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The Murder Of Mary Hattam · DEADBUG SAYS

0:05
[SPEAKER_00]: cast.
0:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And as always, this podcast may not be suitable for young listeners.
0:14
[SPEAKER_00]: So before we begin, I will ask you if you use one thing.
0:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Do you set back?
0:20
[SPEAKER_00]: You shut that plus you give a mouth of yours.
0:23
[SPEAKER_00]: It's more come if you got them.
0:39
[SPEAKER_00]: December 1958, the girl on the beach, part one, astralia, a country of kangaroos, men and daisy-duk-shaws, and lesbians, all of which are unappealing except for maybe kangaroos.
1:06
[SPEAKER_00]: which if I'm being honest, I don't give a fuck about that, me, the year, the 7 1958.
1:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Australia was a nation that believed to know exactly what it was, the Second World War was over.
1:22
[SPEAKER_00]: The economy was booming.
1:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Television's flickered in liver rooms for the first time, playing American reruns.
1:32
[SPEAKER_00]: A laurel honey, and probably all Chidiastralian shows my masterines in them, families packed with the peaches, drove shiny holdens, and spoke confidently about the future, at least on the surface.
1:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Because beneath the optimism, sad and other astralia, an astralia that rarely appeared
2:04
[SPEAKER_00]: And Australia divided by race, class, geography, and science.
2:15
[SPEAKER_00]: And in the final days before Christmas 1958, in remote town on the edge of the continent, those cracks was split wide open.
2:35
[SPEAKER_00]: and murder, they shocked a nation.
2:39
[UNKNOWN]: Hi.
2:41
[SPEAKER_00]: On a case, the nearly 70 years later, still raises a simple question that I'll destroy or get it right, or did the country convince itself that it had.
2:59
[SPEAKER_00]: To understand the crime, you first have to understand the place.
3:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Seduna, South Australia, today is known as the gateway to Nalabor, but in 1958, there was a tiny isolated settlement on far western edge of the state, one road in, one road out, a place where
3:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, and I guess that sounds like a bit of a cliché today, but back then, there were true.
3:45
[SPEAKER_00]: The population was only around 1200 people, fishing boats bobbed in the harbour.
3:54
[SPEAKER_00]: children wronged beaches unsupervised, doors left unlocked, then those travelled quicker, then a spastic on rollerskates going down the side of a mountain.
4:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Which I can imagine will be pretty fast, and I shall like to see that.
4:16
[SPEAKER_00]: If a stranger arrived in town,
4:25
[SPEAKER_00]: They'd know the false stories before sunset.
4:32
[SPEAKER_00]: By the Christmas in 1958, it was hard, and it was bright.
4:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Christmas decoration song and shop windows, and families prepared for the holidays.
4:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Children counted the days and took Christmas morning.
4:50
[SPEAKER_00]: the world felt normal, safe, predictable, or at least predictable enough.
5:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Australia itself was under the leadership of Prime Minister Sir Robert Mensis, a man whose name was synonymous with stability.
5:12
[SPEAKER_00]: The country was experienced in strong economic growth, rise in home ownership, expanded industry, for many Australians, these were prosperous years.
5:25
[SPEAKER_00]: The temple glass dry and family looked very different from today.
5:30
[SPEAKER_00]: The had worked, mom stated home, at least that with the ideal set-up that were constantly
5:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Men worked at darks, farms, throughout ways, in the factories.
5:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Women were expected to raise a children, keep house, prepare the meals.
5:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And there were good times, the average wage was rising, suburbs were growing.
6:01
[SPEAKER_00]: And Australians were buying things their parents could never imagined.
6:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Like soap.
6:08
[SPEAKER_02]: And now I'm just joking that cause televisions, refrigerators, the future seem like it arrived.
6:20
[SPEAKER_00]: But not for everyone, because while White Australia celebrated prosperity, the indigenous
6:36
[SPEAKER_01]: a different reality, one may, literally wax.
6:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And many parts of the country, they faced restrictions on movement, employment, and even alcohol consumption.
6:48
[SPEAKER_00]: Which I don't think is a totally bad idea, if you've ever had the displeasure of seeing an aboriginal drunk.
6:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Some required official exemptions to exercise rights, the white Australians, simply took for granted.
7:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Many Australians preferred not to think about it, many never saw it.
7:09
[SPEAKER_00]: I guess at a site, at a mine, especially in the big cities, but in remote towns, like Seduna.
7:19
[SPEAKER_00]: Those divisions were impossible to ignore, and they would soon become central to one of the most controversial criminal cases, and I was trying history.
7:35
[SPEAKER_00]: On Friday, the 719th, 1958, a traveling carnival rolled into town, with his stinky carnies and felt based workers, but for children, there was magic, bright lights, music, games, noise,
8:04
[SPEAKER_00]: and a place is isolated as a journal.
8:08
[SPEAKER_00]: A carnival just wasn't entertainment.
8:12
[SPEAKER_00]: I was an event.
8:15
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind people talked about for weeks, and for the kids even longer.
8:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Workers unloaded equipment.
8:24
[SPEAKER_00]: Stars were assembled, getting ready for their annual griffed.
8:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Locals gather to see what it arrived.
8:32
[SPEAKER_00]: On the few days, it's a junum, felt larger than it really was.
8:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Among those traveling with the carnival that year, were a 27-year-old, a room to man, named the Rupert, Maxwell, Stewart, and being a room to some kind of tribe.
9:02
[SPEAKER_00]: I'm guessing that one is real name, but I guess his real name don't matter now.
9:09
[SPEAKER_00]: It's lost in time.
9:11
[SPEAKER_00]: But most people simply know him as Max.
9:15
[SPEAKER_00]: At that point, he was just another carnival worker, a grifter, passing through town.
9:23
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody imagined that within days, his name would appear in newspapers all across Australia.
9:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody imagined politicians, judges, journalists, and eventually a world commission would become involved in his life.
9:45
[SPEAKER_00]: For now, it was just simply another abo original.
9:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And no one, nothing original, bone, travelin' with a bunch of other, filthy, stinky, kines, just another face, and a travelin' freak show.
10:03
[SPEAKER_00]: You know, I'm sure they're all right, eh.
10:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Don't wanna seem too judgmental.
10:08
[SPEAKER_00]: And as the Juno, prepared for another hot December weekend, nobody there knew that nine year old Mary Adams death clock was now ticking.
10:25
[SPEAKER_00]: Like thousands of Australian children in the 1950s, Mary enjoyed a freedom that would seem extraordinary today.
10:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Children walk to their friends' houses alone.
10:39
[SPEAKER_00]: played outside for hours, explored beaches, and scrub land without any supervision.
10:45
[SPEAKER_00]: And yet, sure, parents worried, but the dangers that dominate modern parenting had yet entered every day life back then, most especially in a place like Sajuna.
11:08
[SPEAKER_00]: The following afternoon, Saturday, December 20th, Mary would head out to the plain in the beach.
11:16
[SPEAKER_00]: The sun will be high.
11:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And let's not forget that December is summer in Australia.
11:25
[SPEAKER_00]: And the sea was calm.
11:27
[SPEAKER_00]: And nothing about the afternoon would initially seem unusual.
11:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Those screams were reported.
11:34
[SPEAKER_00]: No obvious struggle.
11:36
[SPEAKER_00]: No witnesses running for help.
11:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Just a small coastal town, carrying on with a summer weekend.
11:46
[SPEAKER_00]: But before the day was over,
11:48
[SPEAKER_00]: The entire community would find itself searching in the darkness.
11:54
[SPEAKER_00]: And I'll stray you would begin one of the most bitterly disputed criminal cases in this history.
12:02
[SPEAKER_00]: A case involved in race, politics, the death penalty.
12:10
[SPEAKER_00]: An horrific matter that would remain controversial for this very day.
12:19
[SPEAKER_00]: A murder that took an innocent nine-year-old child from this world.
12:38
[SPEAKER_02]: Part two, the search.
12:50
[SPEAKER_00]: Seduna.
12:51
[SPEAKER_00]: The temperature had climbed through the afternoon.
12:56
[SPEAKER_00]: Children were everywhere.
12:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Adults took cover from the heat.
13:02
[SPEAKER_00]: The school year was ending.
13:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Christmas was less and a week away.
13:08
[SPEAKER_00]: In the carnival, remained in town.
13:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Families drifted between the beach, the shop, and the attractions that appeared almost overnight.
13:19
[SPEAKER_00]: For most people, there was a completely ordinary day.
13:23
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of day might you, for God in almost as soon as it ends.
13:29
[SPEAKER_00]: But for one family, it will become a date bound permanently into that memory.
13:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Because sometimes, generally after the known, nine-year-old Mary Adam disappeared.
13:45
[SPEAKER_00]: The first nobody panicked.
13:48
[SPEAKER_00]: The pretty nine-year-old was popular, and friendly, men was known to drift from location to location, playing with different groups of friends, so why would they be nervous?
14:01
[SPEAKER_00]: That's when 1958.
14:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Children came and went.
14:05
[SPEAKER_00]: They wanted to explore.
14:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes they stayed out longer than expected.
14:14
[SPEAKER_00]: and a small down like Sijuna.
14:19
[SPEAKER_00]: People looked out for one another.
14:21
[SPEAKER_00]: If a child got lost, someone usually knew where to walk.
14:26
[SPEAKER_00]: But as they have the known slipped into Eden, concern, solely replaced, confidence.
14:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary hadn't returned.
14:37
[SPEAKER_00]: Franz hadn't seen her.
14:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody seemed to know where she'd gone.
14:47
[SPEAKER_00]: And with every passing hour, the questions took a more urgent tone.
14:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I was she.
14:53
[SPEAKER_00]: I would see her last.
14:58
[SPEAKER_00]: And why hadn't she come home?
15:02
[SPEAKER_00]: As they light faded, family members began searching.
15:11
[SPEAKER_00]: They're more locals, and on the entire town.
15:18
[SPEAKER_00]: The such bread through the streets, the beaches, and open ground.
15:23
[SPEAKER_00]: People carry torches, call the name.
15:29
[SPEAKER_00]: Check places, children might hide.
15:32
[SPEAKER_00]: Places, children might play.
15:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Places, children might accidentally become trapped.
15:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Nobody wanted to think about the worst, but the dark of possibilities.
15:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Not yet, but that fear loomed, and the back of everyone's mind.
15:53
[SPEAKER_00]: But because once you allow yourself to think the worst, you can never go back.
16:02
[SPEAKER_00]: The sun disappeared.
16:11
[SPEAKER_00]: and something changed, the atmosphere, the feeling, the optimism, the confidence, that's slipping away, the belief that everything would be alright, and I'll begin to evaporate.
16:37
[SPEAKER_00]: People began to take their eyes off of the ground and looked up and locked the eyes on one another.
16:48
[SPEAKER_00]: As I will look at for answers, looking for clues, looking for assurance, looking for somebody who knew something, anything.
17:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Mind-mission, and the down through silent is still imagine it to sound waves rolling onto the shore, the occasional bug and dog, the distant home of generators from the carnival grounds.
17:30
[SPEAKER_00]: beneath it all, the creeping sets, there's something that's terribly wrong.
17:43
[SPEAKER_00]: The follow-in morning, the search resumed, now larger, now urgent, more determined.
17:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Fallen days come to coastline, others search the scrubland,
18:00
[SPEAKER_00]: police now join the effort.
18:03
[SPEAKER_00]: People would go on the bad hope and marry would have been found safe.
18:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Walk up to a different reality.
18:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Because this was no longer a child who'd missed a curfew, something that happened to it.
18:21
[SPEAKER_00]: But the question was, what?
18:29
[SPEAKER_00]: then came the gruesome discovery.
18:34
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of discovery, have very apparent fears.
18:41
[SPEAKER_00]: The kind of discovery, the searcher secretly dreads, while convincing himself that won't happen.
18:51
[SPEAKER_00]: A body was found
18:57
[SPEAKER_00]: The blonde, long, scraggly hair, the clouded blue eyes, the end of the shawl on, and such was over.
19:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And the nightmare was beginning.
19:17
[SPEAKER_00]: Words spread quickly about a girl who was newed.
19:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And a town barely more than a thousand people.
19:28
[SPEAKER_00]: who was traveled frightening, like fire, in the brushland.
19:38
[SPEAKER_00]: People stepped out of the frantus, gathered in its small groups.
19:45
[SPEAKER_00]: The women wept.
19:48
[SPEAKER_00]: There was whispering.
19:51
[SPEAKER_00]: There was speculation.
19:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Many asked the same questions over and over.
19:59
[SPEAKER_00]: What's it really, huh?
20:02
[SPEAKER_00]: What happened?
20:05
[SPEAKER_00]: That would do such a thing.
20:09
[SPEAKER_00]: That one had answers.
20:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Only rumours.
20:15
[SPEAKER_00]: Rumours of a naked body.
20:18
[SPEAKER_00]: Covered in maggots.
20:22
[SPEAKER_00]: Bites on a body.
20:25
[SPEAKER_02]: for animals, all was still the killer, parts of a chewed off, and then we'll fear.
20:34
[SPEAKER_02]: And that would disbelief.
20:37
[SPEAKER_00]: His murders and then parts were rare.
20:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Child murders, rare still.
20:46
[SPEAKER_00]: This wasn't supposed to happen in places like Sijuna, not yet.
20:55
[SPEAKER_00]: little girl, not days before Christmas.
21:03
[SPEAKER_00]: The kangaroo cops immediately secured the area and vestigators began examining the scene.
21:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Photographs were taken.
21:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Measurements recorded wouldn't
21:21
[SPEAKER_00]: movements very traced, every footprint, every mock, have read this guarded flip flop and cigarette, mad at it, because somewhere among those details was a story, the story that pretty nine-year-old Mary Adam,
21:49
[SPEAKER_00]: And in those early hours, the Australian police faced enormous pressure because this was a town, a frightened town, did not want to dance this.
22:05
[SPEAKER_00]: Lynch mobs were now foaming newspapers, they wanted answers, families wanted answers.
22:19
[SPEAKER_00]: from the man to the retard who cleaned up the pig guts at the pig habit well well maybe not that guy but this won't gonna happen right away.
22:34
[SPEAKER_00]: This was world loss triumphant and homicide investigations even in big cities don't begin with suddenly small towns you can
22:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Because for an investigation like this and a place like this it begins with confusion, contradictions, math truths, mistakes, and assumptions, lots of assumptions, especially in 1958, especially in remote town.
23:18
[SPEAKER_00]: and most suddenly one fear begins to influence judgment.
23:23
[SPEAKER_00]: And there were plenty of fear.
23:28
[SPEAKER_00]: The gone of all that brought excitement to Sajuna suddenly looked different.
23:33
[SPEAKER_00]: People who had been welcomed only days earlier.
23:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Now, became subjects of suspicion.
23:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Strangest, who now stood out.
23:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Visitors stood out, and they went on for Melia.
23:52
[SPEAKER_00]: Scooter.
23:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Because one community experiences a tragedy, it instinctively closes ranks and searches for explanations.
24:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And often, they search for somebody to blame.
24:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Police began interviewing witnesses, gather in statements, constructed timelines, names were written down, names were crossed off, then written down again.
24:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Every freaking town was called in, and called in twice.
24:39
[SPEAKER_00]: Maybe given a little rough treatment to hopefully help them loosen his tongue.
24:45
[SPEAKER_00]: every lead matted, every possibility matted, at least for the moment, but before long investigators would focus their attention on one particular man, a Connie worker, an abo, if I may be so bold, to be so politically incorrect, an abo from central Australia,
25:14
[SPEAKER_00]: A man who only Thais earlier had been virtually unknown outside a small circle of acquaintances, and under 12s, who knew who worked the flying swan ride, as name, Max Stewart, and what happened next would ignite one of the biggest legal and political shitstorms that Australia had ever seen.
25:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Because while many people would come to believe, please, had found the killer.
25:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Others would spend decades arguing that they'd entrap an innocent man.
25:52
[SPEAKER_00]: And from this man would come a confession that would divide Australia for generations.
26:08
[SPEAKER_02]: Part four, the confersion.
26:15
[SPEAKER_00]: By the morning of December 21, 1958, the search for Mary Adam was over.
26:25
[SPEAKER_00]: The searches found on the shoreline would leave a permanent scar on a small town.
26:33
[SPEAKER_00]: The pretty nine-year-old had been a victim of a violent attack.
26:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Investigators quickly concluded that this was not an accident.
26:43
[SPEAKER_00]: No was at a simple disappearance.
26:47
[SPEAKER_00]: His was a homicide.
26:49
[SPEAKER_00]: The evidence at the scene in the state of the body concluded that the Mary had been the victim of a brutal, sexual crime.
26:59
[SPEAKER_00]: She will raped in the most gross move ways.
27:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Viciously penetrated the three holes available to the killer.
27:09
[SPEAKER_00]: The fact that a body had been exposed to the coastal environment, complicated parts of the forensic picture,
27:17
[SPEAKER_00]: time, weather, and yeah, I'm sure the harsh Australian someone.
27:26
[SPEAKER_00]: All the begun that work before investigators had arrived, and yet there were no doubt about the central fact.
27:34
[SPEAKER_00]: The child had been murdered, and she had been beaten.
27:39
[SPEAKER_00]: She had been tortured.
27:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, she had been raped.
27:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And somebody in or around the town looks exactly what had happened.
27:53
[SPEAKER_00]: The pressure on the police was immediate and Christmas only being days away.
27:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Public fare was spreading.
28:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Parents kept their children close.
28:04
[SPEAKER_00]: Room was circulated through the streets and the shops and the homes of the most
28:16
[SPEAKER_00]: and the people wanted answers and wanted them fast.
28:22
[SPEAKER_00]: The investigation widened as witnesses were in the view and every freaking pito town would drag then and given the phone book treatment to make sure that they told everything they know and maybe a few things they didn't know and timelines were constructed movements were tracked
28:47
[SPEAKER_00]: Attention, eventually found and focused.
28:50
[SPEAKER_00]: On a traveling Connie Walker, who went by the name of Max Stewart, the 27-year-old Abel, that was not mine.
29:00
[SPEAKER_00]: Who had a rap sheet longer than a retard's tongue looking ice cream off of his own bell buckle?
29:07
[SPEAKER_00]: An outsider from Central Australia.
29:10
[SPEAKER_00]: And at first, he was just one of many double questions.
29:14
[SPEAKER_00]: Then he became the center of the investigation and before long, the police announced would appear to be a breakthrough.
29:22
[SPEAKER_00]: The Abel had made a confession.
29:26
[SPEAKER_00]: And the many Australians that should have ended the story right there, because in their opinion the Abba over the aborigini was subhuman.
29:36
[SPEAKER_00]: They were fucking animals, who shit in the same place that they eat, and they smell them.
29:43
[SPEAKER_00]: Boy, oh boy, did they smell?
29:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Like a shit sandwich that had been left out in the Australian sun for two days.
29:51
[SPEAKER_00]: They were like vrooming, and the confession.
29:55
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess the carbs that weren't too much of a surprise, being worried were from.
29:59
[SPEAKER_00]: They were like flies to shit.
30:03
[SPEAKER_00]: Just another dirty tail.
30:06
[SPEAKER_00]: in a dirty island, by a dirty people.
30:12
[SPEAKER_00]: But there were questions that were refused that there's a beer.
30:16
[SPEAKER_00]: Questions that continued to echo that gaze later, because, through its first language, was not English.
30:24
[SPEAKER_00]: His education was limited.
30:27
[SPEAKER_00]: But the statement attributed to him appeared to be more sophisticated, more eloquent than attributed to, by his own friends account, a retard.
30:40
[SPEAKER_00]: Support us with later argue that the confession, or at least parts of the confession, seemed more like the language used by the police than a retard.
30:59
[SPEAKER_00]: Prosecutors stood by their case, the 30 Abba were done in case closed, and the justice system moved forward.
31:12
[SPEAKER_00]: The trial matracted enormous attention.
31:16
[SPEAKER_00]: The prosecution argued that the confession spoke for herself, to them, the evidence was compelling.
31:26
[SPEAKER_00]: The filthy carny worker said he'd been drinking all day.
31:30
[SPEAKER_00]: They were high as a kite.
31:33
[SPEAKER_00]: We saw the pretty young girl.
31:35
[SPEAKER_00]: She came over.
31:36
[SPEAKER_00]: She wanted to go on a ride.
31:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And they said that he'd let her.
31:41
[SPEAKER_00]: On the one condition, after she went on that ride with them, she'd go for a walk.
31:48
[SPEAKER_00]: And to this, she picked up promised.
31:50
[SPEAKER_00]: And afterwards, he walked the pretty girl down to the beach.
31:56
[SPEAKER_00]: and he brutalized her, and every home that got a given her, probably if you, she never knew she had.
32:06
[SPEAKER_00]: And that was an important fact, because the police had told no one that, but the abomu, and there's only one way he knew that, because he was there.
32:18
[SPEAKER_00]: And he fucking did it, just as sure as he didn't wear the other end.
32:23
[SPEAKER_00]: But that the fence, they saw things very differently.
32:27
[SPEAKER_00]: They challenged aspects of the confession.
32:31
[SPEAKER_00]: Raised concerns about the interpretation of that confession.
32:36
[SPEAKER_00]: In question whether Stewart had fully understood what was happening during the police' questioning.
32:44
[SPEAKER_00]: After all, I was a semi-rethord and even they had rights.
32:50
[SPEAKER_00]: The courtroom became more than a place to determine guilt.
32:54
[SPEAKER_00]: It became a battleground, not just over evidence, but over race, power, language, trust, but in the end, oh yes, none of that mattered.
33:12
[SPEAKER_00]: The jury convicted Max to it.
33:18
[SPEAKER_00]: What was it there?
33:21
[SPEAKER_00]: Death by hanging.
33:24
[SPEAKER_00]: For many Australians, justice have been delivered.
33:30
[SPEAKER_00]: Case closed.
33:32
[SPEAKER_00]: After all, he went the first thatbo to get his hand caught in the cookie jar.
33:39
[SPEAKER_00]: And it wouldn't be the last.
33:41
[SPEAKER_00]: But not everybody's great.
33:44
[SPEAKER_00]: not even close, because after the conviction, the story took an extraordinary time, one a number of journalists began digging deeper.
33:57
[SPEAKER_00]: Among them were reporters, connected the Adelaide's newspaper world, questions that had once circulated quietly, suddenly appeared in print.
34:09
[SPEAKER_00]: The case was dissected.
34:12
[SPEAKER_00]: Witnesses were re-examined.
34:15
[SPEAKER_00]: police conduct came on the scrutiny.
34:19
[SPEAKER_00]: The conviction became national news, and then one of Australia's most influential newspaper proprietors entered the battle.
34:29
[SPEAKER_00]: A young Rupert Murdoch long before he became an international media figure.
34:36
[SPEAKER_00]: Murdock, through the weight and the influence of his newspapers, challenged the young aboriginals' conviction, the campaign intensified, along with public interest.
34:49
[SPEAKER_00]: What had seemed like a straightforward criminal case was transforming into something much larger.
34:58
[SPEAKER_00]: National controversy.
35:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Appeals followed, arguments continued, supporters of Stuart insisted serious doubts existed, supporters of the prosecution insisted the courts had reached the correct conclusion, just another abom who had been caught with his fingers in the fish pie, their words not mine, and that the bait became fierce,
35:29
[SPEAKER_00]: emotional, political, and deeply divisive.
35:35
[SPEAKER_00]: Eventually the matter became so significant that a royal commission was established.
35:42
[SPEAKER_00]: The commission examined the allegations surrounding the investigation and the confession.
35:49
[SPEAKER_00]: Witnesses testified, evidence was revisited, arguments were heard once again
35:58
[SPEAKER_00]: Several other Connie workers had seen the Abbott talking to the young girl.
36:03
[SPEAKER_00]: But only one saws toward and the little girl walking away together, was a beach.
36:09
[SPEAKER_00]: And by all accounts, he were even more drunk than the Connie he were riding out on.
36:17
[SPEAKER_00]: So who you're going to believe here?
36:19
[SPEAKER_00]: And this was the issue.
36:21
[SPEAKER_00]: To the public, Connie's with the seatful,
36:26
[SPEAKER_00]: Grypton, lawyers, and they stink, too.
36:30
[SPEAKER_00]: I just thought of that one in, but that was the public's perception.
36:35
[SPEAKER_00]: And that were the perception that the newspapers believed had helped find the Connie guilty.
36:42
[SPEAKER_00]: Yet even after all of this, and all the evidence put together, no one could agree on what had happened.
36:53
[SPEAKER_00]: Some believe the commission vindicated the authorities, others believed that important questions remained unanswered, and the years that followed, stewards of that sentence was commuted, and never had his date with the hangman.
37:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Instead, he served years in prison for eventually being released.
37:16
[SPEAKER_00]: But released did not end the debate.
37:19
[SPEAKER_00]: If anything, it guaranteed the argument will continue, because there was never a moment when everyone accepted the same version of events.
37:29
[SPEAKER_00]: That was always competing narratives, competing interpretations, competing truths.
37:38
[SPEAKER_00]: Nearly 70 years later, historians, legal scholars, and true crime researchers still examine
37:47
[SPEAKER_00]: My many conclude that Max Stewart was guilty as sin, and that police got the right man, and that some of the public would just feel guilty about condemning a retard and an aboriginal.
38:02
[SPEAKER_00]: Others believe the investigation was deeply flawed and racist.
38:08
[SPEAKER_00]: Many focused on the confession.
38:11
[SPEAKER_00]: Others focus on the broadest social conditions of Australia in the 1950s, an era, when indigenous Australians often face systematic prejudice and unequal treatment.
38:25
[SPEAKER_00]: An era, when assumptions could influence outcomes, an era very different from the Australia we know today.
38:41
[SPEAKER_00]: The first is a tragic tale of a little blonde girl who appears to blue eyes who was never seen without caring her doll, a child who never had the chance to grow old, a family, for her
39:07
[SPEAKER_00]: But the second story is the reason this case still appears in books, documentaries, and court histories.
39:18
[SPEAKER_00]: It is a story of doubt of uncertainty, a confession by a semi-retard that brought other questions, a conviction that divided a nation and a legal battle that refused to die.
39:41
[SPEAKER_00]: Mary Adam's killer has been dead for many years.
39:45
[SPEAKER_00]: Not perhaps he was never correctly identified at all.
39:52
[SPEAKER_00]: That depends entirely on which side of the argument you believe.
39:58
[SPEAKER_00]: But what is beyond dispute is this?
40:02
[SPEAKER_00]: A nine-year-old girl lost her life.
40:06
[SPEAKER_00]: Australia was forced to confront uncomfortable questions about justice, and one small town on the edge of a continent became the center of a controversy that still echoes through
40:33
[SPEAKER_00]: And perhaps, that is why the case remains so haunting, not because we lack theories, but because we still lack certainty.
40:46
[SPEAKER_00]: Sometimes, and certainty, is the most unsettling of endings of all.
40:55
[SPEAKER_00]: Max Stewart died on November 21, 2014.
41:01
[SPEAKER_00]: Most sources gave his birth being the year in 1932.
41:05
[SPEAKER_00]: That would have made him 82 years old when he died.
41:10
[SPEAKER_00]: Mark Stewart never disappeared, and the obscurity, once it was released from prison.
41:17
[SPEAKER_00]: He went on to become a respected elder.
41:20
[SPEAKER_00]: I've an aboriginal tribe, which one?
41:23
[SPEAKER_00]: I don't know.
41:24
[SPEAKER_00]: And then an important story.
41:27
[SPEAKER_00]: I might share related to him, which I don't think you are.
41:32
[SPEAKER_00]: On his deathbed, the former Connie Worker maintained his innocence.
41:38
[SPEAKER_00]: And I guess at the end of the day, we'll never know if he did it.
41:43
[SPEAKER_00]: All right, then.
41:46
[SPEAKER_00]: And that's a question that he'll have to answer, when he meets his abode, God.
42:50
[SPEAKER_01]: Going in the sink, the side of your keys Cold little shine under the leeks You left your scarf on my chair back Red thread hanging like a thin crack
43:25
[SPEAKER_01]: my thumb keeps moving and it stops same old corner, same old stop and I keep the door cracked like maybe you come back one more time one more time come back, come back, take this day
43:56
[SPEAKER_01]: Come back, come back before I break broken
44:35
[SPEAKER_01]: One blue shirt in your scent Rain on the still mud on my shoes Every small thing still points to you The kettle clicks then don't steal I pour too much out of habit And the whole room feels your name Like a note I can't explain
45:19
[SPEAKER_01]: Take this steak Come back, come back before
45:59
[SPEAKER_01]: If you're halfway down the block, if you start at the corner, stop if you miss me Just a little turn around, make it some more Come back, come back, take this lake Come back, come back before
46:44
[SPEAKER_01]: Coring in the sink beside your keys Call a little shine