Main image: The Coogee Aquarium, Sydney, where a recently captured tiger shark sparked a baffling murder mystery.
Left to right: The victim, James Smith; key witness Reginald Holmes; Cored Joy, the seaside cottage rented by suspect Patrick Brady.
By an extraordinary twist of fate, a human arm expelled by a shark became the first link in a bizarre chain of events involving smuggling, blackmail, and murder.
It was a balmy spring afternoon on April 17, 1935. Bert Hobson and his son Ron were fishing from a 12-foot (3.6-meter) launch off Maroubra Point in Coogee, Sydney, Australia. Dissatisfied with their catch so far, they put out set lines baited with horse mackerel before returning home for the evening. The following morning, they returned to see if their set lines had caught anything profitable. They were surprised to discover a tiger shark measuring a mighty 14 feet 6 inches (4.42 meters). The shark had been lured to the set line to feast on a smaller shark that had become tangled in it. The Hobsons managed to capture the tiger shark and then sold it to the Coogee Aquarium, which happened to be run by Bert’s brother Charlie. The worldwide economic depression of the 1930s had hit Sydney hard, and Charlie Hobson hoped that this exciting addition would attract visitors willing to pay a bit extra to see the impressive shark fed twice a day.
On the afternoon of April 25, Anzac Day (a holiday honoring veterans), eight days after the shark had been caught, a grisly discovery surfaced in the shark’s tank. Fortunately, only a few people were present when the aquarium’s prize attraction started to thrash about, almost as if it was about to jump out of the pool. Moments later a human arm—clearly expelled by the shark—was spotted bobbing in the water. While Bert Hobson used a stick to keep this gruesome find close to the side of the tank, in case the huge shark tried to swallow it again, the police were immediately informed and rushed to the scene. To their surprise, the arm appeared to be in a fair state of preservation. Generally, the gastric juices of a shark would digest human flesh within days. However, the stress and shock of being captured and put on display may have slowed the shark’s digestive processes. A piece of rope was tied around the wrist and, on the inside forearm, was a tattoo of two sparring boxers.
Main image: The Coogee Aquarium, Sydney, where a recently captured tiger shark sparked a baffling murder mystery.
Left to right: The victim, James Smith; key witness Reginald Holmes; Cored Joy, the seaside cottage rented by suspect Patrick Brady.
Gradually, theories as to whose arm it was started to build. Some wondered whether the arm had been discarded by a doctor or medical student, while others suggested, rather fancifully, that the arm could have belonged to a man who had committed suicide by plunging into the ocean with his arms tied. Due to decomposition, fingerprinting was no easy task. Medical examiners had to carefully remove skin from the fingers and then slip it over their own gloved digits to lift a print.
April 29, 1935 / Edwin Smith contacts police to report that the arm belongs to his missing brother James.
Police received their first lead when a man named Edwin Smith recognized the description of the tattoo. Edwin’s brother James had been missing since April 7, after telling his wife that he was “going on a fishing trip with a companion.” James was a 45-year-old, English-born criminal, police informant, and ex-boxer who lived in the Sydney suburb of Gladesville. Fingerprinting confirmed that the arm did indeed belong to him.
It was initially assumed that its discovery was simply evidence of another tragic shark attack, of which there had been three in recent months. However, further examination revealed a far more disturbing scenario. It was clear that the arm had not been bitten off by the shark after all—it had been severed with a knife. The focus of the investigation suddenly shifted to murder.
Thanks to Edwin Smith’s information, the police at least knew who the arm belonged to; however, they were now faced with arguably the most bizarre case they had ever encountered. In a Wagga Wagga Express article, dated June 15, 1935, detectives freely admitted that they were facing a problem seemingly devised “by one of the cleverest killers in the history of Sydney’s crime.”
James Smith had numerous connections with the criminal underworld and, while looking into his seedy acquaintances, investigators came across the name Reginald Holmes. To many who knew him, Holmes appeared to be a respectable, wealthy businessman and family man who ran a successful boat-building business on the shores of Lavender Bay. However, there was another, hidden side to Holmes’ life. Behind the façade of normality, he was involved in various illegal activities, controlling lucrative smuggling and insurance fraud operations from his company, which was strategically situated on the shorefront. Enquiries revealed that Holmes had once hired Smith to collect cocaine, opium, and other contraband dropped overboard by ships coming in from the east. Moreover, investigators discovered that the year before his disappearance, Smith had been using an overinsured yacht owned by Holmes when it mysteriously caught fire and sank. The duo had intended to cash in on the insurance money, but the company concerned became suspicious and refused to pay.
Investigators speculated that Smith was shot dead on the shore and his body then dumped in the ocean. They hoped that finding the spent cartridge from the bullet that killed him, as well as identifying the gun that fired it, might lead them to his killer.
The beaches from Cronulla to Coogee were painstakingly searched. The shark in the aquarium was also killed, gutted, and examined. However, both of these attempts to find any clues as to how Smith met his end were in vain.
Initially, Holmes strongly denied any involvement in the bizarre case. But shortly after police questioned him, they received reports of a “raving man” careening around the harbor in a speedboat with blood streaming down his face. After a lengthy police pursuit, the dazed man was captured and identified as Reginald Holmes. He had a wound on his head, and he claimed that somebody had shot at him. However, the police were skeptical of this story and concluded that Holmes had inflicted the gunshot wound on himself. Either Holmes was trying to cast himself as a victim in the case, or the graze on his head was a failed suicide attempt.
Interrogation of Holmes then led investigators to a convicted forger named Patrick Brady. Investigators discovered that Smith was last seen drinking and playing cards with Brady at the Hotel Cecil in Cronulla. They also found out that Brady had rented a small cottage called “Cored Joy” on Taloombi Street in Cronulla.
When the cottage was searched, a can of kerosene mixed with blood was found in the pantry. The owner of the cottage noticed that since Brady had rented it, two rugs, two large mats, a mattress, a metal trunk, and a rope all appeared to be missing. Even more peculiar, the contents of the missing metal trunk had been placed inside a new, larger one that was found in its place. The owner also noted that the cottage had been scrupulously cleaned. Impressed by this accumulation of clues, the police questioned Patrick Brady and a few days later, they charged him with the murder of James Smith.
June 12, 1935 / Reginald Holmes, the key witness in Patrick Brady’s murder trial, is found shot dead in his car.
Reginald Holmes was scheduled to appear at the coroner’s inquiry, as well as the much-anticipated trial of Brady. However, Holmes would not live long enough to give his testimony. In the early hours of the very morning of the coroner’s inquiry, Holmes was found shot dead in his car on Hickson Road, Dawes Point, near Sydney Harbour Bridge. This desolate, run-down area was somewhere that law-abiding citizens tended to avoid. It was reputed to be a favorite meeting point for local smugglers—a place where money and contraband speedily changed hands.
The passenger door of Holmes’ Nash sedan was ajar and the position of his wounds indicated that he had been shot three times by someone sitting in the passenger seat. Moreover, there were no signs of a struggle, implying that Holmes had been murdered by somebody he knew well enough to allow into his car.
Following Holmes’ murder, his wife came forward to divulge what she knew, and in lieu of her murdered husband, became the key witness in the trial. She said that on April 8, Patrick Brady had visited their home; his arms were cut and bloody, and he carried a knapsack that she recognized as belonging to Smith. A taxi driver would later corroborate her story, telling investigators that, on that same date, he had driven Brady from Cronulla to Holmes’ home in North Sydney. After Brady left, Holmes told his wife that Brady had murdered Smith, dismembered him, and “put it in a tin trunk, put it in a boat, and tipped it overboard.”1
“HE HAD A HAND IN A POCKET AND WOULDN’T TAKE IT OUT… IT WAS CLEAR [HE] WAS FRIGHTENED.”
A majority of the detectives in the Sydney homicide squad believed that Brady somehow forgot about Smith’s telltale tattooed arm when packing the trunk with the rest of his dismembered remains. Realizing his mistake, he later disposed of it, whereupon it was swallowed by the shark. Others theorized that Brady had retained Smith’s arm as evidence, in order to convince Holmes that the gruesome deed had been done, before disposing of it.
The Supreme Court ruled that an arm did not constitute a body, which was required for a murder conviction, and thus there was no way of knowing if James Smith was deceased or not. The judge also refused to accept Mrs. Holmes testimony, regarding it only as hearsay.
September 12, 1935 / Patrick Brady is formally acquitted of the murder of Reginald Holmes.
The generally accepted theory is that when the insurance company refused to pay out after the suspicious sinking of Holmes’ yacht, Smith and Holmes fell out, and Smith threatened to expose Holmes as a criminal. James Smith’s wife testified that she found an entry in her husband’s black pocket book that Reginald Holmes had owed him £60 or £65 ($5,300 or $5,800 in US dollars today). She said she could not be sure how the debt was incurred. However, it is possible that this was the amount Holmes owed Smith for the boat insurance scheme that went awry. In a bid to save his reputation, Holmes hired Brady to put Smith away for good, and Brady shot Smith dead in his rented cottage. When investigators later questioned Holmes, Brady believed that Holmes would not stand up to the pressure, so he silenced him.
An intriguing alternative theory about Holmes’ death was put forward by Alex Castles in his 1995 book, The Shark Arm Murders. Castles speculated that the outwardly respectable Holmes could have taken out a contract on his own life in order to spare his family the public shame they would have suffered if he were to be convicted of the boat insurance fraud.2
Alex Castles also suggested another possible suspect for the murders of Smith and Holmes. Smith had been a police informant and had pointed the finger at a Sydney gangster named Eddie Weyman in a bank robbery. Weyman was also mixed up in the local drug trade, and it is possible that Weyman killed Smith and Holmes out of revenge, and to remove rivals in the drug trade.
Whoever threw James Smith’s dismembered arm to the sharks and silenced Reginald Holmes has never been brought to justice. Had the trial of Patrick Brady taken place in modern times the outcome could well have been very different.
In the past, murder convictions without a body were rare, but modern developments in forensic science have made it much more likely that a conviction can be obtained today. A famous example is the conviction of Richard Crafts, who murdered his wife in Connecticut in 1986 and disposed of her body using a wood chipper. DNA technology in criminal investigation would probably have resulted in Brady being found guilty, with or without the rest of Smith’s body. As it was, it was a million-to-one chance that the murder of James Smith was ever brought to light, triggering a chain of events that even the most ingenious thriller writer would have difficulty conceiving.
The tiger shark in Coogee Aquarium
A reconstruction of the distinctive boxers tattoo on the severed arm.