A man will be charged on Friday in Sydney with the stabbing murder of the daughter of former Sarawak CID chief Peter Chye at her home in Sydney more than 24 years ago.  

Chye also lost a millionaire doctor son, Michael, who was gunned down in Sydney 10 months earlier.

The Daily Telegraph reported that the detained man, an Australian citizen who lived in Thailand, was arrested by detectives from the Homicide Squad after he arrived in Sydney on a flight from Kuala Lumpur in August.

Rita Caleo (nee Chye), 39, a mother of two, was stabbed to death in her luxury apartment in Sydney’s exclusive Double Bay in the early hours of Aug 10, 1990.

Caleo, a businesswoman, was stabbed in her bedroom while her baby daughter and four-year-old son were asleep in the next bedroom.

The live-in nanny heard noises from the main bedroom before finding the body at 1.30am.

Rita Caleo’s husband, Mark Caleo, was working at one of his two Italian restaurants in Sydney at the time of the murder. It is believed they had a restaurant, also called Caleo, in Kuala Lumpur.

The arrested man was a teenager at the time of the stabbing and is believed to be related.  

Caleo’s murder followed the shooting murder of her wealthy brother, Dr Michael Chye, on Oct 16, 1989. Dr Chye was shot dead as he sat in his Mercedes Benz car parked inside the garage of his mansion in the upmarket suburb of Woollahra in Sydney.

The Daily Telegraph said that despite extensive investigations into both murders during the 1990s, no one was charged over either incident.  

The homicide team’s Det Insp John Lehmann is reported to have told the media that police believed a number of people were involved in Caleo and Dr Chye’s murders, and investigations were ongoing.

“We are hoping to make more arrests,” the Daily Telegraph quoted Lehmann as saying.

Meanwhile, the Sydney Morning Herald reported that three months before her death, Caleo reportedly sent a sealed envelope to her solicitor.

The envelope read: “To be opened only if my death is unnatural”.

The envelope was opened by her solicitor in the presence of detectives after her murder in 1990. She accused two people of organising the killing of her brother in the gangland-style execution.

Caleo wrote in the letter that if she died an unnatural death, it would be the same people responsible for it.

- Bernama