 | This article needs additional citations for verification .(December 2021) |
The Shark Arm case refers to a series of incidents that began in Sydney, Australia, on 25 April 1935 when a human arm was regurgitated by a captive 3.5-metre tiger shark, resulting subsequently in a murder investigation and trial.
During mid-April, a tiger shark was caught 3 km (1.9 mi) from Coogee Beach and transferred to the Coogee Aquarium Baths, where it was displayed publicly. Within a week, it became ill and vomited in front of a small crowd, leaving the left hand and forearm of a man bearing a distinctive tattoo floating in the pool. Before it was captured, the tiger shark had devoured a smaller shark. It was this smaller shark that had originally swallowed the human arm.
Fingerprints of the hand identified the arm as that of former boxer and petty criminal James "Jim" Smith (born in England in 1890), who had been missing since 7 April 1935. Smith's arm and tattoo were also identified positively by his wife, Gladys Smith, and his brother, Edward Smith. [1] Smith was also a police informer. Examination revealed that the limb had been severed with a knife, which resulted in a murder investigation. [1] Three days later, the aquarium owners killed the shark and gutted it, hampering the initial police investigation.
Early inquiries correctly implicated a Sydney businessman named Reginald William Lloyd Holmes (1892–1935). Holmes was a fraudster and smuggler who also managed a successful family boat-building business at Lavender Bay. [2] Holmes had employed Smith several times to work insurance scams, including one in 1934 in which an over-insured pleasure cruiser named Pathfinder was sunk near Terrigal. Soon afterwards, the pair began criminal activity with Patrick Francis Brady (1889–1965), an ex-serviceman and convicted forger. With specimen signatures from Holmes' friends and clients provided by the boat-builder, Brady would forge cheques for small amounts against their bank accounts that he and Smith then cashed. Police were later able to establish that Smith had been blackmailing Holmes.
Smith was last seen drinking and playing cards with Patrick Francis Brady at the Cecil Hotel in the southern Sydney suburb of Cronulla on 7 April 1935 after telling his wife he was going fishing. [3] Brady had rented a small cottage in Taloombi Street, Cronulla at the time Smith became missing. Police alleged that Smith was murdered at this cottage. Port Hacking and Gunnamatta Bay were searched by the Navy and the Air Force, but the rest of Smith's body was never found. This caused problems for the prosecution when Brady was eventually brought to trial.
Brady was arrested on 16 May and charged with the murder of Smith. A taxicab driver testified that he had taken Brady from Cronulla to Holmes' address at 3 Bay View Street, McMahons Point on the day Smith had gone missing, and that "he was dishevelled, he had a hand in a pocket and wouldn't take it out... it was clear that [he] was frightened." [4]
Initially, Holmes denied any association with Brady but four days later, on 20 May 1935, the businessman went into his boatshed and attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head with a .32 calibre pistol. However, the bullet instead flattened against the bone of his forehead and he was merely stunned. Revived after falling into the water, he crawled into his speedboat and led two police launches on a chase around Sydney Harbour for approximately four hours until he was finally caught and taken to hospital. [5]
In early June 1935, Holmes decided to cooperate with the police in investigating the murder of Smith. He told Detective Sergeant Frank Matthews that Brady had killed Smith, dismembered his body and stowed it into a trunk that he had then thrown into Gunnamatta Bay. He then claimed Brady had come to his home, showed him the severed arm and threatened Holmes with murder if he did not receive £500 immediately. Holmes also admitted that after Brady had left his home, he travelled to the Sydney coastal suburb of Maroubra and discarded Smith's arm in the surf. [6]
On 11 June 1935, Holmes withdrew £500 from his account and late in the evening left home, telling his wife he had to meet someone. He was also very cautious as he left his home, accompanied by his wife to the door of his Nash sedan. Early the next morning, he was found dead in his car at Hickson Road, Dawes Point. He had been shot three times at close range. [7] The crime scene was made to appear that Holmes had committed suicide, but forensic police had no doubt that he was murdered. Holmes had been due to give evidence at Smith's inquest later that morning.
Holmes was cremated at Northern Suburbs Crematorium on 13 June 1935. [8] He left an estate valued at over £34,000 in 1935. [9]
The Coroner's inquest into Smith's death began on 12 June 1935 at the City Coroner's Court directed by Mr. E.T. Oram, the same day Holmes was found dead in his car with gunshot wounds to his chest. Although Holmes was the inquest's main witness, he was never offered police protection before his testimony could be heard. Forensic evidence was examined by forensic pathologist Sir Sydney Smith. [10]
The lawyer serving Brady, Clive Evatt KC (1900–1984), [11] claimed to the coroner that there was not enough substance to begin the inquest. Evatt argued that an arm "did not constitute a body", and that Smith, minus his arm, could still be alive. [12] The case is still unsolved.
The inquest's most important witness, Holmes, was then dead; the case against Brady was insufficient due to lack of evidence. [13] The Shark Arm Murders suggests that Smith was killed by Brady on the orders of gangster Edward Frederick ("Eddie") Weyman, who was arrested while attempting to defraud a bank with a forged cheque in 1934 [14] and later during a bank robbery, apparently due to information Smith had given to the police. Smith had been exposed as a police informant, and therefore would have been targeted for assassination. [15]
The police charged Brady with the murder of Smith, although he was later acquitted. [16] For the next 30 years, Brady maintained that he was in no way involved with the murder of Smith. [17] He died at Concord Repatriation General Hospital in Sydney on 18 April 1965, aged 76. [18] [19]
The investigation into the murder of Smith and his severed arm became legendary in Australia's legal history. [20]
It inspired the TV play The Grey Nurse Said Nothing . [21]
In his 1995 book The Shark Arm Murders, Professor Alex Castles claims that Holmes took out a contract on his own life to spare his family the public disgrace of conviction. [22]
Bill Bryson also mentions this case in his book Down Under (known as In a Sunburned Country in the U.S.), but wrongly implies that the arm belonged to a swimmer who was eaten by the shark.
The Shark Arm Case was the basis of a 2003 episode of CSI: Miami . This case was also featured on Season 5, Episode 2 of the popular YouTube series "Buzzfeed Unsolved".
It was also basis for the season 4 episode 15 of comedy crime series Psych (The Head, the Tail, the Whole Damn Episode).
Coogee is a beachside suburb in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, in the City of Randwick. Coogee is located 8 kilometres south-east of the Sydney central business district, in the state of New South Wales, Australia.
Azaria Chantel Loren Chamberlain was a nine-week-old Australian baby girl who was killed by a dingo on the night of the 17 August 1980 during a family camping trip to Uluru in the Northern Territory. Her body was never found. Her parents, Lindy and Michael Chamberlain, reported that she had been taken from their tent by a dingo. However, Lindy was tried for murder and spent more than three years in prison. Michael was also put in jail for some time. Lindy was released only after Azaria's jacket was found near a dingo lair and new inquests were opened. In 2012, 32 years after Azaria's death, the Chamberlains' version of events was officially supported by a coroner.
Donald Bruce Mackay was an Australian businessman and anti-drug campaigner. He disappeared in 1977, but his body has never been found. In 1986, James Bazley was convicted on his murder.
The backpacker murders were a spate of serial killings that took place in New South Wales, Australia, between 1989 and 1993, committed by Ivan Milat. The bodies of seven missing young people aged 19 to 22 were discovered partially buried in the Belanglo State Forest, 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) south-west of the New South Wales town of Berrima. Five of the victims were foreign backpackers and two were Australians from Melbourne. Milat was convicted of the murders on 27 July 1996 and was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences, as well as 18 years without parole. He died in prison on 27 October 2019, having never confessed to the murders for which he was convicted.
Graeme Thorne was an Australian child who was kidnapped and murdered in 1960 for part of the money that his parents, Bazil and Freda, had won in an Opera House lottery. The crime, regarded as one of the most infamous in Australia's history, caused massive shock at the time and attracted huge public attention, and was the country's first well known kidnap for ransom. The police investigation that led to the capture and conviction of his murderer, an immigrant named Stephen Bradley, is often considered as pioneering, sophisticated, and the beginning of modern forensic investigation in Australia.
Greg Bird is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer who played in the 2000s and 2010s. He played as a stand-off, second-row or lock for Australia at international level.
Smith's Weekly was an Australian tabloid newspaper published from 1919 to 1950. It was an independent weekly published in Sydney, but read all over Australia.
Sallie-Anne Huckstepp was an Australian writer, sex worker and whistleblower, who was the victim of a homicide. She came to attention in 1981 for speaking out about police corruption in Sydney, Australia. Huckstepp's murder remains unsolved.
Caroline Byrne, an Australian model, was found at the bottom of a cliff at The Gap in Sydney in the early hours of 8 June 1995. Her then boyfriend Gordon Eric Wood, who at the time of her death was a chauffeur and personal assistant to businessman Rene Rivkin, was convicted of her murder on 21 November 2008 and spent three years in Goulburn Correctional Centre. He was acquitted of the conviction in February 2012.
Sir Sydney Alfred Smith, was a forensic scientist, pathologist and one of the pre-eminent medico-legal specialists in the world. From 1928 to 1953, Smith was Regius Professor of Forensic Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, a well-known forensic department of that time. Smith's iconic 1959 autobiography Mostly Murder has run through many British and American editions and has been translated into several other languages.
Clive Raleigh Evatt was an Australian politician, barrister and raconteur. He was a member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly from 1939 until 1959. At various times he sat as a member of the Industrial Labor Party, Labor Party and as an independent.
Keli Lane, a former Australian water polo player and teacher was convicted of the 1996 murder of her newborn baby, Tegan, and of three counts of making a false declaration. Lane is serving an 18-year prison sentence and will be eligible for parole on 12 May 2023, after serving a period of 13 years and five months in custody. On 18 April 2011, Lane's lawyers lodged an appeal against her conviction at the same time as a Sydney taxi driver alleged he saw Lane dispose of the child. Her final application for appeal was rejected by the High Court in August 2014.
Jaidyn Raymond Leskie was the Australian child of Bilynda Murphy and Brett Leskie, kidnapped and murdered in 1997. Leskie is believed to have died of head injuries. Despite intense public interest, several leads, and the arrest and trial of a prime suspect, Leskie's murder remains unsolved. Although the decision was made in 2002 not to hold an inquest into the toddler's death, the case remained in the news for several more years. An inquest was later held in 2006, implicating the mother's boyfriend, Greg Domaszewicz, who at the time of the kidnapping was babysitting the boy at his house at Newborough. The exact circumstances of Leskie's disappearance and death were never clear, and were complicated by vandalism at the house on the evening of the toddler's disappearance; several false tips and pranks about the boy's fate; and the body not being discovered until six months later.
William Joseph Hollebone, known informally as 'Joey' Hollebone, was a notorious and violent member of the criminal underworld, based in the inter-city suburbs of Sydney, Australia. Hollebone began serving a decade-long sentence for manslaughter in 1935, during which he met 'Chow' Hayes. From the mid-1940s to the mid-1950s Hollebone and Hayes were the best-known and feared of Sydney's criminal gunmen, with newspapers regularly reporting on their nefarious activities.
The Lindt Café siege was a terrorist attack that occurred on 15–16 December 2014 when a lone gunman, Man Haron Monis, held hostage ten customers and eight employees of a Lindt Chocolate Café in the APA Building in Martin Place, Sydney, Australia.
John Daniel 'Snowy' Cutmore, was a notorious and brutal Australian criminal, well-known in the criminal underworld of both Melbourne and Sydney during the inter-war years until his violent death in 1927. Cutmore was raised in inner-city Melbourne and was a prominent member of the Fitzroy Push, a lawless gang involved in prostitution, sly-grog and violence. Throughout his criminal career Cutmore displayed a willingness to relocate to another state to evade police attention, often travelling between Melbourne and Sydney. For a short period from late 1926 he was a member of Norman Bruhn's criminal gang in Sydney, attributed as Australia’s first 'razor gang' at the beginning of a period of gang violence in Sydney in the late-1920s known as the 'razor gang wars'. Cutmore was shot and killed in his mother's home in Carlton in October 1927, in an underworld gunfight that also resulted in the death of his rival, 'Squizzy' Taylor.
The Old Coroner's Court, The Rocks are heritage-listed shops and the site of the former The Rocks Visitors Centre, a former morgue, the former Coroner's Court of New South Wales and offices located at 102-104 George Street, in the inner city Sydney suburb of The Rocks in the City of Sydney local government area of New South Wales, Australia. It was designed by Walter Liberty Vernon and built from 1906 to 1908. It is also known as Coroner's Court (former) - Shops & offices, Coroners Court / City Morgue and shops and offices. The property is owned by Property NSW, an agency of the Government of New South Wales. It was added to the New South Wales State Heritage Register on 10 May 2002.
"The Grey Nurse Said Nothing" is a television play episode from the Australian television series The General Motors Hour. It was produced and directed by David Cahill. It was made by Channel Seven who later called "the most ambitious dramatic production ever attempted in Australia... [written by] one of the world's foremost authors of television plays and the cast is Ihe largest ever assembled for an Australian television dramatic production.... the greatest care has been taken to achieve the maximum possible standard in the production of the play which covered a total period of approximately eight weeks." The episode aired on 28 May 1960 in Sydney and Melbourne, and on 11 June 1960 in Brisbane.
Mostly Murder is the 1959 autobiography of forensic pathologist Sir Sydney Smith.
