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004 - The Sydney Shark Arm Murder · Who Did What Now With Katie Charlwood

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: You're listening to an airwave media podcast. Hi, and welcome
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: back to Hooded What Now, the history podcast with me
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Katie Charlwood, your host, lover of sea wenches and reader
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: of books. Ah. Here we are. We are officially in
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: the fest of season. Yes, yes, yes, yes yes. My
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: tree has been up for weeks because it's twenty twenty
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  Speaker 1: and time is an illusion this year, so I thought,
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: let's get into this season. The season of Christmas now
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  Speaker 1: is it has become? And what gets you when the
• 0:48
  Speaker 1: Christmas spirit more than a mysterious murder or two in
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  Speaker 1: Australia involving vintage villain, surprising schemes and of course a
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  Speaker 1: shark or two. Let's dive in, dive dive in. No oh, okay, okay,
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  Speaker 1: So yeah, today we're gonna talk about the shark arm
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  Speaker 1: murder of nineteen thirty five. Dun, dun, dun. Let's get
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  Speaker 1: right into it. I may my mispronounced names, by the way,
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: I should probably mention that, but like you know me,
• 1:23
  Speaker 1: at this point, I'm probably gonna mispronounce a bunch of stuff.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: It's okay. Tweet me at hooded What Night Pod. You
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: can also email me at hooded what Now pod at
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: gmail dot com and most on Instagram. So yeah, and TikTok,
• 1:36
  Speaker 1: I'm everywhere. Sorry. Okay, back back to It's the seventeenth
• 1:40
  Speaker 1: of April nineteen thirty five and a fisherman is off
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  Speaker 1: the coast of Cookie Beach in Sydney, Australia and he
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  Speaker 1: manages to hook the small shark, which is nice but
• 1:48
  Speaker 1: then should have anarky cartoon or that that's scene in
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: the Phantom Menace was always a big girl fish. A
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: four foot tiger shark swallows the smaller shark. Any thinks one, obviously,
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: so he decides to take the larger shark, which is
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: uneaten and decidedly more alive, to the Cookie Aquarium Baths
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: because you think it'll be a cool attraction for the
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: following and Zach Day weekend. Now, the Cookie Aquarium Baths
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  Speaker 1: it could basically hold I think somewhere between twelve hundred
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: and fourteen hundred people and it'd sort of fallen out
• 2:21
  Speaker 1: of fashion. But they thought this will be a really
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  Speaker 1: good attraction. It'll bring people in. So Anzac Day is
• 2:27
  Speaker 1: a day of remembrance in Australia and New Zealand and
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: it commemorates all those who died in wars and conflicts
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: and peacekeeping operations. So at this point mainly it was
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  Speaker 1: for people who had passed in things like World War One,
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  Speaker 1: more so AnyWho. At this time, sharks were basically public
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  Speaker 1: enemy number one, kind of like the opposite of jaws. Now,
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  Speaker 1: I just imagine an old time he wanted poster and like,
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  Speaker 1: have you seen the shark? If so, run away, swim away,
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  Speaker 1: get away, avoid sharks and the jets. I'm sorry, I'm
• 3:03
  Speaker 1: not sorry. So in February March of that year, three
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  Speaker 1: men had already been attacked slash killed, slash chomped by
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  Speaker 1: sharks like you know. And they even had like bounty
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  Speaker 1: hunters to Red Sydney of the demons of the sea.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: So the Cookie aquarium baths. They were like, okay, this
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: real life Rubie Roundhouse killer of men would be just
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: the spectacle the crows would want to see. And they did.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: They packed the place out. So the tiger shark do
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: do do do do? Is loving at large, swimming about
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  Speaker 1: in his swimming about in his pool, reveling no doubt
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  Speaker 1: in his new found fame. He gets the run of
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the pool. He's eating rather voraciously up until the twenty
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  Speaker 1: fifth of April, and shit starts to get weird. On
• 3:59
  Speaker 1: Anzac Day, when the places fully packed to the brim,
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  Speaker 1: the shark is like moving slowly banging into the side
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  Speaker 1: of the pool. It's being fairly disorientated, you know. And
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  Speaker 1: while a huge group of spectators watch, the shark starts
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  Speaker 1: to vomit up this dark, sort of billious fluid. It's
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  Speaker 1: just like this, and it's like it chucks up a
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  Speaker 1: rat and a bird. And then, to the complete shock
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  Speaker 1: and horror of the audience, a human arm fingers two elbow.
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  Speaker 1: I believe initially they think, oh, well, this is probably
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  Speaker 1: just an accident, another tragic death of a poor young
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  Speaker 1: man who thought swimming in shark infested waters was a
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  Speaker 1: tip top idea. Alas, this was not the case. Upon
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  Speaker 1: closer inspection, it was clear that the arm was severed
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  Speaker 1: with a sharp implement of some kind, but too quickly
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  Speaker 1: to being a surgical procedure, so it was definitely hacked
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  Speaker 1: son or chopped off. It was not professionally done. Well,
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  Speaker 1: that's arguable.
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  Speaker 2: With how like sharks have a pretty acidic stomach, regarding
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  Speaker 2: how acidic the shark's gas produces are, they were able
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  Speaker 2: to determine that the arm had been consumed between eight
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  Speaker 2: to eighteen days. So what they think happened is that
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  Speaker 2: the smaller shark had consumed the arm before the bigger
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  Speaker 2: shark chopped on it, so effectively, this was just before
• 5:43
  Speaker 2: at the latest, this would be just before the shark
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  Speaker 2: was caught, so clearly this is a murder. Luckily, the
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  Speaker 2: arm had a pretty distinctive tattoo of two boxer sparring
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  Speaker 2: on the forearm. This was so lucky in fact, that
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  Speaker 2: after seeing a report in a Sydney newspaper, I think
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: it was The Sydney Sydney Truth. Yes, after seeing a
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  Speaker 2: report in it, the police get a phone call from
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  Speaker 2: Edwin Smith who was like, yeah, my brother James Smith.
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  Speaker 1: And his friends calling. Jim has been missing for a
• 6:17
  Speaker 1: couple of weeks and that does seem to be his arm. Again,
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  Speaker 1: the arm was so well preserved they were actually able
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  Speaker 1: to get fingerprints from it, so the police were able
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  Speaker 1: to confirm that the arm had in fact previously belonged
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  Speaker 1: to one Jim Smith. Now let me tell you to Jim.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: Jim was a bankrupt builder, xboxer, X bookie and a
• 6:40
  Speaker 1: small time criminal with a record of minor convictions. He
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: wasn't quite in the underworld, but he wasn't exactly. Yeah,
• 6:49
  Speaker 1: he wasn't exactly. He wasn't quite in the underworld. He
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: wasn't exactly rubbing shoulders with the criminal elite. He was
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: more say underworld adjacent as far as the complice were concerned,
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: and he was involved in illegal gambling rings and kind
• 7:04
  Speaker 1: of stuff like that was happening at the time. So
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  Speaker 1: the police start digging and they discovered that Jim Smith
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: had last been seen with his longtime buddy and expert
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  Speaker 1: forger Patrick Brady. Now, Brady and Smith had been seen
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  Speaker 1: drinking at the Cessa hotel in Cronula Crnulla, I'm going
• 7:25
  Speaker 1: to go with Cronulla and Crnula before returning to a
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: cottage on Gonnamatta Bay that Brady had been renting. I
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: hope these names are pronounced correctly anyway. The next morning,
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Patrick Brady gets a taxi Cronulla Cabby if you will,
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  Speaker 1: who takes him all the way to North Sydney and
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  Speaker 1: drops him right outside the door of Cough businessman Reginald
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  Speaker 1: Lloyd Holmes. The Cabby said that Brady was like, oh, disheveled,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: and acting weird and shaky and like as if someone
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: was following him. And he also would not take his
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: hand out of his pocket. He said it was like
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: he was holding something in it in this like really
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  Speaker 1: deep pocket. Suspicious. Don't be suspicious. He's been suspicious. He's
• 8:15
  Speaker 1: been suspicious. Here's being in suspicious. Okay. So Reginald Lloyd Holmes,
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  Speaker 1: a seemingly respectable entrepreneur, was nothing of the sort. He
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: was in charge of a smuggling ring using speedboats in
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: the like that were actually built in Home's own boat
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: building business. What is this good to do with the
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: severed army, ask Well, turns out our good pal Gym
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  Speaker 1: was a seasonal employee of mister Reginald Lloyd Homes, often
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  Speaker 1: driving the speedboats during the smuggling jobs. Okay, so this
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: is nineteen thirty five, so this is just you're gonna remember.
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: We're in the past. Okay. So what they would do
• 8:54
  Speaker 1: is they would have packages and the packages would float
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  Speaker 1: on top of the water. They dump them out, they'd
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  Speaker 1: float on top of the water, and Smith would go
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  Speaker 1: driving around in the speedboat and start picking up the packages.
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  Speaker 1: That's it. That's as complicated as it was. And then
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: after you know they've been doing this bit for a while,
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  Speaker 1: they start a scheme and they bring Patrick Brady into
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  Speaker 1: the fold. They need him because again he's an expert forger.
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  Speaker 1: So I think it was some sort of insurance scam
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  Speaker 1: they were trying to flog. And yeah, so allegedly Smith
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  Speaker 1: and Holmes have a falling out over a failed insurance scam.
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  Speaker 1: There may have been some blackmail on Smith's part involved,
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  Speaker 1: and the police, if nothing else, are highly suspicious. So
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  Speaker 1: Brady and Holmes are taken in for questioning. And firstly,
• 9:44
  Speaker 1: everything they have is circumstantial. They don't have enough evidence.
• 9:47
  Speaker 1: And secondly, Holmes is all Brady who new telegram? Who
• 9:54
  Speaker 1: is So weeks go by, and just when the case
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  Speaker 1: hits an apparent dead end, mister Reginald Lloyd ho comes
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  Speaker 1: crashing through it on a speedboat. On the twentieth of
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: May nineteen thirty five. Homes speeds out of his boat
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  Speaker 1: jen into the harbor on one of his very fast,
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  Speaker 1: very special speedboats. He should sit and see. So he's
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: there out in the bay. He pulls out a pistol
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  Speaker 1: and he attempts to die by suicide, and this doesn't
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  Speaker 1: quite work, so he shoots himself in the head, plummets
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: into the water, but he's not dead and fair enoughs
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  Speaker 1: he's gone full resputing here. So he falls into the
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  Speaker 1: water and in a crazy random happen stands a rope
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  Speaker 1: from the boat catches around his wrist and it prevents
• 10:33
  Speaker 1: him from drowning and from landing in the water. It
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  Speaker 1: revives him. It shocks him and revives him, and he
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  Speaker 1: manages to scramble back on board the boat. And then
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  Speaker 1: I don't know, like the water Sea Police, maybe it's
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: the regular police who have a boat. I'm assuming they
• 10:49
  Speaker 1: have boat with something anyway, Coastguard maybe Anyway, they were
• 10:54
  Speaker 1: basically alerted to this event and they take chase. So
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  Speaker 1: they chase this man for four hours four hours, and
• 11:03
  Speaker 1: they go out past Circular Key, saw him making it
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: through all the midmorning ferry traffic. I mean, it's not
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: a quiet bay. How they go, They go down right
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  Speaker 1: down Sydney Harbor and finally, when he's just a rind
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  Speaker 1: bit where the Sydney Heads are, he gives up. He
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  Speaker 1: just stops and he's like, all right, I give myself up.
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  Speaker 1: Let's let's do this. And so my chum's the plot Thickens.
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  Speaker 1: Holmes ends up singing like a damn canary. He's got names,
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: he's got places, he's got dates, and he was ready
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  Speaker 1: to squawk on Brady. So Holmes claims that Brady had
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: killed Smith and dismembered him, and he gave him a
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: quote unquote Sydney send off, and effectively this is putting
• 11:50
  Speaker 1: body in a trunk and then dumping it into goot
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: Amana Bay. He then claimed that Patrick Brady showed up
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: at his house and showed him Jim's very very distinct
• 12:00
  Speaker 1: tattooed arm as proof that he had dismembered him and
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: chucked him in and then threatened him, demanding five hundred
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  Speaker 1: pounds five hundred pounds to keep quiet about the whole
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: affair now before the official inquest into Jim Smith's death
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: takes place, the day before, Reggie good oldready there he
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  Speaker 1: goes and withdraws five hundred pounds. Oh yeah.
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  Speaker 3: So as he's given up and he's squawking on Brady,
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: he's like, yeah, as he's as he's squawking on Brady,
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  Speaker 3: he's like when he is caught and he gives himself
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  Speaker 3: up to the police on the boat, he says something
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: along that I don't know who did it, but if
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: you give me.
• 12:48
  Speaker 1: A day, I'll go get the bastard. I'm paraphrasing. He
• 12:52
  Speaker 1: basically said, I don't know who did it, but if
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: you want AMMI go deal with him AnyWho. The day
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: before the inquest, Reggie withdraws five hundred pounds, which is
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: in today's money is around thirty six thousand pounds forty
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: thousand euro sixty five thousand Australian dollar That so, in
• 13:13
  Speaker 1: today's money, I'm going to go around the world. Here,
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: I'm going to do the ones that I know, okay.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: So five hundred pounds in nineteen thirty five would have
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: been thirty six thousand pounds today forty thousand euro, sixty
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: five thousand Australian dollars and forty eight thousand American dollars. Okay,
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: So he takes out the five hundred and he tells
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: his wife later that evening that he has to meet someone,
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: and off he goes. So at one twenty am, mere
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: hours before the inquest, on the twelfth of June, holmes
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: car was found at the deserted docks at Dollars Point,
• 13:55
  Speaker 1: slumped over the steering wheel, slumped over the steering wheel
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  Speaker 1: of his car. Was the body of mister Reginald Lloyd Holmes,
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: so PARKD and Hixon Road under the Harbor Bridge. There
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: he lay with three bullet wounds in his chest. Some
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: people theorized that this was an elaborate suicide, with Holmes
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: taking hit on himself. But yeah, it's it's more likely
• 14:18
  Speaker 1: that the trial only lasts two days because it doesn't
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: have any relevant witnesses and the case against Patrick Brady
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: is so circumstantial that the case just crumbles. He gets
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: to stroll out of court, probably doing whatever dance was
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: popular at the time. I'm assuming what happened between the
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: Charleston and the jive the American swing? Was it swing anyway?
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: One of the things they said, one of the things
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: they said was like, we can't pray this was a
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: murder because we only have the arm. We don't have
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: the rest of the body. So how do we know
• 14:56
  Speaker 1: he's actually dead, not just out there chilling out with
• 14:59
  Speaker 1: one arm. So, I mean, nineteen thirty five, I know
• 15:05
  Speaker 1: amputations happened, but it wasn't a surgical one. I feel
• 15:10
  Speaker 1: like it's fine, No, it's fine, it's sine And after this.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: After this, more information comes out and my chums, how
• 15:21
  Speaker 1: the plot thickens. As it turns out our dear friend
• 15:24
  Speaker 1: Jimmy Smith was a police informant, which means, you know,
• 15:29
  Speaker 1: the quote unquote rat was caught and dealt with snitches
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: get stitches or more like snitches get hacked up and
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: served to the sharks. But whatever, I just found it
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: strange if he's like an official informant and he's a
• 15:44
  Speaker 1: confidential informant or whatever, and no police officer was like, oh,
• 15:48
  Speaker 1: I know him. That can't be. That's that guy who
• 15:53
  Speaker 1: gives in FO to me. And wait, wasn't that guy
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: dubbing everybody in all right? There was also a possibility
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: of a gang war going on. Yeah, another option is
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: that he was actually killed as a result of a
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: there was a gang war going on and he was
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: just you know, ratting on the wrong guys. You know.
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: But there we go. And that is the shark arm
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: murder of nineteen thirty five. So too long didn't listen, TLDL,
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: Too long didn't listen. Small shark eats arm, Big shark
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: eats little shark. Big shark goes on display. Big shark
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: gergitate's arm conveniently recognizable, roaming arm, recognized by criminal's brother,
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: tales of intriguancieux, attempted suicide, speak boat, chase by suspect, capture, confession,
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: more murder case thrown out because one armed does not
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: a corpse make Oh. So I am now getting ready
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: for the rest of the festive season. We are mainly decorated,
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: so I'm gonna write my Christmas cards I think soon
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: and get them done. So but yeah, that's a that's
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: a fun one for all of us. But is everyone
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: getting into the festive spirit? If you have anything you
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: want to say to me, I'm on Twitter, I'm on
• 17:20
  Speaker 1: I'm on Twitter, Instagram, tektok, and I have an email
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: at twitted, whatnopod at gmail dot com. So if anything,
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: if I have if you want to send me phonetics,
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: if I mispronounced, then go ahead. It's all there. Anything
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: you want to say, you can tweet me, you can
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: instagram me. Whatever I think my day I was a
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: open if they're not sorry. I also do historical hot
• 17:47
  Speaker 1: takes in TikTok because it's fun and I have to
• 17:52
  Speaker 1: actually plum what I'm going to cook for Christmas because
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: I don't know yet. And I have realized that I
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: have far too many Christmas stuffies like I have so many,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: I've started collecting Christmas plushes and honestly, I'm not even
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: mad about it. Am I the only one who has
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: a Christmas wardrobe? Because I have a Christmas wardrobe? So
• 18:23
  Speaker 1: that's everything? And you can always message mey, tweet me
• 18:28
  Speaker 1: all that jazz. If there's anything you really really want
• 18:32
  Speaker 1: me to cover, give me an email. Should be an email,
• 18:34
  Speaker 1: let me let me know anything I any. I love people,
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: places and things from ancient times to the relatively modern day,
• 18:45
  Speaker 1: and let's talk about it. Adios a revoir of waita
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: Zen my friends, See you next time.