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The Thorne Kidnapping

Most countries have a famous kidnapping. On 10 July 1973, in Rome, John Paul Getty III, grandson of oil billionaire and renowned miser, J. Paul Getty, was kidnapped, and a ransom of $17 million was demanded over the telephone for his safe return. Not one willing to part with his hard-earned money in a hurry, his grandfather refused to pay any ransom ‘on principle’. In November 1973, an envelope containing a lock of hair and a human ear was delivered to a daily newspaper. The note attached said: ‘This is Paul’s ear. If we don’t get some money within 10 days, then the other ear will arrive. In other words, he will arrive in little bits.’ Still reluctant to part with the ransom, Getty senior negotiated a deal and got his grandson back for about $2 million. He was found alive in southern Italy shortly after the ransom was paid. His kidnappers were never caught.

America’s most famous case of kidnapping and ‘crime of the century’ occurred in 1932. A son of the world’s greatest living hero, Charles A. Lindberg, was abducted from Lindbergh’s New Jersey home by an intruder using a crude, home-made ladder to gain entry to a second-storey bedroom. A ransom note was left on the window sill. The demand was paid, but the child was found dead in the woods near the house 73 days later. Two years later, 35-year-old Bronx carpenter Bruno Richard Hauptmann was tried, found guilty and executed, despite vehemently protesting his innocence to the bitter end.

In 1960, four-year-old Eric Peugeot, son of the Paris automobile millionaire, Raymond Peugeot, was kidnapped from the playground of a fashionable golfcourse outside of Paris. His kidnappers demanded $35,000 – about the equivalent of a round of drinks to mega-rich Peugeot – for the boy’s safe return. The ransom was promptly paid and the boy was returned, unharmed, a short time later. His kidnappers were arrested in 1962 and each sentenced to 20 years in jail.

Unlike the more notorious cases from around the world, Australia’s most famous kidnapping wasn’t of a member of a rich and famous family. It was also Australia’s first-ever kidnapping. In fact, kidnapping was so unheard of in Australia that, until it happened, no Crimes Act in Australia contained a provision for it! Child kidnappings only ever happened on the other side of the world, two or three weeks away by propellered aeroplane in America or Europe, not in Australia where children were king and could swim, fish and bushwalk in absolute safety and the only predators were the sharks and magpies protecting their young. Yet, due to the circumstances surrounding the case and the extraordinary scientific detection utilised for those archaic times, the Graeme Thorne kidnapping is arguably Australia’s best-known crime and a crime that became famous around the world.

On 1 June 1960, ticket 3932 was drawn out of a barrel at Sydney’s State Lottery Office. The first prize was £100,000. The winner was travelling salesman Bazil Thorne, 37. He cut short a business trip to celebrate with his wife Freda and their two children, Graeme, 8, and Belinda, 3. The family lived in a two-bedroom apartment in Bondi. The money did not change their lifestyle much.

At 8.30 am each weekday, Graeme walked up the street to get a lift to school with a family friend. But on Thursday, 7 July 1960, he disappeared. It was 36 days after the win. Mrs Thorne rang Bondi police station. Within minutes Sergeant Larry O’Shea arrived. The phone soon rang.

‘Is that you, Mrs Thorne?’ a man with a thick European accent asked. ‘Is your husband there?’

‘What do you want my husband for?’ Freda questioned.

‘I have your son.’

O’Shea pretended to be Bazil Thorne. ‘What can I do for you?’ he asked.

‘I have got your boy,’ the voice said. ‘I want £25,000 before five o’clock this afternoon.’

O’Shea asked: ‘How do you think I’m going to get that kind of money?’

‘You have plenty of time before five o’clock,’ the man replied. ‘If you don’t get the money I’ll feed the boy to the sharks.’

‘How will I contact you?’ O’Shea asked.

‘I will get in touch with you,’ the caller said and hung up. Mrs Thorne then told the sergeant about their lottery win. She also recalled that shortly after the win, a man with a heavy European accent had knocked on her door asking for a Mr Bognor, a name she didn’t recognise.

The kidnapper did not call back by 5 pm on 7 July, as he had said he would. The next day, Graeme’s empty school case was found on the outskirts of Sydney. Hundreds of police, assisted by army units, helicopters and tracker dogs, combed the area.

On Saturday night, police arranged a withdrawal of £25,000 from Bazil Thorne’s account. When they had heard nothing by Sunday, 10 July, Mr Thorne went on television offering all or part of the money for information. All his appeal did was attract con artists.

On Monday, the searchers found Graeme Thorne’s school cap, raincoat, lunch bag and maths books. On 16 August 1960, five weeks after he went missing, Graeme’s body was discovered on a vacant block in Grandview Grove, Seaforth; it was 15 metres from a house. His hands and feet were tied with rope. A silk scarf had been knotted tightly around his neck. He was wrapped in a checked car rug and still wore his school blazer. The boy had died of a fractured skull or strangulation – or both.

A man had earlier reported seeing a blue 1955 Ford Customline at the scene of Graeme’s disappearance. Authorities appealed for the public to report anyone with such a car who had been acting suspiciously.

William and Kathleen Telford of Clontarf, near Seaforth, had a neighbour, Stephen Bradley, who drove that model. The Bradleys moved house the day Graeme Thorne disappeared. When Graeme’s body was found, the Telfords rang the police. They said that before the kidnapping, Mr Bradley had been leaving home at the unusual time of six o’clock each morning. They said he was Hungarian and had a strong European accent.

Eight days after Graeme Thorne’s body was found, detectives called on Stephen Bradley at work. Bradley was a thick-set, olive-skinned man of average height in his mid-30s, and he was cooperative.

He remembered 7 July well – he had moved house that day. His wife and children left for the airport by taxi about 10 am. They were going to Queensland for a holiday. The removalists arrived around an hour later. Bradley left with them soon after lunch. The family was now living in Manly.

The day after the questioning, Bradley’s wife Magda booked a one-way passage for herself and her 13-year-old son (from a previous marriage) to London on the liner Himalaya. Four days later, Bradley booked a ticket for himself and their two other children on the same ship. The next day the Himalaya departed, with the Bradleys on board.

The following Sunday’s newspapers published a description of Bradley’s missing blue 1955 Ford Customline. Police received a call from a man who had bought it on 20 September at an auction. They impounded the vehicle and took scrapings from the boot. They also took possession of a vacuum cleaner that was among various items Bradley had sold to a furniture auctioneer. The results of the tests on the boot scrapings and the contents of the vacuum cleaner made Bradley a suspect.

The master of the Himalaya was asked to keep him under surveillance. The ship berthed at Colombo on 10 October. Bradley was taken into custody by local authorities. His wife and children continued the voyage.

Bradley arrived back in Sydney in handcuffs on 19 November. The trial began on 20 March 1961. Bradley pleaded not guilty. In his opening address, the Crown prosecutor made the following statement.

 

Crown prosecutor: There are lots of questions that are unanswered that would indicate that Mr Bradley deliberately and wilfully murdered the lad … Did not Bradley’s movements on the day of the kidnapping and in the days that followed suggest flight? I suggest to you that Bradley deliberately murdered Graeme Thorne by delivering a blow to the head shortly before or after he put him in his car after kidnapping him.

 

A specialist reported that Graeme Thorne was killed by a blow to the head. A team of experts examined Graeme Thorne’s clothing and the car rug that was wrapped around his body. From the mould on Graeme’s shoes, it was determined that the body had been in the bushland where it was discovered for most of the time since the murder. A pinkish substance on Graeme’s clothing turned out to be a lime stock mortar. Detectives concluded that at some stage the body had been lying beneath a house or in a garage. Fragments of plant matter on Graeme’s clothing came from two types of cypress.

Detectives carrying samples of the cypress, soil and mortar called at the Bradleys’ Clontarf address. They looked for the soil from the rug, the trees and the pink mortar. They were all there.

Experts reported that hair found on the car rug, in the boot of the car and in the vacuum cleaner was all from a Pekinese dog. The Bradleys owned one named Cherry. A Clontarf resident remembered a vet calling at the Bradleys’ in a Volkswagen. Police found a vet at Rushcutters Bay who picked up animals in a Volkswagen: the vet was holding Cherry for shipment to London. Hairs from Cherry matched the hairs found on the rug in which Graeme Thorne’s body was wrapped.

A real estate agent told police he had shown the Bradleys several houses on 24 June. One had been in Grandview Grove, Seaforth, next to the vacant lot where Graeme’s body was found.

Detectives found discarded film negatives in the garden of the Bradleys’ flat in Manly. Once printed, one showed Mrs Bradley and her children sitting on a car rug with the same pattern as the one found wrapped around Graeme.

The court was told that on the morning of 21 November 1960, Mrs Thorne had identified Stephen Bradley – in a line-up of 16 men – as the one who called at her apartment looking for Mr Bognor.

Bradley took the stand and said he had nothing to do with taking Graeme Thorne. He said that on 7 July he got up at 7.30 am and finished packing. A taxi took Mrs Bradley and the children to the airport in time for the 11.45 am flight. The removalists arrived shortly after.

The Crown prosecutor suggested that the Bradleys had argued over the kidnapping. He suggested that Magda had taken a taxi to avoid being associated with the Ford Customline and that Bradley could have got to Bondi and back in time for the removalists at 10 am.

The defence called Magda Bradley, 41, to the stand. She had flown in from London a few days earlier. She said the car rug was similar to one she had owned, but they had lost the rug some time ago. She denied having seen the scarf found around Graeme Thorne’s neck. The prosecutor tried to implicate her. ‘I put it to you that you knew your husband could not drive you to the airport terminal because you knew your husband was somewhere in the Bondi area at the time,’ he said.

Mrs Bradley replied: ‘No sir, I am sorry sir, you are very wrong.’ She said she had been unaware that detectives had called on her husband on 24 August.

‘You say it is just a coincidence that the very next day you went and booked yourself a passage to London?’ asked Mr Knight.

‘I am very sorry. It must be a coincidence,’ replied Mrs Bradley.

The jury returned a guilty verdict. Mr Justice Clancy stated: ‘Stephen Leslie Bradley, you are sentenced to penal servitude for life.’

Magda Bradley divorced her husband in 1965 and moved to Europe. Life in prison for Bradley was unpleasant. Despised by the other prisoners and subjected to repeated bashings, he was put in protective custody. On 6 October 1968, he died of a heart attack. He was 43 years old.