A shocking case of concealed death and neglect has unfolded in Brisbane’s Supreme Court, where a 51-year-old man has been sentenced for the manslaughter of his stepfather, a beloved Yugoslavian migrant who built a new life in Australia. Tomislav Nemes, 69, a retired successful businessman who helped countless new arrivals settle in the country, was discovered mummified and decomposing in his Gold Coast bedroom in early 2023 – 14 months after he died in February 2022.
Court documents detail that for more than a year, Nemes’ stepson Nikola Golem lied to family members, telling relatives that the ailing Nemes was under medical care for a coma and gradually recovering. Prosecutors revealed that for months after Nemes’ death, his wife of nearly 30 years – Dragica Nemes, who was never charged – slept beside his remains, believing the overwhelming stench of decomposition was just toxin release from herbal treatments she and Nemes, both devout Jehovah’s Witnesses who rejected Western medicine, were using. As the odor grew impossible to ignore, Golem stuffed towels along the bedroom door frame to trap it inside the room, court was told.
When authorities finally entered the home, they found Nemes’ body in an advanced state of decay: his upper body had mummified to the point his face was unrecognizable, his lower half had decomposed into the mattress, his right hand bones were exposed, and the room was infested with insects and littered with animal droppings.
The tragedy traces back to 2021, when Nemes – who already lived with diabetes – suffered a serious fall that left him bedbound, reliant on Golem and his mother for daily care. Crown prosecutor Stephanie Gallagher told the court that while Nemes received basic food and pain relief, his severe untreated medical needs were ignored. He developed large, gaping bedsores that likely led to sepsis before his death. Though an exact cause of death could not be confirmed, Gallagher argued that Golem’s deliberate denial of medical care accelerated the death of the already vulnerable man. She added that Golem, who had seized Nemes’ phone months before his death over suspicions he was wasting family money on bad investments, chose to hide the death from his “mentally fragile” mother after Nemes passed.
Nemes was only located after persistent pressure from his two daughters from a previous marriage, Suzanna Beljanski and Elizabeth Marzano, who lived interstate and had not heard from their father in months. When their 2019 last contact stretched into silence, the sisters raised alarms. During a Gold Coast holiday, Beljanski demanded access to the home, but was turned away by Golem and Dragica Nemes. She spent days contacting police and hospitals begging for a welfare check, and finally convinced an officer to climb over the property fence to investigate, leading to the grim discovery.
In emotional statements to the court, the sisters described the lingering trauma of their father’s death. “There is no word in English or in my father’s own language about what it is to have your dad hidden in his bed for 14 months while you search for him,” Beljanski said. Marzano added that she is haunted by the details of his death: “When I think of my father today, the first image that comes to mind is no longer the wonderful life that he lived but the way he died.”
The sisters also painted a portrait of their father as a hardworking, generous man who arrived in Australia as a young migrant from the former Yugoslavia (now Croatia) with next to nothing, and built a successful business while making a point of supporting other new migrants. “Even today, decades later, people still approach our family and tell us their lives in Australia began because dad gave them a chance,” Marzano said. The court also heard that Nemes had raised Golem as his own son for nearly 30 years, helping him through his own lifelong health challenges.
Defense barrister Martin Longhurst explained that Golem suffers severe long-term cognitive impairments after being run over by a lawnmower as a young child. Golem, who uses a wheelchair and wears a padded skull cap after brain surgery to insert a shunt that also causes regular seizures, had no ill will toward Nemes, Longhurst argued. He told the court that Golem was only following Nemes’ own wishes to avoid Western medicine, and became trapped in a web of lies to calm his mother’s concerns, fearing he would face punishment if he revealed Nemes’ death. Longhurst conceded that Golem’s decision to hide the body for more than a year remains “markedly inexplicable” and deeply disturbing.
Justice Rebecca Treston, who called Golem’s actions – particularly the concealment of the body after death – “truly difficult to understand”, noted that the helpless Nemes “was quite simply left to rot.” She sentenced Golem to nine years in prison, with eligibility for parole on August 21, 2026, giving Golem credit for the almost three years he has already spent in pre-sentence custody.