The Shark Arm Case

Guests at the Coogee Aquarium near Sydney, Australia, got a big surprise during their visit.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Listen to Hudson Riverradio dot Com. Don't make us come
and find you.

Speaker 2 (00:06):
I'm Linda Zimmerman.

Speaker 1 (00:07):
I'm Brian Harrowitz, and this is.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Murder in the Hudson Valley on Hudson Riverradio dot Com.
Good evening. We are very very excited tonight. We have
a special mystery guest, which yes, we're very excited about this,
but you're going to have to wait because we have

(00:31):
a cold case first. Are you ready for this, Brian,
I'm ready. Okay, We're going back to April fifth, nineteen
eighty six, in the small town of zebulon, Georgia. Are
you familiar with that, about an hour south of Atlanta.

Speaker 1 (00:49):
No, I'm not.

Speaker 2 (00:50):
Actually, probably not a lot of people are. But eight
year old Alison Renee Smith gets on her bise to
ride to her friend's house and disappears. They do not
find her till the following afternoon. She is in a

(01:11):
dog pen on the neighbor's yard that had two pit bulls,
and the pit bulls had mangled her body. She is deceased,
but it was not the dogs who killed her. She
was dead when she was thrown into the dog pen.

(01:34):
The autopsy showed she had been beaten to death and
sexually abused. They asked the neighbor, did you do this?
Did you kill her? He replied, I didn't do it.
I wasn't there.

Speaker 1 (01:55):
M hmm comment Uh huh, I wasn't there, but I
know what happened.

Speaker 2 (02:00):
That's what that sounds like to me. But they couldn't.
They never arrested anyone in this case. Yeah, that is
very strange. I wasn't there. So the apparently we're not
collecting specific DNA samples till nineteen ninety one, but they

(02:20):
are hoping there is DNA on her clothing or other items.
So it is my great hope that unless a witness
or an informant comes forward, that they do this testing
and they get this sob through what we've been talking

(02:41):
about over and over again, genetic genealogy. You you don't
have to have your DNA on record. Your second cousin
twice removed may have gone to twenty three and me
or ancestry. So you know, these cases like this are cold,

(03:02):
but they are never forgotten. So hopefully the money and
the resources will be found to test this DNA and
if for some reason, the murderer is listening they're coming
for you. It's probably just a matter of time.

Speaker 1 (03:20):
Wow. Yeah, So.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Yeah, I mean obviously it's someone I would think from
the neighborhood. This girl is riding to her friends, You
abduct her, Do you bring her back then to her
neighbor's house? Do you bring the body back to next
door to where she lived? And you had to know

(03:46):
about the dog pen?

Speaker 1 (03:47):
It sounds if I had to guess that it was premeditated.
This is what I'm going to do, and I'm gonna
make it look like the dogs did it, Like she
went in to go play with the dogs and it's
her fault that she went in the dog pen.

Speaker 2 (04:00):
I think that's it exactly. And I will not be
the least bit surprised if this neighbor who wasn't there,
they find out, yeah, he was there, or he knows
who did it. And so again, eight year old Allison
Smith Zebulon, Georgia. If you know anything, call your local

(04:24):
police department, call the state police, call someone. And you know,
it's been almost forty years, but it's never too late
to get people like this where they belong.

Speaker 1 (04:38):
True.

Speaker 2 (04:40):
So that's our cold case. Now we're gonna have a
drum roll. We're gonna have trumpets sounding for when we
come back. Well, we are get ready, all right, We'll
be right back. Hudson River Radio dot com.

Speaker 3 (05:01):
Hudson River Radio dot com.

Speaker 2 (05:07):
We are back, and I see our guest sitting there
with his mic off and speaking of Mike, we have
Michael Warden back with us.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
Golf clap.

Speaker 3 (05:20):
Thank you, thank you, thank you for the rounding applause.
I feel weird, I don't I feel out of place.

Speaker 1 (05:29):
Well, you're you are one of the ogs, you know.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (05:34):
For anybody who was a newer listener, it was Mike
and Linda when Murder in the Hudson Valley launched. And
I'm gonna I guess I'm gonna tell your story Mike. So,
Mike was a patrol sergeant at the time, and he
retired and became a judge in the local criminal court.
So as a judge, he had to be very careful

(05:54):
about expressing an opinion on any case that might be
open or any judgments that might be appealed to all that.
So that's why Mike had to step aside. And at
the time I was just the button pusher, the little
monkey button pusher, start and stop, so.

Speaker 3 (06:10):
It's good to be back, and I'm glad that I
can jump in on a case where there's no chance
of appeals or well anyway, it's this one I believe
is not even related to this continent.

Speaker 1 (06:23):
No, no, so.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
That's even better. It's only within the confines of the
United States that I'm restricted.

Speaker 1 (06:28):
There you go, well, so then you're good to go
on this one. And I can't wait to hear your feedback.
It's as usual in ambush case. Linda has no idea
what's coming. Mike, obviously you have no idea what's coming.
But it's called the shark Arm case, and it's apparently
very famous in Australia. I had not heard of it.

(06:49):
I don't know if either one of you if it
rings a bell in.

Speaker 2 (06:52):
My dark arm, I'm not sure.

Speaker 1 (06:55):
Yeah, I had no idea, and this just happened to
come across one of the rabbit holes that was going
down and it's apparently famous in Australia, but I had
not heard of it. And I'm like, all right, this
is this is too good to not talk about. So
we're going to Australia. April seventeenth, nineteen thirty five, a
fisherman caught a small shark off of Coogie Beach. Coogie

(07:19):
is a suburb of Sydney, Australia. While the small shark
was on the line, a larger tiger shark came up
and grabbed the smaller shark that was on the on
the fishing line. So now this guy had a giant
tiger shark on the line, and somehow he was able
to bring it in alive, and he was able to

(07:46):
bring it in too short. I don't know how he
did this. Because tiger sharks can grow up to the
range of sixteen feet and about a ton. They're known
as being garbage eaters, meaning that they will just eat anything,
including actual garbage like man made garbage that will then
get stuck in its stomach. You know, pieces of metal,

(08:08):
all that kind of stuff. So we're gonna come back
to that in just a little bit. It just so
happens that around that beach in February and March nineteen
thirty five, those are the warmer months. They're the cooler
months up here, those are the warmer months. In Australia,
three different swimmers had been attacked and eaten by sharks,

(08:28):
so the public was already on edge, kind of like
a real life Jaws. At the time, even though these
attacks are just super rare, people assumed that it was
one shark that had, you know, this vendetta against all
the swimmers, and they had hired shark hunters to go
out and try to catch it, just like the real
life Quint in the Jaws movie. So this unsuspecting fisherman

(08:53):
just happened to be the lucky one. He brought the
tiger shark to the Koogie Aquarium for public exhibition, and
it was such a huge news story that people just
came to check out this giant tiger shark, this menace
to society. Well, keeping sharks healthy in captivity is difficult
right off the bat, and I'm sure the conditions in

(09:14):
nineteen thirty five were probably abysmal. You know zoos at
the time. This is when they would throw animals into
the concrete cages with the iron bars and that was it,
not like today where they're a little more concerned about
habitats and the well being of the animal. But unfortunately,
this shark started to get sick and not act right,

(09:34):
and while there was a giant crowd there to check
it out, this shark vomited and what did it vomit?
It vomited parts of that smaller shark that the fishermen
first caught, and it also vomited a human arm.

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Surprise, Well that was part the price of admission. Huh
uh huh, Mike, did you think you'd be coming into
a shark vomit case?

Speaker 3 (10:00):
I did not. I can say I never expected shark vomit. No,
but it's one more reason not to go to Australia.
Everything was kill I know I have not been.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
I definitely want to go. I will go. But yes,
anytime you hear anything about Australia, it's the most dangerous.
Blank in the world.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
Is in Australia's poisonous, the most deadly.

Speaker 1 (10:21):
Yeah, plant, animal, weather, whatever you name it, it's always Australia.
And I still want to go. Go figure. So now
we have this human arm floating around. They weren't sure
whether this arm was inside the smaller shark that had
been partially digested, or if it was two separate meals

(10:43):
for the tiger shark. That's something that had not been solved.
But it just so happened that this human arm had
a distinctive tattoo of two boxers facing each other, you know,
the old timey fist up pose. So not a very
common tattoo. Without that tattoo, I think this would have
been the end of the story. But they put a

(11:03):
description of the tattoo in the newspaper and a man
named Edwin Smith recognized the tattoo and the arm as
belonging to his brother James Smith, who went by Jimmy.
Jimmy was born in eighteen ninety in England and had
moved to Australia. Jimmy was a former boxer and he

(11:25):
ran a pool hall, a billiard haul bar kind of thing,
and he had been reported missing since April seventh, nineteen
thirty five, ten days before the shark was caught. So
all the pieces kind of start to fit together.

Speaker 2 (11:39):
And is that upon there all the pieces?

Speaker 1 (11:41):
No, it wasn't, but I'm going to take credit for
it anyway. They were able to get fingerprints off of
the vomit hand. Believe it or not. Jimmy was a
criminal already and had fingerprints on file and they were
a match, so they were able to hi this arm
to Jimmy. I don't know when fingerprints started to come

(12:06):
into widespread use in law enforcement. Mike, I don't know
if definitely. Yeah, I can't even imagine trying to match them.
This is all pre computer. Where do you start. You're
going through physical cards and physical you know, how do
you sort? I wouldn't even know where to start and
how they did it.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
But yeah, I mean they could have done it by
classification and then looked them up like you classify the
Prince and then yeah, the world classification. Yeah, but again
it was all manual. Still, someone had to look at
it with the magnifier, classify it, yeah, and then send
it to a clerk to go like go through your
index and then sure that was a fun process.

Speaker 1 (12:48):
I'm sure it was, but it worked. They matched it
to Jimmy. The investigation also showed that the arm had
been removed from the body with a knife, it had
not been bitten off by the shark like you would
have thought it would be. So now they had a
murder investigation on their hands thanks to this.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
This would have been a very very well mannered shark
that used silverware.

Speaker 1 (13:10):
That's true, But to the best of my knowledge, not
even tiger sharks had the opposable thumbs right to take
you know, so, yeah, what are the odds that this
is the shark that gets caught and that leads to
a murder investigation. Unfortunately, the owners of the aquarium wound
up killing and gutting the tiger shark, and then they

(13:32):
disposed of any possible further evidence. So I'm sure they
themselves were looking for something further in the stomach of
the tiger shark, but in the process they kind of
ruined anything else that they may have been able to discover.
It also turns out that Jimmy Smith was a police
informer what we would nowadays call the confidential informant a CI.

(13:56):
At the time, they were called fizzers, which is the
term that I think we need to bring back. Judge Mike,
see what you can do about that.

Speaker 2 (14:03):
I never heard that. What is the derivation of a fizzer?

Speaker 1 (14:07):
I have no idea. This is Australians. We do have
Australian listeners, and I should probably apologize now for the
way I'm going to mangle names of towns that are
coming up, but I'm going to do my best. I
didn't try the Australian accent because that would just be
a flop right off the bat So I'm going to
do my best, but I do think we need to

(14:28):
bring Fizzer back, or at least bring it to the
United States. So yeah, Mike, that's on. You see what
you can do about that. It's better than snitch, right,
I agree, I agree, it has more class.

Speaker 3 (14:41):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (14:42):
So Jimmy himself had participated in a few insurance scams
with a Sydney businessman named Reginald William Lloyd. Holmes got
that he sounds fancy. He managed a boat building business
in Lavender Bay, which is another Sydney suburb. Holmes was
very successful, but he also was involved in smuggling and fraud.

(15:05):
He used the speedboats that he built to go out
and pick up illegal stuff that other boats dropped into
the harbor, you know, your drugs and contraband and all
that kind of stuff. Boats would drop it. He would
go out, pick it up, bring it back in, turn
around and sell it. On one occasion in nineteen thirty four,
Holmes and Jimmy sank an overvalued boat in order to

(15:27):
clean the insurance money. Didn't work, they didn't get anything.
They brought in a third accomplice, a guy named Patrick
Francis Brady, who was already a convicted forger. Identity theft
isn't new. They did it back then. It just had
to be done manually, like the fingerprint searches. So Brady
would take samples of checks that Holmes customers wrote to

(15:50):
the boat business, and they would forge new checks against
those customers' bank accounts. What they would do is keep
the amounts relatively small to try to go on noticed
something that is still done today. It's just done digitally.
And then Brady and Jimmy would go catch the checks.
And as it turns out, Brady was then blackmailing Holmes

(16:11):
the boat guy, on all of his shenanigans, so he
was making extra money. So Jimmy didn't have a whole
lot of friends at this point. He was just a shyster,
just trying to play everybody against everybody else. On April seventh,
nineteen thirty five, the day that Jimmy went missing, he
told his wife he was going fishing. He was actually

(16:32):
out drinking and playing cards with Brady, the guy that
was forging all the checks. Brady lived in a small
rental cottage in Cronula. I hope I'm saying that right. Cronula,
which is another suburb of Sydney, and this is where
police believed Brady killed Jimmy. The Australian Air Force and

(16:52):
Navy searched the waters in the area, but the rest
of Jimmy was never found, just the arm that the
tiger shark threw up in front of everybody. Brady was
arrested on May sixteenth, nineteen thirty five, and charged with
Jimmy's murder. A taxi driver would later testify that he
had picked up Brady at his house and drove him

(17:13):
to Holmes's house, and the driver said that Brady was
very visibly shaken up. He was a complete mess, and
he kept one hand in his pocket the whole time.
He just it was obvious that he was not going
to take this hand out of his pocket. Didn't know
why at the time. Holmes, when he was questioned by police,

(17:34):
denied even knowing. Brady said he had no idea who
he was, which we know is nonsense. But a few
days later, May twentieth, he took a speedboat out into
the harbor and attempted suicide by shooting himself in the
head with a thirty two caliber pistol. Now, Linda, if
you recall We recently talked about people getting shot in

(17:56):
the head and what happens to the bullet.

Speaker 2 (17:59):
It goes around the skin to the back, not through
the skull.

Speaker 1 (18:03):
Right, our former detective, you can probably back us up
on that. Right, a bullet that hits the skull, everybody
thinks it's gonna be the most Exactly, it just flattens
against the skull, which is a very strong bone, and
it'll be found under the skin sometimes in the back
of the head. It'll just travel. So Holmes wound up
just knocking himself unconscious by shooting himself in the head.

(18:27):
He fell overboard and apparently the water was enough to
wake him back up, and he climbed back into his
speedboat and then led police on a four hour chase
around Sydney Harbor in these boats, just going back and forth.

Speaker 2 (18:41):
Has anyone made a movie on this?

Speaker 1 (18:43):
Yes, yes, they have a number of TV episodes and
movies and a book about this, So yeah, there is.
So I want to know how much fuel the police,
two police boats and homes had on their boats to
be able to go for four hours, Like I'm assuming
relatively full speed. That's pretty good. That's a lot of fuel.

Speaker 3 (19:07):
I can honestly say, in my whole career, never had
a high speed boat chase me.

Speaker 1 (19:11):
Neither me neither, and I don't plan on having one.

Speaker 3 (19:14):
I feel like I missed out now sight did.

Speaker 1 (19:19):
Yeah. Yeah, I think it dodged well, no pun intended.
I think he dodged a bullet on that one. Ye.
So police chased him around for about four hours. They
were able to catch him and then they took him
to the hospital. And at that point, I'm going to
leave you hanging while we take a quick break and
we will be right back.

Speaker 2 (19:39):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com.

Speaker 3 (19:46):
This is Hudson River Radio dot com.

Speaker 2 (19:51):
I think Mike should bring us in.

Speaker 1 (19:52):
Oh yeah, Mike, old timey go for it.

Speaker 3 (19:57):
And this is OG co host of Murder in the
Hudson Valley Michael Wharton as a special guest here. I'm
very happy Brian and Linda. Yeah, you dusted me off,
pulled me out of the trunk, and you know I
still had it in me.

Speaker 2 (20:14):
Good, Yes, you do.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
So what do you think so far? I think Brady's guilty.
Thinks Holmes has anything to do with it?

Speaker 3 (20:24):
Yeah, I think they're all They all got to be
involved in this. MM Hm, they're all shady.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
Everybody's shady. Absolutely, they are.

Speaker 3 (20:32):
They are. I mean, none of them sound like they're
the kind of people you want involved in your life
in any way.

Speaker 1 (20:37):
This is true. The one I don't get is Homes
the successful boat builder, because he was doing fine on
his own. But I don't know, I don't know what
it is.

Speaker 2 (20:46):
You don't know what kind of debt he was in
and what Just because you bring in a lot of money,
who knows what you're spending or And he was just
a crooked guy and liked the thrill of the could
be illegal activity, could be Well, let's find out, shall we?
All right?

Speaker 1 (21:03):
All right? So now Holmes had a hole in his
head and that was apparently enough to make him change
his mind, and he decided to cooperate with the investigation.
Detective Sergeant Frank Matthews was the one handling the case,
and in June of nineteen thirty five, Holmes told the
detective that Brady had killed Jimmy had chopped up the body,

(21:25):
put most of it into a trunk that he threw
into Gunna Mada Bay, and I hope I said that right,
Gunnamada Bay. Again outside of Sydney. He kept one part,
which we know which part that is one arm. And
then Holmes said that Brady showed up at his house,
like the taxi driver said, dropped the severed arm and

(21:47):
threatened to kill Holmes if he didn't get five hundred
pounds in currency Australian you know, Australian pounds back then.
If you translated now, it's worth about seventy two dollars
US now, so a nice chunk of change. But I
would say that's a little intimidating to have an arm
dropped in front of you and say, fork over some

(22:09):
a little bit.

Speaker 3 (22:10):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (22:11):
Brady left, and Holmes said he took Jimmy's arm and
he's the one who tossed it into the ocean.

Speaker 2 (22:19):
And then what are the chances a shark eats it?
This is amazing, and then they catch that shark.

Speaker 1 (22:25):
And even if it's more amazing, it might be a
double shark, because, like I said, we don't know if
it was that smaller shark that ate it first and
then got eaten by the bigger shark.

Speaker 2 (22:33):
It's like those cartoons where little fish gets eat by
a bigger fish and a bigger one and a bigger one.

Speaker 1 (22:38):
That's EXAs.

Speaker 3 (22:38):
I'm just thinking of what what did the shark think
when he sees this arm? Like, wait a minute, is
this a trick? Is there a hook attached to this?
This is good to be true. It's an arm?

Speaker 1 (22:49):
Yeah, yeah, crazy.

Speaker 2 (22:51):
And the fact that he hadn't digested it.

Speaker 1 (22:54):
Yes, yeah, So tiger sharks are known to have slow digestion,
so you know, the was between somewhere around eight to
eighteen days in the shark's stomach, which would fit the
time that Jimmy was missing and and all this happened.
So everything was lining up. Everything was lining up well
with this. So on June eleventh, nineteen thirty five, after

(23:17):
speaking with police, which is weird because he did this.
After speaking with police, Holmes drew that five hundred pounds
out of the bank, told his wife that he was
going to meet somebody, and left the house. The next morning,
Holmes was found dead in his car in Dawes Point,
another suburb of Sydney. He had been shot three times

(23:39):
in the chest at close range, and the scene was
obviously set up to try to make it look like
a suicide, but anybody with half a brain knew it
was a murder. It was a murder scene. So who
do you.

Speaker 2 (23:49):
Three times in the cho shoots themselves three times in
the chest?

Speaker 1 (23:53):
Exactly. Yeah, it's possible, but unlikely. Holmes was scheduled to
testify and give evidence the next morning, actually the morning
that he was found, the twelve, and he left behind
an estate worth about a million dollars in US currency.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Now wow, Oh, he wasn't in debt.

Speaker 1 (24:12):
So he was doing quite well. Yes, wow, yep. He
was not offered police protection, even after the threat of
Jimmy dropping the arm at his house, and even though
he was the main witness in the case. So who
is the number one suspect that comes to mind that
took this guy out. You're thinking it's braid he's doing it,

(24:33):
But it's actually likely that Holmes had hired his own
hitmen because he was very afraid of his reputation being
tarnished by any kind of conviction or being involved with
any of these kind of things. And his family would
not get his life insurance payout if he committed suicide.

Speaker 2 (24:51):
So you think he hired someone to kill him.

Speaker 1 (24:54):
The prevailing theory still is that he had hired his
own hitmen just to take him out of the picture. Sure,
he wouldn't have to be humiliated. His family would get
a nice chunk of change, and that would be the
end of his story. Common says would say, Brady, but
maybe maybe not. We don't know. So the coroner's inquest

(25:15):
that they did down there began that morning, the twelfth,
where Holmes was supposed to testify. That was handled by
Sir Sidney Smith, no relation to Jimmy Smith, who was
an eminent scientist and professor in forensics at the time.
He was very well known around the world for these
kinds of cases. Brady's defense attorney, which is going to

(25:36):
make Linda's head explode. Mike, you might want to step
back because the top of her head is going to
pop off right now. The attorney's name is Clive Evitt.
He claimed that there was not enough substance to the
case to launch a coroner's inquest because all they had
was one arm, and lots of people survive without an arm,

(25:57):
So Jimmy could very well be alive us missing an
arm and they didn't have a body.

Speaker 2 (26:03):
Oh my god, that I did not expect. That, isn't it.

Speaker 1 (26:10):
It's brilliant who would come up with that.

Speaker 2 (26:14):
A scumbag defense attorney.

Speaker 1 (26:17):
And this scumbag defense attorney set the stage for many,
many cases around the world after that by coming up
with that argument. So, wow, hats off to Clive Evitt
because that was smart. That was a good move. So
as far as actual evidence goes, they had an arm,
they did not have a body. Their star witness was dead.

(26:40):
And it's likely that Brady killed Jimmy on orders of
another gangster who had been arrested himself on check forgery
and bank robbery based on information that Jimmy had given
to police as a fizzer earlier. So now this other
gangster wanted to get revenge on Jimmy, all right, following

(27:01):
the past.

Speaker 2 (27:02):
Yes, m hmm, okay.

Speaker 1 (27:05):
So in the end, Brady was charged with the murder
of Jimmy Smith, but he was acquitted because there just
wasn't quite enough to convict him. Wow, yep. So for
the next thirty years, Brady absolutely insisted he had nothing
to do with Jimmy's murder. He died in nineteen sixty
five at age seventy six, and this case is still

(27:26):
considered unsolved.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
Interesting yep.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Yeah, and there you have it.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
The Shark Arm case and yes, it's been made into
the idea behind. It has been used on like CSI
and a bunch of those kind of shows. There was
a movie and I cannot remember the name of it.
There have been several books about it. So yep, yep.
This case has been used for a basis of a
lot of different things like that.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
Wow. So I guess there wasn't a lot of hard
evidence once you're witness was killed and I couldn't just
use his.

Speaker 1 (28:03):
Statement, correct, Yep, he had to testify.

Speaker 2 (28:08):
So we have to ask Mike, if this came before
you as a judge, how would you rule on this?

Speaker 3 (28:18):
Oh? My gosh, I wouldn't even know where to begin. Well,
first of all, it be such a high felony that
I would just, uh, It'll go right up to the
next court above me.

Speaker 1 (28:27):
Right, So in New York, Mike would handle the initial arraignment.

Speaker 3 (28:30):
Yeah, yeah, I would have the preliminary you know, jurisdiction,
and then the superior court would This would.

Speaker 1 (28:39):
Be one of the few cases nowadays, with all bail reform,
that you could actually put someone in jail for holding
I could, yes, yeah, yeah, there are so many cases
nowadays after bail reform that all right, released on recognisance
we'll never see you again.

Speaker 2 (28:54):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 1 (28:55):
But that's an argument murder murder.

Speaker 3 (28:57):
I could definitely, I could have definitely set bail, yeah,
and schedule a preliminary hearing, But chances are they would
indicted it faster than you could have a prelimb. Right
on a case like this, I would suspect. So what happened?

Speaker 2 (29:11):
Yeah, what happened to the arm? Did they give it
a burial?

Speaker 1 (29:15):
I don't know. That's a good question. I have no idea.

Speaker 2 (29:19):
Did he have a wife?

Speaker 1 (29:20):
He had not as far as I know, not as
far as.

Speaker 2 (29:24):
Yeah, maybe they threw it back to the sharks. Yeah.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
All the articles I wound up, you know, they focus
on the arm issue and the and the defense and
all that kind of stuff. But I honestly don't know
about Jamie's background.

Speaker 2 (29:35):
Now. I know there's a lot of divers in the
US who are looking for people who have gone missing.
They scan for cars and things, and there's there has
to be a lot of divers in Australia. That lake
that the trunk was apparently thrown into.

Speaker 1 (29:53):
The ocean, Well it went into the ocean, so it.

Speaker 2 (29:55):
Was an ocean. I always a bay that would be
tough then.

Speaker 1 (30:01):
And because well, you know, you would think it would
float for a little bit. I guess, depending on what
it's made of. In the thirties, I'm guessing trunks were
a little more common than nowadays. You see somebody traveling
with a trunk, you know they're going to be a
handful asking for the manager. You know they're gonna be
one of those kind of people.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
But if the trunk did decay then or break or whatever,
you have all those sharks to clean up the evidence, right.

Speaker 1 (30:26):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (30:27):
I find it interesting the argument without a body, because
there's cases in the York where some of them are
not solved, so I can't comment on those cases. But
in generically where people have been declared dead based upon
the amount of blood and other evidence left at the scene,
but nobody So basically the medical examiner would look at

(30:48):
the fatality of the circumstances and say, well, a person
who had lost this amount of blood, you know, at
a scene, could not have lived, right, so therefore this
person and is dead. But the body is not ever found,
but they can conclusively say that, well they're definitely dead, because.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
Right, it's not a survivable injury.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
Right, right. The amount of blood would indicate that this
is not right. So you wouldn't have a body or
maybe even a means of what caused it, but you
could have a medical examiner testify that, Yeah, someone can't
lose this amount of blood and survive. Now it's a
matter of what they do with the body, how they
do it, and who did it. And I think that's

(31:30):
been that's been done in other jurisdictions as well.

Speaker 2 (31:33):
And see this is why we miss you, Mike. You
come up with the legal parts of it.

Speaker 3 (31:40):
Yeah, yeah, it's and it raises I mean, how would
you investigate that, you know, if you have a body,
if you don't have a body, but you have a crime.
You know, someone's been murdered, you don't have their body, and.

Speaker 1 (31:52):
All you have is an injury that is survivable potentially. Right. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:57):
So in this case, right, you have an arm, and
I mean the fact that it was cut off should
have been sort of a okay, a little bit odd,
but I guess the argument isn't necessarily a bad one.
It's hey, listen, you have an arm, but how do
you know he's dead?

Speaker 1 (32:16):
Right?

Speaker 3 (32:16):
You know they didn't cut his arm off and he's
in hiding.

Speaker 1 (32:21):
Yeah yeah, I mean, y least you have an assault
or something along those lines, but that would not be
a coroner's inquest. The coroner's inquest is.

Speaker 3 (32:30):
That body.

Speaker 1 (32:31):
Yeah yeah, so definitely an interesting argument I could.

Speaker 3 (32:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (32:39):
I'm sitting here, Yeah, I'm sitting here stewing over this
defense attorney.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
Yeah, the case is ninety years old and everybody's long dead,
but it still gets to her. I knew she was.

Speaker 2 (32:48):
It does get to me. I mean, they don't care
as long as they're paying being paid and they have
a chance of winning. I bet he was so proud
of himself for doing this. You know, you have this
brutal murder, murderer, dismemberer. But if I can you know,
throw some nonsense excuse in there and win the case,

(33:12):
hooray for me.

Speaker 1 (33:14):
That's their job. Yeah, that's their job. So yeah, right,
so there you go, all right, so angry, and it's
a good time to pull the plug and let you that's.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
All right, So Mike, we hope you'll join us again.

Speaker 3 (33:30):
That great.

Speaker 2 (33:30):
Yeah, we have some old we can get some old
cases to uh talk about. Yeah, like perhaps uh the
one we know from Fall River, Massachusetts. Yes, all right,
you have to do.

Speaker 3 (33:44):
All you have to do is grab my arm and
squeeze a little. Oh wait, don't grab my arm.

Speaker 1 (33:48):
Yeah, watch out for sharks.

Speaker 2 (33:52):
All right, Mike take us out.

Speaker 3 (33:55):
Well, thank you. I don't have to end this one.
That's a great one. Here as a special og guest
Murder in the Hudson Valley almost in the other show.
And thank you for listening, and hopefully I'll be back
again soon to talk talk about some of the murders
that are way way past any statute limitation.

Speaker 2 (34:18):
This is Hudson River

Speaker 1 (34:19):
Radio dot com.