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The Qantas Bomb Hoax

At the time that it happened it was acclaimed as the Australian crime of the century. It was the most audacious hoax ever perpetrated on police and, to make it even more embarrassing, the villain got clean away with it and if it wasn’t for the stupidity of his accomplice, they could still be looking for him.

On the afternoon of 26 May 1971, a man with a slight English accent rang Commonwealth Police and said, ‘My name is Mr Brown. There is a bomb on your flight to Hong Kong. If you bring it below 20,000 feet it will go up like a matchbox.’

The caller said a similar, but disarmed, pressure bomb was hidden in an airport locker. It would confirm that Mr Brown was deadly serious.

Police raced to the locker and, just as the caller had said, they found a harmless decoy bomb in the designated locker. It was equipped with sticks of gelignite and a barometrically controlled trigger that would detonate the bomb if it dropped below a certain temperature. This guy wasn’t bluffing.

The plane carrying the bomb, Qantas flight 755 with 128 passengers and crew on board, was ordered to return to Sydney but not to drop below 35,000 feet.

Not prepared to risk the lives of the passengers and crew – though they feared that once the extortionist had the money he would still let the plane blow up – Qantas did as he bid and paid him $500,000 and stuck word for word by his strict instructions that he not be followed.

At 6.20 pm with the plane circling Sydney at well above 35,000 feet, Qantas general manager, Captain Robert Ritchie, received a call from the bomber: ‘You can relax,’ an elated Mr Brown told him. ‘There is no bomb on board.’

Tentatively, flight 755 came back below 35,000 feet and landed safely.

Mr Brown and the $500,000 vanished without a trace. There was not a clue as to the perpetrator of the hoax. Underworld informants would usually come up with a lead to something as big as that – given that half a million in 1971 would be the equivalent of at least a couple of million today – but there was not a whisper of scuttle-butt from anywhere.

All police could do was wait for the villain to make a mistake. They didn’t have to wait very long. Paying $50,000 to his accomplice – who also happened to be his boyfriend – Mr Brown headed north to sunny Queensland for a luxury holiday and spending spree. With cash he purchased an E-Type Jag – which was all the rage in those days – and a luxury penthouse.

Back in Sydney after their holiday, the boyfriend was spending up big and came to the attention of the local garage owner who couldn’t help but notice that the young barman had purchased three brand new cars in as many weeks. He rang the cops.

In August that same year, a team of detectives knocked on the door of Peter Pasquale Macari’s luxury Bondi penthouse and arrested him for the Qantas bomb hoax. Skipping bail on an indecent assault charge in England, Macari had arrived in Australia in 1969 with his life savings of $25,000 but a bad business deal had left him virtually penniless and in the clutches of impending bankruptcy.

He got the idea from the telemovie The Doomsday Flight and put his plan into action. To his amazement it had worked.

Although he had achieved celebrity status for his ingenious plan, Peter Macari’s squandering of the spoils was short-lived; he was sent to prison for 10 years. Upon his release in 1980 he was immediately deported back to England to face the indecent assault charge.

Although large sums of cash were found in Macari’s penthouse and in other hiding spots throughout Sydney, there is still $100,000 of the $500,000 ransom money to be accounted for.