Andre Rebelo will serve his life sentence. The Perth man convicted of murdering his mother for her life insurance has withdrawn the appeal he lodged against that conviction, ending a year of legal manoeuvring in which his lawyers floated one alternative cause of death after another.

The withdrawal was reported on Wednesday 16 September 2026 by 10 News Perth, and within the hour by The West Australian, WAtoday and news.com.au. Rebelo's bid to overturn the verdict is finished. He remains in custody with a minimum term of 25 years.

What he was convicted of

Colleen Rebelo was 58. She was found in May 2020 at her Bicton home, lying under a running shower, by her younger son Fabian. On the face of it, it looked like a woman who had collapsed while washing.

It was not. A jury took eight weeks of trial evidence and, in December 2024, convicted her elder son of murder. Prosecutors alleged he had choked or strangled her and then arranged the scene. He had taken out three life insurance policies in her name worth more than $1 million between them, and he lodged a claim three days after she died — the step that brought police to the case. During the trial he admitted forging his mother's will and forging a coroner's report.

On 1 April 2025 — his 29th birthday — Justice Bruno Fiannaca sentenced him to life imprisonment with a 25-year minimum. The judge told him he had staged the scene "to make it look like she had died of natural causes".

The court heard the couple were more than $100,000 in debt and that Rebelo wanted to sustain the lifestyle he shared with his partner, social media influencer Gracie Piscopo. She was never accused of any wrongdoing.

The appeal that never got heard

By September 2025 Rebelo had told the Court of Appeal he wanted the conviction set aside. His case, run by lawyer Sitara Grey, was that the Crown had never proved he was in the house when his mother died, and that she had died of natural causes.

The centrepiece was a hot water tank. Rebelo's brother Julian had told the trial the tank held only 30 to 40 minutes of hot water. The body was found about 2.20pm with the shower still running warm — so, the defence argued, the taps could not have been turned on much before 1.50pm, more than two hours after Andre left the house at 11.40am.

"the only person who could have turned on the hot water" — Andre Rebelo's appeal submission, arguing it had to have been Colleen Rebelo herself

The defence also leaned on the forensic pathologist's evidence that the position of the body was consistent with a collapse after a cardiac episode, and raised cardiac arrhythmia and anaphylaxis as possibilities. In the months that followed, reporting by The West Australian and WAtoday tracked further theories — including a genetic explanation for a sudden death — and repeated delays while medical material was chased down.

None of it will now be tested in court. The reason Rebelo gave for pulling out has not been reported.

What happens now

An abandoned appeal leaves the original verdict and the original sentence exactly as they were. Rebelo is serving life, and he cannot be considered for parole until he has served the 25-year minimum the court set.

Withdrawing an appeal is ordinarily the end of the road rather than a pause. It is not a decision a prisoner takes lightly, which is why the absence of any stated reason is the most interesting thing about Wednesday.

Why it matters here

This was one of the WA cases that people actually followed — a Perth family, a suburban bathroom, an insurance claim, and a son who kept insisting the whole thing was a tragedy rather than a crime. For the Rebelo family, Wednesday's decision means no fresh hearing, no re-run of the forensic argument, and no more years of waiting to find out whether the verdict would hold.

It held.

Photo: The David Malcolm Justice Centre in Perth, where the Court of Appeal sits — a file photo of the building, not of these proceedings. Calistemon via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).