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Serial Killer Documentary - The Fisherman · The Evolution of Evil - True Crime Stories

0:20
Speaker 1: I never saw Lee do anything unkind or cruel throughout
0:26
Speaker 1: the whole time of the holidays every year. The cruelest
0:33
Speaker 1: he was ever to me who I saw him cruel
0:35
Speaker 1: twenty thing was when he was with that boy that
0:39
Speaker 1: night in nineteen sixty two. They had the tent up
0:44
Speaker 1: and there was a campfire going, and the car was
0:48
Speaker 1: parked a little bit further away, facing away, and they
0:54
Speaker 1: were cooking some food, and I spent some time at
0:56
Speaker 1: the campfire, and then the other boys to me, we've
1:01
Speaker 1: got a body in the car.
1:04
Speaker 2: And I can't remember what was said.
1:06
Speaker 1: I must have shown some disbelief, because I remember being
1:10
Speaker 1: over at the They opened the boot of the car
1:14
Speaker 1: and looked in and there was just tens of petrol
1:17
Speaker 1: or it's tins of something I don't know, on a
1:20
Speaker 1: few other things.
1:23
Speaker 3: And then I.
1:24
Speaker 2: Maybe I I confront him. I can't remember that.
1:27
Speaker 1: I didn't say it, said something like you're a liar,
1:30
Speaker 1: because he went around then to the back seat of
1:34
Speaker 1: the car, back door of the car on the left
1:40
Speaker 1: hand side, and opened the car door.
1:48
Speaker 2: And said to look. But I did look, and there was.
1:53
Speaker 1: Tarp or blanket some sort, and there was bumps underneath it.
2:01
Speaker 2: But I couldn't see.
2:01
Speaker 1: That it was a body, and so I I think
2:06
Speaker 1: I said something like it it's not. And then Lee
2:11
Speaker 1: called to me from the other side of the car,
2:14
Speaker 1: and he'd opened the back door.
2:19
Speaker 2: And told me to come here. And then he moved the.
2:26
Speaker 1: Blanked back over the h head of a boy laying
2:31
Speaker 1: in the back seat of the.
2:32
Speaker 2: Car, and he had wet here his I s well,
2:40
Speaker 2: I didn't see, but I could see his head.
2:45
Speaker 1: And wet here, and I remember I did look a
2:49
Speaker 1: little bit close and see your face's European. I don't
3:00
Speaker 1: remember anything else was said, but what I do remember
3:02
Speaker 1: was that he said, so you'd better go home, little girl,
3:05
Speaker 1: or I might shove something up your bumphole and bury you,
3:09
Speaker 1: murder you and bury you like we're doing with him.
3:19
Speaker 1: And I'd look to Lee to see if there was
3:21
Speaker 1: any help, but he just sort of had defined look
3:28
Speaker 1: on his face, like I've never seen him look before.
3:34
Speaker 4: These events have remained unresolved since nineteen sixty two. The
3:39
Speaker 4: Lee this woman refers to is now serving a life
3:42
Speaker 4: sentence for a murder committed in Tasmania in nineteen seventy five,
3:47
Speaker 4: thirteen years after the incident. She described.
4:13
Speaker 5: I spent almost twenty years in the Victoria Police Force,
4:16
Speaker 5: most of that in the Major Crime Squad. I worked
4:20
Speaker 5: on the Costaican Royal Commission, the Hilton Hotel, Turkish Consulate
4:25
Speaker 5: and Russell Street bombings. Soon after I moved back to
4:30
Speaker 5: Tasmania in ninety eight, I read an article in the
4:33
Speaker 5: Hobart Mercury. I concerned some prisoners who were allowed out
4:37
Speaker 5: of Hay's prison farm on weekends to go fishing in
4:41
Speaker 5: the Durbin River. The article focused on one prisoner, James
4:48
Speaker 5: Ryan O'Neill. He was serving a life sentence for the
4:52
Speaker 5: murder of a boy in nineteen seventy five. This bloke
5:03
Speaker 5: was fascinating. He drived in Tasmania in November nineteen seventy four,
5:09
Speaker 5: murdered a nine year old boy at Eagle Hook Neck
5:12
Speaker 5: in early February seventy five. In April he murdered another boy,
5:18
Speaker 5: and in the intervening period of two months he unsuccessfully
5:23
Speaker 5: tried to abduct at least another five boys. It was
5:29
Speaker 5: a very strong pattern, and all my experience told me
5:34
Speaker 5: that a person doesn't just arrive in a new state
5:37
Speaker 5: then start killing and abducting. There had to be previous crimes.
5:43
Speaker 5: I wrote to Gym and told him a bit about myself.
5:47
Speaker 5: I said I'd like to come out the Hays and
5:50
Speaker 5: talk to him about his life. Oh h, he wrote
5:53
Speaker 5: straight back, agreeing to meet me. That was the start
5:58
Speaker 5: of my journey. So, Jim, you've spent over a quarter
6:11
Speaker 5: of a century in the prison system, twenty six and
6:15
Speaker 5: a half years somewhere about there. How have you found it?
6:20
Speaker 3: Well, I haven't gotten the older. I've deliberately not had
6:22
Speaker 3: a birthday since I came in.
6:27
Speaker 5: How old were you when you came into the prison
6:30
Speaker 5: sere twenty seven and now fifty four?
6:34
Speaker 6: Yeah.
6:34
Speaker 3: I was born in Melbourne forty seven. Went to school
6:37
Speaker 3: Scotch College, Caulfield Grammar. Scotch College was a very upper
6:47
Speaker 3: class boarding school, which I did not like.
6:51
Speaker 5: Did you enjoy Schirling?
6:54
Speaker 3: No? No, and no again. I spise you know, reasonably uh, normal,
7:03
Speaker 3: uneventful sort of childhood. He father was in real estate, uh,
7:10
Speaker 3: which I followed him into after leaving school. We used
7:17
Speaker 3: to go away on annual holidays fishing trips.
7:20
Speaker 7: Uh.
7:21
Speaker 3: One of my favorite places was inside very very you
7:26
Speaker 3: was Johannah River. Uh, the Western District, Victoria Cape Otway area.
7:32
Speaker 3: We used to go uh camping down there at least
7:36
Speaker 3: every year. We knew all the uh, all the farmers,
7:39
Speaker 3: the families uh uh in the area u A.
7:43
Speaker 5: And I suppose, by any chance did any of those
7:45
Speaker 5: farmers happen to have some nice daughters.
7:49
Speaker 3: You could a one track mine, you know that, Yes
7:52
Speaker 3: they did.
7:53
Speaker 8: Uh.
7:53
Speaker 3: I I mentioned uh at the beginning of this that
7:56
Speaker 3: I learned fishing and shirting and other things. And uh
7:59
Speaker 3: uh the other thing he's had quite a bit to
8:00
Speaker 3: do with with one particular daughter of this farmer.
8:05
Speaker 2: Yes, I think I was probably about six when I
8:09
Speaker 2: saw the father.
8:11
Speaker 1: Lee's father called to him in a really harsh, demanding tone,
8:17
Speaker 1: authoritority of like sergeant in the army type tone of voice.
8:22
Speaker 2: Lee, come here.
8:24
Speaker 1: And I remember seeing Lee having to walk towards his
8:28
Speaker 1: father with allay fear in his face. The father had
8:31
Speaker 1: a stick about thirty centimeters long, and he got hold
8:37
Speaker 1: of Lee by the arm and started belting him hard
8:41
Speaker 1: with the stick, hard enough that he swung off the ground.
8:44
Speaker 9: It was obviously an unhappy passile with your mom and dad. Yes,
8:50
Speaker 9: correct me, I'm wrong here. Your mother had a problem
8:54
Speaker 9: with the buds, yes, and still does. Oh, she still it's.
9:00
Speaker 5: Still Jim O'Neill's father had been a prisoner of war.
9:09
Speaker 5: He had a lot of problems. Jim's mother was a
9:12
Speaker 5: much younger woman and apparently a pretty bad alcoholic. They
9:17
Speaker 5: fought violently and the police were called to their house
9:20
Speaker 5: in Brighton on many occasions. Jim dropped out of his
9:26
Speaker 5: real estate course at Preyan Tech and set himself up
9:29
Speaker 5: as a gun dealer. Around about this time, he got
9:33
Speaker 5: himself tangled up with some notorious underworld figures, people like
9:38
Speaker 5: George Joseph, the man who supplied the gun that killed Andy.
9:43
Speaker 5: Drugs campaigner Donald mckuy.
9:48
Speaker 3: I don't care what anyone says, nice fellow.
9:50
Speaker 5: Who were the other people that you're come in contact
9:54
Speaker 5: with to a.
9:54
Speaker 3: Much lesser, much smaller is venture in Balley. She don't mafia,
10:00
Speaker 3: you know what I mean. They like to portray that
10:02
Speaker 3: sort of attitude. There's such a great deal that went
10:10
Speaker 3: on in Melbourne that never came to light, that was
10:14
Speaker 3: only sort of known by those involved. And I'd grown
10:18
Speaker 3: up in Melbourne, you know, gone to good schools, and
10:20
Speaker 3: that I had no inkling of what actually went on,
10:25
Speaker 3: And all of a sudden I was introduced to a
10:28
Speaker 3: world where judges could be bought, where police officers could
10:38
Speaker 3: be bought, and not just bought, but actively engaged in
10:48
Speaker 3: the criminal activities.
10:53
Speaker 5: I got the failing Jim liked his money quick and easy.
10:57
Speaker 5: He branched out into a new line of work. He
11:01
Speaker 5: started buying uncut aples and selling them to duelis in Melbourne.
11:06
Speaker 5: It must have paid him pretty well, cause he made
11:09
Speaker 5: a lot of raid trips backwards and forwards to keep paid.
11:12
Speaker 5: Between sixty five and sixty seven, how many such trips
11:20
Speaker 5: approximately would.
11:21
Speaker 9: You have mate?
11:23
Speaker 3: Oh, that's hard to estimate exactly, but quite a few,
11:28
Speaker 3: uh fifteen, Yeah, could have been more.
11:32
Speaker 5: And how many vehicles would you have worn out in that.
11:34
Speaker 3: Period, because I mean, you know, to get stranded out
11:39
Speaker 3: there was you could go for several days and see
11:41
Speaker 3: no one. I have actually made trips up there where
11:44
Speaker 3: you where you leave Portagusta turn off towards uh Woomera
11:49
Speaker 3: and not see another vehicle for the entire rest of
11:51
Speaker 3: the trip. Yeah. All the horror stories that I'd been
11:55
Speaker 3: told about kooper Pedia, I mean I I know that happened,
12:01
Speaker 3: and they even happened while.
12:03
Speaker 5: I was up there, But what were some of the
12:06
Speaker 5: horror stories that.
12:07
Speaker 3: You heard about well briefullly just disappear.
12:11
Speaker 5: Uh. We were talking about Cooper Pudie and he clammed
12:23
Speaker 5: up on me. This wasn't the first time he'd done it.
12:27
Speaker 5: I started to think to myself, what's he done in
12:29
Speaker 5: the mid sixties in South Australia that he doesn't want
12:32
Speaker 5: me to know about. In all the time I'd spent
12:46
Speaker 5: talking to Jim, he'd maintained that he'd never had any
12:50
Speaker 5: trouble with the police before he was arrested in Tasmania,
12:54
Speaker 5: not even this spouting ticket. I'd heard some stories about
12:59
Speaker 5: men with some kids in Victoria, but I never had
13:03
Speaker 5: aatny hard facts. Then one day, out of the blue,
13:07
Speaker 5: he handed me a copy of his ninety six Barral assessment.
13:12
Speaker 5: I've got no idea why he did this, because on
13:15
Speaker 5: page three of details of twelve charges against him for
13:19
Speaker 5: reduction and indecent assault and four boys in Melbourne in
13:23
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy one. I'd spent a lot of time with
13:35
Speaker 5: Jim O'Neil, and I felt I was getting far too
13:38
Speaker 5: close to him, So I decided to see if he
13:41
Speaker 5: talked more openly to someone he'd never met before.
13:46
Speaker 3: I read in the files.
13:47
Speaker 10: When I read the whole case and the pro board
13:50
Speaker 10: reports that there are accusations and many accusations that things
13:55
Speaker 10: that happened in Melbourne.
13:56
Speaker 3: Was this, I cannot say, right, I'm under legal Yeah.
14:05
Speaker 10: Did you have a chance to talk to the pro board?
14:08
Speaker 3: I have heard yes.
14:09
Speaker 10: Did they imply to you that the that you were
14:14
Speaker 10: sexually interested in the boys? And were you able to
14:16
Speaker 10: answer that?
14:18
Speaker 3: You know, I denied it, and there are no there
14:23
Speaker 3: are no proven incidents of that rhyme whatsoever?
14:26
Speaker 10: How would you describe your sexuality? Would you say you're
14:29
Speaker 10: just a heterosexual man.
14:32
Speaker 3: Or a lot of recent years more like a monk
14:40
Speaker 3: in the past, you'd see yourself as being yeah, and
14:44
Speaker 3: demonistrably so yeah, right, I mean.
14:49
Speaker 10: But wouldn't people say, I'm sorry to hark back, but
14:52
Speaker 10: I think it's important that there were boys in the
14:56
Speaker 10: two cases and then the one case why boys? Just
15:02
Speaker 10: accidents happened to be there.
15:09
Speaker 3: I have no idea, right, uh, none whatsoever? Right? You
15:17
Speaker 3: had an accident, didn't you again?
15:18
Speaker 11: Change?
15:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, there was a license gun downer. I had a
15:23
Speaker 3: partner at the time, and we purchased a thirty two
15:27
Speaker 3: Burretta which wasn't feeding uh properly, and he was uh stupidly,
15:33
Speaker 3: I suppose cycling uh live rounds through the mechanism and
15:42
Speaker 3: one discharged and uh it hit me right there. I
15:48
Speaker 3: was later taken out in hospital and had gone back
15:53
Speaker 3: through a skull on a bit of damage. They've gone
15:57
Speaker 3: down through the turn, went down through three and lodged
16:01
Speaker 3: in my neck. But that led to a lot of blackouts. Well,
16:05
Speaker 3: I think a more proper description of what they were
16:10
Speaker 3: was an unaccounted for period of time.
16:15
Speaker 9: Right.
16:16
Speaker 5: You may know, I was in jail for a murder.
16:19
Speaker 5: He reckons he can't remember because of the gunshot wound,
16:23
Speaker 5: but I had a strong feeling that his problems began
16:26
Speaker 5: a lot earlier than that.
16:28
Speaker 12: It's about the worst possible thing that could happen if
16:31
Speaker 12: you've got someone who's already antisocial and then you damage
16:35
Speaker 12: his frontal lobe, because that he's already got limited control
16:40
Speaker 12: over impulses, and the frontal lobe is where the control
16:44
Speaker 12: over impulses reside. So if you look that out, he's
16:48
Speaker 12: going to become even more disinhibited than he would have
16:52
Speaker 12: been before, had even more impulsive.
17:03
Speaker 5: I found out from the trial documents that as a
17:07
Speaker 5: child Jim and Neill was prone to fantasies. There are
17:12
Speaker 5: instances of cruelty to animals, dishonesty, harson, and truancy. On
17:21
Speaker 5: top of that, there was also a strong inference from
17:24
Speaker 5: one of the psychiatrists that Jim himself had been sexually
17:28
Speaker 5: molested as a child, probably by someone close to him.
17:36
Speaker 13: You talked about your father or how was your relationship
17:39
Speaker 13: with your mother? You said you had a fitty good
17:43
Speaker 13: relationship with your father. I mean, you know you got
17:45
Speaker 13: reasonably with your mother.
17:47
Speaker 10: It's so so yeah, what just couldn't get close or
17:55
Speaker 10: got too close?
18:01
Speaker 3: Look, can we skip this one?
18:04
Speaker 5: That body language is so interesting? Head goes left, he's
18:09
Speaker 5: going to lie. Head goes right. How am I going
18:12
Speaker 5: to get out of this one?
18:20
Speaker 9: Following your shooting in Victoria?
18:24
Speaker 5: Can you take us through a chronological sequence of events?
18:29
Speaker 1: Oh?
18:32
Speaker 3: Good, I can't without Sorry, See if I mentioned that,
18:40
Speaker 3: it's going to position it.
18:48
Speaker 5: Jim jump bail before he could face trial for the
18:51
Speaker 5: boys in Victoria. He headed to the West and disappeared
18:55
Speaker 5: off the radar for quite a while. Jim talked tapping
19:01
Speaker 5: about he saw him in the West. He told me
19:04
Speaker 5: about how he'd worked on cattle stations around fit Troy Crossing,
19:08
Speaker 5: But then for some reason he started to get real advisive.
19:13
Speaker 5: He said that on legal advice he wouldn't say where
19:16
Speaker 5: he'd been or when he was there. He told me
19:22
Speaker 5: he was worried that one day of the police might
19:25
Speaker 5: find something and planned his d and I on it. Honey,
19:30
Speaker 5: A man was something to hard would make such a coming?
19:35
Speaker 9: Uh what would you real like for?
19:38
Speaker 14: Uh?
19:38
Speaker 3: B R I D G A T.
19:42
Speaker 9: And Christian Night?
19:44
Speaker 3: Anthony Leo g h.
19:48
Speaker 9: H said why did you change?
19:52
Speaker 14: Look?
19:52
Speaker 9: I really don't know.
19:55
Speaker 14: Uh.
19:56
Speaker 9: I didn't conceal my movements score h.
20:00
Speaker 3: I mean, you know, my friends, a family and all
20:02
Speaker 3: that knew exactly where it was. What are I doing?
20:06
Speaker 5: I talked to people up there and it surprised me
20:09
Speaker 5: how many of them remembered Jim ain't Neil. He apparently
20:13
Speaker 5: spent a lot of time hanging around the Fitzroy cross
20:17
Speaker 5: and Pub. It was there that he met then married
20:21
Speaker 5: a young TASMANI and bar made. I found one blacker
20:25
Speaker 5: who actually went to the wedding.
20:27
Speaker 15: Well, I suppose the first time I really run into
20:30
Speaker 15: him properly was he came up to Fitzroy Crossing and
20:34
Speaker 15: he was he wasn't actually doing anything, just in the
20:37
Speaker 15: bar there for quite a while. And he actually met
20:40
Speaker 15: one of the bar mats, Caroll, at that stage, and.
20:44
Speaker 16: They end up getting married.
20:45
Speaker 15: And to this day, I still don't know whether anybody
20:48
Speaker 15: got up and told Carol that, you know, the things
20:51
Speaker 15: that people were saying about husband or the shuit was it.
20:54
Speaker 15: I was working for the.
20:55
Speaker 16: Department of Agriculture that stage out at the research station
20:58
Speaker 16: where at a research stage twenty three mile out of town,
21:01
Speaker 16: and the next minute the end up there as manager
21:04
Speaker 16: and I certainly wasn't happy about working for him.
21:07
Speaker 5: How did he get the job?
21:09
Speaker 15: Yeah, Jim could tell a pretty good story. It was
21:10
Speaker 15: full of shit basically, so you know, and he was
21:12
Speaker 15: just going there and he would have spun a yarn
21:15
Speaker 15: and said that he had done that, and they probably
21:16
Speaker 15: wouldn't have done a decent check up on him.
21:19
Speaker 5: Did you notice a scar on Jim's head?
21:24
Speaker 15: Well, yeah, well he told us about that, like I
21:28
Speaker 15: had been shot, and he told us it was in
21:30
Speaker 15: Vietnam that had happened, and apparently the bullet went in
21:33
Speaker 15: here and out through the back of his back of
21:35
Speaker 15: his head there and it was there was a war
21:37
Speaker 15: wound from Vietnam that we heard.
21:40
Speaker 5: I got on the phone to an old black who'd
21:43
Speaker 5: been in JP out there. He had no time for
21:46
Speaker 5: Jim at all. And there was something else He told
21:50
Speaker 5: me about the unsolved deaths of an Aboriginal boy in
21:54
Speaker 5: November seventy three. An Aboriginal was it? A young fellow?
22:03
Speaker 9: Yeah, he was.
22:04
Speaker 13: He was found.
22:07
Speaker 15: Wrapped in barbe wi around the log and it was
22:10
Speaker 15: actually found up a three once the rivers have sided.
22:13
Speaker 15: But you know, it just went down as a tribal killing.
22:17
Speaker 5: The best of my knowledge, there weren't any records about
22:23
Speaker 5: the boy's death, no official inquest, newspaper stories, nothing, And
22:31
Speaker 5: it was pretty clear as some people didn't appreciate me
22:34
Speaker 5: raising the subject. Was there any deaths up there at
22:38
Speaker 5: all that you thought was a bit suspicious at the
22:42
Speaker 5: time A Neil was up.
22:43
Speaker 14: There, there was. There was some black fellow tide on
22:50
Speaker 14: a on a log floating down the river, but that
22:54
Speaker 14: you know, that's that's a sort of black flow caper
22:59
Speaker 14: we did. There's something you wouldn't take him blood, he noted.
23:02
Speaker 14: But he evidently had a bit to do with the gym.
23:04
Speaker 14: So where did he that? Oh? There was him, and
23:10
Speaker 14: he's made at the race has got tangled up with gins.
23:15
Speaker 3: Hm.
23:16
Speaker 5: The Mullajar communities located near some of the stations that
23:20
Speaker 5: Jim worked on a few of the elders remembered him
23:25
Speaker 5: with the gentle people. I got the failing They wouldn't
23:28
Speaker 5: speak ill of anyone. He'd always kept to himself. Do
23:34
Speaker 5: you remember what his name was, Jim Jim May?
23:41
Speaker 9: Now? Can you remember what sort of bloke this fellow was?
23:47
Speaker 2: Always what broke?
23:52
Speaker 5: Some of them gave the impression that Jim was just
23:54
Speaker 5: another white fellow. But I got a nagging failing things
23:58
Speaker 5: weren't quite right. Things became clearer when I talked to
24:06
Speaker 5: the owners of Fossil Downs, one of the big stations
24:09
Speaker 5: where Jim worked for a while as a storman for
24:12
Speaker 5: someone who only worked there for a couple of months
24:15
Speaker 5: more than thirty years ago. He seems to have made
24:18
Speaker 5: quite an impression on them.
24:20
Speaker 11: We found I fought with Jim's work. It was the
24:23
Speaker 11: more the moral issue, I suppose that prompted us to
24:27
Speaker 11: ask him to go, because in due course it came out.
24:30
Speaker 11: Because the Native girls can never keep secrets, they said
24:35
Speaker 11: that Jim was paying for their favors by giving them
24:41
Speaker 11: bacon and drinks.
24:44
Speaker 5: Who's that fellow to you?
24:46
Speaker 8: Jim O'Neill, a guy used to work on another property,
24:50
Speaker 8: told me. He said that he'd done the Bowmont job.
24:56
Speaker 8: That's Beaumont children in South Australia, and at the time
25:00
Speaker 8: I thought he was too young to be involved at
25:02
Speaker 8: all and didn't take much notice of it.
25:07
Speaker 5: Now there was another young Aboriginal boy found dead in
25:13
Speaker 5: the river somewhere around for Troy Crossing. Did somebody tell
25:17
Speaker 5: you something about that?
25:18
Speaker 3: No?
25:19
Speaker 8: No, we just hear people dying, but not the We
25:23
Speaker 8: didn't hear of that. We probably heard about it, but
25:25
Speaker 8: we didn't hear of any of the detail of it.
25:29
Speaker 8: If we did, we'd forgotten. You know, I've forgotten.
25:33
Speaker 5: I thought you'd said to me on the phone that
25:35
Speaker 5: you'd one of the workers had told you that Jim
25:38
Speaker 5: had spoken about killing an Aboriginal boy.
25:43
Speaker 8: No, no, not, I said nothing that was in me
25:47
Speaker 8: because I don't know anything about that.
25:52
Speaker 5: He apologized to me the next day. He said there
25:56
Speaker 5: were some things but left unset a ring. I decided
26:01
Speaker 5: to have a talk to Norm Adams. He'd been a
26:03
Speaker 5: policeman in fit Troy Crossing and when I talked to
26:06
Speaker 5: him a couple of days earlier, he'd mentioned the boy
26:10
Speaker 5: in the river with the wire. What were the guts
26:13
Speaker 5: of that? Never heard of it before? That's right, Oh well,
26:20
Speaker 5: if you never heard of it. The Norm didn't want
26:23
Speaker 5: to talk, but I found out there was another policeman
26:26
Speaker 5: in Fit Troy Crossing at the time. Jim was there.
26:30
Speaker 5: He died a few years ago, but his wife was
26:33
Speaker 5: happy to talk to me. She didn't remember the boy
26:36
Speaker 5: in the river, but she had plenty to sire about
26:40
Speaker 5: Jim o' neil.
26:41
Speaker 17: Soon as Trevor met jimmy' neill, he said, I don't
26:45
Speaker 17: trust that blag. He's a sly man. It's written all
26:50
Speaker 17: over him. Said there's something not right about that blow.
26:54
Speaker 17: He didn't like the way he hung around the children,
26:57
Speaker 17: particularly Norm Adams's boys. On one occasion, prs Norm to
27:02
Speaker 17: let the boys and they had a daughter, VICKI a
27:05
Speaker 17: bit younger, spend the night out there, and Drevor did
27:09
Speaker 17: ask no one not to let them go, but he did,
27:12
Speaker 17: who was very, very angry about the whole episode. And
27:17
Speaker 17: we went out there the next day and had this
27:19
Speaker 17: barbecue and a bit of a stressful day Carol was
27:23
Speaker 17: terribly upset. She thought the marriage was a sort of
27:26
Speaker 17: a sham. And she didn't say straight out that he
27:30
Speaker 17: felted her around, but she certainly intimated that he did.
27:37
Speaker 17: Used to tell these outrageous stories. He reckoned the wound
27:41
Speaker 17: in his head. Naturally somebody would inquire about it. He
27:45
Speaker 17: told one story that his mother's boyfriend was a gangster
27:49
Speaker 17: and that he had shot him in the head.
27:55
Speaker 5: She may know all tell a pack of lies when
27:57
Speaker 5: he was in the Kimberly. Apart from the fact he
28:00
Speaker 5: told people he was a driver when he couldn't ride
28:03
Speaker 5: a horse, he also said he was an accountant, a
28:06
Speaker 5: Vietnam veteran, a bush lawyer, and even an aisy go agent.
28:13
Speaker 5: By all accounts, Jim wasn't much of a manager, and
28:16
Speaker 5: eventually the department moved him sideways to Derby. By this
28:21
Speaker 5: time his wife was three months pregnant. He left for
28:25
Speaker 5: Troy Crossing in August seventy four. Within weeks of him
28:30
Speaker 5: arriving in Derby, a young boy disappeared off the street.
28:35
Speaker 6: A few years back, a friend of mine was telling
28:38
Speaker 6: me that a little boy went down to a shop
28:42
Speaker 6: to get something around tea time and never ever returned
28:45
Speaker 6: home again. I don't remember what year that was. I
28:50
Speaker 6: just remembered him telling me this, and it's just stuck
28:55
Speaker 6: in my head ever since. This fellow said he was
28:58
Speaker 6: twelve year old when he went met the sharp he
29:01
Speaker 6: went has been gone from there, maybe ten years, maybe more.
29:08
Speaker 5: According to a missing person's report, this boy was last
29:12
Speaker 5: seen getting into a car driven by a European man
29:16
Speaker 5: outside the Eldest store in Derby. He'd just been to
29:19
Speaker 5: the local shop. It's the exact same thing that happened
29:24
Speaker 5: in Tasmania. The first boy disappeared after gaunt of the
29:28
Speaker 5: shop to get a cart and a cigarettes for his father.
29:31
Speaker 5: The second boy was getting a cart and a milk.
29:38
Speaker 5: Jim Money stayed in Derby for a couple of months.
29:41
Speaker 5: In November, he and his wife moved to Tasmania. At
29:45
Speaker 5: that time it was only state in the country he
29:48
Speaker 5: hadn't been to. He killed the boy at Eagle Hawk
29:52
Speaker 5: Neck in early February seventy five, on the same day
29:56
Speaker 5: he brought his wife a newborn son home from hospital.
30:00
Speaker 9: We came down from the Kimberleys, you know, directly to here.
30:05
Speaker 3: We arrived. Didn't think about the middle of November seventy four,
30:09
Speaker 3: and I was in prison on the second of May
30:12
Speaker 3: seventy five, so uh, it wasn't long now.
30:17
Speaker 5: One of the detectives who arrested and charged Jim O'Neill
30:20
Speaker 5: is now the Tasmanian Police Commissioner. He was a junior
30:25
Speaker 5: detective sergeant in early seventy five when he and his
30:28
Speaker 5: partner tracked Jim and his wife to a motel in Lanceston,
30:33
Speaker 5: trade to form. Jim was about to leave the state
30:36
Speaker 5: when the second boy disappeared off the strait. He was
30:39
Speaker 5: doing a paper run and his disappearance sparked a great
30:43
Speaker 5: deal of concern.
30:45
Speaker 4: Uh, there was anger, there was fear.
30:47
Speaker 7: There was a great deal of media speculation that there
30:49
Speaker 7: was peraps, a serial killer operating in Tasmania, and of
30:53
Speaker 7: course that turned out to be very much the case.
30:56
Speaker 7: We discovered that in the fortnite prior to the second
31:01
Speaker 7: boy disappearing, that there were probably four, if not five
31:05
Speaker 7: other children who had been picked up taken to remote
31:09
Speaker 7: locations who'd managed to escape the person that had abducted
31:14
Speaker 7: them and get away relatively injury free. O'Neil at that
31:19
Speaker 7: time was a barman at the Loof for hotel, which
31:21
Speaker 7: is the eglorg Neck Hotel, And of course he was
31:24
Speaker 7: a very dominant influence in the search and offered all
31:27
Speaker 7: sorts of advice and assistance, And of course the investigation
31:31
Speaker 7: later proved that he had picked the boy up on
31:35
Speaker 7: the day that he was due to bring his wife
31:36
Speaker 7: home from hospital from having their first child. He obviously
31:40
Speaker 7: saw this kiddy playing in the washway, somehow or other,
31:43
Speaker 7: got him into the car, took him up a desperately long,
31:47
Speaker 7: lonely bush track, had his way with him sexually, and
31:51
Speaker 7: then inflicted massive injuries to his head with a rock.
31:56
Speaker 7: We visited the key sites, the sites where the bodies
32:01
Speaker 7: had been left, the sites where some clothing had been secreted,
32:04
Speaker 7: the photographs. We took shame, being absolutely relaxed, smoking, very
32:08
Speaker 7: distant from the whole activity, so much so that when
32:12
Speaker 7: we were eventually it up this enormously long, difficult, thickly
32:17
Speaker 7: overgrown bush track to find the first child, O'Neill stepped
32:22
Speaker 7: on the remains and it wasn't there is or there's Ricky,
32:27
Speaker 7: it was there it is. He showed absolutely no remorse
32:30
Speaker 7: at all. There was never a tear shed by him
32:33
Speaker 7: about what he'd done.
32:35
Speaker 3: To those children.
32:41
Speaker 5: Could you explain to me what you mean by it
32:44
Speaker 5: would never have happened the charge that arose.
32:56
Speaker 3: To bring you in here. The charge was murder and
33:02
Speaker 3: the victim was a child. And later on thinking about it,
33:10
Speaker 3: I felt very sorry for that jury because that court
33:13
Speaker 3: could not have made a decision, an accurve decision, because
33:20
Speaker 3: nobody in that court gave them the information they needed
33:23
Speaker 3: to do it. It was a load of crap from
33:26
Speaker 3: both the defense and the prosecution.
33:31
Speaker 5: Humans trial was over in four days. He was sentenced
33:35
Speaker 5: to prison for the term for his natural life.
33:47
Speaker 3: See I maintained and still do that I had no
33:51
Speaker 3: memory of the event at all. I mean not partial
33:57
Speaker 3: or that there was just no memory of it there.
34:02
Speaker 3: And I think.
34:05
Speaker 5: After twenty eight years, human l still uses blackout as
34:09
Speaker 5: his excuse, even though it came out he'd persuaded his
34:14
Speaker 5: wife to create a false alibi for him. He also
34:18
Speaker 5: disposed of his bloodstained clothing. Later he led detectives to
34:22
Speaker 5: the body he'd hidden in thick bush.
34:26
Speaker 12: He may have suffered some form of blackout at some stage.
34:30
Speaker 12: He suffered a major head injury in meningitis, and there
34:35
Speaker 12: were a couple of episodes in the past, fairly soon
34:39
Speaker 12: after the illness that may have been a form of epilepsy,
34:44
Speaker 12: and that's a fairly high risk. For someone who's suffered
34:49
Speaker 12: a penetrating head injury and who suffered meningitis, he would
34:52
Speaker 12: be at high at risk for epilepsy. But I just
34:58
Speaker 12: cannot conceive of situation where you carry out highly complex
35:03
Speaker 12: activities of abducting a child and killing a child during epilepsy.
35:08
Speaker 12: That would be that would be unique.
35:13
Speaker 5: Jim told me he'd had at least eight or nine
35:16
Speaker 5: of the so called blackouts while he is traveling around
35:19
Speaker 5: the country. He'd already used blackouts as his excuse in Tasmania,
35:25
Speaker 5: and I wondered what else he was hiding.
35:28
Speaker 3: I think one of the times that sticks in my
35:33
Speaker 3: memory as I found myself in the Western District, Victoria,
35:45
Speaker 3: sitting on a beach in a suit, in a business suit,
35:50
Speaker 3: with waves washing around me, sitting on the edge of
35:53
Speaker 3: the ocean there and actually becoming aware of where I
36:01
Speaker 3: was at that particular time. And yet I could not
36:06
Speaker 3: have told you how I got there or what I
36:08
Speaker 3: was doing there.
36:09
Speaker 5: Can you tell me what period of time was missing?
36:14
Speaker 3: Well, probably in the vicinity of twenty four hours.
36:20
Speaker 7: When we started to check on the background about the
36:22
Speaker 7: places that it had been. I think from memory that
36:26
Speaker 7: there are about seven or eight kiddies who are almost
36:28
Speaker 7: copybook in various places around Australia who had simply disappeared,
36:32
Speaker 7: never to be found.
36:35
Speaker 10: Let me ask you a real hard question. Don't answer
36:37
Speaker 10: it if you don't want to, But the question is,
36:40
Speaker 10: do you ever worry about what you might have done
36:44
Speaker 10: when you had the worst period of blackouts? Does it
36:48
Speaker 10: ever worry you that, as you can't remember because that
36:52
Speaker 10: was the worst period, what other things might.
36:54
Speaker 9: Well, that's.
36:57
Speaker 3: Quite correct. Yeah, and then again nothing has come to light.
37:03
Speaker 5: Right after Jim and Neil had been locked up for
37:06
Speaker 5: life in Tasmania, police from the other states started sniffing around.
37:11
Speaker 5: I got hold of a couple of letters from the
37:13
Speaker 5: police in South Australia written to the officer in charge
37:17
Speaker 5: at Fitzroy Crossing. These letters made me think, why it
37:23
Speaker 5: was Jim man Neil granted bail and Victoria and why
37:27
Speaker 5: is it that the police in three states never spoke
37:31
Speaker 5: to each other until after he was arrested in Tasmania.
37:36
Speaker 5: The dates in this document clearly relate to the disappearance
37:42
Speaker 5: of two young girls from the Oval in Adelaide on
37:46
Speaker 5: the twenty fifth of August nineteen seventy three, and there
37:51
Speaker 5: was an abduction and buggery committed on a young boy
37:55
Speaker 5: in Elizabeth the tenth of January nineteen seventy four, and
38:01
Speaker 5: the previous day there was another little boy that was
38:05
Speaker 5: abducted and raped. The second document is addressed to Sergeant Charoit.
38:11
Speaker 5: In part, this document reads, we have been chasing O'Neill
38:17
Speaker 5: ever since he was released on bail in Melbourne several
38:20
Speaker 5: years ago on thirteen charges of abduction and indecent assault
38:25
Speaker 5: on young boys. He changed his name and skipped to
38:28
Speaker 5: the West and now, as you know, has run the
38:32
Speaker 5: full course and killed two boys in Tazzy And it
38:35
Speaker 5: is anybody's guess how many other kids he's interfered with
38:38
Speaker 5: during his travels. For some reason or another, he denies
38:43
Speaker 5: ever having been to South Australia. The thing I found
38:51
Speaker 5: interesting is that the South Australia police had been looking
38:55
Speaker 5: for O'Neill since he jumped bail in nineteen seventy one,
39:00
Speaker 5: That was before the incidents referred to in the letters.
39:05
Speaker 5: It got me thinking maybe though wanted to talk to
39:08
Speaker 5: him about something else. Something that occurred when he was
39:12
Speaker 5: traveling between Malvin and Cooper Perdy in the mid sixties.
39:25
Speaker 4: The disappearance of the Beaumont children from Gleneld Beach in
39:28
Speaker 4: Adelaide is the most baffling mystery in Australian criminal history.
39:33
Speaker 4: It was Australia Day in nineteen sixty six and the
39:36
Speaker 4: temperature was over forty degrees. The three children, aged nine,
39:40
Speaker 4: seven and four, went to the beach and were never
39:43
Speaker 4: seen again. One of the last sightings of them was
39:47
Speaker 4: in a beachside milk bar.
39:56
Speaker 5: In my travels, I'd come across people who had told
39:59
Speaker 5: me that you O'Neil had confessed that he was involved
40:03
Speaker 5: in the disappearance of the Beaumont children. Unfortunately, the original
40:07
Speaker 5: witnesses were dead, so I traveled to Adelaide to talk
40:11
Speaker 5: to Brian Swann, who's in charge of the Beaumont investigation.
40:19
Speaker 18: On Phase three. Here were dealing in opens from Cooper Petias.
40:24
Speaker 18: You know Cooper Pedias in South Australia. Is this where
40:26
Speaker 18: the possible Beaumont connection comes in his movements in South Australia.
40:30
Speaker 5: Yes, he was fascinated, greatly fascinated with Cooper Pety and
40:34
Speaker 5: he brought the topic up on numerous occasions, and he
40:39
Speaker 5: never once mentioned Adelaide whatsoever. He spoke about going from
40:44
Speaker 5: Melbourne to Cooper Perdy, and possibly two years after I
40:49
Speaker 5: had been commenced visiting him, I said to him, where
40:52
Speaker 5: does the raid run between Cooper Paudy and Melbourne.
40:57
Speaker 3: You've got to go through Adelaide.
40:58
Speaker 5: And that was the first time that he never mentioned
41:01
Speaker 5: Adelaide and I thought.
41:03
Speaker 3: It was a peculiar thing.
41:05
Speaker 18: Do you have him in South Australia in nineteen sixty six?
41:08
Speaker 18: I know here it's Scott the late sixties and early.
41:10
Speaker 5: Seventies, definitely from sixty five and sixty six.
41:18
Speaker 18: Specifically, as he mentioned anything about the disappearance of the
41:21
Speaker 18: Beaumont children.
41:22
Speaker 5: I said to him on one occasion that I had
41:26
Speaker 5: heard that he had told other people that he was
41:31
Speaker 5: responsible for the murder of the Beaumont children in nineteen
41:36
Speaker 5: sixty six. And his response to me was I couldn't
41:40
Speaker 5: have done that. I was in Melbourne at the time.
41:43
Speaker 5: The point that stuck in my mind was he didn't
41:46
Speaker 5: deny it. I don't know if you may know or
41:51
Speaker 5: kill the Beaumont children or not. I know he telled
41:55
Speaker 5: others he did it, I can certainly put him in
41:59
Speaker 5: South Australia in nineteen sixty six. I also know that
42:04
Speaker 5: in all the time he talked about his travels, he
42:08
Speaker 5: never once mentioned Adelaide. He was barely night An in
42:13
Speaker 5: nineteen sixty six. But you've got to remember he was
42:17
Speaker 5: only fifteen at the time of the incident at Joanna
42:20
Speaker 5: River in night Owen sixty two. The Joanna River area
42:28
Speaker 5: wholes special significance to Jim O'Neill. He's talked about it
42:33
Speaker 5: so many times. Mostly he was talking about fishing and
42:37
Speaker 5: hunting below. In my view, when he talks about those things,
42:42
Speaker 5: he's actually talking about killing.
42:49
Speaker 1: I watched them pack and I'll watched them come up
42:51
Speaker 1: the driveway past the cowyard.
42:53
Speaker 2: There was not going to draw.
42:54
Speaker 1: My mother went to the draw. She came back in
42:56
Speaker 1: and said that h Lee wanted to talk to me.
43:00
Speaker 1: And I went to the door and he asked me
43:01
Speaker 1: to step outside, shut the door behind me, and o
43:05
Speaker 1: to the side a bit where there was an old
43:08
Speaker 1: tank who stood there, and he asked me, had I
43:15
Speaker 1: told anyone? And I either shot shook my head and
43:18
Speaker 1: said no, And he said we buried him, and I
43:25
Speaker 1: must have asked where, because I remember him saying across
43:29
Speaker 1: the river from where we camped.
43:33
Speaker 2: And that was.
43:36
Speaker 3: He.
43:36
Speaker 2: Then I asked was the other boy with him? And
43:39
Speaker 2: then he.
43:40
Speaker 1: Looked over and I saw the car parked over and
43:42
Speaker 1: the drive and he was sitting watching us. And then
43:46
Speaker 1: he looked away, and then Lie said he had to go,
43:48
Speaker 1: and he went over and got in the car, and
43:50
Speaker 1: they drove off, and I watched them go up.
43:54
Speaker 2: The road.
43:57
Speaker 1: And just appear out of side. And it was then
44:00
Speaker 1: after school the weekend. In the next few days anyway,
44:04
Speaker 1: went looking down along the river, went walking looking for a.
44:11
Speaker 2: What could be a grave.
44:18
Speaker 5: I felt that my best chance had proven that Jim
44:20
Speaker 5: and killed out the children would be found on the
44:23
Speaker 5: dairy farm at Joanna. I contacted the Victoria place and
44:28
Speaker 5: told them I was going to try and locate a body.
44:33
Speaker 5: The search area covered about half an acre of floodplain.
44:36
Speaker 5: It was badly overgrown with weeds and blackberries. The willow
44:41
Speaker 5: trees that lined the river when Jim and his mate
44:44
Speaker 5: were there in nineteen sixty two had recently been cut
44:47
Speaker 5: down and piled into windrows.
44:55
Speaker 14: You seen that truck, What do you think that is.
45:03
Speaker 2: A pretty good sign? I think.
45:09
Speaker 5: He says it was here that he had his biggest
45:11
Speaker 5: blackout ever. When he woke up, he was sitting on
45:14
Speaker 5: the beach. Waves were washing around him. His clothes were
45:19
Speaker 5: muddy and torn, as if he'd been digging. He claimed
45:24
Speaker 5: he had no idea how he got there, and reckons
45:27
Speaker 5: that he'd been missing for more than twenty four hours.
45:31
Speaker 5: The experts I've spoken to her about his so called
45:34
Speaker 5: blackouts all a growing It's a code that he uses
45:38
Speaker 5: to describe a period of time when he's committed serious offenses.
47:04
Speaker 5: Forty years is a long time for a small body
47:06
Speaker 5: to be buried. It's possible we misfinding it by centimotus,
47:13
Speaker 5: or even that Jim moved it at a later time.
47:17
Speaker 5: Whatever the case, I'm still convinced that when he was
47:21
Speaker 5: fifteen years old, something significant happened here, maybe even his
47:28
Speaker 5: first haste to murder.
47:44
Speaker 10: Psychopaths of people who like to control other human beings
47:49
Speaker 10: so often like to control life and death. And here
47:51
Speaker 10: you have a situation of a man who's nurturing worms
47:57
Speaker 10: but then feeds them to rodents, and the symbolism for
48:02
Speaker 10: a psychopath and that is enormous.
48:05
Speaker 7: He'll tell you as much as he wants you to
48:07
Speaker 7: know at particular times. But I've got no doubt that
48:11
Speaker 7: he's got inheritability to persuade himself that he's absolutely guilty
48:14
Speaker 7: of nothing.
48:30
Speaker 10: Jim and you both fish and hunt, but Jim goes
48:35
Speaker 10: one step further. He hunts for humans too. He did
48:40
Speaker 10: it when he called those two boys, and I think
48:42
Speaker 10: he's done it in the past.
48:52
Speaker 5: Earlier this year, I went out the Hays to talk
48:54
Speaker 5: to Juma, and I wanted to ask him some questions
48:59
Speaker 5: about the things people had said about him. He lost
49:04
Speaker 5: his temper and stormed off, shouting, I'm putting an end
49:08
Speaker 5: to this. You're trying to set me up. Over three years,
49:16
Speaker 5: Jim and I did a lot of talking, but for
49:20
Speaker 5: the moment, it looks like my questions are going to
49:22
Speaker 5: remain unanswered. They'll probably never be answered, but that doesn't
49:29
Speaker 5: mean I'm going to stop asking. Fishing creeks small rivers
49:41
Speaker 5: is my greatest love. Where you can read the water
49:47
Speaker 5: and work out where the fish will be lying or
49:50
Speaker 5: is most likely to be lying, and using a small hawk,
49:57
Speaker 5: most likely I'll only use one worm.
50:01
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think you know. When I think back of
50:06
Speaker 3: the best fish, especially the fish I've caught down here.
50:13
Speaker 3: I've been star gazing or not taking much notice at all,
50:18
Speaker 3: but I've just loved the law, just a you know,
50:20
Speaker 3: a tazzy devil or or something that you can get
50:22
Speaker 3: a bit of distance with. There was no finesse, no
50:26
Speaker 3: skill if you like involved at all. I mean that
50:30
Speaker 3: law hit the water near a hungary if you couldn't
50:35
Speaker 3: care less, if you just stick a war worm on
50:38
Speaker 3: an ordinary.
50:41
Speaker 4: James Ryan O'Neill is now fifty six years old. He
50:44
Speaker 4: has served twenty eight years in prison and is currently
50:48
Speaker 4: Tasmania's longest serving prisoner for a single offense. His last
50:52
Speaker 4: application for a parole was in nineteen ninety six. In
50:57
Speaker 4: that report there is an excerpt from a letter written
50:59
Speaker 4: by the Crown Advocate in nineteen seventy five. In my opinion,
51:06
Speaker 4: this man is a very dangerous man indeed, and any
51:08
Speaker 4: question of his release should be approached very cautiously. Further,
51:12
Speaker 4: any person considering the release of O'Neil should, in my opinion,
51:16
Speaker 4: make inquiries of the police in Victoria and Western Australia.