Dedication
To Trevor Kipling
and dedicated professionals
within the Criminal Justice System
Contents
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Chapter 1
The Butchered Boys
Chapter 2
The Search for Richard Kelvin
Chapter 3
The Evidence
Chapter 4
The Arrest of Dr Millhouse
Chapter 5
Serial Killers
Chapter 6
New Leads
Chapter 7
Bevan Spencer von Einem
Chapter 8
The Raids
Chapter 9
The Associate
Chapter 10
The Case
Chapter 11
The Alibi
Chapter 12
The Trial
Chapter 13
Additional Charges
Chapter 14
The Rumours
Chapter 15
The Family
Photo Section
Copyright
Acknowledgements
Many people assisted with the telling of this story. In particular, I thank Lee Haddon, Malcolm Howells, Tony Love, Jodie O’Brien, Des Phillips, Ivan Sarvas and Lois Snow for their encouragement and support.
Also, I acknowledge the work of M.L. Dietz, J. Douglas, J. Norris and M. Olshaker, which provided much of the detail about serial killers in Chapter 5.
Introduction
Adelaide is no different from any other city when it comes to crime. It has its traffic offenders, its petty thieves, its drug users and dealers and its murderers. But somehow Adelaide has earned a reputation for having more than its fair share of killers — and weird, sick ones at that.
That reputation has been earned by the city in spite of itself. Adelaide has always had a sense of difference about it. When it was established in the late 1830s the city was well planned: a square mile encased by a ring of parklands, with fine city parks in each of its quarters and a main central square that took the name of Victoria, Queen of England. A small river, the Torrens, created a green corridor just to the north of the main city area, separating it from another small section, North Adelaide, built on a rise and populated by the colony’s wealthiest residents. Adelaide was different, too, because while most of Australia’s cities began their histories as penal colonies, South Australia was a province of free settlers.
This heritage remained a touchstone, the city forging a name for its culture, its charm and its lifestyle. It is home to a world famous Festival of Arts. Its wide streets and historic buildings impart a sense of space and calm compared to the rush and bustle of many of Australia’s larger capitals, and its lifestyle revolves around a social charm that has come from a Mediterranean climate coupled with a focus on excellent food and wine. This is seemingly intensified by Adelaide’s place in the South Australian landscape. The city is hemmed in by successive arcs of low mountain ranges, wine growing areas and, finally, the harsh and unforgiving Outback.
With such a history and setting, Adelaide has always been thought of as a large country town. A nice place to live. The strength of its society, with great landed interests and moral obligations, built another reputation — Adelaide became known as the ‘City of Churches’.
But beneath all of these conservative and wealthy trappings, people’s lives in its expanding suburbs had all the complications experienced elsewhere. Every city has its underbelly and Adelaide was no different in that sense. In fact, author Salman Rushdie once declared after a visit to its arts festival that Adelaide was the ‘perfect setting for a . . . horror film’, and that ‘sleepy conservative towns are where those things happen’.
It is the horror of many of Adelaide’s strange murders that nowadays peppers its international name. Why, in the second half of the 20th century, did a whole string of abductions and killings target such a nice community’s children, adolescents and young adults? Why have many of these remained unsolved, leaving a bitter taste of unfinished business in the mouths of families and law agencies?
Some of these murders were no doubt single acts of madness. But some were so incomprehensibly deliberate and so heartless the psyche of the city was damaged forever. Why, people now ask, is Adelaide the home of Australia’s weirdest killers?
Unfortunately, the catalogue of murders at the centre of these questions does not shed any light on an answer.
Three of them have baffled Adelaide’s police force for close to thirty years. They remain unsolved, and detectives were powerless in a way because they simply didn’t understand the killings. They didn’t understand why they occurred or what sort of person would commit them.
Firstly, in 1966, three young children disappeared from the city’s most popular beach, Glenelg. It was Australia Day and nothing more un-Australian could have been imagined. The three children from one family, the Beaumonts, were thought to have been abducted, and after extensive searching, and many publicly shocking leads, they were never found and were presumed murdered. What remains from the case is that name — the Beaumont children — which has stuck in the minds of all South Australians as a catchphrase for the day the nicest city in Australia lost its innocence. What also remains for many is the image of an eerie identikit illustration of a thin, harmless looking man, perhaps in his 20s or 30s, who was seen lurking in the area at the time. Whatever became of him? Was he indeed the sick criminal responsible? We will never know.
Seven years later, the disappearance of two young girls from an Aussie Rules football match at the picturesque Adelaide Oval, situated on the banks of the Torrens River just a kilometre from the city’s central business district, was equally troublesome. The oval was packed with people watching their favourite winter sport when the two girls, Joanne Ratcliffe, eleven, and friend Kirsty Gordon, four, left their parents to go to a toilet within the grounds. In any proper society there shouldn’t have been a problem. The toilets were not far away, the place was crowded with similar family folk — but the two girls were never seen again.
The person responsible was never found, and all the bad memories surrounding the case of the Beaumont children came flooding back into the minds of South Australians. The places where they had always felt at home, always felt secure, where they went to enjoy their free time at the beach or at the footy, were no longer safe. More importantly, their children were no longer safe. The quiet, peaceful life they had always known had
