not identify a specific cause of death.

One theory was that she had been asphyxiated, with her nose broken and her mouth gagged with tape.

Forensics officers combed the house for days, and police interviewed more than 300 suspects.

Substantial rewards were offered to find the killers, but it all came to a dead end, morphing into one of Canberra's longest-running unsolved killings.

Irma grew up in Hungary in a large family.

Their daughter, Elizabeth Mikita, still remembers how her parents made the difficult decision to leave in 1956 when communist repression from the Soviet Union threatened Hungary.

"Mum was working, cleaning for the Russians, and she got to know them quite well," Mrs Mikita told 7.30.

Those Russians warned her to leave because the borders were going to be closed.

"She managed to talk Dad into leaving their half-built house, his work and everything else," she said.

"He took me on his bike. Mum took my sister. She was only about eight, nine months old."

"She walked to the Austrian border."

The family had fled with just the clothes on their backs and their passports.

In 1957 their prayers for a better life in Australia were answered.

They ran a successful kitchen manufacturing business in Canberra as their family grew around them.

Being targeted by burglars was the last thing on their minds.

Three attacks in three years

The brutal attack in 1999 was their third break-in.

In 1997 the Palasics lost $100,000 in cash that had been hidden under their former house, which was taken while they were at the local Hungarian club.

Elizabeth was in disbelief at the time.

"I just laughed. I said, 'You what? What the hell are you doing with a hundred-thousand-odd dollars down under the house?' Mrs Mikita recalled.

Her mother then responded with: "I thought they wouldn't find it."

Their grandson, John Mikita, said the money had been stored in Danish biscuit tins.

"There would be like five, ten tins, and the first couple would be still biscuits," Mr Mikita said.

"And then the third one, you open up the tin, and it was full of hundred-dollar bills that were rolled up in the tin."

"They just felt more secure having the money with them, and you can appreciate why ... when you leave a country with nothing on your back except for clothes, they didn't trust the bank."

No one was ever charged with the theft.

A year later Irma went to the garden at night get a lemon for her tea.

She confronted an intruder and was punched to the ground, but not before she pulled the balaclava off him as he and an accomplice fled.

"That was a very brave act by Irma," said Detective Sergeant Craig Marriott, who led the final investigation.

"That gained us a piece of evidence that in years to come, proved to be vital to the conviction of that person."

Irma went on TV to appeal for information.

"I said, 'Don't kill me, don't kill me'," she said when recalling the attack.

"You can imagine how unsafe she felt at that place," Mrs Mikita said.

The attack spurred the couple to move across town to the suburb of McKellar, where they thought they would be safe.

It was there Irma's worst nightmare unfolded, when she was attacked for a third time in 1999, as two intruders tore the house apart.

They were looking for money, which they found in a concealed compartment under the oven.

The robbery netted $30,000, but it cost Irma her life, before the two men melted away into the night.

But they left some crucial evidence behind.

Soon after Irma was killed, Gregor Palasics remembered seeing one of the men drinking from a container in the fridge.

Tests on a water jug and a milk bottle yielded DNA samples from two unknown people.

In 1999 the samples couldn't be matched but they could be preserved.

Detective Sergeant Marriott  said it was just a matter of time before the DNA could be used successfully.

"The two unknown DNA profiles from the … 1999 crime scene had been placed on the national DNA database," he said.

In 2019, there was a match with a man from Victoria's Hungarian community named Steve Fabriczy.

His DNA matched the sample on the milk bottle.

"Steve Fabriczy's DNA had been taken as a convicted offender sample by Victoria Police. He'd been convicted of conspiracy to hijack a truckload of cigarettes," Detective Sergeant Marriott said.

But a single DNA match does not make a case.

Detective Sergeant Eloise Bradley helped profile Fabriczy, building a picture of his personality and character.

"I felt like the day we knocked on his door to arrest him we knew him intimately and very personally," Detective Bradley said.

"And that all came into play in the strategy that we ran."

Enter 'Mr Big'

Working undercover, police followed Fabriczy when he took a holiday to Hungary in 2022.

"We clearly needed to initiate contact with him, and Hungary provided that opportunity," Detective Sergeant Marriott said.

The AFP had help from the Hungarian police.

"The Hungarians … undertook some investigative actions on our behalf," Detective Sergeant Marriott said.

"Once he returned to Australia, we were able to continue the relationship with him that had been established in Hungary."

That's when the Mr Big sting began.

'Mr Big' is a strategy that involves setting up a fictitious criminal syndicate and drawing in the suspect with employment.

Fabriczy worked for the fictitious crime group set up to trap him for eight months and was paid $10,000.

Then he was called to a meeting at Melbourne's Crown Casino, where he was told by an undercover officer — posing as the head of the syndicate — that his DNA had come up in an investigation into a Canberra murder.

It was suggested to him that the syndicate could help, but only if he told the truth.

Detective Sergeant Bradley said Fabriczy never suspected a thing.

"The overwhelming research into these strategies is that the motivation of this person to get what is offered to them … is overwhelmingly more important in the forefront of their mind than the possibility that this could be a ruse," she said.

But Detective Sergeant Marriott said it was not all plain sailing.

"There was some obvious reticence from Fabriczy to reveal his involvement," Detective Sergeant Marriott said.

But Detective Sergeant Marriott said once he did, he gave a version of events that he was there to help a man named Joseph Vekony.

Fabriczy has always denied a part in the violence and did the same to the undercover police.

"I never, never, never murder anyone," Fabriczy told them.

"We went for money, not for murder."

Vekony's name had already come up when police were gathering their profile of Fabriczy.

The pair had been associated in the past, but were no longer on good terms.

To get his DNA to see if it matched the water jug, police set off undercover, following Vekony on a road trip from Melbourne to Cape York.

They had reached the Queensland border before police were able to collect a discarded coffee cup.

It was a match, and not just to the water jug.

The DNA also matched a sample recovered from the balaclava Irma had grabbed in the 1998 burglary.

That meant Vekony was at both break-ins.

The men were brought to Canberra near the end of 2023 and charged with murder.

Fabriczy stuck to his story that he was there, but not involved in the violence.

Vekony denied ever going to Canberra.

Detective Sergeant Bradley said Vekony appeared very surprised when police knocked on his door.

"I think there was a certain air of confidence and maybe arrogance that he had gotten away with what he had done,"

she said.

In the end, the jury found both men guilty of manslaughter but not the greater charge of murder.

They were also found guilty of a raft of other charges, including aggravated assault and burglary.

Vekony heard the verdict from hospital where he was being treated for liver cancer.

He was also convicted of the 1998 attack on Irma.

'Hurt, confusion' remains for family

In the immediate aftermath of the verdict, the family was relieved that someone had been held to account for Irma's death.

But it's an anxious wait for the family, including Irma's daughter Elizabeth.

"I keep seeing Mum getting bashed and the feelings of terror, hurt … confusion, I just can't get it out of my head and I don't think I will ever get it out of my head," she said.

John Mikita says there are still many unanswered questions, including how the pair knew where his grandparents were.

"This is a generational impact," he said.

"It's not just what happened to Irma and Gregor on that night, it's affecting so many people and it will be affecting all of our family for so many generations to come."

Elizabeth has other questions.

"What really upsets me is that they are Hungarians," she said.

"That really puts a knife into my heart."

"I want to know why, and why you, as countrymen, did this to your own countrymen. That really hurts."

Mr Mikita says the family is also concerned the manslaughter charge means those responsible won't serve a fair sentence.

"We obviously would like to hope that life imprisonment was something that would be on the cards," Mr Mikita said.

"Having manslaughter now may mean that that's not the case."

The men will be sentenced in August.

Credits:

Reporter: Elizabeth Byrne

Producer: Richard Mockler

Photography: Shaun Kingma

Graphics: Chan Woo Park

Digital production: Jenny Ky and Myles Wearring

Editor: Paul Johnson

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Posted Wed 24 Jun 2026 at 5:01pm

Wed 24 Jun 2026 at 5:01pm

, updated Wed 24 Jun 2026 at 5:10pm

Wed 24 Jun 2026 at 5:10pm