Chapter 4

It had been a sober beginning to 1931. The impact of the Great Depression was deepening as unemployment continued to rise, national income declined, and more than 40,000 men moved around the country seeking work. In Melbourne, the inquest into the murder of Mena Griffiths meant details of her death were fresh in the public’s mind.

Then on Saturday, 10 January, the city awoke to a fresh horror.

***

Adeline Hazel Wilson, who was known by her middle name, lived with her parents at 3 Melton Avenue in Ormond, about two and a half kilometres from the Wheatley Road house where Mena Griffiths’ body had been found. However this fact was of no importance to police: at the time of Hazel’s murder, they had Robert McMahon under lock and key.

Hazel had three older brothers, Frank, Percy and Siley, and while none of them lived at home, they were regular visitors to Melton Avenue. Hazel was 16 years old and had left school two years earlier, but poor health – respiratory and throat problems – meant she did not have a job.

A pretty girl with sparkling blue eyes and dark brown hair cut in a fashionable bob, Hazel was a petite five foot one (155 centimetres) meaning it was possible she could be mistaken for a younger girl. Popular and vivacious, she loved to dance, often going out in the evening with her best friend, Lucy Hogan, and regularly staying with Lucy overnight or even for a stretch of several days.

Hazel had told her parents long before that if she was not home by 10 p.m., it was because she was staying at Lucy’s. There were rare occasions when the girls would return to the Wilson house in the early hours of the morning, but there were also times when they didn’t go home at all, assuming their respective parents would believe if their daughter was not in her own bedroom, she must be at the other girl’s house. However, for the most part, on her nights out Hazel would return to her own home, alone, usually around midnight, but sometimes as late as 3 a.m.

Early in January 1931, Lucy had stayed with the Wilsons for several nights, gone home, then returned again on Tuesday, 6 January. This time, she remained until Friday night, sharing Hazel’s bedroom at the back of the house. There was no particular reason for this extended stay: they were simply two teenage girls at a loose end during the long, hot summer days.

On the evening of Friday, 9 January, Hazel dressed in bloomers, stockings, a white singlet and white lace petticoat beneath a green floral-print dress, which she cinched with a green patent-leather belt. As she and Lucy prepared to go out, Hazel added a black cotton coat – which Lucy brushed down – shoes, and a leather handbag. Hazel told her parents she intended to be home early, and the two girls left the Wilson house some time between 8 and 8.30 p.m.

Together, they walked to Glenhuntly railway station, a distance of about 1.7 kilometres, arriving at ten past nine. Hazel purchased the ticket for her friend with fourpence her father had provided for that purpose; otherwise the girls had no money between them. Lucy asked the porter in the ticket office for a cigarette and he obliged with tobacco and papers for both girls. They smoked their hand-rolled cigarettes in the station waiting room, then cadged another cigarette each from two men waiting on the platform. By the time they’d finished smoking those, Lucy’s train had arrived.

At the last minute, Hazel asked her friend to stay, suggesting they go for a walk together instead. Lucy declined and boarded a carriage. It was five minutes or so before the train pulled out of Glenhuntly station and Hazel remained on the platform for some of that time. Then Lucy watched her friend walk out of the station gates and turn down Glen Huntly Road. Hazel was alone, quite happy, and as far as Lucy knew, was heading straight home with no intention of meeting anyone.

***

When Hazel hadn’t returned home by 11.30 that night, her father simply assumed she’d decided to stay with Lucy. He went to bed, but he and his wife, Sarah, remained awake, continuing to talk. At about midnight, there was a noise outside, a whining sound.

‘What was that?’ Fred asked.

‘It might be a dog,’ Sarah replied.

Mr Wilson got out of bed and peered through the window facing Melton Avenue. There was something on the footpath, something unmoving, that he thought was a dog. He turned to his wife.

‘You have a look,’ he said.

Sarah looked out the window. ‘There is a man going along carrying a parcel.’

But when Mr Wilson checked again there was nothing to be seen: no dog, no man. He got back into bed then told his wife, ‘You go out and have a look and see what that was.’

Mrs Wilson pulled on her dress and slippers and ventured out to the front fence where she stood, looking up and down the street. In the moonlight it was clear that if anyone or anything had been there, they were gone; Melton Avenue was empty. Mrs Wilson returned and got back into bed and with that, Hazel’s parents went to sleep.

***

The next morning, the Wilsons woke between 6 and 7 a.m. Neither thought to check if their daughter was in her room; the back door and windows were always locked at night. Usually, if Hazel came in late she would call out and one of her parents would let her in, reassured that their daughter was safely home. They had been particularly anxious since the murder of Molly Dean, and on several occasions Hazel’s parents had even walked out at night to wait for her; usually at the corner of Oakleigh and Grange Roads, but once (at least) venturing as far as Glen Huntly Road (about 1.5 kilometres) where the tram lines ran. Hazel was aware of her parents’ fear for her, but also their understanding that she may on occasion spend the night at the Hogan house.

Therefore, on the morning of 10 January, the Wilsons were not unduly alarmed: they assumed Hazel had stayed with Lucy Hogan and they went about their normal Saturday routine.

Around 8 a.m. two of Hazel’s brothers, Siley and Percy, arrived. The brothers lived together in Malvern – having been ordered to move out by their parents – but were often back at the family home. Perhaps beginning to feel some unease at her daughter’s unplanned absence, Mrs Wilson told her sons Hazel hadn’t come home the night before. As it happened, Percy had an errand to run that would take him close to Lucy’s house, so Mrs Wilson asked him to check if Hazel was there. This seems to have been chance rather than a foreboding of any great tragedy: if Percy hadn’t been heading in that direction, the Wilsons might not have bothered to check on Hazel’s whereabouts for some time. While there had been one or two other times when either Mr Wilson or one of the brothers went to the Hogan residence in search of Hazel, in general her parents were relatively comfortable with – or resigned to – the idea of Hazel occasionally staying with her friend.

Percy left on his bicycle at about 9 a.m. and Mr Wilson went to collect grass to feed his horse, returning at 9.45. Frank Wilson, the eldest son, arrived a few minutes later, but Mr Wilson didn’t mention Hazel’s absence.

The morning wore on.

Mr Wilson went out on another errand at 11 a.m., returning some time around midday to be greeted by his wife and sons Siley and Percy.

‘Hazel did not stop at Lucy’s last night,’ Mrs Wilson said. ‘Frank’s gone down to Ormond police station to see if she met with an accident.’

When Frank came back, it was with the disheartening news that police were not in attendance at Ormond on Saturday mornings; a woman had told him they would be in later and she would ensure a constable was sent to the Wilson home. As the family began to grow more anxious, Hazel’s father went outside. Approaching the front gate he saw something, something he swore had not been there before.

A lady’s shoe.

He called his wife and together they went to investigate.

‘My God, it is Hazel’s shoe!’ Mrs Wilson cried.

Later, when giving a statement to police, Mr Wilson would recall that at that moment the recent, brutal murder of Molly Dean had flashed through his mind. He remembered how Molly Dean had been dragged away, and also how the previous night his wife thought she saw a man carrying some sort of package down the street.

Hazel’s mother’s thoughts must have been plunging down the same black hole.

‘My God, she’s been killed,’ she said, picking up the shoe.

Sarah Wilson was taken inside, then Mr Wilson, Siley and Frank returned to the front gate. They stood for a moment, discussing the shoe and what to do next.

‘I’ll tell you what we’ll do,’ said Siley. ‘We’ll have a look at all the blocks of ground and the houses. She may have been done the same as Mena Griffiths.’

It was the first time anyone had voiced the thoughts they all shared: that there was a killer roaming the streets of Melbourne, and Hazel had become his latest victim. And just like Mena Griffiths’ father and brothers, the Wilson men set out to search for Hazel.

Stepping into the street, they noticed some marks on the unmade footpath, as though someone had been scuffing their feet – or as though there had been a struggle – just in front of the Wilson’s fence.

Together, they walked slowly along the street.

Near the corner of Melton Avenue and Oakleigh Road, they found another irregularity marring the footpath, ‘as if a foot had been dragged along’. Another similar disturbance was visible in the silt that lined the gutter at the road’s edge, and after crossing the road they found two parallel marks in the silt of the opposite gutter.

Moving ahead, Frank entered number 41 Oakleigh Road, a vacant lot overgrown with bushes, ferns and long grass, and only about 120 yards (110 metres) from the Wilson home in Melton Avenue. Seconds later, he yelled out to his father.

‘Stop! Don’t come any further!’

‘Why?’

‘She’s here.’

Mr Wilson’s immediate reaction was unexpected, but with the brutal murder of Molly Dean sharp in his mind, part of him could not face what his son had found. Rather than running toward Frank and his daughter, he ran next door, rang the bell, and asked the woman who answered if she had heard any noises from the vacant block the night before.

‘No, why?’ came the reply.

‘Because my little girl has either been killed or something.’ Hazel’s father turned and ran back into the street.

Frank flagged down a passing motorcyclist, and asked him to go for the police. As the motorcycle roared away, Mr Wilson went to tell his wife. Together they rushed back to the block on Oakleigh Road, where a small crowd was already beginning to gather, to face a sight no parent should ever see.

Hazel’s body lay behind some bushes. Various witnesses would later testify there appeared to be no signs of a struggle: the surrounding grass was not unduly trampled or flattened and there were no drag marks. It was almost as though the body had simply been dropped where it lay.

She was face down in the long grass, her hands tied behind her back with her green belt and a piece torn from her petticoat. Her bare legs were tied together with her pink bloomers just above the ankles, and wounds were visible on both her heels. Her dress and black coat were pulled up to her waist, but one of those first on the scene – a stranger who had come to see what the commotion was about – pulled Hazel’s clothes down to cover her buttocks, protecting the dead girl’s modesty. When local police arrived on the scene, they did nothing more than cover Hazel’s body with a blanket before summoning detectives. There was little they could do, except try to manage the crowd that continued to swell as word of the crime swept through the neighbourhood.