Cowra

Small Town Brutality

For a quiet town, Cowra has had more than its share of brutality.

With a population of just over 10 000 people, Cowra is located in the central-west region of NSW and is well known for its beauty and relaxed nature.

But there’s a dark side to the town. It is historically significant as the site of a World War II prisoner-of-war (POW) camp that was the scene of an incident known as the ‘Cowra breakout’. In August 1944, over 500 Japanese POWs attempted a mass breakout from the camp. Simultaneously, some Japanese prisoners still inside the camp tried to kill themselves; 235 Japanese and Australian soldiers died during the incident.

In June 2008, the community was blindsided when one of its own, a 69-year-old man, murdered his wife and two grandchildren, and tried to kill his own daughter. The scene of brutality that the police encountered was sinister and shocking for any setting, let alone this quiet town.

Senior Constable Shelly Walsh said ‘have a good day at school’ to her children, a son aged seven, and daughter, five, as she dropped them at her parents’ house in the town. It was something she did often. Shelly was stationed at Parkes Police Station but was in the process of being relocated to Cowra. The children would stay overnight and their grandparents would take them to school the next day. Her parents, John, 69, and Mabel, 52, had moved to Cowra from Sydney a decade before.

Shelly tried to call the house several times that morning with no answer. Her father finally answered the phone at 11 a.m. and said that his wife was unwell. By that stage, though, John Walsh had already killed everyone in the house.

When Shelly returned to her parents’ house on the afternoon of 30 June, she found her mother dead on the bedroom floor with her back propped up against the bed. Her father had said that she was sick and resting.

Shelly noticed her children’s school uniforms were still laid out where they had been left the night before. Rushing to the children’s room, she found them dead, tucked up in their bunk beds. While Shelly was making this horrific discovery, her father lunged at her from behind with an axe, trying to kill her too.

Shelly wrestled with her father and managed to get the axe away from him before fleeing for her life, with an axe wound to her head. Shelly banged on the door of a neighbour’s house, screaming, ‘Dad has just killed mum and the two kids!’

It was unfathomable that someone could do what Walsh did. He had hit his wife with a lump hammer and stabbed her. He had then drowned his little granddaughter and killed his grandson with the same hammer used on their grandmother. Walsh had even drowned the family dog, carefully wrapped it in plastic and placed it under the children’s beds.

By the time the police arrived, Walsh was gone. Police told the town to lock their doors and stay inside. A brutal killer was on the loose. Walsh’s photo was shown on the television news in an attempt to find him fast. Police were protecting Shelly’s ex-husband, also a policeman, in the belief that Walsh was on his way to kill him too. In fact, Shelly had told police that as her father was attacking her, he had said, ‘When I am done with you lot I am going to Newcastle to kill your ex-husband.’

Walsh was tracked down later that night in a Hay motel, 400 kilometres from Cowra. The motel owner, a former detective, recognised him when he checked in and phoned police.

It is possible that in his own twisted mind Walsh had thought he was saving his family by killing them. He had given no real reason for his crimes but when his daughter was fighting for her life from her own father, he had said, ‘We are all better off this way.’

At Walsh’s sentencing in 2009, Justice Lucy McCallum said the lack of explanation for the crimes was most disturbing:

The killings remain unexplained. The only reason stated by the offender for killing JH and KH [the children’s names were subject to a suppression order during the trial] is the baseless and arrogant assertion that his daughter would not have been able to care for them on her own. His acts were wicked in the extreme.

The court was told that Walsh, originally from Northern Ireland, had planned to drive across Australia to Broome and ‘start a new life’. Walsh received two life sentences and will die in prison.

Speaking to A Current Affair after her father was sentenced in 2009, Shelly Walsh said her father would not tell her why he brutally killed the family.

‘If you’re here looking for a reason why, I don’t have anything to offer,’ Shelly said her father told her during a prison visit.

In 2010, Shelly spoke to her local newspaper and said she believed her father’s untreated depression was a catalyst for the shocking murders. Shelly said she believes her father’s depression was linked to her brother’s suicide many years earlier.

‘My father was never violent until that terrible day, but was always a controlling and powerful figure who was never questioned by the family,’ Shelly said.

Disturbingly, Walsh’s younger brother was convicted and jailed for murdering his own family in August 2007. James Conan, then 66, stabbed his 21-year-old partner Kirsty O’Connell in a frenzied attack and then after pausing for a cigarette, smothered their four-year-old son Patrick and then bathed him. Conan, who changed his surname in respect to Conan the Barbarian, was obsessed with Vikings and had laid his son out in a ritualistic way with toys surrounding him and a dagger next to his little body. NSW detectives travelled to England in 2009 to interview Conan about his brother and their lives.

Nowadays, Shelley is involved in victim advocacy.

‘The importance of victim welfare can never, ever be overrated,’ Shelly told The Advocate newspaper in 2011.

Shelly is now an education officer in the NSW Police and works for change within the force so that a greater emphasis is directed to victims.

The brutal crimes of John Walsh brought back the memories of the unsolved murder of two of the town’s young women in 1987.

The murder of Catherine Holmes (née Pollard), 28, and her close friend Georgina Watmore, 24, was one of the most violent crimes the state of NSW has ever seen. People who saw the crime scene said it resembled a slaughterhouse.

The women were attacked in the early hours of 15 April in Catherine’s house. They were found brutally bashed in the front bedroom. Catherine had suffered an estimated 15 blows with what was believed to be a tomahawk. Georgina had been bashed five times.

Later that day at 3 p.m. a co-worker Robyn Moulder went to check on the woman to find out why they hadn’t turned up to a shift at the Edgell cannery, where they both worked. On the way she met Catherine’s neighbour Leslie Marsh, and the pair went to the house together. Calling out, they received no answer so Leslie went inside and was confronted by the horrific scene. When the women were found, Catherine was already dead and Georgina was barely clinging to life but died en route to the hospital.

There had been an informal get together at the house the night before after Catherine and Georgina had gone out for dinner with a group of friends at a local hotel. Catherine was also a bartender at the hotel – the Lachlan Inn – and was well known among the patrons. Her children, aged eight and nine, had been staying the night with her mother.

Four friends had joined the women back at the Jindalee Circuit address. They all reported to police that the party was relaxed and there was no hint of trouble when they left at around 3 a.m. The house was part of a housing commission area on the outskirts of the town and it was a fairly quiet place.

Police could find no sign of forced entry to the home and the back door of the house had been left unlocked. The killer had trailed blood through the house and escaped via the laundry and out the back door. The blood trail went to the roadway.

When the women were first found, Catherine was in the bed under the sheets but Georgina was hanging off the bed, barely alive.

Police conducted an exhaustive investigation and spoke to over 1200 people both in NSW and interstate to try and solve the case. To think there was a violent killer on the loose filled the town with terror. Newspaper reports in the days after the murders described Cowra as a ‘small, sleepy country hamlet’.

A neighbour told police she had seen a man in a cowboy hat sitting in a park across the road before the killing. It was the slimmest of leads for the police to go on.

In May 1987, the NSW Government posted a $50 000 reward. As part of the reward, there was the offer of a free pardon to any accomplice who did not commit the crime and who provided information. (That immunity was withdrawn in 2010.)

At a 1988 inquest, coroner Jim Smith said he was satisfied that there had been a thorough investigation by the police.

Smith said the offender must have known the victims – the brutality of the attacks indicated an emotional involvement – and scotched rumours the murders were drug related.

In 1989, a Sydney man Paul Gerald Mason was questioned about the Cowra killings after he was charged with the murders of two young women and an eight-month-old baby.

In May 1989, Mason bludgeoned pregnant Mary Clark to death with a pickaxe in her isolated farmhouse north of Canberra. He also tried to murder her one-year-old son. Then in July 1989, Mason murdered Ruth Ferguson and her baby son at Pambula Beach on the NSW south coast. Mrs Ferguson and her baby Mark were found by her husband in the boot of her car. She had been bludgeoned to death and her son strangled. Mason knew his victims well. He had gone to school with Mrs Ferguson and had met Mrs Clark’s husband through their mutual love of rock climbing and the outdoors. Mason’s father had described the Clarks as his son’s ‘very dearest friends’.

It stands as one of Australia’s most baffling crimes. The sheer brutality of his attacks on the women and their babies was horrific. Mason was arrested at the police station at Woden, Canberra on 29 July.

According to police, Mason was questioned about the double murder of Cathy Holmes and Georgina Watmore because of the similarities in the deaths of all the women. However, detectives found no connections between the crimes.

While in custody, Mason was found hanging in his cell. An inquest recorded a finding of suicide on Mason’s death and the murders of Mrs Clark, Mrs Ferguson and her baby were recorded as murders committed by Mason.

In 2010, NSW Police increased the reward to $200 000 in the hope that this would motivate someone to reveal leads that would uncover the killers of Catherine and Georgina.

At the time, Detective Senior Constable Matt Packham of the Unsolved Homicide Squad said the double murder remained ‘a blight on the Cowra community’.

‘The murder of Cathy Holmes and Georgina Watmore remains the subject of much speculation, innuendo and gossip within the township, contributing to the heartache and grief of the family and friends of the girls,’ Packham said.

‘We will continue to knock on doors, speaking to people, pursuing persons of interest and lines of enquiry, until this matter is resolved.’

The family and friends of the women are still waiting for justice.

Anyone with information on the murders of Catherine Holmes and Georgina Watmore should contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000 or at http://crimestoppers.com.au.