By Tyler Wright
The mysterious disappearance and suspected murder of celebrity chef and founder of Olinda’s Cuckoo restaurant, Wilhelm ‘Willi’ Koeppen, has once again reached the national spotlight nearly 50 years after he went missing.
A panel of experts discussed the 1976 cold case on an episode of Channel Nine’s Under Investigation which aired on Wednesday 15 February, coming to the conclusion that the famous chef was most likely murdered; probably by someone he knew.
Koeppen’s daughter Sabina Wakefield, who was 16 at the time, is also convinced her father was met with foul play.
“I’m absolutely convinced he was murdered that night, and a lot of the loose threads, ‘he’s left the country, he’s run away, he always said he wanted to disappear and just go away’ a lot of that came from my mother and from other people,” Ms Wakefield told the Star Mail.
“To me they were just red herrings.”
“The process, of course, is always harrowing because we have to bring up information, but it’s also a relief as well… because there’s so many unanswered questions about my father’s murder, and I feel that it wasn’t taken seriously when it actually happened.”
Willi Koeppen was born in Berlin on 22 June 1929, forming his career as a chef before moving to Australia after the war.
Mr Koeppen married Karin Lantzsch on 30 April 1957, and the couple purchased a cafe on Mount Dandenong Tourist Road and converted it into Australia’s first smorgasbord restaurant, the Bavarian-themed Cuckoo restaurant which opened in 1958.
The couple turned the restaurant into a successful business, with Mr Koeppen featuring on his own TV slot called The Chef Presents on HSV-7 and a radio program on 3XY.
Despite his wealth, Ms Wakefield said her father was “very humble”.
“He could have driven a luxury car, but he drove a bombing old Volkswagen. He never got dressed up. He had an island in Queensland that he loved because he was very private and bit of a loner and loved the island and eating oysters off the rocks,” Ms Wakefield said.
“So opposite to my mother; my mother loved the glamorous life and she loved the front part of the Cuckoo and getting dressed up and luxury cars, and she loved all the opposite things that he did.
“In so many ways, they were very incompatible.”
Despite staying married, both Mr and Mrs Koeppen were both believed to be engaging in affairs, with Mr Koeppen even reportedly purchasing a house in Mount Dandenong for a woman he was seeing.
At the time of his disappearance in 1976, Mr Koeppen had moved to a cottage at the rear of the family home, suffered from alcoholism and appeared to suffer from some form of depressive illness.
“He was so desperately unhappy because of his living arrangements and what was going on around him,” Ms Wakefield said.
“Now, in retrospect, with the benefit of age, if I’d been a bit older at the time, I would have taken a more proactive step in helping him, because he was a good father.”
“He was very kind, he was very generous, and he was very honest as well… but as things started to go out of control around him, he started to drink more, which made him difficult and hard to be with,” Ms Wakefield said.
On 28 February 1976, a drunken Koeppen reportedly abused staff, including his wife, at the Cuckoo restaurant, before family friend and local practitioner Dr Bernard Butler telephoned Mrs Koeppen to say he would visit the restaurant to see her husband.
It’s believed both Mr Koppen and Dr Butler talked and drank alcohol at the restaurant, before Dr Butler suggested going to his residence in Olinda.
In separate cars, the men drove roughly 750 metres to Dr Butler’s residence sometime between 2am and 3am on Sunday 29 February, where they talked and consumed more alcohol about an hour.
Between 3am and 4am, Dr Butler observed Mr Koeppen drive his Volkeswagen Kombi Van away from his residence towards Mr Koepenn’s home in Ferny Creek; the last known sighting of Mr Koeppen alive.
At around 4.30am, Cuckoo cleaner Nivelles Love found Mr Koeppen’s vehicle parked in the lower car park of the property, with nobody inside or near the vehicle.
Despite Mr Koeppen’s body never being found, in 2018 Coroner Sarah Hinchey found his death was suspected to be the result of homicide.
Mr Koeppen’s three children were 17, 16 and 10 at the time of his disappearance.
Ms Wakefield said her family talk about their father’s disappearance “all the time”.
“We always hope in some ways that it might be resolved. If we could find that body… we might find something. Who knows? But maybe it’s brought us together,” she said.
“It’s like an open wound that never goes away… I just always hope that someday something might turn up.”
The family sold the Cuckoo Restaurant in 2022 after the business closed prior due to Covid seating restrictions and the ill health of Karin Koeppen, who died on 24 July 2022.
