August 6, 2025 • 58 mins
On a scorching summer day in Adelaide, January 26, 1966, the Beaumont children—Jane, Arnna and Grant—left for Glenelg Beach and never came home.
In a crowd of hundreds, they vanished without a trace, no evidence at all. Nearly 60 years on, the mystery still grips Australia, it's the cold case that can't go cold.
Joining us are author Stuart Mullins and former detective Bill Hayes, who believe a man known as “The Satin Man” is responsible for their disappearance.
Find out more about Stuart and Bill's book Unmasking the Killer of the Missing Beaumont Children here.
If any of the contents in this episode have caused distress, know that there is help available via Lifeline on 13 11 14 or Beyond Blue on 1300 22 4636.
Make sure to leave us a rating and review on Apple & Spotify to let us know how you're liking the episodes.
CREDITS
Guests: Bill Hayes & Stuart Mullins
Host: Claire Murphy
Senior 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 (00:06):
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on. On a bright,
hot sunny day in Adelaide in nineteen sixty six, the
three children of Jim and Nancy Beaumont went to the beach.
It was January twenty sixth, a public holiday in South
Australia then, although it would be another nearly thirty years
(00:27):
before it would become a nationally recognized one. The mercury
was rising into the forties that day, and while Jim
was away for work, Nancy had to occupy those three kids,
all under the age of ten, for the entire.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Day by herself.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Three kids who knew that their summer school holidays were
fast running out. So in Jane, the eldest, at nine
years old, suggested she'd take her seven year old sister
Anna and little brother Grant, who was just four, to
the nearby Glenelg Beach for the morning. Nancy was all
too happy to send them off on another easy adventure.
It wasn't far to go, they'd been there before, and
(01:03):
the spot on Adelaide's western suburban shore would be packed
with other people on a public holiday Wednesday, so off
they went the three little Beaumont children, with their bathers on,
their towels around their necks, and a purse full of
change handed over by Mum for lunch and a bus fare.
Now in a crowd of hundreds, three little kids might
be noticed by many of them, or none at all,
(01:25):
as they raced to the sandy shore and cool relief
of the ocean. But researchers have been chasing the whereabouts
of these three for decades. Believe they were noticed by
at least one man, the worst possible man. And as
the years pass and more and more people come forward
with stories relating to this man, could they have finally
(01:46):
solved the mystery about what happened to Jane, Anna and
Grant Beaumont. I'm Claire Murphy and this is True Crime Conversations,
a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking
to the people who know the most about them. In
twenty twenty six, the Beaumont chill will have been missing
(02:07):
for sixty years, but despite that passage of time, their
case continues to haunt those who investigate it. How could
three children be taken in broad daylight in front of hundreds?
How could no one have seen where they went? And
how did one of those children end up in a
bakery with more money than she ever.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Left her house with that day?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Author Stuart Mullins, who grew up in the same neighborhood
as the Beaumonts, and former detective turned private investigator Bill
Hayes have slowly been unraveling the stories around a man
who not only had the opportunity to snatch Jane, Arna
and Grant, but who also led a life that suggested
that their disappearance was not a crime of opportunity, but
rather a carefully planned luring in of three innocent lives
(02:53):
to satisfy a depraved section of society.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Who is the Satin Man?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
And why haven't police ever really looked into his movements
on the day the Beaumont children disappeared, seeing as his
house was literally in sight of the last places they
were seen alive.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Stuart and Bill join us now.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Stuart, I'd like to kick off our conversation with you today.
You have spent so many years researching the disappearance of
the Beaumont children, and.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
You, like me, grew up.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Will you closer to where this all unfolded in Adelaide?
Why do you think this case has had such a
lasting personal impact on you.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
There is an emotional attachment too, and a few people
have said, and even Bill said, you can see that
in the You know, when I write the first chapter
of the Beaumont generation, that was me, That was the
Muddins family, it was the Beaumont family. May have been
your family growing up around the streets of Glenelg. We
did exactly what Jane anna, and granted that was my life,
(03:59):
so it was easily I could easily write and I
could feel, you know, when three children go down to
Collie Reserve, as I did, as I would say you did,
then you went with the belief that you were free,
You're having a good time and there was no way
you could have got attacked or abducted. And it was
those three that really brought it home and brought it
(04:20):
home to my parents. I remember my mother started to
look out for where we were going, wanted to know
where we were. So it was the day that Australia
lost its innocence because three children being abducted and disappeared
from Collie Reserve has not happened before, and it hasn't
happened since, not just in Australia, but worldwide it's a
(04:43):
one off and so unusual, which goes down to the
thing how brazen and confident that individual was. And yeah,
it's that connection. As you were born in South Australia
with Collie Reserve, I frequent and Collie Reserve. I knew
exactly their lifestyle. The Peringa Park Primary School that Jane
(05:03):
and Anna attended was only just down the road from
my primary school, Darlington Primary School, and it was about
four k's different and I used to play footy on
their able. I knew where they lived. My grandmother lived
about four hundred meters from where Nancy and Jim Bow
might live, so I knew the summer to part. So
(05:24):
there's a very in depth emotional connection.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
We did actually speak to you about this case on
this podcast back in twenty nineteen, a conversation that you
had with Jesse Stevens, who was hosting at the time.
What has changed since then, because Nancy had died the
year before you spoke to Jesse, but Jim was still
alive back then, so in that six years, what's changed
(05:51):
about this case?
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Well, since the book came out, firstly, the Satin Man
came out and then Bill was heavily involved, which gave
a lot of credibility. You may look at me and say, well,
you know, he's after notoriety and he's an upstart. But
when you get Bill Hayes involved, who's a former detective
(06:13):
and a federal investigator and a private and investigator, now
it adds that credibility. So Ears started to prick up
and adding him to the team, I say, a small team.
It started to get even the media interested. And what
happens when you put out a true crime book, and
we've seen this over and over again, people start to
(06:35):
come forward that have kept silent. Now why have they
kept silent is because the fear of not being believed,
and we've seen that time and time again. We saw
it with Rolf Harris. You know he was applying his trade.
People did come forward and they were discarded. Not Rolf Harris.
(06:55):
It would have been the same with Phipps. So when
people come forward and speak out and there's a similarity
between what they're saying and they're not connected, so you're
starting to build a picture. And over the last since
the last podcast, the picture has been building. So I
don't think there's any doubt whatsoever. In my mind, I
(07:17):
would say, Bill's that Harry Phipps is the instigator. But
what we've found out it's much more in depth than
I think even we anticipated. So it's people coming forward
one after another, feeling emboldened that they can now speak
out and be believed.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Well, we'll get into a little bit more detail about
who Harry Phipps the Satin Man is in a minute.
But Bill, you became involved in this case. I mean,
it was more than two decades after you know, the
children disappeared, so you have continued to investigate it ever since,
and you've often had to work independently of police. And
(07:56):
this is something that I've seen throughout your book is
that the role of detectives and police in this case
has been very difficult because they have been undated with
theories and people suggesting things, and they have even at
times without permission from you know, people up there chain
(08:16):
gone and investigated things off the back of you know,
clairvoyance and all kinds of crazy stuff with this case,
Just how difficult is it to bring new theories to
those who are officially investigating the Beaumont children.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Now, well, we've had a great deal of difficulty with
it throughout the investigation. I okay, revolved in two thousand
and eight, which is four decades after the event, and
it was a very cold case obviously after all those years,
but it was a very interesting case. It was put
to me by Stuart when you first contacted me. I
(08:55):
wasn't wouldn't so I was reluctant, but I was a
bit cautious about getting involved in something like this. We
had many meetings with police over the years. We've given
them voueolumes and volumes of information which all strangely disappeared,
and we had to keep reproducing volumes of information every
time someone new took over the core case. So it's
(09:18):
been a hard road. It's been difficultyes, indeed.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Well, Stuart, can you take us back to the beginning
of this for people? I mean, I think people are
all in different stages of their awareness of what happened
to the Beaumont children. They would have seen headlines over
the years that, you know, maybe give them some idea
of what happened. But can you take us back to
nineteen sixties Somerton Park and Glenelg Because many people who
initially hear this story are often appolled that a mother
(09:45):
would allow three small children, you know, the ten and under,
to go to the beach by themselves. But can you
give us an idea of exactly what that area was like,
why parents were allowing their children to go to the
beach by themselves, even like was four years old. Like
it seems completely out of our realm of understanding now
(10:05):
of what ni teen sixties Adelaide looked like.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
There was an old saying be home before the street
lights came on. So in the school holidays, children roamed
the areas around your suburbs and beyond. And you've got
to remember that we had creeks that weren't cemented in.
We had rolling hills. I was up at a place
called Seakam Gardens at the base of the Adelaide Hills,
(10:30):
and you could walk for miles up there, and there
was creeks and there was orange trees, and you went adventuring.
All you had to do was to be home before
the street lights came on. That's what kids did at
that time. My mother usually my mom, because my dad
was in the Air Force, he was away. She didn't
know where we were. We had no cell phones, we
(10:51):
had no thing. It was just like, yes, we're going
to a friend's place and we're going off exploring. So
there was many things to do in the summer. The
Adelaide heat as you know, but get up to thirty
degrees celsius or one hundred degrees fahrenheit and you'd head
down the beach, which I did at Seekum Gardens, down
to Brighton Beach, which is our favorite because it had
(11:14):
the jetty, but also Collie Reserve where there was This
is what mostyn said and people don't understand, is that
Collie Reserve was packed, was absolutely packed. When I went
down there with my friends, we would walk six kilometers
by ourselves. I was the first time I went to
(11:35):
Collie Reserve. I was five years old. Five years old.
I went with the next door neighbor, Rosalind always remembered
that she was eleven. We walked. This is after the movies.
We saw a hard day's night, but that's what we did.
There was no what's going to happen to us? We
just had to get home before the street lights came on.
(11:57):
So it was an adventure playground for kids. It's very
rare for a child to be abducted. It's much you can.
It's fed in to us these days to keep your
kids close to you, and I do that because we've
been involved with the Beaumont children. But back then we
didn't have that media. It was free and easy.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
It was.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
It was an unbelievable kid's lifestyle. And Shane, Arna and Grant,
even though Grant was four, it didn't matter, and they
only had to walk down to Collie Reserve. It was
it was well two kilometers, that's nothing. We were walking
six ten sometimes who were out all day as long
as we were back home before the street lights came on.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Well, let's talk about that day.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
It's January twenty sixth, nineteen sixty six. It's forty something
degrees that day, which is not uncommon for that time
of year. So the beach would have been packed that day.
And Mum, who is you know busy, She's got housework
to be done. Nancy's like, what do I do with
these three kids? They're pestering me. They've all been, you know,
(13:04):
ragging on each other, and you know, the two little
ones are saying that, you know, Jane has a boyfriend,
and they're all kind of you know, mucking around an
annoying Nancy. So she's like, right, I can't have them
walk to the beach two k's today it's forty degrees.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I'll give them a few coins.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
They can catch the bus, get some lunch, and come
back again around midday.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
So they had it all planned out.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
The bus dropped them off basically not far from the
beach on Jetty Road, which true to its name, runs
down to the Jetti which is at the beach, and
so they go off adventuring. What do we know exactly
happened after they got off the bus to the last
time that they were seen, which was at the bakery.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
They got off the bus, made the way down to
the Colie Reserve. On the way there saw the pushman,
the local persman who they knew. Waved to him said hello,
went down to the reserve. Now we're getting to do openscounts.
The children came on the reserve, put the towels down
(14:06):
on the grassy area and went into the beach area
with what it was a player around there, came out
and put the towels down close to a man who'd
been already on the reserve lying on a towel. They
got very close to that man and in fact the
(14:27):
two youngest ones went over and started playing with him,
which indicated to me the Stuart a certain form of
familiarity there for them to do that, because we're told
by Missus Beaumont that the children are not like that.
They wouldn't just go to some stranger and engage with him.
(14:50):
Jane was far too smart for that, and she was
She's a smart kid. So they were playing with the
reserve of this man. They were flicking him with the
towel and all that sort of shining thing was going on.
One stage, you were down into the wall water and
he came back out. And this is where it gets
really strange again the man. Jane allowed the man to
(15:16):
dry the children and to dress them after they come
out of the water, totally totally out of character for
Jane to allow that. Missus Molmont could not believe that
which was told that, but it happened because the ivors
was side happening. The children had continued to play with
(15:37):
a man, and at one stage the man had stood
up and said to the people nearby, beric mind there
was thousands around. The place was packed, said to those around,
has anybody seen anybody near our clothes? Somebody's nicked by money.
They then packed up just after midday and left the reserve,
(15:59):
walking towards the men's changing rooms. And that was the
last of people at the reserve saw of the children.
And for many years the next sighting was at Wenzel's bakery,
but that changed. That changed in two thousand and seven
because we got another witness. So what we know now
(16:19):
is that the children the left reserve gone down towards
the men's changing rooms, and then no one has seen
this but presumably have walked up the Harry's house, which
this is about one hundred and nineteen meters one hundred
ninety meters from the reserve. The story is then taken
(16:42):
up now at the home, and that was taken up
by Harry's son, Hayden Phipps. We told us that he'd
been at his little daytime school holiday job and he'd
come home lunch time and he'd gone into what he
called the covey. Now the covey wasn't a covey like
was peeled imagined something up in the tree or three
(17:03):
house or something. What do you call the covey was
a few planks leading against the defence, and he got
in there for sly smoke. While he was there, he
saw three children coming in to the backyard, just walking
go straight to Harry. Harry at that time was loading
his car up with surfboard bags. Now, when I spoke
(17:26):
to Hate and asked him what was in the surfboard bags,
he said Harry's dresses. Harry was a feticist and a
cross dresser. He had a fetish for Saturn, hence the
book sat Man. And we know that when he handled satin,
(17:46):
saw satin thought about Saturn, he became so sexually aroused
that he was known to spontaneously ejaculate. He was so
arousing for him. So here we have three little children
which they had spoken to Harry who'd been handling satin dresses,
so he would have been in a state of excite,
(18:07):
and he took them inside the house. Were inside the
house for a period of time, and then Harry came
back out and continued to load the car with his
bags and left drove out drive away. Hayden says that
was the last time he saw the children and Harry
in that situation. We now take it up at Wenzel's Bakery,
(18:32):
which is about one hundred and twenty meters walk from
Harry's house where the children arrived there and Jane had
suddenly found a one pound note because she paid for
six meals. There was five past these, one pie, six
finger buttons and two bottles of pop was a one
(18:56):
pound note when they arrived at you remember at the reserve.
Allegedly their money had been sold. Money's been nicked, so
she had no money. Two things that means. One where
don't you get the pant note? But two she was
in the hands and the person who took the money
because he's the person who could can rely on to
get them home and give them more money to buy
(19:19):
lunch for the mum and themselves and someone else. The
children have never seen again after buying the food from
the bakery, which is just the thing there that's part
of the mystery.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
What Hayden has said. He said, I saw the children
at his house around lunchtime. Those children and the man
left that reservers, Bill said, with no money, and it
was around twelve oh five. They end up at Wensley's
Bakery around twelve twenty five. Now they leave the reserve
with no money none. They've got twenty minutes to collect
(19:57):
that money and then end up at Wensley's bakery. It
marries in exactly what Hayden had said. They aim into
the backyard. We've walked up myself and Bill. We've done
this at a slow pace. You've got to think they've
got Grant Beaumont in hand, and it's one hundred degrees hit.
We've walked up to those chain trips at a slow pace,
(20:19):
waited there and then walked straight down Augusta Street that
from the run Darvel from where they were playing. You
only have to look down you can see Harry's place.
It's one hundred and ninety meters. You walked down there.
We did this at a slow pace, waited, collected the
pound note or made out, and then walked to Wenzels.
It was nineteen minutes. It fits like a glove.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
How much of a reliable source is Hayden, because I
mean a lot of this new evidence is based on
his story. And how did we find out his story
in the end, because it obviously wasn't brought up back
when the immediate investigation was happening, and in fact the
pound note was kept quiet from people for a very
(21:04):
long time too. Is it a fairly integral part of
this investigation. Police thought that it would become something bigger
down the track if they ever found someone to match
it to. But how reliable is Hayden? How did his
evidence actually come to light?
Speaker 3 (21:20):
I found Hayden. I've met him. Bill's met him. Look,
I've done reference checks on him in the recruitment game,
so that's what I do. He's credible, he can be
excuse expression, he can bullshit a bit.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
When the book came out, quite a few people came forward,
which true crime do, and they called with their theories.
But there was one particular person that came forward was
a lady called Angela Fife, but she was married to Hayden,
so it was Angela Phipps. She had bought that book
and it enlightened her because she didn't realize that the
(21:56):
man seeing with the kids at the beach that day
was known to give out pound notes. One that she
believed her husband, Hayden Phipps at that time, had been
sexually abused by his father, Harry. He talked about and
Hayden showed all the characteristics of being sexually abused because
with Angela, she was a psych nurse at one of
(22:19):
the establishments up in North Queens then, and she was
dealing with and working with victims of child sexual abuse.
That Hayden a lot of times would be caught with
his face down in the pillow making grunting noises in
the middle of the night, and he'd be sweating. He
was also very erratic. He suffered from alcoholism, he suffered
(22:41):
from depression, anxiety, and it got to a point that
they split up. Angela couldn't take it anymore. But when
she read the book, she put one on one together
the pound note. She didn't know. She's thinking where Harry lives.
She believed that Harry was a pedophile. So you've got
a pedophile one hundred and ninety meters from Colie Reserve,
(23:02):
hands out pound notes fits the description to an absolute tea.
That was the three major things that she put forward
that spiked Allan Whittaker's interest. He called me and he said,
are you sitting down? And once he told me that
I had a chill go up my backbone, which has
happened a few times, and I knew we were onto something.
(23:25):
I've even got it right now. I believe I was
onto something.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Clare Murphy.
I'm speaking with writer Stuart Mullins and former South Australian
Police detective Bill Hayes about the Beaumont Children's disappearance. Up next,
Stuart and Bill talk more about the man they think
is guilty for the disappearance of the Beaumont children, Harry Phipps.
(23:53):
Can we talk a little bit about Harry Phipps what
kind of man he was seen as, because I understand
he had quite the two different personas, one that was
very public and one that was very private. And how
he would be in a position to be able to
randomly hand out pound notes because as you mentioned, that's
(24:15):
like handing out of fifty these days. So he was
a very well off man and I understand very well connected.
Can you give us an idea of who Harry Phipps
was in the nineteen sixties and seventies.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
Was a gentleman who is very successful in business. He
was an engineer by training, as was his father. He
had been. He had built up a small business engineering
type business to what cast the Load became, which was
(24:48):
a major foundry manufacturer and.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
For those people who aren't from Adelaide, the Castel factory
employs like loads of people.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
It's a pretty big operation.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Right, Like, it's no small meat and potatoes factory here.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
It sits on a second certain hector site that gives
you the idea. It's about six football fields or huge.
It was huge anyway. He built that up into the
business that became He was a multi millionaire, hence his
ability and capacity to give out one pound nuts. As
(25:24):
a person, he was He's a jeculine hide, a definite
jeculine hide. He is to some people, who's the hell person,
well met type individual who is well dressed, debonair slave smart.
The other side of him was aside a few people saw,
(25:47):
and that was the pedophile side, or the psychotic side,
the person who would fly off the handle in an
incredible rage from zero to one hundred and split second
for no apparent reason. It just happened. His psychotic ages.
He had evidence throughout his life, so those unfortunate to
(26:13):
see that side of him and surviving having never forgotten
what they saw what he did. So he was out
in the community doing the good things that rich people do.
And then behind that bail was the other Harry, and
he unfortunately is the Harry that we believe the bomb
(26:37):
of children met.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
And this is a man we referred to as the
Satin man, right.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Correct, correct, So that man was evil, he was cruel,
He was a psycho. A psycho he really wasn't that case.
Once he got aroused, there was no stopping, absolutely no stopping.
Hayden gave an example of Harry's arousals when he explained
(27:03):
his own rapes to me, when Harry had raped him,
and how as a four or five year old child,
Hayden would lie in his bed at night waiting to
hear the swish of Saturn coming down the hallway because
he knew Harry was coming down wearing one of his
satin dresses, and Hayden was about to get raped. That
(27:25):
was his life and his experience of his father. He
hated his father throughout his life, and we always said
there was a reason for that. We couldn't find out
the reason. We thought it was because he'd been abusing him,
and certainly that was a big part of it, but
we now believed there was other reasons too why he
(27:47):
had his father. But Harry, for the people who met him,
mister Hyde character, for those people who are unfortunate to
meet the mister Hyde in Harry's character, it was an
unforgetable and horrible experience for those honors who saw on
(28:07):
the other side, and they would never believe that mister
Hyde had ever lived. Harry was a great guy, looked
after the guys at work, paid them well through great parties,
really did. But that's all part of his front. So
that's Harry and a nutshell two people.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Can we talk about those people who would find out
later on that they were.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
The victims of this Satin Man?
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Because you've written books, including The Satin Man, where people
have identified who this person is and Gon hang On,
I think I'm also.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
The victim of this person.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Can you talk us through who some of those people
are and what their experiences have been.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
The first really notable one. We've had several, but one
really notable one was a lady. I interviewed her at length.
Her story was compelling. So there was a man that
would share outside of cars the lay every day and
watched her and her friend walked to school together and
(29:14):
wave and smile. Nice Harry. And it was Harry that
went on for some considerable time, And on this particular day,
she'd gone up to Streeter Street up past Street Street,
Streeter Street to Kincaid Avenue, which is street behind Castle
Loi to go to her friend's house to do some
(29:36):
homework together. She stayed longer than she planned and she
had to leave to get home. So she's making her
way home down street of the street towards King Caid
Avenue and the man that she'd been watching standing in
street of street very much say guy, And as she
walked down the street, she crossed the road to the
(29:57):
other side of the street from where he was, and
he came across the street towards her, met her towards
the middle of the road, put his arm gently on
shoulder and started speaking to her in a very nice
plus way. She recalled that because he wasn't rough and
gruff like her father, and he smelt really well and
(30:18):
he gently spoke to her as he was guiding her
across to the other side of the street of street
down towards the junction of Street Street and Morigi Avenue.
That's no our car park. Back then when this happened,
it was a bit of waste ground that had piles
of earth piled up and kids would use it for
the bikes up and down on the bikes over these
(30:39):
piles of earth. He guided her into those the corner
of all those piles of earth, which was sheltered from
the street by its bulk. He set her down, spoke
to her, and cut along story short. He even see
raped her. When he finished raping her, he stood up
(31:01):
and as his typical the behavior we know of Harry Phipps,
he started up in the dust, off his clothing and
blaming her for getting his clothes dirty. Look what you've done.
Look at the nice clothes and putting on dirty. It's
told your fault. So he does this change start to
go to bad, Harry. She ran home. She got home,
(31:24):
she was disheveled, dirty. Her mother said nothing, let her in,
told her she had to go and get changed before
her father come home. Her father come home, and that
was it for a while. She didn't say anything to
her mother, and wouldn't say anything to her father because
he would have blamed her. If she'd have brought the
police to his house, she would have got the biggest
(31:46):
beating she'd have had. He was a violent man, and
she didn't tell him her It did cause behavioral changes
in her, so much so when she left home, when
she was about seventeen or eighteen and was being looked
after by a couple who are a nice couple who
were very kind to her, and now you've tried to
(32:07):
work out what had happened to you. So she told
him this story that I've just told you, and they
convinced her to call the police. They called in the
South Australia Police in the uniform. Police officer responded and
came to serious spoke to her about what had happened.
He then basically told her how difficult it would be
(32:29):
for the police and for her to prove this. There's
no evidence, no forensic evidence, it's an old case. Nobody's
going to believe you. All that sort of stuff. So
much so that she said decided it wasn't worth it,
so she just let it go. She had continued to
be a bit of a troublesome child or a young
(32:51):
person and men she ended up in to say where
she began to settle down. She had married a police
officer who became a senior police officer over there and
was quite happy. She told some friends about her childhood
what had happened to her, and one day she's watching
(33:13):
something on TV. What happened to be a program Stuart
Live done, and they flashed Harry's photograph of Bet and
she said to a friend who was seeing with it,
that's the one they rape them. That's the guy who
raped me. And that truly is the first time she
knew his name was Harry Phipps.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Next, how close are we to finding the remains of
the Beaumont.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Children, Stuart?
Speaker 1 (33:43):
You have been researching Harry Phipps's connection to the missing
Beaumont children for quite some time, and during this time,
while Nancy has passed away, Jim has still been alive.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Through this process. He's sadly passed on now.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
But have you taken your belief of Harry Phipps's connection
to his missing children to him personally?
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Moston matters had kept in contact with him over the years,
and when he got involved with me and Bill. Regarding
Harry Phipps, he went to see him, had a cup
of tea with him. Because he was the first detective
on the case. He was the first detective to meet
(34:29):
a distraught mister Missus Beaumont, so Jim trusted him, knew
where he lived, most people knew where he lived, and
went around to see him. I got a call from
Boston to say that he had caught up with Jim
and that he was very appreciative of what both myself
and Bill were doing. But that's all he said. Regarding that,
(34:51):
he does say publicly that you know, he doesn't want
to be you know, his hopes raised and yet dashed again,
But on this occasion he didn't say that. In Boston,
he actually was grateful and that me and Bill, like
I felt pleased with that. I could see that he
(35:13):
could see what we were doing was the right thing
to do. Now is what he thought of Harriet Phipps.
I don't know, but he was appreciative of this. So
that was a quite quiet consolation that we were doing
the right thing. We knew we were. And I would say,
going even further that, you know, dealing with the and
(35:34):
Bill has two with the major crime. You know, we've
got this in the book. Do they have the time,
do they have the resources to what myself and Bill
have done over these years? Which investigation takes president over
another one? Is it an investigation or a true crime
(35:55):
mystery of fifty sixty years old? Or they've got more
pressing matters and those pressing matters are also exemplified by
the media. The media is going to put pressure on
to get things solved. The public are going to do that.
So I think I believe what we've heard. They're quite
appreciative even what me and Bill are doing, because we're
(36:19):
hitting in the right direction. We've got the time. I mean,
it does interfere with our own work, but we've got
the time, we do have the resources, We're not silly,
and we're heading in the right direction. So I think
the police most probably breathe a sigh of relief, even
though they don't say it.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Speaking of police, what has to eventuate for them to
finally go to the cast alloy site in I think
the first peop was around twenty thirteen. For them to
start actually looking for the remains of the Beaumont children
at Harry Phipps's factory site.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
What has to happen to get them there.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
There's two boys, David and Robin Harkin. They read the
Satin and Not on the sat Man book searching for
the Beaumonts and then the Saturn Man. They called Alan
Whittaker initially and said they had dug a grave size hole.
Once they found out it was Harry Phipson carsall they
called Alan Whittaker, and again Alan Whittaker called me and
(37:19):
said again are you sitting down. There was two boys,
brothers that dug this grave size hole at the back
of the factory back in nineteen sixty six, and it
is only three days after the children go missing, and
Harry Phipps was there watching them. And also when they
finished that hole, they were powding pound notes follow the money.
(37:41):
You know who hands out You've got a pound note there,
You've got a pound note with Jane, and then you've
got a pound note a few days later. So that
obviously pricked my ears up. And of course Bill got involved,
and of course you know, he followed it through. So
it was just it was like, oh, here we go.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Yeah. I took students from both the brothers. Was now
I was even two men, both business professionals, and they
could quite clearly recall digging the hole back in sixty six.
Because of the nature of the hole, there was nothing
nearby to put in the hole. They couldn't work out
why they were digging this play great hole in forty
(38:21):
degree heat. They couldn't work out why, as I said,
there was nothing there that mystified him that this older
bloke who was supervising was going to have to put
whatever he wanted to put in the hole, put in
the hole himself, and then he would fill this big hole,
which said dug out, which was a massive task for them.
(38:42):
And what was ho was he going to do? You know,
just on his own. They couldn't work it out, and
that remained with them. They've got barbecues years later and
joke about the time they dug the great You know,
I wondered what he wanted to put in there? There
was nothing there to put in.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
What happened in that first dig and what led you
to go back and recheck it?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Afterwards?
Speaker 4 (39:02):
Hayden saw the dig and TV and Rainy, his cousin
who was his closest lifetime friend, and said, quote, they're
digging in the wrong fucking place. That was upheld by
the fact that we found nothing in that area at all.
(39:23):
We dug the hole. It wasn't that a whole anything
that the one that we dug when it was the
twenty eighteen hole that the police dug, it was nothing
compared to the hug that we did recently. That was
a massive deed. They had dug a hole. I think
I thought I got from watching it and seeing it
(39:45):
and listening to them, was we just dug a hole
to shut us up again, once again shut us up.
It didn't, but they thought it would. So the deed
was unsuccessful in the first since because I think it
was the wrong place. The key was that the guy
(40:06):
eyes went into a gate, the first gate and cast alway.
What we didn't realize at the time was that the
first gate in twenty thirteen was not the first gate
in nineteen sixty six. The first gate was further back. Now.
(40:28):
That wasn't until we dug the second hole no further
and we found something. With a ground penetaric radar and
equipment that we used, we found some anomalies there. A
hole was dug. That hole was dug in twenty eighteen.
Again we found the hole with nothing in it. It's
been a massive hole. Nothing there. And what was interesting too,
(40:52):
was that we found another hole that had been dug
like an L shape towards the first hole throughout the
first hole dug by the two boys, which we could
see quite clearly on the graph that we had, and
then another one intersecting across the bottom of the first
hole of the twenty eighteen hole like an L shape,
(41:13):
And I wondered about why was that, Because when they
dug out that the bigger twenty eighteen hole, they dug
out both holes and there wasn't even a screw in
the second hold that the added hole didn't have anything
in it. So somebody's dug up a massive grade hole
and not putting anything in it. Likewise, with the original
(41:35):
nineteen sixty six hole that we dug it twenty eighteen,
that two contained nothing a couple of animal bones about
two feet down. So we started, we went and dug
again at a really really big deal. I think we
dug ten thousand cubic medias in the initiative, and that's
a massive hole. Then things started to happen. If the
(42:00):
things started to happen. On the last air of the
Big D we had a member of the public standing
beside press conference that we were holding. We had fifteen
minutes to get off site, so it was last press conference,
see you later word. So he approached us and gave
some information of some research he'd been doing as a
(42:22):
member of the public and also as a former employee
of Castle like about the more likely area of where
the children might be bed. He nominated cut a long
story short, he nominated the very northeastern corner as being
the place where the ship hit. That Hayden had inferred
(42:44):
to was that's where all the rubbish, trash whatever from
the factory that we've gone in that northeastern corner. Another
thing had happened after the guy had spoken to us
about what his research had shown. Stuart on a phone call. Yeah,
(43:05):
there was.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Let's call the lady Sharon. She called. She'd been watching
the dig to say that she had been abused and
that she was told some certain information regarding the same corner.
They don't know each other. They corroborated that same corner.
And I think that one time we were going to
(43:29):
write the chapter called under the Peppercorn Tree, because that's
where the peppercorn is. But she was She spoke to
me about being sexually abused inside those cast like cottages.
She spoke about the corner, the far corner under the
peppercorn tree.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
There was a couple of cottages on the cast Aloys site,
and there was one in particular that was known as
Harry's cottage that he only had access to but you
had heard that it was where he staught a lot
of those silk dresses.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
That that's correct.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
We talked about earlier.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
That was it was under lock and key, and it
was Harry's cottage, so no one was allowed in there.
So what she had described inside those cottages, myself and
Bill have been inside that cottage before they've been demolished.
And she was talking about the wood paneling in the
second room and lo and behold, the old nineteen sixty
(44:21):
seventies wood paneling was there. So she had been inside
those cottages and that's where the sexual abuse that occurred.
She was very descriptive what she also and I've learned
this that when people are talking about their sexual abuse,
when they start to talk about the colors and the
fuel and the smell, they're actually living it. They're not
(44:44):
making it up. So the more she talked, I basically said,
this is a job for Bill. Being a trained detective,
I found her very credible. What she was saying was
very credible, and it corroborated what other people were saying
that she couldn't possibly know. And she mentioned names, you know,
she couldn't possibly have known unless she was there. So
(45:07):
after talking to her. I was convinced that she was
telling the truth, and I introduced her to Bill Hayes.
We knew we were under something, but this really nailed it.
Speaker 4 (45:20):
I found her to be reluctantes. Someone can said it
that way. It was like pulling teeth really, but you
get there, you get stuff. And she had stuff to say,
and she had told me about there's a note that
was left on the gate that Castle Oay in twenty sixteen,
(45:43):
the fiftieth anniversary of the children being abducted. In that note,
and it says that the two girls were bury there
Castle Oi, a little boy wasn't and may you rest
in peace? Or may you rest in peace? All that
sort of stuff. It was a note that really picked
our interest back in twenty sixteen because we felt that
(46:07):
the way this note was done and the trouble they
had gone to make it the way they had, this
person knew something. On the bottom of the note was
the initials C dot S dot dot dot, So we
can work out who that was. There was one person
we thought it was, but we'd improved me wrong. And
(46:28):
I spoke to her about that. She told me that
she had created and left it out. She described the
leper set set she used to create it, and also
the typewriter that she used to type it, and the
type caster was on there of that type typewriter. I
(46:50):
asked her what the initial CS meant, because her initials
were not CS. She described to me that that was
a cryptic cross word clue that she just wanted to give,
and CS dot dot dot stance for CS Loose, who
was the author of the line of Witch and the Wardrobe,
(47:10):
which was Jane's favorite book at the time of her abduction,
and that was their cryptic clue she gave. We went
across and spent the entire day with her, interviewing her
by or the tap and we were recording, and then
finished up with Allie detext test. She told me about
(47:34):
certain things that happened within her family that were pedophiles.
She had a family of pedophiles. She was taken by
some pedophile members of her family to visit a friend
in South Australia when she was about ten or twelve
years old during the school holidays and she was taken
to Castlelone and she was met never met at the
(47:57):
castle by the owner of the factory, Harry Phipps. We
took him to the foundry to see the foundry, showed
her his car Pontier Cuisianne, and then took her to
his cottage, that cottage that he only he had. While
he was in there, he showed her racks containing satin
(48:18):
clothes dresses hanging up and asked her what she'd like
to pick one that once she had loved. She picked
one flother or too big for her, and then he
took her into the room, laid her down, and I
maginally raped her fresh for jointly raping her got up
and left the room for a short time and returned
(48:39):
to the room wearing a satin dress that she picked,
and he anally raped her. And we know this was
more than one person has been Harry's m o vgile
and adele rat. She then talked to me about the
bomb on children. She told me that one of her
rapists as a child was another pedophile who was called John,
(49:04):
and John had basically held her captain of you like
back when she was about twenty one one years old
in his house interstate and when she wasn't handcuffed to
the table, he had a shotgun in her face. She said.
He told the story of the Bonbone children and Harry Phipps.
(49:27):
This man knew Harry and admitted that he was a
member of Harry's pedophile group. She saw the story that
he was drunk, but he was lucid. He told her
that he'd been told by someone that the children had
(49:48):
been abducted from the College reserve and taken to the
Castle Life factory on the day of their production. During
that first day, for some reason, the little boy right,
something had happened there, and he took him away and
placed them in some nearby stables, and then took her
(50:11):
back to the cottages where the girls were raped by
Harry Phipps, by Hayden Phipps, and by another person called
Bill or William Robson. Apparently that was how the rapes occurred.
(50:31):
That Hayden had raped Jane, only Mary and Robson had
raped Jane and Anna. Little Lada had become extremely upset
on one of the days the first day and had
been brutally assaulted physically by Phipps. Not have to say
I was a hard and investigator. We see lots of stuff,
(50:54):
and it made me feel sick when I was being
told what she told me. The children were kept for
two days being raped and kept overnight in cupboards in
the cottages, locked in cupboards would be absolutely terrifying. I
was afraid of the park. I can't believe what. Excuse me?
Speaker 2 (51:15):
Do you need a moment?
Speaker 4 (51:16):
Bill?
Speaker 3 (51:17):
Yes, yeah, and understand that that's that's how I felt
when he first told me. The other thing is that
that lady mentioned the two names, Bill Robson and a
guy called John Little. Bill called me and said, have
you heard of these people? I called Hayden's closest cousin
(51:38):
and I said, have you heard of these people? And
he said yeah. He said one was a close family friend.
He used to Harry all the time because he only
the closest cousin lived only around the corner. So there
was number one. She couldn't possibly have known these people
without being told that she was there. And the other
one was Bill Robson. I said, you know who's this guy?
(52:00):
And he worked at castell Or. He was basically Harry
Phipps's right hand man. So there's two names, and she
didn't just pluck them out of the air. She had
to have been there. And so I called Bill, and
there was another thing that we knew she was truthful,
But to come out with just mentioning a person's name
unless you've been there, you know, you don't guess those
(52:22):
sorts of things. So I passed it on to Bill,
and it was another another aspect of her truthfulness of
what happened.
Speaker 4 (52:30):
The man was speaking to her a description of the
whole They were digging at the peppercorn tree, the Roth
eastern corner, and he shaid that they were buried on
the concrete, and they corrected it and shaid it was
like the concrete dust dust, but they didn't make it hard.
(52:51):
They didn't put water on it because of the human
cry that was going on at the time, because of
the abduction, and they just covered it up and thought
it hard and naturally or whatever. So that was thrown
over the bodies. Because he used to tell her when
she was a child, if you don't do as you're told,
(53:11):
you be buried on the concrete like the bomb. Once
we got back in, and we were really grateful to
get back in because we hadn't reached that point when
we threw the track. We can imagine my heart sinking
because I knew what I was looking for, no one
else did. I didn't tell them about the gray concrete,
(53:31):
and I was looking to see if I had seen that,
And before we got to that part where I believed
it would be, we threw the track and we were
told we couldn't come back. I was beside herself, basically
because I had to see that area to see was
there something there? Now, given she said that the kids
(53:54):
were there, buried there, and we're under this concrete powder.
So we dig on and when we got to the
peppercorn tree, we started to uncovered gray powder about three
feet down under the surface and as exactly as described
why the bloke who was telling a story to our victim,
(54:17):
exactly as described it was still powdered because it wasn't concrete.
That is very significant. There's no way that he, she,
or anyone could have known that that powder was buried
in that ground three feet deep on the surface to
tell us that that's what was throwing over the kids,
(54:39):
that was very telling for me. We didn't find anything,
which was curious in that northeast corner. That makes me
more curious than anything because you remember that was a
ship hit, so something's been through there.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
Cleaned it out.
Speaker 3 (54:56):
There's what you're looking for with the CASTELOI or any
alloy factory. You've got to look at thet their waste material,
and it's quite extensive. That from chemical containers which are
made of metal, because you know, back in the nineteen
sixties everything was made for metal. It wasn't plastics. You know,
you brought your ice cream in an ice cream tin.
So you've got metal containers. You've got obviously filing shavings dross,
(55:22):
which is the leftover heavy metal material that's got to
be dumped somewhere. And that's when Hayden and I mentioned
this to Bill this morning for our next Facebook post.
Is he mentioned the pit not a pit. There is
a defined location the ship pit. As I said, he
(55:46):
he had a specific spot. Hence what Bill said earlier
they're digging in the fucking wrong spot is he knows
where that is where we dug. Either they've moved it
out or we're not quite in the right spot, because
I would have I was waiting. It's apart from the
children's remains, is that I was hoping that we would
(56:06):
hit canisters who will hit a metal, some sort of metal,
something that would indicate that there was a dump there.
There was a ship pit, and it hasn't been found either,
as Bill said, they've picked it up and taken it elsewhere,
or it's still there somewhere. But again it's like needle
and haste, where is the ship pit?
Speaker 1 (56:29):
With that clarity, though, just to finish, is it enough
if we don't find the remains of these children? With
the clarity that you now have around this story and
the fact that that site now is going to be redeveloped,
they're going to build houses over the top of it,
there might not be recourse to check ever.
Speaker 2 (56:51):
Again, and now there's not.
Speaker 1 (56:54):
Too many people left alive who were directly involved in
all of this. I mean, Hayden has passed now, as
is Angela. So is there enough clarity around this?
Speaker 2 (57:03):
Do we put this to rest? With what you found out?
Speaker 3 (57:06):
I wouldn't put it to rest. I'd never put it
to rest. But we so far have done everything humanly
possible that we could possibly do. I disappointed. Yes, However,
it's now for the general public to come forward like
this lady. It's a domino effect. You get one person
(57:27):
coming forward to people, and this is what's happening now,
is that even with this podcast, with the book coming out,
I would be of the belief that other people will
now feel empowered, that they're going to be believed, that
they come forward with their story. So disappointed with the
dig but this I believe there's still more to go,
(57:49):
especially after this book and this podcast, is that people
will finally some people like the lady who or the
several ladies beforehand, will have the courage to come forward
and tell their story. If they feel that going to
the please to crime stoppers, I can understand that, will
they be believed, will somebody get back to them? Just
(58:11):
come to us direct. We will listen, because if it's
happened to one, two, and three, it's happened to twenty thirty.
And I'll give you an example. Jared Risdale, Catholic priest,
fifty four counts of child sexual abuse. It started with
one and that one person who came forward initially wasn't believed.
Now there's another fifty three. And that's what I believe,
(58:33):
and I'm quite sure Bill does is going to happen here.
Speaker 1 (58:39):
Thank you to Stewart and Bill for helping us tell
this story. You can find their book, Unmasking the Killer
of the Missing Beaumont Children at the link in our
show notes True Crime Conversations is a Muma MEA podcast
hosted by me Claire Murphy and produced by Tarlie Blackman,
with audio designed by Jacob Brown.
Speaker 2 (58:55):
Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (58:56):
I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation
True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and
waters that this podcast was recorded on. On a bright,
hot sunny day in Adelaide in nineteen sixty six, the
three children of Jim and Nancy Beaumont went to the beach.
It was January twenty sixth, a public holiday in South
Australia then, although it would be another nearly thirty years
(00:27):
before it would become a nationally recognized one. The mercury
was rising into the forties that day, and while Jim
was away for work, Nancy had to occupy those three kids,
all under the age of ten, for the entire.
Speaker 2 (00:40):
Day by herself.
Speaker 1 (00:42):
Three kids who knew that their summer school holidays were
fast running out. So in Jane, the eldest, at nine
years old, suggested she'd take her seven year old sister
Anna and little brother Grant, who was just four, to
the nearby Glenelg Beach for the morning. Nancy was all
too happy to send them off on another easy adventure.
It wasn't far to go, they'd been there before, and
(01:03):
the spot on Adelaide's western suburban shore would be packed
with other people on a public holiday Wednesday, so off
they went the three little Beaumont children, with their bathers on,
their towels around their necks, and a purse full of
change handed over by Mum for lunch and a bus fare.
Now in a crowd of hundreds, three little kids might
be noticed by many of them, or none at all,
(01:25):
as they raced to the sandy shore and cool relief
of the ocean. But researchers have been chasing the whereabouts
of these three for decades. Believe they were noticed by
at least one man, the worst possible man. And as
the years pass and more and more people come forward
with stories relating to this man, could they have finally
(01:46):
solved the mystery about what happened to Jane, Anna and
Grant Beaumont. I'm Claire Murphy and this is True Crime Conversations,
a podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking
to the people who know the most about them. In
twenty twenty six, the Beaumont chill will have been missing
(02:07):
for sixty years, but despite that passage of time, their
case continues to haunt those who investigate it. How could
three children be taken in broad daylight in front of hundreds?
How could no one have seen where they went? And
how did one of those children end up in a
bakery with more money than she ever.
Speaker 2 (02:27):
Left her house with that day?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
Author Stuart Mullins, who grew up in the same neighborhood
as the Beaumonts, and former detective turned private investigator Bill
Hayes have slowly been unraveling the stories around a man
who not only had the opportunity to snatch Jane, Arna
and Grant, but who also led a life that suggested
that their disappearance was not a crime of opportunity, but
rather a carefully planned luring in of three innocent lives
(02:53):
to satisfy a depraved section of society.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
Who is the Satin Man?
Speaker 1 (02:59):
And why haven't police ever really looked into his movements
on the day the Beaumont children disappeared, seeing as his
house was literally in sight of the last places they
were seen alive.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Stuart and Bill join us now.
Speaker 1 (03:14):
Stuart, I'd like to kick off our conversation with you today.
You have spent so many years researching the disappearance of
the Beaumont children, and.
Speaker 2 (03:23):
You, like me, grew up.
Speaker 1 (03:26):
Will you closer to where this all unfolded in Adelaide?
Why do you think this case has had such a
lasting personal impact on you.
Speaker 3 (03:36):
There is an emotional attachment too, and a few people
have said, and even Bill said, you can see that
in the You know, when I write the first chapter
of the Beaumont generation, that was me, That was the
Muddins family, it was the Beaumont family. May have been
your family growing up around the streets of Glenelg. We
did exactly what Jane anna, and granted that was my life,
(03:59):
so it was easily I could easily write and I
could feel, you know, when three children go down to
Collie Reserve, as I did, as I would say you did,
then you went with the belief that you were free,
You're having a good time and there was no way
you could have got attacked or abducted. And it was
those three that really brought it home and brought it
(04:20):
home to my parents. I remember my mother started to
look out for where we were going, wanted to know
where we were. So it was the day that Australia
lost its innocence because three children being abducted and disappeared
from Collie Reserve has not happened before, and it hasn't
happened since, not just in Australia, but worldwide it's a
(04:43):
one off and so unusual, which goes down to the
thing how brazen and confident that individual was. And yeah,
it's that connection. As you were born in South Australia
with Collie Reserve, I frequent and Collie Reserve. I knew
exactly their lifestyle. The Peringa Park Primary School that Jane
(05:03):
and Anna attended was only just down the road from
my primary school, Darlington Primary School, and it was about
four k's different and I used to play footy on
their able. I knew where they lived. My grandmother lived
about four hundred meters from where Nancy and Jim Bow
might live, so I knew the summer to part. So
(05:24):
there's a very in depth emotional connection.
Speaker 1 (05:30):
We did actually speak to you about this case on
this podcast back in twenty nineteen, a conversation that you
had with Jesse Stevens, who was hosting at the time.
What has changed since then, because Nancy had died the
year before you spoke to Jesse, but Jim was still
alive back then, so in that six years, what's changed
(05:51):
about this case?
Speaker 3 (05:53):
Well, since the book came out, firstly, the Satin Man
came out and then Bill was heavily involved, which gave
a lot of credibility. You may look at me and say, well,
you know, he's after notoriety and he's an upstart. But
when you get Bill Hayes involved, who's a former detective
(06:13):
and a federal investigator and a private and investigator, now
it adds that credibility. So Ears started to prick up
and adding him to the team, I say, a small team.
It started to get even the media interested. And what
happens when you put out a true crime book, and
we've seen this over and over again, people start to
(06:35):
come forward that have kept silent. Now why have they
kept silent is because the fear of not being believed,
and we've seen that time and time again. We saw
it with Rolf Harris. You know he was applying his trade.
People did come forward and they were discarded. Not Rolf Harris.
(06:55):
It would have been the same with Phipps. So when
people come forward and speak out and there's a similarity
between what they're saying and they're not connected, so you're
starting to build a picture. And over the last since
the last podcast, the picture has been building. So I
don't think there's any doubt whatsoever. In my mind, I
(07:17):
would say, Bill's that Harry Phipps is the instigator. But
what we've found out it's much more in depth than
I think even we anticipated. So it's people coming forward
one after another, feeling emboldened that they can now speak
out and be believed.
Speaker 1 (07:34):
Well, we'll get into a little bit more detail about
who Harry Phipps the Satin Man is in a minute.
But Bill, you became involved in this case. I mean,
it was more than two decades after you know, the
children disappeared, so you have continued to investigate it ever since,
and you've often had to work independently of police. And
(07:56):
this is something that I've seen throughout your book is
that the role of detectives and police in this case
has been very difficult because they have been undated with
theories and people suggesting things, and they have even at
times without permission from you know, people up there chain
(08:16):
gone and investigated things off the back of you know,
clairvoyance and all kinds of crazy stuff with this case,
Just how difficult is it to bring new theories to
those who are officially investigating the Beaumont children.
Speaker 4 (08:29):
Now, well, we've had a great deal of difficulty with
it throughout the investigation. I okay, revolved in two thousand
and eight, which is four decades after the event, and
it was a very cold case obviously after all those years,
but it was a very interesting case. It was put
to me by Stuart when you first contacted me. I
(08:55):
wasn't wouldn't so I was reluctant, but I was a
bit cautious about getting involved in something like this. We
had many meetings with police over the years. We've given
them voueolumes and volumes of information which all strangely disappeared,
and we had to keep reproducing volumes of information every
time someone new took over the core case. So it's
(09:18):
been a hard road. It's been difficultyes, indeed.
Speaker 1 (09:22):
Well, Stuart, can you take us back to the beginning
of this for people? I mean, I think people are
all in different stages of their awareness of what happened
to the Beaumont children. They would have seen headlines over
the years that, you know, maybe give them some idea
of what happened. But can you take us back to
nineteen sixties Somerton Park and Glenelg Because many people who
initially hear this story are often appolled that a mother
(09:45):
would allow three small children, you know, the ten and under,
to go to the beach by themselves. But can you
give us an idea of exactly what that area was like,
why parents were allowing their children to go to the
beach by themselves, even like was four years old. Like
it seems completely out of our realm of understanding now
(10:05):
of what ni teen sixties Adelaide looked like.
Speaker 3 (10:08):
There was an old saying be home before the street
lights came on. So in the school holidays, children roamed
the areas around your suburbs and beyond. And you've got
to remember that we had creeks that weren't cemented in.
We had rolling hills. I was up at a place
called Seakam Gardens at the base of the Adelaide Hills,
(10:30):
and you could walk for miles up there, and there
was creeks and there was orange trees, and you went adventuring.
All you had to do was to be home before
the street lights came on. That's what kids did at
that time. My mother usually my mom, because my dad
was in the Air Force, he was away. She didn't
know where we were. We had no cell phones, we
(10:51):
had no thing. It was just like, yes, we're going
to a friend's place and we're going off exploring. So
there was many things to do in the summer. The
Adelaide heat as you know, but get up to thirty
degrees celsius or one hundred degrees fahrenheit and you'd head
down the beach, which I did at Seekum Gardens, down
to Brighton Beach, which is our favorite because it had
(11:14):
the jetty, but also Collie Reserve where there was This
is what mostyn said and people don't understand, is that
Collie Reserve was packed, was absolutely packed. When I went
down there with my friends, we would walk six kilometers
by ourselves. I was the first time I went to
(11:35):
Collie Reserve. I was five years old. Five years old.
I went with the next door neighbor, Rosalind always remembered
that she was eleven. We walked. This is after the movies.
We saw a hard day's night, but that's what we did.
There was no what's going to happen to us? We
just had to get home before the street lights came on.
(11:57):
So it was an adventure playground for kids. It's very
rare for a child to be abducted. It's much you can.
It's fed in to us these days to keep your
kids close to you, and I do that because we've
been involved with the Beaumont children. But back then we
didn't have that media. It was free and easy.
Speaker 4 (12:17):
It was.
Speaker 3 (12:17):
It was an unbelievable kid's lifestyle. And Shane, Arna and Grant,
even though Grant was four, it didn't matter, and they
only had to walk down to Collie Reserve. It was
it was well two kilometers, that's nothing. We were walking
six ten sometimes who were out all day as long
as we were back home before the street lights came on.
Speaker 2 (12:40):
Well, let's talk about that day.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
It's January twenty sixth, nineteen sixty six. It's forty something
degrees that day, which is not uncommon for that time
of year. So the beach would have been packed that day.
And Mum, who is you know busy, She's got housework
to be done. Nancy's like, what do I do with
these three kids? They're pestering me. They've all been, you know,
(13:04):
ragging on each other, and you know, the two little
ones are saying that, you know, Jane has a boyfriend,
and they're all kind of you know, mucking around an
annoying Nancy. So she's like, right, I can't have them
walk to the beach two k's today it's forty degrees.
Speaker 2 (13:16):
I'll give them a few coins.
Speaker 1 (13:17):
They can catch the bus, get some lunch, and come
back again around midday.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
So they had it all planned out.
Speaker 1 (13:23):
The bus dropped them off basically not far from the
beach on Jetty Road, which true to its name, runs
down to the Jetti which is at the beach, and
so they go off adventuring. What do we know exactly
happened after they got off the bus to the last
time that they were seen, which was at the bakery.
Speaker 4 (13:45):
They got off the bus, made the way down to
the Colie Reserve. On the way there saw the pushman,
the local persman who they knew. Waved to him said hello,
went down to the reserve. Now we're getting to do openscounts.
The children came on the reserve, put the towels down
(14:06):
on the grassy area and went into the beach area
with what it was a player around there, came out
and put the towels down close to a man who'd
been already on the reserve lying on a towel. They
got very close to that man and in fact the
(14:27):
two youngest ones went over and started playing with him,
which indicated to me the Stuart a certain form of
familiarity there for them to do that, because we're told
by Missus Beaumont that the children are not like that.
They wouldn't just go to some stranger and engage with him.
(14:50):
Jane was far too smart for that, and she was
She's a smart kid. So they were playing with the
reserve of this man. They were flicking him with the
towel and all that sort of shining thing was going on.
One stage, you were down into the wall water and
he came back out. And this is where it gets
really strange again the man. Jane allowed the man to
(15:16):
dry the children and to dress them after they come
out of the water, totally totally out of character for
Jane to allow that. Missus Molmont could not believe that
which was told that, but it happened because the ivors
was side happening. The children had continued to play with
(15:37):
a man, and at one stage the man had stood
up and said to the people nearby, beric mind there
was thousands around. The place was packed, said to those around,
has anybody seen anybody near our clothes? Somebody's nicked by money.
They then packed up just after midday and left the reserve,
(15:59):
walking towards the men's changing rooms. And that was the
last of people at the reserve saw of the children.
And for many years the next sighting was at Wenzel's bakery,
but that changed. That changed in two thousand and seven
because we got another witness. So what we know now
(16:19):
is that the children the left reserve gone down towards
the men's changing rooms, and then no one has seen
this but presumably have walked up the Harry's house, which
this is about one hundred and nineteen meters one hundred
ninety meters from the reserve. The story is then taken
(16:42):
up now at the home, and that was taken up
by Harry's son, Hayden Phipps. We told us that he'd
been at his little daytime school holiday job and he'd
come home lunch time and he'd gone into what he
called the covey. Now the covey wasn't a covey like
was peeled imagined something up in the tree or three
(17:03):
house or something. What do you call the covey was
a few planks leading against the defence, and he got
in there for sly smoke. While he was there, he
saw three children coming in to the backyard, just walking
go straight to Harry. Harry at that time was loading
his car up with surfboard bags. Now, when I spoke
(17:26):
to Hate and asked him what was in the surfboard bags,
he said Harry's dresses. Harry was a feticist and a
cross dresser. He had a fetish for Saturn, hence the
book sat Man. And we know that when he handled satin,
(17:46):
saw satin thought about Saturn, he became so sexually aroused
that he was known to spontaneously ejaculate. He was so
arousing for him. So here we have three little children
which they had spoken to Harry who'd been handling satin dresses,
so he would have been in a state of excite,
(18:07):
and he took them inside the house. Were inside the
house for a period of time, and then Harry came
back out and continued to load the car with his
bags and left drove out drive away. Hayden says that
was the last time he saw the children and Harry
in that situation. We now take it up at Wenzel's Bakery,
(18:32):
which is about one hundred and twenty meters walk from
Harry's house where the children arrived there and Jane had
suddenly found a one pound note because she paid for
six meals. There was five past these, one pie, six
finger buttons and two bottles of pop was a one
(18:56):
pound note when they arrived at you remember at the reserve.
Allegedly their money had been sold. Money's been nicked, so
she had no money. Two things that means. One where
don't you get the pant note? But two she was
in the hands and the person who took the money
because he's the person who could can rely on to
get them home and give them more money to buy
(19:19):
lunch for the mum and themselves and someone else. The
children have never seen again after buying the food from
the bakery, which is just the thing there that's part
of the mystery.
Speaker 3 (19:35):
What Hayden has said. He said, I saw the children
at his house around lunchtime. Those children and the man
left that reservers, Bill said, with no money, and it
was around twelve oh five. They end up at Wensley's
Bakery around twelve twenty five. Now they leave the reserve
with no money none. They've got twenty minutes to collect
(19:57):
that money and then end up at Wensley's bakery. It
marries in exactly what Hayden had said. They aim into
the backyard. We've walked up myself and Bill. We've done
this at a slow pace. You've got to think they've
got Grant Beaumont in hand, and it's one hundred degrees hit.
We've walked up to those chain trips at a slow pace,
(20:19):
waited there and then walked straight down Augusta Street that
from the run Darvel from where they were playing. You
only have to look down you can see Harry's place.
It's one hundred and ninety meters. You walked down there.
We did this at a slow pace, waited, collected the
pound note or made out, and then walked to Wenzels.
It was nineteen minutes. It fits like a glove.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
How much of a reliable source is Hayden, because I
mean a lot of this new evidence is based on
his story. And how did we find out his story
in the end, because it obviously wasn't brought up back
when the immediate investigation was happening, and in fact the
pound note was kept quiet from people for a very
(21:04):
long time too. Is it a fairly integral part of
this investigation. Police thought that it would become something bigger
down the track if they ever found someone to match
it to. But how reliable is Hayden? How did his
evidence actually come to light?
Speaker 3 (21:20):
I found Hayden. I've met him. Bill's met him. Look,
I've done reference checks on him in the recruitment game,
so that's what I do. He's credible, he can be
excuse expression, he can bullshit a bit.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (21:32):
When the book came out, quite a few people came forward,
which true crime do, and they called with their theories.
But there was one particular person that came forward was
a lady called Angela Fife, but she was married to Hayden,
so it was Angela Phipps. She had bought that book
and it enlightened her because she didn't realize that the
(21:56):
man seeing with the kids at the beach that day
was known to give out pound notes. One that she
believed her husband, Hayden Phipps at that time, had been
sexually abused by his father, Harry. He talked about and
Hayden showed all the characteristics of being sexually abused because
with Angela, she was a psych nurse at one of
(22:19):
the establishments up in North Queens then, and she was
dealing with and working with victims of child sexual abuse.
That Hayden a lot of times would be caught with
his face down in the pillow making grunting noises in
the middle of the night, and he'd be sweating. He
was also very erratic. He suffered from alcoholism, he suffered
(22:41):
from depression, anxiety, and it got to a point that
they split up. Angela couldn't take it anymore. But when
she read the book, she put one on one together
the pound note. She didn't know. She's thinking where Harry lives.
She believed that Harry was a pedophile. So you've got
a pedophile one hundred and ninety meters from Colie Reserve,
(23:02):
hands out pound notes fits the description to an absolute tea.
That was the three major things that she put forward
that spiked Allan Whittaker's interest. He called me and he said,
are you sitting down? And once he told me that
I had a chill go up my backbone, which has
happened a few times, and I knew we were onto something.
(23:25):
I've even got it right now. I believe I was
onto something.
Speaker 1 (23:32):
You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Clare Murphy.
I'm speaking with writer Stuart Mullins and former South Australian
Police detective Bill Hayes about the Beaumont Children's disappearance. Up next,
Stuart and Bill talk more about the man they think
is guilty for the disappearance of the Beaumont children, Harry Phipps.
(23:53):
Can we talk a little bit about Harry Phipps what
kind of man he was seen as, because I understand
he had quite the two different personas, one that was
very public and one that was very private. And how
he would be in a position to be able to
randomly hand out pound notes because as you mentioned, that's
(24:15):
like handing out of fifty these days. So he was
a very well off man and I understand very well connected.
Can you give us an idea of who Harry Phipps
was in the nineteen sixties and seventies.
Speaker 4 (24:27):
Was a gentleman who is very successful in business. He
was an engineer by training, as was his father. He
had been. He had built up a small business engineering
type business to what cast the Load became, which was
(24:48):
a major foundry manufacturer and.
Speaker 1 (24:51):
For those people who aren't from Adelaide, the Castel factory
employs like loads of people.
Speaker 2 (24:57):
It's a pretty big operation.
Speaker 1 (24:59):
Right, Like, it's no small meat and potatoes factory here.
Speaker 4 (25:02):
It sits on a second certain hector site that gives
you the idea. It's about six football fields or huge.
It was huge anyway. He built that up into the
business that became He was a multi millionaire, hence his
ability and capacity to give out one pound nuts. As
(25:24):
a person, he was He's a jeculine hide, a definite
jeculine hide. He is to some people, who's the hell person,
well met type individual who is well dressed, debonair slave smart.
The other side of him was aside a few people saw,
(25:47):
and that was the pedophile side, or the psychotic side,
the person who would fly off the handle in an
incredible rage from zero to one hundred and split second
for no apparent reason. It just happened. His psychotic ages.
He had evidence throughout his life, so those unfortunate to
(26:13):
see that side of him and surviving having never forgotten
what they saw what he did. So he was out
in the community doing the good things that rich people do.
And then behind that bail was the other Harry, and
he unfortunately is the Harry that we believe the bomb
(26:37):
of children met.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
And this is a man we referred to as the
Satin man, right.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Correct, correct, So that man was evil, he was cruel,
He was a psycho. A psycho he really wasn't that case.
Once he got aroused, there was no stopping, absolutely no stopping.
Hayden gave an example of Harry's arousals when he explained
(27:03):
his own rapes to me, when Harry had raped him,
and how as a four or five year old child,
Hayden would lie in his bed at night waiting to
hear the swish of Saturn coming down the hallway because
he knew Harry was coming down wearing one of his
satin dresses, and Hayden was about to get raped. That
(27:25):
was his life and his experience of his father. He
hated his father throughout his life, and we always said
there was a reason for that. We couldn't find out
the reason. We thought it was because he'd been abusing him,
and certainly that was a big part of it, but
we now believed there was other reasons too why he
(27:47):
had his father. But Harry, for the people who met him,
mister Hyde character, for those people who are unfortunate to
meet the mister Hyde in Harry's character, it was an
unforgetable and horrible experience for those honors who saw on
(28:07):
the other side, and they would never believe that mister
Hyde had ever lived. Harry was a great guy, looked
after the guys at work, paid them well through great parties,
really did. But that's all part of his front. So
that's Harry and a nutshell two people.
Speaker 1 (28:26):
Can we talk about those people who would find out
later on that they were.
Speaker 2 (28:33):
The victims of this Satin Man?
Speaker 1 (28:36):
Because you've written books, including The Satin Man, where people
have identified who this person is and Gon hang On,
I think I'm also.
Speaker 2 (28:44):
The victim of this person.
Speaker 1 (28:45):
Can you talk us through who some of those people
are and what their experiences have been.
Speaker 4 (28:49):
The first really notable one. We've had several, but one
really notable one was a lady. I interviewed her at length.
Her story was compelling. So there was a man that
would share outside of cars the lay every day and
watched her and her friend walked to school together and
(29:14):
wave and smile. Nice Harry. And it was Harry that
went on for some considerable time, And on this particular day,
she'd gone up to Streeter Street up past Street Street,
Streeter Street to Kincaid Avenue, which is street behind Castle
Loi to go to her friend's house to do some
(29:36):
homework together. She stayed longer than she planned and she
had to leave to get home. So she's making her
way home down street of the street towards King Caid
Avenue and the man that she'd been watching standing in
street of street very much say guy, And as she
walked down the street, she crossed the road to the
(29:57):
other side of the street from where he was, and
he came across the street towards her, met her towards
the middle of the road, put his arm gently on
shoulder and started speaking to her in a very nice
plus way. She recalled that because he wasn't rough and
gruff like her father, and he smelt really well and
(30:18):
he gently spoke to her as he was guiding her
across to the other side of the street of street
down towards the junction of Street Street and Morigi Avenue.
That's no our car park. Back then when this happened,
it was a bit of waste ground that had piles
of earth piled up and kids would use it for
the bikes up and down on the bikes over these
(30:39):
piles of earth. He guided her into those the corner
of all those piles of earth, which was sheltered from
the street by its bulk. He set her down, spoke
to her, and cut along story short. He even see
raped her. When he finished raping her, he stood up
(31:01):
and as his typical the behavior we know of Harry Phipps,
he started up in the dust, off his clothing and
blaming her for getting his clothes dirty. Look what you've done.
Look at the nice clothes and putting on dirty. It's
told your fault. So he does this change start to
go to bad, Harry. She ran home. She got home,
(31:24):
she was disheveled, dirty. Her mother said nothing, let her in,
told her she had to go and get changed before
her father come home. Her father come home, and that
was it for a while. She didn't say anything to
her mother, and wouldn't say anything to her father because
he would have blamed her. If she'd have brought the
police to his house, she would have got the biggest
(31:46):
beating she'd have had. He was a violent man, and
she didn't tell him her It did cause behavioral changes
in her, so much so when she left home, when
she was about seventeen or eighteen and was being looked
after by a couple who are a nice couple who
were very kind to her, and now you've tried to
(32:07):
work out what had happened to you. So she told
him this story that I've just told you, and they
convinced her to call the police. They called in the
South Australia Police in the uniform. Police officer responded and
came to serious spoke to her about what had happened.
He then basically told her how difficult it would be
(32:29):
for the police and for her to prove this. There's
no evidence, no forensic evidence, it's an old case. Nobody's
going to believe you. All that sort of stuff. So
much so that she said decided it wasn't worth it,
so she just let it go. She had continued to
be a bit of a troublesome child or a young
(32:51):
person and men she ended up in to say where
she began to settle down. She had married a police
officer who became a senior police officer over there and
was quite happy. She told some friends about her childhood
what had happened to her, and one day she's watching
(33:13):
something on TV. What happened to be a program Stuart
Live done, and they flashed Harry's photograph of Bet and
she said to a friend who was seeing with it,
that's the one they rape them. That's the guy who
raped me. And that truly is the first time she
knew his name was Harry Phipps.
Speaker 1 (33:35):
Next, how close are we to finding the remains of
the Beaumont.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
Children, Stuart?
Speaker 1 (33:43):
You have been researching Harry Phipps's connection to the missing
Beaumont children for quite some time, and during this time,
while Nancy has passed away, Jim has still been alive.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Through this process. He's sadly passed on now.
Speaker 1 (33:58):
But have you taken your belief of Harry Phipps's connection
to his missing children to him personally?
Speaker 3 (34:07):
Moston matters had kept in contact with him over the years,
and when he got involved with me and Bill. Regarding
Harry Phipps, he went to see him, had a cup
of tea with him. Because he was the first detective
on the case. He was the first detective to meet
(34:29):
a distraught mister Missus Beaumont, so Jim trusted him, knew
where he lived, most people knew where he lived, and
went around to see him. I got a call from
Boston to say that he had caught up with Jim
and that he was very appreciative of what both myself
and Bill were doing. But that's all he said. Regarding that,
(34:51):
he does say publicly that you know, he doesn't want
to be you know, his hopes raised and yet dashed again,
But on this occasion he didn't say that. In Boston,
he actually was grateful and that me and Bill, like
I felt pleased with that. I could see that he
(35:13):
could see what we were doing was the right thing
to do. Now is what he thought of Harriet Phipps.
I don't know, but he was appreciative of this. So
that was a quite quiet consolation that we were doing
the right thing. We knew we were. And I would say,
going even further that, you know, dealing with the and
(35:34):
Bill has two with the major crime. You know, we've
got this in the book. Do they have the time,
do they have the resources to what myself and Bill
have done over these years? Which investigation takes president over
another one? Is it an investigation or a true crime
(35:55):
mystery of fifty sixty years old? Or they've got more
pressing matters and those pressing matters are also exemplified by
the media. The media is going to put pressure on
to get things solved. The public are going to do that.
So I think I believe what we've heard. They're quite
appreciative even what me and Bill are doing, because we're
(36:19):
hitting in the right direction. We've got the time. I mean,
it does interfere with our own work, but we've got
the time, we do have the resources, We're not silly,
and we're heading in the right direction. So I think
the police most probably breathe a sigh of relief, even
though they don't say it.
Speaker 1 (36:35):
Speaking of police, what has to eventuate for them to
finally go to the cast alloy site in I think
the first peop was around twenty thirteen. For them to
start actually looking for the remains of the Beaumont children
at Harry Phipps's factory site.
Speaker 2 (36:53):
What has to happen to get them there.
Speaker 3 (36:56):
There's two boys, David and Robin Harkin. They read the
Satin and Not on the sat Man book searching for
the Beaumonts and then the Saturn Man. They called Alan
Whittaker initially and said they had dug a grave size hole.
Once they found out it was Harry Phipson carsall they
called Alan Whittaker, and again Alan Whittaker called me and
(37:19):
said again are you sitting down. There was two boys,
brothers that dug this grave size hole at the back
of the factory back in nineteen sixty six, and it
is only three days after the children go missing, and
Harry Phipps was there watching them. And also when they
finished that hole, they were powding pound notes follow the money.
(37:41):
You know who hands out You've got a pound note there,
You've got a pound note with Jane, and then you've
got a pound note a few days later. So that
obviously pricked my ears up. And of course Bill got involved,
and of course you know, he followed it through. So
it was just it was like, oh, here we go.
Speaker 4 (37:58):
Yeah. I took students from both the brothers. Was now
I was even two men, both business professionals, and they
could quite clearly recall digging the hole back in sixty six.
Because of the nature of the hole, there was nothing
nearby to put in the hole. They couldn't work out
why they were digging this play great hole in forty
(38:21):
degree heat. They couldn't work out why, as I said,
there was nothing there that mystified him that this older
bloke who was supervising was going to have to put
whatever he wanted to put in the hole, put in
the hole himself, and then he would fill this big hole,
which said dug out, which was a massive task for them.
(38:42):
And what was ho was he going to do? You know,
just on his own. They couldn't work it out, and
that remained with them. They've got barbecues years later and
joke about the time they dug the great You know,
I wondered what he wanted to put in there? There
was nothing there to put in.
Speaker 1 (38:56):
What happened in that first dig and what led you
to go back and recheck it?
Speaker 2 (39:01):
Afterwards?
Speaker 4 (39:02):
Hayden saw the dig and TV and Rainy, his cousin
who was his closest lifetime friend, and said, quote, they're
digging in the wrong fucking place. That was upheld by
the fact that we found nothing in that area at all.
(39:23):
We dug the hole. It wasn't that a whole anything
that the one that we dug when it was the
twenty eighteen hole that the police dug, it was nothing
compared to the hug that we did recently. That was
a massive deed. They had dug a hole. I think
I thought I got from watching it and seeing it
(39:45):
and listening to them, was we just dug a hole
to shut us up again, once again shut us up.
It didn't, but they thought it would. So the deed
was unsuccessful in the first since because I think it
was the wrong place. The key was that the guy
(40:06):
eyes went into a gate, the first gate and cast alway.
What we didn't realize at the time was that the
first gate in twenty thirteen was not the first gate
in nineteen sixty six. The first gate was further back. Now.
(40:28):
That wasn't until we dug the second hole no further
and we found something. With a ground penetaric radar and
equipment that we used, we found some anomalies there. A
hole was dug. That hole was dug in twenty eighteen.
Again we found the hole with nothing in it. It's
been a massive hole. Nothing there. And what was interesting too,
(40:52):
was that we found another hole that had been dug
like an L shape towards the first hole throughout the
first hole dug by the two boys, which we could
see quite clearly on the graph that we had, and
then another one intersecting across the bottom of the first
hole of the twenty eighteen hole like an L shape,
(41:13):
And I wondered about why was that, Because when they
dug out that the bigger twenty eighteen hole, they dug
out both holes and there wasn't even a screw in
the second hold that the added hole didn't have anything
in it. So somebody's dug up a massive grade hole
and not putting anything in it. Likewise, with the original
(41:35):
nineteen sixty six hole that we dug it twenty eighteen,
that two contained nothing a couple of animal bones about
two feet down. So we started, we went and dug
again at a really really big deal. I think we
dug ten thousand cubic medias in the initiative, and that's
a massive hole. Then things started to happen. If the
(42:00):
things started to happen. On the last air of the
Big D we had a member of the public standing
beside press conference that we were holding. We had fifteen
minutes to get off site, so it was last press conference,
see you later word. So he approached us and gave
some information of some research he'd been doing as a
(42:22):
member of the public and also as a former employee
of Castle like about the more likely area of where
the children might be bed. He nominated cut a long
story short, he nominated the very northeastern corner as being
the place where the ship hit. That Hayden had inferred
(42:44):
to was that's where all the rubbish, trash whatever from
the factory that we've gone in that northeastern corner. Another
thing had happened after the guy had spoken to us
about what his research had shown. Stuart on a phone call. Yeah,
(43:05):
there was.
Speaker 3 (43:07):
Let's call the lady Sharon. She called. She'd been watching
the dig to say that she had been abused and
that she was told some certain information regarding the same corner.
They don't know each other. They corroborated that same corner.
And I think that one time we were going to
(43:29):
write the chapter called under the Peppercorn Tree, because that's
where the peppercorn is. But she was She spoke to
me about being sexually abused inside those cast like cottages.
She spoke about the corner, the far corner under the
peppercorn tree.
Speaker 1 (43:45):
There was a couple of cottages on the cast Aloys site,
and there was one in particular that was known as
Harry's cottage that he only had access to but you
had heard that it was where he staught a lot
of those silk dresses.
Speaker 3 (43:57):
That that's correct.
Speaker 2 (43:58):
We talked about earlier.
Speaker 3 (43:59):
That was it was under lock and key, and it
was Harry's cottage, so no one was allowed in there.
So what she had described inside those cottages, myself and
Bill have been inside that cottage before they've been demolished.
And she was talking about the wood paneling in the
second room and lo and behold, the old nineteen sixty
(44:21):
seventies wood paneling was there. So she had been inside
those cottages and that's where the sexual abuse that occurred.
She was very descriptive what she also and I've learned
this that when people are talking about their sexual abuse,
when they start to talk about the colors and the
fuel and the smell, they're actually living it. They're not
(44:44):
making it up. So the more she talked, I basically said,
this is a job for Bill. Being a trained detective,
I found her very credible. What she was saying was
very credible, and it corroborated what other people were saying
that she couldn't possibly know. And she mentioned names, you know,
she couldn't possibly have known unless she was there. So
(45:07):
after talking to her. I was convinced that she was
telling the truth, and I introduced her to Bill Hayes.
We knew we were under something, but this really nailed it.
Speaker 4 (45:20):
I found her to be reluctantes. Someone can said it
that way. It was like pulling teeth really, but you
get there, you get stuff. And she had stuff to say,
and she had told me about there's a note that
was left on the gate that Castle Oay in twenty sixteen,
(45:43):
the fiftieth anniversary of the children being abducted. In that note,
and it says that the two girls were bury there
Castle Oi, a little boy wasn't and may you rest
in peace? Or may you rest in peace? All that
sort of stuff. It was a note that really picked
our interest back in twenty sixteen because we felt that
(46:07):
the way this note was done and the trouble they
had gone to make it the way they had, this
person knew something. On the bottom of the note was
the initials C dot S dot dot dot, So we
can work out who that was. There was one person
we thought it was, but we'd improved me wrong. And
(46:28):
I spoke to her about that. She told me that
she had created and left it out. She described the
leper set set she used to create it, and also
the typewriter that she used to type it, and the
type caster was on there of that type typewriter. I
(46:50):
asked her what the initial CS meant, because her initials
were not CS. She described to me that that was
a cryptic cross word clue that she just wanted to give,
and CS dot dot dot stance for CS Loose, who
was the author of the line of Witch and the Wardrobe,
(47:10):
which was Jane's favorite book at the time of her abduction,
and that was their cryptic clue she gave. We went
across and spent the entire day with her, interviewing her
by or the tap and we were recording, and then
finished up with Allie detext test. She told me about
(47:34):
certain things that happened within her family that were pedophiles.
She had a family of pedophiles. She was taken by
some pedophile members of her family to visit a friend
in South Australia when she was about ten or twelve
years old during the school holidays and she was taken
to Castlelone and she was met never met at the
(47:57):
castle by the owner of the factory, Harry Phipps. We
took him to the foundry to see the foundry, showed
her his car Pontier Cuisianne, and then took her to
his cottage, that cottage that he only he had. While
he was in there, he showed her racks containing satin
(48:18):
clothes dresses hanging up and asked her what she'd like
to pick one that once she had loved. She picked
one flother or too big for her, and then he
took her into the room, laid her down, and I
maginally raped her fresh for jointly raping her got up
and left the room for a short time and returned
(48:39):
to the room wearing a satin dress that she picked,
and he anally raped her. And we know this was
more than one person has been Harry's m o vgile
and adele rat. She then talked to me about the
bomb on children. She told me that one of her
rapists as a child was another pedophile who was called John,
(49:04):
and John had basically held her captain of you like
back when she was about twenty one one years old
in his house interstate and when she wasn't handcuffed to
the table, he had a shotgun in her face. She said.
He told the story of the Bonbone children and Harry Phipps.
(49:27):
This man knew Harry and admitted that he was a
member of Harry's pedophile group. She saw the story that
he was drunk, but he was lucid. He told her
that he'd been told by someone that the children had
(49:48):
been abducted from the College reserve and taken to the
Castle Life factory on the day of their production. During
that first day, for some reason, the little boy right,
something had happened there, and he took him away and
placed them in some nearby stables, and then took her
(50:11):
back to the cottages where the girls were raped by
Harry Phipps, by Hayden Phipps, and by another person called
Bill or William Robson. Apparently that was how the rapes occurred.
(50:31):
That Hayden had raped Jane, only Mary and Robson had
raped Jane and Anna. Little Lada had become extremely upset
on one of the days the first day and had
been brutally assaulted physically by Phipps. Not have to say
I was a hard and investigator. We see lots of stuff,
(50:54):
and it made me feel sick when I was being
told what she told me. The children were kept for
two days being raped and kept overnight in cupboards in
the cottages, locked in cupboards would be absolutely terrifying. I
was afraid of the park. I can't believe what. Excuse me?
Speaker 2 (51:15):
Do you need a moment?
Speaker 4 (51:16):
Bill?
Speaker 3 (51:17):
Yes, yeah, and understand that that's that's how I felt
when he first told me. The other thing is that
that lady mentioned the two names, Bill Robson and a
guy called John Little. Bill called me and said, have
you heard of these people? I called Hayden's closest cousin
(51:38):
and I said, have you heard of these people? And
he said yeah. He said one was a close family friend.
He used to Harry all the time because he only
the closest cousin lived only around the corner. So there
was number one. She couldn't possibly have known these people
without being told that she was there. And the other
one was Bill Robson. I said, you know who's this guy?
(52:00):
And he worked at castell Or. He was basically Harry
Phipps's right hand man. So there's two names, and she
didn't just pluck them out of the air. She had
to have been there. And so I called Bill, and
there was another thing that we knew she was truthful,
But to come out with just mentioning a person's name
unless you've been there, you know, you don't guess those
(52:22):
sorts of things. So I passed it on to Bill,
and it was another another aspect of her truthfulness of
what happened.
Speaker 4 (52:30):
The man was speaking to her a description of the
whole They were digging at the peppercorn tree, the Roth
eastern corner, and he shaid that they were buried on
the concrete, and they corrected it and shaid it was
like the concrete dust dust, but they didn't make it hard.
(52:51):
They didn't put water on it because of the human
cry that was going on at the time, because of
the abduction, and they just covered it up and thought
it hard and naturally or whatever. So that was thrown
over the bodies. Because he used to tell her when
she was a child, if you don't do as you're told,
(53:11):
you be buried on the concrete like the bomb. Once
we got back in, and we were really grateful to
get back in because we hadn't reached that point when
we threw the track. We can imagine my heart sinking
because I knew what I was looking for, no one
else did. I didn't tell them about the gray concrete,
(53:31):
and I was looking to see if I had seen that,
And before we got to that part where I believed
it would be, we threw the track and we were
told we couldn't come back. I was beside herself, basically
because I had to see that area to see was
there something there? Now, given she said that the kids
(53:54):
were there, buried there, and we're under this concrete powder.
So we dig on and when we got to the
peppercorn tree, we started to uncovered gray powder about three
feet down under the surface and as exactly as described
why the bloke who was telling a story to our victim,
(54:17):
exactly as described it was still powdered because it wasn't concrete.
That is very significant. There's no way that he, she,
or anyone could have known that that powder was buried
in that ground three feet deep on the surface to
tell us that that's what was throwing over the kids,
(54:39):
that was very telling for me. We didn't find anything,
which was curious in that northeast corner. That makes me
more curious than anything because you remember that was a
ship hit, so something's been through there.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
Cleaned it out.
Speaker 3 (54:56):
There's what you're looking for with the CASTELOI or any
alloy factory. You've got to look at thet their waste material,
and it's quite extensive. That from chemical containers which are
made of metal, because you know, back in the nineteen
sixties everything was made for metal. It wasn't plastics. You know,
you brought your ice cream in an ice cream tin.
So you've got metal containers. You've got obviously filing shavings dross,
(55:22):
which is the leftover heavy metal material that's got to
be dumped somewhere. And that's when Hayden and I mentioned
this to Bill this morning for our next Facebook post.
Is he mentioned the pit not a pit. There is
a defined location the ship pit. As I said, he
(55:46):
he had a specific spot. Hence what Bill said earlier
they're digging in the fucking wrong spot is he knows
where that is where we dug. Either they've moved it
out or we're not quite in the right spot, because
I would have I was waiting. It's apart from the
children's remains, is that I was hoping that we would
(56:06):
hit canisters who will hit a metal, some sort of metal,
something that would indicate that there was a dump there.
There was a ship pit, and it hasn't been found either,
as Bill said, they've picked it up and taken it elsewhere,
or it's still there somewhere. But again it's like needle
and haste, where is the ship pit?
Speaker 1 (56:29):
With that clarity, though, just to finish, is it enough
if we don't find the remains of these children? With
the clarity that you now have around this story and
the fact that that site now is going to be redeveloped,
they're going to build houses over the top of it,
there might not be recourse to check ever.
Speaker 2 (56:51):
Again, and now there's not.
Speaker 1 (56:54):
Too many people left alive who were directly involved in
all of this. I mean, Hayden has passed now, as
is Angela. So is there enough clarity around this?
Speaker 2 (57:03):
Do we put this to rest? With what you found out?
Speaker 3 (57:06):
I wouldn't put it to rest. I'd never put it
to rest. But we so far have done everything humanly
possible that we could possibly do. I disappointed. Yes, However,
it's now for the general public to come forward like
this lady. It's a domino effect. You get one person
(57:27):
coming forward to people, and this is what's happening now,
is that even with this podcast, with the book coming out,
I would be of the belief that other people will
now feel empowered, that they're going to be believed, that
they come forward with their story. So disappointed with the
dig but this I believe there's still more to go,
(57:49):
especially after this book and this podcast, is that people
will finally some people like the lady who or the
several ladies beforehand, will have the courage to come forward
and tell their story. If they feel that going to
the please to crime stoppers, I can understand that, will
they be believed, will somebody get back to them? Just
(58:11):
come to us direct. We will listen, because if it's
happened to one, two, and three, it's happened to twenty thirty.
And I'll give you an example. Jared Risdale, Catholic priest,
fifty four counts of child sexual abuse. It started with
one and that one person who came forward initially wasn't believed.
Now there's another fifty three. And that's what I believe,
(58:33):
and I'm quite sure Bill does is going to happen here.
Speaker 1 (58:39):
Thank you to Stewart and Bill for helping us tell
this story. You can find their book, Unmasking the Killer
of the Missing Beaumont Children at the link in our
show notes True Crime Conversations is a Muma MEA podcast
hosted by me Claire Murphy and produced by Tarlie Blackman,
with audio designed by Jacob Brown.
Speaker 2 (58:55):
Thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1 (58:56):
I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation
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