Chapter Thirteen

At 10.50p.m. on Saturday, 31 March 1962, Reg Cornish and his wife were pushing their baby in a pram along busy Campbell Street in Darlinghurst, about midway between the scenes of the two ‘mutilator murders’. The young parents were on their way home after visiting friends at nearby Moore Park, and were hurrying along to beat the scattered evening showers.

As the Cornish family walked to where they lived in Denham Street they passed the entrance to Little Bourke Street. Mr Cornish looked up the narrow side street and noticed what looked like a body lying in the gutter a few yards away.

‘He was lying about four to six feet [1.2 to 1.8 metres] from the corner of Church Lane and Little Bourke Street,’ he told police. ‘He was lying on the right side facing the kerb and very close to the kerb. There was quite a quantity of blood in the gutter. I stooped over and had a quick look, to discover that he was still breathing, but only just.

‘I didn’t notice any injuries on the body, the clothing or anything of that nature. There was lots of blood around the head, but I only had a quick look. I did notice that the left-hand side of his trousers was slightly pulled down and the skin was bare.

‘I took my wife home and rang the police. My wife then went to Darlinghurst Police Station. On the way home we told two men in a truck what I had seen and they said they would go to the police station and report it. [There is no police record of the men reporting the killing.] About seven minutes later I returned to the spot where I had seen the man — I could still see the body, but it had moved from its original spot. I went away and returned about three-quarters of an hour later with Detective Sergeant Greene.’

At 11.10p.m. on the same evening Stephen Flegman was driving along Little Bourke Street when he almost ran over the body of a man lying in the gutter. ‘I drove about 15 yards [14 metres] past him and then I stopped and got out and went back and had a look,’ he said. ‘He appeared to be dead and had blood on his face, blood around his neck, his trousers were down and he had blood on the lower part of the body in the vicinity of his private parts.

‘I went to the Darlinghurst Police Station and reported it and an officer drove me back to the body. It was in the same position as I left it and I never saw any other person.’

Constable Neil Robinson, the first police officer on the scene, was visibly shaken by what he saw. ‘The deceased was lying on his back on the road about 15 feet [4.5 metres] from the corner of Little Bourke Street and Church Lane and his left leg was slightly drawn up; his left hand was on his stomach and his right arm was extended into the gutter,’ he said. ‘I noticed that the deceased was bleeding from the throat and the blood was running into the gutter.

‘The body was clothed in a shirt, singlet, trousers, underpants, socks and shoes. I noticed the deceased’s trousers were pulled down around his thighs, and this exposed the region of the genital organs. I noticed that the genital organs were missing. I felt the wrist of the deceased — there was no pulse, and from my observation I believed that he was dead. I remained at the scene until the detectives arrived.’

At 1.30a.m. on Sunday, 1 April, Lawrence Hickson was picked up by detectives at his lodgings at Comber Street, Paddington, and taken to Little Bourke Street. He identified the deceased as his friend, Frank Gladstone McLean. Hickson had been located from personal papers found in the deceased’s pocket. Police had not told Hickson of the mutilation of his friend, and Frank McLean was covered with a sheet at the time of identification.

Hickson told detectives that he had known Frank McLean for about 11 years, and the last time he had seen him was at about three o’clock that afternoon, when he had had a few beers with him at the Evening Star Hotel in Crown Street, a few minutes’ walk from where he had been found dead.

Hickson said that his friend was quite sober when he left him. He said that Frank was an unemployed labourer who survived from one week to the next on his army pension and lived in a room in Albion Street, Surry Hills. He had been hitting the bottle pretty heavily since he broke up with his family some time ago. Frank was a good bloke who didn’t have an enemy in the world. Hickson was very sad that his mate was dead.

When detectives pieced together what took place in Little Bourke Street that rainy Saturday night they were alarmed at the killer’s casualness. When Reg Cornish came across the dying Frank McLean at 10.50p.m., he said McLean was four to six feet (1.2 to 1.8 metres) from the corner of Church Lane and there was no sign of any mutilation. Cornish left to report the finding to the police and returned seven minutes later to find that the body was not in the spot where he had first seen it.

When Stephen Flegman drove his truck down Little Bourke Street at 11.10p.m., McLean appeared to be dead and had blood on his face, blood around his neck, his trousers were down and he had blood on the lower part of the body and in the vicinity of his genitals.

And Constable Neil Robinson, the first police officer on the scene, stated that when he arrived with the witness Flegman the victim was lying on his back about 15 feet (4.5 metres) from the corner of Church Lane. The details he noted about the deceased matched those that Mr Flegman had noted.

Detectives concluded that Mr and Mrs Cornish had interrupted the murderer as he was hacking his victim to death and that when the killer heard the Cornish family approaching the entrance to Little Bourke Street, possibly by their talking or perhaps the baby crying, he hid close by as Mr Cornish walked into Little Bourke Street, discovered Frank McLean’s still breathing body and left with his wife to get the police.

From dragging marks and blood in Little Bourke Street it appeared that in the seven minutes until Mr Cornish returned, the killer had gone back to his dying victim, dragged him further up into the lane, finished off killing him and then removed his genitals.

Donald Rush, proprietor of the Beresford Hotel in Bourke Street, Darlinghurst, was one of the last people to see Frank McLean alive. ‘On the evening of 31 March, Frank was in my bar from half past seven until closing time,’ Mr Rush told police. ‘I only knew him as Frank, I didn’t know his second name. He had had too much liquor, and he was the last in the bar. It was necessary for me to usher him out of the door at about 10.15. The last I saw of him he was on the footpath. He had a bottle of Penfolds Sweet Sherry in his back pocket.’

The deceased’s post-mortem, conducted by Dr William H. Brighton at the Sydney City Morgue on Monday, 2 April, revealed that 36-year-old Frank Gladstone McLean was five feet 11 inches (180 centimetres) tall, weighed nine stone eight pounds (61 kilograms) and had a blood alcohol reading of 0.34 at the time of his death.

McLean had died of massive haemorrhaging from numerous gaping wounds in his neck, some of which had gone through the neck and come out the other side. Two large wounds had penetrated his chin and tongue, indicating that the blade had been plunged in an upward direction with extreme force.

There were 49 stab wounds in all to the neck, face, head, arms, chest, shoulders and back of the victim. The deceased’s throat had been cut twice and a jugular vein had been severed. It was not possible to tell if the injury to the jugular had occurred first or later on in the attack. The penis, scrotum and testicles had been excised, together with an area of skin surrounding them.

A check of Frank McLean’s fingerprints showed that he was a small-time crook with a record for numerous petty offences. He was also known as Frank Glasson Snell, Francis Leonard Coles, Geoffrey James Harper, John Joseph Gordon McLean and Francis David McLellan.

But it was under ‘known associates’ on the deceased’s record that detectives found what they thought was their first real clue. There they found the name Alfred Reginald Greenfield, the killer’s first victim. McLean and Greenfield had been friends.

The Daily Telegraph ran a large article on the morning of Monday, 2 April, headlined ‘New Clue In Stabbing Mysteries’, which told of the killing of Frank McLean and that he was friendly with the murderer’s first victim, Alf Greenfield, and how they went fishing together at the Domain, often drank together, lived in the same area and frequented the same wine bars and hotels. It was alleged that McLean had once said, ‘I’ll have to watch myself or I’ll wind up like poor old Alfie.’

The article told of the killing in detail, but again stopped short of saying what the actual mutilations were. It said that a special squad of 25 experienced detectives had set up an operations room on the fourth floor of the CIB and that the CIB had recently asked Interpol to check whether any similar murders were on record. Interpol had replied that the modus operandi of the killer was unknown to them.

The article said that most of the experts consulted on the case told police that the killer was probably ‘completely normal’ when not possessed by the compulsive desire to kill and mutilate. However, the killer was striking again after shorter intervals of time, and many detectives felt that he could kill again ‘very soon’ unless caught.

The police had also said that the killer took much greater risks in murdering McLean, and seemed to attack with increased violence.

Monday night’s Daily Mirror carried a story headlined ‘Man Alive When Mutilated’, which said that the killer’s third victim was still alive when the murderer carried out his sadistic mutilations, and that police had interviewed 240 people since the killing on Saturday night. The article also said that the young couple who discovered the body, Mr and Mrs Cornish, believed that it was the crying of their baby that frightened the murderer.

Thursday’s Daily Telegraph carried a story headlined ‘Killer Could Be Woman’, and reported that a senior detective had said that they were not ruling out the possibility that a woman was involved in the murders. He also said that the killer could come from any class of society and from any suburb.

‘The intensive police investigation has thrown up a series of other charges involving supposedly respectable members of the community,’ the detective said. ‘These men, detectives have found, lived a Jekyll and Hyde existence. Known as respectable members of society in their own social strata, they preyed, in their other capacity, on the city’s helpless derelicts.’

Chief of the CIB, Superintendent R. Walden, went on radio and television and said that the task force had a number of strong leads they were working on and that an arrest was imminent. The truth was that the police had nothing. The fact that McLean and Greenfield were friends had led nowhere, and detectives were left to assume that it was most likely only a coincidence. The killer had disappeared as if he were invisible. There was not a clue.

On 6 April, Melbourne detectives detained a seaman from the Greek liner Patris at the request of the Sydney CIB. Detective Inspector Ron Perry and Detective Sergeant Jim Black flew to Melbourne and questioned the man, a 23-year-old German who had lived in Australia for three years, for five hours. The following morning he was released, at 11.40a.m. — 20 minutes before the Patris sailed. The man’s questioning had followed an anonymous phone call to the Sydney CIB.

Three days later investigations took a new turn, when a Melbourne medical student who had been living in East Sydney, not far from where McLean had been found, was reported missing from his rooming house. Suspicious neighbours told police that the young man seldom left his room. He was traced, but again it was a dead end.

A truck driver reported at Paddington Police Station that he had been attacked by a man with a knife whom he believed was the killer. He showed Detective Douglass stab wounds and scratches to his neck, shoulder and ribs, and signed a statement giving details of the attack, but next morning he admitted that he had inflicted the wounds on himself. Police didn’t charge him with an offence and he was let go with a caution.

In a desperate move to catch the murderer, an embarrassed NSW government offered a total reward of £5000 (about $250,000 in today’s money), a staggering amount of money for the times, for any information that may lead to his capture. The Premier of NSW, Robert James Heffron, said that the reward offer would remain in force for 12 months and that the government would advise the Governor to give a free pardon to any accomplice who first gave information leading to the murderer’s capture.

One of the senior detectives investigating the three murders said: ‘We don’t believe that any man can live completely alone in Sydney for ten months. Somewhere in East Sydney or in other suburbs is at least one person who shares the knowledge of guilt. We hope the £5000 reward will be the means of unlocking this shared guilt. Because of the urgency of the investigation, we welcome information of even the slightest suspicion.

‘The three murder victims were all struck down with extreme violence. We feel that some blood must have stained the clothes of the murderer. Is it possible that since June last year, on three occasions, the murderer has been able to keep the knowledge of these soiled clothes completely secret? Or is there a second person involved? If so, then it is to this second person who must have knowledge, or at the least suspicion, that the reward of £5000 is directed.’

No second person came forward. And no one reported anyone with bloody clothes. The killer had been too cunning for that.

In the meantime the derelicts of the city made themselves scarce after dark. It was rumoured in the hazy world of the deadbeats that Frank McLean’s last words to a friend had been that he was terrified of frequenting his usual haunts because ‘the mutilator might get him’, and that the killer had overheard his conversation and stalked and killed him for his indiscretion.