Detectives investigating the death of a Sydney mother more than 20 years ago will today (Tuesday 14 October 2014) charge a man with murder.

Mrs Rita Caleo, a 39-year-old mother of two young children, was stabbed to death in her Double Bay home in the early hours of Friday 10 August 1990.

Mrs Caleo’s murder followed the shooting death of her brother, Dr Michael Chye, 10 months earlier on 16 October 1989. Mr Chye was shot dead while sitting in his car which was parked inside the garage of his Woollahra home.

Despite extensive investigations into both murders during the 1990s, no one was charged in relation to either incident.

The NSW Police Force’s Unsolved Homicide Team took carriage of the investigations under Strike Force Nichola in 2008 and earlier this year, on Friday 15 August 2014, detectives arrested a man at Sydney International Airport after he arrived on a flight from Kuala Lumpur. The man, a 42-year-old Australian citizen who had been living in Thailand, was subsequently charged with:

• Solicit to commit murder;
• Accessory before the fact to murder; and,
• Accessory after the fact to murder.

The Unsolved Homicide Team’s investigation into the murders of Mrs Caleo and Dr Chye has continued and today the 42-year-old man will be charged with murder when he appears at Central Local Court.

The investigation by Strike Force Nichola remains ongoing.