A 16-year-old boy was sexually assaulted before his bloodied, partially clothed body was discovered in an empty house on a quiet Sydney street.
The brutal murder in May has shocked detectives, who are still trying to determine why anyone would want to harm aspiring football player Mahmoud Hrouk.
"This is the million-dollar question we ask and want an answer for, as to what has motivated someone to do this," Detective Inspector Grant Taylor told AAP.
Mahmoud went to Villawood McDonald's with his friends on the Saturday night of May 16.
He was on the phone to his mother, who was due to pick him up, about 9.40pm but family say the call cut out.
Police believe that was around the time Mahmoud, a boy who spent weekends at football matches with his mum and counted his uncles as his close friends, first met his demise.
The next day family members scoured the streets in Fairfield East for the teen.
His lifeless body was found inside a vacant house on Belmore St.
Det Insp Taylor said Mahmoud was missing items of clothing and possessions.
"No doubt that clothing was quite bloodied," he said.
"And again no doubt the perpetrator or perpetrators have, when they fled the scene, taken the clothing with them for some reason unknown to us."
The crime scene in which Mahmoud was found was "particularly brutal".
"It's one that always stays in your mind and one that no one wants to investigate," Det Insp Taylor said on Wednesday.
"We are very keen to capture someone for this event but no one wants to attend those sorts of crime scenes."
Mahmoud's adoring family described him as a very funny guy, who was loved by many and had no hate.
It is his good character and absence of a motive, that has police baffled as to why he was brutally killed.
"You can guess and speculate, but why a young 16-year-old boy would be sexually assaulted so badly and then murdered is beyond us," Det Insp Taylor said
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