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.

                                                __________________________

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.

I don't like Mondays - Brenda Spencer, the first school shooter.

The silicon chip inside her head,
Gets switched to overload.

Brenda Spencer lived with her father after her parents divorced.  It would be a massive understatement to say it was not a normal relationship.  Not many 16 year old girls sleep in the same bed as their father.

She had been depressed for quite some time, but her father refused the doctor’s advice to admit her to a psychiatric facility.  She asked for a new radio for Christmas, instead he gave her a gun.

Brenda had already been in trouble for shooting her BB gun out of her front window at the school across the road, shooting out the windows.  Now she had a real gun.

And nobody's gonna go to school today,
She's going to make them stay at home.

Unfortunately for many students, they were already at Grover Cleveland Elementary School in San Diego, lining up outside, waiting for Principal Burton Wragg to unlock the gates and let them in.  It was January 29^th 1979 and Brenda Spencer was about to become the first school shooter.

She used her Christmas present, a Ruger 10/22 Semi-Automatic .22 calibre rifle with telescopic sight, to shoot at the children lining up across the road.  Principal Wragg tried to protect his charges, and was fatally wounded in the process.  The school janitor, Mike Suchar, came to assist his boss protect the children, and paid for his heroism with his life.  One of the first responding officers, Officer Robert Robb, was wounded in the neck.  The shooting was only stopped because another brave police officer drove a garbage truck between Brenda’s house and the school, blocking her view of the children.  After 30 rounds of ammunition, 2 men lay dead, and a police officer and 8 children were wounded. 

Tell me why?
I don't like Mondays.

Brenda then barricaded herself in her house for nearly seven hours.  She told police negotiators that she was going to “come out shooting”.  A journalist began ringing all the local phone numbers, to ask residents of the area if they had witnessed the events, trying to get a scoop.  He unintentionally managed to call Brenda, and so he asked her “Tell me why?”  Her response, according to that journalist, was the now iconic “I don’t like Mondays”.  She ended the conversation by saying “I have to go now.  I shot a pig, and I want to shoot some more”.  The journalist had his scoop.

Brenda claims to not remember this exchange, but it would be safe to say that on that day she was not strongly connected to reality. 

Eventually, she surrendered, and walked outside, dropping her rifle on the front lawn.  The person terrorising an elementary school and a whole neighbourhood was a 5’2”, very thin girl, with long red hair.  Police searched the run-down house, finding evidence of beer and whiskey, although Brenda tested negative for any substances in her system.

Brenda was tried as an adult.  She pled guilty to two counts of murder and assault with a deadly weapon and was sentenced to 25 years to life.

Brenda clearly had a mental illness at the time of the crime, which doesn’t seem to have ever been effectively treated.  At her first parole hearing she told the parole board that she was hoping that the police would kill her.  She claims to have attempted suicide the previous year, and she felt that her father wanted her to kill herself, which is why he gave her a gun.  She also claimed to the parole board that she was under the influence of drugs, but the police conspired to falsify the drug test results.  She has self-harmed several times in prison, once using a heated paper clip to burn the words “courage” and “pride” into her chest after a relationship break up.    Brenda has been treated for epilepsy and depression while in prison, but still seems to be significantly disconnected from reality.

At her parole hearing in 2001 Brenda claimed her father had sexually abused her.  This was the first time she had mentioned it to authorities, so they did not believe her.  After Brenda’s arrest, her father went on to have a relationship with Brenda’s 17 year old roommate from juvenile detention, later marrying her.  Brenda’s roommate looked just like her.  In a cruel twist of fate for one of the children shot by Brenda, a child of Brenda’s father and Brenda’s roommate – Brenda’s half-sibling – attended the child care centre where the now adult victim worked.

Brenda has expressed concern that she is responsible for the school shootings which have occurred since. 

“With every school shooting, I feel I’m partially responsible,” she told the parole board back in 2001. “What if they got the idea from what I did?”

Sadly, I suspect that even though Brenda was the first, she did not create nearly four decades of copy cats.

Long before my interest in crime, I loved the song “I don’t like Mondays” by The Boomtown Rats.  The first two songs I asked for on vinyl, aged 5, were ”I don’t like Mondays” and “Video Killed the Radio Star” by The Buggles.  I clearly had excellent taste.  It was more than 30 years later before I discovered the story behind the music, after watching the documentary about Brenda titled “I don’t like Mondays”.  If you get the chance, I recommend watching it.  It gives a fascinating insight into Brenda, both at the time of the crime, and throughout the years in prison.  It really is a story of a mentally ill person who needed help, but didn’t know how to get it.  As a result two heroic men died, 9 more people were injured, and psychological scars were inflicted on scores of innocent people, many of them children.  She is still in prison, and I doubt she will ever be released.  At her last parole hearing in 2009 the parole board decided that she would not be eligible again until 2019. 

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.

Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka

Brief Summary and Editorial:  Serial Killer Barbie and Evil Bastard Ken

Paul and Karla on their wedding day.

It's fairly common to picture serial killers (and for that matter rapists and paedophiles) as disfigured, evil little men. Maybe that's why Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka really stand out.

Paul Bernardo met Karla Homolka and found in her his perfect woman - beautiful, sexually adventurous, and most importantly submissive. When Paul asked Karla what she would think if he told her that he was the Scarborough Rapist, a criminal who had been tormenting a Canadian suburb for a period of several months, Karla said she thought it was "cool". They fell hard for each other and Karla was willing to do ANYTHING to keep her attractive fiance.

That anything included drugging her 15 year old sister, Tammy, so Paul could rape her. You see, using Paul's fucked up logic, Karla was not a virgin when she started seeing Paul, so he needed to take the virginity of her sister to make up for that. When he put it like that, Karla was happy to help. She stole some anaesthetic from the vet clinic where she worked as a vet nurse. On December 23rd 1990 Paul, Karla and Tammy stayed up later than everyone else.

Tammy Homolka.

Tammy had been drinking and had eaten not long before her older sister held a drug soaked rag over her face while her fiance vaginally and anally raped her. While her oldest sister was orally raping her, Tammy asphyxiated on her own vomit and died. She was significantly burnt on her face from the anaesthetic agent which had been sloppily applied by her sister, but the medical examiner thought it must have been from stomach acid.

Three weeks after this horrible event, Paul took a video of Karla dressed in Tammy's clothes, and while pretending to be Tammy, performed oral sex on him. This act alone suggests that Karla did not care about what she had done to her little sister.

Karla, during her trial.

Paul continued to rape women, often with Karla's consent and presence. At least one woman who was raped by Bernardo after getting off a bus said she saw a blonde woman nearby holding a video camera. Police dismissed this as hysteria.

Eventually at least two more teenage girls lost their lives at Paul and Karla's hands.  In recent years Paul has confessed to several more rapes for which other people had been imprisoned and since pardoned.  There is also at least two young girls who died in the same area at the same time who were quite probably more victims of Paul and Karla, although unless Paul confesses, the truth will probably never be known.

The whole time that Paul and Karla were killing, a forensic pathology lab had a sample of Paul's DNA waiting to be tested as the Scarborough rapist. After more than two years the sample was finally tested and Paul Bernardo was arrested.  This was just one is a series of errors and delays made by police and forensic services which may have cost some young girls their lives. 

Karla, domestic violence victim.

Paul's fascination with his new video camera along with his decision to beat Karla black and blue sealed their fate. Karla's parents came and removed her and she reported the abuse to them, having photos taken of her horrific bruising. She also went to the police and confessed.

Police made a deal with Karla to tell what she knew. She ended up with a ten year sentence that was increased to twelve years when police discovered her role in the death of her own sister. Then the police were given the video tapes that Paul's lawyer had in his possession. If they had had those tapes earlier, Karla would never have received a deal and she would still be in prison.

Karla was released in July 2005, to media hysteria throughout Canada. There were even websites where you could bet when Karla would be killed - with the stipulation that you couldn't bet on it and then kill her, as that was cheating. 

It's an interesting case. I wonder how Karla's family feel about her these days, with the knowledge they must now possess. Was Karla a battered wife, committing the crimes as she had no choice but to follow her abusive manipulative husband? Or was she a willing participant who enjoyed it as much as Paul did? Karla insists she was a victim too. The video tapes suggest otherwise. 
Personally I think the video tapes are more convincing than the wimpering of a convicted killer.

Links

There are plenty of stories online about Canada's most infamous serial killing couple, but these will give you a good summary:



Crime Library

Karla Homolka on Wikipedia

Paul Bernardo on Wikipedia