The Beaumont Children (Updated)

Having a child go missing is a parent’s worst nightmare and for Jim and Nancy Beaumont that nightmare became a reality when their three children disappeared. The disappearance of the Beaumont Children is one of Australia’s most well know child disappearance cases as it marked the beginning of a change in Australia. 

The Beaumont Children (from left to right: Jane,9, Grant, 4, and Arnna,, 7). Image credit: Wikipedia Commons

On January 26th 1966, the Beaumont Children left their home to go to the beach to cool down as it was a hot day. Jane, who was 9 and the eldest, was in charge of her two younger siblings, Arnna, 7, and Grant, 4, as the three walked to the bus stop to catch the short five-minute ride to Glenelg from their home in Somerton Park, knowing that they had to be home by 2pm.

The day passed and when 2pm arrived Nancy Beaumont wasn’t concerned when the children failed to return. She thought that perhaps the three had missed the bus they were originally going to take home and were on the next one. When the three of them failed to get off the next bus, Nancy began to grow concerned and contacted the police but it wouldn’t be until the next day that the Beaumont children would be declared officially missing by the police.

The police started to work on a timeline with the help of witnesses that had seen the three children throughout the day. They had arrived at the beach like originally planned but didn’t stay playing there for long as around 10:15AM they were spotted leaving. They were seen again by an elderly woman at 11AM playing under a sprinkler but it seemed to the woman that they weren’t alone.

Not far away was a lean, blonde man, in his mid 30’s, lying on his stomach and he was watching them play. Fifteen minutes later the same man was spotted playing with the Beaumont children playing with them under the sprinkler. The children appeared to be perfectly happy to those who saw them and even looked to be relaxed and enjoying themselves as they played with the man.

There are some conflicting reports regarding times after this but what is known is that thirty minutes later a shop keeper reported seeing the three children buy snacks and a meat pie in his shop. He had recognised them from previous visits that they had made and also because during those visits the children had never bought a meat pie. They paid with a £1 bill, which was more money than their mother had given them when they had left that morning.

At 12:15PM the children are estimated to have been seen with the blonde man they had been playing with earlier that day leaving the beach in a group. They however don’t seem to stay with him for the rest of the afternoon as a postman reported seeing the three of them around 3PM, all in good spirts and were happy to say hello to him; and while the police believe his claim they cannot be one hundred percent certain that he saw them at 3PM as it is possible that he saw them earlier in the day.

The reports that the children were seen talking with strangers surprised Jim and Nancy Beaumont as they described their children as shy, especially Jane. It would have been very put of character for the Beaumont children to talk or even play with a stranger, so the police theorised that the children had met the man during a previous visit and the man had gained their trust. This theory was partially supported by a remark that Arnna had made, stating that Jane had “got a boyfriend down the beach”, only Nancy had taken the remark to mean that Jane had made a friend down at the beach and thought nothing of it until after the children had disappeared.

Timeline made thanks to https://time.graphics/

The trail went cold after the postman’s report and while there were numerous sightings for the year that followed the disappearance, nothing came of them. Several months after the children disappeared a woman did come forward saying that on the night of January 26^th she saw a man with three children enter a house near her own. Later the next day she saw a young boy walking down a lane before he was roughly grabbed and carried back into the house by the man she had seen the night before.

Twenty-four hours later the house showed no signs of anyone living in it and the woman did not see the man nor the children again. After hearing the story and agreeing that there was a possible connection between what the woman saw and the disappearance, the police were unable to establish why it had taken the woman so long to come forward with the information.

The police investigation ruled out the children drowning as none of the seventeen items that were identified as being with the children have ever been recovered and are believed to have gone missing with them. Following the disappearance, Jim Beaumont made an appeal that made National TV and every lead that was given to the police was followed up.

The police even went as far as to invite Paranormal Investigator Gerard Croiset to help, hoping that he would be able to point them in the direction of some possible leads. His arrival in Australia caused a media frenzy bring more attention to the case. Croiset identified a warehouse near the children’s home that had been a building site at the time of the disappearance as a possible place where the children’s bodies were buried.

The owners of the site were more than a little reluctant to excavate the area but ultimately gave in when the public raise $40,000 to demolished the area that Croiset had identified. However, the search was unsuccessful as no remains and no evidence was discovered at the site.

The trail once again went cold and Australia was left wondering what had happened to the Beaumont children. Then two years after the disappearance, Jim and Nancy Beaumont received two letters from someone that was believed to be Jane and another by a man who claimed to have the children.

The letter claimed that he was the children’s “guardian” and was willing to return the children to their parents at an address he had given. The parents jumped at the chance to have their children returned to them, and travelled to the address they had been given along with a Detective. The author of the letter did not show and the Beaumont’s returned home. Shortly after their return, another letter arrived claiming that he had identified the Detective and because they had not come alone the author would now be keeping the children.

It wouldn’t be until 1992 that the letters were deemed a hoax and their author identified. With advancements in technology the police were able to locate a 42-year-old man who had written the letters as a teenager. He had written them as a joke and because of the time that had passed no charges were made against him.

Jim and Nancy Beaumont. Image credit: News.com.au

Jim and Nancy Beaumont received sympathy from across Australia after the disappearance and not once was it ever suggested that someone should have been with the children. The two of them cooperated fully with the investigation regardless of where it took them, but nothing has ever panned out and the whereabouts of their children is still a mystery. They remained in their house in Somerton for many years, worried that if they did move away and the children returned that they wanted to make sure that they were still there.

They did eventually move but ensured that the police were kept up to date with their current address, even after their divorce. In 1990 they were hit with another crushing blow when a computer generated, age progression of the Beaumont children was published in the media against their wishes. The move by the media caused a large amount of backlash and a new surge of sympathy for Jim and Nancy Beaumont, but it didn’t bring anyone forward with leads that gave any new information. It has been reported that they have accepted that it is possible that they will never learn the truth of what happened to their children in their life time.

As years have passed there have been a couple of cases that have possible connections to the Beaumont Children’s disappearance but nothing has ever been officially declared. In 1973 Joanne Ratcliffe, 13, and Kriste Gordon, 4, disappeared from Adelaide oval after their parents allowed them to leave their group together to go to the toilet.

Over the course of the next 90 minutes they were spotted a number of times, distressed and in the company of a man with a similar description as the man that had been seen playing with the Beaumont children on the day of their disappearance. After the last reported sighting they weren’t spotted again and are now presumed to have been abducted and murdered.

The other case that has possible ties is known as the Family Murders. In 1979 the body of a mutilated young man was discovered and later identified as Neil Muir, 25. In 1982 the body of Mark Langley, 18, was discovered and it is reported that he had been subjected to “surgery” and died of bloodloss.

The skeletal remains of Peter Stogneff, 14, were discovered a year after his disappearance and Alan Barnes, 18, was discovered after being subjected to the same “surgery” as Mark Lanley. In 1983, Richard Kelvin, 15, was discovered to have been mutilated in a similar way. Bevan Spencer von Einem was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Richard Kelvin in 1984 and is believed to have played a part in the Beaumont children’s disappearance because of testimony that was given during the trial.

A police informant by the name of “Mr B” told the police during the investigation that Von Einem boasted about abducting three children from a beach and taking them home to conduct what Von Einem described as “experiments”. He supposedly connected the children together in what Von Einem called a “brilliant surgery” but during the procedure one of the children died and he had been forced to kill the remaining two, later dumping the bodies in bushland south of Adelaide.

Before this information was given to them, the police did not consider him a suspect but at the time of the Beaumont Children’s disappearance he did resemble the description and sketched from 1966 and as of reports from 2014, he has not been ruled out.

Bevan Spencer Von Einem is believed to be one of the best suspects for the case but isn’t the only man alleged to having something to do with what happened to the Beaumont children.

Arthur Stanley Brown was charged with the murders of sisters Judith and Susan MacKay but never convicted as during trial it was discovered that he was diagnosed with Dementia and Alzheimer’s. At the time of the Beaumont children’s disappearance, Brown had a resemblance to the description and sketch the police had of the blonde man seen with the Beaumont children and to the man seen with Joanne Ratcliffe and Kriste Gordon.

However, the police have never been able to place Brown in the area of the Beaumont children’s disappearance; no records of Brown movements at the time have ever been uncovered but it is possible that they were lost in the 1974 Brisbane flood or that he could have deleted the files himself as we was able to go in and out of Government buildings unrestricted.

While having no physical proof that Brown ever visited Adelaide, a witness did report Brown talking about the Adelaide Festival Centre and how he had seen it which would place in in Adelaide in June, 1973. The Adelaide Oval Disappearance happened in August 1973, and a witness who had seen Joanne and Kriste with a man later identified Brown as the man that they had seen.

No witnesses have come forward with information that placed Brown at the beach with the Beaumont children and his only connection with the case is the resemblance he has to the man seen with girls at Adelaide Oval.

James Ryan O’Neill was sentenced to life in prison in 1975 for the murder of a 9-year-old in Tasmania. Before that, he is reported to have told a station owner in the Kimberley’s as well as several other people that he was responsible for the Beaumont Children’s disappearance.

After his incarceration, Detective Gordon Davie worked to build up trust with O’Neill and started to film a documentary called The Fisherman, which tried to link O’Neill to the children’s disappearance despite there being no evidence to link O’Neill to it. When asked whether he did it, O’Neill replied that he couldn’t have done it as he had been in Melbourne at the time. Davie didn’t see the statement as a denial and later asked again if O’Neill had anything to do with the children’s disappearance. The reply he got only informed Davie that O’Neill had been advised by legal counsel that he shouldn’t discuss where he was or when he was there.

Despite his claims, O’Neil did work for the Opal Industry. The job required him to travel to Coober Pedy and to get there from Melbourne you needed to travel through Adelaide. O’Neill did try to stop the documentary’s release but his injunction was denied by the High Court and the documentary was aired on the ABC in October 2006. The Beaumont case wasn’t the only case the Davie suspected O’Neill to be a part of as he believed that O’Neill had connections to the Adelaide Oval disappearance. Despite Davie’s suspicions, South Australian police have interrogated O’Neill and do not believe him to be a suspect.

Derek Ernest Percy, Victoria’s longest serving prisoner, is also reported to be a suspect because of an article published in The Age in April 2007. In the article it is alleged the cold case investigators had collected evidence that made Percy a suspect in a number of children murders and that one of those cases was the Beaumont children’s.

During the investigation of Yvonne Tuohy murder, a crime that Percy would be found not guilty of by reason of insanity, it is believed that he had indicated that he may have been responsible for the Beaumont children’s disappearance but couldn’t bring up any further details due to a psychological condition that prevented him from recalling his actions. In 1966, Percy would have been 17 and if witness reports of the man seen with the Beaumont children are correct, he would have been too young to have been that man.

It is also unknown whether or not Percy had a car at the time which would have helped in the abduction and disposal. Percy was incarcerated from 1969 until his death in 2003, so he is not believed to have any connection to the Adelaide Oval case like the suspects mentioned before.

Beaumont Children Newspaper Article. Image Credit: Wikipedia Commons

So where does Australia stand now with this case? The disappearance of the Beaumont children is still credited to be one of the reasons why parents changed how they cared for their children and more importantly changed parents views on allowing their young children to go out alone without adult supervision.

In the time leading up to their disappearance, parents were happy to allow their children to disappear for hours at a time to play. It was perfectly normal for children to go out just as the Beaumont children had and to return later that day. Following their disappearance, parents started to change this and the amount of freedom that children once had was limited.

In November of 2013 a factory in North Plympton was excavated after a tip to the police identified it as a possible burial site and ground penetrating radar located a small anomaly. No remained were discovered nor was any evidence and the site was cleared as a burial site.

In January 2016 it was reported that the police were following up on lead. The person who had called felt very certain that the person that they named was behind the disappearance of the three children. In the two years before 2016 the police reported 159 tips that all pertained to the Beaumont Children.

Since writing this in later 2017, there have been a few new developments. In February 2018, a new search began in North Plympton at the New Castalloy factory. After many hours of digging the police, forensic specialists and SES (State Emergency Services) called off the search. Bones were found at the site but forensic anthropologist confirmed that they were not the remains of the three children. Instead it was suspected that they belonged to a horse or a cow.

The case is still officially open, even after fifty years has passed and there is a reward of $1 Million dollars for any information that would help crack the case. If you or anyone you know has any information pertaining to this case, please get in contact with Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

 

SOURCES:

Casale, Steven. (2017) The Mysterious Disappearance of the Beaumont Children. The Line Up.
https://the-line-up.com/beaumont-children

Dowell, Andrew & Mott, Mitch. (2018). Beaumont children search: Police end today’s dig, having found no human remains. News.com.au
http://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/beaumont-children-search-police-begin-digging-at-new-castalloy-factory-north-plympton-in-latest-search-for-missing-children/news-story/91981ecc0dbde57d5251e228580248b8

River1467. (2018). Xanthe Mallet – Criminologist – The Beaumont Children [Image]
https://www.river1467.com.au/featured/as-heard-on-river1467/81041-xanthe-mallet-criminologist-the-beaumont-children

Sutton, Candace. (2017) Time running out for Beaumont children clues as next anniversary of Australia’s most infamous child abduction looms. News.com.au.
http://www.news.com.au/national/south-australia/time-running-out-for-beaumont-children-clues-as-next-anniversary-of-australias-most-infamous-child-abduction-looms/news-story/b778fe6fb0acedd8a7a8b6d035ec954d

Wikipedia. (n.d) Beaumont Children Disappearance. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beaumont_children_disappearance