Unsolved: The disappearance of the Beaumont Children.

January 26^th is Australia Day, a day of national celebration, a day when thousands of Australians make the most of the public holiday in the height of summer, having barbeques and heading to their nearest beach.

It was no different for the three Beaumont children.  The school holidays were nearing an end, and they were keen to spend as much time at Glenelg Beach as they could. Nancy Beaumont had chores to complete that hot summer day, so after some persuasion and assurances from her eldest daughter Jane (9), Nancy agreed to let them go to the beach unsupervised.  Jane had always been responsible with her younger sister Arnna (7) and brother Grant (4). The children caught the 8:45am bus and were expected back on the midday bus.

Nancy walked out to the bus stop to greet the midday bus, but her children were not on it.  Or on the 2pm bus.  Jim Beaumont returned from his sales job at 3pm to a frantic Nancy, and quickly went down to Glenelg Beach to find their three children, but they were nowhere to be seen. Thus began one of the most famous incidents in Australian history.  Were they abducted by a paedophile? Kidnapped and sold? Did they meet with foul play or an horrific accident?  Nearly 54 years later these questions still have no answers.

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Jim Beaumont drove around the streets for two and a half hours before collecting Nancy and going to the police. Police initially thought that the children would still be at the beach, having lost track of time. Their search of the beach proved fruitless, and they expanded the search out to the surrounding areas.  The police were able to establish that between the three children they were wearing or carrying 17 items, including towels and bags.  None of these items were located either.

As news of the crime spread through the media, the whole nation became transfixed.  Headlines screamed “Sex Crime Now Feared” three days after their disappearance.

Police spoken to many witnesses at Glenelg Beach and were able to piece together the actions of the children that morning.

The children had swum in the ocean, and played under a sprinkler in Colley reserve. It was in Colley Reserve that witnesses reported to the police that they saw the children in the company of a tall, fair haired man, in his 30s.  The man had tanned skin and was wearing only bathing trunks. The children seemed comfortable around him, playing and jostling in an affectionate way. However, Jim and Nancy could not think of anyone the children knew who fit this description.

This was odd to Jim and Nancy Beaumont, as they felt that their children would not play with such familiarity with a stranger.  To further add to the mystery, the children bought lunch form the nearby bakery with a One Pound note.  Nancy had only sent them to the beach with coins. There was also an addition to their regular order – the children normally ordered pasties, but that day also ordered a meat pie.

As the days went on, no hint of the children or any of their possessions was found.  All three children, and their belongings, had vanished without a trace.

As the investigation continued with no leads, a famed psychic, Gerard Croiset was flown in to help, with no discernible result.

Suspects

Harry Phipps

The most recent addition to the suspect list, Harry Phipps was a 48 year old factory owner when the Beaumont Children disappeared.  

Phipps has come to prominence after the publication of a book called The Satin Man by Alan Whitaker with Stuart Mullens originally released in 2013.  He lived only 300 metres from Glenelg Beach, and resembled the man seen with the children that morning. Haydn Phipps, Harry’s son, claimed years later that his father brought three children to their home that Australia Day and that he saw them enter the family house, but did not see them leave.

In addition, two local men, who had been youths at the time, claimed that Harry asked them to dig a 2m x 1m x 2m hole at the site of his factory that weekend, paying them in One Pound notes and telling them to never come near him again.

An excavation of an area of the factory was excavated in 2018 with no results.

Phipps resembled the man on the beach, but at 48 was considerably older than witnesses estimated, although it has been claimed that he looked younger than his years.

Bevan Spencer von Einem

Bevan von Einem is a convicted murderer and paedophile from Adelaide, known to be active in the 1960s and 1970s.

He was found guilty of the 1983 murder of Richard Kelvin, a 15 year old boy who was the son of an Adelaide television news reader, Rob Kelvin.  Richard had been abducted, held captive, sexually abused, drugged and tortured for five weeks before being murdered.

Von Einem was also charged in two further murders but due to a lack of evidence the charges were eventually dropped. There are other murders that prosecutors believe von Einem was involved in, but have not been able to pursue due to a lack of evidence.

A long-held theory was that von Einem was a member of a high-powered group of homosexual paedophiles, known as “The Family” which operated around Adelaide without fear of prosecution as many of the members were high ranking lawyers, judges and other officials. While this was discussed in many media articles, there was never any documented proof of this group’s existence.

Von Einem somewhat resembled the drawing of the man seen with the Beaumont children in 1966, and an informant claimed that von Einem had told him that he once took three children from a beach and conducted experiments on them.

The statements that point to von Einem are that he liked to attend Glenelg Beach around that time to “perv” on changing rooms and was obsessed with children.

The statements against von Einem being the man on the beach are that he was significantly younger than the man was described on the day (he was 20 years old, whereas the man was described as being in his mid 30s) and von Einem’s victims were usually in their teens or older and exclusively male.

Derek Ernest Percy

Before Derek Percy died he was the longest serving prisoner in Victoria, despite the fact that he had been found not guilty of killing Yvonne Touhy in 1969 by reason of insanity.  Percy was held indefinitely, On Her Majesty’s Pleasure, due to his ongoing danger to the community.

Percy was a suspect in many crimes against teens and children around the country in the 1960s.  His family travelled quite a bit, and then Percy joined the navy, which placed him in the vicinity at the time of many murders, such as the Wanda Beach murders, the murder of Linda Stilwell on St Kilda Beach and the murders of Simon Brook in Sydney and Allen Redstone in Canberra. In 2014, a year after his death at age 64, it was ruled that he had killed Linda Stilwell in 1968.

Percy admitted to being at Glenelg Beach on the day of the abduction of the Beaumont Children, however he was 17 which is considerably younger than the man seen with the children.

In a personal touch, I worked with a woman who had grown up in the small town of Mount Beauty in rural Victoria while Derek Percy had lived there.  She remembered him as a strange boy who was constantly stealing women’s underwear off clothes lines, a crime known as “snow dropping” which is often a precursor to crimes such as peeping, public indecency and worse.

Arthur Stanley Brown

In 1998, 86 year old Arthur Brown was charged with the murder of sisters Judith and Susan Mackay 28 years earlier in 1970. 

Judith, five, and her older sister Susan seven, disappeared on August 26^th 1970 from a school bus stop less than 10 minutes after leaving home.  Their bodies were found two days later in a dry creek bed.  They had both been raped and stabbed, with Susan strangled as well.

Unfortunately, the trial did not go ahead due to Brown’s age-related health issues, but authorities and the Mackay family believe that he was responsible for the crime.

As an active paedophile during the 1960s and 1970s, Brown was considered a possible suspect for the Beaumont Children.  He resembled the man at the beach, but there was never any firm proof that he had been in Adelaide at the time.

Jim and Nancy

Nancy Beaumont passed away in September 2019, never knowing what happened to her children Jane, Arnna and Grant on Australia Day 1966.  Jim is now 94. Having to live more than half their lives not knowing the fate their children; having the judgemental eyes of the country on Mrs Beaumont because she let her children go to the beach on their own; the guilt she no doubt felt about that decision and the “what-ifs” she would have gone over in her head a million times. My sympathy for Mr and Mrs Beaumont is immeasurable. 

I was born nearly nine years after the Beaumont Children disappeared, but I grew up knowing the story and wanting to know the answer to the mystery.  I remember watching tabloid TV shows such as A Current Affair as they interviewed adults who claimed to be Jane or Arnna or Grant, all grown up. Of course, they never were. Or when a new theory or new suspect came up and all the tabloid TV and newspapers went crazy for the story all over again.  I can’t imagine how much additional pain these claims caused Jim and Nancy Beaumont. 

The case has become synonymous with the end of innocence in suburban Australia.  With most viable suspects having now passed away, the reality is we will probably never know the fate of the Beaumont Children, unless someone stumbles on some bones by chance. As much as the rest of the country wants to know what happened, it is Jim and Nancy who deserve that knowledge more than anyone.  And for Nancy at least, it is already too late.

The Somerton Beach Man.

 

At 6:30am on December 1^st 1948 Adelaide police were called.  A local resident had found a man sitting on Somerton Beach, leaning back onto the seawall.  His feet were crossed and pointing toward the sea.  An unlit cigarette was tucked behind his ear, and one which was half smoked was tucked into his collar.  He was wearing a modern grey double breasted jacket, crisp white shirt, red and blue tie, brown pants and a brown knitted pullover.  His shoes were clean and shiny.  The strangest part of his appearance was that he was missing a hat, which was unusual for such a well-dressed man.  Also, he was dead.

The X marks the location of the body.

Witnesses had seen the man sitting on the beach the night before, stretching his left arm out and dropping it limply, where it continued to lay.  His right arm was curled up towards his face.

In his pockets were a used bus ticket, a used train ticket, a comb, cigarettes and matches and half a packet of Juicy Fruit.  The bus ticket would have taken him to the bus stop about 1,100 meters up the road. 

No form of identification was found. 

An autopsy was ordered, which found no apparent cause of death.  The coroner ruled that the man had died of probable poisoning, most likely an untraceable barbiturate, although he ruled out the pasty which remained in the man’s stomach as the cause.  The man was described as between 40 and 45, of “Britisher” appearance and in top physical condition.  His dental records could not be matched to anyone in Australia.  His clothes were searched, which revealed that all the clothing labels had been removed.

Police circulated the man’s photo and fingerprints to no avail.  Some people came forward, believing they knew the man’s identity, but upon investigation they were all mistaken. As he could not be identified his body was embalmed, which was the first time in Australia’s history that this was necessary.

On January 14^th 1949, staff at the Adelaide Railway Station found an unattended brown suitcase which had been checked into the cloakroom on November 30^th.  The suitcase contained clothes, sharpened scissors and a merchant marine stencilling brush.  It also contained a needle and thread.  The thread was an unusual brand and matched a repair made to the pants of the dead beach man.  All the labels of the clothing had been removed bar three which read the name “Keane” or “T Keane”.  Police renewed their search with this information, searching internationally as well, but could find no T. Keane reported missing from any English speaking country.  The only other clue from the suitcase was that it was a style which could only have been made in America due to the type of machine work.

An inquest was held into the man’s death, and during this time, his belongings were searched again.  This time police found a tiny piece of paper rolled up inside the fob pocket in the man’s trousers.  The paper had two words on it – Tamam Shud, which is Persian for “ended” or “finished”, written in a distinctive font.  It was the last two words from a book of Poetry called The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam.  The book had been extremely popular in Australia, and now police searched for a copy that was missing a section of its last page.  The media joined in the search, and the very next day a man found a copy of the book had been placed in the backseat of his unlocked car in Glenelg, a beach side suburb of Adelaide.  He recognised the book from the newspaper story.  The copy of the book was missing a section which exactly matched the piece of paper in the dead man’s pocket.

In the back of the book were faint pencil markings of five lines of capital letters with the second line struck out. The strike out is now considered significant with its similarity to the fourth line possibly indicating a mistake and thus, possible proof the letters are code:

WRGOABABD

MLIAOI

WTBIMPANETP

MLIABOAIAQC

ITTMTSAMSTGAB

Code experts, including the department of defence, were unable to decipher it.

Also written in the book was an unlisted phone number, which belonged to a former nurse who lived in Glenelg.  She appeared very shaken when shown a photo of the dead man, but denied all knowledge of him, or why he would be so near her home. She seemed so shaken that police were concerned she might faint during questioning. She told them that she had owned a copy of The Rubaiyat when she had worked in Sydney, but had given it to a patient in 1945.  The patient was traced and found to be alive and well.  She asked not to have her name recorded as she was now married and wanted to spare her husband any embarrassment, so was given the pseudonym “Jestyn” in the police report.  This severely hindered follow up investigations.  Years later it was discovered that she was not actually married at the time. 

The lack of information about the dead man, and the mysterious code in the book led to contemporary rumours that he was a spy.  It was the early days of the cold war, and many believed that the man may have been a Russian spy en route to the Woomera US military base in central South Australia.   

A plaster cast was made of the man’s head and shoulders and he was buried in a pauper’s grave in Adelaide.  Years later flowers began appearing on his grave, although police were not able to establish who was leaving them.

After the death of the Jestyn, her daughter and daughter-in-law sold their story to the Australian edition of 60 minutes, claiming that Jestyn was a Russian spy and knew the identity of the dead man.  They claim she told them that the man was “known at a level above the Adelaide police”.  They stated that Jestyn was an admitted communist sympathiser who spoke fluent Russian.  The women even speculated that she may have borne him a child – their deceased brother and husband.  An investigator sought to have the body exhumed, but the Attorney General denied permission, citing a lack of public interest beyond curiosity.

The case is still listed as open in South Australia, but it is unlikely we will ever know the identity of the Somerton Beach man.

The Zodiac Killer: This is the Zodiac Speaking

One of my main areas of interest in all this crime stuff is unsolved crimes, and The Zodiac is a beauty: serial killer who has killed at least 7 people - 7 are definitely linked to him, but at one stage he claimed to have killed 37 people. And he sent creepy cyphers to police and the media, some of which are still unsolved.
Here is the story:  Most people believe it all started in October 30th 1966 in California, when pretty young Cheri Jo Bates was murdered. He had stalked her in her university library and disabled her car while she studied inside. When she couldn't start her car, he approached and offered assistance. They spent over an hour talking in the dark alleyway. Then he killed her. He didn't rape her, or steal her purse. He just killed her.  The only clue the police had came in a letter from the Zodiac himself. He didn't call himself Zodiac yet. He didn't sign the first letter at all, but in the letter he made threats against women he saw in his daily life and ended the letter "IT WAS JUST A WARNING. BEWARE...I AM STALKING YOUR GIRLS NOW".  The letter was sent to the police and the media. A second letter was then sent, but the police were still no closer to having any realistic suspects.  The police had one suspect - an ex-boyfriend who didn't take the break up well. He is still listed as the only firm suspect in Cheri's murder forty years after the event. There is some conjecture whether Cheri really was the first Zodiac victim, but her death certainly fits the pattern.

David Faraday and Betty-Lou Jenson

Now the Zodiac began focusing on young couples in cars. Betty-Lou Jenson, 16, and David Faraday, 17, had the unfortunate luck of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.  Parked in David's mother's car in a "lover's lane" area on Lake Herman Road, Benicia, California, Betty-Lou and David were ambushed and shot to death late at night on December 20th 1968.  It appears that David was standing near the car when shot, whereas Betty-Lou had made a run for it and was shot five times in the right side of the upper back. The police were baffled - there were no witnesses, no motives and no suspects (Graysmith).

Darlene Ferrin and Michael Mageau.

Six months later, on July 4th 1969, he struck again.  The victims this time were Darlene Ferrin, 22, and Michael Mageau, 19.  They were shot while parked at the  Blue Rock Springs Golf Course in Vallejo California.  Darlene was killed, but somehow Mike survived despite his injuries.  He was able to give a description of the killer to police, but no leads turned up anything useful in their investigation.  There were reports that Darlene's husband received a prank phone call later that night - he could hear nothing but breathing/wind.

Bryan Hartnell and Cecilia Shepherd.

It was less than three months later when the Zodiac struck again.  Bryan Hartnell, 20, and Cecilia Shepherd, 22, were stabbed while spending an afternoon relaxing at Lake Berryessa California, September 27th 1969.  During this attack, the killer wore a hood over his head which appeared to be home-made.  Bryan survived despite six stab wounds to his back.  He was able to describe the killer and the hood, but again police were left baffled.

Paul Stine.

The final confirmed Zodiac victim was Paul Stine, a cab driver in San Francisco, two weeks later on October 11th.  As a victim he did not fit the pattern - he was 30 years old and not in a lovers lane type area.  A square of Paul's shirt had been carefully ripped off, and pieces of the shirt were later mailed to the media to prove that the Zodiac was responsible.

One of the most baffling aspects of the Zodiac case were not only the phone calls he made to the police and families, but more than that it was the letters and cypher he designed which caught media attention. The letters kept arriving for years after the confirmed killings stopped - 1974 or 1978 depending on whether you believe the validity of the 1978 letter.  It seemed he was desperate to get acknowledgement for his killing. He insisted that his cyphers be published on the front page of newspapers and the media complied.  The cypher baffled law enforcement and a civilian couple actually solved it after it was published in the newspaper. The solved cypher, like most of the letters, promised more murders and implied that the Zodiac was always watching. In one letter he even threatened to bomb a school bus, and then shoot the children as they ran off the bus. 

With a few appearances over the few years via mail and phone calls, the interest in the Zodiac was maintained, but the case was never solved. Some of the suspects included Ted Kaczynski (The Unabomber) and Bruce Davis (a Manson Family member).  The most favoured suspect of many, including author Robert Graysmith, was Arthur Leigh Allen. I say "was" because he died of natural causes in 1992. DNA evidence taken off postage stamps did not match Allen, however there are some claims that he got others to lick his stamps for him.  Convincing arguments for and against Allen are all over the interwebs.  Other suspects have periodically emerged, as often happens in unsolved crimes.  Most recently a woman came forward in 2009 and claimed her late father was the Zodiac.

Realistically the case will probably be filed next to Jack the Ripper and JonBenet Ramsey in the "we are never going to solve this one" drawer.  I have just finished reading "Zodiac" by Robert Graysmith.  While many have discounted his theories, I found it a useful introduction to the details of the case and it gave me many areas to think about.
The full story can be read on  Crime Library and many interesting articles and points of view are out there on the interwebs.  I found Zodiackillerfacts and Zodiac Killer most interesting - especially as they seem to have almost opposite views.