Ten years ago mum-of-four Carrissa Kaye Scholten was raising money to care for her disabled daughter Tiffani. Now she is behind bars for allegedly murdering her.
The 36-year-old was charged with the murder of 12-year-old ‘Tiffy’ two years after the child’s ‘extremely emaciated’ body was removed from her Gold Coast home.
Police say the state of the child’s body – found at the family home on the night of Easter Monday in 2022 – was ‘confronting’.
Police have also laid a murder charge against Aaron Paul Richardson, 37, who is Scholten’s long term partner, but not the biological father of Tiffani or her other children.
The accused couple faced Southport Magistrates Court on Tuesday, where they were remanded in custody.
Queensland Police child protection unit detectives have been investigating Tiffani’s death since paramedics were called to the pair’s home at Bellagio Crescent, Coomera, at 8pm on April 18, 2022.
They found the girl ‘unresponsive’ and declared the home a crime scene.
Detective Inspector Paul Fletcher, of the Gold Coast district vulnerable persons unit, said Tiffani’s case had been one of his most difficult he had been involved in.
‘The investigation into the death of this young girl has been one of the most heart-wrenching and complex we’ve had to conduct,’ he said this week.
Tiffani suffered from the rare chromosomal disorder Retts Synrome and epilepsy, which made it difficult for her to eat, and had been fed through a stomach tube when young.
Eight years to the day before Tiffani was found dead, Scholten and Tiffani’s birth father started the public fundraiser ‘Help Get Tiffy Walkin’.
The Scholtens said the money raised would be used to buy a special baby walker harness called an ‘Upsee Kit’, that straps to an adult’s legs and allows the child to walk with them.
At the time, in April 2014, Tiffani was just shy of her fifth birthday and had gained weight after beginning to eat orally, having weighed just 5kg at the age of three.
On Facebook at the time, Scholten thanked generous donors, and people posted responses saying ‘how lucky she is to have you as her mummy’ and what ‘a wonderful mother you truly are’.
Scholten responded by posting a photo of herself, her husband, their four kids, saying ‘A BIG THANKYOU from our family’.
She appears to have moved to Coomera – the Gold Coast’s theme park capital and location of Dreamworld, Movie World and Wet’n’Wild – in 2016.
She and Aaron Richardson lived in a duplex on Bellagio Crescent, and then the four-bedroom, three-bathroom house where Tiffani’s body was later found.
Detectives formed Operation Uniform Zoysia to investigate the vulnerable girl’s death and appealed to ‘direct eyewitnesses’ who saw Tiffani between December 2021 and April 2022.
Along with people who may have seen Tiffani in public at that time, they also asked for anyone – including children – who may have visited the home or interacted with the family over the previous years.
A former cleaning and cosmetics salesperson, Scholten was listed as ‘unemployed’ on court papers filed this week, the Gold Coast Bulletin reported.
Richardson was listed as living at Redland Bay, southeast of Brisbane.
Police allege the death of Tiffani, a former Southport Special School student, was as a result of insufficient care.
Scholten and MrRichardson have both been charged with a single count of murder and will next appear in Southport court on November 8.