Original here. This is one of the most popular posts on the blog. The Bizarrepedia article on the subject implies that I have one of the best accounts of this crime on the web. I think I did a good job of it. It did require quite a bit of research. Certainly it is one of the most bizarre murder mysteries of the modern era. Everyone in Australia has heard of the Beaumont Children, but few in the rest of the world have. I am republishing it here for those of you who did not read it the first time. This is one of the greatest murder mysteries of the 20th Century.
This is one of the most famous unsolved crimes in Australia or possibly in the world. Three young children went to the beach in Australia one day, met a tall, blond haired man who they seemed to be friends with, played with him a while, then walked away with him and off the face of the Earth. To this day it is unsolved.
The link will provide you with all you need to know about the case. The three children were all brothers and sisters, two older girls and their little brother. They went to the beach in the morning. While there, they met a tall, blond haired man about 35-39 years old. They seemed to know him and played with him for a while. Then he dressed them, and all four walked away from the beach. They were last seen buying a meatpie with money that the man must have given them.
The suspect in the Beaumont children case in 1966 and the Adelaide Oval case in 1973. The same man almost certainly committed both crimes, and he has never been caught. He is probably not one of the known suspects. Now he would be 78 years old, or he has already died. The children are surely dead.
There were several descriptions of the man, and they all matched up. A postman saw the children in the afternoon walking along, but we now think that he saw them in the morning instead.
A woman said that a man and three small children moved into a house on her street that night. A young boy tried to run away down the street, but the man chased after him, grabbed him roughly and took him to the house.
The oldest girl was very shy, and no one understands why she let the man dress her at the beach. The children were cautious, and the thinking now is that they made friends with the man.
The children were never seen again.
Many theories have sprung up, including some that say they are still alive.
A man said he lived next door to them in the 1960’s after they were kidnapped. Police interviewed him.
A few years back, children from a family claimed that their pedophile father had killed the children along with his pedophile gang, which included prominent members of society. The children were taken to a car, shown the open trunk where the dead children were, and told that this is what would happen to them if they talked. Police said the story was credible, but nothing more was heard.
Letters supposedly written by the children came to the parents after they were gone, but all were pranks.
A Dutch psychic was called in, and he claimed the kids were buried under a warehouse. Much later, the warehouse was excavated and nothing was found.
There are several main suspects:
Bevan Spencer von Einem
A very strange guy, a sadistic homosexual accountant who is associated with the extremely bizarre Family Murders which occurred much later. He is in prison after being convicted of the savage murder of a young man. However, Einem only killed boys aged 15-25 if he did the rest of the Family Murders (which he did), so the age is wrong. Also, von Einem would have had to kill three kids in 1966, stop killing for 13 years, then start killing again, but this time kill young men.
Von Einem was only 20 years old at the time, so he is the wrong age. However, he was already prematurely gray at age 20, and he was known to die his hair blond. In addition, he was recently identified from an old photo as among a crowd who was watching searchers look for the Beaumont children.
According to a 3rd party, von Einem confessed to killing the Beaumont children and also to the Adelaide Oval abduction. He said he did surgery on the kids, “connected them up,” but one had died, so he killed the others and threw their bodies off a dam into a reservoir. The dam area and reservoir were searched, but nothing was found. But this witness is not very reliable, and psychos are always confessing to crimes that they did not do.
I don’t believe he did this crime. He’s the wrong age, and the victim profile is wrong.
Arthur Stanley Brown
Yet another one and a very interesting case. In 1999, he was tried for the murder of a young girl, but the case was dismissed because he was too senile to stand trial. The case against him was very good. He died three years later. A married man who worked as a carpenter, he was also a child molester for many years. Victims continue to come forward. He also supposedly confessed to friends that he had killed the Beaumont children. The media speculates that he is the killer, but he’s dead now.
He seems to be the wrong age. He was 54 years old at the time of the Beaumont children case. He does resemble the Identikit description, and 25 years after the Adelaide Oval disappearance, a witness picked him out as the man she had seen before. But she was looking at a picture of him as an 86 year old man. At the time of the Adelaide Oval case, he would have been 61 years old. The Adelaide Oval suspect was said to be in his early 40’s. I do not believe that he did this crime.
James Ryan O’Neill
Convicted of the murder of a 9 year old boy in 1975. A skilled sociopath, he was interviewed over three years by a retired detective who eventually came to believe that O’Neill is the perpetrator of the Beaumont children case. The media continues to propagate this line. O’Neill was only 17 years old in 1966, so he is the wrong age. I also do not feel that he looks like the Identikit of the suspect. I do not believe that O’Neill did this crime.
Derek Percy
Derek Percy, who died just recently, is one of Australia’s most famous criminals. A sadistic pedophile, he was convicted of the horrible murder of a 12 year old girl. The crime was so savage and crazy that the jury was convinced that only an insane person could have done it, so he was found criminally insane. Others later said he was psychotic or schizophrenic. He wasn’t not crazy at all. He was simply a sociopath. He seemed to also be implicated in the murders of a few other children around this time.
He placed himself right at the crime scene on that day but said he could not recall if he did the crime or not. But Percy placed himself near the scene of every crime they questioned him about, and he always lied and said he didn’t recall if he committed the crime or not. Maps of the scene of the Beaumont crime, with the area circled in felt marker, were found in his possession Percy would have been only 16 years old at the time, and it’s thought that the perpetrator would have needed a car. Percy could not yet drive.
Percy was already a very strange young man at the time of the Beaumont case. He carried a knife with him everywhere he went as a teenager, but in rural Australia at the time, this was common. As a teenager, he was spotted by other boys, who were hidden, at a watering hole. He was dressed in girls’ clothes and he was stabbing frenziedly at a pair of girl’s panties and yelling. Then he went down by the water and shit in the river. The boys repeated the story at school, but it was so weird that no one believe them.
As a teenager, he moved around a bit, but everywhere he went, women’s underwear tended to disappear. He may have also been a peeper. He was a cold and emotionless young man. He later went into the navy and was a sailor when he was arrested for the crime that locked him up.
Shortly before he died, authorities discovered a locker where he stored his possessions. Police searched it and found extensive fantasies and elaborate charts detailing his plans to abduct and murder more children. Police wanted his DNA to compare to other crimes, but he would never give it up, and as he was not a criminal, just a mental patient, they couldn’t force him. Soon before he died, he received a $200,000 Navy pension, sparking outrage across Australia.
The Adelaide Oval case took place seven years later. The suspect was almost surely the same man who took the Beaumont children. At the time of the Oval disappearance, Percy was in prison.
I do not believe that Derek Percy was the perpetrator in this case. He was too young, and he was in prison during the Oval case.
Adelaide Oval Case
Seven years after the Beaumont case, there was an Aussie Rules match at a stadium called the Adelaide Oval. Two young girls went to the bathroom. Their parents never saw them again.
A ticket booth attendant said that a man got the girls’ attention by telling them he was trying to rescue a cat trapped under a stand. At some point, he apparently grabbed the younger girl and picked her up. A witness saw a man walking away carrying the younger girl, while the 11 year old was behind him, hitting and kicking him.
The witness thought it was strange and watched them for about a minute. The man and the two girls were seen several more times in the blocks near the stadium. The older one was still struggling with the man and hitting him. One witness thought it was so odd that he almost called police, but then thought again. The girls’ father went looking for them, but it was too late.
The suspect was a man about 41-45 years old. He is a dead ringer for the suspect in the Beaumont case, and it is almost certain that the same man committed both crimes.
Von Einem and Arthur Brown are said to be strong suspects in the Adelaide Oval case. However, the ages seem to be wrong. The suspect was 41-45 years old. Von Einem was 27 years old, and Arthur Brown was 61 years old.
I do not believe that the suspect in the Beaumont case is any of the suspects listed above. It is someone else altogether.
If you think this website is valuable to you, please consider a contribution to support the continuation of the site.
