Chapter 7

It was summer 1934 in the Victorian seaside town of Inverloch, about 140 kilometres south-east of Melbourne. Four years had passed since the murders of Hazel Wilson and Mena Griffiths and the crimes had been forgotten by most. Even at the time the girls were killed, for the locals of sleepy Inverloch, the shocking news had been softened by the buffer of distance.1 Things like that only happened in big cities: the murders had no real relevance for the people of Inverloch, except for a sad shake of the head and comparison with the quiet rural life.

Motor cars were becoming increasingly common during the 1920s and ’30s and this gave rise to an exciting new trend: the motoring holiday. Reasonable roads meant Inverloch was an easy two-hour drive from Melbourne, and the tiny South Gippsland town became a popular summer holiday spot. For those who didn’t drive, it was possible to take a train from Melbourne to Wonthaggi then catch the bus to Inverloch. Accommodation was offered by one hotel and two guest houses, but the majority of holidaymakers took advantage of camping facilities on the foreshore, where hundreds of tents were pitched during the height of the season. Holidaying families came from Melbourne but also the surrounding district, particularly Wonthaggi, where a thriving coal mine supported a sizeable population.

The Christmas period was always busy, but Inverloch had an additional drawcard that added thousands of day-trippers to the holiday throng: a New Year’s Day beach carnival. The programme included running and swimming races, motor car events, a prize for the most attractive beach pyjama ensemble, and the crowd favourite, the Miss Inverloch beauty pageant. It was the highlight of the holiday season.

***

Twelve-and-a-half-year-old Ethel Belshaw lived with her family in nearby Tarwin Meadows, about 15 miles (24 kilometres) from Inverloch. Only about 40 people lived in the isolated dairying community: share farmers and others who worked on the Tarwin Meadows property owned by Mr Black. Ethel’s father, Robert, was employed as a herd tester, and the Belshaws lived in one of a number of red cottages clustered together and hemmed in by low hills. Ethel attended school in a building that also served as the church and social hall, enjoyed playing with her dolls, and knew everybody in the district. She never went out unless accompanied by one of her siblings, older sister Clarice Maud (aged 19) or brother Harold (aged 11). Ethel’s father had told her, ‘some of the facts of life’ and, in particular, had warned her of the dangers of having anything to do with strange men.2

Ethel was a sturdy girl in the way of many country children of the era, and looked two or three years older than her actual age. With long fair hair and a wide smile, she was an attractive child3 but somewhat reserved: not the sort to strike up conversations with strangers.

***

On New Year’s Day, 1935, Ethel was invited to go to Inverloch with her friend, eight-year-old Margaret Knights. Also in the party were Margaret’s parents, her two brothers, Raymond and Gordon, and two other adults, Mr James Jenkins and Mrs Madge Rule. Jenkins was Mrs Knights’ nephew (by marriage) and lived in Melbourne, where he worked as a building contractor. He also happened to be Gordon Knights’ boss, and the 18-year-old apprentice would board with him in Melbourne when work was on.

Ethel’s own parents didn’t join the group going to Inverloch: her mother, Clarice, was unwell and her father, a scoutmaster, had left on 27 December to attend a two-week scout jamboree in Frankston, 100 kilometres away.

New Year’s Day was warm – perfect for the festivities – and Ethel’s group secured a good picnic place in a lane off the promenade, not far from Mrs Donoghue’s ice cream shop. They arrived in Inverloch around 12.15 p.m., so they lunched together – tomato sandwiches and tea – until 1 p.m. before settling in for an afternoon by the sea. The girls spent their time swimming, eating ice cream, and watching the carnival events, joining the rest of the Tarwin Meadows people at various times throughout the day. It was an idyllic start to the year.

By 4.30 p.m., the beach carnival was drawing to a close and most of the group gathered at the end of the pier. Only Raymond was absent, having taken a boat trip across the bay. By this time, both girls had already changed out of their bathing costumes and were wearing dresses, while Gordon Knights had put clothes on over his swimming togs.

The beauty pageant had finished and the pyjama parade was still to be held, when Ethel and Margaret decided to walk the short distance to Mrs Donoghue’s shop on Beach Road (now The Esplanade) for one final ice cream. Margaret had Gordon’s purse, which she had taken from his pocket at some point, much to the disapproval of her brother. A ten-shilling note that had been in the purse was now missing, although Margaret claimed she had placed it in the food box, back in the truck that had brought them from Tarwin Meadows.

Margaret was given some money – sixpence by her father and ninepence by Mr Jenkins, matching Ethel’s one shilling and threepence – and the two girls, accompanied by Gordon, walked away. They were headed for the truck, so Margaret could show Gordon where to find his missing money.

Shortly after, the girls and Gordon split up. He turned back toward the beach while Margaret and Ethel continued to Mrs Donoghue’s shop, where they found a sizeable queue. Ethel was ahead of her friend in the line, and as soon as she’d been served she left the crowded shop to wait outside.

When Margaret emerged minutes later, Ethel had disappeared.

Meanwhile, Gordon had returned to the pier. He announced that he would have a quick swim before entering one of the final events – the greasy barrel – and left his clothes with his parents. Despite Gordon’s intentions, the Knights and their friends chose to watch the pyjama parade, rather than the less edifying spectacle of the greasy barrel competition.

Soon after, Margaret returned.

‘Where’s Ethel?’ Mrs Knights asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Margaret replied, and explained to her mother how the girls had bought ice cream, and Ethel had been served first, and when Margaret walked out of the shop, she couldn’t see her friend.

No one was particularly alarmed. It was only a five-minute walk between the pier and the ice cream shop, and the township was full of people in a holiday mood. No doubt Ethel had been distracted or possibly met up with other friends and been delayed. Nonetheless, Margaret was sent back to the shop to look for Ethel.

It was now after 5 p.m. and someone in the group suggested it was time for tea. So, for the next half hour or so, that was precisely what the Knights and their friends did. During this time, Gordon returned, collected his clothes, went and changed, then rejoined the group for tea. In retrospect, it seems almost bizarre that with a child missing the group of adults charged with her care would opt to brew tea and pass around cake, but their actions reflect the mindset of the time and place: New Year’s Day, 1935, the beach, a town full of relaxed, happy people where the worst crime was probably the occasional drunken fracas on a Friday night. The group clearly had no doubt that Ethel would appear at any moment.

But she didn’t.

Anxiety began to grow. Ethel had been missing for over an hour. She knew the party would be preparing to head back to Tarwin Meadows, so even if she had briefly lost track of time, she should have returned by now.

At 5.40 p.m. Robert Knights, Margaret’s father, told the local police officer, First Constable James McCarthy, that Ethel had become separated from the group. Mr Knights and several other men instigated a search, some heading back toward town and beyond Mrs Donoghue’s shop, others following the road in the opposite direction, ducking down tracks through the tea-tree scrub that bordered the beach. Gordon was among the searchers, heading along the beach away from town: he didn’t venture inland from the shore and was not accompanied by anyone else during this stage of the search.

There was no sign of Ethel.

By 7 p.m. it was reported to Constable McCarthy that Ethel was definitely missing: she had now been gone for two and a half hours. Several hundred locals and campers rallied to help, summoned by the frantic ringing of church and school bells. The hunt continued as long as there was light, and even after darkness fell the tireless searchers continued: hoping Ethel was merely lost or for some reason had started to walk home to Tarwin Meadows, hoping she would answer their cries.

Around 1 a.m., after hours of fruitless searching, the remainder of the Tarwin Meadows group set off on the journey home, leaving Mr Knights and Mr Jenkins in Inverloch so they could resume the search for Ethel at first light. It was not merely a case of getting Margaret and the others away from the unfolding drama. Mrs Belshaw was expecting her daughter to come home: someone had to tell her Ethel was missing.

Wednesday, 2 January, promised to be a warm and sunny day, but in Inverloch the celebratory mood of New Year’s Day had been replaced by fear, uncertainty, and a grim determination to find the missing girl. In a seaside town the possibility that Ethel had drowned must have been a consideration. Although she could swim and the waters were generally calm, a tidal channel – capable of producing strong currents – ran close to the shore. There was also a chance Ethel may have wandered into the scrub and become disoriented, or even had an accident which rendered her unable to return. The search was extended. People in cars and on horseback covered the entire beachfront and road between Inverloch and Tarwin Lower.

The idea that Ethel was the victim of crime – let alone murder – hadn’t occurred to anyone.

***

James McGuinness, a drill assistant at the Wonthaggi coal mine, was holidaying in Inverloch at the time. At 9.30 on the morning of 2 January, he reported to Constable McCarthy to volunteer in the search for Ethel Belshaw. He and four other men were duly assigned an area to cover and dispatched, one of dozens of people scouring the town and its surrounds.

Around 10.30 a.m., about a quarter of a mile (400 metres) north-east of the pier, McGuinness found Ethel lying face down in a small clearing, not far from a track that wound its way through the dense tea-tree. She was dressed, but her legs were tied at the ankles with one of her undergarments, and the blue cloth belt from her dress had been used to bind her hands behind her back. A length of stocking could also be seen, loosely encircling her neck and hair. Her shoes and purse had been placed neatly beside the body.

Ethel’s mother, Clarice, had travelled to Inverloch to assist in the search. She was immediately told her daughter was dead, but not the circumstances. On hearing the news, Mrs Belshaw collapsed, needing urgent medical attention: she was considered to be in too delicate a state to hear the full truth about Ethel’s death. Word was also sent to Robert Belshaw, who immediately set out from Frankston to join his wife.

The state of Ethel’s body shocked those who found her, and one of the searching men became ‘violently ill’4 at the sight. Dr Lancelot Sleeman, a local doctor, was summoned to view the body before it was removed to the Wonthaggi morgue. A skilled general practitioner, he was nonetheless not trained in forensic pathology. While remaining appropriately reticent about specifics, Dr Sleeman was of the opinion that Ethel had died in a violent struggle with her assailant. This early supposition was based on what confronted police when Ethel was turned over and her face could be seen: it appeared she had been badly beaten about the head. Dr Sleeman also stated that death had occurred around 11 o’clock the previous night, a pronouncement that would later be shown to be incorrect. In any case, nothing was certain until the official post-mortem examination could be performed.

As it happened, Detective F. Gwyther of the Melbourne CIB was holidaying in Inverloch. He took charge of the investigation until Detective Sloan arrived from Melbourne, accompanied by the police fingerprint expert, photographer, and a group of Indigenous trackers.5

Initially, police had little to go on, but the skilled work of the Indigenous trackers yielded some information. The chief tracker (identified only as Freddie) confirmed that no struggle had occurred in the place where Ethel’s body was found, instead directing police to a sheltered clearing a few yards away. Nearby tyre tracks that had initially caused some excitement were dismissed by Freddie as being several days old, but he told detectives the assailant was not an old man. Furthermore, none of Ethel’s hair was found in any of the surrounding shrubbery. If she had been carried, it was almost inevitable that some of her long hair would have caught on the dense tea-tree. Everything suggested Ethel had simply walked away from Mrs Donoghue’s shop, ice cream in hand, in the company of her murderer. Together they had entered the scrub and when they reached the clearing, the unknown man had turned on her.

Government pathologist Dr Crawford Mollison travelled from Melbourne to Wonthaggi, and on the morning of Thursday, 3 January – two days after the discovery of Ethel’s body – he performed the post-mortem examination. She was still clad in her dress, petticoat and singlet, but as the pathologist noted, conditions had not been ideal, and the body was ‘considerably decomposed’, somewhat hindering his investigation. Apparently it had taken Russell Street detectives most of the day to travel from Melbourne to Inverloch on 2 January. They didn’t reach the murder scene until 5 p.m., and it was another two hours before Ethel’s body was removed to the morgue.

There was a cut under one eye and scratches on Ethel’s face and legs which Dr Mollison concluded had been caused when she was dragged, face down, through the scrub for several yards. The extreme discolouration of her face – thought by others to have been caused by a violent beating – was the result of asphyxia: one of Ethel’s stockings had been pushed forcibly into her mouth, trapping some of her long hair with it. The second stocking was tied around her neck, the majority of her hair contained beneath it. It was not tight enough to have strangled Ethel, suggesting that it had been used to either blindfold the girl or secure the other stocking in her mouth, and had subsequently slipped. There were no ligature marks or bruises on Ethel’s neck to indicate strangulation, but Dr Mollison did suggest suffocation may have happened faster if there was pressure on her chest; for example, if someone had been kneeling on her.

The pathologist was also of the opinion that Ethel’s arms and legs had been bound after death. By contrast, bruising on Ethel’s tongue clearly indicated that the stocking had been forced into her mouth while she was still alive.

Dr Mollison took Ethel’s stomach contents and some organs back to Melbourne for analysis. The stomach contents were unremarkable, but did indicate she had died four or five hours after eating her lunch of tomato sandwiches. The only other significant fact revealed by the post-mortem examination was that Ethel had not been sexually assaulted.

The coroner, Mr Grant, opened an inquest at the Wonthaggi Hospital, heard Dr Mollison’s findings and formal evidence of identification, and then adjourned proceedings while the police investigation continued. Dr Mollison concluded there had been no violent struggle. Ethel had been killed between 5 and 6 p.m. on the afternoon of 1 January, and death was due to suffocation, caused by the stocking stuffed into her mouth.

Ethel Belshaw’s funeral was held at 3 p.m. on Friday, 4 January, and she was buried in the tiny cemetery at Tarwin Lower.