December 23, 2025 • 56 mins
On the night of September 19, 1952, 22 year old Betty Shanks stepped off a tram in the Brisbane suburb of Grange and began the short walk home to her parents’ house, less than 400 metres away. Within minutes, she was violently attacked and killed, her body discovered the following morning in a neighbour’s garden. More than seventy years later, her murder remains Queensland’s oldest unsolved homicide, defined by a narrow twelve minute window, unanswered questions, and a truth that has never been fully uncovered.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
On the night of September nineteenth, nineteen fifty two, a
twenty year old woman stepped off the tram in Brisbane
and began her short walk home that she had taken
countless times before. It was a familiar route through a
quiet suburb where nothing about the evening felt unusual. However,
she never arrived home, and by morning, Brisbane would wake
(00:25):
to a crime that shattered its sense of safety and
became the longest running unsolved murder in Queensland's history. This
is the tragic and true story of Betty Shanks.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
My name's Ben, I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked
and Grim, a.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
True crime podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Warning.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
The following podcast and material intended for a mature audience.
Listener discretion is advised. Cheers, it is almost Christmas.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Cheers, Cheers to Christmas eve.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Eve, Christmas eve Eve. Indeed, I don't know about anyone else,
but I have consumed far more calories in the last
few days than I have in the last previous few months.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Honestly, my belly already kind of hurts. So that's uh,
that's you know what that means?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Tis the season to start thinking about going to the
gym in about a week. You know.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well even the other day, wasn't I just like, Oh,
just don't even worry about it, just eat it, ben Like,
because you were like, gosh, I've eaten so much today.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I mean, sometimes you got to do that. Sometimes you
got to worry about your health. But this is not
the season to really concern yourself with calories.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I know.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
This is the season of just enjoying.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I was planning for us to have salad for lunch,
so there you go.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
If I'll have room for salad.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I know we'll probably be eating cookies and stuff and
that will be our lunch.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
That's pretty much how Christmas generally goes. Oh I'm going
to plan a good meal, but I'm too full to
have that good meal because of all the junk in between.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
But it is kind of nice just the visiting too,
and stuff right, and lots of times with the visiting
comes like drinks and food.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
And true, well, like last night we had a good
dinner with some friends, for example, with some good drinks
and food. This morning we had a good friends dot
buy and he said he hadn't had a drink yet today,
so we had a drink with them.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
You had a drink. I didn't have a drink. Well
to say, I was like, it's not even noon.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Bro, Well, and it was whiskey. You're not a whiskey person,
So very long. Yeah, but yeah, it's a good time
of year.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
It is.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
It is. But I also have a very interesting story
for you today.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It seems as though you do.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
It's not really a Christmas case, per se. I was
thinking about doing a Christmas one, but this one kind
of came on my radar and I really liked it.
And I've got a good reason on why I'm doing
it this time of year, and we'll talk about that.
Don't worry.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Well, some people might be like, f Christmas, right and
be totally fine with that.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
It is thrown in our face this season, that's.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
True, and not everyone celebrates it. So I totally get it.
But I digress. This is still a story that I
really thought, you know, it was appropriate. Let's say that.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
So well, before we dive in, we should thank our patrons.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yes, of course, So these people have been supporting us
over on Patreon. They signed up this week along with
many other people, and big shout out to a let
Nikki Bell, Penya Sherry, Stutz, Shaston Kasheal, and Ava Armstrong.
So thank you very much for signing up and supporting
us over on Patreon.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
We appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
We seriously do. We got a lot of cool people
who have joined that community over there, so seriously, thank
you very much.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Reads a lot, and we have one more little tiny announcement.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
To make we do you want to do the honors?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Just basically that we have this episode out today, we
will not be having Fridays out, just kind of a
little bit of you know, rest, relaxation time, and we'll
be back on the following Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yes, so we are taking one day off, so there
will not be an episode on Friday, which is I
believe Boxing day, and then we're back the following week
on the Tuesday again.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, so that's not too much time away from us.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
So no, it's just one episode that we're taking some
relaxing time to enjoy the holiday.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And people are probably also busy right now anyway, and
they're most likely and that's fair.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Probably they probably understand they're probably not even gonna be
listening to this until like a month later when they've
caught up on all their to dos in their life
and busyness, things start to slow. But I think if
you're ready, I'm ready to get into the story.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Okay, I'm going to set the scene here. On most nights,
Thomas Street was barely worth noticing. It was the kind
of suburban road people walked without thinking, lined with modest
homes and shaded by trees that stood well longer than
those houses themselves. In nineteen fifty two, this part of Brisbane,
the capital of Queensland, Australia. It's settled. Early after dark,
(04:59):
the street fell quiet, except for the occasional city tram
in the distance, or the sound of a radio drifting
through an open window. People felt very safe here, safe
enough to leave doors unlocked, safe enough to assume that,
you know, raised voices were nothing more than kids fooling around,
or maybe a small late night argument that would burn
itself out, you know, nothing anything dangerous. But that Friday night, well,
(05:25):
something was different. Yes, the air was warm, and the
week was ending, and families were in fact settling in.
There was a tram line that reached its final stop nearby,
emptying its passengers into the streets, the ones that they
knew by heart. On their walks home. Most of them
would be home, in fact, within minutes, and no one
standing on Thomas Street that evening could have guessed that
(05:48):
something irreversible was about to happen. There were no warnings,
no signs of a threat waiting in the dark, just
a familiar walk, a familiar route, and a sense of
see that would not survive the night, because by morning
the street and its city would no longer feel the same.
(06:09):
And before, honestly, this fateful day, and before she became
the name attached to Queenland's most oldest cold case, well,
Betty Shanks was just a young woman getting on with
her life. Betty was twenty two years old in September
of nineteen fifty two, living with her parents and younger
brother in Brisbanes, Inner North. She had grown up in
the area and while she never really left it, there
(06:31):
was no dramatic reason for that. It was simply where
her life was. Home was safe, familiar, and close to
everything she needed. She was bright, driven and quietly ambitious.
Betty had graduated from the University of Queensland with a
Bachelor of Arts specializing in psychology, which was not common
for women of that time.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
It really wasn't so good for her.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Yeah, we're talking the fifties here and she's going to
post secondaries. So awesome, incredible. Now she worked as a
trainee personnel officer for the Commonwealth Department of the Interior
in Brisbane, CBD, a solid government job that she took
very seriously. Friends and coworkers described her as very intelligent,
kind and dependable, someone who showed up, did her work
(07:15):
and didn't seek attention for it. Betty was not the
reckless kind of person. She wasn't impulsive, She didn't drink heavy,
she didn't stay out late for no reason, and didn't
bounce from relationship to relationship. In fact, as far as
anyone close to her new, she wasn't even seeing anyone
at all. She kept a very small circle of friends,
mostly other women, and spent much of her time studying, working,
(07:37):
or at home with her family. If something was troubling her,
she certainly didn't broadcast it. Now. Just a few months earlier,
Betty had experienced a very rare stroke of luck. In
April of nineteen fifty two, she won three thousand pounds
as Australia was still using the British style currency system,
(07:57):
and she won this in the Golden Casket lottery, which
exchange and inflation considered, that's about the equivalent of roughly
a quarter million US dollars today.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Holy shit.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, so she got some bank she scored, baked us,
she did, and so it made newspapers and her name
was printed in bold black letters. You know, all of it.
But the wind didn't exactly change her personality. In fact,
it didn't really change her at all. She actually used
the money quite responsibly, paying off her parents' mortgage, helping
renovate the family home, and covering medical treatments she needed
(08:29):
for a spinal condition. There was no flashy purchases and
no sudden lifestyle shift. By all accounts, Betty was content. Busy, yes,
but she's happy and settling into her life now. Brisbane
in nineteen fifty two mirrored the same quiet sense of order.
It was often described as a big country town, the
(08:49):
kind of place where people slept with their windows open,
doors unlocked, and children walked home alone after dark without
a second thought. Violent crime was rare, and strangers attacking
people were almost unheard of. If someone screamed in the night,
for example, the assumption wasn't that it was danger, it
was probably teenagers fooling around, or a small domestic argument
(09:10):
that would eventually and harmlessly resolve itself. Friday, September nineteenth
and nineteen fifty two began no differently than any other
weekday in Betty's life. That morning, she left her family's
home in Grange and headed into the city for work,
just as she always did. Her job with the Commonwealth
Department of the Interior kept her busy during the day.
By all accounts, nothing about that Friday stood out now
(09:32):
because it was Friday. Betty had night classes after work
that was part of her ongoing studies and professional development.
So Wednesday and Friday's nights those were dedicated to lectures
and they were part of her normal routine, something she
committed to week after week, and she took them quite seriously.
So when the workday ended, Betty didn't rush home. Instead,
(09:53):
she and her supervisor, John Doocey drove together from the
CBD to the location of the class. Now it was
near George Street and so that's where they were going.
The lecture, well, it wrapped up just before nine pm.
Several students were in attendance, along with the lecturer, Edwin
Millicaton now Millicaton lived in a direction that was partially
overlapping with Betty's route home, so on some evenings he
(10:17):
would offer to give her a lift, and that's what
happened that night after class. He drove her towards Windsor
dropped her off at a tram stop along Lutwich Road.
From there she boarded the four to thirty four tram
bound for granch Now. The ride itself was uneventful. Other
passengers came and went as a tram moved through the
(10:37):
North suburbs, eventually reaching the final stop at the day's
road terminus. The clock read just after nine thirty pm.
When the tram doors opened, Betty stepped down onto Thomas Street.
In fact, a friend, Jane Osborne, saw her at that
very moment as she was leaning forward slightly about to
step off that tram onto the pavement. Was small, rather
(11:01):
forgettable detail at the time, but ultimately it would later
become the last confirmed sighting of Betty Shanks alive.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
A moment in time that you take so for granted
that you have no idea that's going to be the
last time you see an.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Individual right just in passing.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Oh and it's just so often I mean, right, someone
gets I don't know what exactly happens here, but they're
going to have that last moment that someone just doesn't realize.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Well, there's always a last moment. There's a last everything,
I guess, so you just never know. So I'm not
going to get all like sappy on us. Yeah, I'm
just going to leave it at that. Now, from the terminus,
Betty walked home and it was honestly quite a short walk.
Less than four hundred meters is all she had to travel,
(11:49):
just a few minutes at most. She had walked it
countless times before, at all hours, without any sort of incident.
The street was quiet, residential and lined with houses and
shaded by trees. Nothing about it was really threatening. But
she never arrived home. She never made it. Now. What
makes the Betty Shank story so unsettling is the small
(12:10):
window of time. Investigators would later determine this took place
somewhere between nine thirty eight pm and nine fifty three pm,
just twelve minutes. In that brief span, a young woman
stepped off the tram. She would then encounter someone on
a quiet residential street and was brutally attacked less than
(12:31):
a block from the safety of her home. The timeline
begins to tighten almost immediately after Betty leaves the tram
as well, just after nine thirty pm. Several residents in
the area later told police that they actually heard screams
coming from Thomas Street. They weren't vague noises or distant shouts.
They were described as very sharp, panicked, or unmistakably human.
(12:53):
The screams were heard between nine thirty eight and nine
forty pm. Now at the time, no one rushed outside.
This was Gronge in the early nineteen fifties, a place
where violent crimes just weren't existing. Some residents yeah glancedale
their windows, but they saw nothing unusual in the darkness
and return to what they were doing. Others assumed the
noise was just teenagers or who knows what, so no
(13:16):
one called police. Those few minutes would haunt the suburb
for decades. Now. By the early hours of Saturday morning,
Betty's parents would awake and be very worried with Betty
not being home. She was never careless about coming home,
and by one thirty am her father reported her missing
to the police. Officers began checking nearby tramlines and school grounds,
(13:39):
assuming that she'd missed her stop or needed help getting
back home for some reason. It was just after five
thirty am as daylight began to creep into the quiet
streets of Grange. Alec Stewart, an off duty police officer,
stepped outside of his home onto the corner of Cranberry
and Thomas Street to collect the morning newspaper, and what
(14:01):
he saw stopped him in his tracks. It was his
neighbor's front garden. Just there, sitting inside the fence line
of missus Hill's property, lay the body of a young woman.
She was found laying on her back. Her clothes were disheveled,
Her blouse had been pulled open and its buttons torn away,
and her underwear had been removed. The position of her
(14:23):
body and the condition of her clothes made it immediately
clear that something violent had taken place. In fact, blood
was present at the scene. There was bloody handprints that
were visible on the fence railing nearby, Oh my Goodness,
which indicated the attacker had been in contact, specifically with
the property. Her handbag laid close as well, its contents
scattered across the garden, though nothing of valuable. Nothing appeared
(14:46):
to be missing that was worth anything a tram ticket.
In fact, the one that she used to ride that
tram that night was still clutched in her hand. The
injuries were severe and consistent with an extreme physical assault,
and for Constable Alex Stewart, the man who found her,
the meaning of the scene was unmistakable. This was not
an accident. This was clearly a homicide.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Well, no shit, yeah, And it is surprising to me
that it just happened right in like the open of people,
like a neighborhood, pretty much right in.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
The middle of a street manicured lawn there I'm picturing.
I don't know if this is correct, but in my
mind I picture like a little white picket fence with
like bloody handprints on it and a body sprawled in
some flowers.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Like, how the shit does that even happen?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, So, within minutes, the street began to fill with
police officers as he called the authorities, the garden was
cordoned off as a crime scene, and the neighbors emerged
from their houses, confused, then horrified as words spread that
a woman had been murdered only meters from where they slept.
When identification was made, the shock deepened the victim was
(15:53):
in fact Betty Shanks, the local girl known in the
area who was reported missing only hours ago. Well. She
was now found dead less than four hundred meters from
her family's door. Her tram ticket, as I mentioned, still
grasped in her hands, and evidence suggests that the attacker
well had thrown her over the fence. Her body landed
(16:13):
just meters from the bedroom where Constable Stuart had been
sleeping hours before. As officers examined the scene, the reality
set in this had happened quickly, violently, and under the
cover of darkness, and when reconstructed, Betty's movements, while one
detail of them, stood out immediately. She was clearly attacked
(16:35):
incredibly close to home, and that distance from the tram
terminus to her home was short enough that she should
have been inside within minutes. Yet the screams came from
a point only two or three minutes walk from where
she got off the tram. Now that discrepancy raised an
unsettling question. Why hadn't Betty gone straight home? Because from
(16:55):
the time that she got off the tram station to
when the screams had occurred, she should already been in
her front door.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
But she wasn't well. I mean, A, she could have
ran into someone that she knew and was chit chatting
or something, and b whatever, she felt like someone was
following her, so she like in a kind of flurry,
took like the wrong way or something to get rid
of this person.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
You're already thinking exactly like the officers.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Were, Okay, exactly, maybe I should be an officer.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Maybe maybe maybe you should have a little bit of
a career switch here. I might be looking for a
new co host soon, I guess, as Nichole's going to
be solving murders instead of talking about them. Anyways, an
interesting thing happened here too. Her wristwatch provided a very
crucial detail for this timeline. It was found that her
watch had stopped at nine fifty three PM, and a
(17:44):
watchmaker would later confirm the stoppage was consistent with a
sudden violent impact. So that gave police that window of
time between the screams at around nine thirty nine and
the watch stopping at nine point fifty three. Police believed
the higher attack unfolded, but something delayed her after she
stepped off that trap. Whether it was, like you said,
(18:06):
a conversation, maybe a confrontation or encounter she didn't anticipate.
We don't know, but Betty did not immediately begin her
walk home, and that pause, whatever caused it, placed her
in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Now it
was clear, simply by looking at Betty's body that she
had been subject to extreme violence in a very short
(18:28):
span of time. I'm pretty sure we can all have
this bit of an image of what we see her like,
and it's not a pretty picture. Her injuries told a
story of sustained, frenzied aggression rather than a single blow
or momentary loss of control. In fact, her injuries were
quite extensive. Her jaw was fractured. One of her teeth
(18:48):
had been dislodged with such force that it was later
found several meters away from her body. Her face showed
a heavy trauma, her tongue and mouth were badly injured,
and investigators concluded that she'd been struck and kicked repeatedly.
In fact, dark smudges of black boot polish were on
her face and legs, which means the attacker's shoes had
(19:12):
connected with those spots. As police believed she was kicked
while she was on the ground.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Whoa which actually means this person was a disgusting, disgusting human.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Yeah, he's a douche canoe for sure. Holy Now, two large,
bloodstained handprints were found on the top rail of a
fence boarding the garden. The position of the prince suggested
that Betty had been thrown or pushed over the fence,
and that her attacker used it as support for his
weight as he followed or leaned over. From the size
of the prince, detectives believed the attacker was a physically
(19:48):
large man. Now, despite the violence, robbery was quickly ruled out.
I mentioned that Betty's handbag was found nearby with its
contents scattered, but nothing was stolen. Her jewelry, for example,
was even still in her body. There was no sign
that money or valuables had been taken.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Whatsoever, Okay, because I was wondering that she just won
the lottery, right.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
So that's true, But didn't seem like anyone stole anything, Okay. Now,
her clothing complicated this picture. Her blouse had been torn
open buttons ripped away. Her bra strap was in fact broken,
and her underwear had been removed and it lay near
her body. At first glance, it appeared to be a
very sexually motivated attack, but the post mortem told a
(20:33):
different story because there was no evidence left behind that
proved Betty had been raped or sexually assaulted, so investigators
began to suspect that the undressing may have happened after
the attack, either as a failed attempt at sexual assault
and the perpetrator had to get out of there before
you know, doing whatever he was going to do, or
(20:54):
potentially as a deliberate act to mislead police.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Okay, yeah, I'm still just shocked though that no one
heard any of this.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
People did hear screams, okay.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
But I guess it just wasn't like alarming enough.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, something they heard the screams, assumed it was, you know,
just maybe a couple people fighting and they'll get over it,
or kids playing. This sort of stuff didn't happen here.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Oh crazy, So their mind just didn't even go there.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah, their mind didn't go that it was actually anything.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Dangerous, which is really freaking sad.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
It is now. Ultimately, strangulation was determined to be Betty's
cause of death, and by mid morning on September twentieth,
nineteen fifty two, the news about it was everywhere everyone
seemed to be talking about a young woman who had
been murdered in Grange, beaten and strangled in the middle
of a quiet suburban street, and for Brisbane. While this
(21:48):
was uncharted territory police response while it escalated almost immediately,
every available detective was pulled into this case. A special
communications room was set up inside the Criminal Investigation Branch
and officers worked in shifts around the clock. Hotels, laundries,
trash bins, public toilets. They were all searched for blood
(22:09):
stained clothes that had been discarded. Hundreds of homes had
officers knocking on the doors, and thousands of men. They
were all questioned to be potential leads and suspects, but
there wasn't a whole lot to go on. This was
the largest criminal investigation Queensland had ever launched, and the
pressure was intense. It came from everywhere. The public well,
(22:31):
they wanted answers, the media, they wanted a suspect, and
police knew that if they didn't move fast, the trail
on this case could go cold. Very soon. Newspapers ran
dramatic headlines. They branded the unknown killer as a sex
maniac and flooding the city with speculation, every rumor was printed,
every theory was debated, and Brisbane, a city used to
(22:54):
be quiet and filled with routines with predictable nights, well
now it was suddenly gripped by fear. People began locking
their doors for the first time. Windows that had always
been left open were now shut tight. Parents worn daughters
not to walk alone at night, and women altered their roots,
avoided trams after dark and stayed home if they could.
(23:15):
For investigators working the case, nothing about Betty made sense
as a target of a violent crime. She wasn't known
to take risks. She didn't drink, didn't frequent dangerous places,
didn't keep questionable company. She went to work, attended her
night classes, went home. That was her routine. There was
nothing about her that suggested she would find violence like this.
(23:39):
So investigators started where they always do, to those closest
to the victim and digging into their life. They spoke
at length with Betty's parents, her brother, her friends and coworkers.
They combed through her days leading up to the murder,
looking for anything that was out of place, whether it
was arguments or acquaintances, secret relationships, financial issues, anything that
could explain why someone would wait for her in the
(24:02):
dark street then attack her with such violence, but nothing emerged.
Betty had no known enemies, she didn't have a relationship,
and according to her closest friends, she hadn't even dated
anyone in a year leading up to her death. And
if she was troubled by something, well she hadn't shared it.
(24:23):
That made one detail impossible to ignore. Whoever attacked her
either knew her movements extremely well or encountered her simply
by chance and acted quickly.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Huh, there just doesn't seem like there is like enough
information here. I mean, I'm sure the police may have more, obviously,
but she just seemed like the most pear innocent, lovely person,
right and basically and that something terrible happened to her,
and there isn't really anything no like trail. So I don't.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Well, Well, if this case were to happen today, I
think it would go a lot different. Being that this
is in the fifties.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Things of fingerprints or whatever, right, that makes it a
lot tough, or even like cameras right on people's houses and.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
So sure, so it's a shame to say that. I
think this case is a byproduct of its time. That's
very fair, now, investigators. They also struggled with the location
of the attack. Betty was assaulted and killed only minutes
from her home. We know that it was in a
street that she knew very well. This was huge because
(25:34):
it suggested either confidence that the attack on the attacker's
part or familiarity with the area. Possibly as well, because
a stranger passing through would have taken a very significant
risk attacking someone so close to houses. That's not normal
attacking behavior.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
No, not at all, So.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
This person likely knew the area. Then there was the
question of timing. Why did Betty not walk straight home
after leaving the tram. The screams were heard too late
for her to have stepped off and immediately been attacked
at the spot where her body was found. By then,
she should have already made it home, so something had
clearly delayed her. Police also believed the attack happened quickly
(26:15):
and with enough force to silence Betty before she could
attract sustained attention. The screams heard suggested panic, but they
weren't very long.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Oh okay, it was just like a quick yeah kind
of thing and then silence exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
So all of this helped narrow the location of the
initial confrontation, it likely occurred near the tram terminal itself
or along the early stretch of Thomas Street before Betty
reached the final leg of her walk home. The attacker
would have already been close to her before things turned violent,
and that realization brought investigators back to one troubling idea
(26:51):
someone may have been waiting now. In the days following
the murder, several witnesses came forward with accounts that all
pointed to the same unsettling detail. A man was seen
loitering near the Grange tram terminal that very night. Witnesses
described him as being tall, close to six feet, with
(27:12):
a solid build and a round face. He was well groomed,
neatly dressed, and wearing a light brown, double breasted suit.
He wasn't drunk, he wasn't loud or belligerent. He wasn't
trying to speak to anyone. Instead, he just paced back
and forth near the terminus, appearing restless, as though waiting
for someone or something. In fact, in the later inquest,
(27:33):
witnesses would eventually give formal statements describing this man's appearance
and movements. Their accounts were consistent enough that police believed
they were all describing the same individual, and investigators became
convinced that this man mattered to this story. The timing
lined up all too well.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Now.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Betty stepped off the tram just after nine thirty pm,
and the screams were heard less than ten minutes later,
So if someone had been waiting at the terminus, it
would explain why Betty didn't immediately head home. Then another
report surfaced. Roughly forty seven minutes after Betty's wristwatch had stopped,
a taxi driver picked up a man less than three
(28:16):
kilometers from the crime scene. The man reportedly had blood
on his face and clothing. He appeared agitated and gave
no clear explanation for his condition. Now police believed this
passenger could be the same man seen earlier at the terminus.
The only problem was no one could identify him.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Well, that definitely makes sense, but it also really doesn't,
because who the hell is this guy? Well?
Speaker 1 (28:43):
What makes sense and what doesn't? What do you mean exactly?
Speaker 2 (28:45):
It makes sense that there was someone odd hanging around, Okay, yeah,
and then you know, however, much time afterwards, someone he
got picked up with like blood on.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Him forty seven minutes.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah, so n three kilometers or whatever her away, so
it must then it makes sense that this would be
like the same person.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
It does. So if you have an individual hanging around
an area, then someone getting killed in that area, then
someone's seen leaving that area with blood on them. It
seems to all add.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Up, and it's well, I'm just thinking, like, it's really
too bad. But I mean, even nowadays, someone could potentially
well no, I think taxis probably have cameras of sorts
in them, recording, so yeah, he probably wouldn't be able
to get away with it so much. But I was
just thinking someone nowadays get picked up, pays with cash
or whatever. Then you know, maybe they could get away
(29:34):
with this, but probably not either.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Hard to say.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Hmm, oh my gosh, Okay, this doesn't make any sense.
Who the hell is this guy?
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Now? For weeks after the murder, detectives worked under the
assumption that Betty Shanks had been attacked by a stranger,
someone who didn't know her, someone who wore a brown
suit and saw an opportunity and acted without warning. But
then during the aforementioned inquest in February of nineteen fifty three,
a detail merged that quietly unsettled that theory. Betty's supervisor,
(30:05):
John Doocy, testified that two days before her death, Betty
had received a telephone call at work, one that visibly
upset her.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Okay, here we go.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
According to John, the call came from an unknown male,
but he didn't know what he said, only that when
Betty put the phone down, she was shaken, noticeably different
from her usual calm, focused self quote. She was not
her normal self after that call end quote. This was
the first time investigators actually heard anything suggesting that Betty
(30:40):
may have been unsettled before the night she died. Up
until then, everything seemed aokay, her typical routine and happiness.
Police immediately tried to reconstruct that call, who placed it,
where it came from, whether it was threatening, familiar, or
simply unwanted, But in nineteen fifty two, tracing phone calls
was limited at best. There was no recordings or call
(31:02):
her ID or any sort of reliable way to identify
the voice on the other end of the line. All
detectives could confirm was that this call had happened, and
then it had affected her.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Now.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
The revelation forced police to consider a new possibility that
someone may have been thinking about Betty before that Friday night,
that someone who knew her name and felt entitled enough
to contact her directly may have been watching her. That
didn't mean Betty knew her killer, though, but it did
raise the possibility that the attack wasn't entirely random.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Well, I'm just sitting here thinking too that maybe she
was into something that no one knew of, or something
a little bit dangerous of sorts.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
But how what she's at work, she's at school, then
she's at home.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Well, someone knew to call her, right, so knew her
and wasn't happy with her, So how would she have
made them unhappy?
Speaker 1 (31:59):
But people can be unhe with you for reasons that
you do not have control over. Just because you pissed
someone off doesn't mean you did something to piss them off.
Just my existence pisses some people off.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
I know that that's very true.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
I guess maybe her winning the lottery, maybe her being
a woman going to post secondary in an era like this, she.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Might have taken an opportunity from a man someone believed right, or.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Maybe someone had an infactuation with her, or maybe it
was a colleague who was threatened by her. We don't know.
There's many possibilities that she had no control over that
she did not go out of her way to construct
that could have resulted in this scenario.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Hm hmmm, okay, Yeah, if only you could just know
what was said on that line, Hey, it would make
a lot of things easier.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yeah. Now, as time went on, investigators did all they
could to try and put all the pieces of the
puzzle together. They went through all the details and evidence
they could, and you have to try and find a breakthrough.
And among all the things recorded at the crime scene,
one detail did continue to stand out to them, and
in fact, it almost was mocking the police because no
one could explain why this detail was there. You see,
(33:09):
on Betty Shank's forehead, they found a strange pattern imprint.
It wasn't a bruise or a cut or a scrape.
Investigators described it as a distinct, dotted or textured mark,
like likely pressed into the skin during the attack. It
was photographed, it was measured and noted repeatedly in reports.
But it was a problem because the mark didn't match.
(33:31):
It didn't match the fence, it didn't match the ground,
It didn't clearly resemble a hand, fist or piece of
debris or anything whatever caused it had come into forceful
contact with Betty's forehead during the assault, likely while she
was being overpowered, and left this imprint so early on,
some detectives thought it might be meaningless. You know, injuries
(33:52):
and violent struggles can can occur in unexpected ways from
unexpected sources, maybe a rock pressed into her head a
certain weird way, for example. But journalists who saw the photos, well,
they weren't convinced. One of them was Ken Blanche, a
veteran crime reporter who'd been among the first at the
scene in nineteen fifty two. Ken believed that the imprint
(34:15):
resembled the pattern left by a military canvas gator, the
type of protective leg covering worn by soldiers at the time,
with straps over the lower leg and over the boot.
It was a very compelling idea. During that time, the
Korean War was underway and Brisbane was full of servicemen
and soldiers in uniform who were you know, it was
(34:35):
a very common sight on trams, streets and pubs. If
that mark came from a gator, it suggested the attacker
wasn't necessarily just strong, but potentially could have had military
training to boot, but not everyone agreed with this theory.
Other investigators pointed out that the pattern wasn't an exact match. Similar, yes,
(34:58):
but not identical. Print could have come from a boot's soul,
or a textured object pressing down during the chaos of
the attack, or something no one had thought to compare
it to. Still, the mark refused to fade from this case.
It appeared in newspaper articles, resurface during the inquest, It
lingered in police files long after any sort of leads
(35:18):
dried up, and over time it became less about what
it proved and more about what it might suggest military involvement,
a uniformed attacker, someone accustomed to violence, or just another
coincidence that investigators desperately wanted to mean something. As the
weeks turned into months and then into years, the murder
(35:38):
of Betty Shanks began to attract something investigators dreaded almost
as much as silence. False confessions. Men started coming forward
claiming responsibility for the crime. Some were local, others were
from interstate areas, and a few were already in custody
for unrelated offenses. Several confessed late in life offering death
(36:01):
bed admissions that promised closure, Yet every single one of
them fell apart under scrutiny. Some couldn't place themselves in
Brisbane at the time. Others described details that didn't match
the crime scene. A few even admitted that they had
fabricated their story after reading newspaper articles or hearing radio broadcasts.
In some cases, police concluded that men were seeking attention.
(36:22):
In others, they believed that the confessions came from people
struggling with mental illness or guilt over unrelated acts, or
perhaps a desire to attach themselves to a notorious crime.
But by the end of the first decade, at least
seven men had formally confessed to killing Betty Shanks, and
none of them were linked or charged.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Oh that is so many. That is just so bizarre
to me, people who are admitting to crimes that they
do not commit. I mean, I get like the mental health,
I guess, or they want the popularity, But what a
waste of resources and time and.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Just yeah, each one of these confessions is it's draining time, energy,
and honestly momentum from a potential investigation that could actually
solve it. Absolutely because they have to go check alibis, interviews, witnesses,
all this, re examine physical evidence. There's so much that
goes through this and it really hinders the case.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Well, and I don't know too if the family is
made aware of this too, and then they're they're thinking
like the killer's caught when really they're not.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah, it's bad to say that.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
If that's the case, that is like devastating to them.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
And all the while the real trails growing colder. Now.
Tips did come in, but few of them led anywhere,
and as time passed with no arrests, the investigation entered
a new phase, with physical evidence exhausted and witnesses offering
no new information that's actually legitimate. Detectives were forced to
confront a very difficult reality. They still did not understand
(37:49):
why Betty Shanks had been attacked, and one of the
first theories to gain traction was mistaken identity. Police learned
that a local doctor's receptionist regularly walked the same streets
at a similar time of night and carried keys to
where many drugs were stored. Investigators considered the possibility that
(38:10):
someone had been waiting for her and attacked Betty instead
by accident. The idea explained the apparent ambush the precise timing,
but there was no evidence that the receptionists had been targeted,
nor any proof that the killer knew her schedule, so
it didn't really go anywhere. Another theory emerged after a
local doctor died by suicide just two days after Betty
(38:32):
was murdered. The timing raised eyebrows and fueled public speculation,
and rumors spread that he may have known Betty or
harbored unwonted feelings towards her for a brief period. Some
believed guilt had driven him to take his own life,
but police again found no link between the doctor and Betty.
No witnesses placed him in Graange that night, no evidence
(38:53):
tied him to the crime. He was eventually ruled out,
though the rumor lingered for years now, the military connection
was something that remained a very persistent undercurrent in this case.
The unusual patterned imprint on Betty's forehead led some investigators
and journalists to suggest it may have been caused by
a military gaiter or equipment worn by soldiers. With Brisbane
(39:13):
hosting the large number of servicemen during the Korean War,
the theory seemed very plausible. However, no soldier was ever identified,
and no military record produced a suspect who could be
placed at the scene. But most of all, that taxi
driver who reported picking up a well dressed man with
blood in his face and clothing less than an hour
after Betty's watch had stopped. This remained the largest piece
(39:37):
in the story, and it's less a theory and more
a loose end which honestly could fall under any one
of the previous theories. The pick up occurred a short
distance from the murder scene, and police believed this man
was likely the same individual witness seen pacing the Grannge
Tramp terminal earlier that night, but his identity well never
confirmed and never found. And with each theory accounting for
(39:59):
part of the time timeline, but they all each failed
to explain the whole picture. There's no single narrative that
seemed to fit every known fact, and as years passed,
while theories multiplied while certainty dwindled, for nearly half a century,
the murder of Betty Shanks existed as a very cold case.
But then in the late nineteen nineties, that silence was
(40:23):
broken by a claim so personal and disturbing that it
reignited public interest almost overnight. In nineteen ninety nine, a
woman named Dishe Birtles came forward with an allegation that
stunned investigators and the public alike. See. She claimed that
her father, Eric Sterry, was responsible for Betty's murder. Eric
(40:48):
just So happened to be a former soldier and worked
as a locksmith for the Queensland government. According to Ditsch,
he had become obsessed with Betty after changing the locks
at her parents' home. He believed he developed a very
romantic feeling towards her, feelings that well were not returned.
In her account, rejection triggered a very violent response. Deets
(41:11):
described her father as an extremely violent man. She said
she had endured years of abuse at his hands, which
included frequent beatings and sexual assault. She told police that
his violence was unpredictable, that he could shift from calm
to enraged without warning, and that she lived in constant
fear throughout her childhood. She also claimed that on the
(41:33):
night that Betty was murdered, her father had returned home late,
behaving strangely, and according to her, he later burned his
clothes and ordered her to clean his shoes. Carefully paying
particular attention to the grooves along the souls. Now, at
the time she was young, didn't understand why, but years
(41:54):
later she believed what she was cleaning was blood from
his shoes.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Oh yeah, that is ridiculously suspicious.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Now Dish also said that her father kept a photograph
of Betty Shanks in a family photo album, and he
had done so for decades, with words written on the
back that read, quote Betty Thompson Shanks murdered nineteen fifty
two end quote.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Oh gosh.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
She believed he kept it as a very personal reminder,
or perhaps even a trophy, of the crime that he committed.
Now his backstory, Eric's backstory it raised further red flags.
His military medical records described him as suffering from severe anxiety,
impulsive behavior, blackouts, and violent tendencies. Two psychiatrists, in fact,
(42:42):
had assessed him as potentially psychotic and dangerous. Not to mention,
he even had a documented history of domestic violence, including
police call outs earlier in nineteen fifty two. Now Dish
also claimed she tried to tell police about this year's
earlier in when she was just sixteen, she reported her
(43:03):
father's abuse and told officers she feared he would kill
her the same way he had killed Betty Shanks, and
according to her, she was simply dismissed. She attempted again
in the early nineteen nineties, encouraged by a counselor, but
received little follow up. By the time her story actually
became public, Eric Sterry had already been dead for two years.
(43:27):
Police reviewed her claims but ultimately concluded there was nothing
they could verify. Potential witnesses were gone, physical evidence was
decades old, and any opportunity to question Eric directly had
passed since well, he's now dead. Officials and the public's
reaction to all of this was quite divided. Some believe
that Detch was finally naming the killer, but others questioned
(43:50):
whether memory, trauma and the time had blurred the truth.
All we know is without proof though that this case well,
it just simply couldn't move forward regardless. By the early
two thousands, the murder of Betty Shanks was no longer
just a cold case. It was part of Queensland's history.
Generations of detectives had come and gone, each inheriting the
(44:12):
same box of evidence, the same unanswered questions, and the
same narrow window of time in which everything had gone wrong,
But what had changed was science. Advances in forensic technology
gave investigators something Earlier detectives never had the possibility that
microscopic traces left behind in nineteen fifty two might actually
(44:34):
still hold answers. Hair, skin, cells, blood, things that were
once invisible or unusable could now, in theory, identify a killer.
Cold case teams reviewed the evidence again, this time through
modern lens. Items you know had once been cataloged and
set aside were now being reexamined. Photographs were studied with
(44:56):
higher resolution. Old witness statements were re read with fresh eyes,
looking for inconsistencies or overlooked details, and there was renewed
focus on the idea that Betty had fought back to now.
She had been wearing silk gloves that night, which made
it very difficult to land any sort of defensive retaliation,
but investigators believe it was still possible she could have
(45:18):
scratched or grabbed her attacker during the struggle, and if
she did, even briefly, there was a chance she took
something with her some hair, some skin under her fingernails,
a smear of blood not her own. The challenge, however,
it was still time. Evidence handling in nineteen fifty two
was not what it was today. DNA was not preserved
(45:40):
intentionally because no one knew it would matter. Some items
were lost, others were contaminated, some simply degraded beyond usefulness.
Even when testing was possible, while results often came back inconclusive,
police also revisited old persons of interest. Some had already died,
others could no longer be located. In at least one case,
(46:03):
DNA comparisons were attempted decades later, but ruled out suspects
rather than identifying anyone. Despite these obstacles, investigators never fully
closed the door on Betty's case. Queensland Police have repeatedly
stated that Betty shanks murder remains an active cold case.
(46:23):
The fifty thousand dollars reward they put out still stands,
and authorities continue to believe that someone somewhere knows what happened,
or know something something small that could finally tip this
case forward. More than seventy years have passed and the
murder case of Betty Shanks is still ongoing. Yet no
(46:44):
one has ever been able to say with certainty why
Betty was attacked that night she was not robbed, she
was not sexually assaulted. For all we know, she was
not known to be in a relationship, nor did she
have any enemies. Nothing in her routine suggested risk, and
yet within minutes of stepping off that tram, she was
fighting for her life. The question of whether Betty was
(47:05):
targeted or simply crossed paths with the wrong person at
the wrong moment it remains unknown. The mysterious phone call
due days earlier. While it lingers as one of the
most unsettling details in the case, it is the only
confirmed disruption to Betty's otherwise steady, predictable life. Then there's
the man in the brown suit. Multiple witnesses saw him
(47:27):
pacing at the tram terminus that night, and a taxi
driver too later described picking up a bloodied man not
far from the scene of the crime. Police believe they're
the same person, but despite appeals, reconstructions, and decades of speculation,
we still do not know the identity of that man.
Every single unanswered question we have circles back to the
(47:50):
same narrow time span, the twelve minutes between nine thirty
eight and nine fifty three PM on an otherwise ordinary
Friday night. But regardless of what we don't know, it's
important to remember what we do know. Betty Shanks was
twenty two years old. She was intelligent, ambitious, and deeply
(48:14):
connected to her family. She had completed a university degree
at a time when higher education for women was still
so rare, and she was steadily carving out a career
in the public service. She lived at home, not out
of necessity but practicality, saving money, helping her parents, and
planning for a future that was still unfolding. Those who
(48:37):
knew her described her as kind, generous, and dependable. She
enjoyed going to the cinema, studying, and spending time with friends.
She had goals, she had momentum, and nothing about her
life suggested that she was nearing an abrupt end. In
the months before her death, Betty used her lottery winnings
not for extravagance but for her own family. She paid
(49:00):
off the mortgage of her parents home, she helped improve
the house that she grew up in, and she invested
in her own health. It was a quiet generosity that
reflected who she was, thoughtful, grounded, and forward looking. Everything
about who she was as a kind person is what
this season of Christmas is actually about now. This story
(49:25):
doesn't actually have anything to do with Christmas through the holidays,
but I did want to tell this story of Betty
Shank today because she embodies so much of what people
lose sight of in today's age. Betty, in all honesty,
can teach each and every single one of us something,
and in honor of her, I think it would be
nice if we try and learn from her to be
(49:46):
a bit kinder, to be a little less greedy, and
to better ourselves, not because it's required, but because we
want to. And the world could be a little better
because of it. For Betty's family, in there loss, there
was no trial or conviction. Her parents lived out the
rest of their lives without knowing who killed their daughter
(50:06):
or why. And for investigators, the case remains unfinished. The
reward still stands, the file is still open, and until
something changes in the case, Betty Shanks is remembered not
just as a victim of one of Queensland's oldest and
most unsolved murders in history, but instead also as a
young woman whose life mattered and still does. Her story
(50:31):
endures because it asks something of us, not as investigators,
but as people. It asks us to slow down, look
beyond ourselves, and to choose generosity over excess, kindness over convenience,
and empathy over indifference, not because it's the season that
(50:52):
demands it, but because people like Betty lived that way
quietly anyways, without any applause, at a time of year
meant for reflection. Her life reminds us that small acts
of kindness and care matter, that how we treat others,
even when no one is watching, leaves a mark far
(51:12):
more lasting than anything anyone can buy or accumulate. Somewhere,
the truth of those twelve minutes still exist. But even
before that truth may ever be found, the name Betty
Shanks still brightens the world, even though her own light
has gone out. And that's the story of Betty Shanks.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Well, shit, Ben, what that's like about to make me cry? Huh?
I feel like I'm obsessed with Betty, Like I love her.
Speaker 1 (51:48):
She's our badass of the day. For sure. She was
a very inspiring individual. She was very caring, went above
and beyond when she didn't have to, and she was
taken away far too by an absolute monster in the dark.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
Yeah at twenty two years old. Yeah, that is just
such a young life, and I just fricking hate saying this,
but I feel like, seventy years later, like what are
they going to find? Or you know, like it, Like
you had said earlier, if this had happened today, it
would be far easier probably to go about trying to
(52:23):
solve this. But the fact that it happened in nineteen
fifty two is no help.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
Well, we can say that about almost any case, any
older case is going to be easier to solve today
if it happened today rather than you know, fifty, seventy,
eighty whatever years ago. But when you look at it
and you say, Okay, if only we had that knowledge
back then, because we have a bloody handprint, you know,
we have impressions from boots or things like that. If
(52:50):
only we knew not even to do the testing, but
to preserve it properly, that could make all the difference.
And it's unfortunate that in this case so far, nothing's
been preserved or done well enough to find who did
it today.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
I mean, that's so long ago. The theories. Okay, at first,
when you were like this was a mistaken identity kind
of thing, I was like, oh my gosh, that makes
so much sense. But then there is that phone call,
right that is, if there wasn't that phone call, I
feel like that would it would just be like, yeah,
like really just shitty, wrong place, the wrong time kind
of thing.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
But what if that phone call was maybe it was
her dad, Maybe they had a fight earlier that day,
the dad phoned at work. I just got to say,
you know what, you pissed me off when you did this,
and it upset Betty.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
Yeah, it could have been really nothing.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
It could have been And then you know what, maybe
the dad forgot about it or whoever, and when they
talked about this phone call and inquired about it, the
dad doesn't remember calling her. And it could be a
mistaken identity in the phone call. Maybe it's even a
wrong number, or maybe it's someone who's calling the company,
not Betty and going off just so happens to be
(54:01):
Betty that they ended up getting on the line with.
Maybe it wasn't a targeted phone call after all.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
Yeah, gosh. But also the person that had her picture
in a photo album is very alarming.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
Yeah, I have a feeling that was the dude. There
is a lot that lines up there.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
And it's like, if only you'd listen to this daughter
in nineteen sixty then, or even early or ninebers or whatever,
while he was still alive. I mean something, maybe at
that point he would have been like, yeah, that was me.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
Potentially, probably not, but maybe who knows.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
But anyway, enough about all these these ridiculous men that
decided to friggin dim her life far too early. The
story is about her and how awesome she is.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
So yeah, she's our badass of the day one hundred
and ten percent. I think we could all be a
little bit more like Betty.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
No kidding, Well, yeah, the fact that she won all
this like who wins that kind of money and it
almost goes unnoticeable, really, you know when you do things
like pay off your your parents' mortgage. Because she could
have just went and gone and bought her own house.
That's true, very easily, right, So it's just like, holy crap,
she just and she made other people's lives be more
(55:15):
affected than her own with this money, which is saying
a lot that's true.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
So yeah, anyways, sorry for throwing an unsolved case that
you hear just before Christmas.
Speaker 2 (55:26):
And very Christmas to us.
Speaker 1 (55:28):
When I was telling Nicole before we turn the MIC's
on that I was doing an unsolved case. She's like, oh,
thanks for the Christmas present, throwing me an unsolved case.
I was like, gee, but there's a reason I want
to talk about Betty for a reason. She deserves it.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
So yeah, we'll forgive you eventually, Ben eventually.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
Well, as a reminder, we're not gonna be throwing out
an episode this Friday, so we'll see you guys in
a week's time next Tuesday. In the meantime, hopefully you
guys have a great Christmas holiday. If you don't celebrate
any of that, you know what, I just hope you,
hope you have a week I hope you're doing great,
and we'll see you in a week's time and until
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Then, stay wicked.
On the night of September nineteenth, nineteen fifty two, a
twenty year old woman stepped off the tram in Brisbane
and began her short walk home that she had taken
countless times before. It was a familiar route through a
quiet suburb where nothing about the evening felt unusual. However,
she never arrived home, and by morning, Brisbane would wake
(00:25):
to a crime that shattered its sense of safety and
became the longest running unsolved murder in Queensland's history. This
is the tragic and true story of Betty Shanks.
Speaker 2 (00:39):
My name's Ben, I'm Nicole, and you're listening to Wicked
and Grim, a.
Speaker 1 (00:43):
True crime podcast.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
Warning.
Speaker 1 (00:47):
The following podcast and material intended for a mature audience.
Listener discretion is advised. Cheers, it is almost Christmas.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Cheers, Cheers to Christmas eve.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
Eve, Christmas eve Eve. Indeed, I don't know about anyone else,
but I have consumed far more calories in the last
few days than I have in the last previous few months.
Speaker 2 (01:29):
Honestly, my belly already kind of hurts. So that's uh,
that's you know what that means?
Speaker 1 (01:35):
Tis the season to start thinking about going to the
gym in about a week. You know.
Speaker 2 (01:40):
Well even the other day, wasn't I just like, Oh,
just don't even worry about it, just eat it, ben Like,
because you were like, gosh, I've eaten so much today.
Speaker 1 (01:48):
I mean, sometimes you got to do that. Sometimes you
got to worry about your health. But this is not
the season to really concern yourself with calories.
Speaker 2 (01:55):
I know.
Speaker 1 (01:56):
This is the season of just enjoying.
Speaker 2 (01:57):
I was planning for us to have salad for lunch,
so there you go.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
If I'll have room for salad.
Speaker 2 (02:03):
I know we'll probably be eating cookies and stuff and
that will be our lunch.
Speaker 1 (02:08):
That's pretty much how Christmas generally goes. Oh I'm going
to plan a good meal, but I'm too full to
have that good meal because of all the junk in between.
Speaker 2 (02:16):
But it is kind of nice just the visiting too,
and stuff right, and lots of times with the visiting
comes like drinks and food.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
And true, well, like last night we had a good
dinner with some friends, for example, with some good drinks
and food. This morning we had a good friends dot
buy and he said he hadn't had a drink yet today,
so we had a drink with them.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
You had a drink. I didn't have a drink. Well
to say, I was like, it's not even noon.
Speaker 1 (02:36):
Bro, Well, and it was whiskey. You're not a whiskey person,
So very long. Yeah, but yeah, it's a good time
of year.
Speaker 2 (02:43):
It is.
Speaker 1 (02:44):
It is. But I also have a very interesting story
for you today.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
It seems as though you do.
Speaker 1 (02:48):
It's not really a Christmas case, per se. I was
thinking about doing a Christmas one, but this one kind
of came on my radar and I really liked it.
And I've got a good reason on why I'm doing
it this time of year, and we'll talk about that.
Don't worry.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
Well, some people might be like, f Christmas, right and
be totally fine with that.
Speaker 1 (03:05):
That's true.
Speaker 2 (03:06):
It is thrown in our face this season, that's.
Speaker 1 (03:08):
True, and not everyone celebrates it. So I totally get it.
But I digress. This is still a story that I
really thought, you know, it was appropriate. Let's say that.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
So well, before we dive in, we should thank our patrons.
Speaker 1 (03:20):
Yes, of course, So these people have been supporting us
over on Patreon. They signed up this week along with
many other people, and big shout out to a let
Nikki Bell, Penya Sherry, Stutz, Shaston Kasheal, and Ava Armstrong.
So thank you very much for signing up and supporting
us over on Patreon.
Speaker 2 (03:39):
We appreciate you.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
We seriously do. We got a lot of cool people
who have joined that community over there, so seriously, thank
you very much.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
Reads a lot, and we have one more little tiny announcement.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
To make we do you want to do the honors?
Speaker 2 (03:52):
Just basically that we have this episode out today, we
will not be having Fridays out, just kind of a
little bit of you know, rest, relaxation time, and we'll
be back on the following Tuesday.
Speaker 1 (04:03):
Yes, so we are taking one day off, so there
will not be an episode on Friday, which is I
believe Boxing day, and then we're back the following week
on the Tuesday again.
Speaker 2 (04:12):
Yeah, so that's not too much time away from us.
Speaker 1 (04:15):
So no, it's just one episode that we're taking some
relaxing time to enjoy the holiday.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And people are probably also busy right now anyway, and
they're most likely and that's fair.
Speaker 1 (04:23):
Probably they probably understand they're probably not even gonna be
listening to this until like a month later when they've
caught up on all their to dos in their life
and busyness, things start to slow. But I think if
you're ready, I'm ready to get into the story.
Speaker 2 (04:36):
Let's do it.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
Okay, I'm going to set the scene here. On most nights,
Thomas Street was barely worth noticing. It was the kind
of suburban road people walked without thinking, lined with modest
homes and shaded by trees that stood well longer than
those houses themselves. In nineteen fifty two, this part of Brisbane,
the capital of Queensland, Australia. It's settled. Early after dark,
(04:59):
the street fell quiet, except for the occasional city tram
in the distance, or the sound of a radio drifting
through an open window. People felt very safe here, safe
enough to leave doors unlocked, safe enough to assume that,
you know, raised voices were nothing more than kids fooling around,
or maybe a small late night argument that would burn
itself out, you know, nothing anything dangerous. But that Friday night, well,
(05:25):
something was different. Yes, the air was warm, and the
week was ending, and families were in fact settling in.
There was a tram line that reached its final stop nearby,
emptying its passengers into the streets, the ones that they
knew by heart. On their walks home. Most of them
would be home, in fact, within minutes, and no one
standing on Thomas Street that evening could have guessed that
(05:48):
something irreversible was about to happen. There were no warnings,
no signs of a threat waiting in the dark, just
a familiar walk, a familiar route, and a sense of
see that would not survive the night, because by morning
the street and its city would no longer feel the same.
(06:09):
And before, honestly, this fateful day, and before she became
the name attached to Queenland's most oldest cold case, well,
Betty Shanks was just a young woman getting on with
her life. Betty was twenty two years old in September
of nineteen fifty two, living with her parents and younger
brother in Brisbanes, Inner North. She had grown up in
the area and while she never really left it, there
(06:31):
was no dramatic reason for that. It was simply where
her life was. Home was safe, familiar, and close to
everything she needed. She was bright, driven and quietly ambitious.
Betty had graduated from the University of Queensland with a
Bachelor of Arts specializing in psychology, which was not common
for women of that time.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
It really wasn't so good for her.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
Yeah, we're talking the fifties here and she's going to
post secondaries. So awesome, incredible. Now she worked as a
trainee personnel officer for the Commonwealth Department of the Interior
in Brisbane, CBD, a solid government job that she took
very seriously. Friends and coworkers described her as very intelligent,
kind and dependable, someone who showed up, did her work
(07:15):
and didn't seek attention for it. Betty was not the
reckless kind of person. She wasn't impulsive, She didn't drink heavy,
she didn't stay out late for no reason, and didn't
bounce from relationship to relationship. In fact, as far as
anyone close to her new, she wasn't even seeing anyone
at all. She kept a very small circle of friends,
mostly other women, and spent much of her time studying, working,
(07:37):
or at home with her family. If something was troubling her,
she certainly didn't broadcast it. Now. Just a few months earlier,
Betty had experienced a very rare stroke of luck. In
April of nineteen fifty two, she won three thousand pounds
as Australia was still using the British style currency system,
(07:57):
and she won this in the Golden Casket lottery, which
exchange and inflation considered, that's about the equivalent of roughly
a quarter million US dollars today.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
Holy shit.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Yeah, so she got some bank she scored, baked us,
she did, and so it made newspapers and her name
was printed in bold black letters. You know, all of it.
But the wind didn't exactly change her personality. In fact,
it didn't really change her at all. She actually used
the money quite responsibly, paying off her parents' mortgage, helping
renovate the family home, and covering medical treatments she needed
(08:29):
for a spinal condition. There was no flashy purchases and
no sudden lifestyle shift. By all accounts, Betty was content. Busy, yes,
but she's happy and settling into her life now. Brisbane
in nineteen fifty two mirrored the same quiet sense of order.
It was often described as a big country town, the
(08:49):
kind of place where people slept with their windows open,
doors unlocked, and children walked home alone after dark without
a second thought. Violent crime was rare, and strangers attacking
people were almost unheard of. If someone screamed in the night,
for example, the assumption wasn't that it was danger, it
was probably teenagers fooling around, or a small domestic argument
(09:10):
that would eventually and harmlessly resolve itself. Friday, September nineteenth
and nineteen fifty two began no differently than any other
weekday in Betty's life. That morning, she left her family's
home in Grange and headed into the city for work,
just as she always did. Her job with the Commonwealth
Department of the Interior kept her busy during the day.
By all accounts, nothing about that Friday stood out now
(09:32):
because it was Friday. Betty had night classes after work
that was part of her ongoing studies and professional development.
So Wednesday and Friday's nights those were dedicated to lectures
and they were part of her normal routine, something she
committed to week after week, and she took them quite seriously.
So when the workday ended, Betty didn't rush home. Instead,
(09:53):
she and her supervisor, John Doocey drove together from the
CBD to the location of the class. Now it was
near George Street and so that's where they were going.
The lecture, well, it wrapped up just before nine pm.
Several students were in attendance, along with the lecturer, Edwin
Millicaton now Millicaton lived in a direction that was partially
overlapping with Betty's route home, so on some evenings he
(10:17):
would offer to give her a lift, and that's what
happened that night after class. He drove her towards Windsor
dropped her off at a tram stop along Lutwich Road.
From there she boarded the four to thirty four tram
bound for granch Now. The ride itself was uneventful. Other
passengers came and went as a tram moved through the
(10:37):
North suburbs, eventually reaching the final stop at the day's
road terminus. The clock read just after nine thirty pm.
When the tram doors opened, Betty stepped down onto Thomas Street.
In fact, a friend, Jane Osborne, saw her at that
very moment as she was leaning forward slightly about to
step off that tram onto the pavement. Was small, rather
(11:01):
forgettable detail at the time, but ultimately it would later
become the last confirmed sighting of Betty Shanks alive.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
A moment in time that you take so for granted
that you have no idea that's going to be the
last time you see an.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
Individual right just in passing.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
Oh and it's just so often I mean, right, someone
gets I don't know what exactly happens here, but they're
going to have that last moment that someone just doesn't realize.
Speaker 1 (11:29):
Well, there's always a last moment. There's a last everything,
I guess, so you just never know. So I'm not
going to get all like sappy on us. Yeah, I'm
just going to leave it at that. Now, from the terminus,
Betty walked home and it was honestly quite a short walk.
Less than four hundred meters is all she had to travel,
(11:49):
just a few minutes at most. She had walked it
countless times before, at all hours, without any sort of incident.
The street was quiet, residential and lined with houses and
shaded by trees. Nothing about it was really threatening. But
she never arrived home. She never made it. Now. What
makes the Betty Shank story so unsettling is the small
(12:10):
window of time. Investigators would later determine this took place
somewhere between nine thirty eight pm and nine fifty three pm,
just twelve minutes. In that brief span, a young woman
stepped off the tram. She would then encounter someone on
a quiet residential street and was brutally attacked less than
(12:31):
a block from the safety of her home. The timeline
begins to tighten almost immediately after Betty leaves the tram
as well, just after nine thirty pm. Several residents in
the area later told police that they actually heard screams
coming from Thomas Street. They weren't vague noises or distant shouts.
They were described as very sharp, panicked, or unmistakably human.
(12:53):
The screams were heard between nine thirty eight and nine
forty pm. Now at the time, no one rushed outside.
This was Gronge in the early nineteen fifties, a place
where violent crimes just weren't existing. Some residents yeah glancedale
their windows, but they saw nothing unusual in the darkness
and return to what they were doing. Others assumed the
noise was just teenagers or who knows what, so no
(13:16):
one called police. Those few minutes would haunt the suburb
for decades. Now. By the early hours of Saturday morning,
Betty's parents would awake and be very worried with Betty
not being home. She was never careless about coming home,
and by one thirty am her father reported her missing
to the police. Officers began checking nearby tramlines and school grounds,
(13:39):
assuming that she'd missed her stop or needed help getting
back home for some reason. It was just after five
thirty am as daylight began to creep into the quiet
streets of Grange. Alec Stewart, an off duty police officer,
stepped outside of his home onto the corner of Cranberry
and Thomas Street to collect the morning newspaper, and what
(14:01):
he saw stopped him in his tracks. It was his
neighbor's front garden. Just there, sitting inside the fence line
of missus Hill's property, lay the body of a young woman.
She was found laying on her back. Her clothes were disheveled,
Her blouse had been pulled open and its buttons torn away,
and her underwear had been removed. The position of her
(14:23):
body and the condition of her clothes made it immediately
clear that something violent had taken place. In fact, blood
was present at the scene. There was bloody handprints that
were visible on the fence railing nearby, Oh my Goodness,
which indicated the attacker had been in contact, specifically with
the property. Her handbag laid close as well, its contents
scattered across the garden, though nothing of valuable. Nothing appeared
(14:46):
to be missing that was worth anything a tram ticket.
In fact, the one that she used to ride that
tram that night was still clutched in her hand. The
injuries were severe and consistent with an extreme physical assault,
and for Constable Alex Stewart, the man who found her,
the meaning of the scene was unmistakable. This was not
an accident. This was clearly a homicide.
Speaker 2 (15:09):
Well, no shit, yeah, And it is surprising to me
that it just happened right in like the open of people,
like a neighborhood, pretty much right in.
Speaker 1 (15:19):
The middle of a street manicured lawn there I'm picturing.
I don't know if this is correct, but in my
mind I picture like a little white picket fence with
like bloody handprints on it and a body sprawled in
some flowers.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Like, how the shit does that even happen?
Speaker 1 (15:32):
Yeah, So, within minutes, the street began to fill with
police officers as he called the authorities, the garden was
cordoned off as a crime scene, and the neighbors emerged
from their houses, confused, then horrified as words spread that
a woman had been murdered only meters from where they slept.
When identification was made, the shock deepened the victim was
(15:53):
in fact Betty Shanks, the local girl known in the
area who was reported missing only hours ago. Well. She
was now found dead less than four hundred meters from
her family's door. Her tram ticket, as I mentioned, still
grasped in her hands, and evidence suggests that the attacker
well had thrown her over the fence. Her body landed
(16:13):
just meters from the bedroom where Constable Stuart had been
sleeping hours before. As officers examined the scene, the reality
set in this had happened quickly, violently, and under the
cover of darkness, and when reconstructed, Betty's movements, while one
detail of them, stood out immediately. She was clearly attacked
(16:35):
incredibly close to home, and that distance from the tram
terminus to her home was short enough that she should
have been inside within minutes. Yet the screams came from
a point only two or three minutes walk from where
she got off the tram. Now that discrepancy raised an
unsettling question. Why hadn't Betty gone straight home? Because from
(16:55):
the time that she got off the tram station to
when the screams had occurred, she should already been in
her front door.
Speaker 2 (17:02):
But she wasn't well. I mean, A, she could have
ran into someone that she knew and was chit chatting
or something, and b whatever, she felt like someone was
following her, so she like in a kind of flurry,
took like the wrong way or something to get rid
of this person.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
You're already thinking exactly like the officers.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Were, Okay, exactly, maybe I should be an officer.
Speaker 1 (17:23):
Maybe maybe maybe you should have a little bit of
a career switch here. I might be looking for a
new co host soon, I guess, as Nichole's going to
be solving murders instead of talking about them. Anyways, an
interesting thing happened here too. Her wristwatch provided a very
crucial detail for this timeline. It was found that her
watch had stopped at nine fifty three PM, and a
(17:44):
watchmaker would later confirm the stoppage was consistent with a
sudden violent impact. So that gave police that window of
time between the screams at around nine thirty nine and
the watch stopping at nine point fifty three. Police believed
the higher attack unfolded, but something delayed her after she
stepped off that trap. Whether it was, like you said,
(18:06):
a conversation, maybe a confrontation or encounter she didn't anticipate.
We don't know, but Betty did not immediately begin her
walk home, and that pause, whatever caused it, placed her
in the wrong spot at the wrong time. Now it
was clear, simply by looking at Betty's body that she
had been subject to extreme violence in a very short
(18:28):
span of time. I'm pretty sure we can all have
this bit of an image of what we see her like,
and it's not a pretty picture. Her injuries told a
story of sustained, frenzied aggression rather than a single blow
or momentary loss of control. In fact, her injuries were
quite extensive. Her jaw was fractured. One of her teeth
(18:48):
had been dislodged with such force that it was later
found several meters away from her body. Her face showed
a heavy trauma, her tongue and mouth were badly injured,
and investigators concluded that she'd been struck and kicked repeatedly.
In fact, dark smudges of black boot polish were on
her face and legs, which means the attacker's shoes had
(19:12):
connected with those spots. As police believed she was kicked
while she was on the ground.
Speaker 2 (19:17):
Whoa which actually means this person was a disgusting, disgusting human.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Yeah, he's a douche canoe for sure. Holy Now, two large,
bloodstained handprints were found on the top rail of a
fence boarding the garden. The position of the prince suggested
that Betty had been thrown or pushed over the fence,
and that her attacker used it as support for his
weight as he followed or leaned over. From the size
of the prince, detectives believed the attacker was a physically
(19:48):
large man. Now, despite the violence, robbery was quickly ruled out.
I mentioned that Betty's handbag was found nearby with its
contents scattered, but nothing was stolen. Her jewelry, for example,
was even still in her body. There was no sign
that money or valuables had been taken.
Speaker 2 (20:05):
Whatsoever, Okay, because I was wondering that she just won
the lottery, right.
Speaker 1 (20:09):
So that's true, But didn't seem like anyone stole anything, Okay. Now,
her clothing complicated this picture. Her blouse had been torn
open buttons ripped away. Her bra strap was in fact broken,
and her underwear had been removed and it lay near
her body. At first glance, it appeared to be a
very sexually motivated attack, but the post mortem told a
(20:33):
different story because there was no evidence left behind that
proved Betty had been raped or sexually assaulted, so investigators
began to suspect that the undressing may have happened after
the attack, either as a failed attempt at sexual assault
and the perpetrator had to get out of there before
you know, doing whatever he was going to do, or
(20:54):
potentially as a deliberate act to mislead police.
Speaker 2 (21:00):
Okay, yeah, I'm still just shocked though that no one
heard any of this.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
People did hear screams, okay.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
But I guess it just wasn't like alarming enough.
Speaker 1 (21:09):
Yeah, something they heard the screams, assumed it was, you know,
just maybe a couple people fighting and they'll get over it,
or kids playing. This sort of stuff didn't happen here.
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Oh crazy, So their mind just didn't even go there.
Speaker 1 (21:20):
Yeah, their mind didn't go that it was actually anything.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Dangerous, which is really freaking sad.
Speaker 1 (21:25):
It is now. Ultimately, strangulation was determined to be Betty's
cause of death, and by mid morning on September twentieth,
nineteen fifty two, the news about it was everywhere everyone
seemed to be talking about a young woman who had
been murdered in Grange, beaten and strangled in the middle
of a quiet suburban street, and for Brisbane. While this
(21:48):
was uncharted territory police response while it escalated almost immediately,
every available detective was pulled into this case. A special
communications room was set up inside the Criminal Investigation Branch
and officers worked in shifts around the clock. Hotels, laundries,
trash bins, public toilets. They were all searched for blood
(22:09):
stained clothes that had been discarded. Hundreds of homes had
officers knocking on the doors, and thousands of men. They
were all questioned to be potential leads and suspects, but
there wasn't a whole lot to go on. This was
the largest criminal investigation Queensland had ever launched, and the
pressure was intense. It came from everywhere. The public well,
(22:31):
they wanted answers, the media, they wanted a suspect, and
police knew that if they didn't move fast, the trail
on this case could go cold. Very soon. Newspapers ran
dramatic headlines. They branded the unknown killer as a sex
maniac and flooding the city with speculation, every rumor was printed,
every theory was debated, and Brisbane, a city used to
(22:54):
be quiet and filled with routines with predictable nights, well
now it was suddenly gripped by fear. People began locking
their doors for the first time. Windows that had always
been left open were now shut tight. Parents worn daughters
not to walk alone at night, and women altered their roots,
avoided trams after dark and stayed home if they could.
(23:15):
For investigators working the case, nothing about Betty made sense
as a target of a violent crime. She wasn't known
to take risks. She didn't drink, didn't frequent dangerous places,
didn't keep questionable company. She went to work, attended her
night classes, went home. That was her routine. There was
nothing about her that suggested she would find violence like this.
(23:39):
So investigators started where they always do, to those closest
to the victim and digging into their life. They spoke
at length with Betty's parents, her brother, her friends and coworkers.
They combed through her days leading up to the murder,
looking for anything that was out of place, whether it
was arguments or acquaintances, secret relationships, financial issues, anything that
could explain why someone would wait for her in the
(24:02):
dark street then attack her with such violence, but nothing emerged.
Betty had no known enemies, she didn't have a relationship,
and according to her closest friends, she hadn't even dated
anyone in a year leading up to her death. And
if she was troubled by something, well she hadn't shared it.
(24:23):
That made one detail impossible to ignore. Whoever attacked her
either knew her movements extremely well or encountered her simply
by chance and acted quickly.
Speaker 2 (24:37):
Huh, there just doesn't seem like there is like enough
information here. I mean, I'm sure the police may have more, obviously,
but she just seemed like the most pear innocent, lovely person,
right and basically and that something terrible happened to her,
and there isn't really anything no like trail. So I don't.
Speaker 1 (25:00):
Well, Well, if this case were to happen today, I
think it would go a lot different. Being that this
is in the fifties.
Speaker 2 (25:07):
Things of fingerprints or whatever, right, that makes it a
lot tough, or even like cameras right on people's houses and.
Speaker 1 (25:13):
So sure, so it's a shame to say that. I
think this case is a byproduct of its time. That's
very fair, now, investigators. They also struggled with the location
of the attack. Betty was assaulted and killed only minutes
from her home. We know that it was in a
street that she knew very well. This was huge because
(25:34):
it suggested either confidence that the attack on the attacker's
part or familiarity with the area. Possibly as well, because
a stranger passing through would have taken a very significant
risk attacking someone so close to houses. That's not normal
attacking behavior.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
No, not at all, So.
Speaker 1 (25:53):
This person likely knew the area. Then there was the
question of timing. Why did Betty not walk straight home
after leaving the tram. The screams were heard too late
for her to have stepped off and immediately been attacked
at the spot where her body was found. By then,
she should have already made it home, so something had
clearly delayed her. Police also believed the attack happened quickly
(26:15):
and with enough force to silence Betty before she could
attract sustained attention. The screams heard suggested panic, but they
weren't very long.
Speaker 2 (26:24):
Oh okay, it was just like a quick yeah kind
of thing and then silence exactly.
Speaker 1 (26:29):
So all of this helped narrow the location of the
initial confrontation, it likely occurred near the tram terminal itself
or along the early stretch of Thomas Street before Betty
reached the final leg of her walk home. The attacker
would have already been close to her before things turned violent,
and that realization brought investigators back to one troubling idea
(26:51):
someone may have been waiting now. In the days following
the murder, several witnesses came forward with accounts that all
pointed to the same unsettling detail. A man was seen
loitering near the Grange tram terminal that very night. Witnesses
described him as being tall, close to six feet, with
(27:12):
a solid build and a round face. He was well groomed,
neatly dressed, and wearing a light brown, double breasted suit.
He wasn't drunk, he wasn't loud or belligerent. He wasn't
trying to speak to anyone. Instead, he just paced back
and forth near the terminus, appearing restless, as though waiting
for someone or something. In fact, in the later inquest,
(27:33):
witnesses would eventually give formal statements describing this man's appearance
and movements. Their accounts were consistent enough that police believed
they were all describing the same individual, and investigators became
convinced that this man mattered to this story. The timing
lined up all too well.
Speaker 2 (27:54):
Now.
Speaker 1 (27:54):
Betty stepped off the tram just after nine thirty pm,
and the screams were heard less than ten minutes later,
So if someone had been waiting at the terminus, it
would explain why Betty didn't immediately head home. Then another
report surfaced. Roughly forty seven minutes after Betty's wristwatch had stopped,
a taxi driver picked up a man less than three
(28:16):
kilometers from the crime scene. The man reportedly had blood
on his face and clothing. He appeared agitated and gave
no clear explanation for his condition. Now police believed this
passenger could be the same man seen earlier at the terminus.
The only problem was no one could identify him.
Speaker 2 (28:37):
Well, that definitely makes sense, but it also really doesn't,
because who the hell is this guy? Well?
Speaker 1 (28:43):
What makes sense and what doesn't? What do you mean exactly?
Speaker 2 (28:45):
It makes sense that there was someone odd hanging around, Okay, yeah,
and then you know, however, much time afterwards, someone he
got picked up with like blood on.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
Him forty seven minutes.
Speaker 2 (28:57):
Yeah, so n three kilometers or whatever her away, so
it must then it makes sense that this would be
like the same person.
Speaker 1 (29:04):
It does. So if you have an individual hanging around
an area, then someone getting killed in that area, then
someone's seen leaving that area with blood on them. It
seems to all add.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Up, and it's well, I'm just thinking, like, it's really
too bad. But I mean, even nowadays, someone could potentially
well no, I think taxis probably have cameras of sorts
in them, recording, so yeah, he probably wouldn't be able
to get away with it so much. But I was
just thinking someone nowadays get picked up, pays with cash
or whatever. Then you know, maybe they could get away
(29:34):
with this, but probably not either.
Speaker 1 (29:37):
Hard to say.
Speaker 2 (29:38):
Hmm, oh my gosh, Okay, this doesn't make any sense.
Who the hell is this guy?
Speaker 1 (29:43):
Now? For weeks after the murder, detectives worked under the
assumption that Betty Shanks had been attacked by a stranger,
someone who didn't know her, someone who wore a brown
suit and saw an opportunity and acted without warning. But
then during the aforementioned inquest in February of nineteen fifty three,
a detail merged that quietly unsettled that theory. Betty's supervisor,
(30:05):
John Doocy, testified that two days before her death, Betty
had received a telephone call at work, one that visibly
upset her.
Speaker 2 (30:16):
Okay, here we go.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
According to John, the call came from an unknown male,
but he didn't know what he said, only that when
Betty put the phone down, she was shaken, noticeably different
from her usual calm, focused self quote. She was not
her normal self after that call end quote. This was
the first time investigators actually heard anything suggesting that Betty
(30:40):
may have been unsettled before the night she died. Up
until then, everything seemed aokay, her typical routine and happiness.
Police immediately tried to reconstruct that call, who placed it,
where it came from, whether it was threatening, familiar, or
simply unwanted, But in nineteen fifty two, tracing phone calls
was limited at best. There was no recordings or call
(31:02):
her ID or any sort of reliable way to identify
the voice on the other end of the line. All
detectives could confirm was that this call had happened, and
then it had affected her.
Speaker 2 (31:14):
Now.
Speaker 1 (31:14):
The revelation forced police to consider a new possibility that
someone may have been thinking about Betty before that Friday night,
that someone who knew her name and felt entitled enough
to contact her directly may have been watching her. That
didn't mean Betty knew her killer, though, but it did
raise the possibility that the attack wasn't entirely random.
Speaker 2 (31:36):
Well, I'm just sitting here thinking too that maybe she
was into something that no one knew of, or something
a little bit dangerous of sorts.
Speaker 1 (31:45):
But how what she's at work, she's at school, then
she's at home.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Well, someone knew to call her, right, so knew her
and wasn't happy with her, So how would she have
made them unhappy?
Speaker 1 (31:59):
But people can be unhe with you for reasons that
you do not have control over. Just because you pissed
someone off doesn't mean you did something to piss them off.
Just my existence pisses some people off.
Speaker 2 (32:10):
I know that that's very true.
Speaker 1 (32:12):
I guess maybe her winning the lottery, maybe her being
a woman going to post secondary in an era like this, she.
Speaker 2 (32:21):
Might have taken an opportunity from a man someone believed right, or.
Speaker 1 (32:24):
Maybe someone had an infactuation with her, or maybe it
was a colleague who was threatened by her. We don't know.
There's many possibilities that she had no control over that
she did not go out of her way to construct
that could have resulted in this scenario.
Speaker 2 (32:40):
Hm hmmm, okay, Yeah, if only you could just know
what was said on that line, Hey, it would make
a lot of things easier.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
Yeah. Now, as time went on, investigators did all they
could to try and put all the pieces of the
puzzle together. They went through all the details and evidence
they could, and you have to try and find a breakthrough.
And among all the things recorded at the crime scene,
one detail did continue to stand out to them, and
in fact, it almost was mocking the police because no
one could explain why this detail was there. You see,
(33:09):
on Betty Shank's forehead, they found a strange pattern imprint.
It wasn't a bruise or a cut or a scrape.
Investigators described it as a distinct, dotted or textured mark,
like likely pressed into the skin during the attack. It
was photographed, it was measured and noted repeatedly in reports.
But it was a problem because the mark didn't match.
(33:31):
It didn't match the fence, it didn't match the ground,
It didn't clearly resemble a hand, fist or piece of
debris or anything whatever caused it had come into forceful
contact with Betty's forehead during the assault, likely while she
was being overpowered, and left this imprint so early on,
some detectives thought it might be meaningless. You know, injuries
(33:52):
and violent struggles can can occur in unexpected ways from
unexpected sources, maybe a rock pressed into her head a
certain weird way, for example. But journalists who saw the photos, well,
they weren't convinced. One of them was Ken Blanche, a
veteran crime reporter who'd been among the first at the
scene in nineteen fifty two. Ken believed that the imprint
(34:15):
resembled the pattern left by a military canvas gator, the
type of protective leg covering worn by soldiers at the time,
with straps over the lower leg and over the boot.
It was a very compelling idea. During that time, the
Korean War was underway and Brisbane was full of servicemen
and soldiers in uniform who were you know, it was
(34:35):
a very common sight on trams, streets and pubs. If
that mark came from a gator, it suggested the attacker
wasn't necessarily just strong, but potentially could have had military
training to boot, but not everyone agreed with this theory.
Other investigators pointed out that the pattern wasn't an exact match. Similar, yes,
(34:58):
but not identical. Print could have come from a boot's soul,
or a textured object pressing down during the chaos of
the attack, or something no one had thought to compare
it to. Still, the mark refused to fade from this case.
It appeared in newspaper articles, resurface during the inquest, It
lingered in police files long after any sort of leads
(35:18):
dried up, and over time it became less about what
it proved and more about what it might suggest military involvement,
a uniformed attacker, someone accustomed to violence, or just another
coincidence that investigators desperately wanted to mean something. As the
weeks turned into months and then into years, the murder
(35:38):
of Betty Shanks began to attract something investigators dreaded almost
as much as silence. False confessions. Men started coming forward
claiming responsibility for the crime. Some were local, others were
from interstate areas, and a few were already in custody
for unrelated offenses. Several confessed late in life offering death
(36:01):
bed admissions that promised closure, Yet every single one of
them fell apart under scrutiny. Some couldn't place themselves in
Brisbane at the time. Others described details that didn't match
the crime scene. A few even admitted that they had
fabricated their story after reading newspaper articles or hearing radio broadcasts.
In some cases, police concluded that men were seeking attention.
(36:22):
In others, they believed that the confessions came from people
struggling with mental illness or guilt over unrelated acts, or
perhaps a desire to attach themselves to a notorious crime.
But by the end of the first decade, at least
seven men had formally confessed to killing Betty Shanks, and
none of them were linked or charged.
Speaker 2 (36:40):
Oh that is so many. That is just so bizarre
to me, people who are admitting to crimes that they
do not commit. I mean, I get like the mental health,
I guess, or they want the popularity, But what a
waste of resources and time and.
Speaker 1 (36:54):
Just yeah, each one of these confessions is it's draining time, energy,
and honestly momentum from a potential investigation that could actually
solve it. Absolutely because they have to go check alibis, interviews, witnesses,
all this, re examine physical evidence. There's so much that
goes through this and it really hinders the case.
Speaker 2 (37:13):
Well, and I don't know too if the family is
made aware of this too, and then they're they're thinking
like the killer's caught when really they're not.
Speaker 1 (37:21):
Yeah, it's bad to say that.
Speaker 2 (37:23):
If that's the case, that is like devastating to them.
Speaker 1 (37:26):
And all the while the real trails growing colder. Now.
Tips did come in, but few of them led anywhere,
and as time passed with no arrests, the investigation entered
a new phase, with physical evidence exhausted and witnesses offering
no new information that's actually legitimate. Detectives were forced to
confront a very difficult reality. They still did not understand
(37:49):
why Betty Shanks had been attacked, and one of the
first theories to gain traction was mistaken identity. Police learned
that a local doctor's receptionist regularly walked the same streets
at a similar time of night and carried keys to
where many drugs were stored. Investigators considered the possibility that
(38:10):
someone had been waiting for her and attacked Betty instead
by accident. The idea explained the apparent ambush the precise timing,
but there was no evidence that the receptionists had been targeted,
nor any proof that the killer knew her schedule, so
it didn't really go anywhere. Another theory emerged after a
local doctor died by suicide just two days after Betty
(38:32):
was murdered. The timing raised eyebrows and fueled public speculation,
and rumors spread that he may have known Betty or
harbored unwonted feelings towards her for a brief period. Some
believed guilt had driven him to take his own life,
but police again found no link between the doctor and Betty.
No witnesses placed him in Graange that night, no evidence
(38:53):
tied him to the crime. He was eventually ruled out,
though the rumor lingered for years now, the military connection
was something that remained a very persistent undercurrent in this case.
The unusual patterned imprint on Betty's forehead led some investigators
and journalists to suggest it may have been caused by
a military gaiter or equipment worn by soldiers. With Brisbane
(39:13):
hosting the large number of servicemen during the Korean War,
the theory seemed very plausible. However, no soldier was ever identified,
and no military record produced a suspect who could be
placed at the scene. But most of all, that taxi
driver who reported picking up a well dressed man with
blood in his face and clothing less than an hour
after Betty's watch had stopped. This remained the largest piece
(39:37):
in the story, and it's less a theory and more
a loose end which honestly could fall under any one
of the previous theories. The pick up occurred a short
distance from the murder scene, and police believed this man
was likely the same individual witness seen pacing the Grannge
Tramp terminal earlier that night, but his identity well never
confirmed and never found. And with each theory accounting for
(39:59):
part of the time timeline, but they all each failed
to explain the whole picture. There's no single narrative that
seemed to fit every known fact, and as years passed,
while theories multiplied while certainty dwindled, for nearly half a century,
the murder of Betty Shanks existed as a very cold case.
But then in the late nineteen nineties, that silence was
(40:23):
broken by a claim so personal and disturbing that it
reignited public interest almost overnight. In nineteen ninety nine, a
woman named Dishe Birtles came forward with an allegation that
stunned investigators and the public alike. See. She claimed that
her father, Eric Sterry, was responsible for Betty's murder. Eric
(40:48):
just So happened to be a former soldier and worked
as a locksmith for the Queensland government. According to Ditsch,
he had become obsessed with Betty after changing the locks
at her parents' home. He believed he developed a very
romantic feeling towards her, feelings that well were not returned.
In her account, rejection triggered a very violent response. Deets
(41:11):
described her father as an extremely violent man. She said
she had endured years of abuse at his hands, which
included frequent beatings and sexual assault. She told police that
his violence was unpredictable, that he could shift from calm
to enraged without warning, and that she lived in constant
fear throughout her childhood. She also claimed that on the
(41:33):
night that Betty was murdered, her father had returned home late,
behaving strangely, and according to her, he later burned his
clothes and ordered her to clean his shoes. Carefully paying
particular attention to the grooves along the souls. Now, at
the time she was young, didn't understand why, but years
(41:54):
later she believed what she was cleaning was blood from
his shoes.
Speaker 2 (41:58):
Oh yeah, that is ridiculously suspicious.
Speaker 1 (42:02):
Now Dish also said that her father kept a photograph
of Betty Shanks in a family photo album, and he
had done so for decades, with words written on the
back that read, quote Betty Thompson Shanks murdered nineteen fifty
two end quote.
Speaker 2 (42:16):
Oh gosh.
Speaker 1 (42:17):
She believed he kept it as a very personal reminder,
or perhaps even a trophy, of the crime that he committed.
Now his backstory, Eric's backstory it raised further red flags.
His military medical records described him as suffering from severe anxiety,
impulsive behavior, blackouts, and violent tendencies. Two psychiatrists, in fact,
(42:42):
had assessed him as potentially psychotic and dangerous. Not to mention,
he even had a documented history of domestic violence, including
police call outs earlier in nineteen fifty two. Now Dish
also claimed she tried to tell police about this year's
earlier in when she was just sixteen, she reported her
(43:03):
father's abuse and told officers she feared he would kill
her the same way he had killed Betty Shanks, and
according to her, she was simply dismissed. She attempted again
in the early nineteen nineties, encouraged by a counselor, but
received little follow up. By the time her story actually
became public, Eric Sterry had already been dead for two years.
(43:27):
Police reviewed her claims but ultimately concluded there was nothing
they could verify. Potential witnesses were gone, physical evidence was
decades old, and any opportunity to question Eric directly had
passed since well, he's now dead. Officials and the public's
reaction to all of this was quite divided. Some believe
that Detch was finally naming the killer, but others questioned
(43:50):
whether memory, trauma and the time had blurred the truth.
All we know is without proof though that this case well,
it just simply couldn't move forward regardless. By the early
two thousands, the murder of Betty Shanks was no longer
just a cold case. It was part of Queensland's history.
Generations of detectives had come and gone, each inheriting the
(44:12):
same box of evidence, the same unanswered questions, and the
same narrow window of time in which everything had gone wrong,
But what had changed was science. Advances in forensic technology
gave investigators something Earlier detectives never had the possibility that
microscopic traces left behind in nineteen fifty two might actually
(44:34):
still hold answers. Hair, skin, cells, blood, things that were
once invisible or unusable could now, in theory, identify a killer.
Cold case teams reviewed the evidence again, this time through
modern lens. Items you know had once been cataloged and
set aside were now being reexamined. Photographs were studied with
(44:56):
higher resolution. Old witness statements were re read with fresh eyes,
looking for inconsistencies or overlooked details, and there was renewed
focus on the idea that Betty had fought back to now.
She had been wearing silk gloves that night, which made
it very difficult to land any sort of defensive retaliation,
but investigators believe it was still possible she could have
(45:18):
scratched or grabbed her attacker during the struggle, and if
she did, even briefly, there was a chance she took
something with her some hair, some skin under her fingernails,
a smear of blood not her own. The challenge, however,
it was still time. Evidence handling in nineteen fifty two
was not what it was today. DNA was not preserved
(45:40):
intentionally because no one knew it would matter. Some items
were lost, others were contaminated, some simply degraded beyond usefulness.
Even when testing was possible, while results often came back inconclusive,
police also revisited old persons of interest. Some had already died,
others could no longer be located. In at least one case,
(46:03):
DNA comparisons were attempted decades later, but ruled out suspects
rather than identifying anyone. Despite these obstacles, investigators never fully
closed the door on Betty's case. Queensland Police have repeatedly
stated that Betty shanks murder remains an active cold case.
(46:23):
The fifty thousand dollars reward they put out still stands,
and authorities continue to believe that someone somewhere knows what happened,
or know something something small that could finally tip this
case forward. More than seventy years have passed and the
murder case of Betty Shanks is still ongoing. Yet no
(46:44):
one has ever been able to say with certainty why
Betty was attacked that night she was not robbed, she
was not sexually assaulted. For all we know, she was
not known to be in a relationship, nor did she
have any enemies. Nothing in her routine suggested risk, and
yet within minutes of stepping off that tram, she was
fighting for her life. The question of whether Betty was
(47:05):
targeted or simply crossed paths with the wrong person at
the wrong moment it remains unknown. The mysterious phone call
due days earlier. While it lingers as one of the
most unsettling details in the case, it is the only
confirmed disruption to Betty's otherwise steady, predictable life. Then there's
the man in the brown suit. Multiple witnesses saw him
(47:27):
pacing at the tram terminus that night, and a taxi
driver too later described picking up a bloodied man not
far from the scene of the crime. Police believe they're
the same person, but despite appeals, reconstructions, and decades of speculation,
we still do not know the identity of that man.
Every single unanswered question we have circles back to the
(47:50):
same narrow time span, the twelve minutes between nine thirty
eight and nine fifty three PM on an otherwise ordinary
Friday night. But regardless of what we don't know, it's
important to remember what we do know. Betty Shanks was
twenty two years old. She was intelligent, ambitious, and deeply
(48:14):
connected to her family. She had completed a university degree
at a time when higher education for women was still
so rare, and she was steadily carving out a career
in the public service. She lived at home, not out
of necessity but practicality, saving money, helping her parents, and
planning for a future that was still unfolding. Those who
(48:37):
knew her described her as kind, generous, and dependable. She
enjoyed going to the cinema, studying, and spending time with friends.
She had goals, she had momentum, and nothing about her
life suggested that she was nearing an abrupt end. In
the months before her death, Betty used her lottery winnings
not for extravagance but for her own family. She paid
(49:00):
off the mortgage of her parents home, she helped improve
the house that she grew up in, and she invested
in her own health. It was a quiet generosity that
reflected who she was, thoughtful, grounded, and forward looking. Everything
about who she was as a kind person is what
this season of Christmas is actually about now. This story
(49:25):
doesn't actually have anything to do with Christmas through the holidays,
but I did want to tell this story of Betty
Shank today because she embodies so much of what people
lose sight of in today's age. Betty, in all honesty,
can teach each and every single one of us something,
and in honor of her, I think it would be
nice if we try and learn from her to be
(49:46):
a bit kinder, to be a little less greedy, and
to better ourselves, not because it's required, but because we
want to. And the world could be a little better
because of it. For Betty's family, in there loss, there
was no trial or conviction. Her parents lived out the
rest of their lives without knowing who killed their daughter
(50:06):
or why. And for investigators, the case remains unfinished. The
reward still stands, the file is still open, and until
something changes in the case, Betty Shanks is remembered not
just as a victim of one of Queensland's oldest and
most unsolved murders in history, but instead also as a
young woman whose life mattered and still does. Her story
(50:31):
endures because it asks something of us, not as investigators,
but as people. It asks us to slow down, look
beyond ourselves, and to choose generosity over excess, kindness over convenience,
and empathy over indifference, not because it's the season that
(50:52):
demands it, but because people like Betty lived that way
quietly anyways, without any applause, at a time of year
meant for reflection. Her life reminds us that small acts
of kindness and care matter, that how we treat others,
even when no one is watching, leaves a mark far
(51:12):
more lasting than anything anyone can buy or accumulate. Somewhere,
the truth of those twelve minutes still exist. But even
before that truth may ever be found, the name Betty
Shanks still brightens the world, even though her own light
has gone out. And that's the story of Betty Shanks.
Speaker 2 (51:38):
Well, shit, Ben, what that's like about to make me cry? Huh?
I feel like I'm obsessed with Betty, Like I love her.
Speaker 1 (51:48):
She's our badass of the day. For sure. She was
a very inspiring individual. She was very caring, went above
and beyond when she didn't have to, and she was
taken away far too by an absolute monster in the dark.
Speaker 2 (52:03):
Yeah at twenty two years old. Yeah, that is just
such a young life, and I just fricking hate saying this,
but I feel like, seventy years later, like what are
they going to find? Or you know, like it, Like
you had said earlier, if this had happened today, it
would be far easier probably to go about trying to
(52:23):
solve this. But the fact that it happened in nineteen
fifty two is no help.
Speaker 1 (52:28):
Well, we can say that about almost any case, any
older case is going to be easier to solve today
if it happened today rather than you know, fifty, seventy,
eighty whatever years ago. But when you look at it
and you say, Okay, if only we had that knowledge
back then, because we have a bloody handprint, you know,
we have impressions from boots or things like that. If
(52:50):
only we knew not even to do the testing, but
to preserve it properly, that could make all the difference.
And it's unfortunate that in this case so far, nothing's
been preserved or done well enough to find who did
it today.
Speaker 2 (53:07):
I mean, that's so long ago. The theories. Okay, at first,
when you were like this was a mistaken identity kind
of thing, I was like, oh my gosh, that makes
so much sense. But then there is that phone call,
right that is, if there wasn't that phone call, I
feel like that would it would just be like, yeah,
like really just shitty, wrong place, the wrong time kind
of thing.
Speaker 1 (53:27):
But what if that phone call was maybe it was
her dad, Maybe they had a fight earlier that day,
the dad phoned at work. I just got to say,
you know what, you pissed me off when you did this,
and it upset Betty.
Speaker 2 (53:39):
Yeah, it could have been really nothing.
Speaker 1 (53:41):
It could have been And then you know what, maybe
the dad forgot about it or whoever, and when they
talked about this phone call and inquired about it, the
dad doesn't remember calling her. And it could be a
mistaken identity in the phone call. Maybe it's even a
wrong number, or maybe it's someone who's calling the company,
not Betty and going off just so happens to be
(54:01):
Betty that they ended up getting on the line with.
Maybe it wasn't a targeted phone call after all.
Speaker 2 (54:07):
Yeah, gosh. But also the person that had her picture
in a photo album is very alarming.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
Yeah, I have a feeling that was the dude. There
is a lot that lines up there.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
And it's like, if only you'd listen to this daughter
in nineteen sixty then, or even early or ninebers or whatever,
while he was still alive. I mean something, maybe at
that point he would have been like, yeah, that was me.
Speaker 1 (54:33):
Potentially, probably not, but maybe who knows.
Speaker 2 (54:36):
But anyway, enough about all these these ridiculous men that
decided to friggin dim her life far too early. The
story is about her and how awesome she is.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
So yeah, she's our badass of the day one hundred
and ten percent. I think we could all be a
little bit more like Betty.
Speaker 2 (54:54):
No kidding, Well, yeah, the fact that she won all
this like who wins that kind of money and it
almost goes unnoticeable, really, you know when you do things
like pay off your your parents' mortgage. Because she could
have just went and gone and bought her own house.
That's true, very easily, right, So it's just like, holy crap,
she just and she made other people's lives be more
(55:15):
affected than her own with this money, which is saying
a lot that's true.
Speaker 1 (55:19):
So yeah, anyways, sorry for throwing an unsolved case that
you hear just before Christmas.
Speaker 2 (55:26):
And very Christmas to us.
Speaker 1 (55:28):
When I was telling Nicole before we turn the MIC's
on that I was doing an unsolved case. She's like, oh,
thanks for the Christmas present, throwing me an unsolved case.
I was like, gee, but there's a reason I want
to talk about Betty for a reason. She deserves it.
Speaker 2 (55:41):
So yeah, we'll forgive you eventually, Ben eventually.
Speaker 1 (55:46):
Well, as a reminder, we're not gonna be throwing out
an episode this Friday, so we'll see you guys in
a week's time next Tuesday. In the meantime, hopefully you
guys have a great Christmas holiday. If you don't celebrate
any of that, you know what, I just hope you,
hope you have a week I hope you're doing great,
and we'll see you in a week's time and until
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Then, stay wicked.
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