The Mysterious Disappearance of The Beaumont Children: Australia’s Most Puzzling Unsolved Mystery // DARK SUMMER VOL. 2
In 1966, three children vanished without a trace in Australia, and no one knows what happened. It’s a mystery that still plagues the country to this day, and may credit it as the reason people started locking their doors there.
But today, we have a much clearer picture of the crime, who might have been responsible, and there’s even been updates on the case as of this year.
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SOURCES
The Satin Man: Uncovering the Mystery of the Missing Beaumont Children by Alan Whiticker & Stuart Mullins
Twelve Crimes that Shocked the Nation by Alan Whiticker
https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/106960546
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2025-03-01/dig-for-beaumont-childrens-remains-concludes/104997388
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037907382400077X
TRANSCRIPT
January 26th, 1966. It was a Wednesday in Adelaide Australia down by the southern coast. It was also the last week of the summer holiday break before school started up again. Parents were at work, most of them desperate for their kids to begin the school year and have routine again.
That was the case for Nancy Beaumont. Her husband, Jim, was out of town on a business trip. And so it was up to Nancy to provide entertainment for her three children all day. 9-year-old Jane, 7-year-old Arnna, and 4-year-old Grant.
The 26th was forecast to be a scorcher, reaching at least 38 degrees C, or 100F. As the children sat gathered at the breakfast table, they could already feel the day’s promised heat invading the small house. They begged their mother: can we go to the beach??
Now, the family lived less than two miles away from Glenelg (Gla-NELL) Beach in Somerton Park, a suburb of Adelaide. At first, Nancy was hesitant to let the children go. But the kids begged: It was so close, and they were so familiar with the area. Plus, they could easily ride their bikes there and back. Eventually, Nancy gave in: She told them they could spend two hours at the beach, then she wanted them to come home before the heat got too intense. Also, it was too dangerous to take their bikes on the busy road so they had to take the bus
The children excitedly got ready, pulling on their little bathing suits and sandals. Nine-year-old Jane packed a small shoulder bag with three towels and a copy of Little Women to read on the bus. She was also responsible for holding their bus fare and lunch money, which she kept in a white clamshell change purse. Nancy gave her a few coins eight shillings and sixpence – more than enough – and asked her to use some of the change to buy an extra pastie and bring it home for her own lunch.
And then, Nancy waved them off from the front yard, watching them walk down the block towards the corner to catch the 10AM bus.
Once she saw the kids off, she tidied up around the house, then rode her bike to go visit a friend. She left shortly before noon, wanting to be back home in time to meet the children. However, by 12:30, they still hadn’t arrived. Nancy shrugged it off; the kids had probably lost track of time, caught up in their fun. Or maybe the line to buy lunch in the pie shop had been longer than they anticipated; there was sure to be a large crowd of people at the beach on such a hot day. Either way, Nancy figured they’d be home on the 2:00 bus instead.
But two more hours clicked by… and there was still no sign of the children. Now Nancy was starting to get worried. But she was conflicted about what to do, if she should go out and look for them or not. If they’d also missed the 2:00 bus and decided to walk home instead, she might be able to meet them halfway, but without knowing which route they’d take, it was just as likely she’d end up passing them. And she didn’t want them to come home to an empty house.
A little after 3PM the front door opened – but it wasn’t the kids; it was Jim Beaumont, home early from his business trip. Hardly able to keep her voice steady, Nancy told him she was starting to fear the worst. Had there been an accident? What could be keeping them?
Jim tried to calm her down, assuring her that the children would look after one another. They called Jane, the oldest, “little mother” afterall. But he was clearly nervous too, because he got back in his car to search for them himself. He circled all the surrounding streets between the house and the beach, checking all the possible routes. He parked at Glenelg, but there were so many people out at the beach that day, a thousand at least, it was nearly impossible to tell if his children were actually among the crowd. So Jim drove back to the house….
And By 6PM, The Beaumont parents were forced to accept a terrifying reality. They drove to the local police station to report their three children missing. But the beach was just 15 minutes away, and there were so many people there. So the question became, where did the children go, and did someone know where they were?
Welcome back to heart starts pounding, I’m your host Kaelyn Moore, and today, we have another chilling installment in our dark summer series. Summer is supposed to be the happiest time of year, but when children are left unattended, like they so often are on summer break, tragedy can strike in an instant.
We are going to be diving into one of Australia’s most baffing unsolved mysteries. One that still plagues the country to this day and has spawned searches as recent as this year. A TON of research went into this episode. We read books, I watched documentaries, read through witness statements and files from retired homicide detectives, and I’m still reeling over this one, and I need to know your thoughts.
I want to get right back to it, but first, I wanted to give a shoutout to all of our listeners that work on cruises and reached out to me after we did an episode about the cruise disappearance of Rebecca Coriam. It was great to hear from you guys, and I learned that fancier cruise ships have bigger morgues because so many people, typically older individuals, die while at sea. So just remember that the next time you’re on your cruise vacation.
Alright, back to it
ACT TWO
Nancy Beaumont tried her best to keep her composure as she gave the police a description of each one of her children.
9-year-old Jane was mature for her age, though shy around strangers. On the morning of January 26th, she left the house wearing a pink one-piece bathing suit, pale green shorts, and plaid canvas shoes with white soles. Her brown hair was cropped short and she typically wore a ribbon or a tortoiseshell headband, but Nancy couldn’t remember what she’d decided that morning as Jane was old enough to dress herself.
7-year-old Arnna was quite the opposite of her older sister; gregarious and garrulous, always happy to strike up a conversation. She was last seen wearing a red-and-white striped bathing suit, tan shorts, tan sandals, and a bright orange headband.
4-year-old Grant had been dressed in green-and-white bathing suit bottoms underneath green shorts with red leather sandals. It was such a hot day, Nancy hadn’t bothered trying to get him to wear a t-shirt; it was just one more thing that might get left behind, and they were only supposed to be in the sun for a few hours anyway.
Now… it was almost dark.
While Jim rode alongside officers in a squad car, searching the streets, Nancy returned home with another pair of detectives, who tried to reassure her by telling her she’d be surprised how many kids they find tucked away hiding in their own house, so worried they’ll be in trouble, they’re too scared to come out. But Nancy shook her head; they didn’t punish their children like that. They trusted them.
Police found no sign of them, nor anything that suggested they had run away. No clothes missing. Their favorite toys still waiting for their return.
As the night went on, Nancy had the overwhelming thought that she may never see her children alive again. Her kids would never stay out this late by choice. Grant and Arnna were still afraid of the dark, and Jane would never worry them like this. It caused her to become so hysterical, she had to be sedated
Outside the Beaumont house, the search continued in earnest. Dozens of patrol cars circled the surrounding streets, announcing over the loudspeaker: “Have you seen three small children?” news bulletins broadcast descriptions of Jane, Arnna, and Grant across TV and radio stations.
Five search and rescue boats scanned the water around Glenelg and the nearby boat harbor with spotlights, there was the horrible reality they could find the children floating in the water, but they never did. Once the sun came up, they expanded their patrol grid to 30 miles, from Henley Beach to Aldinga. There were Squads of police cadets dispatched to search the sand dunes and caves along the coastline. mixed groups of officers and volunteers were searching block by block, checking backyards, toolsheds, and stormdrains. But they didn’t find anything. Not a single trace that the children had ever been there.
So police had to turn to witnesses. They begged the public, to reach into their memory from that day on the beach. had anyone seen these children, or any children that looked like them.
And it turns out, people had.The tip line was flooded with calls – over 1000 in the first five days. But one of these tips absolutely chilled the police.
A local woman called in. She had been at the beach that day and had seen three young children playing. Two girls with cropped hair and their younger brother. She had watched the children playing at Colley’s Reserve, a grassy reserve right off of the beach, for the better part of an hour. Now, it didn’t look like the children’s parents were with them, but She reported that, at a certain point, they were approached by a tall man, at least six feet, with a thin face.
He was in his 30s or 40s, suntanned and athletic looking, with blonde hair parted to the left. He was wearing pale blue swim trunks with a white stripe down the side, and had been sunning himself on a towel in the grass before introducing himself to the kids, which made the women feel like he didn’t know them. After a few minutes, however, it seemed like he had earned the children’s trust and they were all playing together, jumping through the sprinklers. When the local woman left the park, shortly before noon, they were still laughing and frolicking.
This was the first real lead the police had about what could have happened to the children, and it was a huge one. But the more tips they skimmed through, the more they noticed sightings of this man come up…
Through witness statements, the police were able to recreate a timeline of the disappearance
So Nancy Beaumont had seen the children off shortly before 10AM, watching them walk toward the bus stop.
The bus driver confirmed this; he remembered them getting on and paying their fare. He couldn’t remember exactly what stop they got off at, but it’s assumed they rode to the corner of Mosely St. and Jetty Rd. – because around 10:15AM, the local postman saw the children walking down Jetty Rd. in the direction of the beach. They were laughing, holding hands. Grant had called out, “It’s the postie!” and they’d all waved hello.
The next sighting of the children was About 45 minutes later by one of Jane’s classmates who saw the trio playing in the shallows at Glenelg Beach. Eventually, the children moved up to the grassy park that bordered the beach called Colley’s Reserve. Jane spread their towels out in the shade between some palm trees. Grant and Arnna chased each other through the sprinklers. The kids were all laughing and appeared to be in great spirits.
And that’s when the woman saw the children playing with the mysterious man. But she wasn’t the only one…
An elderly couple and a middle-aged woman, also saw the Beaumont children with this man in the park, but they weren’t playing. Their sightings were about a half hour after the first woman left, and it seemed like in that time there had been a concerning development.
The man approached the elderly couple and asked if they’d seen anyone “messing with our stuff.” The man seemed deeply concerned, and said that Jane’s purse had been stolen. Inside was the money that her mother had given her for lunch that day. The couple hadn’t seen anything, and neither had the middle-aged woman. After a few more minutes of searching, the man helped the children pack up and get dressed, pulling their dry clothes over their bathing suits. An act that was OVERLY familiar. Jane was described as being nervous around strangers, and yet this man was helping her get dressed. How had he gained her confidence so quickly? Next, the children waited as the man went to the nearby changing shed to get dressed. When he came back, the four of them walked off together.
The next sighting was by A cashier at Wenzel’s Cakes who remembered Jane, Arnna, and Grant buying lunch “around midday.” The shop was a few minutes walk from the beach and close to their bus stop. The tall man wasn’t with them, but there was something about an interaction the cashier had with the children that struck him as odd.
They bought some pies and pasties for themselves as well as another lunch in a separate bag. And Jane paid for all of it with a £1 note. Given that Nancy Beaumont had only given her daughter 85 shillings in coins, we have to assume that Jane had gotten it from the man and that the separate bag was for him. The £1 note had stuck out to the cashier because, in 1966, that was a considerable amount of money; roughly $50 today. He found it strange that a child so young had so much money on them.
After they collected their lunches, they pushed through the door of the shop and into the world. And that was the last confirmed sighting of the Beaumont children.
With this new info, the police start putting pieces of this puzzle together. It seemed like the man at the beach was looking to gain the children’s trust. He was most likely a complete stranger, and the children were shy. So, he used a trick that, maybe he had used before on a child. He took Jane’s coin purse so she would be put into a vulnerable position. She’d feel horrible if she couldn’t feed her siblings, and even worse if her mother found out she had lost the money. So, he offered her some help, which made the young and naive Jane believe he could be trusted.
Then, he gave them more than enough money for both lunch and bus fare, proving just how good of a guy he was.
Then, maybe he mentioned that the children were already running late. Maybe he brought up just how hot it was that day, and how the next bus wasn’t going to be for another two hours. And then, after setting up this entire situation, the tall man probably offered to give the kids a ride home. And Once they were in the car, who knows where he actually took them.
But Some people later speculated a scenario that, might be even creepier than the one I just laid out for you. They suggested that this man wasn’t actually a stranger; that the children had already spent time with him at the beach…
See, Shortly before their disappearance, Arnna had allegedly made an off-handed comment teasing Jane about “having a boyfriend down the beach.” Their mother hadn’t pressed for an explanation at the time, she figured it was just kids being kids and sisters teasing one another. But when she heard about the tall man, it suddenly connected. It could also explain why he had seemed overly familiar with the kids, physically helping them get dressed – even Jane, who was not only old enough to dress herself, but known to be reserved with strangers.
However, I will add, the boyfriend claim is not included in some of the more official reporting on the case, so part of me does wonder if it’s a rumor that just keeps getting repeated because it fits the rest of the details so well.
So If this man was indeed a stranger, he managed to manufacture an opening, win over the children’s trust, and spirit them away in less than an hour. That’s not luck. That’s practice. And, at least to me, it seems like the smooth execution of a seasoned predator.
But who was he? And what had he done with the Beaumont children?
ACT THREE
I honestly can’t overstate the amount of resources and manpower that went into the Beaumont investigation. Armed with this new information, Police units and volunteers from all over South Australia descended on Adelaide in droves to help find the children. Sixty officers went door-to-door, canvassing over 400 homes, seeing if anyone resembled the Tall Man. Concerned that the children’s bodies might have been dumped in the local marina, authorities actually drained the water into the ocean, then a team of 65 police and cadets walked the entire 70 acres in a shoulder to shoulder grid search. But no traces of the children were found.
A sketch artist worked with the witnesses from Colley Reserve to create a composite of the man. The likeness was published in newspapers across Australia and the photo was chilling. It depicted his sunken cheeks and slim face. His thin, long nose and large eyes. The composite was published alongside a recent photo of the children. This did actually produce a suspect – a local man who looked a lot like the composite. But after three interviews with the police, he was officially cleared. After this initial lead, no other suspects emerged.
The Australian government offered a $500 reward, around $8,000 today, for any information leading to the recovery of the Beaumonts. As the days turned to weeks, private citizens made their own contributions, pushing the total to $10,000.
On February 3rd, a week after the disappearance, Nancy Beaumont gave her first public statement. She would never give up hope completely, but she had come to accept that her children had likely been killed. With Jim by her side, she lamented, “It’s been too long. I can’t be stupid and say that they’re going to come in with a skipping rope. I’ve got to feel that the little things are huddled up somewhere and nobody has found them. [...] I’m inclined to think it was all over on the Wednesday afternoon. Whoever it was [who took them] had nothing to lose.”
As it became more certain that the Beaumont children wouldn’t be recovered, and with no new leads to follow, the nation moved on. But they never forgot, not completely; like Nancy, they never gave up hope that the mystery could be solved. In a way, they needed it to be. Someone had to answer for such a terrible tragedy.
Unfortunately, that need can blind us to logic and common sense. Which made the investigation vulnerable to red herrings and conspiracies. For better or worse, every tip had to be investigated, even when it came to the more…let’s say eccentric ones?
In the summer of 1966, the Adelaide Advertiser, one of the local newspapers, contacted a Dutch psychic, known as one of the foremost clairvoyants in the world, named Gerard Croiset (khuh-RAHRT krwah-ZAY).
And he claimed that, Just from looking at a few pictures of the children and the area, a vision had come to him. In a letter to the Advertiser, Croiset (krwah-ZAY) claimed that “there was no foul play, nor were they kidnapped. The children are dead. I am almost certain they suffocated; smothered alive. There was some sort of collapse.” This vision even showed him the children’s bodies; they were buried “about half a mile from where they were last seen.”
Newspapers went ahead and published this on August 3rd, and surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, I don’t know, hundreds of people swarmed Glenelg Beach, hunting for the children. They didn’t find anything. but Croiset said that he could provide them a more detailed vision if he just…. had more information. He said maybe seeing footage of the area would help. So Channel 7 chartered a Cessna to fly along the coast and film the beachfront to send to him.
And after reviewing, Croiset claimed the children were buried a little over a mile from where they were last seen. “They crawled through a little hole. Suddenly the whole lot tumbles down – instantly. I cannot see if it is water or sand. They crawl towards the end of the hole and suddenly I don’t see them any more.”
This new vision sparked a fresh wave of searches among the storm drains along the beach, which, mind you, was a complete waste of resources… These areas had all been thoroughly checked by police the morning after the children disappeared. And Croiset’s theory seemed to ignore the biggest piece of evidence, the Tall Man.
But the people didn’t care, they wanted the psychic to get more access to the area to help them find the kids, so A local business owner put up $1200 to fly him to the coast
For the next two days, Croiset wandered around town, trying to sense what he called the “vibrations” of the children’s final moments. He started in Colley Reserve, roamed down the beach a few miles, then went to the shop where they’d bought their lunch, theatrically pressing his body against the stone wall.
Of course, he didn’t find anything, and At the end of the second day, Croiset abruptly announced that he was going back to Holland; there were too many people following him in Adelaide, interrupting his work and exhausting his gifts. He said he would never be able to find the children like this.
But then, later that night a new tip came in. A woman who lived close to Jane and Arnna’s elementary school had seen the girls playing with other children in the neighborhood several times before they disappeared. They liked to play on a vacant block, next to an old warehouse. Before it was restored, the warehouse had been used as a brick works. The woman now wondered if this was the location Croiset had seen – perhaps the children had gone to the warehouse to play, climbed into one of the old brick chutes, and then become buried in a cave in?
The next morning, Croiset announced to the press that he had located the Beaumonts, he had a vision that night that they they actually were under this warehouse.
He then led a pair of detectives to the north corner of the 4,000 square foot building. A gaggle of reporters watched Croiset point to a spot on the floor, about 8 feet from the wall, and announce: “This is where they are buried.”
He returned to Holland the next day, explaining, “My work is done. Yesterday I found them. The rest is up to you.”
Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple. The warehouse had been completely renovated that year by a grocery chain. During that process, crews had inspected all of the old brick chutes before filling them with gravel. Then the entire floor had been covered in four inches of concrete. So the only way to look for the children would be to completely tear up the floor, effectively ruining the warehouse. and it’s no surprise that the grocery chain wouldn’t agree to this After spending so much money on renovations,
Which Gerard Croiset probably knew about. See, Throughout his years of consulting on missing persons cases, his visions usually went one of two ways. The missing victims he saw were always deceased, and either “in the water” or “buried underground.” The direction he chose depended on the context of the disappearance. If they were “in the water” he typically predicted they would be found “within six days,” which managed to both sound specific enough to be impressive, but also gave a submerged body plenty of time to float to the surface. If they were “buried underground” he knew the chance of recovery was slim, which mostly meant no one could prove his claim as false.
But Croiset had underestimated the public zeal surrounding the Beaumont case. A Citizen’s Action Committee formed, rallying support and collecting donations for a partial excavation, in the spot Croiset had indicated. Facing mounting public pressure, the owners of the warehouse said they could dig as long as the Committee paid for the dig themselves.
They broke ground on March 1st. The dig lasted for ten days, reaching a depth of 15 feet, before the money ran out and they had to stop. They ultimately found nothing related to the Beaumont children.
I actually have a note here from my researcher that I want to read to you guys, she wrote “People still believed Croiset was right, they just hadn’t been allowed to dig deep enough, so there was another more exhaustive excavation of the warehouse in 1996. But, of course, they found nothing because he’s a big fraud. Thank you for the note, Abigail…
And unfortunately, it seems like Croiset wasn’t the only fraudster to try and hijack the search efforts.
In January of 1968, the Melbourne Herald published an interview with Jim and Nancy to mark the two-year anniversary of the disappearance. Shortly after, they received a letter… allegedly written by Jane.
The letter explained that the children were safe, but they left with a man that day. It goes on to explain that the strange man was willing to give the kids back if the parents followed specific instructions and went to go pick them up the following Monday
It seems like the parents were desperate to follow any lead that came in, because not many had. And On the morning of the 26th, Jim went to collect the children, just like the letter had spelled out. He arrived at 9AM wearing white pants and a dark blue blazer. Two detectives sat skeptically in a van parked on the corner, ready to collect the children and spirit them to safety should the man arrive.
But no one ever arrived. Some one called the post office multiple times saying they were on the way with the children, but no one ever showed. Jim waited outside for 6 hours before he finally admitted to himself it was probably a hoax.
And More than 20 years later, the letters were proven to be a hoax. In May of 1992, detectives were able to lift some fingerprints off the letters thanks to new technology. They got a match – to a now 41-year-old man living in Melbourne. That made him just 17 when the letters were sent and 15 when the Beaumonts were taken. The police actually went and brought him in for questioning, and After several hours of interrogation, it was confirmed that the man had nothing to do with the actual kidnapping; he was only guilty of being an asshole, a common affliction among 17-year-olds. Given how much time had passed, and the man’s genuine remorse over his actions, no charges were filed.
For years after the Beaumont parents attempted to bring their children home, scams like this were par for the course. False leads, clairvoyant clues, and messages from the beyond… but nothing real. Still, the tipline remained open, ready for the call that might crack the case, but eventually, the phone stopped ringing. Australia started moving on, and the Beaumont parents began to worry that they would never get an answer
And then… the kidnapper struck again.
ACT FOUR
BREAK 2
It was a Saturday afternoon. August 25th, 1973 - seven and a half years after the Beaumont children disappeared.
A crowd of over 12,000 fans had packed into the Adelaide Oval arena to watch a match between Norwood and North Adelaide. Among them were the Ratcliffe family: Les, his wife Kath, and their two children, 13-year-old David and 11-year-old Joanne.
Seated next to them was Rita Huckel and her 4-year-old granddaughter Kirste Ann Gordon, who Rita was babysitting for the weekend. Both the Ratcliffes and Rita were regular Norwood supporters. They often watched the matches from the same section, and were already familiar enough with each other. So when Kirste needed to go to the bathroom during the first quarter, 11-year-old Joanne offered to take her.
Knowing how rowdy some of the crowds at matches could get, the Ratcliffes didn’t allow their children to go to the bathroom alone during halftime or the fourth quarter of a match. Knowing this, Joanne offered to take Kirste for a final bathroom break in the third quarter, around 3:45PM. Sure, they were just 11 and 4, but it seemed better that they go together.
Ten minutes passed. Fifteen. And the girls still weren’t back. Les and Kath looked at each other with concern. Was everything ok? Eventually, they went to look for them, and Kath soon realized that the girls weren’t in the bathroom. That’s when the Ratcliffes started to panic.
They even asked one of the stadium officials to make a stadium-wide announcement that two young girls were missing. But the official just gave them this look like, you’re kidding right. that would disrupt the game and people wouldn’t be able to hear the loudspeaker over the noise of the crowd anyway. He told the Radcliffes to return to their seats and wait to see if the girls turned up.
But as we know when it comes to missing children, every moment can be critical. And for the next HOUR, the Ratcliffe’s waited in their seats, panic in their hearts, as the two girls remained missing.
Finally, once the match was over and thousands of guests were flooding out of the stadium, an announcement was broadcast over the PA system. It took another 15 minutes to formally notify the police. And by then… the girls were gone. No matter how much the officers searched through the stadium, the parking lot, and auxiliary buildings. Nothing turned up. They expanded the search to the surrounding parkland and nearby golf course. A team of divers was eventually called to search the River that ran alongside the Adelaide Oval. Police set up roadblocks to stop and check cars.
But it was too late, not a single trace of the girls emerged. So, the police turned to the people inside of the stadium at the time. Did anyone see the girls? Or remember seeing anything strange that day? And that’s when they got a tip that changed everything.
One of the groundskeepers reported seeing the girls around 4:30pm – nearly 45 minutes after they’d left to use the bathroom. But they weren’t in the stadium, and they weren’t alone. They were spotted trying to lure a kitten out from a hiding spot in one of the equipment sheds. The groundskeeper was in the shed’s staffroom and could hear the girls talking to the kitten, cooing at it.
And that’s when he heard a man’s voice say “I’ll try to get him out for you.” The groundskeeper said that he didn’t think much of it at the time, because there were plenty of feral cats that liked to hang around the auxiliary building, and they usually attracted children’s notice. By the time he came out of the staffroom, the man had already started walking away, the girls following behind. He was wearing a wide-brimmed hat, brown pants, and a grey plaid sports coat. It was hard to tell how tall he was because his back was stooped over, but he was estimated to be 5 '8". (172 cm)
Two more witnesses saw the girls with this same man – but by then he was carrying Kirste under one arm and dragging Joanne with the other as she kicked and fought back. Both witnesses assumed that he was their father. They were last seen walking in the direction of the south gate, towards the parking lot.
Immediately, the press and the public started making comparisons to the Beaumont disappearance. Two kids snatched from a public place, filled with witnesses, in broad daylight. Both used tactics to groom children, luring them by gaining their trust or trying to show them a kitten. And then… when a sketch artist worked with the witnesses to create a composite, the final result bore an uncanny resemblance to the man who had befriended the Beaumont children at Colley’s Reserve.
Both men had the same long face, the same sunken cheeks, a slender nose. If I’m being honest, the Adelaide sketch looks just like the Beaumont sketch if the person had aged seven years.
Unfortunately, the Adelaide Oval investigation went the same way as the Beaumont’s. There was an initial outpouring of manpower and resources – dozens of officers canvassed the surrounding area, knocking on over 1000 doors. A tip line received 4,500 calls. But no leads emerged, no suspects were identified. The case went cold. It remains unsolved to this day.
Officially, these cases were never linked, mostly because no suspect was ever identified. But if we could find the perpetrator from one of the kidnappings, would it give us answers about the other?
Over the last six decades, several “persons of interest” have been considered in the Beaumont case – a few of them for both the Beaumonts and the Adelaide Oval. By and large, the police looked at known pedophiles. People that would have known professional grooming tactics. However, none of the elements that allowed these men to be captured for their other crimes were present in the Beaumont abduction.
Bevan Spencer von Einem was convicted of kidnapping and murdering a 15-year-old boy in 1983. During the course of their investigation, the police came to suspect that von Einem not only had accomplices, but was potentially involved in additional child murders. An anonymous informant, referred to as “Mr. B,” claimed that von Einem was responsible for at least 10 other deaths, including the Beaumonts. He alleged that von Einem had boasted about taking three children from the beach and bringing them home to conduct “experiments.” He was also the same height and build as the man from Colley Reserve, and looked similar to the composite sketch.
However, that all happened in 1983. At the time the Beaumont children disappeared, von Einem was only 19. And the man from Colley Reserve was described as late 30s to early 40s by multiple witnesses. In addition, von Einem was convicted by overwhelming forensic evidence - hair and fibers found on the body. In other words… he was sloppy. Not a single trace of the Beaumonts was left behind.
To me, this is what also discounts another, potential suspect, named Arthur Stanley Brown. He bore a strong resemblance to the composite sketch, particularly in the Adelaide Oval case, and was known to wear the same kind of wide-brimmed hat when he traveled for work. Brown had been charged with the 1970 abduction and murder of two sisters, aged 5 and 7. Their bodies were discovered in a dry creek bed. There was nothing subtle about the violent crime. But he was 53-years-old in 1966, much older than the man witnesses described.
James Ryan O’Neill was publicly linked to the Beaumont case by a documentary called The Fisherman. O’Neill was convicted of killing a nine-year-old boy in 1975 and suspected of kidnapping and sexually assaulting at least four others. He had traveled all over Australia for work and, according to the documentary, children had gone missing in seven of the places he’d visited. When asked directly about the Beaumont case, O’Neill was evasive. He said, “Look, on legal advice I am not going to say where I was or when I was there.” But there’s nothing conclusive to link him to the case, or even to definitively place him in Adelaide in January of 1966.
There are other names that routinely pop up in discussions about the Beaumonts – Derek Percy was a convicted child murderer from the area, and he looks the most like the police sketch. However, he was only 17 at the time, and multiple sources said the Tall Man was definitely 30’s to 40’, so the police never really considered him a suspect.
Alan Munro and Errol Radon also come up – but there are strong reasons why they’ve been discounted by the police. And for all of the above, they were only investigated because of other crimes, not because of real evidence. And maybe that’s the problem. The police looked at known predators. What about the unknown? What if there was someone so practiced, so skilled at covering their crimes, the police never even considered them?
ACT FIVE
But then In 2007 and interesting tip came in to Australian author Alan Whiticker. He had just published the first comprehensive overview of the Beaumont children case in a new book, Searching For the Beaumont Children. A woman had picked up a copy and read it quickly, because she couldn’t believe what she was reading. By the end, she felt like she new exactly who the man who took the children was, so she called Alan.
The man, she claimed, was her ex-father-in-law, Harry Phipps.
There were certain things about the man’s behavior that really stood out to the woman.
For one, Phipps had a habit of handing out £1 notes to kids. As I said earlier, it was a lot of money back then, and Phipps seemed to delight in watching kids' eyes go wide at the sight of all of that money. And when Whitaker started investigating the woman’s claims, he found that multiple other people close to Phipps backed this story up – he built a reputation of generosity.
Also, remember how investigators looked into every pedophile in the area? Well, this woman fully believed that Harry Phipps was a pedophile, but he wasn’t on any list because his crimes were never reported. The reason she knew this was because her ex-husband, Phipps’ son, told her. He was unfortunately one of his victims.
Unlike the other persons of interest, Phipps was never on the police’s radar. He was a wealthy business owner, a socialite even. But the more Whiticker interviewed Phipps’ family members and friends the more it was revealed that, behind closed doors, it was an open secret that he was a predator. In particular, they described his uncontrollable satin fetish – to the point that no one was allowed to wear satin clothing around Phipps because he was so aroused by it.
But one shocking revelation came directly from his son, who claimed that, back in 1966, he actually saw his father bring the Beaumont children back to their house. He watched as they got out of his father’s car and walked inside, but he never saw them leave. He believed his father killed the children and then buried them at one of the factories he owned in Adelaide.
Now, like I said, Whiticker spent years investigating this angle and wrote an entire book about what he found. It’s a fascinating read and I definitely recommend you check it out if you want to dive deeper into this case, but I’m not going to recap the whole thing here. What I will say is that the book lays out an extremely compelling argument against Phipps, so it’s worth sharing the highlights.
The Phipps’ house was within walking distance of Colley Reserve, just over 275 meters, and the shop where the kids bought their lunch was about halfway between the two. There was actually an alley that ran from the Phipps’ back gate all the way down to the beach. Which means he could have gone to the beach and taken the children back without ever having to go on the main road. Remember, the children weren’t ever spotted again after they bought lunch with the note. Was it because he was able to whisk them away down this alleyway?
While researching the book, Whiticker’s co-author visited the Phipps house and spoke with his widow. She was pretty reserved, but At a certain point she agreed to give him a tour of the house.
Most of the house seemed normal, and unremarkable, but then, she lead him down into the cellar. Now, the cellar was packed with boxes and old furniture, it was just being used for storage. But there was something amongst the items that really jumped out to Whiticker.
a white change purse, like the one Jane had lost that day at the beach. When asked about it, Phipps’ widow became nervous and defensive. She claimed it was hers but didn’t seem to want to talk much about it. Whitacker went ahead and reported it to the police. But when they came to collect it a few days later, Phipps’ widow told the detective that she had thrown it out. And the following week, her lawyer sent the authors a cease and desist letter, warning them never to contact her again.
On top of all of this, more interesting information came out about Phipp’s upbringing, especially the fact that, according to the people who knew Harry Phipp’s mother, she raised him as a girl for the first few years of his life. Apparently, his father spent a lot of time away, and while he was gone, Phipp’s mother would put him in dresses and pretend he was her daughter.
After the book detailing all of Whitickers findings about Phipps, The Satin Man, was published, two more people contacted the author with information. It was two brothers who testified that Harry Phipps paid them to dig a large hole at one of his factories the weekend after the Beaumont children disappeared. It took most of the weekend for the boys, just teenagers at the time, to dig the six foot hole, because the ground was sandy and the sides kept falling in.
Other officers heard stories from people who worked at the plant that said Phipps would always look at the same spot on the grounds. One time even removing his cap and holding it to his chest, like in reverence.
To the credit of the Adelaide police, they treated these leads seriously, and organized two digs at the Phipps factory, one in 2013 and another in 2018. Unfortunately, neither turned up anything significant. But they weren’t willing to give up just yet. In February 2025, there was a third dig at the factory, sponsored by private funding. It lasted an entire week and dug to a deeper level than either of the previous searches,
But that dig still uncovered nothing. As of now, there are no other plans to dig at the factory.
Now, so much time has passed, where do we go from here? And if there’s closure to be found, who will it be in service of?
Harry Phipps died in 2004; his son, having finally come forward, died unexpectedly in 2015. And his ex wife died just a year after that. The father will never face justice and the son will never be vindicated.
Nancy and Jim Beaumont stayed in their Somerton Park home for over almost two decades after their children disappeared. They said in interviews that they couldn’t bear to move away, on the off chance that the kids turned up at the front door one day. But eventually, after so many years of waiting, being frozen in time, Nancy and Jim filed for divorce and decided to move on separately, outside of the public eye. Nancy died in 2019; Jim followed in 2023.
So, if not for the family, if not for those directly impacted, why can’t we let this case go? It has to be something more than morbid curiosity – this is a fascination that’s persisted for 60 years.
I think it’s because this case still taps into something that many of us fear to this day. That there could be a monster, hiding in plain sight, who can whisk away children in a matter of minutes without anyone seeing. Sure, we have better technology now, every year there are cases where children just vanish, and no one knows what happened.
But maybe if we find these kids, if there’s any way to bring Jane, Arna and Grant home, if we can definitively say that it was one of the suspects, then it will bring some sort of closure to this wound that deeply affected an entire country. Afterall, many credit this event as the reason people in australia started locking their doors.
But, what do you guys think? Do we have enough info to know who is responsible, or are there too many questions? I’d love to hear your thoughts wherever you listen.
And I will be here next week with our final installment into Dark Summer, where we talk about a terrifying true summery urban legend. Please join me, wont you?
Until then, stay curious
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