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Guest Character Profiles > Wesley Russo Karl Richmond

After being fired from her job at the New York Post, following a legal battle that cost the newspaper millions of dollars, journalist Elle Robinson returned to Erinsborough for a fresh start. As she attempted to find work with online newspaper The Daily Monster, she met with editor Wesley Russo, hopeful that it was far outside the demographic of her old newspaper and that her recent firing wouldn't be an issue. Unfortunately, Wesley had easily found out what had happened and was reluctant to hire her, but told her that, if she could bring him a big, noisy story that would attract readers, he might think again. Aware that this might be her only opportunity to get back into journalism, Elle looked around for a story and struck gold when she was touring Ramsay Street, meeting some of the new faces who'd arrived since she last lived there. Whilst at the Varga-Murphy house, she managed to sneak a look at some files belonging to cop Cara, and realised that the police were looking into a string of recent robberies with a possible connection to someone on the inside of the government, known as Jones.

After taking photographs of the papers in the file, Elle spent all night working on an article which she sent to Wesley, who was very impressed. However, Elle was unaware that Cara had a personal involvement in the case, as builders the Linwell brothers, who she'd reported a couple of years earlier for unsafe work practices, appeared to be involved. As the Linwells had already threatened Cara's family before, she started receiving more threats after the article was published and it was decided that her wife and kids should leave Ramsay Street to stay with family in Apollo Bay. Despite all of this, Elle was unapologetic, feeling that she'd done the right thing by exposing the corruption, and she met with Wesley again, who was keen for her to continue researching the story and find out the identity of Jonesy. However, as she started to realise that the story was putting people in danger, she finally backed down and accepted that her days as a journalist might be over.

A few weeks later, Wesley was staying at Lassiters Hotel whilst visiting friends, and he quickly struck up a rapport with the hotel's assistant manager, Zac Willis. Struggling with his feelings for neighbour Colton Keys, Zac ended up sleeping with Wesley, later concerned to realised that he knew Elle - who Zac lived with - and that he was the editor of The Daily Monster. Confused by Zac's behaviour, Elle confronted him and he admitted that he was worried that he was the target of Wesley's latest story, opening up to Elle about the reason why he'd left Darwin and moved to Erinsborough - a sex tape had gone public and was threatening to ruin his career.

A few weeks later, it looked like Zac had managed to avoid any trouble, even though there had been a series of copycat sex videos filmed in the lift at Lassiters in Erinsborough, nobody had linked them back to him. Whilst in town, Wesley took an interest in the sex tape story, but was quickly distracted when Elle approached him and said that they had a firm lead on the identity of Jonesy and that he had a definite link to local government. She explained that Jonah Jackson, a local developer known as Jonesy, had been buying up houses that were due to be purchased by the government to build a new freeway, and that she had seen him with Helen Brown, the Mayor of Erinsborough, embracing outside his apartment. As Helen was one of the people who'd pushed for the new freeway, it looked like she was guilty of corruption and so Wesley quickly published the story, giving Elle credit for her findings. When it appeared online the next morning, it led to Helen being arrested in the middle of a council meeting and soon it was discovered that others in both local and state government were involved.

Episodes Featured
9312, 9314, 9333, 9352

Biography by Steve

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