Chapter 14

On 6 December – the day after his arrest – Arnold Sodeman had appeared before Mr McLean P.M. in the Melbourne City Court. Slight of build and deeply tanned, Sodeman was dressed in a yellow, open-necked shirt, loose grey sweater and a creased, well-worn brown sports suit. He looked younger than his stated 36 years and a far cry from the ghoulish apparition described five years earlier by Joyce Griffiths. However, there were some corresponding details.

Arnold Sodeman matched the general size and shape of the man Joyce had described and he also had a somewhat peculiar way of walking: Mena Griffiths’ murderer had been described as having a slovenly gait and dragging his feet. Sodeman had a single scar on the right side of his upper lip rather than numerous scars (or sores) on both cheeks, and he also wore a set of false upper teeth. Five years ago, the man who killed Mena was said to have decayed teeth with several missing from the sides of his upper jaw. It was hardly a stretch to believe Sodeman had had dental work done in the intervening period.

He calmly met the gaze of many of the people in the crowded courtroom, and answered questions so quietly that at times he was almost inaudible. There was no lawyer to represent him. At the end of the brief hearing, he indicated he had no questions and would not apply for bail. It was a moot point. Bail was formally refused and Arnold Sodeman was remanded until 13 December when the inquest into June Rushmer’s death would be reopened. As he left the dock, Sodeman glanced quickly around the crowded court then walked, completely composed, to the cells.

Once the inquest was properly concluded, a trial date could be set. In the meantime, newspaper reporters were in a frenzy of speculation after the sensational confession and arrest. Arnold Sodeman had been one of the witnesses interviewed over the disappearance of Ethel Belshaw at Inverloch. He’d said he knew the girl, told police he had spoken with her, but that was it. He even testified about their encounter at the inquest into Ethel’s murder.

Arnold Sodeman had never been a suspect.

He had never appeared – even peripherally – on the radar of detectives investigating the earlier murders of Mena Griffiths and Hazel Wilson.

So who was this man?

***

Arnold Sodeman’s family had been in Australia for several generations. Records show his grandfather, Ernst Wilhelm Sodeman, a cabinetmaker, arrived in September 1883 with his wife, Jeannie Matilda, and son, Karl.1 The family travelled from Hamburg aboard the S.S. Kehrweider, departing on 5 July and arriving in the port of Adelaide on 12 September. Karl was just three years old. The family stayed in Adelaide for three years before moving to Sydney where they lived for two and a half years. In 1889, they moved to Melbourne where they would remain.

In January 1936, ahead of her grandson’s trial, Jeannie Sodeman provided a statement to authorities regarding the family history. She hinted at an inherited predisposition to mental weakness in the Sodeman line, revealing that her brother-in-law, Gustav, who had remained in Germany, died in a mental asylum after nine years in and out of hospital. Then she told them about her husband.

Karl’s father (Arnold’s grandfather) Ernst Sodeman wasn’t a drinker, in fact, he was a very good tradesman. A hard worker, he provided so well for his family that when he died, his widow was left with three houses. But according to Jeannie, at the end of the 1890s, something began to change: Ernst began to experience fits of rage. If something was not to his liking, he would flip a table, destroy the room, then turn on her. It started with blood noses but quickly became worse, and he would beat his wife badly. Chillingly, when Jeannie spoke with authorities in 1936 she said of her husband, ‘Many and many’s the time he caught me by the throat.’ Whether her grandson Arnold ever witnessed those episodes will never be known.

In 1911, Ernst had a stroke, and his health – physical and mental – began to rapidly deteriorate. Finally, on 13 May 1913, he was committed to the Hospital for the Insane in Kew (later commonly referred to as Willsmere). By that stage he was in poor health: he had a heart condition, muscle tics in his knees, chronic nephritis and left-sided hemiplegia, the result of the stroke. And Ernst Sodeman was considered completely insane.

His short-term memory was described as ‘defective’, but Ernst also had delusions about his wife’s fidelity. He believed she was conducting sexual relationships with four other men, that he was not the father of their children, and would describe their sex life in ‘prurient detail’. Most disturbingly, not long before his admission to the Hospital for the Insane, Ernst attempted to kill his wife. After initially denying the homicidal attack, he finally claimed he’d only done it because Jeannie refused his advances.

On 3 November, after six months in the asylum, Ernst was released on probation; but by 24 November he was back, restless and mentally unstable. He was ‘retained in bed’ under treatment in the infirmary ward, but died at 10.15 p.m. on 10 December 1913. While the cause of death was pneumonia, the official report also mentioned ‘grosser brain lesions’. Significantly, contrary to the statement Jeannie would make in 1936, hospital records indicate Ernst Sodeman’s fits of rage and violence only began after his first stroke.

Jeannie Sodeman was convinced there was something very wrong with the family she had married into, as she would later tell authorities, ‘Something in the blood.’

***

Ernst and Jeannie’s son, Karl, had left home long before the decline of his father’s health. On 6 May 1899, at age 19, he married Violet Esther Wood, one year his junior. The couple’s eldest son, Arnold Karl Sodeman, was born eight months later on 12 December 1899, in Hawthorn. A second son arrived the following year.

For the young Karl striking out on his own, everything looked positive: he was qualified as an electrical engineer, employed, and had a wife and two healthy children. Life was good.

By 1911, Karl, Violet and their two sons, Arnold and Ernest James, were living in Arundel Crescent in Surrey Hills, a comfortable middle-class Melbourne suburb featuring gracious Federation and Edwardian homes on large allotments. Arnold attended Auburn State School and later Canterbury State School. To the outside world, the Sodemans presented a picture of comfortable respectability. But behind closed doors, everything was not quite as it seemed.

Arnold had no recollection of events, but claimed to have been told by his mother that in the early years of the marriage, his father was an alcoholic and a gambler who would regularly – possibly as often as every week – come home in a raging temper, assault Arnold’s mother and smash things in the house. Despite having no memory of this, Arnold later told authorities he may have witnessed the violence as an infant.

By the time Arnold was seven or eight, his father had reformed and given up his vices. He was very strict, allowing his sons little freedom, always wanting things done exactly and to the minute. As Arnold described it, there were consequences for bad behaviour:

When he beat us, which was not often, he beat us properly … He had a frightful temper and flew into terrible rages and would nearly flog us to bits when he started on us. He would grab us and drag us into the room. There was only [my] brother and me.

When he was thirteen, Arnold Sodeman ran away from home but returned a short while later. It seemed this was only a brief disruption in the family’s life. In 1914, they moved to 13 Victoria Road in the nearby suburb of Auburn, where they remained for several years. However, three years later, in January 1916, Arnold ran away again. World War I was raging in Europe, and this time the underage Sodeman was attempting to join the Australian Army and head for the battlefields.2 His disappearance was reported to police and Arnold was found before entering camp and returned to his worried parents. The notice in the ‘Missing Friends’ column of the 13 January edition of Victoria Police Gazette describes someone who would be hard-pressed to convince an enlisting officer that he was the required 21 years of age:

SODEMAN, ARNOLD, is missing from his home, 13 Victoria street, Auburn, since 6th inst. Description:- 16 years of age, 5 ft. 2 or 3 in. high, stout build, medium complexion, brown hair, dark eyes, pimples on his face; dressed in a dark tweed suit, brown soft-felt hat, soft heliotrope collar, and black boots.3

In 1917, Arnold’s father was hired as an engineer at the State Coal Mine on the Powlett River coalfield; the Sodemans left Melbourne, and moved to Wonthaggi. The thriving town was the hub of the coal industry and, as it happens, was relatively close to both Inverloch and Leongatha. Arnold had left school and he also found work in the mine. While Arnold would later tell authorities he had been employed as an apprentice fitter, in the employee register he is listed as a clipper.4

It was around this time that things started to unravel for Arnold, and indeed most of the Sodeman family.

Violet, Arnold’s mother, met a man named John Campbell and they began seeing each other. When their secret was uncovered, Violet promised her husband she would break off the relationship. If she kept her promise, it wasn’t for long.

In March 1918, Karl came home to find all Violet’s belongings gone and a note to say she was leaving. He took the next train to Melbourne, caught up with her at Flinders Street Station, and somehow persuaded her to return home to Wonthaggi.

Then in June he received a message at work: Violet had left again. Karl tried to track her down but with no success. Three months later Ernest, Arnold’s brother, received a letter from his mother telling him she was living in Port Pirie, South Australia, where she was known as Mrs John Campbell.

Karl got a lawyer and enquiry agents (private detectives) were sent to Port Pirie to confront Violet. When they knocked on her door, she identified herself as Mrs Campbell but readily gave the agents a photograph of herself ‘for the purpose of identifying her as Mrs Sodeman[n]’.

In 1919, Karl filed a petition for divorce on the grounds of adultery. An attempt was made in January 1920 to serve papers on Violet Sodeman and John Campbell (as co-respondent) but they had left their Port Pirie address and could not be found. The divorce was finalised (in the absence of any response from Violet) in July 1920.

The Campbells subsequently returned to Victoria. Arnold’s mother began to develop health problems and at some point in the mid-1920s, she collapsed and was rushed to The Alfred Hospital in a critical condition. Doctors feared for her life but managed to stabilise her and, slowly, Violet recovered. Unfortunately, she was never the same: her brain had been affected and she now had great trouble remembering things. While still able to clearly recall events that had happened 15 or 20 years earlier, Violet had problems with her short-term memory, and would often forget things that had happened in recent days. From that point on, her memory and cognitive function continued to deteriorate with each passing year.

***

Following the divorce in 1920, Arnold’s father, Karl Sodeman, also began to suffer bouts of ill health, and by the mid-1920s was suffering from significant mental illness. In March 1930 he was admitted to the Mont Park Hospital for the Insane. He was thin, in ‘feeble health’ and suffering from a condition referred to as general paralysis of the insane. Under the care of Dr Reginald Ellery, Karl was administered Wagner-Jauregg’s malaria fever treatment. Dr Ellery had pioneered the use of this protocol in Australia for the treatment of general paralysis of the insane, and despite its risks it had become the standard treatment for the condition throughout the world. However, in the case of Karl Sodeman, while the protocol may have aided his mental condition, he would never leave Mont Park Hospital.

Reports stated that Karl had begun to deteriorate seven years prior to his admission to the asylum, and had been unable to work since 1924. He was described as ‘demented’: unaware of his surroundings, wandering aimlessly and getting lost, incapable of carrying on a rational conversation or understanding what was said to him; he kept taking his clothes off, was restless at night, and ‘faulty in his habits’ (had poor bodily hygiene).

After a month of treatment in the hospital’s infirmary, Karl was trans­ferred to a ward, but on 10 June, he became ill with pneumonia and was confined to bed. Arnold Sodeman’s father died two days later. When Dr Ellery performed the post-mortem examination on 14 June, his report described a thin, foreign-looking man with bed sores on his hips. Karl’s heart was fine, but there were some pathological changes visible in the liver and kidneys. However, the most significant findings were the lungs and brain. The lower lobes of both lungs were consolidated (filled with fluid rather than air) as a result of the pneumonia. Karl’s skull was normal but beneath it, the dura mater (the outer membrane protecting the brain) was thickened, while one of the other membranes, the pia mater, was hazy. The cerebral cortex was wasted, the ventricles dilated – indicating an increase of fluid in the brain – and there was ‘granular frosting’ on the floor of the fourth ventricle.

All this information about the mental history of the family would come out following Arnold Sodeman’s trial, but it had little relevance to Arnold’s teenage years. While his brother apparently continued to work hard and toe the line, Arnold was going his own way and not all of it was good.

He seemed destined for trouble.

***

At the start of 1918, Arnold was still living and working in Wonthaggi when he forged a cheque for £3. Dated 18 February, the cheque was made payable to Arnold Sodeman, supposedly signed by A.J. Norton, and drawn on the Colonial Bank of Australasia Ltd.

Arnold had left his job in the mine and, during the previous month, had been working for the real Mr Norton in his bakery shop in Hicksborough (about five kilometres north of the centre of Wonthaggi). On 19 February, Arnold went out in the horse and cart with instructions to fetch a load of firewood. He did not return, but the horse came back the following day. At about the same time, Mr Norton realised his cheque book was missing.

Arnold cashed the dud cheque to pay for drinks at the Caledonian Hotel in Wonthaggi. Bartender Joseph Connolly accepted the payment after consultation with his employer, giving Arnold £2/19 change in cash. The bartender would subsequently tell police Arnold had been sober and had left soon after paying. When the manager of the Caledonian Hotel presented the cheque at the Wonthaggi branch of the Colonial Bank of Australasia, bank manager Edward Sweeney immediately recognised the signature was not that of his customer, refused to honour the cheque, and notified Mr Norton. At that point, the matter was reported to police.

***

On 22 February 1918, a warrant was issued for Sodeman’s arrest, but he was nowhere to be found. Presumably he left Wonthaggi as soon as the forgery was detected.

Sodeman put a good deal of distance between himself and Wonthaggi, quickly finding a job as a farm labourer at Bamawm, just outside the central Victorian town of Rochester. He worked there for several months, and according to his boss was always of good character. However, Arnold Sodeman was no longer Arnold Sodeman: he was now using an alias and to everyone he met he was James Hill.

On Saturday, 22 June, Sodeman (Hill) claimed to be unwell and asked for time off to travel into Rochester to see the doctor. Permission was granted, but it was some 15 or 20 kilometres to town. There was a contractor working on the farm at the time, and he had his horse and gig with him. Sodeman asked if he could borrow the horse and cart for the trip into Rochester. The answer was no: the gig hadn’t been greased and the horse had worked the day before and needed to rest. But that morning, while the contractor was working on another part of the property, Sodeman harnessed up the horse anyway and drove to town.

In Rochester, Sodeman engaged a room for the night in a boarding house kept by Mrs Henrietta Ware. While he did go to the doctor and received a prescription, he never had it filled. Instead, when he left the boarding house in the early hours of Sunday morning, he stole three blankets and a brush and comb from the room. Mrs Ware missed them the next morning, and her report to police was backed up by evidence from the maid, Emma Hope, who had made up room number three on 22 June and observed the items in the room at the time. When Sodeman left the next day, the blankets, brush and comb were gone.

Sodeman’s crimes were so blatant as to be stupid; either that, or he was just incredibly cocky. Because he wasn’t done.

After several drinks at the local pub, the Shamrock Hotel, Sodeman left the Rochester boarding house and drove the horse and cart 60 kilometres to Bendigo, arriving there at six o’clock on Sunday morning. He went straight to the Belfast Hotel and rented a room. There, Sodeman met a cabman and asked him if he could find a buyer for the horse and gig.

The cabman obliged and early on the morning of Monday, 24 June, Sodeman sold the horse and gig for £19, giving the cabman £1 for his trouble. Sodeman provided a receipt, which he signed ‘A. Thomas’. The buyer – a coach builder by trade – must have had his suspicions. The six-year-old black horse was worth about £12 on its own, and the gig and harness another £35, so the deal represented a significant bargain. Later, the buyer would claim he thought it was quite fair as the horse seemed to be in poor condition.

Immediately after pocketing the money he got for the horse and gig, Sodeman caught a train to Melbourne and booked into another boarding house under the name Hill. After several days he moved to different accommodation, but remained in the city until the law caught up with him.

Arnold Sodeman was arrested in Swanston Street on 21 July 1918 for the crime he had committed in Wonthaggi. He admitted passing the forged cheque, but said he was under the impression everything had been sorted out. According to Sodeman, his mother told him she had paid his debts (a fine and the amount owed to the Caledonian Hotel). Needless to say, that argument did not get him very far.

Ten days later, after lodging his guilty plea, Sodeman was bailed to appear in the Supreme Court on 15 August. The £100 bail was posted – £50 by Arnold and the other £50 by his father, Karl – and Arnold was back on the streets.

However on 12 August – just three days before he was due to appear in court on the forgery charges – Sodeman was arrested again and charged with horse stealing and larceny.

Witnesses had already been deposed in Rochester, Bendigo and Wonthaggi, and all the cases were transferred to the Supreme Court in Melbourne. Now that they had him, the courts could handle the forgery, larceny and horse stealing charges together, and this time, Sodeman was remanded in custody. Arnold Sodeman, aka James Hill, aka A. Thomas, was 19 years old.

***

Following Sodeman’s arrest for his crimes, the respective officers in charge of the Wonthaggi case and the Bendigo case contacted Russell Street Police Headquarters seeking further information about the prisoner. Constable Dunn in Wonthaggi was told that nothing was known against Arnold Sodeman, or at least – according to the query sheet – nothing as far as could be ascertained. However, the query from the Bendigo Criminal Investigation Branch was handled by a different officer at Russell Street, who noted that although there were no convictions recorded against James Hill, he was also known to police as Arnold Solleman.5

There is nothing to suggest that young Sodeman was anything more than an occasional (comparatively) petty criminal. However, given how successful he would later prove to be at remaining undetected when committing murder, who knows what else he might have been doing in those earlier years? The fact that he was using an alias suggests there might have been more going on.

The trial was held in Melbourne on 15 August 1918. Sodeman pleaded guilty to 10 charges but his lawyer appealed for leniency: there had been trouble at home and the lad was without the wise counsel of one of his parents. Clearly this was a reference to the departure of Sodeman’s mother with another man. The court was also told that if Arnold was released, his father would take the troubled youth and his younger brother to Queensland for a fresh start. This does not sound like the act of a violent, domineering parent, but rather one at the end of his tether, searching for a way to turn his son’s life around.

However, the judge considered the charges too serious and sentenced Arnold Sodeman ‘to be detained in the Reformatory Prison at Castlemaine during the governor’s pleasure’.

Sodeman was sent to gaol, but not for long. He kept his head down, managed to impress the Indeterminate Sentences Board, and was paroled in August 1919. The notice of his release in the Victoria Police Gazette describes a young man who had changed drastically in the three years since he’d tried to run away and join the army:

Sodiman [sic], Arnold, 34949, alias James Hill; tried at Melbourne S.C., 15th August, 1918, forgery; larceny (two convictions); horse-stealing (seven convictions); committed to Castlemaine Reformatory during the Governor’s pleasure; Victoria, engineer’s apprentice, 1899, 5 ft. 3 3/4 in., fair complexion and hair, brown eyes. Scar on bridge of nose and vaccine marks on the left upper arm, tattooed woman’s face, bust arms painted red, roses around waist, lower left arm, ballet-girl lower right arm, scars on right buttock, scar on right thigh, scar on left shin. No previous conviction known. Released on parole from Castlemaine Reformatory Prison, 14th August, 1919.6

After his release, Sodeman travelled to South Australia, visiting Adelaide and Port Pirie but primarily working as a farm labourer again. By February 1920, he was back in Victoria and living at 40 Grey Street, East Melbourne. Time in the Castlemaine Reformatory had apparently done little to help the wayward young man. Now using a new alias, Harry Phillips, Sodeman took his criminal offending to the next level.

At half past ten on the night of 1 March, John Richards, assistant station master at Surrey Hills railway station, was in the station office counting cash when two men walked in. One of them was Kenneth Littlejohn and the other was Arnold Sodeman (Phillips). Sodeman had a revolver in each hand.

‘Hands up!’ he said, expecting the station master to comply.

But the railwayman was made of sterner stuff, and made a grab for Littlejohn. From a distance of only about four feet (1.2 metres) away, Sodeman fired two shots. One hit the finger of the station master’s right hand while the other struck the right side of his body. Hearing the shots, a traveller rushed to the station master’s aid, forcing Sodeman and Littlejohn to flee on stolen bicycles, leaving the cash behind. Police were quickly notified and the suspects – who had now abandoned the bicycles – were located. A foot chase ensued and two officers were making ground when Littlejohn slowed to a walk and gave himself up. Sodeman, however, disappeared into the darkness.

In his statement, Littlejohn said he had only met Harry Phillips (Sodeman) three days earlier and the whole thing had been Phillips’ idea; it was Phillips who had the guns and anyway, Phillips had promised Littlejohn he wasn’t going to shoot, just frighten the station master into obedience.

Sodeman was arrested on 6 March. When confronted with the evidence of Littlejohn’s statement, he responded, ‘I have nothing to say.’ But two days later – after talking to his mother – he claimed the guns both went off accidentally.

The two men pleaded not guilty to attempted robbery under arms and personal violence against the station master (who fortunately survived, albeit with a bullet still inside him) and were committed for trial in April. On 16 April, when charges were heard in the Court of General Sessions, Kenneth Littlejohn changed his plea to guilty. He was remanded for sentencing, while Sodeman, his co-accused, again pleaded not guilty and was granted a postponement of his trial while he obtained witnesses. Interestingly, although it was acknowledged that Harry Phillips had several aliases, throughout proceedings he continued to be formally identified by this name, rather than as Arnold Sodeman.

Harry Phillips (Sodeman) appeared in court again on 23 April and had legal representation in the form of both a barrister and solicitor (Messrs Menzies and Nigan respectively). The defence claimed police had pressured Phillips into making an admission and therefore it should not be given undue consideration by the court. Additionally, the station master’s identification was inconclusive and unsatisfactory. Phillips was in fact elsewhere on the night of the crime. He maintained he had met with Littlejohn earlier in the day and was with him until they parted company at 7.40 in the evening. Phillips had then kept a date with a young lady named Joyce McMahon, meeting her in Richmond and escorting her to a picture show in the city. He was in her company at the picture house at the time of the Surrey Hills crime.7

Phillips (Sodeman) was found guilty and sentenced to three years’ prison with hard labour. However, the sentence came with a sting in the tail: the words, ‘then to be detained during the pleasure of the Governor’. Phillips had been declared an habitual criminal and under this form of indeterminate sentencing, after the nominal sentence (in this instance, three years) had been served, a prisoner could continue to be held in custody. Cases were reviewed by the Indeterminate Sentences Board, who decided when and if a prisoner was suitable for release.

In 1923, after his three years were up, Sodeman was not released but was transferred to the McLeod prison farm on French Island in Western Port Bay.

And on 10 November, together with another prisoner, he escaped.8 In the notice that went out, Phillips was described as five foot four, with a fresh complexion, fair hair and brown eyes. His profession was also given: electrical engineer. This suggests Sodeman was not only making up names as needed, but was also borrowing pieces of other people’s background, in this case that of his father.

According to the warder, Phillips and the other prisoner had reported to him as usual at about 9 p.m. and then retired for the night. In the morning they were gone and a search discovered a store had been broken into and oars and rowlocks taken. A dinghy and motorboat were also missing. Sodeman would later say that his experience as a fitter had enabled him to fashion a crank handle to start the motor launch.

Police on the mainland were immediately notified and the stolen boats were found abandoned at Rhyll, on nearby Phillip Island. It was a huge blunder for the escapees who, in the dark, had presumably mistaken Phillip Island for the mainland. In 1923, there was no bridge linking the island to the coastal town of San Remo – that was still another 17 years away – so the two men were trapped. They were arrested on 12 November, and later that month were charged in the City Court with ‘having been incorrigible rogues’ in that they escaped from a place of legal confinement. Both were sentenced to 12 months’ imprisonment, and this time Sodeman was sent to the Metropolitan Gaol (Pentridge) in Coburg.

***

Sodeman wasn’t released until the first week of May 1926; his sentence had been extended at the governor’s pleasure. He remained in Melbourne and claims to have worked at Carlton and United Breweries (CUB) for just over a year, before he ‘left the brewery and married’.9 However, records show Arnold Sodeman married Bernice Cecilia Pope in the Congregational Church on Victoria Parade, Collingwood (now East Melbourne), on 17 July 1926. Therefore, rather than working at CUB until the latter half of 1927 and then marrying, either his tenure at the brewery was very short or he continued to work there after the couple wed.

Interestingly, it also means Sodeman met and married his wife just over two months after his release from prison. It is a small detail, but possibly an indication of how charming, honest and ‘normal’ he appeared to be. As Bernice was 28 years old (and there was a shortage of eligible young men following World War I) she may have considered herself lucky to be rescued from spinsterhood.

After marrying, the couple first lived with Arnold’s mother in Kew, before moving to Geelong. There, Arnold worked for Cresco Fertilizers, at the woolsheds, and doing odd jobs, until he decided to become more independent and bought a truck. He initially used it to cart wood for a man who was clearing a farm (splitting the proceeds 50/50), then Arnold really struck out on his own, starting a wood yard and furniture removal business.

By 1928, advertisements in the Geelong Advertiser for the carting business place Arnold and his wife in Candover Street, West Geelong.10 Arnold advertised that he would cart anything, anywhere, and this included transporting loads between Geelong and Melbourne.11 On the surface, it would seem that his last term in prison had the desired effect: Arnold Sodeman was finally settling down and going straight.

Arnold and Bernice were a happy couple, and on 11 October 1928, they became parents to a baby girl whom they named Joan. Arnold called his wife Doll, and was apparently a considerate and affectionate husband and father.

***

The start of the Great Depression made it much harder for an unskilled labourer like Sodeman to find the work needed to support a family. He sold out of his Geelong business just before Christmas 1928, and by early the following year the family had moved back to Melbourne. They briefly lived with Arnold’s mother before moving to 10 Ruby Street, Ormond: a street that intersected with Wheatley Road about 250 metres from the empty house where Mena Griffiths was murdered.

During this period, Sodeman sought work wherever he could find it: odd jobs, as a labourer at the O. Gilpin drapery store in East Malvern, then as a tailer-out (guiding timber as it comes off the saw) at Chitty’s Timber Yard on Dandenong Road. Life wasn’t easy, but the Sodemans were no different to thousands of other working-class families of the time.

Early in 1931, he found employment out of the city and the Sodemans moved away from Ormond. He started working as a handyman for Murray Black on his property, Tarwin Meadows. At first Sodeman was living at the property itself, but when his wife and daughter joined him, the family moved into a cottage in the Tarwin Meadows hamlet, a few doors down from the Belshaw family.

In 1932, the Sodemans moved to Bair Street, Leongatha, and Arnold did labouring work for the council and the Country Roads Board. The Sodemans occasionally took in lodgers, and at some point the Rushmer family – when they first arrived in Leongatha – stayed in the Sodemans’ house. And June Rushmer met Arnold Sodeman. In December 1935, he was arrested for June’s murder.

When detectives interviewed scores of people in Leongatha – people who knew Arnold Sodeman and his family well – it seemed he was the last person anyone would have suspected of carrying out such horrifying murders. He was an even-tempered man, amiable, with a mild disposition and generous nature. He worked hard to support his wife and daughter and never showed any sign of violence or aggression towards them.

Like many men, Sodeman liked to drink, and occasionally drank to excess, but it didn’t seem to be a problem. In fact, the worst anyone ever said of Arnold Sodeman when he was drunk was that he was inclined to foolish talk, and sometimes got a bit unsteady on his feet. Except alcohol lowers inhibitions, and one of the things Arnold Sodeman seemed to have been keeping under tight control was his impulse to kill.