The Lakemba Murders

Kevin Irwin

The Dart family were the epitome of the industrious, respectable working class that populated Australia post-war. William Dart was a well-respected master plumber, who had his own small business with son Ronald. Dorothy Dart, 49, kept the comfortable Lakemba brick and weatherboard suburban cottage and had raised the couple’s children, now grown up. The couple’s daughter, Dorothy Jean, still lived at home but was soon to be married. She was an attractive young woman who excelled at sports and was civic-minded.

Lakemba had always been a solid working-class area and became a popular settling place for Greek and Italian migrants from the 1950s and then Lebanese from the 1970s. The suburb, 15 minutes southwest from Sydney’s CBD, is now home to one of the largest mosques in Australia.

Miss Dart, 20, and Norman Kahler announced their engagement on 27 December 1949. They were both looking forward to a happy future together. However, the life of this average suburban family was violently torn apart one week after the joyous news of the engagement.

On the evening of Tuesday, 3 January 1950, Mrs Dart was found battered to death and her daughter barely clinging to life in their Garrong Road home. Both women had severe head injuries and Mrs Dart had been scalped in the frenzied attack.

Police had been called by neighbours who heard piercing screams from the house at 8.15 p.m.

When police arrived they forced open the front door to find a nightmare scene. Mrs Dart was dead in the hallway. The walls, floors and furniture were spattered with blood. A trail of blood led them to young Dorothy who was unconscious in the kitchen, with gaping head wounds.

She was rushed to the nearby Canterbury District Hospital but died a few hours later at 11 p.m.

Police immediately began the search for the murder weapon, believed to be a lead pipe or some similar heavy instrument.

Mr Dart Sr was away on a fishing trip at Lake Burrill and son Ronald, who was married and lived nearby, was told of the tragedy and came to the scene immediately.

Dorothy Jean’s fiancé was inconsolable when told of her death. Police interviewed Mr Kahler at his home and he was completely bewildered as to why anyone would want to harm his wife-to-be and her mother.

‘Dorothy had no enemies as far as I know. She was a sweet-tempered girl,’ Mr Kahler told police.

‘I can’t understand why anyone would want to harm her. The whole thing seems like a nightmare. Her mother had the same disposition,’ he said. ‘The man must have been a maniac.’

In the days following the horrific crime, detectives were convinced that the viciousness of the attack meant that the killer had a personal grudge against the women and would have been known to them.

They focused on talking to men who were known to Miss Dart and thought that a rejected suitor could have been the killer. It had been reported that Miss Dart’s engagement ring had been smashed to pieces, along with her hand, in the wild attack but a post-mortem had shown her fingers were not broken.

Detectives tried to piece together the women’s movements before the killer arrived at the house. It appeared that Mrs Dart was reading a newspaper in the lounge and her daughter was knitting items for her cherished wedding trousseau in the kitchen.

When police first arrived at the house they noticed that the radio was turned on loud. Mrs Dart was deaf and it was likely that she did not realise her daughter was being attacked until it was too late.

The Darts’ next-door neighbour told police that after hearing screams from the house, he looked over and saw a man who appeared to be bending over and ‘prodding something’ on the floor.

Several other neighbours reported seeing a man leave via the front door but then run around the side of the house and escape over the fence.

The only solid clue, besides witness statements, that police found in the days following was a bloodstained dark blue polka-dot scarf discovered in the Darts’ backyard. It appeared the killer must have dropped it as he made his escape.

The press had dubbed the killer a ‘maniac’ and Sydney was shocked by the brutality of the murders of the unassuming women. If everyday people like them had been killed then surely it could happen to anyone?

Three days after the murders, a man presented himself, in the company of his parents, to Campsie Police Station. The man was Kevin John Irwin, 23, who lived the same street as the Darts.

On Saturday, 7 January 1950, the police charged Irwin with murder. That same day, over 1000 people attended the funeral of the Dart women. The Sydney Morning Herald reported that 500 people stood in sweltering heat outside St Andrew’s Church of England during the service. Mother and daughter were buried together.

Irwin was refused bail and remanded in custody. An inquest into the deaths was conducted in February 1950.

Irwin’s father John gave evidence at the inquest that on the night of the murders his son came home after 11 p.m. with his trousers damp, which was odd because he had left the house at 7.15 p.m. to go to the movies. Mr Irwin said his son told him he had changed his mind and gone to Manly to the beach and slipped in the water.

Mr Irwin even told the hearing his son had asked him, ‘What’s going on up at the Darts’?’

A Lakemba resident, Geoffrey Furnell, also gave evidence and said that he was walking along Garrong Road at 8.15 p.m. on the evening of 3 January, on his way to his home in nearby Railway Parade, and saw a woman struggling with a man on the front lawn of the Dart residence. Mr Furnell said he saw the man hit the woman with a cylindrical object the size of a rolling pin.

He went on to recall that the man dragged the woman back to the verandah, where there was a short struggle, and then he carried her into the house. The witness heard some more thumping noises and then he saw a man come to the window, press his face to the glass and then disappear.

Bloody heel prints had been found on the verandah and in the kitchen of the murder scene and the spotted scarf found in the backyard was confirmed by Mr Irwin to be similar to one he had recently owned. The heel of shoes handed to police, from the Irwin house, matched the bloodied heel impressions.

A crown of a wristwatch winder was also found amid the bloody scene in the kitchen. A detective from the scientific branch of the Sydney Criminal Investigation Bureau said that police gathered items from Irwin’s home including the clothes Irwin had worn on the night of the murders and a wristwatch. The detective confirmed that the winder matched the wristwatch that belonged to the accused.

Irwin’s father outlined the ‘peculiarities’ of his son. Irwin had been born with a double cleft palate, which had been fixed with surgery, though the young man’s speech had been affected. Mr Irwin Sr told the packed courtroom that there was a history of cleft palates and insanity in the family’s history. He also revealed that he and his wife – Irwin’s mother – were third cousins. Whether or not this was the reason for their son’s conditions, Irwin was also deemed by Crown witness Sydney psychiatrist Dr John George to have the mental age of a 13-year-old. However, Dr George said he believed the accused knew what he was doing at the time of the murders.

Irwin’s defence made a plea to the court that their client was of ‘unsound mind’ when he killed the Dart women and vigorously tried to have him declared insane due to his alleged mental capability.

A work colleague of Irwin’s testified that Irwin, a moulder, had been able to perform tasks with a fair amount of skill. Neighbours described Irwin as being fairly polite and ‘normal’, though he had been made fun of over the years by other children because of his speech impediment. Newspapers reported that Irwin was extremely nervous when in the dock and he paused often before tentatively giving one-word answers to questions.

Eighteen years after the murders of the Darts, a case in Melbourne made international headlines when a young man was acquitted in 1968 of murder on the grounds of insanity. Laurence Edward Hannell, 21, pleaded not guilty to murdering 77-year-old Mary Redfern in her Brunswick flat in 1967. Hannell had purposely cut the antennae to Ms Redfern’s television and then knocked at her window, asked if she was having trouble with her set and offered to help. When in the flat, Hannell tripped the elderly woman and then stabbed her several times in a motiveless attack. Hannell admitted to police he had killed the woman and that he did not even know her. ‘[The murder] just came into my mind and I carried it out,’ Hannell said.

Hannell, who lived in the same apartment block as Ms Redfern, was found to have an extra Y chromosome – an extra masculinity factor known as an XYY Syndrome. The syndrome can result in intellectual impairment, delayed development and being taller than average. Scientists believed that the condition meant that sufferers were unable to self-regulate their actions. At Hannell’s trial, a Pentridge Prison psychiatrist said that the condition meant that every cell in the man’s brain was abnormal. Hannell was ordered to strict custody at her majesty’s pleasure.

It was the first time chromosomal evidence was given in an Australian court. It wasn’t until 1960 that this kind of research was being undertaken on chromosomal defects to explain criminality.

Irwin, who may well have been a candidate for chromosomal testing, had made a confession to police, which he now said he did not recall, nor did he have any memory of what occurred at the Darts’ home. When he was first questioned by police, Irwin had denied that he had anything to do with the murders and said the blood found on his clothes was from a brawl he had been involved in the same night. He admitted he owned a pair of golf shoes the same as the style and make that matched the heel impressions at the murder scene.

The policeman giving evidence, Detective Sergeant Jack, told the court that Irwin had reportedly asked to see the officer by himself. Jack said, ‘He put his arm on the table, leant his head on his arm and burst out crying, saying, “I will tell you all about it. I killed them. I hit them on the head with a piece of pipe I took from the backyard.” ’

Jack recounted how Irwin had told him he went to the Darts’ place to use the telephone and young Dorothy had told him she was engaged. Irwin then alleged the women started talking about ‘my sister’s dead baby’.

‘I thought Mrs Dart was grinning at me and making fun of me and my sister,’ Irwin reportedly told the detective.

Jack told the court that Irwin recounted that he had excused himself, and gone outside the Darts’ house and picked up a piece of pipe, which he had hidden under his coat.

Irwin said that when he re-entered the house he asked Mrs Dart what she was grinning about and then struck the unsuspecting woman on the head. When Mrs Dart was first struck, her daughter ran to help and Irwin savagely beat her on the head too.

In line with what witnesses observed, Mrs Dart ran along the hallway, out the front door and on to the verandah but Irwin struck her again and dragged the terrorised woman back inside.

Jack said that at the conclusion of his confession, Irwin told him, ‘I know I’ll spend the rest of my life in jail for this, but don’t let them hang me. I don’t want to die yet.’

Irwin was found guilty of murder and sentenced to death. His sentence was later commuted to life.