Latest / Real Crime with Adam Shand / New Evidence in the Beaumont Mystery | Bryan Littlely
Transcript
- 0:05Speaker 1: Approache Production.
- 0:14Speaker 2: Welcome to Real Crime and Adam Shand I'm your host.
- 0:16Speaker 2: Adam Shand The Abduction of the Beaumont Children Jane Arner
- 0:20Speaker 2: and Grant on January twenty sixth, nineteen sixty six. It's
- 0:23Speaker 2: one of the great unsolved crimes in Australian history.
- 0:26Speaker 3: Vanished from at Glenell Beach on Australia Day in nineteen
- 0:29Speaker 3: sixty six, and their disappearance remains one of Australia's most
- 0:32Speaker 3: enduring and high profile cold cases.
- 0:36Speaker 2: Year after year we hear the same list of suspects
- 0:39Speaker 2: associated with this investigation, and yet the mystery continues no
- 0:43Speaker 2: closer to resolution. People have always wanted this case solved
- 0:48Speaker 2: because at that time it really took away the innocence
- 0:51Speaker 2: of life in Australia in the mid sixties. So when
- 0:55Speaker 2: a new name pops up, it's always worth investigating. An
- 0:58Speaker 2: Adelaide journalist and podcaster Brian Littley has generated a lot
- 1:02Speaker 2: of interest in a known pedophile named Leslie Davis as
- 1:06Speaker 2: a credible suspect in the case. I'd never heard of
- 1:09Speaker 2: Davis in relation to the Beaumonts, but Brian in his
- 1:12Speaker 2: podcast Sleepers Can put Davis on Glenell Beach on Australia
- 1:17Speaker 2: Day nineteen sixty.
- 1:19Speaker 3: Six, investigators have made an unexpected discovery at the old
- 1:23Speaker 3: CASTELLOI site, a slab of hardened sand buried beneath tons
- 1:28Speaker 3: of dirt.
- 1:29Speaker 2: You can also point to other crimes committed against children
- 1:32Speaker 2: by Davis that suggests it's possible that he could have
- 1:36Speaker 2: been the culprit. Brian's agreed to share his findings with me.
- 1:40Speaker 2: Welcome to real crime, Brian. Good day, Adam, how are
- 1:43Speaker 2: you very well? Thanks thanks for coming on. How did
- 1:47Speaker 2: the name Leslie Davis turn up in your orbit?
- 1:50Speaker 1: Yeah? So it was just through doing the work.
- 1:53Speaker 3: I launched Sleepers only in August of this year, and
- 1:56Speaker 3: my idea was Sleepers was to I guess originally, I'd
- 2:00Speaker 3: come across a lot of information throughout my career as
- 2:03Speaker 3: a journalist which just never made the news papers and
- 2:05Speaker 3: never made the print for a whole heap of reasons,
- 2:08Speaker 3: but mainly because it can be really hard to stack
- 2:11Speaker 3: that up and put it out there when you're writing
- 2:13Speaker 3: for a news corporation that you really needed to stack
- 2:17Speaker 3: up those stories. So there's a lot of things that
- 2:19Speaker 3: weren't ever reported or sort of hit the floor, because
- 2:23Speaker 3: stories have to be written to link and all sorts
- 2:25Speaker 3: of things. The details I wanted to share, I wanted
- 2:29Speaker 3: to share them raw and as if it was being
- 2:31Speaker 3: told for the first time, or when it was told
- 2:33Speaker 3: for the first time. So I went about creating a
- 2:35Speaker 3: podcast that would put me in a room with witnesses
- 2:39Speaker 3: or victims, people that had a story to tell that
- 2:42Speaker 3: I knew that there's some substance to it, and I
- 2:45Speaker 3: knew that there were links to least investigations or actual
- 2:48Speaker 3: outcomes of people going to jail over these crimes.
- 2:51Speaker 1: So these of the behind the scenes type stories.
- 2:54Speaker 3: I started that process in August, and just a few
- 2:57Speaker 3: episodes in I was contacted by Pain Davis. It happens
- 3:02Speaker 3: to be a person that my family knew and grew
- 3:04Speaker 3: up in the same as me and as around about
- 3:06Speaker 3: the same age as. He compacted me and said, hey,
- 3:09Speaker 3: we've always had this suspicion about our uncle. There's anyway
- 3:14Speaker 3: Cain came on the show. I said, stop stop there,
- 3:16Speaker 3: I don't want to hear anymore. Kane came on one
- 3:19Speaker 3: of our shows, and in that show he revealed that
- 3:23Speaker 3: there's had been we'd know been involved in some crimes
- 3:26Speaker 3: because there were some newspaper articles about him abusing some children,
- 3:30Speaker 3: a five year old and a seven year old, and
- 3:32Speaker 3: he got charged for that and he went to jail for.
- 3:34Speaker 1: A couple of years, two of four years he was
- 3:36Speaker 1: meant to.
- 3:36Speaker 3: But the real story behind that was never really told,
- 3:39Speaker 3: and that was that it involved an element of abduction
- 3:42Speaker 3: of those two girls. Cain exposed that live and rule
- 3:47Speaker 3: on Sleepers. From there we went and got about checking
- 3:50Speaker 3: out more on what we could about Les Davis. It
- 3:54Speaker 3: happened that we had been told about, or we'd seen
- 3:57Speaker 3: some evidence of the name Les Davis some four years before,
- 4:01Speaker 3: but no one ever.
- 4:02Speaker 1: Responded to her or reacted to her.
- 4:04Speaker 3: And that was in just a single Facebook post on
- 4:07Speaker 3: the Unmasking the Killers Unmasking the Killer of the Beaumonts
- 4:11Speaker 3: book or social media.
- 4:12Speaker 1: Page which you're familiar with, Adam. Yes, it was just.
- 4:16Speaker 3: One line that said, this sketch looks like a man
- 4:20Speaker 3: that lived with us and abused us. His name is
- 4:24Speaker 3: Les Davis. There was zero reaction or response to that.
- 4:28Speaker 3: No one ever plicked on that name and said, who
- 4:32Speaker 3: do you mean, who's this Les Davis?
- 4:34Speaker 1: So there was very little.
- 4:35Speaker 3: About Les Davis out there in our endeavors to try
- 4:39Speaker 3: to find out more. We went and spoke to that
- 4:41Speaker 3: person who made that post, and we've learned a lot
- 4:44Speaker 3: more about Les Davis and his crimes. Something very interesting
- 4:49Speaker 3: that we did learn very early on is that there's
- 4:51Speaker 3: no photographs of Les Davis that all disappeared. His actions
- 4:56Speaker 3: are the actions of someone who was trying to hide something.
- 4:59Speaker 3: He moved around a lot, and we can place him
- 5:01Speaker 3: in a lot of places where some of these crimes
- 5:04Speaker 3: ha and place him with people the likes of stan Hart,
- 5:09Speaker 3: who I've spent fifteen years researching and finding out information
- 5:13Speaker 3: about with regards to the Adelaide Oval abduction, which.
- 5:17Speaker 2: Was Joe and Ratcliffe and Kirsty Gordon who went missing
- 5:20Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy three from the Adelaide Oval.
- 5:22Speaker 3: Yeah, and something that Cain had told us on that
- 5:25Speaker 3: Sleeper's episode was that his uncle, his grand uncle as Davis,
- 5:29Speaker 3: had a mate, Sam who lived in around the Orau area,
- 5:33Speaker 3: which is where Yatner is. Is where we've been looking
- 5:36Speaker 3: since March April of this year and searching on the
- 5:40Speaker 3: property for evidence to support the claims of stand Heart's
- 5:46Speaker 3: grandson Mark Trevor Marshall, who wrote a statement to the
- 5:50Speaker 3: Mulligan Inquiry that stan Hart was central to the abduction
- 5:54Speaker 3: and killings of joe Ane Radcliffe and Kirsty Gordon. So
- 5:59Speaker 3: these names come in and it's not just about a
- 6:01Speaker 3: single name. It is about the relationships that we are
- 6:05Speaker 3: able to without doubt form up and show and the
- 6:09Speaker 3: places that this person was and crimes that he's committed,
- 6:14Speaker 3: that he's been charged for, that he's been convicted of.
- 6:17Speaker 3: You're right, we can put Leiz Davis in Glenell on
- 6:20Speaker 3: January twenty sixth, nineteen sixty six, and we can do
- 6:23Speaker 3: that by way of his sister Joyce was running a
- 6:27Speaker 3: side show operation there or working on the side shows there.
- 6:31Speaker 3: And my family's name Joyce Davis and his Davis family
- 6:35Speaker 3: for ever in a day, and I know the family
- 6:38Speaker 3: locally here in Victor Harbor. In fact, Les Davis I
- 6:42Speaker 3: found out a couple of days after hearing Les Davis's
- 6:44Speaker 3: name for the first time. He worked on my family
- 6:47Speaker 3: farm when my father was ten years old. My father's
- 6:50Speaker 3: now eighty three, so he was known then as Les Chapel.
- 6:54Speaker 3: And he's changed his name since, going to the married
- 6:57Speaker 3: name of his mum. After some time his movements around
- 7:02Speaker 3: South Australia fit with a whole Hepochrome Adam. He was
- 7:06Speaker 3: Injuna in nineteen fifty eight at the same time and
- 7:12Speaker 3: with the Sideshows. He did some working alongside his sister
- 7:14Speaker 3: and picking up jobs around side shows in the line.
- 7:17Speaker 3: He was working with the Sideshows in nineteen fifty eight
- 7:20Speaker 3: at the time of the Mary Hattam murder. We can
- 7:23Speaker 3: put Les Davis in some very very critical spots at
- 7:27Speaker 3: some very critical times when it comes to crimes against
- 7:30Speaker 3: children in particular.
- 7:32Speaker 2: So Mary had him murder at s Juna, which was
- 7:34Speaker 2: of course the famous Stuart case.
- 7:36Speaker 4: Yes, and my grandfather Jack CHANQC.
- 7:39Speaker 2: He was at that time represented Stuart at the Royal
- 7:42Speaker 2: Commission where he stormed out and called it a kangaroo court.
- 7:46Speaker 2: And Max Rupert Stewart he had his death sentence commuted
- 7:49Speaker 2: eventually but was never never had it quashed and did
- 7:52Speaker 2: a life sentence. And I think he always lived with
- 7:57Speaker 2: the stain that he was believed to have been the
- 7:59Speaker 2: killer of this little girl.
- 8:01Speaker 3: Yeah, and look we've done some research into that as well,
- 8:04Speaker 3: when we find some statements from some people that support
- 8:07Speaker 3: that there was no way that he could have done
- 8:09Speaker 3: that crime he was where he said he was working
- 8:12Speaker 3: at the side shows at that time. So we have
- 8:15Speaker 3: a real interest in Les Davis. And we have that
- 8:18Speaker 3: also on the basis of some information that I'm about
- 8:22Speaker 3: to bring out in the next couple of days on
- 8:24Speaker 3: sleepers in and around a victim of him, or some
- 8:28Speaker 3: victims of him, who had gone to police a number
- 8:32Speaker 3: of times from the mid nineteen eighties. Certainly they did
- 8:36Speaker 3: have some success in going to police. That is how
- 8:39Speaker 3: Les Davis was caught in the act of abusing and
- 8:44Speaker 3: abducting two girls from the far north of South Australia
- 8:48Speaker 3: in nineteen eighty nine, was on the basis of this
- 8:51Speaker 3: family reported to police and they had already done it
- 8:55Speaker 3: a couple of times, reported to police the actions of
- 8:58Speaker 3: Les Davis against their children. We are told that he
- 9:03Speaker 3: had photographs of the Beaumont children in his possession, kept
- 9:09Speaker 3: in his wallet, not newspaper equippings, printed photographs.
- 9:15Speaker 4: That he may have taken himself.
- 9:18Speaker 3: Well, I don't know in the nineteen eighties that it
- 9:21Speaker 3: was particularly easy to print at home your own photographs.
- 9:25Speaker 3: I mean, you could have a photo lab. We know
- 9:27Speaker 3: that he never had anything like that. He wasn't a
- 9:30Speaker 3: well to do type person. You couldn't really duck down
- 9:33Speaker 3: to the local Kema and get those photographs printed off
- 9:36Speaker 3: if you hadn't taken them yourself. So somehow he obviously
- 9:42Speaker 3: had obtained If we had to believe the victims that,
- 9:45Speaker 3: I have no reason not to. They did take this
- 9:48Speaker 3: information to police, and I can have you know, it's
- 9:51Speaker 3: confirmed that they did go to police over these things.
- 9:54Speaker 3: That's what we try to do with sleeved We try
- 9:56Speaker 3: to link it back to some actions by police or
- 9:59Speaker 3: in action as it might be. But if we can
- 10:01Speaker 3: link it to an authority, we can go to the
- 10:03Speaker 3: police and say, did this happen?
- 10:05Speaker 1: You check this out? And that's my safety name.
- 10:08Speaker 5: I guess adam tremendous because the instance of abductors taking
- 10:13Speaker 5: multiple children is rare, and three children is almost unheard
- 10:19Speaker 5: of at one time.
- 10:20Speaker 2: It takes a particular kind of offender. You've done enough
- 10:24Speaker 2: work on Davis in an instance where those two little
- 10:27Speaker 2: girls were being abused. What you've established, I believe is
- 10:31Speaker 2: that they're in the boot of his car.
- 10:34Speaker 3: Yeah, that's by all accounts, that is what they had
- 10:37Speaker 3: been in the boot of his car.
- 10:38Speaker 1: The newspaper articles that we've got.
- 10:40Speaker 3: We've only got one small article about that core hitting,
- 10:43Speaker 3: and that does say that he lured them to the
- 10:45Speaker 3: car with lot of his ice creams in a game
- 10:47Speaker 3: of hide and seek, which sort of suggests they might
- 10:51Speaker 3: have tried to hide them or they put themselves in
- 10:53Speaker 3: the boot of the car or something like that. But
- 10:56Speaker 3: certainly that family, it was their car, the car belonged
- 11:00Speaker 3: to them, and they had simply as Davis away from
- 11:02Speaker 3: their home to.
- 11:03Speaker 1: Get him away from their children.
- 11:05Speaker 3: After he had taken one of these little girls in
- 11:09Speaker 3: the middle of the night, stolen her out of her
- 11:11Speaker 3: bed and took her off to down a creek bed
- 11:13Speaker 3: to abuse her. That's when the father acted sent him
- 11:18Speaker 3: in a car. That car came back to their house
- 11:22Speaker 3: a couple of days later and he was frantically cleaning it.
- 11:25Speaker 3: Now he was arrested for that crime. They did forensically
- 11:29Speaker 3: look at that car, so there is evidence to say
- 11:32Speaker 3: that he put them in the boot of the car,
- 11:34Speaker 3: and he certainly took them away from the Copler caravan
- 11:38Speaker 3: Park to Belle Tanner where he was living in the house.
- 11:42Speaker 3: So there's certainly that element. And if you're going to
- 11:45Speaker 3: look at the person or persons. And I don't know
- 11:48Speaker 3: about you, Adam, but there's not a chance in hell
- 11:51Speaker 3: that one person alone was responsible for the Beaumont crime
- 11:55Speaker 3: or the Adelaide over it just it wouldn't not You've
- 11:59Speaker 3: got to look at these crimes and say, you know,
- 12:03Speaker 3: it's not just any child abuser has the capacity to
- 12:07Speaker 3: do that, Nor do they have the capacity to go
- 12:09Speaker 3: from the old abuser or dirty old man to abducting murderers,
- 12:16Speaker 3: hide them forever, old man, no sign ever seen.
- 12:20Speaker 1: You've got to have a bit more going on than
- 12:23Speaker 1: just that. So I don't think that leaves Davis acted
- 12:25Speaker 1: alone that Boon crime. And for what it's.
- 12:28Speaker 3: Worth, when we have a look at identic its, and
- 12:30Speaker 3: identic its are only as good as the sketch artists
- 12:32Speaker 3: that's done it and the information that's provided to that
- 12:35Speaker 3: sketch artist to form the picture in the first place.
- 12:38Speaker 3: We have a look at the Beaumont identic kit that's
- 12:42Speaker 3: come from a number of witnesses of people seeing them
- 12:45Speaker 3: with the children. Is it the one person or is
- 12:48Speaker 3: it a makeup of several people? And I think that's
- 12:50Speaker 3: probably more to the point that it's a makeup of
- 12:53Speaker 3: several people.
- 12:56Speaker 2: That's what I believe as well, because it obviously changed
- 12:59Speaker 2: over the journey back in sixty six. There was initially
- 13:02Speaker 2: was a younger man, a surfey type character with blonde hair.
- 13:05Speaker 2: A bit later on it's a middle aged man with
- 13:07Speaker 2: sharper features, swept back hair. But when you've posted the
- 13:12Speaker 2: picture that you obtained of Leslie Davis, it does look
- 13:16Speaker 2: a lot like the identicate the second one.
- 13:20Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, look, I feel that to be the case
- 13:22Speaker 3: and the reason I'll post things like that, And you know,
- 13:25Speaker 3: I don't put a lot of weight into identic its
- 13:27Speaker 3: because they're not photographs, right, they are that interpretation of
- 13:31Speaker 3: information that's come in And for what I know is
- 13:34Speaker 3: the identic artist at the time, for the moment, he
- 13:37Speaker 3: was still hungover or pissed when he did the first one.
- 13:40Speaker 3: But that said, if you start to look at the people,
- 13:45Speaker 3: the most likely people with the people that you can
- 13:47Speaker 3: place on the beach at the time that are in
- 13:49Speaker 3: that circle or in that realm, and if you can
- 13:53Speaker 3: start to knit together relationships, which we can we believe
- 13:57Speaker 3: now and it's only with multiple bits of research and
- 14:01Speaker 3: chasing under lines that we believe that Dan Hart was
- 14:04Speaker 3: in area at the time. We know that Tony Monroe,
- 14:10Speaker 3: a person that I think is very central to this case,
- 14:13Speaker 3: and he's locked away for feld sex crimes, which date
- 14:16Speaker 3: back to December twelve, nineteen sixty five, is the earliest
- 14:19Speaker 3: one that we can get him on one month before
- 14:22Speaker 3: those kids went missing. And we know that he was
- 14:25Speaker 3: on the beach that day or at Bynell that day
- 14:28Speaker 3: on January twenty sixth and was cited, and the witness
- 14:32Speaker 3: that cited him has not been ruled out by police
- 14:35Speaker 3: as a credible witness. Lere's David we know was there
- 14:39Speaker 3: on the day. I can link Le's Davis to Tony
- 14:42Speaker 3: Monroe to stan Hart. Can I lenk stand Heart to
- 14:46Speaker 3: Tony Monroe. I'm not sure that. Where we have some
- 14:50Speaker 3: very interesting lines that we believe we can almost make
- 14:53Speaker 3: that link as well, but I can't look at directly
- 14:55Speaker 3: linking these people together. Then you start to build that
- 14:57Speaker 3: picture of one the identic kid. There's the elements of
- 15:00Speaker 3: all three of those people, but two, if you're going
- 15:04Speaker 3: to get away with I think you're going to something
- 15:07Speaker 3: like that the movement, and you're going to need more
- 15:08Speaker 3: than one person.
- 15:11Speaker 1: I think.
- 15:12Speaker 2: So one of the challenges for anyone looking at this
- 15:14Speaker 2: case in hindsight is that the information taken at the
- 15:18Speaker 2: time was so imperfect. A couple of police working Glennel
- 15:21Speaker 2: Police station are suddenly in and as a keel of
- 15:24Speaker 2: people up the street, and as I understand it, a
- 15:26Speaker 2: lot of people didn't get to give their evidence or
- 15:28Speaker 2: their versions on the day or even days afterwards.
- 15:31Speaker 4: How much do you.
- 15:32Speaker 2: Think that's a hurdle now to establishing who was responsible.
- 15:37Speaker 1: Well, that's a huge hurdle.
- 15:38Speaker 3: But also I see people talk about RB very interesting
- 15:41Speaker 3: to see the case files. No one's asking the question
- 15:44Speaker 3: of how much of those case files exist still, because
- 15:48Speaker 3: my understanding is quite a bit of information has been
- 15:52Speaker 3: lost over the years. Accidentally destroyed in confidence is probably
- 15:57Speaker 3: the way it is. But when they did transfer a
- 16:00Speaker 3: lot of hard written statements to the digital files, I'm
- 16:05Speaker 3: led to believe that a lot of material was lost,
- 16:09Speaker 3: So there would have been missed opportunities. Right from the start,
- 16:13Speaker 3: hundreds of people lined up to give information there with
- 16:15Speaker 3: only a couple of police officers. We have landed on
- 16:20Speaker 3: a witness who says that she spent time with the
- 16:23Speaker 3: children at the beach and a man I guess in
- 16:26Speaker 3: the late morning of January twenty sixth, nineteen sixty six,
- 16:30Speaker 3: with her children and her family. Now, people were really
- 16:34Speaker 3: really critical of her. Why didn't she come forward earlier?
- 16:37Speaker 3: She's a ninety one year old Aboriginal woman. She was
- 16:40Speaker 3: a thirty two year old Aboriginal mom. Life wasn't very
- 16:44Speaker 3: easy for a thirty two year old Aboriginal mum in
- 16:47Speaker 3: Adelaide in South Australia in nineteen sixty six. She had
- 16:51Speaker 3: a white husband and mix braced children. I'm quite sure
- 16:55Speaker 3: there's good reason. I know there's good reason for her
- 16:58Speaker 3: to have been quite reluctant to come forward as herself.
- 17:01Speaker 3: But I'm not sure that her husband never did, or
- 17:03Speaker 3: that information wasn't there that police didn't know that this
- 17:06Speaker 3: woman existed as a witness. Certainly, over the years police
- 17:11Speaker 3: went to her or tracked her down. In twenty eighteen,
- 17:14Speaker 3: I understand they went and saw her to ask for help,
- 17:16Speaker 3: So they knew about her.
- 17:17Speaker 1: They've known about her for an amount of time.
- 17:21Speaker 3: Those witness statements and those little bits of hope that
- 17:24Speaker 3: sit in amongst all that information and from all those
- 17:27Speaker 3: witnesses that might have come forward, there's traces of around
- 17:31Speaker 3: the people know this well.
- 17:32Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't think it's reasonable to suddenly question her
- 17:35Speaker 2: evidence on the basis of why didn't.
- 17:37Speaker 4: You come forward?
- 17:38Speaker 2: We're saying seen the same thing leveled victims of historic
- 17:41Speaker 2: sexual assault. Why didn't you come forward years ago? It
- 17:44Speaker 2: doesn't devalue to someone's evidence. I think that's just junk
- 17:47Speaker 2: in my opinion. The evidence has got assessed on its
- 17:51Speaker 2: actual granular value.
- 17:53Speaker 1: Yeah.
- 17:53Speaker 3: Yeah, And look if anyone who questioned the integrity of
- 17:55Speaker 3: this woman would be absolutely mad if they knew who
- 17:58Speaker 3: she was. And when she hasn't come to us to say, hey,
- 18:01Speaker 3: I want my story of her. She doesn't want to
- 18:03Speaker 3: go out there in the public at all. That's her thing.
- 18:05Speaker 3: She doesn't want to be identified at all. I don't
- 18:08Speaker 3: question to her witness account one little bit. I think
- 18:12Speaker 3: it's absolutely spot on the money, and I think it's
- 18:15Speaker 3: very impertinent. I went out with Lea Davis as a
- 18:18Speaker 3: person of interest without ever seeing a photograph of him.
- 18:22Speaker 3: We didn't have a photograph of him at all. And
- 18:24Speaker 3: I did that for a very good reason, because it's
- 18:27Speaker 3: all the other information that we have that we know
- 18:30Speaker 3: that makes him a very strong suspect. In my mind,
- 18:34Speaker 3: I didn't care what the photograph looked like I was
- 18:37Speaker 3: of the impression that the photograph would look like the
- 18:40Speaker 3: identicate photo, because that's what the witnesses and that's what
- 18:44Speaker 3: the victims of him had said.
- 18:46Speaker 1: So that was a very deliberate point by me.
- 18:50Speaker 2: Based on what you know so far, the information that's
- 18:52Speaker 2: come to you, what's your case theory on Davis's involvement
- 18:57Speaker 2: and the possible involvement of others.
- 19:00Speaker 3: My theory is, I do believe that there's an older
- 19:02Speaker 3: person involved in probably encouraging the transfer of children to them,
- 19:09Speaker 3: if that makes sense, from some younger, more reckless types
- 19:13Speaker 3: who might be able to befriend those kids easily. So
- 19:17Speaker 3: my theory is that the idea of the jan and
- 19:19Speaker 3: having a boyfriend someone had groomed if you liked an
- 19:23Speaker 3: older teenager. In my mind slightly at Tony Munroe, it
- 19:28Speaker 3: was like a pied piper at Coldel Get the time
- 19:31Speaker 3: boy scout leader who ran a group of young boys
- 19:34Speaker 3: diving along those beaches, and approachable type if you are
- 19:38Speaker 3: a younger person, someone you could just mix with on
- 19:41Speaker 3: the beach, And they did be mixed with him on
- 19:43Speaker 3: the beach, so that might have been the way to
- 19:46Speaker 3: bring them into the frame an offer of let's go
- 19:50Speaker 3: to the side shows. It wasn't a very busy day
- 19:52Speaker 3: at Glenel that day. It's not like Australia Day these days.
- 19:56Speaker 3: It wasn't celebrated on the day. It was a Wednesday.
- 19:59Speaker 3: It was a quieter day. They're the observations that we're
- 20:02Speaker 3: getting from three witnesses. But the side was an attraction
- 20:06Speaker 3: and was a meeting place for younger people.
- 20:09Speaker 1: We know that Les was working there.
- 20:11Speaker 3: We know that other people who have been victims of
- 20:14Speaker 3: Tony Munroe were in and around that side show area
- 20:18Speaker 3: as well. And I believe that that's the direction that the
- 20:22Speaker 3: children would have gone and where they would have probably
- 20:25Speaker 3: met their abductor at least two people involved in that
- 20:29Speaker 3: morning of in the lead up to those kids going away,
- 20:33Speaker 3: I am of the strong belief that they didn't leave
- 20:37Speaker 3: on foot to go anywhere. My strong belief is that
- 20:40Speaker 3: they probably willingly got into a vehicle and left that way.
- 20:46Speaker 2: So how does that tally with the last known side thing,
- 20:52Speaker 2: if you like, at Wenzel's Bakery where Jane is supposed
- 20:56Speaker 2: to be buying all this food first siblings, impossibly other people.
- 21:00Speaker 4: Do you think that's credible?
- 21:01Speaker 3: Yeah, well, I have spoken to a member of the
- 21:04Speaker 3: Wenzel family, and you know, that was a few years ago,
- 21:07Speaker 3: just out of the blue. I met her at a
- 21:08Speaker 3: garage sale, and I don't know what the occasion was,
- 21:11Speaker 3: but somehow their Beaumont case was raised in conversation and
- 21:15Speaker 3: her response was my family and it was actually a
- 21:18Speaker 3: garage tale of her parents' house, said, my family wouldn't
- 21:22Speaker 3: have a clue what anyone bought that day or anything
- 21:25Speaker 3: like that, so they're not too sure about that that account. Certainly,
- 21:28Speaker 3: I think they probably did go to the bakery. How
- 21:31Speaker 3: much food they bought and for whom who knows? In
- 21:34Speaker 3: my mind a one pound note.
- 21:36Speaker 1: They weren't rare. I don't see that as evidence to
- 21:38Speaker 1: any effect.
- 21:39Speaker 3: You know, people could get a one pound note and
- 21:41Speaker 3: tell you what if you were planning on abducting three kids,
- 21:44Speaker 3: one pound note coming up with that with the last
- 21:47Speaker 3: of your.
- 21:47Speaker 1: Concerns, wouldn't it.
- 21:49Speaker 3: But certainly David Smith did suggest that he spoke with
- 21:53Speaker 3: the person that was with them. He did identify that
- 21:56Speaker 3: person as Tony Munroe. And he did also speak with
- 22:00Speaker 3: the witness that was the lady on the bench, who
- 22:03Speaker 3: is a confirmed witness by Paul. Police have never been
- 22:06Speaker 3: able to tell me. They ruled David Smith as a witness. Now,
- 22:11Speaker 3: David said that he saw them after they had been
- 22:14Speaker 3: bought lunch by the man, so that does fit that
- 22:17Speaker 3: signing at the bakery, and the last that David Smith
- 22:21Speaker 3: thought of them was them leaving in a sports model
- 22:26Speaker 3: car with a man he described or identified as Tony Monroe.
- 22:31Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I've always had a problem with this
- 22:34Speaker 2: idea that you abduct children and then send them to
- 22:36Speaker 2: the bakery to get food.
- 22:39Speaker 4: It doesn't somehow tally for.
- 22:40Speaker 2: Me, if this is your intention to molest and ultimately
- 22:44Speaker 2: murder these children, that you're going to risk letting them
- 22:47Speaker 2: out of your sight to go into a bakery to
- 22:49Speaker 2: buy food. And I wonder also, can we really be
- 22:52Speaker 2: sure that that account is from that day. We had
- 22:55Speaker 2: the situation where the postman claimed to have seen them
- 22:58Speaker 2: on the same day, but then the latter realized no,
- 23:00Speaker 2: it was another day. So some of this stuff, as
- 23:03Speaker 2: we said at the outset, the information was not gathered instantaneously.
- 23:06Speaker 2: So the longer you take, the more likely you're more
- 23:09Speaker 2: more praying you are the mistakes.
- 23:12Speaker 3: Yeah, you're absolutely right, Like these observations people coming forward
- 23:17Speaker 3: are coming from the right place. Yes we saw something,
- 23:20Speaker 3: let's talk about, but they might not know the days,
- 23:22Speaker 3: and we do know that the children had been to
- 23:25Speaker 3: the beach in the days previous and leading up to it.
- 23:28Speaker 3: I have a reasonable amount of confidence in David Smith's account.
- 23:31Speaker 3: I have got a letter from his boss. David only
- 23:34Speaker 3: came forward in twenty fifteen. He didn't realize that he
- 23:37Speaker 3: had seen anything of any note. He didn't even realize
- 23:40Speaker 3: that it was Polly Reserved.
- 23:42Speaker 1: That the children went from.
- 23:43Speaker 3: He thought they disappeared during the Base Sheffield Race, which
- 23:47Speaker 3: is completely different. David went off to Puckepaniel three days
- 23:51Speaker 3: after the Bowman I'm done. Some three or four days
- 23:53Speaker 3: after went off to the Vietnam and he didn't come
- 23:56Speaker 3: back in a very good space. But he did have
- 23:58Speaker 3: a letter from his boss at Clarson's Glass that stated
- 24:02Speaker 3: the twenty seventh of January nineteen sixty six to his lieutenant,
- 24:06Speaker 3: describing him as a sensational person who could be put
- 24:10Speaker 3: into any role that he might want while he's.
- 24:12Speaker 1: Serving, and it was a fantastic character. He should fit
- 24:16Speaker 1: very well there.
- 24:17Speaker 3: David says that it was his last day of work
- 24:20Speaker 3: and he was covering someone else's shift, someone else's round
- 24:23Speaker 3: with Clarkson's glass.
- 24:24Speaker 1: He wouldn't normally be at clam.
- 24:26Speaker 3: Out, so I can certainly put him in that space
- 24:30Speaker 3: on that day. I can also certainly put him No
- 24:32Speaker 3: one's ever really, I just never come out and told
- 24:36Speaker 3: us the identity of the old lady on the bench
- 24:39Speaker 3: who confirmed is a witness to the kids playing with
- 24:42Speaker 3: a man. Well, David Smith could tell us where she lived,
- 24:46Speaker 3: so I think he's quite credible. That's what you've got
- 24:49Speaker 3: to do is I go about looking at the investigation
- 24:53Speaker 3: space as I'll try to prove you wrong, because it's
- 24:55Speaker 3: so much easier to prove someone wrong than it is
- 24:57Speaker 3: to prove the right. So we look at these ways
- 24:59Speaker 3: or how to discount them as a real witness, and
- 25:01Speaker 3: I can't discount.
- 25:04Speaker 2: Yeah, it seems the work wasn't done on Les Davis
- 25:07Speaker 2: because of course ninety sixty six he's not on.
- 25:10Speaker 4: The radar as a sex offender.
- 25:12Speaker 2: It may well have been active at that time, but
- 25:14Speaker 2: it's not till the late eighties when the full extent
- 25:17Speaker 2: of his proclivities is revealed.
- 25:19Speaker 4: So he goes under the radar.
- 25:21Speaker 2: Do you know if South Australia Police is about they
- 25:23Speaker 2: had a good look at him.
- 25:25Speaker 4: Based on what you're saying.
- 25:27Speaker 3: I know that they searched probably is at corn and Jongla,
- 25:31Speaker 3: which is not surprisingly just around the corner from stan
- 25:35Speaker 3: Harts Place and also a place where the Marshall family Mark.
- 25:38Speaker 3: Marshall's family Mark being the one who wrote the confession
- 25:42Speaker 3: to the Mulleting Inquiry about his grandfather and family being
- 25:45Speaker 3: involved in that Adelaide oval case. So please did search
- 25:49Speaker 3: those locations in recent months? I opposed a question to
- 25:55Speaker 3: Detective Heath Leena. He's the lead detective on the Adelaide
- 25:57Speaker 3: Oval case. You know whether he'd be sharing some details
- 26:01Speaker 3: about their investigations into Les Davis and I'm going to
- 26:05Speaker 3: every flat though we will not be so I do
- 26:07Speaker 3: know that they've done that.
- 26:08Speaker 1: The people that have been closer to that.
- 26:10Speaker 3: Have let me know that they were there at certain times.
- 26:13Speaker 3: Police were there at certain times doing at least some.
- 26:18Speaker 2: Checks, right, because I guess Southern Tralia Police could be
- 26:24Speaker 2: a little gun shy about new suspects given they brought
- 26:28Speaker 2: into the whole Harry Phipps theory that Glenell resident Harry Phipps,
- 26:32Speaker 2: the businessman largely on the strength of testimony from his
- 26:36Speaker 2: son Hayden took the children and that he was a
- 26:39Speaker 2: known piti fi, that he abused his own family. And
- 26:42Speaker 2: it's all on the say so of Hayden. And I
- 26:45Speaker 2: looked at this up and down, and I always had
- 26:46Speaker 2: doubts about it. But on the strength of this evidence
- 26:50Speaker 2: from Hayden, and that also that Harry Phipps might have
- 26:53Speaker 2: buried the children on the side of his CASTELLOI factory
- 26:57Speaker 2: there in North Blimpton, they went and they didn't find anything,
- 27:00Speaker 2: and they seem to have pulled back from any active
- 27:02Speaker 2: role in investigating Leeds since what do you know of
- 27:06Speaker 2: their attitude towards the Bonont case.
- 27:08Speaker 3: Now, I've got to say that it's more the Adelaide
- 27:12Speaker 3: Oval case that I've obviously had direct contact with him,
- 27:15Speaker 3: and the attitude there is that they don't suggest that
- 27:20Speaker 3: anything we've been doing up at Yatna and searching around
- 27:24Speaker 3: there has relevance to them. I In fact, their suggestion
- 27:28Speaker 3: from the Police Commissioner Grant Stephens when we first started
- 27:32Speaker 3: up there was that we shouldn't be giving families.
- 27:34Speaker 1: False hope by doing what we're doing.
- 27:37Speaker 3: Since that time, they have engaged with the evidence that
- 27:40Speaker 3: we've been providing to them, in that they compelled me
- 27:43Speaker 3: to hand over a bone which referred to as the
- 27:46Speaker 3: Yatna class bone. It's a bone that we found at
- 27:49Speaker 3: the property of San Hart's looking at a very specific location.
- 27:53Speaker 3: We're actually looking for suitcases that we were told we're
- 27:57Speaker 3: buried in the backyard that had come from inside stan
- 28:01Speaker 3: Hart's strong room. Stan didn't use banks room within his house.
- 28:06Speaker 3: They referred to it as it was puff as Joe
- 28:09Speaker 3: and also his strong room. He weren't allowed to go
- 28:10Speaker 3: in there, and he dealt in cash only. These suitcases,
- 28:15Speaker 3: the contents of which weren't known by the people that
- 28:18Speaker 3: buried him, were buried in the backyard and we were
- 28:20Speaker 3: appointed directly to where to look for those suitcases. And
- 28:23Speaker 3: it was within the remnants of a suitcase that we
- 28:27Speaker 3: found that bone with glass lodged into it. It is
- 28:32Speaker 3: it is pelvic bone, and it is juvenile pelvic bone.
- 28:36Speaker 3: It is ninety percent light that to be human. And
- 28:38Speaker 3: that's as assessed by Marchie Henneberg. So I was compelled
- 28:43Speaker 3: once we had that reasonable suspicion that it was human.
- 28:46Speaker 3: Compelled by South Australian Police to hand over that bone.
- 28:49Speaker 3: I was intending to send it or part of it
- 28:52Speaker 3: overseas for independent testing, and I had, under instruction from Marchie,
- 28:57Speaker 3: I'd taken some cuttings of the bone to hand to
- 29:00Speaker 3: South Australian Police one part of that so they could
- 29:02Speaker 3: test that forensically. Because they hadn't aids with what we
- 29:06Speaker 3: were doing. They did not want to know the barrels
- 29:09Speaker 3: that I say we've got. We still have them. I
- 29:13Speaker 3: have offered to take them to police multiple times and
- 29:16Speaker 3: I've been denied multiple times.
- 29:19Speaker 4: They don't want to know them. Tell us about the barrels.
- 29:22Speaker 3: The barrels were located at the Pigna Reservoir and they
- 29:26Speaker 3: were located by following a map that Mark Marshall grew
- 29:29Speaker 3: from his prison cell in two thousand and seven and
- 29:32Speaker 3: formed part of the Marligan Inquiry into the abuse of
- 29:35Speaker 3: children in state care. He put an X on the
- 29:38Speaker 3: map and said this is where you'll find the two
- 29:40Speaker 3: girls in this tunnel. When South Australian Police were taken
- 29:45Speaker 3: to that site on Christmas Eve two thousand and eight,
- 29:48Speaker 3: and also to stan Hart's shack at Yatna by the
- 29:52Speaker 3: private investigators who do have links with the outlaw motorcycle gang.
- 29:57Speaker 3: They could not locate the tunnel to spot that. Standing
- 30:00Speaker 3: one meter in front of it, looking at the wall
- 30:02Speaker 3: of a rock based wall, they sten, there's no tunnel here.
- 30:06Speaker 3: We're done here, nothing to see here. Funnily enough, when
- 30:09Speaker 3: I asked them about the exercise.
- 30:11Speaker 1: Of them going out there.
- 30:12Speaker 3: When I asked in twenty eleven, South Australian Police denied
- 30:15Speaker 3: having any knowledge of even going out there, and I said, no,
- 30:19Speaker 3: we've never done that.
- 30:19Speaker 1: You're barking up the wrong tree, Bryan.
- 30:21Speaker 3: I probably showed them some video and photographs so they're
- 30:24Speaker 3: detectives out there, and they they said, oh, well, okay,
- 30:27Speaker 3: so we did go out there, but that doesn't mean anything.
- 30:30Speaker 1: They didn't locate the tunnel.
- 30:32Speaker 3: The private investigators math the cow site rock face wall
- 30:37Speaker 3: of the reservoir, opened up the very large tunnel and
- 30:41Speaker 3: pulled out two barrels, the contents of which have been tested.
- 30:45Speaker 3: They were tested in the Say forensics lab in two
- 30:48Speaker 3: thousand and nine. They tested positive for a weak trace
- 30:51Speaker 3: of blood and strong traces of ACCID. We've had them
- 30:55Speaker 3: tested multiple times and not the team Globin in there
- 30:59Speaker 3: and it was that at police said they're inconclusive, but
- 31:03Speaker 3: as a hell of a hell of a bloody effort
- 31:05Speaker 3: to go to a few kangaroo baites, isn't it?
- 31:08Speaker 2: Well, it is, but your belief is that there was
- 31:10Speaker 2: acid used to dissolve bodies inside those barrels.
- 31:15Speaker 3: And we will check those barrels out with a fine
- 31:18Speaker 3: tooth combe. We've not done that because we wanted to
- 31:21Speaker 3: be able to provide that material to South Australian Police.
- 31:25Speaker 3: We've tried desperately a number of times to make them
- 31:29Speaker 3: available to South Australian Police and they've showed no interest.
- 31:33Speaker 3: So when you ask about the interest of police in
- 31:37Speaker 3: the Beaumont case, I'm seeing similar sorts of pushback or
- 31:43Speaker 3: non acceptance of leeds as I am in the Adelaide
- 31:46Speaker 3: Over case, which I've been working on for much longer,
- 31:49Speaker 3: but as far as much more detail, because we've had
- 31:52Speaker 3: better leads. I can say right now, Adam that we
- 31:56Speaker 3: are working around And you know, as a journalist and
- 31:58Speaker 3: when you go into places to look at such crimes,
- 32:02Speaker 3: you get a lot of pushback from the community. Right
- 32:05Speaker 3: people don't want to know the journalists trying to write
- 32:08Speaker 3: the story and are you're just here to sensationalize and
- 32:10Speaker 3: you're going to make our town look bad and all
- 32:12Speaker 3: this sort of stuff.
- 32:14Speaker 1: I'm in the app and now doing this stuff with
- 32:16Speaker 1: a fantastic team.
- 32:17Speaker 3: But the support that we are getting in that community
- 32:20Speaker 3: from the locals is overwhelming, the positive, the amount of
- 32:25Speaker 3: information that's flowing through. I can't believe how much detail
- 32:30Speaker 3: we're getting. There is not one person that I've heard
- 32:34Speaker 3: from in that region that says we're on the wrong trap.
- 32:38Speaker 3: And I've had dozens and dozens and dozens They Bill
- 32:41Speaker 3: knew it was him, Bill knew it was him.
- 32:44Speaker 1: Stand Hart.
- 32:46Speaker 2: You talk about a level of protection for these suspects
- 32:49Speaker 2: in South Australia, possible collusion, cooperation, working together. Of course,
- 32:54Speaker 2: this brings up the specter of the family. Do you
- 32:57Speaker 2: believe in the family that there was this high level
- 32:59Speaker 2: group of pedophiles abducting, abusing and murdering children.
- 33:04Speaker 1: I do.
- 33:05Speaker 3: Why Well, I've got the maps that map out the
- 33:08Speaker 3: whole network, and we've had them. They were produced in
- 33:11Speaker 3: two thousand and four, So I do believe in that,
- 33:15Speaker 3: and I'm seeing direct evidence to support the fact that
- 33:21Speaker 3: someone the likes of stan Hart had the eyear of
- 33:25Speaker 3: very very influential people at the time when he was
- 33:28Speaker 3: going through his court case in nineteen sixty six, that
- 33:31Speaker 3: he had the confidence there to say that people know
- 33:34Speaker 3: that you're telling lies. This is a victim to torment
- 33:38Speaker 3: that victim with letters or have letters written to torment
- 33:43Speaker 3: him to say that Don Dunstan, who would then become premier,
- 33:47Speaker 3: knows that you're lying to These were crimes that the
- 33:51Speaker 3: judge said that he should be put away for life
- 33:53Speaker 3: for stand Hart the abuse of this one girl, and
- 33:58Speaker 3: she's come on to sleepers and spoken about this. The brave,
- 34:01Speaker 3: brave woman she is. Her life was destroyed by that man.
- 34:05Speaker 3: Now he was told in court by the judge that
- 34:10Speaker 3: he was deserving of a life sentence what he had done.
- 34:14Speaker 3: He got three years and he was out with him
- 34:16Speaker 3: just over a year. One month after Don Duncan became
- 34:20Speaker 3: Premier who a letter to this victim to torment her
- 34:24Speaker 3: made reference direct reference to Don Dunstan knowing that she
- 34:28Speaker 3: was like, doesn't stack up to me, you know it
- 34:33Speaker 3: speaks from him. There's writings from his family from sand
- 34:36Speaker 3: Hart's family that say that he made direct deals with
- 34:40Speaker 3: Don Dunstan over the care of his intellectually disabled sun
- 34:44Speaker 3: direct deals.
- 34:45Speaker 1: Don Duncan went to a convicted.
- 34:47Speaker 3: Pedophile's house and made a deal with him to look
- 34:50Speaker 3: after his intellectually disabled some for life. That rings alarm
- 34:55Speaker 3: bells to me when we start to talk about this.
- 34:57Speaker 3: Whether it's protection or a level of knowledge and communication
- 35:01Speaker 3: between these people, that might be all it is, but
- 35:05Speaker 3: there's definitely evidence to support that.
- 35:07Speaker 2: Adam right and a lot of people say this, And
- 35:09Speaker 2: one of the key figures who could help in all
- 35:11Speaker 2: this is Bevan Spencer von Ainem, convicted child murderer. He
- 35:16Speaker 2: killed fifteen year old Richard Kelvin, the son of Rob Kelvin,
- 35:19Speaker 2: the newsreader back in nine and eighty four.
- 35:21Speaker 4: Was convicted nine eighty four.
- 35:23Speaker 2: Unfortunately, since we did this interview, Bevan Spencer von Einem
- 35:27Speaker 2: died taking his filthy secrets to the grave.
- 35:31Speaker 4: He could help so much. Do you think he has
- 35:33Speaker 4: information that could resolve some of this?
- 35:36Speaker 3: Oh, definitely he has information that could resolve some of this.
- 35:39Speaker 3: But it's not information that's not known by a whole
- 35:41Speaker 3: heap of people who aren't in prison and can readily speak.
- 35:45Speaker 3: It's not unknown by a whole heap of people who
- 35:49Speaker 3: are in positions of authority who could readily put that
- 35:52Speaker 3: out there into the public arena.
- 35:55Speaker 1: Of course it is.
- 35:56Speaker 2: And I think the success of Sleepers and the amount
- 35:59Speaker 2: of people coming to you, listening to the podcast, coming
- 36:03Speaker 2: to your Facebook page making Contrybus shows the level of
- 36:07Speaker 2: skepticism by the average person in South Australia. The justice
- 36:11Speaker 2: has not been done and the conspiracies, if you can
- 36:14Speaker 2: call them that, do persist. They're not resolved. And as
- 36:17Speaker 2: you say, there are people out there who know more
- 36:21Speaker 2: and haven't shared it.
- 36:22Speaker 3: Yeah, it's really hard with the Sleepers thing because some people,
- 36:27Speaker 3: if you sit there and go they might go I
- 36:29Speaker 3: know this, and I know this, and I saw this.
- 36:31Speaker 3: I've made the rule that we have to be able
- 36:34Speaker 3: to connect it to an authority, you know, there has
- 36:36Speaker 3: to have been some police action or so we can
- 36:39Speaker 3: actually bring it back and close that loop so you
- 36:42Speaker 3: can get past that word conspiracy. No, this happened, There
- 36:46Speaker 3: is a result here, or there is these people have
- 36:48Speaker 3: been to authorities and tried to be heard and they
- 36:51Speaker 3: haven't been heard, or it's just got buried in there.
- 36:53Speaker 3: There was so much of this stuff going on through
- 36:56Speaker 3: a period of our life in South Australia and around Australia.
- 36:59Speaker 3: There's no doubt around the world that this stuff has
- 37:02Speaker 3: always happened, but there was so much of it too.
- 37:05Speaker 3: Actually get something that isn't drowned out by the smaller
- 37:09Speaker 3: And I hate being saying that that no abuse of
- 37:12Speaker 3: a child is insignificant, right, but there's some that's more
- 37:15Speaker 3: important to actually finding the answers. So that's one of
- 37:19Speaker 3: the challenges with doing something like this is you just
- 37:22Speaker 3: get a pile on of information and it's again sorting
- 37:26Speaker 3: out what you can work with rather than you know,
- 37:29Speaker 3: not ignoring, but what can I work with to get
- 37:31Speaker 3: to that next step?
- 37:33Speaker 2: And might I add that you're doing all this out
- 37:37Speaker 2: of love really, and you're out here, you're supporting all
- 37:39Speaker 2: your work by working on the family farm.
- 37:43Speaker 3: Yeah, well you know, people get oh, I want to
- 37:45Speaker 3: answer my question, why don't you do this?
- 37:46Speaker 1: Look, I have a farm, I have a family.
- 37:48Speaker 3: I write fifteen hours a week for a newspaper and Douglass,
- 37:53Speaker 3: but I live here in Victor Harbor on the farm.
- 37:56Speaker 1: I run some sporting organizations.
- 37:58Speaker 3: I'm the president of the Tennis Association, and then I
- 38:01Speaker 3: actually have a full time job as a milk fact feell.
- 38:06Speaker 1: So everything I do with sleeper is in my spare time.
- 38:10Speaker 2: Now, Let's hope that there can be more focus on
- 38:12Speaker 2: Leslie Davis as a possible such because I think he
- 38:15Speaker 2: needs to be eliminated on the basis of what you've said. Unfortunately,
- 38:18Speaker 2: he can't help us. He died in nineteen ninety eight.
- 38:21Speaker 1: What happened, Yeah, he took his own life in u Dunda.
- 38:25Speaker 1: He had gassed himself.
- 38:28Speaker 3: He was released from prison after that incident in nineteen
- 38:31Speaker 3: where he's convicted in nineteen ninety one.
- 38:33Speaker 1: Who is released in prison?
- 38:34Speaker 3: He went over to WA and in WA he breached.
- 38:39Speaker 1: His parole and was locked up there for a bit.
- 38:42Speaker 3: When he came back, he did spend some time in
- 38:45Speaker 3: Port Lincoln prison and we understand at the time that
- 38:48Speaker 3: he took his own life. He was not much longer
- 38:51Speaker 3: after his sister Margaret, he's one real supporter, She had
- 38:55Speaker 3: died of a heart attack and within the next two
- 38:58Speaker 3: months he had taken his own life. Family suggests that
- 39:02Speaker 3: he probably knew his gig was up, but he was
- 39:05Speaker 3: also facing some fresh charges for child abuse around that
- 39:10Speaker 3: time of being investigated for it. We know some stage
- 39:14Speaker 3: he tried to take his own life. At the my
- 39:18Speaker 3: Ponger Reservoir, which gives rise to us thinking more about
- 39:23Speaker 3: a link with the Beaumont case. As you would know
- 39:25Speaker 3: that police did put a lot of effort into searching
- 39:28Speaker 3: at the my Ponger Reservoir in relation to the bone.
- 39:32Speaker 4: I think they drained didn't they drain it at the.
- 39:34Speaker 1: Time they did dive there in nineteen sixty six. I
- 39:38Speaker 1: know this.
- 39:38Speaker 3: So I used to work with the with Say Water,
- 39:41Speaker 3: and my job was to do the public relations for
- 39:43Speaker 3: the reservoir program a few years ago at the time
- 39:47Speaker 3: that my Ponger Reservoir would have been very low at
- 39:49Speaker 3: the time in nineteen sixty six. So the reservoir keepers,
- 39:52Speaker 3: way back when I was a journalist at the Victor Times,
- 39:55Speaker 3: I did stories there. The reservoir has actually got the
- 39:57Speaker 3: walls actually got hollows all the way through it, tunnels
- 39:59Speaker 3: all the way through it to part of the design
- 40:02Speaker 3: which relieves pressure. So i'd gone on two were there
- 40:05Speaker 3: having a look, and the reservoir keeper had said that
- 40:09Speaker 3: if the children had been dumped in their reservoir, he
- 40:11Speaker 3: would have been very hard for them to find it
- 40:14Speaker 3: because it would have been right in that middle part
- 40:16Speaker 3: because of the water level at the time of the
- 40:19Speaker 3: abduction was quite low, lots of silk in there, things
- 40:23Speaker 3: like that. But we know that Les Davis actually worked
- 40:28Speaker 3: on a project at the my Ponger Reservoir in around
- 40:32Speaker 3: the time of the Beaumont abduction in nineteen sixty six.
- 40:36Speaker 1: He was doing some concreting there. That was one of
- 40:39Speaker 1: many jobs that he did.
- 40:40Speaker 3: And he had stated to people that he lived with
- 40:44Speaker 3: later on in life that his special place, his secret place,
- 40:48Speaker 3: was at the Myponger Reservoir. And that's where told we
- 40:53Speaker 3: laid by those family members. He tried to take his
- 40:56Speaker 3: own life by strangling himself with his own belt at
- 41:00Speaker 3: the Mypunger Reservoir at one stage.
- 41:03Speaker 2: Yeah, a man consumed with his own guilt and haunted
- 41:06Speaker 2: by memories of what he may have done.
- 41:11Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, Les Davis.
- 41:13Speaker 3: Also we've learnt very recently that he was sent up
- 41:16Speaker 3: to Alice Springs to live for a certain time by
- 41:20Speaker 3: his family. It's just told to get out, put on
- 41:22Speaker 3: a bus and sent up there or on the train.
- 41:24Speaker 3: And he did live in some town camp communities up
- 41:27Speaker 3: there in Alice Springs as well. And having been up
- 41:31Speaker 3: in Alice Springs, and I've got some very close connections
- 41:34Speaker 3: with community up there. I was editor of the paper
- 41:36Speaker 3: in l Springs for a while back in twenty thirteen
- 41:38Speaker 3: and twenty fourteen. Absolutely scares the shit out of me, Adam,
- 41:43Speaker 3: that such a predator might have been in and around
- 41:46Speaker 3: those communities.
- 41:47Speaker 1: So I would very much love to hear.
- 41:51Speaker 3: Some feedback from those people up there, And that's one
- 41:54Speaker 3: of the next steps I'm going to take is to
- 41:55Speaker 3: see if I can get some more learnings about Les
- 41:58Speaker 3: Davis in that community up there, because I'm afraid a
- 42:03Speaker 3: playground for him.
- 42:05Speaker 4: You all the best.
- 42:05Speaker 2: I think your work has just begun, and I think
- 42:07Speaker 2: the information coming through will continue, and I hopefully you
- 42:11Speaker 2: get some sort of resolution because these cases, every year
- 42:14Speaker 2: that passes the chance of resolution just gyms out a
- 42:17Speaker 2: little bit more So while people are still alive and
- 42:19Speaker 2: coming forward, they should come to sleepers.
- 42:21Speaker 4: Thank you, Brian, You've lived several lives, mate. I mean,
- 42:25Speaker 4: how are you sure there aren't two of you?
- 42:27Speaker 1: But I don't know.
- 42:28Speaker 4: You're doing an amazing job.
- 42:30Speaker 1: Thank you very much, Adam.
- 42:32Speaker 3: And what I like to say is, you know nineteen
- 42:35Speaker 3: seventy three at that adelaide Able abduction, Joanne Ratcliffe fort
- 42:39Speaker 3: and fort Here abduct there. All the witness accounts say that,
- 42:42Speaker 3: and what I like to say is we need to
- 42:44Speaker 3: show the courage of eleven year old girl. We need
- 42:47Speaker 3: to fight like Jay when we do looking at these cases,
- 42:50Speaker 3: because there's so more courage than I think any cop
- 42:54Speaker 3: or authority that I've ever seen. An eleven year old girl,
- 42:59Speaker 3: so more courage than anyone that I've seen when I'm
- 43:02Speaker 3: dealing with these cases, I like Jay.
- 43:05Speaker 4: That's a very powerful notion. Brian, thanks for your time today, mate.
- 43:12Speaker 2: That's Brian Litterley of the Sleepers podcast. He's doing an
- 43:16Speaker 2: amazing job these cases, the Beaumonts, the Adelaide Oval abductions.
- 43:22Speaker 4: There are people out there who still know what happened.
- 43:26Speaker 2: They need to come forward while they're still trying to
- 43:29Speaker 2: bring some sort of resolution. If you know anything but
- 43:32Speaker 2: can assist, we're going to put the link for the
- 43:34Speaker 2: Sleepers podcast in the description. You can also send me
- 43:38Speaker 2: an email Adam Shanner, writer at gmail dot com. And
- 43:42Speaker 2: if you trust the police, you can always call crime Stoppers,
- 43:45Speaker 2: though in South Australia, I'm not sure it's going to
- 43:47Speaker 2: do you much good. There's a bit of a head
- 43:48Speaker 2: in the sound attitude there, but you can call them
- 43:50Speaker 2: anyway one hundred, triple three, triple zero.
- 43:53Speaker 4: Bring that information forward.
- 43:55Speaker 2: There's always someone out there that knows something or knows
- 43:58Speaker 2: someone that can resolve these Thanks for listening.
- 44:00Speaker 4: This has been Adam Shann for Real Crime.
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