EXCLUSIVEMark Wilhelm wanted the world to forget him after he gave mum-of-three Dianne Brimble a fatal drug dose on a P&O cruise in 2002. Now we've found the reclusive party boy - and his life today is beyond pathetic
One of Australia's most-hated men is hiding out in the suburbs, bald, bankrupt and now a right-wing conspiracy theorist who is holed up in his mum's fortress-like home.
Mark Wilhelm, the man who infamously fed 42-year-old mother-of-three Dianne Brimble the toxic dose of the date rape drug Fantasy which killed her on the floor of his cruise ship cabin, is back in Adelaide after fleeing town almost 20 years ago.
Wilhelm's behaviour in the passageways of P&O's Pacific Sky in the hours when Ms Brimble, 42, lay naked, degraded and dying on the carpet of Cabin D182 was nothing short of outrageous.
He and cabin mate Leo Silvestri, whose plans to throw Ms Brimble's body overboard and complaints that the 'b****' had ruined the men's holiday created a furore, were the two men who had sex with Ms Brimble after her drink was spiked.
A coroner would find that Ms Brimble could have survived had Wilhelm not stepped over her on the cabin floor and rampaged the ship's corridors naked, ruling 'he could not even tell the truth to save her life'.
The chief person of interest among the so-called Brimble 8 - who treated the September 2002 cruise as a drug-fuelled sex tour - Wilhelm has avoided public scrutiny since manslaughter charges against him over Ms Brimble's death were controversially dropped.
However, Daily Mail Australia found Wilhelm living an anonymous life on the northern outskirts of Adelaide.
We tracked Wilhelm, now 52, to a house in the South Australian capital where he has moved back in with his mother, along with his girlfriend.
Mark Wilhelm (right) is hiding out in the suburbs, bald, bankrupt and now a right-wing conspiracy theorist who is holed up in his mum's fortress-like home
Wilhelm (above) infamously fed 42-year-old mother-of-three Dianne Brimble the toxic dose of the date rape drug Fantasy which killed her on the floor of his cruise ship cabin in 2002
Bald with a gut (left), his once chiselled facial features (right in 2009) now jowled and wrinkled, Wilhelm was dressed in shorts with a T-shirt as he did minor chores around his parents' home
Mark Wilhelm drove from his mum's home to pick up a woman believed to be his girlfriend and drove to the local IGA where the woman, despite having a pronounced limp, did the shopping while he stayed in the car
Now bald with a gut, his once chiselled facial features jowled and wrinkled, Wilhelm was dressed in shorts with a T-shirt or singlet as he did minor chores around his parents' home.
Robyn and Rudiger Wilhelm bought the house, which is between a local reserve and a BMX track, 30 years ago. It is not clear if Rudi Wilhelm, a German-born Vietnam veteran now aged 80, is still at the house.
It may be the final bolthole for Wilhelm, who has tried living in several different country towns, but had to leave when his infamy or bankruptcy caught up with him.
Daily Mail Australia has also learned that despite him getting off scot-free, Australians have been hitting back at Wilhelm since Dianne Brimble's untimely death. Wherever he has gone, he has either been run out of town or become such a social outcast that he has had to leave.
Wilhelm could be seen outside the house this week with mum Robyn, before driving to the local shops to pick up a middle-aged woman who is believed to be his girlfriend.
The woman, who appeared to have difficulty walking, then drove with Wilhelm to the nearby IGA. Despite her bad leg, it was she who went inside to buy groceries, while Wilhelm remained in the car.
He drove a red Toyota Corolla with a golden skull-and-crossbones sticker on the back and a another sticker on the vehicle curiously saying 'Private Property No Trespassing'.
Another car at Wilhelm's property had the same message stuck on its rear end.
The Brimble 8 pose before sailing. Top: Mark Wilhelm, MS (pixelated), Dragan Losic, Peter Pantic. Bottom: Ryan Kuchel, Letterio Silvestri, Luigi Vitale, Charlie Kambouris
Manslaughter charges against Mark Wilhelm were dropped and no-one was held accountable or punished over her degradation and needless death
Mark Wilhelm with his red Toyota which features a curious 'no trespassing' sign, a skull and crossbones and the red ensign of the sovereign citizen movement which doesn't recognise Australian law
Wilhelm's vehicle also has a sticker on it of a red ensign flag, the symbol of the sovereign citizen fringe group, whose followers believe they are not subject to Australian law and reject the authority of police and the judicial system.
'SovCits' gained attention during the Covid pandemic for refusing to wear masks in public and repeating 'I do not consent' when stopped by traffic cops.
If Mark Robin Wilhelm feels a grievance against police for dragging his name through the courts in the years since Ms Brimble's death, he should reflect on the fact that he has profited handsomely from the system.
It was prosecutors back in 2010 who decided not to send him to a second trial over Dianne Brimble's death, and the NSW Supreme Court which endorsed him in a judgment cloaked in sympathy.
At his last public appearance, Justice Roderick Howe found it was Wilhelm who had suffered 'enough public humiliation' from the 'hysteria' over Ms Brimble's death and said that Wilhelm's life had all but been 'destroyed'.
In a statement many thought disrespectful to the Brimble family, Howie claimed Ms Brimble had willingly taken the lethal gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB) which killed her and had committed a criminal offence by taking it.
This is completely at odds with then-deputy state coroner Jacqueline Milledge's findings that Dianne Brimble 'was unknowingly drugged by unscrupulous individuals who were intent on denigrating her for their own sexual gratification'.
The hysteria, or at least community outrage, would follow Wilhelm as he tried to escape scrutiny, moving from South Australia to the Victorian border town of Mildura, where he was outed by alarmed women who said they were scared to work alongside the 'arrogant prick'.
Next he went to historic Bendigo, where he lived in a clapboard house, before moving to a tiny village called Marong on the town's outskirts.
A naked Mark Wilhelm striding the corridors of Pacific Sky's D Deck after taking liquid Fantasy and Viagra on the night Dianne Brimble died from an overdose
A pariah wherever he goes, Wilhelm is now back living with his elderly mother
Dianne Brimble (left) died on the floor of Cabin D82 after being drugged with Fantasy and then coerced into sex with strangers, principally Mark Wilhelm (right) who was charged with her manslaughter and let off
The story of what happened there is a small-town classic of social downfall.
The townsfolk of Marong, population 300, did not learn all the terrible details of what Wilhelm did in the early hours of September 23, 2002, but they knew enough.
They knew about Dianne Brimble's lonely, terrible death after she had boarded the Pacific Sky with her sister, both their daughters and eight other family members.
They knew how the fun holiday escape the Queensland mum had long been saving for had gone wrong when she collided with a bunch of men whose plan for the 10-day cruise was diabolically different.
Mark Wilhelm and seven men from Adelaide had packed drugs such as Fantasy, ecstasy, Viagra and Valium for a sordid voyage on which some of them hoped to lure women with drugs and have sex with them.
At least half the men had criminal records and were connected with Adelaide's sleazy nightclub scene. Luigi Vitale was a major drug dealer. Petar Pantic had bikie gang links and would become a pornography importer. Dragan Losic would later be convicted of assaulting his wife.
In a now-infamous photograph of the Brimble 8 standing on the wharf at Sydney's old Overseas Passenger Terminal before embarking on the cruise, Mark Wilhelm poses with his arms crossed and his legs apart, in possibly the last image of him as a blameless man.
There in the background is Dianne Brimble, an unsuspecting blur just over the right shoulder of Wilhelm, the stranger she would be having sex with in about 12 hours after having her drink spiked with a drug she probably didn't know existed.
Wherever he has gone, Mark Wilhelm has either been run out of town or become such a social outcast that he has had to leave and now may be at his last bolthole (above), his mum's place
Dianne Brimble is pictured with her former husband Mark, who supported his ex-wife's reputation as a reserved woman who would never have engaged in sex acts with multiple men, saying she must have been drugged
Cabin D182, where the body of Dianne Brimble was found lying between the bottom two bunks on the morning of September 23, 2002, dead from a toxic dose of Fantasy
Wilhelm and his mother Robyn outside her home in Adelaide this week where the 52-year-old has moved to after becoming bankrupt and a social outcast. Dianne Brimble (right, circled) in the background over Wilhelm's shoulder 12 hours before he would feed her the fatal GHB
He was the man who would give her Fantasy from his secret stash of the pink liquid smuggled aboard in a shampoo bottle, enough to kill her on the blue carpet of his cabin floor.
According to one version of events at the inquest, Wilhelm told Dianne the 'liquid Fantasy' would make her 'ten times hornier' than usual and when she asked if it was dangerous, he said 'no'.
A series of degrading photos that neither the citizens of Marong nor any others except police and coronial investigators would actually see would tell the story of Dianne's humiliating and unnecessary death.
They included close-up shots of Ms Brimble's body partially draped with a sheet, and pictures of her with Wilhelm showing off to the camera, taken by three other Brimble 8 members, Ryan Kuchel, Dragan Losic and Petar Pantic.
The men had gone to the cabin to film a drugged Ms Brimble after learning that Wilhelm 'was having sex with the fat chick'.
Sometime over the next few hours, Ms Brimble lay between the two lower bunk beds and showed signs of struggling, before losing consciousness.
Close-up photos would show Ms Brimble, unconscious or dead, naked on the cabin's carpet, and having defecated.
Mark Wilhelm was also caught on camera, naked but for an orange life jacket, and aroused as he strode along Pacific Sky's Dolphin Deck after taking liquid Fantasy and Leo Silvestri's Viagra.
Mark Wilhelm (above, this week in northern Adelaide) worked at a winery in Mildura until he was outed as the person of interest in the Dianne Brimble death. He went to Marong where he was ostracised
Pacific Sky sailed on September 22, 2002, and just over 12 hours later would be radioing back to Sydney to say a passenger had died in suspicious circumstances on the floor of a cabin shared by four men
Dianne Brimble likely died in Wilhelm's cabin 'between 5am and 6.30am', Chief Forensic Pathologist Dr Johan Duflou later concluded, but Wilhelm may have already been out of the cabin harassing other women passengers by then.
Wilhelm's conduct was not in isolation of some of the other Brimble 8 men. Deputy State Coroner Jacqueline Milledge found that he and Losic, Pantic, Silvestri and real estate agent Ryan Kuchel offered drugs to women on board.
Losic and Silvestri propositioned young women, asking if they 'could go down on them'.
The same night Ms Brimble died, Wilhelm, Losic and Silvestri barged into two women's cabin uninvited and, when told to leave, Wilhelm punched the wall six inches above one woman's head.
One girl, Jessica, heard Wilhelm and Pantic discussing cocaine and ecstasy at the ship's disco, and both men offered to fly her and her friends to America. Jessica was 15 years old.
One woman recalled looking inside cabin D182 about 5.30am and seeing a naked Wilhelm, who was holding his penis and asked if she 'wanted a bit of this'.
One woman named Tanya remembers waking up that morning after an hour's sleep and finding a naked and drugged Wilhelm next to her.
Wilhelm kept on running in and out of the cabin and while he donned boxer shorts after someone complained, he kept on removing them.
One Pacific Sky passenger, Tanya, remembers waking up that morning after an hour's sleep and finding a naked and drugged Wilhelm next to her. Wilhelm donned boxer shorts after someone complained about his naked rampage, but he kept on removing them
Wilhelm invited women to go to his cabin to view and ridicule Ms Brimble's inert form. The women were told in crude terms that Ms Brimble had defecated as she lay, and some of them believed they were viewing an apparently lifeless body.
At 8am, they told Wilhelm and his friends they would meet them for breakfast, just to get the rid of them.
Wilhelm returned to his cabin and along with Silvestri washed and re-dressed Ms Brimble's body, which he would claim still had a 'slight pulse'.
At 8.30am, he called for help, but doctors and nurses found no signs of life and at 9.03am Dianne Brimble was pronounced dead.
The cruise ship was about 100 nautical miles east of Crescent Head and still five days from its first stop at Nouméa.
Dianne's sister Alma Wood had walked out of cabin D188 they were sharing with their daughters and to which Dianne had not returned that night.
A worried Alma saw medical staff rushing to the cabin just across the hallway. A nurse approached Alma in the corridor and told her that Dianne was dead.
Informed at 9.30am of the death, NSW Police gave P&O firm instructions to seal the cabin, given the highly suspicious circumstances of the crime scene.
An upbeat Dianne Brimble waves goodbye as she boards the Pacific Sky at 3.15pm on September 23, 2002. A little over 12 hours later she would be dead and degraded, her naked body lying on one of the ship's cabin floors
But the cabin was not sealed, as per the instructions radioed in by police. Instead its four occupants were allowed to gather their belongings and move to another cabin, forever removing the crime scene of evidence.
When asked, Wilhelm denied any drugs were involved. A female Pacific Sky staffer took pity on him when Wilhelm broke down in the wake of Ms Brimble's death, whether from the effects of drugs and alcohol, or the realisation of the trouble he was in.
He and other Brimble 8 men wanted to leave the cruise in Nouméa and return to Australia.
Dianne's death did not curb the Brimble 8's harassment of other female passengers on Pacific Sky. In the days that followed, as the ship sailed towards the port, women fearful of the men rejected their advances and invitations to socialise.
As Geesche Jacobsen's book 'Abandoned: The Sad Death of Dianne Brimble' reported, one of the cruise night managers heard Leo Silvestri discussing Dianne's death.
'She could hardly restrain herself when she heard him say, "We f***ed the bitch, kicked her out of bed and then she died,"' Jacobsen wrote.
One night when a group of women arrived in the dining room, the Brimble 8 stood up at their table and sang Who Let the Dogs Out, a hit song from two years earlier.
In between singing words such as 'Get back, Scruffy. Get back you flea-infested mongrel', the men barked and mocked the women.
Leo Silvestri, the other Brimble 8 man who had sex with Dianne, made appalling remarks afterwards, saying they should have thrown her body overboard and that he was angry because she had 'f***ed up his holiday
At 7.30am on Thursday, September 26, when the Pacific Sky docked in Nouméa, two detectives were waiting on the wharf, along with the Australian consul, and representatives from New Caledonian immigration, customs and police.
They boarded the vessel.
Two days later, back at the Sydney morgue in Glebe, Dr Duflou examined Ms Brimble's body and determined she was healthy with no history of heart disease. He concluded she had died from GHB poisoning.
Her blood level reading of the drugs was 210 milligrams per litre, a toxic amount which caused Ms Brimble to vomit, empty her bladder and then defecate as her body went into distress and she died.
Her naked form, which had been pushed onto Cabin D182's floor, bore four scratches by her left eye, grazes and bruising on her chest, abrasions on one knee, little finger and left foot, plus head and neck injuries.
Wilhelm and Silvestri would be the main persons of interest at the inquest, which would not take place until 2006.
They would mount legal challenges against the coroner, saying she did not even have jurisdiction over the death at sea, which Ms Milledge would reject.
But before he could even appear at the inquest, Mark Wilhelm had bolted from his home town, with one media outlet reporting that he 'ran away, wanting to avoid the shame that arose from his squalid involvement in the drugs-and-sex death'.
By then aged 33 and under investigation by the NSW Homicide Squad, Wilhelm relocated 400km from his parents' place to Mildura, capital of the Sunraysia vineyard region.
Now aged 52, Wilhelm (above with his mother Robyn) has moved from town to town before being sued for bankruptcy and finally returning to his parents' house
Wilhelm had got a job as a maintenance supervisor at Foster's Wine Estates' Karadoc Winery, producers of Wolf Blass and Yellowglen wines at Red Cliffs in northwestern Victoria.
The other seven men had testified, but Wilhelm could not be found and his father Rudi said he had not seen him for seven years.
Ms Milledge ordered him to appear, and it emerged that Wilhelm had turned up at Karadoc where he was the boss of one of the winery's eight bottling lines.
Wilhelm had not told his employer about his involvement in the Brimble case, and he was getting paid almost double the average wage for the winery's 450 employees.
His boss and co-workers only learned of his involvement when the inquest opened, and women complained they felt 'intimidated, uneasy, maybe a little scared'.
'Word got out,' a one woman on Karadoc's bottling line said. 'It wasn't very nice. What were we expected to think? That he was a nice bloke. Well, we didn't.'
A female co-worker said, 'He's a prick - you know, arrogant', and three women made an official complaint, demanding to be transferred to a different bottling line. They were moved.
'We felt intimidated, uneasy, maybe a little scared,' one said. 'What happened to Dianne Brimble was frightening. We didn't want him around us.'
Australian Workers' Union delegates were pressured to do something, but did not call for his dismissal because, despite Wilhelm having incurred a 2005 fine for producing cannabis, he was not a 'criminal'.
Wilhelm and a woman believed to be his girlfriend in the northern suburbs of Adelaide this week where the 52-year-old has been living after dropping out of sight for 15 years
Wilhelm laughs to himself as he goes about a few chores at his mum's place in Adelaide where the 52-year-old moved back to after trying out a few country towns
On July 2, 2006, what had been an open secret among winery workers became public knowledge when the Mildura Independent Star newspaper published a story which caused a sensation.
On page one, the newspaper said: 'Lindemans Karadoc Winery have confirmed that Mark Wilhelm, a "person of interest" associated with the death of 2002 cruise boat passenger Dianne Brimble, is one of their current co-workers.'
The next day, Mildura police admitted they hadn't known. 'It was the first we knew about him being here,' a senior sergeant said.
The inquest would find that Wilhelm and at least five others of the Brimble 8 could not be believed in their accounts to the inquest and to police.
The inquest heard that Leo Silvestri had spoken of Ms Brimble in disparaging terms to police while still in Nouméa, saying she 'smelt, she was black and she was ugly' and said that he was angry because she had 'f***ed up his holiday'.
Several passengers relayed how Silvestri had told them that the group had considered throwing Brimble overboard.
Police telephone taps on the eight men in the months after Ms Brimble's death showed they were feeling sorry for themselves, believing they were the victims, but also contemplating how to make millions and buy luxury cars by selling their story.
In her findings at the inquest, Ms Milledge described Wilhelm's accounts as 'farcical' and said 'he never admitted to supplying any drug to Ms Brimble'.
At Marong, after people found out Wilhelm was the prime person involved in Dianne Brimble's death, he was persona non grata in the town and he built a high fence and rarely came outside
Wilhelm was given a smooth ride through the justice system with the DPP letting him off and a justice saying he had suffered enough and suggesting that Brimble had willingly taken the fatal drug dose
Over a five-month period up until January 30, 2019, a process server on behalf of Lion's solicitors made several attempts to serve documents on Wilhelm at the Marong house (above), but 'was unable to gain access to the premises due to locked gates'
She concluded that Ms Brimble died from gamma hydroxybutyrate due to 'the administration of that drug by a known person'.
In 2008, the NSW Director of Public Prosecutions announced that Mark Wilhelm, Letterio Silvestri and Ryan Kuchel would be charged, the first two with concealing a serious indictable offence, and Wilhelm with manslaughter and and supplying a prohibited drug.
Silvestri and Kuchel would plead guilty. At a 2009 trial, a jury could not reach a verdict on Wilhelm.
Then came the bombshell as he went to trial again in 2010: the DPP dropped the manslaughter charge against him and he pleaded guilty to drug supply, but received no penalty.
Justice Roderick Howie said Wilhelm had lost his house and his marriage, had received death threats, and was 'a person of good behaviour and of good reputation, apart from the reputation that has been destroyed by allegations'.
He said Wilhelm 'has suffered grievously' for 'what would have been seen by him as an insignificant incident that occurred on this cruise boat'.
No one was held accountable for Dianne Brimble's death.
It is not clear when Wilhelm left Mildura, but he later moved to a house by the railway line in central Bendigo, renting for $385 a week.
Mark Wilhelm and his mother Robyn outside the four-bedroom family home in northern Adelaide where the former Dianne Brimble person of interest has moved back to
A trial judge claimed Mark Wilhelm had 'suffered enough' over years of public ignominy
Sharing the adjoining cabin to Wilhelm's were mates, from left, bikie figure and drug dealer Luigi Vitale, drug and pornography offender Petar Pantic, wife beater Dragan Losic and martial arts man Charlie Kambouris
In June 2011, he bought the house in Marong with a Westpac Bank mortgage and a caveat that his father had interest in the property. The move would not go well.
Marong has a post office, a pub, a primary school and its own footy team, the Marong Panthers, and is close-knit enough that everyone knows everyone else's business.
Marong already had a convicted paedophile in its midst, a man who was ostracised in town after molesting his grandchildren.
Wilhelm's role in Dianne Brimble's death would not be a secret for long, and after moving into the house with his girlfriend, they were rarely seen on the street, never at the pub and only at the post office near closing time.
As one former Marong resident tells me: 'It's a community in which you can't hide.
'You'd go past his house and the curtains were never open. He built a six-foot fence in front of it.
'He never integrated. The pub is very central. Everyone goes there. He never would. He got Google Maps to blur his property online.'
The house 'fell into disrepair' over the ensuing years, and was eventually bought by a developer and demolished. Meanwhile, Wilhelm would go broke.
According to Federal Circuit Court of Australia documents obtained by Daily Mail Australia, Wilhelm was bankrupted in 2019 after Lion Finance filed a creditor's petition to recover $39,170 he had been ordered to pay by the Victorian Magistrates' Court more than three years earlier.
Over a five-month period up until January 30, 2019, a process server on behalf of Lion's solicitors made several attempts to serve documents on Wilhelm at the Marong house, but 'was unable to gain access to the premises due to locked gates'.
The server called at the address, which had no mail box, four times and left calling cards in sealed addressed envelopes affixed to the front gate.
Each time he attended, the previous calling card had been removed and there were lights on in the home and a car in the driveway, but no one responded to his car horn.
Last weekend in Adelaide, Wilhelm continued to live in a heavily shuttered house, emerging once to visit an IGA without leaving his car, and collecting work tools to help a tradie fix cracks in the home's exterior.
His last court appearance was in Bendigo Magistrates Court in 2019 when he received a bond for a traffic matter.
