The Mutilator William MacDonald

Prologue

At around seven o’clock on a bleak and rainy winter’s evening of Sunday, 4 June 1961, Martin Sanders and Keith Thorpe, both military pensioners of no fixed address, hurried up to the counter at Central Police Station in Sydney. The fumes of rotgut plonk almost knocked the duty sergeant and his young offsider off their feet.

They wore fedora hats and thick, grey army overcoats buttoned tightly to the neck with the collars turned up. Their shoulders were hunched and their hands were tucked deeply into their pockets to protect them from the cold. They were dripping wet, and had obviously walked quite a way in the pouring rain.

Both men seemed very agitated, and the veteran policeman surmised that whatever it was that had brought them to the police station had to be very serious.

‘And what brings you gentlemen to my humble establishment so early in the evening?’ asked the sergeant. These were familiar faces, but he was used to seeing them much later in the night, as they were bundled out of the paddy wagon and into the drunk tank.

Both men started talking at once. ‘Hold on, just hold on a minute,’ the sergeant said, raising his hands in protest. ‘One at a time now. You,’ he said, pointing at Sanders, ‘tell me what this is all about.’

‘We’ve found a dead body, sergeant. And he’s been murdered for sure,’ Marty Sanders blurted out, his wide eyes sneaking a glance over his shoulder as if worried that the killer might appear behind him at any second. ‘There’s a body under the dressing sheds at the Domain and it’s been cut up real bad. Never seen anything like it. His family jewels have been lopped off.’

‘Well, have they now?’ The sergeant chuckled and winked at the young constable alongside him. ‘That’s a new one. I thought I’d heard the lot, but this takes the cake. It’s a bit rich for me. I think you boys had better have a chat with a detective.’

Still chuckling, the sergeant escorted the two men upstairs, where they waited on a bench in the corridor until they were summoned into the detectives’ room and told to sit down. The man in the dark suit sitting behind the desk introduced himself as Detective Sergeant Black, and his partner as Detective Duff.

The detectives knew that the Domain was no stranger to corpses. By day the Domain Baths were a popular public swimming spot. The Baths were situated on the grassy southern foreshores of Sydney Harbour, a short walk from the city and Circular Quay and a slightly longer one of 15 minutes from Central Police Station.

By night the area was the haunt of derelicts, men who drank themselves into oblivion and then slept it off in one of the many alcoves that provided protection from the winter chill. This wouldn’t be the first time that one of the poor wretches had died from exposure or drunk himself to death. But murder? That would be a first.

‘Now what’s this about a dead body in the Domain?’ James Black asked as he grimaced and fanned away the stench of fortified wine with his hand. ‘Let’s start at the beginning and I’ll ask questions as we go.’

Detective Duff took notes as the elected spokesman, Sanders, told his story. ‘At about six-thirty tonight we were down at the back of the dressing sheds at the old Domain Baths — on the northern end, where the rocks lead into the water and the big boats go by,’ he said. ‘Keith and I were having a bit of a chat when it started to bucket down, really heavy, so we moved underneath the dressing sheds for shelter — we didn’t have time to make it back into town.’

‘Who went in first?’

‘I think we went in together. Keith was on the right and I was on the left.’

‘And what did you do then?’

‘It was dark under there so Keith struck a match and I saw the lower part of a man’s naked body. Keith was a little bit ahead of me, if I remember rightly.’

‘Was it fully naked?’

‘I only actually saw the bottom of it, up to about here,’ Sanders said, indicating the middle of his chest with his finger.

‘And was the body lying on its back or on its stomach?’

‘On its back. And the lower privates had been cut out, up to the chest almost. I only had a glimpse of the bottom parts.’

‘Did you notice any other wounds to the upper part of the body?’

‘It looked as if he had been cut up around the neck and face a bit too,’ Thorpe interjected, ‘but we didn’t hang around there long enough to find out.’

‘Did you recognise this man?’

‘Never seen him before in our lives.’

‘All right,’ said the detective, rising from his chair. ‘I think we’d better go and take a look.’

Equipped with torches and accompanied by two uniformed officers with umbrellas, the detectives loaded Sanders and Thorpe into the back of a paddy wagon and drove to the Domain. Along the way they discussed what they were about to encounter.

They agreed that they should expect to find the decomposing remains of a derelict, and that it was probably rats that had ravaged the tender bits. This would explain the missing parts. They also agreed that whatever it was, it wasn’t going to be pleasant.

With the uniformed policemen lighting the way in the rain, Martin Sanders led them into the Domain the back way, through a galvanised-iron fence and down a slippery set of concrete steps that led to the rear of the changing shed. As they approached the end where the shed was resting on posts to keep it level with the sloping ground, Sanders stopped, refusing to go any further.

‘In there,’ he said. ‘The body’s in there. But we ain’t goin’ no further.’

The detectives flashed their torches into the darkness and immediately picked up the partially naked body of a man. Or was it a man? That was what they had assumed they would find. But there was something very wrong about this man. As they got closer it dawned on them what it was.

‘Holy shit, Jim. It looks like some sick bastard’s souvenired his cock and balls,’ Detective Duff whispered, as he peered in at the spot where the man’s scrotum used to be.

‘Yeah. And it wasn’t the rats, either. Not unless they’re carrying knives these days. Get a load of those stab wounds,’ his partner replied as he flashed the torch to the upper part of the body while he prodded a buttock with the toe of his shoe. ‘And it feels as though he hasn’t been dead all that long.’

The body was lying on its back. The legs were out straight. The right arm was at the side and the left was outstretched sideways. The head was lying on its side, facing left, and the upper part of the body was clothed in a blood-soaked coat, shirt and singlet. The coat was open and the shirt and singlet were intact. There were socks on the feet.

The cadaver had been stabbed many times in the upper body, shoulders, face and neck, and there were numerous holes in the singlet and shirt. Alongside the body was a pair of shoes, with what must have been the man’s underpants and trousers neatly folded and laid on top.

Leaving the uniformed constables to guard the body and its finders, the detectives made a quick search of the area. Satisfied that the killer, murder weapon and severed body parts were nowhere to be found, at least not in the rain that night, they called Forensics on the two-way radio, and told them of their discovery.

When the scientific officers arrived on the scene and examined the body, they too, as Black and Duff had done, said that they had never seen anything like it in their lives. They wondered what sort of a human being could have done such a thing.

But this was just the beginning…