MOO… And completely spitballing here, but I’d like to hear opinions on my opinions… But here is my current theory.
AKA screwed up big time with his selection of Marion. His target seems to be women at their most vulnerable, but also women who are on the non-confrontational side. I think he saw Marion as vulnerable and meek. But while Marion was going through a rough patch, she had gone through worse before. She wasn’t at her lowest, she really wasn’t even close to her lowest. And from the stories Sally has told, she may have looked like a sweet demure and retiring teacher, but she was a firecracker and had a low “*advertiser censored*” threshold.
And I don’t think AKA knew about the timing of the name change. I think they discussed her changing her name post marriage, maybe he even gave her the moniker of “Florabella”. (She was his beautiful flower after all.) But, I think she decided to get it changed before leaving Australia. Because why wait? She knew the process in Australia, she wasn’t intending to return to Australia, again why wait? Why try to get it changed in a foreign country? Much easier to do it before leaving.
And I think the new passport screwed up his plans. (I could be wrong about this, but I don’t think I am.) When Marion went with AKA to withdraw her money in the UK/abroad, she couldn’t. Because her passport no longer matched the details on her bank account. And I don’t think they’d have accepted a foreign driver’s license back then as proof of identity. So they had to return. Maybe they could have had the name on the account changed and returned to the UK to withdraw funds. But at this point, AKA has to be hearing the clock ticking and is likely pissed that he’s burning his own “hard earned” money on this scam. And it’s all going to ruin in front of his beedy little eyes. At this point, I bet he’s pretty pissed at Marion for screwing his plans up. (I also think that at this point if he doesn’t get HIS money out of her, he’d consider it theft.)
Maybe AKA says something curious at this point, maybe his mask slips and Marion spots it. Again, I think he was a boiling pot at this point, his normal plans got screwed up by the stupid woman. So I wouldn’t be surprised if his mask was slipping. Or possibly AKA makes a really stupid mistake and Marion sees a driver’s license that has his face but not his name. And steals it. (For all the lies AKA told, I think the stolen license might have some merit.) And she confronts him. I don’t know if she went to his house and confronted him or she did it wherever she/they were staying on the return trip. But, from Sally’s stories, I think she would have confronted him. And I bet that sent him over the edge. Because all of it was her fault. She didn’t play her part properly. She was doing things without his permission/his prompting. And now she’s yelling at HIM?
One last thing about the license… I can’t help but wonder if, after he scrambled to dispose of her body, he realized he never retrieved the license. (Or that it was now missing.) And if that’s the case, I hope it’s disappearance has kept him up at night.