January 22, 2025 • 57 mins
On September 7, 1971, at a remote farmhouse 40 kilometres south of Adelaide, Clifford Bartholomew killed 10 people. His wife, his seven children, his sister-in-law and her 19-month-old son. He shot them all dead.
He was sentenced to death, but because of changes to the law, he wasn’t killed. Instead, he was re-sentenced to life in prison and managed to serve just eight years before being released on parole.
He changed his name, his identity and created an entirely new family who knew nothing about his previous life or his crimes… until now.
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Guests: Craig Cook & Allen Arthur
Host: Gemma Bath
Producer: Tahli Blackman
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:11):
You're listening to a Mother MEA podcast. Mother MEA acknowledges
the traditional owners of land and waders. This podcast was
recorded on in November two thousand and two. At the
age of seventy two, a man named Clifford Palmer died,
a beloved husband of twenty two years and stepfather of seven,
(00:34):
known as Poppy Cliff to his brood. His gravestone reads
devoted to and sadly missed by children and grandchildren. By
his family's account, he was a hard working, gentle and
devout man, described as jovial, outdoorsy and adamant about keeping
his kids on the right side of the law. What
(00:56):
they didn't know is that he had a secret, a
whole other life he lived before them, a whole other
family who he murdered. His crimes were so sinister he
was just ribed by the detective who arrested him as
the most hateful man he ever knew, And yet he
was allowed to start again, allowed to shed the title
(01:19):
of Australia's worst family mass murderer to reinvent himself, a
title he still holds to this day. I'm Jemma Bath
and this is True Crime Conversations A Muma mea podcast
exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the
(01:41):
people who know the most about them. On September seventh,
nineteen seventy one, at a remote farmhouse forty k's south
of Adelaide, Clifford Bartholomew killed ten people. His wife, Heather,
aged forty, his seven kids, Neville nineteen, Christine seventeen, Sharon fifteen,
(02:05):
Helen thirteen, Gregory ten, Roger seven, and Sandra four. His
sister in law Winness twenty six and her son Daniel
nineteen months were also shot dead. So how was this killer,
this mass murderer, able to reinvent his life and to
(02:29):
have a second go at family across state lines? And
why didn't we know about it before twenty eighteen? During
this episode, we're going to hear two different voices. First,
we'll be hearing from Craig Cook. He is the very
reason we know about Clifford Bartholomew's second life. Craig's exclusive
work as a journalist for the Adelaide Advertiser revealed the
(02:51):
truth not just to the public, but also to the
family Bartholomew had been helping raise for over two decades
after he'd killed his own. Then we'll hear from former
detective Alan Arthur, who was the first on the scene
back in nineteen seventy one. We thought it was important
to bring in someone who's not only familiar with the
latest details of the case, but also someone who lived
(03:14):
through it, faced Bartholomew and can explain how he was
able to start over Craig. Why haven't we heard this
story before? And I say we because I've never heard
of it. My producer's never heard of it. I've asked
around the editorial team. None of us have heard about
this before. How has it flown so under the radar?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Well, I'd never heard of it either. A great surprise
to me. The reason I came across this story was
editor of the Advertiser called John Whistler. I was as
old as Moses, and he had heard of it. And
he often dropped case studies on my desk and suggested
that I might look through them and see if there
was anything more defined. And one day he dropped these
dusty papers and photographs of the Hope Valley murders and
(04:01):
I just never heard of them. I asked around the
office and people had never heard of it either. It
was unbelievable. I couldn't believe a man who killed ten
members of his family was given a death sentence and
then was allowed out after eight years on parole, given
a new identity and allowed to move into state.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Take us back to the nineteen sixties early seventies. Who
were the Bartholomew family and what did their life look
like in Hope Forest, South Australia.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Well, they were pool. They came from quite a rural
area of South Australia down the south on the way
to Victor Harbor for anybody who knows that region close
to the wine and growing areas, but farmland back in
those days. And mister Barthwallen in Clifford had a part
time job as at the abatoar. Then they didn't have
much money. I think they were renting the property from
(04:50):
a farmer. It was only had four or five rooms
if I re call Clifford and his wife and their
seven children, so nine people in a small cottage. That's
really all I know about them. Some people have interviewed
since who kind of knew them at the time. So
they were very quiet, said he was very quiet, never
totally shocked bal he did on that day Father's Day
(05:12):
in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Well, Hope Forest is a very isolated area, isn't it.
There's not many people there.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
It's not a big community, no, very small.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Everybody would know each other. But yeah, it's not a
million miles from It's not up north in South Australia
where you could be, you know, one hundred miles from anybody. Yeah,
Thouven's not too far away. But yes, isolated for sure,
and yeah, everybody would know. Every breath'd be one pub,
everybody congregate there, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Do we know what state Clifford and Heather's marriage was
in by late nineteen seventy one, just to help set
the scene.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Well, it wasn't in a good place. Basically, she'd asked
him to leave. The story was that he suspected she
was having an affair with a twenty two year old
Vietnam Vet who would come to stay at their place
and help them out, basically become a lodger at their
house and was helping around the farm and doing different jobs,
(06:07):
and Clifford suspected that his wife was having an affair
with him. There's no evidence of it, in particular that
there was any kind of sexual relationship. There was definitely
a friendship if she went to Sydney with this person,
but absolutely no evidence that there was any full blown affair.
But he started be acting quite weirdly Clifford, and she
(06:29):
asked him to leave. And on this day when the
murders happened, it was Father's Den, and he was invited
back because it was Father's Day. He left again that night,
and then he returned in the night and committed his slaughter.
So the suggestion is he may have been under pressure,
and he may have been depressed, of course, and he
was obviously fulfilled with rage and jealousy. That's still an
(06:51):
extraordinary action to take.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Doesn't really excuse hunting down and murdering.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Ten people, No, and your loved ones too.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
So there were seven kids Heather yep. And then there
were two other family members staying there that night that
were also killed.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yep. Winness was have a sister and she had a
young baby or eighteen month old child. They come down
because it was Father's Day, I think. And then there
was another child who'd come down to a couple of
children of witnesses, including Noline who was an eight year
old child, but her brother our older brother decided he'd
(07:29):
take her back to Adelaide because he didn't like the
atmosphere in the house. That was what he'd said. He
felt like something bad was going to happen, and he
was quite right. So that's the only reason that Noline
survived was because her brother took her back to Adelaide
and stayed with relatives.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
How did this shooting unfold? Did it start with Heather
and then he just systematically went through rooms? Were they asleep?
Were they awake?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
It was the middle of the night, and he went
there with the intention of killing Heather. That's what he said.
He made full statements as documented evidence of his state
of mind and what he did in the order he
did it. It's incredibly graphic and very disturbing. He got
a maut from the garage and he intended to stand
Heather and take her to the garage and shoot her
(08:18):
there so that nobody woke up. Once he hit her
with a marriage he woke up, all hell broke loose,
and yeah, I just can't imagine the saying after that.
There's some terrible, terrible imagery around it. All on some
graphic details about his daughter begging him not to kill her.
(08:39):
That was his eldest daughter, and he loved the best,
he said in his statement, But he shot her. And
then he did systematically go around the house, hitting people
on the head with hammers and then shooting them. Unimaginable.
I think some of the family members try to stop him.
One of his sons definitely trying to stop him. There
(09:00):
was fights, but they couldn't overpower him.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Well, he was quite forthcoming in his police interviews, wasn't
he about he's whine state of mind. Do you remember
some of the things he said. You mentioned that he
only meant to kill his wife, but I've seen it.
Also said that he realized once he killed one of
the children, he couldn't leave any of them alive in
(09:25):
his mind.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Because he loved them too much.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
That's what he said, because he loved them too much.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah, that was his statement about why he then had
to systematically kill all the children. Most shocking to the
police officer who investigated this case was the fact that
he'd killed nine people. He went to the kitchen table,
sat down, started drinking heavily, but after about thirty minutes,
he realized the baby was still asleep in the cop
(09:52):
and he went back, and he put a bullet in
that baby's head that really really destroyed the police officer
who investigated this. I just could not see the sense
of that, and that's a that's why they call him
a monster, and he is, in their mind, the worst
person I've ever had to deal with.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
So that would have been nineteen month old Daniel.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Correct his nephew, Yeah, who was asleep.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
The man that Clifford thought his wife was having an
affair with. He was called mister X in the trial
and you tracked him down. Could he tell you anything
about that time or was there a reason you decided
not to name.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Him, not him any evidence you did have an affair,
But that was his argument. I've got a couple of
things to say about mister X actually, which we could include.
So I found mister X, but I chose not to
put him on the record. And the one thing that
(10:49):
was of interest was there was a medical report that
he'd been shot in the groin in Vietnam and he
didn't have any function, so it wouldn't have been a
sexual relationship. Even if he was having an affair with
his wife, he didn't have the capacity to perform sexually.
So I spoke to a third party. I knew his name,
(11:09):
and I knew where he is, and I spoke to
a relative of his, and I gave them several opportunities
to talk to me, and in the end he chose
not to, and I couldn't see any reason to pursue
it any further. To be honest, I just didn't think
he was going to add anymore. He was a twenty
two year old kid, and he didn't know anything. I
(11:30):
think he said at the time that he didn't have
an affair with Heather. He said he was a friendship.
And the night this happened, Clifford had been told by
his wife. Heather told him that they were moving out
of the farmhouse and they're going to move back into
the city, basically into the Port Adelaide area, and that's
where mister X was from. And this was something else
(11:50):
that has said. By following you off, he believed that
this mister X was now going to become the father
to his children. This is what he strangely put together,
that his family was leaving, not only leaving him, but
leaving the area and going to set up house mister X.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
But you couldn't find proof that that was what was
going to happen.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
No, no proof of all, but no nobody else confirmed it.
But that's wouldn't have surprised that ad was trying to
get out of the situation, her marriage already broken down.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Some of the interesting horrific things in his police interviews
that he did say was, you know, he tried to
excuse it by saying he had five months of mental
torture thinking that his wife was having this affair, and
then when he was shooting his family, he couldn't control
the screaming noises in his head and so he just
(12:44):
kept going until it all went quiet. There's just something
so chilling about hearing this man being able to articulate
so clearly what he was doing.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Was stall processes and what he so he's feeling the
screaming and the only thing that's going to stop the
scream is to keep killing people. Yeah, just very difficult
to get inside of his mind. These were his loved ones.
This is not strangers, He's not people attacking it. These
are the greatest loves of his life. And it takes
fifty minutes. It's a long time of killing and beating
(13:19):
and going back and Yeah, at some stage you would
think that something would say stop, that stop, enough is enough.
But obviously he must have got it in his head
that nobody could survive this because he loved them.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
But forty to fifty minutes suggests so much premeditation. You
have to really be thinking as you as you're shooting
to continue for that amount of time.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Yeah, And he was having conversations with his children, especially
at this time, his discussions and begging and pleading, and
I think it was an instant with his summary. He
hit his son over the head and he kind of
became unconscious, and he went back to his bed, But
then the sun woke up again and there was a fight,
and then he ended up shooting his son after all
(14:07):
of the sudden Yeah, I just can't get inside his
head to imagine why you would keep going. I mean,
what are you trying to achieve here? Obviously the obliteration
of your family. Well, something that really annoyed the investigators
is that they didn't have the courage to kill himself.
You really think if he'd gone through all this horror
to save his family from a horror, why wouldn't he
(14:30):
kill himself. What a selfish individual that he would go
back and shoot a baby, but he didn't have the
guts to kill himself. That's why they're describing as the
most horrendous man they'd ever met.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
How were the murders discovered? Was he arrested pretty quickly
after all of this.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
He found his mother at four or five o'clock in
the morning. He wasn't living too far away, and she
said call the police, so he did. It was the
Monday morning after Father's Day, pauling weather, the middle of winter,
and yes, one police officer managed to find his way
down there and found the scene about finding him was
(15:07):
still there in the kitchen, and then obviously he report
already in and quickly escalated to seenior police officers getting
involved and heading down there.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
After the break. I asked Craig about what it was
like interviewing Alan Arthur, the detective who arrested Clifford Buffolow.
You and you've spoken to some of the officers that
had to look at that scene and kind of investigate
that scene.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I spoke to both senior officers involved. There's footage, video
footage of the day without sounding virturedly probably a good thing.
And there they are looking like young men, shocked, young
men I interviewed them as seventy five year old, and
they're still shot by this case. It really has disturbed
them and what they saw that Daves. They said, no
(16:01):
issue have to witness something like that, and they just
couldn't make sense of it. But yeah, I just really
show them to the bar in that story.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
I can never forgive you. Never. It's unforgivable what he
did when it came to children, A two year old
baby and a cock puts the gun to its hidden kills.
I mean, goodness, grace to me, it's not normal that
(16:36):
it was for him.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Do we know if it made headlines at the time.
We're saying we don't. We haven't heard about it. Now
at the time nineteen seventy one, do people know about it?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
I certainly made headlines. It was Australia's biggest mass killing.
It's Liz Australia's biggest mass family killing. So yes, it
made headlines around the country. Whyat then disappeared? I mean,
Adelaide's down from a lot of murders and mysteries, this
one kind of definitely disappeared from the public consciousness. I
(17:10):
can't a friend who remembers it. It's yeah, definitely just
I got lost. I think there must have been a
lot of publicity around when he was released, So that's
seventy eight, seventy nine, But after that the story disappears.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
He was sentenced to death by hanging, which was still
a thing back then in December nineteen seventy one, but
that didn't happen, did it.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
He was sentenced to death by Dame Roma Mitchell. How
she became Dame Roma Mitchell, She was the judge, and yes,
she's sentenced him to death by hanging. Everybody thought that
was probably a just a just result. But even then
they knew the Dunston government. If the Dunstan government came in,
they were probably going to get rid of the death
penalty and he probably would just serve life imprisonment. So
(17:56):
that was already kind of known when he got a
death sentence, but a life imprisonment probably, and if alons
it meant life imprisonment, I think everybody could go with that.
What became so shocking was after eight years he applied
for parole and Dame Rome and Mitchell was head of
the prole board who gave him parole after eight years
in prison.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Why why Craig do we know why we don't.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
We have a few insights. The file, apparently, is one
sheet of paper, that is the file that allowed Clifford
Barthoomy back into the community, a man who killed ten people,
and the piece of paper basically implies that he had
mental issues at the time, depression, and that the psychologist
report suggested he would never do this ever again, which
(18:45):
is quite leap it is, and he probably shouldn't have
had the opportunity to do it ever again either, So
that was the logic. And then the other thing that
came through was that this was considered a domestic violence
incident and therefore of a lesser. If he'd killed ten strangers,
there's no way he would have been out of prison.
But he killed his own family, and therefore some kind
(19:06):
of logic suggests that he he's not a threat to
anybody else.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
That is mind boggling totally, because even I mean, you
try and wrap your head around the fact that, right,
they think that this guy isn't going to do it again,
so therefore will let him out. But it's also he
wasn't punished for the crimes he did do.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
He was called a model prisoner, which I don't know
what that means. But yeah, a model prisoner. So I
didn't kill anybody in prison.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
He wasn't just released after eight years. He was kind
of given a chance of a new life. He was
given a new identity by the government, wasn't he.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Eventually he wasn't given a new identity. Initially, he moved
back into the community where he came from. He moved
back into Port Adelaide where he'd originally come from, and
there were threats against his life. Obviously, there was a
lot of outrage about the fact that he was back
in the community. And it was mainly because it took
a few years, but mainly because of the threats against
(20:02):
his life that the decision was made to give him
a new identity and he chose to move into state.
He went to Victoria.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
He went by Clifford Palmer, so he kept his first
name his.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
First name, just changed the second name to Palmer, not Bartholomew.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
And who did he reinvent himself as that's.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
A very good question. I don't think we know a
lot of details about. But definitely a Christian man. Because
he met his next wife, I think it may have
been a dancel, but he definitely claimed he was a
man of God, and she was very religious. That was
a very important factor for her, and probably you know,
one of the main reasons they got together was the
(20:44):
fact that he was he said he was a man
of God. By this stage he was quite elderly. I
can't remember what work he did after that. He had
a few jobs before they moved to Queensland.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
So he married Merle. He had a second marriage and
a second family.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Melgray mel Gray born in Sri Lanka, immigrant to Australia,
who had seven children.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Row.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
It's kind of eerie, isn't it? Seven children and again.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Seven Jordren again. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get to the stage
where I found his grapes down and it was absolutely
mind blown by what it says on the stage on
the grapes down.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Do we know if mel was aware of what.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
He'd done, the suggestion from the family. I later obviously
had to talk to the family eventually, and I'm pretty
sure he had said that he killed his wife. I
think he declared that, but it was supposed to be
a jealous rage, and the fact that he came out
after eight years suggested that it was nothing. It was
a fit of anger against one person, and that it
(21:47):
was basically a man slaughter charge so easily justified. He
had his release papers, which was still in his possession,
and if he turned those, then maybe he had admitted
the family. Winder family seemed to know that he had
killed his wife on some stage, but it was, yeah,
some misunderstanding or didn't mean to kill her. And he
only served eight years, so therefore it kind of been
(22:08):
that serious.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
And what kind of stepfather was he?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
They could not have been more glowing in their praise
for him as a stepfather. So seven children and then
all the marriages of those children, and then all those grandchildren.
Can't remember how many there are, There's a lot. And
they said nobody could have a bad word for him.
The whole family enjoyed his company and never saw him
(22:37):
raise a fist or be even angry in any situation.
That's what they told me. And obviously when they knew
the full story, they were very shocked.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Well, he was in their lives. He was married to
Merle for over twenty two years. He died in two
thousand and two in his seventies. She died in twenty twelve,
and by this point, the truth of the magnitude of
his crimes were still kind of hidden to the family,
wasn't it. How did they find out?
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Hidden to everybody knew obviously, and that new life they
found out because I told him.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Tell us about how you came into this story. You
mentioned at the start that you got this case report
thrown onto your desk.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Well, whenever John threw something in my way and it
was going to be interesting. He only chose really interesting stories,
and as we said, it was just one unbelievable and too.
I just knew there had to be more to it
in some aspect, and I really did that. Even at
that stage. I wanted to know what happened to him,
But even more so when I met Noline, who was
the young girl who survived the massacre, because she was
(23:42):
full of anger, hate and fear. This is a woman
in her fifties who had lived in incredible trauma and
she still feared from him, her uncle Barty. She had
nightmares about him coming back and shooting her. So once
I interviewed her, I definitely want to know what happened
to her. Clifford Bath following me, I thought we owed
(24:03):
it to her to tell her. If he was dead,
there was strong chance he was, but she should know
and hopefully they put her out of some kind of misery.
How she found out about the murders was just horrendous.
She was a police officers came to the house where
she was staying, and her mother came in and told
(24:24):
her to go and go in the bedroom. So it
obviously said she couldn't hear anything. The TV was under
the bedroom and while the police officers were informing her
so not her mother, I think it was an auntie
who was looking after it about what had happened. It
came up on the television and there were pictures and
Noleen so saw that her mother and brother are being killed,
(24:46):
plus her wife of family, seven cousins found out her
family had been and she sat there and watched the
TV and that's how she floaded.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
That's horrendous, yeah, and imaginable.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
So no wonder she's got a lot of trauma and yeah,
So that was the first story I wrote, really was
about her her journey and however, we wanted to know
if he was alive, and then I kind of made
an approach to police, so I interviewed the two police
officers too to get the full story. They were very
kind in their time. And then I approached the police
(25:20):
and asked them if they could confirm if he was
dead or alive. I took a couple of emails, and
then I got a very surprising email back that's confirm
who was dead, but also told me his surname, which
I was not expecting. So with that and I started
looking for him and I found him.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Well, you found he's Tony's grave. He found his tombstone,
and that's.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
How I knew, and i'd boy the dates, I just
worked out it had to be him. And what was
on the tombstone was the greatest love from your children
and grandchildren, just the man who killed his first family.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
What did you think when you first saw that?
Speaker 2 (26:04):
One of the most surprising things I've ever seen. I think,
just you can't. I mean, at this stage, I didn't
know there was seven children, all these grandchildren, so I
just couldn't understand it. I thought, how did that happen?
Maybe it's not him, because here's the loving children and
grandchildren giving their grandpapa a lovely stand off. I just yes.
(26:25):
And then when I told Norlen, of course I was
that's so far worse. She couldn't believe he'd gotten another
family and lived happily. I mean, even if he hadn't
caused any more chaos. He didn't deserve that, I was
her opinion. He didn't deserve another life and another family.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
So how did you track down the second family that
all the kids and the relatives, and how did you
have these conversations with them about his true identity?
Speaker 2 (26:54):
I tracked them down the same way I found Orleane probably,
which is social media, so people who were a presence
on social media. So you're just slow putting two and
two together. Eventually I worked out where he was from,
where Clifford must have been living, and then worked out
had Mills name by that stage, So eventually I worked
out who he was, where he was and where he lived.
(27:15):
I mean, we were ready to publish, and you have
to give the respect to that family and tell them
that what are we publishing and warn them, yeah, they're
in Queensland. Maybe it wouldn't have even reached them being
published in Adelaide, maybe not, but they deserve the respect
to know what was being published and what was being
said about their grandfather and stepfather. Very difficult, I thought
(27:39):
the family handled things magnificently. They had a family conference.
They had told everybody of an adult age about what
was going to be said that it was probably true.
In fact, it was true. They researched it all themselves,
and yeah, they dealt with it very well. Terrible shocked
at them all. They just couldn't get their head around it.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
One of the family members that you ended up quoting
in your stories kind of said he was glad he
was dead by then.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah, it would have been obviously Flowers, if it'd been alive. Yeah,
just an impossible situation if it'd been alive. So thankfully
it had all happened after Clifford had passed on.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
I want to talk a bit more about Noline, because
she seems like, you know, a bit like the forgotten
victim in this story. How has that the crime shaped
her life?
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Very hard to judge, but having interviewed her, I know
it's it's the most traumatic incident of her life and
she has lived in fear. Basically she had. Some people
might think it's not realistic that he had ever come
back and kill her, but she she believed that was
a possibility, that yeah, he was mad enough to kill Tempe,
(28:56):
But why wasn't he mad enough to come and find
her and kill her? And she had children as well.
By the stage, she had a few children of her own.
And I think she suffered what all of us suffered,
which is the how how can you have been let out?
And how could have been given the chance of the
second life. She really struggled that he didn't he wouldn't
face punishment for wrecking her life and ten other lives,
(29:18):
I mean, and dozens of other lives. Potentially, There's a
whole population that he killed that night. It wasn't just
ten people. There was a futures, whether they got married,
they all have had children, There's a continuation there that
he obliterated and those kind of things. Yes, she really
struggled with She wanted him. I mean, she was very
frank about how she wanted him to die and he
(29:38):
should die in pain because she felt pain, and she
wanted him to have had a miserable life. And then
she found out he had an incredibly wonderful life for
the last twenty years of his life.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Is there an argument to the very least that she
should have been told that he was dead.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Absolutely. I tried to get something happening at the time
around this case that victims should be informed. This is
an extraordinary case, but there are other incidences where victims
do not know what happened to the perpetry. I mean,
other people have had new identities and disappeared, and I
think you should be told if somebody in that circumstances
(30:19):
has died. I think it would make a difference rather
than people wondering what's going on and if they're coming back,
And yeah, I think that's the least the police could
do in those circumstances.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Did you contact the South Australian Parole Board and kind
of ask them retrospectively why did this happen? Could this
happen again? Would they able to give you any answers?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
This South Australian prole Board on the head is Francis
Nelson QC. She's been ed for thirty three years. She's
a great friend of Roma Mitchell's and she's a little
bit mystified too. But then she's said that they don't
have didn't have the full story back in nineteen seventy nine,
and that these days there would be far more evidence,
(31:02):
far more interviews and psychological profiling. She believes the Parole
board today would have a lot more information to be
basing a judgment on if you can't say whether they'd
make the same decision or not, but I'm thinking probably not,
But who knows. But yeah, it's a surprise.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Which I guess is reassuring. But what worries me is
how many other Clifford's are out there from the sixties, seventies,
eighties that perhaps got new identities that we don't know about.
Do you think that that's a common occurrence or am
I kind of catastrophizing it a bit?
Speaker 4 (31:42):
No?
Speaker 2 (31:42):
No, I definitely think it was a common occurrence back
in the sixties, seventies, eighties. Maybe it still happens, probably
happens in cases less horrific and less high profile than
this was at the time. It's apite the fact that
it disappeared from public view. But yeah, there must be
a lot of people who get new identities.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
When you look back at your career and all the
stories you've covered, how does this one compare?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Cover a lot of stories, a lot of amazing stories.
This is probably the most surprising the fact, Yeah, this
would have to be the most surprising to actually track
him down, thinking I remember I was thinking well, we're
never going to find him, and then thanks to the police,
I'd like to think somebody in the police officer did
the right thing and gave me his name. Maybe it
(32:26):
was an accident, but maybe not. And yeah, just from
that point of view, we ever going to find him again?
I mean I think we all knew he was dead,
but then actually find him to find out what had
happened for us twenty ode years of his life. Yeah,
definitely the most surprising outcome.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
It's been quite a few years since you kind of
broke the news to his second family. Have you heard
anything from them since? How they've fared since learning this?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Nothing? No, I wouldn't expect to. I hope they've fared
very well. I hope they coped and they put it
behind them, because what else can they do. I mean,
there was that there were not absolutely no knowledge. I
don't imagine Merle had full knowledge of happened. And where
do you go and check up even on something like that.
I mean, there are many famous murder cases in Australia.
(33:17):
This should have been one of them, but it wasn't.
So they had no way of finding out truth about
what Clifford had done and whether what he was telling
them was the truth. They did find in his papers
after he died, the release notice from the prison which
said he'd been released after three years and for murdering
his wife. Of course, we go back to that time
(33:37):
when he wasn't charged with the other murders, so it.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Wouldn't have been it wouldn't have been in the prison papers.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
It was not his records. Yeah, so that was a
frustration for the police officers who believed he should have
been charged with all the murders at the time. And
then they were relaxed about it because he's got a
death sentence. And then ultimately that probably paid offer him
that he was not charged with all those other murders,
so he could be made to look like he just
killed his wife in a fit of anger.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Did those police officers try to go back and get
those charges once he'd been released. Were they like, okay,
well let's try and charge him.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
It was out of their hands. They won't send any
police officers. It's down to the prosecution. By that stage,
they did push telling me they really thought I think
the police, even higher up the police thought he should
be charged. But there was a consensus that we waste
public money and he's going to prison for the rest
of his life anyway, so let's not waste our time.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
I think the thing that surprises me about this story
not being bigger in terms of one of those stories
that all Australians know the name Clifford Buffalome slash Clifford Palmer,
is that in the media, to have a good story,
you need vision, you need photos, you need color, and
this had everything. We've got the photos of the victims.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
We've got photos of him exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
There is footage of the day that they found the bodies.
There's the body of Winness laying out in the open
in the rain with a cover over it. It's just
just to see that footage was just horrendous. You're there
and you know how those police officers are feeling. You
can see the look on their faces that they've just
been inside that house and they've never seen anything like it,
(35:20):
and I've never want to see anything like it again. Yeah,
we've got all that. It's not like we're missing much.
We've got a full confession. There's no mystery about what
happened in more order on that day. So yes, that's
another baffling reason for why this is not not in
the public consciousness.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
And you can't really, through your travels explain why.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
No. I've got no understanding why missing. The only thing
I can think of is that it was a family affair.
Somebody said that to me once. This was a family
a fair, a personal episode, and therefore you know it's
not about particular interest too. If you've been hunting and
killed ten people out in the forest, as other people
have done, maybe his they would be more famous, but
(36:05):
killing them in his own farmhouse was obviously not the
same impact. A lot of people said it was a
good I remember doing that. A lot of people who
lived in the area at the time were involved in racing,
and I used to cover racing, and that's when I
got back there. It was a good blow. He just
had a mad moment.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me Jemma Bath.
Up next, I talk with former detective Alan Arthur, who
shares some more about the crime scene, his interactions with
Clifford Buffolomew, and the reasoning behind the sentence he received. Alan,
where were you at in your life and your career
(36:44):
in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
We were living in Adelaide and It was a peaceful
sort of life, except that I used to be called
out to go to homicide and other violent crimes from
time to time. Not the only one member of the
homicids squad, but yeah, it happened regularly.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
By the way, how long had you been a detective at.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
That point, seven years? And I was in my third
year in a HOMOICAIDS squad, So you were.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Fairly experienced when it came to being on the scene
of really horrible murders and grizzly crimes.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
Well, that's true, and I've been to half a dozen
or so murders in the three years preceding the Hope
Forest murders, so it wasn't a new event. But I
must say the size of the numbers of victims was
far more than I've ever seen before.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Do you remember when you first got the call asking
you to attend the Farming Forest?
Speaker 4 (37:41):
I we do, take me down there. The detective Sergeant
Giles was the death sergeant and he had only just
come on the early hours of the morning for the
morning ship. His job was to coordinate work and attending members,
allocate them work to do, and he ran me for memory.
(38:01):
It was still dark, and he said, we've got a
job on. We've got ten people dead at a place
called Hope Posts in the Adelaide Hills. We'll pick you
up and convey you to headquarters and from there you
will be off to Hope for us.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
And when you arrived at the farm, what was that like?
What did you first see? What was going on?
Speaker 4 (38:26):
On arrival? Uniform police were there, and I think the
doctor that came with the local uniform police officer was there,
that's from memory. But outside there was the body of
a woman and she was dead and had a gunshop
into her head. And then we're inside and it was
(38:51):
just a short distance inside the back door to where
the kitchen was located, and sitting at the kitchen having
what I remember was a beer, was the successful following you,
the owner of the house or the renter of the house,
and the relative of a woman lying dead outside. As
(39:12):
I came into the kitchen, I just introduced myself and
told him I'd be talking to him shortly. He continued
with his glass of beer. A uniformant police officer was
standing not too far away, keeping a very close eye
on him. And so I didn't inspect that the crime
scene and found bodies scattered throughout the house. There were
(39:36):
nine bodies, including the passes way. His wife was lying
on her back in the main bedroom with the gunshot.
Winner of the head. They all had gunshot went the
head and including a two year old baby in a
cot which was related to the woman lying outside.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
That would have been Winners.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
That was outside.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
What kind of state was Clifford in? Was he distressed?
Speaker 4 (40:03):
Was he?
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Did he say anything to you?
Speaker 4 (40:08):
When I spoke to him, he spoke pleasantly, so to speak.
He didn't show any signs of distraught. Cool, calm and
collected was the only way I can describe him having
just killed ten people, which surprised me to a point.
(40:28):
But once I got to know him doing my questioning
of him, it was easy to understand that he just
was able to do things and not get too flushed
about it.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Why do you say that? Why was he that kind
of personality?
Speaker 4 (40:45):
I don't know what was behind his personality, but he
was a slaughterman by occupation, and I mean that sort
of ditched him with what he did at the house,
by the way, but he seemed cool and collective. He
(41:06):
was never flustered, not during the entire interview with him,
where he made full of admissions, clear admissions about what
he did, the execution of his whole family and extended
family members. He was just a very cool customer and
didn't try to hide anything.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
You've described him as being the most hateful man you knew.
Do you stand by that?
Speaker 4 (41:32):
I can never forgive him. Never. No, It's unforgivable what
he did when it came to children. I meant, a
two year old baby and a cop puts the gun
to its head and kills I mean, goodness, grace to me,
it's not normal, but it was for him.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
You were the one that actually arrested him at the scene,
won't you?
Speaker 4 (41:58):
I am, how did.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
The crime scene, seeing what he had done to those children,
to his wife, to his sister in law, how did
it affect you seeing.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
All of that? Well, I'm looking at all the photographs now,
and I mean it's just a despicable situation. You've got
a wife lying on her back in the main bedroom,
shot in the head, got a four year old girl
(42:31):
in a bed alongside her, shot in the head. They're
all gunshot run into the head. You've got in the hallway,
two teenage girls who woke up to the commotion, and
he gunned them down, all shot in the head. A
boy also woke up. He's lying in the passage. Gunshot
(42:53):
went into the head. You've got the the young baby
in the cot, and another young boy in a bed
alongside the all shot in the head, and the nineteen
year old son. He woke and tried to intervene, but
(43:14):
was bludgeoned with a mallet, and some of the other
victors were belted with a mallet as well, But the
nineteen year old son, having been built with a mallet,
went back to his bed, and of course he too
was in short in the head, as they all were
and winners.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
She was shot outside. Did he suggest that she was
trying to run?
Speaker 4 (43:38):
Absolutely? She It was clear that she had tried to
get out of the house. Who pursued her with the
mallet and bashed her in the head till she was
apparently unconscious or certainly stunn very stunned, And then he
went back, got his rifle and shot her in the head.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
It's just shocking to hear, isn't it. The details of
what he.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
Did well, it is I have I had one wish
for his soul that, Hey, wats and Hill, I can
see why I have no people as man whatsoever. Never.
I mean, it's now what fifty four years since since
(44:27):
these murders occurred a contillionaire, they're still quite fresh in
my mind, and they were persistent till I passed allow.
I suppose the thing.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
That I think about when I imagine Buffalo you going
on this rampage is that it's not like it was
happening within a few minutes. It happened over nearly the
course of an hour, So that gives a lot of
time and space to reconsider, to talk to his victims
as he did it.
Speaker 4 (44:57):
Yes, that's right, But the incentive poem was his intent
to kill his Why and whether that was his only
wish before he actually shot her just to kill her,
(45:18):
I don't wear that that's what he intended to do,
but he got carried away. I think he had an
intent to do more, more killings than justice. Well, and
now the reason I say that because intentionally he went
he had to reload his single shot twenty two rifle
each time, he had to have access to rounds of
(45:38):
ammunition nearby. He had to unlock the breach, put the
bulletin physically one hand, close the breach, pull the trigger,
and kill unlocked the breach discharged an expended round. Busically
by hand, put in a fresh round into the breach,
close the breach, and pull the trigger. He had to
(45:59):
do that ten times. There's just no there was nothing
happened automatically.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
When he was initially charge or went to trial. He
was only tried for the murder of his wife, not
the rest of the children. How did you feel about that?
Speaker 4 (46:19):
Well, that was my instigation. I charged him with it.
It was There's a couple of reasons for it. One
reason is that there was ample evidence of intent to
kill his wife, ample evidence. There was ample evidence to
show that he went on to kill, to actively kill
(46:41):
his family, but to have previous intent. There might have
been some doubt that these are just sort of reactionary
activities that took place following the intentional killing. So I
only charged him with the one that we had the
most evidence about, because you're respected. Whether you're charged him
(47:02):
at ten, he's only going to get to suit at
the same time in jail, and so that was the
one that the proof was in abundance, whereas the others
there might have been excuses for rage and mental problems
and so forth, And he was admitting freely to having
wanting to murder his wife, And did.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
You think it wasn't worth the risk of trying to
go for the other nine charges?
Speaker 4 (47:30):
Well, the fact of life is the courts took into
account those matters. He didn't necessarily have to charge him
with ten murders. The circumstances of him committing the murder
upon his wife included all the acts that he did
to kill the others as well, So there wasn't necessary
(47:54):
for him to be charged with ten counts of murder,
although some people within the police thought I should have
charged him with more, but I wanted to make sure
I got him convicted of murder where the evidence was
most pronounced, that he in tent was clear, whereas he
might have used the defense of emotions and exaggerated behavior
(48:21):
and the lack of intent, whereas with his killing of
his wife it was just total intent.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
As much as I know of the justice system nowadays,
if he was to be charged now with all ten murders,
it would be a different story to back then he
would get more time Now.
Speaker 4 (48:40):
I don't know whether he would really I don't know,
I'm not quite sure that so with the parole system
the way it is these days, what I read in
the paper that people walk away after a very short
times having committed some pretty atrocious crimes. I mean he
was sentenced to death. Yeah, and that in it sort
(49:00):
of was a big deal in those days, although governments
were committing death sentenced to life imprisonment. But when you
when the sentence came out, I can tell you now
that the atmosphere in the court was pretty high, you
know when the judge reads out the death since it
was really something when the.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Government came in and decided to overturn and abolish the
death penalty in Australia, did you ever think that that
could mean that he would be released? Was that a
fear of yours?
Speaker 4 (49:32):
Well, the answer is there is yes, because it hasn't
been a practice for decades where someone has been kept
in jail for fifty years, for forty years, and with
the parole war system as it was back in the seventies,
as I knew it, I mean, people were being let
out after after shorter periods, and perhaps I thought they
(49:55):
should have had And as far as Bartholemy was concerned,
I would have seen him stay there for twenty five years.
In fact, if they had executed the death party, I
wouldn't have I would have gone, had to be in
the pub by myself. You know. It's just just my
personal attitude. It was at the time. It still is.
(50:15):
People don't agree with death penalties anymore. But in my mind,
after a number of homicides that I've been through and
intent shown by the killers, I just think there's room
to put some of these killers to waste.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
So he ended up getting out after about eight years.
Do you remember finding out about that? How did you feel?
Speaker 4 (50:37):
I can't really tell you in words because it would
be rude. Yeah, yeah, it's I got a call from
him when he was he spent eight years in jail.
Some years during that time, I got a call from
the Atler Labor Prison that he wanted a pair of
(50:58):
his shoes footwear returned to him. So by appointment, and
I went to the Outler with his shoes, and I
was shown to a room, a table and two chairs.
He said on one so, and I said on the other,
and prison officers stood at the background, keeping an eye
on things. And I said, I believe it's what you're
(51:19):
after there was no nice It isn't old. I just
treated him coolly. I might have said, how you going anyway?
I said, I believe this is what you're actual? He
said yes. I said, okay, here, I like to do
the sign for these. He signed for them, and then
he said, I suppose you want to know why I
wanted to cool a wife? And I said, I know
(51:42):
all I need to know about you, missed about on
you and none of us. Good thank you very much, goodbye,
and I left him sitting. He was sort of coming
into the chair looking for a nice, friendly chat. I
cut him short.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
What sounds like he wanted to kind of confess his
but you just didn't give him the chance. You didn't
want to, You didn't want to hear it.
Speaker 4 (52:03):
Well, I knew all I needed to know, and I
told him I knew all I needed to know, and
so did the court.
Speaker 1 (52:11):
Once he was released, eventually he moved States, went by
a different name, kind of just blended into Australian society
and we didn't really hear about him for a very
long time until a journalist named Craig came knocking. Had
you heard about him before? Craig uncovered his new life.
Speaker 4 (52:31):
Well, I knew he had changed his name and he'd
moved to Victoria. I knew that he had partnered with
a woman who had several children, and a number of
those children were of or about the age of his
(52:51):
own children that he'd killed.
Speaker 1 (52:54):
And I guess I do know how that made you feel.
But please put it into words, knowing that he had
a second chance at life with seven kids as well,
the same amount that he murdered.
Speaker 4 (53:06):
Look, hate Triblewood. It's a terrible experience. I won't admit
to hating him, But what I do wish is that
the courts took a stronger approach to his future. Whether
I left him in jahf for thirty years or if
(53:28):
they'd carried out the death penality. Either way it would
have been better than what the outcome was. As far
as I'm the concerned, justice wasn't done properly.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
Craig mentioned that those crime scene photos that you said
you've got in front of you, you can't bear to
get rid of them. Why is that?
Speaker 4 (53:46):
No, Okay, I've got them on my lap at the moment.
I've had a look at them this morning. No, Well,
I've got to admit I've got most of the investigations
that I've involved in about seventy one homicides. I have
retained a library with photographs at my age of eighty
(54:07):
five coming up. I've got to think work I do
with them leaves them.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
Lying around the some poor soul to find.
Speaker 4 (54:16):
I think the Police Historical Society might be the place
for them to go and then make it a sorry.
Whether they want to shred them, burn them or hang
on to them, but they are of historical value. If
you've got a crime scene nine like mine.
Speaker 1 (54:31):
You know, Alan, why don't you think more Australians know
about these murders about Buffalomew? He seems to have kind
of slipped through the cracks in terms of you know,
we all know who Ivan Malatt is, we all know
all these murderers through time, but I don't think many
people know Clifford Buffalomew's name or Clifford Palmer.
Speaker 4 (54:51):
No, it's I mean it's come up over the years.
Well it's fifty four years since the murder. It's come up.
I've been contracted a few times over the years. But
I mean, you've got to compare this with the other
murders that have occurred in South which are horrendous as well,
(55:12):
and in the state, and they compete the stories from overseas.
But I think people should remo be reminded from time
to time about what can happen in this in our
state and our city country towns, and to be mindful
(55:33):
of people with whom you communicate with.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
Craig, We've heard from former detective Allen Arthur. But to close,
I'd like to ask you, do you think that someone
could reinvent themselves to this extent today? Say they committed
a crime, they're given a new identity, could they get
away with it in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
Not if they committed a crime like this, Absolutely not,
that's the difference. Yes, if you've committed even a small
leader that's not publicized, maybe you could reinvent yourself, become
a different person and there's no real trace of what
you've done. But the murder of this magnitude, no way.
The publicity would be enormous today. Wherever you went, you'd
(56:22):
be found, you'd have to leave the country.
Speaker 1 (56:23):
I think I would argue that even if you committed
murder and it wasn't overly publicized, we now have access
to the databases. The criminal database is the court databases,
so we can google people's names. We can find things
out on social media that we couldn't back then.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
Quite true, you had to go to a public library
and so it's through dusty documents. If you're lucky to
find anything back then, you were a little hope. So yes,
we have for incredible access these days. I don't think
it'd be possible.
Speaker 1 (56:58):
Thanks to Craig and Alan for helping us to tell
this story. If you couldn't turn off this episode and
liked hearing from two voices, let us know. Send us
an email at true Crime at mamma Mia dot com
dot au, or use the link in our show notes
to send us a voice note. True Crime Conversations is
a mum of mea podcast hosted and produced by me
Jemma Bath and Talie Blackman, with audio design by Jacob Brown.
(57:22):
Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week
with another True Crime Conversation.
You're listening to a Mother MEA podcast. Mother MEA acknowledges
the traditional owners of land and waders. This podcast was
recorded on in November two thousand and two. At the
age of seventy two, a man named Clifford Palmer died,
a beloved husband of twenty two years and stepfather of seven,
(00:34):
known as Poppy Cliff to his brood. His gravestone reads
devoted to and sadly missed by children and grandchildren. By
his family's account, he was a hard working, gentle and
devout man, described as jovial, outdoorsy and adamant about keeping
his kids on the right side of the law. What
(00:56):
they didn't know is that he had a secret, a
whole other life he lived before them, a whole other
family who he murdered. His crimes were so sinister he
was just ribed by the detective who arrested him as
the most hateful man he ever knew, And yet he
was allowed to start again, allowed to shed the title
(01:19):
of Australia's worst family mass murderer to reinvent himself, a
title he still holds to this day. I'm Jemma Bath
and this is True Crime Conversations A Muma mea podcast
exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the
(01:41):
people who know the most about them. On September seventh,
nineteen seventy one, at a remote farmhouse forty k's south
of Adelaide, Clifford Bartholomew killed ten people. His wife, Heather,
aged forty, his seven kids, Neville nineteen, Christine seventeen, Sharon fifteen,
(02:05):
Helen thirteen, Gregory ten, Roger seven, and Sandra four. His
sister in law Winness twenty six and her son Daniel
nineteen months were also shot dead. So how was this killer,
this mass murderer, able to reinvent his life and to
(02:29):
have a second go at family across state lines? And
why didn't we know about it before twenty eighteen? During
this episode, we're going to hear two different voices. First,
we'll be hearing from Craig Cook. He is the very
reason we know about Clifford Bartholomew's second life. Craig's exclusive
work as a journalist for the Adelaide Advertiser revealed the
(02:51):
truth not just to the public, but also to the
family Bartholomew had been helping raise for over two decades
after he'd killed his own. Then we'll hear from former
detective Alan Arthur, who was the first on the scene
back in nineteen seventy one. We thought it was important
to bring in someone who's not only familiar with the
latest details of the case, but also someone who lived
(03:14):
through it, faced Bartholomew and can explain how he was
able to start over Craig. Why haven't we heard this
story before? And I say we because I've never heard
of it. My producer's never heard of it. I've asked
around the editorial team. None of us have heard about
this before. How has it flown so under the radar?
Speaker 2 (03:37):
Well, I'd never heard of it either. A great surprise
to me. The reason I came across this story was
editor of the Advertiser called John Whistler. I was as
old as Moses, and he had heard of it. And
he often dropped case studies on my desk and suggested
that I might look through them and see if there
was anything more defined. And one day he dropped these
dusty papers and photographs of the Hope Valley murders and
(04:01):
I just never heard of them. I asked around the
office and people had never heard of it either. It
was unbelievable. I couldn't believe a man who killed ten
members of his family was given a death sentence and
then was allowed out after eight years on parole, given
a new identity and allowed to move into state.
Speaker 1 (04:20):
Take us back to the nineteen sixties early seventies. Who
were the Bartholomew family and what did their life look
like in Hope Forest, South Australia.
Speaker 2 (04:30):
Well, they were pool. They came from quite a rural
area of South Australia down the south on the way
to Victor Harbor for anybody who knows that region close
to the wine and growing areas, but farmland back in
those days. And mister Barthwallen in Clifford had a part
time job as at the abatoar. Then they didn't have
much money. I think they were renting the property from
(04:50):
a farmer. It was only had four or five rooms
if I re call Clifford and his wife and their
seven children, so nine people in a small cottage. That's
really all I know about them. Some people have interviewed
since who kind of knew them at the time. So
they were very quiet, said he was very quiet, never
totally shocked bal he did on that day Father's Day
(05:12):
in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Well, Hope Forest is a very isolated area, isn't it.
There's not many people there.
Speaker 3 (05:19):
It's not a big community, no, very small.
Speaker 2 (05:21):
Everybody would know each other. But yeah, it's not a
million miles from It's not up north in South Australia
where you could be, you know, one hundred miles from anybody. Yeah,
Thouven's not too far away. But yes, isolated for sure,
and yeah, everybody would know. Every breath'd be one pub,
everybody congregate there, that kind of thing.
Speaker 1 (05:39):
Do we know what state Clifford and Heather's marriage was
in by late nineteen seventy one, just to help set
the scene.
Speaker 2 (05:47):
Well, it wasn't in a good place. Basically, she'd asked
him to leave. The story was that he suspected she
was having an affair with a twenty two year old
Vietnam Vet who would come to stay at their place
and help them out, basically become a lodger at their
house and was helping around the farm and doing different jobs,
(06:07):
and Clifford suspected that his wife was having an affair
with him. There's no evidence of it, in particular that
there was any kind of sexual relationship. There was definitely
a friendship if she went to Sydney with this person,
but absolutely no evidence that there was any full blown affair.
But he started be acting quite weirdly Clifford, and she
(06:29):
asked him to leave. And on this day when the
murders happened, it was Father's Den, and he was invited
back because it was Father's Day. He left again that night,
and then he returned in the night and committed his slaughter.
So the suggestion is he may have been under pressure,
and he may have been depressed, of course, and he
was obviously fulfilled with rage and jealousy. That's still an
(06:51):
extraordinary action to take.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Doesn't really excuse hunting down and murdering.
Speaker 3 (06:56):
Ten people, No, and your loved ones too.
Speaker 1 (07:01):
So there were seven kids Heather yep. And then there
were two other family members staying there that night that
were also killed.
Speaker 2 (07:09):
Yep. Winness was have a sister and she had a
young baby or eighteen month old child. They come down
because it was Father's Day, I think. And then there
was another child who'd come down to a couple of
children of witnesses, including Noline who was an eight year
old child, but her brother our older brother decided he'd
(07:29):
take her back to Adelaide because he didn't like the
atmosphere in the house. That was what he'd said. He
felt like something bad was going to happen, and he
was quite right. So that's the only reason that Noline
survived was because her brother took her back to Adelaide
and stayed with relatives.
Speaker 1 (07:46):
How did this shooting unfold? Did it start with Heather
and then he just systematically went through rooms? Were they asleep?
Were they awake?
Speaker 2 (07:56):
It was the middle of the night, and he went
there with the intention of killing Heather. That's what he said.
He made full statements as documented evidence of his state
of mind and what he did in the order he
did it. It's incredibly graphic and very disturbing. He got
a maut from the garage and he intended to stand
Heather and take her to the garage and shoot her
(08:18):
there so that nobody woke up. Once he hit her
with a marriage he woke up, all hell broke loose,
and yeah, I just can't imagine the saying after that.
There's some terrible, terrible imagery around it. All on some
graphic details about his daughter begging him not to kill her.
(08:39):
That was his eldest daughter, and he loved the best,
he said in his statement, But he shot her. And
then he did systematically go around the house, hitting people
on the head with hammers and then shooting them. Unimaginable.
I think some of the family members try to stop him.
One of his sons definitely trying to stop him. There
(09:00):
was fights, but they couldn't overpower him.
Speaker 1 (09:04):
Well, he was quite forthcoming in his police interviews, wasn't
he about he's whine state of mind. Do you remember
some of the things he said. You mentioned that he
only meant to kill his wife, but I've seen it.
Also said that he realized once he killed one of
the children, he couldn't leave any of them alive in
(09:25):
his mind.
Speaker 2 (09:27):
Because he loved them too much.
Speaker 3 (09:28):
That's what he said, because he loved them too much.
Speaker 2 (09:31):
Yeah, that was his statement about why he then had
to systematically kill all the children. Most shocking to the
police officer who investigated this case was the fact that
he'd killed nine people. He went to the kitchen table,
sat down, started drinking heavily, but after about thirty minutes,
he realized the baby was still asleep in the cop
(09:52):
and he went back, and he put a bullet in
that baby's head that really really destroyed the police officer
who investigated this. I just could not see the sense
of that, and that's a that's why they call him
a monster, and he is, in their mind, the worst
person I've ever had to deal with.
Speaker 1 (10:10):
So that would have been nineteen month old Daniel.
Speaker 3 (10:13):
Correct his nephew, Yeah, who was asleep.
Speaker 1 (10:16):
The man that Clifford thought his wife was having an
affair with. He was called mister X in the trial
and you tracked him down. Could he tell you anything
about that time or was there a reason you decided
not to name.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Him, not him any evidence you did have an affair,
But that was his argument. I've got a couple of
things to say about mister X actually, which we could include.
So I found mister X, but I chose not to
put him on the record. And the one thing that
(10:49):
was of interest was there was a medical report that
he'd been shot in the groin in Vietnam and he
didn't have any function, so it wouldn't have been a
sexual relationship. Even if he was having an affair with
his wife, he didn't have the capacity to perform sexually.
So I spoke to a third party. I knew his name,
(11:09):
and I knew where he is, and I spoke to
a relative of his, and I gave them several opportunities
to talk to me, and in the end he chose
not to, and I couldn't see any reason to pursue
it any further. To be honest, I just didn't think
he was going to add anymore. He was a twenty
two year old kid, and he didn't know anything. I
(11:30):
think he said at the time that he didn't have
an affair with Heather. He said he was a friendship.
And the night this happened, Clifford had been told by
his wife. Heather told him that they were moving out
of the farmhouse and they're going to move back into
the city, basically into the Port Adelaide area, and that's
where mister X was from. And this was something else
(11:50):
that has said. By following you off, he believed that
this mister X was now going to become the father
to his children. This is what he strangely put together,
that his family was leaving, not only leaving him, but
leaving the area and going to set up house mister X.
Speaker 1 (12:07):
But you couldn't find proof that that was what was
going to happen.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
No, no proof of all, but no nobody else confirmed it.
But that's wouldn't have surprised that ad was trying to
get out of the situation, her marriage already broken down.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Some of the interesting horrific things in his police interviews
that he did say was, you know, he tried to
excuse it by saying he had five months of mental
torture thinking that his wife was having this affair, and
then when he was shooting his family, he couldn't control
the screaming noises in his head and so he just
(12:44):
kept going until it all went quiet. There's just something
so chilling about hearing this man being able to articulate
so clearly what he was doing.
Speaker 2 (12:56):
Was stall processes and what he so he's feeling the
screaming and the only thing that's going to stop the
scream is to keep killing people. Yeah, just very difficult
to get inside of his mind. These were his loved ones.
This is not strangers, He's not people attacking it. These
are the greatest loves of his life. And it takes
fifty minutes. It's a long time of killing and beating
(13:19):
and going back and Yeah, at some stage you would
think that something would say stop, that stop, enough is enough.
But obviously he must have got it in his head
that nobody could survive this because he loved them.
Speaker 1 (13:34):
But forty to fifty minutes suggests so much premeditation. You
have to really be thinking as you as you're shooting
to continue for that amount of time.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
Yeah, And he was having conversations with his children, especially
at this time, his discussions and begging and pleading, and
I think it was an instant with his summary. He
hit his son over the head and he kind of
became unconscious, and he went back to his bed, But
then the sun woke up again and there was a fight,
and then he ended up shooting his son after all
(14:07):
of the sudden Yeah, I just can't get inside his
head to imagine why you would keep going. I mean,
what are you trying to achieve here? Obviously the obliteration
of your family. Well, something that really annoyed the investigators
is that they didn't have the courage to kill himself.
You really think if he'd gone through all this horror
to save his family from a horror, why wouldn't he
(14:30):
kill himself. What a selfish individual that he would go
back and shoot a baby, but he didn't have the
guts to kill himself. That's why they're describing as the
most horrendous man they'd ever met.
Speaker 1 (14:42):
How were the murders discovered? Was he arrested pretty quickly
after all of this.
Speaker 2 (14:47):
He found his mother at four or five o'clock in
the morning. He wasn't living too far away, and she
said call the police, so he did. It was the
Monday morning after Father's Day, pauling weather, the middle of winter,
and yes, one police officer managed to find his way
down there and found the scene about finding him was
(15:07):
still there in the kitchen, and then obviously he report
already in and quickly escalated to seenior police officers getting
involved and heading down there.
Speaker 1 (15:21):
After the break. I asked Craig about what it was
like interviewing Alan Arthur, the detective who arrested Clifford Buffolow.
You and you've spoken to some of the officers that
had to look at that scene and kind of investigate
that scene.
Speaker 2 (15:41):
I spoke to both senior officers involved. There's footage, video
footage of the day without sounding virturedly probably a good thing.
And there they are looking like young men, shocked, young
men I interviewed them as seventy five year old, and
they're still shot by this case. It really has disturbed
them and what they saw that Daves. They said, no
(16:01):
issue have to witness something like that, and they just
couldn't make sense of it. But yeah, I just really
show them to the bar in that story.
Speaker 4 (16:15):
I can never forgive you. Never. It's unforgivable what he
did when it came to children, A two year old
baby and a cock puts the gun to its hidden kills.
I mean, goodness, grace to me, it's not normal that
(16:36):
it was for him.
Speaker 1 (16:40):
Do we know if it made headlines at the time.
We're saying we don't. We haven't heard about it. Now
at the time nineteen seventy one, do people know about it?
Speaker 2 (16:49):
I certainly made headlines. It was Australia's biggest mass killing.
It's Liz Australia's biggest mass family killing. So yes, it
made headlines around the country. Whyat then disappeared? I mean,
Adelaide's down from a lot of murders and mysteries, this
one kind of definitely disappeared from the public consciousness. I
(17:10):
can't a friend who remembers it. It's yeah, definitely just
I got lost. I think there must have been a
lot of publicity around when he was released, So that's
seventy eight, seventy nine, But after that the story disappears.
Speaker 1 (17:24):
He was sentenced to death by hanging, which was still
a thing back then in December nineteen seventy one, but
that didn't happen, did it.
Speaker 2 (17:34):
He was sentenced to death by Dame Roma Mitchell. How
she became Dame Roma Mitchell, She was the judge, and yes,
she's sentenced him to death by hanging. Everybody thought that
was probably a just a just result. But even then
they knew the Dunston government. If the Dunstan government came in,
they were probably going to get rid of the death
penalty and he probably would just serve life imprisonment. So
(17:56):
that was already kind of known when he got a
death sentence, but a life imprisonment probably, and if alons
it meant life imprisonment, I think everybody could go with that.
What became so shocking was after eight years he applied
for parole and Dame Rome and Mitchell was head of
the prole board who gave him parole after eight years
in prison.
Speaker 1 (18:18):
Why why Craig do we know why we don't.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
We have a few insights. The file, apparently, is one
sheet of paper, that is the file that allowed Clifford
Barthoomy back into the community, a man who killed ten people,
and the piece of paper basically implies that he had
mental issues at the time, depression, and that the psychologist
report suggested he would never do this ever again, which
(18:45):
is quite leap it is, and he probably shouldn't have
had the opportunity to do it ever again either, So
that was the logic. And then the other thing that
came through was that this was considered a domestic violence
incident and therefore of a lesser. If he'd killed ten strangers,
there's no way he would have been out of prison.
But he killed his own family, and therefore some kind
(19:06):
of logic suggests that he he's not a threat to
anybody else.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
That is mind boggling totally, because even I mean, you
try and wrap your head around the fact that, right,
they think that this guy isn't going to do it again,
so therefore will let him out. But it's also he
wasn't punished for the crimes he did do.
Speaker 2 (19:25):
He was called a model prisoner, which I don't know
what that means. But yeah, a model prisoner. So I
didn't kill anybody in prison.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
He wasn't just released after eight years. He was kind
of given a chance of a new life. He was
given a new identity by the government, wasn't he.
Speaker 2 (19:42):
Eventually he wasn't given a new identity. Initially, he moved
back into the community where he came from. He moved
back into Port Adelaide where he'd originally come from, and
there were threats against his life. Obviously, there was a
lot of outrage about the fact that he was back
in the community. And it was mainly because it took
a few years, but mainly because of the threats against
(20:02):
his life that the decision was made to give him
a new identity and he chose to move into state.
He went to Victoria.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
He went by Clifford Palmer, so he kept his first
name his.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
First name, just changed the second name to Palmer, not Bartholomew.
Speaker 1 (20:19):
And who did he reinvent himself as that's.
Speaker 2 (20:22):
A very good question. I don't think we know a
lot of details about. But definitely a Christian man. Because
he met his next wife, I think it may have
been a dancel, but he definitely claimed he was a
man of God, and she was very religious. That was
a very important factor for her, and probably you know,
one of the main reasons they got together was the
(20:44):
fact that he was he said he was a man
of God. By this stage he was quite elderly. I
can't remember what work he did after that. He had
a few jobs before they moved to Queensland.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
So he married Merle. He had a second marriage and
a second family.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Melgray mel Gray born in Sri Lanka, immigrant to Australia,
who had seven children.
Speaker 4 (21:06):
Row.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
It's kind of eerie, isn't it? Seven children and again.
Speaker 2 (21:11):
Seven Jordren again. Yeah. Yeah, we'll get to the stage
where I found his grapes down and it was absolutely
mind blown by what it says on the stage on
the grapes down.
Speaker 1 (21:23):
Do we know if mel was aware of what.
Speaker 2 (21:26):
He'd done, the suggestion from the family. I later obviously
had to talk to the family eventually, and I'm pretty
sure he had said that he killed his wife. I
think he declared that, but it was supposed to be
a jealous rage, and the fact that he came out
after eight years suggested that it was nothing. It was
a fit of anger against one person, and that it
(21:47):
was basically a man slaughter charge so easily justified. He
had his release papers, which was still in his possession,
and if he turned those, then maybe he had admitted
the family. Winder family seemed to know that he had
killed his wife on some stage, but it was, yeah,
some misunderstanding or didn't mean to kill her. And he
only served eight years, so therefore it kind of been
(22:08):
that serious.
Speaker 1 (22:10):
And what kind of stepfather was he?
Speaker 2 (22:15):
They could not have been more glowing in their praise
for him as a stepfather. So seven children and then
all the marriages of those children, and then all those grandchildren.
Can't remember how many there are, There's a lot. And
they said nobody could have a bad word for him.
The whole family enjoyed his company and never saw him
(22:37):
raise a fist or be even angry in any situation.
That's what they told me. And obviously when they knew
the full story, they were very shocked.
Speaker 1 (22:47):
Well, he was in their lives. He was married to
Merle for over twenty two years. He died in two
thousand and two in his seventies. She died in twenty twelve,
and by this point, the truth of the magnitude of
his crimes were still kind of hidden to the family,
wasn't it. How did they find out?
Speaker 2 (23:07):
Hidden to everybody knew obviously, and that new life they
found out because I told him.
Speaker 1 (23:13):
Tell us about how you came into this story. You
mentioned at the start that you got this case report
thrown onto your desk.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Well, whenever John threw something in my way and it
was going to be interesting. He only chose really interesting stories,
and as we said, it was just one unbelievable and too.
I just knew there had to be more to it
in some aspect, and I really did that. Even at
that stage. I wanted to know what happened to him,
But even more so when I met Noline, who was
the young girl who survived the massacre, because she was
(23:42):
full of anger, hate and fear. This is a woman
in her fifties who had lived in incredible trauma and
she still feared from him, her uncle Barty. She had
nightmares about him coming back and shooting her. So once
I interviewed her, I definitely want to know what happened
to her. Clifford Bath following me, I thought we owed
(24:03):
it to her to tell her. If he was dead,
there was strong chance he was, but she should know
and hopefully they put her out of some kind of misery.
How she found out about the murders was just horrendous.
She was a police officers came to the house where
she was staying, and her mother came in and told
(24:24):
her to go and go in the bedroom. So it
obviously said she couldn't hear anything. The TV was under
the bedroom and while the police officers were informing her
so not her mother, I think it was an auntie
who was looking after it about what had happened. It
came up on the television and there were pictures and
Noleen so saw that her mother and brother are being killed,
(24:46):
plus her wife of family, seven cousins found out her
family had been and she sat there and watched the
TV and that's how she floaded.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
That's horrendous, yeah, and imaginable.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
So no wonder she's got a lot of trauma and yeah,
So that was the first story I wrote, really was
about her her journey and however, we wanted to know
if he was alive, and then I kind of made
an approach to police, so I interviewed the two police
officers too to get the full story. They were very
kind in their time. And then I approached the police
(25:20):
and asked them if they could confirm if he was
dead or alive. I took a couple of emails, and
then I got a very surprising email back that's confirm
who was dead, but also told me his surname, which
I was not expecting. So with that and I started
looking for him and I found him.
Speaker 1 (25:40):
Well, you found he's Tony's grave. He found his tombstone,
and that's.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
How I knew, and i'd boy the dates, I just
worked out it had to be him. And what was
on the tombstone was the greatest love from your children
and grandchildren, just the man who killed his first family.
Speaker 1 (26:00):
What did you think when you first saw that?
Speaker 2 (26:04):
One of the most surprising things I've ever seen. I think,
just you can't. I mean, at this stage, I didn't
know there was seven children, all these grandchildren, so I
just couldn't understand it. I thought, how did that happen?
Maybe it's not him, because here's the loving children and
grandchildren giving their grandpapa a lovely stand off. I just yes.
(26:25):
And then when I told Norlen, of course I was
that's so far worse. She couldn't believe he'd gotten another
family and lived happily. I mean, even if he hadn't
caused any more chaos. He didn't deserve that, I was
her opinion. He didn't deserve another life and another family.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
So how did you track down the second family that
all the kids and the relatives, and how did you
have these conversations with them about his true identity?
Speaker 2 (26:54):
I tracked them down the same way I found Orleane probably,
which is social media, so people who were a presence
on social media. So you're just slow putting two and
two together. Eventually I worked out where he was from,
where Clifford must have been living, and then worked out
had Mills name by that stage, So eventually I worked
out who he was, where he was and where he lived.
(27:15):
I mean, we were ready to publish, and you have
to give the respect to that family and tell them
that what are we publishing and warn them, yeah, they're
in Queensland. Maybe it wouldn't have even reached them being
published in Adelaide, maybe not, but they deserve the respect
to know what was being published and what was being
said about their grandfather and stepfather. Very difficult, I thought
(27:39):
the family handled things magnificently. They had a family conference.
They had told everybody of an adult age about what
was going to be said that it was probably true.
In fact, it was true. They researched it all themselves,
and yeah, they dealt with it very well. Terrible shocked
at them all. They just couldn't get their head around it.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
One of the family members that you ended up quoting
in your stories kind of said he was glad he
was dead by then.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah, it would have been obviously Flowers, if it'd been alive. Yeah,
just an impossible situation if it'd been alive. So thankfully
it had all happened after Clifford had passed on.
Speaker 1 (28:19):
I want to talk a bit more about Noline, because
she seems like, you know, a bit like the forgotten
victim in this story. How has that the crime shaped
her life?
Speaker 2 (28:34):
Very hard to judge, but having interviewed her, I know
it's it's the most traumatic incident of her life and
she has lived in fear. Basically she had. Some people
might think it's not realistic that he had ever come
back and kill her, but she she believed that was
a possibility, that yeah, he was mad enough to kill Tempe,
(28:56):
But why wasn't he mad enough to come and find
her and kill her? And she had children as well.
By the stage, she had a few children of her own.
And I think she suffered what all of us suffered,
which is the how how can you have been let out?
And how could have been given the chance of the
second life. She really struggled that he didn't he wouldn't
face punishment for wrecking her life and ten other lives,
(29:18):
I mean, and dozens of other lives. Potentially, There's a
whole population that he killed that night. It wasn't just
ten people. There was a futures, whether they got married,
they all have had children, There's a continuation there that
he obliterated and those kind of things. Yes, she really
struggled with She wanted him. I mean, she was very
frank about how she wanted him to die and he
(29:38):
should die in pain because she felt pain, and she
wanted him to have had a miserable life. And then
she found out he had an incredibly wonderful life for
the last twenty years of his life.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Is there an argument to the very least that she
should have been told that he was dead.
Speaker 2 (29:56):
Absolutely. I tried to get something happening at the time
around this case that victims should be informed. This is
an extraordinary case, but there are other incidences where victims
do not know what happened to the perpetry. I mean,
other people have had new identities and disappeared, and I
think you should be told if somebody in that circumstances
(30:19):
has died. I think it would make a difference rather
than people wondering what's going on and if they're coming back,
And yeah, I think that's the least the police could
do in those circumstances.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
Did you contact the South Australian Parole Board and kind
of ask them retrospectively why did this happen? Could this
happen again? Would they able to give you any answers?
Speaker 2 (30:40):
This South Australian prole Board on the head is Francis
Nelson QC. She's been ed for thirty three years. She's
a great friend of Roma Mitchell's and she's a little
bit mystified too. But then she's said that they don't
have didn't have the full story back in nineteen seventy nine,
and that these days there would be far more evidence,
(31:02):
far more interviews and psychological profiling. She believes the Parole
board today would have a lot more information to be
basing a judgment on if you can't say whether they'd
make the same decision or not, but I'm thinking probably not,
But who knows. But yeah, it's a surprise.
Speaker 1 (31:22):
Which I guess is reassuring. But what worries me is
how many other Clifford's are out there from the sixties, seventies,
eighties that perhaps got new identities that we don't know about.
Do you think that that's a common occurrence or am
I kind of catastrophizing it a bit?
Speaker 4 (31:42):
No?
Speaker 2 (31:42):
No, I definitely think it was a common occurrence back
in the sixties, seventies, eighties. Maybe it still happens, probably
happens in cases less horrific and less high profile than
this was at the time. It's apite the fact that
it disappeared from public view. But yeah, there must be
a lot of people who get new identities.
Speaker 1 (31:58):
When you look back at your career and all the
stories you've covered, how does this one compare?
Speaker 2 (32:04):
Cover a lot of stories, a lot of amazing stories.
This is probably the most surprising the fact, Yeah, this
would have to be the most surprising to actually track
him down, thinking I remember I was thinking well, we're
never going to find him, and then thanks to the police,
I'd like to think somebody in the police officer did
the right thing and gave me his name. Maybe it
(32:26):
was an accident, but maybe not. And yeah, just from
that point of view, we ever going to find him again?
I mean I think we all knew he was dead,
but then actually find him to find out what had
happened for us twenty ode years of his life. Yeah,
definitely the most surprising outcome.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
It's been quite a few years since you kind of
broke the news to his second family. Have you heard
anything from them since? How they've fared since learning this?
Speaker 2 (32:55):
Nothing? No, I wouldn't expect to. I hope they've fared
very well. I hope they coped and they put it
behind them, because what else can they do. I mean,
there was that there were not absolutely no knowledge. I
don't imagine Merle had full knowledge of happened. And where
do you go and check up even on something like that.
I mean, there are many famous murder cases in Australia.
(33:17):
This should have been one of them, but it wasn't.
So they had no way of finding out truth about
what Clifford had done and whether what he was telling
them was the truth. They did find in his papers
after he died, the release notice from the prison which
said he'd been released after three years and for murdering
his wife. Of course, we go back to that time
(33:37):
when he wasn't charged with the other murders, so it.
Speaker 1 (33:40):
Wouldn't have been it wouldn't have been in the prison papers.
Speaker 2 (33:42):
It was not his records. Yeah, so that was a
frustration for the police officers who believed he should have
been charged with all the murders at the time. And
then they were relaxed about it because he's got a
death sentence. And then ultimately that probably paid offer him
that he was not charged with all those other murders,
so he could be made to look like he just
killed his wife in a fit of anger.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
Did those police officers try to go back and get
those charges once he'd been released. Were they like, okay,
well let's try and charge him.
Speaker 2 (34:12):
It was out of their hands. They won't send any
police officers. It's down to the prosecution. By that stage,
they did push telling me they really thought I think
the police, even higher up the police thought he should
be charged. But there was a consensus that we waste
public money and he's going to prison for the rest
of his life anyway, so let's not waste our time.
Speaker 1 (34:34):
I think the thing that surprises me about this story
not being bigger in terms of one of those stories
that all Australians know the name Clifford Buffalome slash Clifford Palmer,
is that in the media, to have a good story,
you need vision, you need photos, you need color, and
this had everything. We've got the photos of the victims.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
We've got photos of him exactly.
Speaker 2 (34:59):
There is footage of the day that they found the bodies.
There's the body of Winness laying out in the open
in the rain with a cover over it. It's just
just to see that footage was just horrendous. You're there
and you know how those police officers are feeling. You
can see the look on their faces that they've just
been inside that house and they've never seen anything like it,
(35:20):
and I've never want to see anything like it again. Yeah,
we've got all that. It's not like we're missing much.
We've got a full confession. There's no mystery about what
happened in more order on that day. So yes, that's
another baffling reason for why this is not not in
the public consciousness.
Speaker 1 (35:38):
And you can't really, through your travels explain why.
Speaker 2 (35:43):
No. I've got no understanding why missing. The only thing
I can think of is that it was a family affair.
Somebody said that to me once. This was a family
a fair, a personal episode, and therefore you know it's
not about particular interest too. If you've been hunting and
killed ten people out in the forest, as other people
have done, maybe his they would be more famous, but
(36:05):
killing them in his own farmhouse was obviously not the
same impact. A lot of people said it was a
good I remember doing that. A lot of people who
lived in the area at the time were involved in racing,
and I used to cover racing, and that's when I
got back there. It was a good blow. He just
had a mad moment.
Speaker 1 (36:22):
You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me Jemma Bath.
Up next, I talk with former detective Alan Arthur, who
shares some more about the crime scene, his interactions with
Clifford Buffolomew, and the reasoning behind the sentence he received. Alan,
where were you at in your life and your career
(36:44):
in nineteen seventy one.
Speaker 4 (36:47):
We were living in Adelaide and It was a peaceful
sort of life, except that I used to be called
out to go to homicide and other violent crimes from
time to time. Not the only one member of the
homicids squad, but yeah, it happened regularly.
Speaker 1 (37:00):
By the way, how long had you been a detective at.
Speaker 4 (37:03):
That point, seven years? And I was in my third
year in a HOMOICAIDS squad, So you were.
Speaker 1 (37:08):
Fairly experienced when it came to being on the scene
of really horrible murders and grizzly crimes.
Speaker 4 (37:16):
Well, that's true, and I've been to half a dozen
or so murders in the three years preceding the Hope
Forest murders, so it wasn't a new event. But I
must say the size of the numbers of victims was
far more than I've ever seen before.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
Do you remember when you first got the call asking
you to attend the Farming Forest?
Speaker 4 (37:41):
I we do, take me down there. The detective Sergeant
Giles was the death sergeant and he had only just
come on the early hours of the morning for the
morning ship. His job was to coordinate work and attending members,
allocate them work to do, and he ran me for memory.
(38:01):
It was still dark, and he said, we've got a
job on. We've got ten people dead at a place
called Hope Posts in the Adelaide Hills. We'll pick you
up and convey you to headquarters and from there you
will be off to Hope for us.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
And when you arrived at the farm, what was that like?
What did you first see? What was going on?
Speaker 4 (38:26):
On arrival? Uniform police were there, and I think the
doctor that came with the local uniform police officer was there,
that's from memory. But outside there was the body of
a woman and she was dead and had a gunshop
into her head. And then we're inside and it was
(38:51):
just a short distance inside the back door to where
the kitchen was located, and sitting at the kitchen having
what I remember was a beer, was the successful following you,
the owner of the house or the renter of the house,
and the relative of a woman lying dead outside. As
(39:12):
I came into the kitchen, I just introduced myself and
told him I'd be talking to him shortly. He continued
with his glass of beer. A uniformant police officer was
standing not too far away, keeping a very close eye
on him. And so I didn't inspect that the crime
scene and found bodies scattered throughout the house. There were
(39:36):
nine bodies, including the passes way. His wife was lying
on her back in the main bedroom with the gunshot.
Winner of the head. They all had gunshot went the
head and including a two year old baby in a
cot which was related to the woman lying outside.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
That would have been Winners.
Speaker 3 (39:57):
That was outside.
Speaker 4 (39:59):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
What kind of state was Clifford in? Was he distressed?
Speaker 4 (40:03):
Was he?
Speaker 1 (40:05):
Did he say anything to you?
Speaker 4 (40:08):
When I spoke to him, he spoke pleasantly, so to speak.
He didn't show any signs of distraught. Cool, calm and
collected was the only way I can describe him having
just killed ten people, which surprised me to a point.
(40:28):
But once I got to know him doing my questioning
of him, it was easy to understand that he just
was able to do things and not get too flushed
about it.
Speaker 1 (40:41):
Why do you say that? Why was he that kind
of personality?
Speaker 4 (40:45):
I don't know what was behind his personality, but he
was a slaughterman by occupation, and I mean that sort
of ditched him with what he did at the house,
by the way, but he seemed cool and collective. He
(41:06):
was never flustered, not during the entire interview with him,
where he made full of admissions, clear admissions about what
he did, the execution of his whole family and extended
family members. He was just a very cool customer and
didn't try to hide anything.
Speaker 1 (41:26):
You've described him as being the most hateful man you knew.
Do you stand by that?
Speaker 4 (41:32):
I can never forgive him. Never. No, It's unforgivable what
he did when it came to children. I meant, a
two year old baby and a cop puts the gun
to its head and kills I mean, goodness, grace to me,
it's not normal, but it was for him.
Speaker 1 (41:55):
You were the one that actually arrested him at the scene,
won't you?
Speaker 4 (41:58):
I am, how did.
Speaker 1 (42:00):
The crime scene, seeing what he had done to those children,
to his wife, to his sister in law, how did
it affect you seeing.
Speaker 4 (42:10):
All of that? Well, I'm looking at all the photographs now,
and I mean it's just a despicable situation. You've got
a wife lying on her back in the main bedroom,
shot in the head, got a four year old girl
(42:31):
in a bed alongside her, shot in the head. They're
all gunshot run into the head. You've got in the hallway,
two teenage girls who woke up to the commotion, and
he gunned them down, all shot in the head. A
boy also woke up. He's lying in the passage. Gunshot
(42:53):
went into the head. You've got the the young baby
in the cot, and another young boy in a bed
alongside the all shot in the head, and the nineteen
year old son. He woke and tried to intervene, but
(43:14):
was bludgeoned with a mallet, and some of the other
victors were belted with a mallet as well, But the
nineteen year old son, having been built with a mallet,
went back to his bed, and of course he too
was in short in the head, as they all were
and winners.
Speaker 1 (43:33):
She was shot outside. Did he suggest that she was
trying to run?
Speaker 4 (43:38):
Absolutely? She It was clear that she had tried to
get out of the house. Who pursued her with the
mallet and bashed her in the head till she was
apparently unconscious or certainly stunn very stunned, And then he
went back, got his rifle and shot her in the head.
Speaker 1 (44:00):
It's just shocking to hear, isn't it. The details of
what he.
Speaker 4 (44:04):
Did well, it is I have I had one wish
for his soul that, Hey, wats and Hill, I can
see why I have no people as man whatsoever. Never.
I mean, it's now what fifty four years since since
(44:27):
these murders occurred a contillionaire, they're still quite fresh in
my mind, and they were persistent till I passed allow.
I suppose the thing.
Speaker 1 (44:37):
That I think about when I imagine Buffalo you going
on this rampage is that it's not like it was
happening within a few minutes. It happened over nearly the
course of an hour, So that gives a lot of
time and space to reconsider, to talk to his victims
as he did it.
Speaker 4 (44:57):
Yes, that's right, But the incentive poem was his intent
to kill his Why and whether that was his only
wish before he actually shot her just to kill her,
(45:18):
I don't wear that that's what he intended to do,
but he got carried away. I think he had an
intent to do more, more killings than justice. Well, and
now the reason I say that because intentionally he went
he had to reload his single shot twenty two rifle
each time, he had to have access to rounds of
(45:38):
ammunition nearby. He had to unlock the breach, put the
bulletin physically one hand, close the breach, pull the trigger,
and kill unlocked the breach discharged an expended round. Busically
by hand, put in a fresh round into the breach,
close the breach, and pull the trigger. He had to
(45:59):
do that ten times. There's just no there was nothing
happened automatically.
Speaker 1 (46:08):
When he was initially charge or went to trial. He
was only tried for the murder of his wife, not
the rest of the children. How did you feel about that?
Speaker 4 (46:19):
Well, that was my instigation. I charged him with it.
It was There's a couple of reasons for it. One
reason is that there was ample evidence of intent to
kill his wife, ample evidence. There was ample evidence to
show that he went on to kill, to actively kill
(46:41):
his family, but to have previous intent. There might have
been some doubt that these are just sort of reactionary
activities that took place following the intentional killing. So I
only charged him with the one that we had the
most evidence about, because you're respected. Whether you're charged him
(47:02):
at ten, he's only going to get to suit at
the same time in jail, and so that was the
one that the proof was in abundance, whereas the others
there might have been excuses for rage and mental problems
and so forth, And he was admitting freely to having
wanting to murder his wife, And did.
Speaker 1 (47:23):
You think it wasn't worth the risk of trying to
go for the other nine charges?
Speaker 4 (47:30):
Well, the fact of life is the courts took into
account those matters. He didn't necessarily have to charge him
with ten murders. The circumstances of him committing the murder
upon his wife included all the acts that he did
to kill the others as well, So there wasn't necessary
(47:54):
for him to be charged with ten counts of murder,
although some people within the police thought I should have
charged him with more, but I wanted to make sure
I got him convicted of murder where the evidence was
most pronounced, that he in tent was clear, whereas he
might have used the defense of emotions and exaggerated behavior
(48:21):
and the lack of intent, whereas with his killing of
his wife it was just total intent.
Speaker 1 (48:27):
As much as I know of the justice system nowadays,
if he was to be charged now with all ten murders,
it would be a different story to back then he
would get more time Now.
Speaker 4 (48:40):
I don't know whether he would really I don't know,
I'm not quite sure that so with the parole system
the way it is these days, what I read in
the paper that people walk away after a very short
times having committed some pretty atrocious crimes. I mean he
was sentenced to death. Yeah, and that in it sort
(49:00):
of was a big deal in those days, although governments
were committing death sentenced to life imprisonment. But when you
when the sentence came out, I can tell you now
that the atmosphere in the court was pretty high, you
know when the judge reads out the death since it
was really something when the.
Speaker 1 (49:21):
Government came in and decided to overturn and abolish the
death penalty in Australia, did you ever think that that
could mean that he would be released? Was that a
fear of yours?
Speaker 4 (49:32):
Well, the answer is there is yes, because it hasn't
been a practice for decades where someone has been kept
in jail for fifty years, for forty years, and with
the parole war system as it was back in the seventies,
as I knew it, I mean, people were being let
out after after shorter periods, and perhaps I thought they
(49:55):
should have had And as far as Bartholemy was concerned,
I would have seen him stay there for twenty five years.
In fact, if they had executed the death party, I
wouldn't have I would have gone, had to be in
the pub by myself. You know. It's just just my
personal attitude. It was at the time. It still is.
(50:15):
People don't agree with death penalties anymore. But in my mind,
after a number of homicides that I've been through and
intent shown by the killers, I just think there's room
to put some of these killers to waste.
Speaker 1 (50:30):
So he ended up getting out after about eight years.
Do you remember finding out about that? How did you feel?
Speaker 4 (50:37):
I can't really tell you in words because it would
be rude. Yeah, yeah, it's I got a call from
him when he was he spent eight years in jail.
Some years during that time, I got a call from
the Atler Labor Prison that he wanted a pair of
(50:58):
his shoes footwear returned to him. So by appointment, and
I went to the Outler with his shoes, and I
was shown to a room, a table and two chairs.
He said on one so, and I said on the other,
and prison officers stood at the background, keeping an eye
on things. And I said, I believe it's what you're
(51:19):
after there was no nice It isn't old. I just
treated him coolly. I might have said, how you going anyway?
I said, I believe this is what you're actual? He
said yes. I said, okay, here, I like to do
the sign for these. He signed for them, and then
he said, I suppose you want to know why I
wanted to cool a wife? And I said, I know
(51:42):
all I need to know about you, missed about on
you and none of us. Good thank you very much, goodbye,
and I left him sitting. He was sort of coming
into the chair looking for a nice, friendly chat. I
cut him short.
Speaker 1 (51:57):
What sounds like he wanted to kind of confess his
but you just didn't give him the chance. You didn't
want to, You didn't want to hear it.
Speaker 4 (52:03):
Well, I knew all I needed to know, and I
told him I knew all I needed to know, and
so did the court.
Speaker 1 (52:11):
Once he was released, eventually he moved States, went by
a different name, kind of just blended into Australian society
and we didn't really hear about him for a very
long time until a journalist named Craig came knocking. Had
you heard about him before? Craig uncovered his new life.
Speaker 4 (52:31):
Well, I knew he had changed his name and he'd
moved to Victoria. I knew that he had partnered with
a woman who had several children, and a number of
those children were of or about the age of his
(52:51):
own children that he'd killed.
Speaker 1 (52:54):
And I guess I do know how that made you feel.
But please put it into words, knowing that he had
a second chance at life with seven kids as well,
the same amount that he murdered.
Speaker 4 (53:06):
Look, hate Triblewood. It's a terrible experience. I won't admit
to hating him, But what I do wish is that
the courts took a stronger approach to his future. Whether
I left him in jahf for thirty years or if
(53:28):
they'd carried out the death penality. Either way it would
have been better than what the outcome was. As far
as I'm the concerned, justice wasn't done properly.
Speaker 1 (53:38):
Craig mentioned that those crime scene photos that you said
you've got in front of you, you can't bear to
get rid of them. Why is that?
Speaker 4 (53:46):
No, Okay, I've got them on my lap at the moment.
I've had a look at them this morning. No, Well,
I've got to admit I've got most of the investigations
that I've involved in about seventy one homicides. I have
retained a library with photographs at my age of eighty
(54:07):
five coming up. I've got to think work I do
with them leaves them.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
Lying around the some poor soul to find.
Speaker 4 (54:16):
I think the Police Historical Society might be the place
for them to go and then make it a sorry.
Whether they want to shred them, burn them or hang
on to them, but they are of historical value. If
you've got a crime scene nine like mine.
Speaker 1 (54:31):
You know, Alan, why don't you think more Australians know
about these murders about Buffalomew? He seems to have kind
of slipped through the cracks in terms of you know,
we all know who Ivan Malatt is, we all know
all these murderers through time, but I don't think many
people know Clifford Buffalomew's name or Clifford Palmer.
Speaker 4 (54:51):
No, it's I mean it's come up over the years.
Well it's fifty four years since the murder. It's come up.
I've been contracted a few times over the years. But
I mean, you've got to compare this with the other
murders that have occurred in South which are horrendous as well,
(55:12):
and in the state, and they compete the stories from overseas.
But I think people should remo be reminded from time
to time about what can happen in this in our
state and our city country towns, and to be mindful
(55:33):
of people with whom you communicate with.
Speaker 1 (55:40):
Craig, We've heard from former detective Allen Arthur. But to close,
I'd like to ask you, do you think that someone
could reinvent themselves to this extent today? Say they committed
a crime, they're given a new identity, could they get
away with it in twenty twenty five.
Speaker 2 (55:58):
Not if they committed a crime like this, Absolutely not,
that's the difference. Yes, if you've committed even a small
leader that's not publicized, maybe you could reinvent yourself, become
a different person and there's no real trace of what
you've done. But the murder of this magnitude, no way.
The publicity would be enormous today. Wherever you went, you'd
(56:22):
be found, you'd have to leave the country.
Speaker 1 (56:23):
I think I would argue that even if you committed
murder and it wasn't overly publicized, we now have access
to the databases. The criminal database is the court databases,
so we can google people's names. We can find things
out on social media that we couldn't back then.
Speaker 2 (56:40):
Quite true, you had to go to a public library
and so it's through dusty documents. If you're lucky to
find anything back then, you were a little hope. So yes,
we have for incredible access these days. I don't think
it'd be possible.
Speaker 1 (56:58):
Thanks to Craig and Alan for helping us to tell
this story. If you couldn't turn off this episode and
liked hearing from two voices, let us know. Send us
an email at true Crime at mamma Mia dot com
dot au, or use the link in our show notes
to send us a voice note. True Crime Conversations is
a mum of mea podcast hosted and produced by me
Jemma Bath and Talie Blackman, with audio design by Jacob Brown.
(57:22):
Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week
with another True Crime Conversation.
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