Recovered body parts 'unlikely to be missing backpacker'
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Missing Australian woman Britt Lapthorne (AAP: Facebook)
Police in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik say they are almost certain that the body parts found just off the coast are not those of missing Melbourne woman Britt Lapthorne.
The parts were found in the ocean below the road between the hostel where she was staying and the nightclub where she was last seen.
Deputy chief of police Ivan Kukrica says the decomposed state of the remains suggests they had been in the water for months, not the 19 days since Ms Lapthorne disappeared.
He said it was not unusual for the sea patrol to find bodies in the waters around the coastal village.
Many asylum seekers perish in their attempts to cross the ocean from Albania and Montenegro to Italy.
But he says only the medical examiner's autopsy will provide conclusive proof.
"What we know, from our knowledge of decomposing the body in the sea, after it's in the sea, and under sea, we can tell it's not her. But we cannot tell anything for sure before the autopsy gets the result," he said.
Ms Lapthorne's father, Dale, says the discovery did come as a reality check for the family.
"I was feeling because we haven't found a body that there is some hope that Britt is still alive. I guess today was a sense of a reality check," he said.
"We have been hit with this right in the face and I guess to some extent it is what we have been expecting so when the news came out it filled in the right hole so to speak."
Mr Lapthorne says he has been to hell and back since learning from the media that body parts had been discovered washed into the Dubrovnik harbour.
Fighting back the tears, he said he met with the Australian Federal Police officer in Dubrovnik for the first time but that he was given no comfort that the investigation was gathering steam.
It has now been 19 days since Britt Lapthorne went missing.
Victorian Premier John Brumby says the disappearance is a matter for the Australian Federal Police. But he says, as a father, it's every parent's worst nightmare.
"I think many parents could identify and empathise with what's occurred," he said.
"One of our daughters travelled through the same country earlier this year. If your child is away travelling, you think about them all the time and you hope that they're safe."
