Latest / Real Crime with Adam Shand / BEST OF 2025: Why Shirley Never Made It to the Party | Louise Steding

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BEST OF 2025: Why Shirley Never Made It to the Party | Louise Steding · Real Crime with Adam Shand

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Appo Cha Production.
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: Hello listeners to Real Crime with Adam Shander. I want
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: to wish you a very safe and happy festive season.
• 0:18
  Speaker 2: We're going to be taking off over the Christmas break,
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: so I wanted to leave you with a couple of
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: excerpts from my favorite podcasts of twenty twenty five. I
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: hope you enjoy them, and I look forward to giving
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: you some new and excellent crime experiences on our podcast
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: in the new year. I'll talk to you then enjoy.
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: So on the night of September twelfth, nineteen fifty three,
• 0:43
  Speaker 2: she's heading to a party at Richmond. She's going to
• 0:47
  Speaker 2: be picked up by a colleague. She's working at GJ.
• 0:49
  Speaker 2: Cole's Variety store in Burke Street in Melbourne, and this
• 0:53
  Speaker 2: is her social network. She's met people she's working where.
• 0:56
  Speaker 2: She's the young one of the younger ones at fourteen.
• 0:59
  Speaker 2: But she arranges to meet Ronald John Holmes, twenty one,
• 1:04
  Speaker 2: one of her workmates. He thinks they're meeting at Richmond Station.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: She doesn't know about Richmond Station and so she goes
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: to North Richmond Station.
• 1:15
  Speaker 1: What happened next, Well, Ronald Holmes, he was her chaperone.
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: A lot of people thought oh ah, this guy, because
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: of the seven year age difference, had something to do
• 1:28
  Speaker 1: with it. Maybe maybe not. At this stage, when Shirley
• 1:32
  Speaker 1: got off at the station, he wasn't anywhere. Ronald wasn't
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: anywhere to be seen. He probably went to a different station,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: so she would have felt very stood up and humiliated.
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: He did too elsewhere. He added straight to the party
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: and actually told people he'd been stood up. But Shirley
• 1:57
  Speaker 1: wasn't seen again. Actually she wasn't seen since the bus stop.
• 2:03
  Speaker 1: She wasn't really seen until she there's a change over
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: between bus and train. That's where she wasn't seen.
• 2:09
  Speaker 2: Since, because she's coming in from reservoir reservoir as we
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: call it down here, and she gets the train into
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: North Richmond. And as you say, she was not the
• 2:21
  Speaker 2: kind of girl to jump in a stranger's car. I
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: think she would have been more likely to have simply
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: turned around and gone home. But then there's a critical
• 2:33
  Speaker 2: alleged sighting.
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: At about eight o'clock.
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: A woman is walking down from Punt Road down Elizabeth
• 2:41
  Speaker 2: Street towards North Richmond station, and she sees a girl
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: fitting Shirley Collins's description, and she's talking to a man
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: in a car.
• 2:51
  Speaker 1: Can I just interject there, Sure there's more than one
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: witness There were two, And these witnesses came forward two
• 2:59
  Speaker 1: months after Shirley's body was found. And this is a
• 3:04
  Speaker 1: huge repancy. This is a huge lapse of time that
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: impacts the reliability of memory. Also, we know that since
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: this time, many publications in the newspapers have been presented.
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: For example, one of the witnesses reported that she was
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: wearing a pearl necklace because that's how she was presented
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: in the actual newspaper. But in fact they found the
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: pearl necklace back at home. She hadn't worn it at all.
• 3:38
  Speaker 1: So when I looked at this book, I looked for
• 3:42
  Speaker 1: inconsistencies and consistencies, and quite frankly, I pushed many of
• 3:51
  Speaker 1: the witnesses aside and tried to trace steps. A lot
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: of this has to do with timing and movement. That's
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: how I looked at it.
• 4:03
  Speaker 2: Wasn't that in your book, Conceivable Malice, you do cast
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: doubt on these eyewitness accounts. You've always got to be
• 4:10
  Speaker 2: careful with eye witness accounts because they can be influenced
• 4:14
  Speaker 2: by what people have read. Memory fades away very quickly,
• 4:17
  Speaker 2: as you say This was some weeks or months after
• 4:20
  Speaker 2: the events, So we really can't be sure that she
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: even got to North Richmond station, Is that what you're saying?
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah, But irrespective that even if she didn't get to
• 4:33
  Speaker 1: North Richmond station at some time, say Regent Street station
• 4:39
  Speaker 1: where the bus at the bus and the train intersection,
• 4:43
  Speaker 1: at some stage she got in a car and so
• 4:47
  Speaker 1: basically I take that and that car went to Mount Martha.
• 4:53
  Speaker 1: This is why the timing I've looked at motor vehicle speeds,
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: traffic lights, headlights, lighting, weather, all that sort of thing
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: was raining and to arrow down time frames you look
• 5:08
  Speaker 1: at I know it sounds gross, but maggots, maggots that
• 5:13
  Speaker 1: were found. You look at the last meal that she had,
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: the things that we know, because I must say, many
• 5:22
  Speaker 1: of the witness accounts and people can really want to
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: help the police, but they can be a huge distraction,
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: a huge distraction if they're incorrect.
• 5:33
  Speaker 2: You're right, everything is up for contests in this story.
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: Only thing we do know for certain is that nine
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: am Tuesday, three days almost three days after she disappears,
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: a retired businessman is walking his fox terrier Bombo, along
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: Marine Drive Mount Martha. Bombo runs up a driveway to
• 5:53
  Speaker 2: a vacant cottage barking, and comes back and tugs at
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: his master's leg, urging him to come see what he's found.
• 6:01
  Speaker 3: What does the witness find?
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: Ah, This is crucial now, remembering that two days and
• 6:09
  Speaker 1: three nights of past since she actually disappeared. She was
• 6:14
  Speaker 1: found with her head covered and her head smashed in,
• 6:19
  Speaker 1: her face smashed in. She was found naked from the
• 6:25
  Speaker 1: shoulders down except stocking down on one foot, very staged,
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: a very staged position for a fourteen year old girl
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: absolutely dead. I know this sounds awful too, but decomposing.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: It's just imagine how that man felt in finding her. Anyway,
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: he called the police from Ana. Police jumped to it
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: very quickly and they worked together with the police from Melbourne.
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: So it was really a good collaboration of men. Police.
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: The time of death became a critical element to this
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: whole investigation because, as you say, police put out calls
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: for information, There was a radio broadcast, there was pictures
• 7:16
  Speaker 2: of Shirley in the clothes that she wore, staged up
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: with for the model and so forth, and this brought
• 7:22
  Speaker 2: a lot of information, including some witness accounts from people
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: in the Mount Martha area. That suggested that she might
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: not have died on the Saturday, but some days afterwards,
• 7:35
  Speaker 2: which was very misleading. It was indeed, she was supposed
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: to have been seen in a hotel.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: In a shop as well, coffee shop, hotel. The thing is,
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: you think, why on earth would someone do that, Why
• 7:48
  Speaker 1: on earth would they distract police? Well, it might be
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: that she's on their mind and they truly believed that
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: they've seen her, and they don't want to not give
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: information into the police. But I don't actually think that's
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: what happened here. I think it was good publicity. Quite frankly,
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: I know that's callous, but I think that the hotel
• 8:14
  Speaker 1: owner or the shop owner that it brought the client
• 8:18
  Speaker 1: tell because it did to their premises and increase their sales.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: It got them on the map, and in this instance,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: it distracted police. It gave them theories that didn't work,
• 8:33
  Speaker 1: and it wasn't until the medical examiner came up with
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: his findings that they could refute all of these unreliable sightings.
• 8:47
  Speaker 2: You can imagine how that was for Shirley's foster parents.
• 8:52
  Speaker 2: She is a quiet, conscientious girl. She's not experienced socially
• 8:56
  Speaker 2: and suddenly she's turning up in hotels and drinking beer
• 9:00
  Speaker 2: and having meals with older men and so forth.
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: So distressing. But as you pointed out earlier, they stood.
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: By her and said, no, no, she would not have
• 9:12
  Speaker 1: done that. That is not our girl. I thought that
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: was admirable.
• 9:18
  Speaker 3: Correct.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: The medical examin was critical in this because, as you said,
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: he looked at the contents of her stomach and as
• 9:25
  Speaker 2: you indelicately put it, the growth of maggots on.
• 9:28
  Speaker 3: The body over those days.
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: And you suddenly come back to a very specific time
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: of death. How has that arrived at Louise, It's all from.
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: The first laying of eggs. He looked at the laying
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: of eggs and the timelines of the different stages of
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: development of maggots found in Shirley's body, and a different method.
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: Now this is important. These police tried a different method
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: from a different source of information. That is a really
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: good way of examining a case. So the medical eg
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: samina also looked at her last meal, and there was
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: also a false report there too, but it had certain
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: elements in it that took quite a long time to digest,
• 10:18
  Speaker 1: Like it was pea and han soup, and split peas
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: take quite a long time to digest, but not that long,
• 10:26
  Speaker 1: and so the time was narrowed in to around seven
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: thirty pm, So he arrived at a time frame of
• 10:37
  Speaker 1: between seven thirty pm and eleven pm. When I mentioned
• 10:44
  Speaker 1: Ronald Holmes earlier, her chaperone. No matter how I looked
• 10:50
  Speaker 1: at this, he did not fit within the timeline. This person,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: the killer, had to drive to Mount Martha and come back.
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: Remember that Ronald turned up a party. The police even
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: asked what were you all doing at the time he arrived,
• 11:13
  Speaker 1: What were you watching? They were all watching motorbikes on
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: probably the TV, so they closed in. That's one person
• 11:23
  Speaker 1: who got eliminated. Now must say he was also a suspect,
• 11:27
  Speaker 1: quite a main one for me in the beginning. So
• 11:32
  Speaker 1: at that point when he did not fit, he got eliminated.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: Set to the side, eliminated by me as a suspect,
• 11:42
  Speaker 1: as he I think was eliminated by the police too.
• 11:46
  Speaker 1: Basically I pulled ever brewerybody in, including the parents, including
• 11:54
  Speaker 1: all the colleagues. I pulled everybody in as a suspect,
• 11:59
  Speaker 1: especially given that eighty seven percent of murders commit to
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: buy people who know the victim eighty seven percent. They
• 12:10
  Speaker 1: don't say to what extent they know them. But here
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: we've got a whole bundle of work colleagues, we've got parents,
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: foster parents and so on. So everybody became a focus,
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: but not Ronald. He got eliminated early on.
• 12:34
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• 12:38
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