Kidnapped Read online

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  Detective Sergeant Ken Baret was given the odious task of informing Bazil and Freda Thorne that their son’s body had been found. By this time, Bazil, Freda and Belinda had been relocated by the police to another eastern suburbs address. Baret arranged for Reverend Goodwin to come with him to break the news, but moments before they arrived, Bazil and Freda learned of the discovery of their son’s body from a television broadcast.

  Freda and Bazil received the news with outward stoicism and inner despair. It had been five weeks since their son had been taken, and nothing that could reliably be ascribed as contact from the kidnapper had occurred since the night of his abduction, so their expectations for his survival were not high. Their greatest fear, apart from constant worry that he was being ill-treated and in a state of intense anguish, had been that Graeme would be killed and his body disposed of in a place where it would never be found, forcing them to live the rest of their lives never knowing whether he was alive or dead. The discovery of his body at least saved them from that fate. They had suffered so much over the intervening five weeks and sunk so low after each contact had proven to be bogus, that when they were finally given the news that his body had been found it added an additional layer to an already crushing sense of grief and loss. Their fear of his death had been so great and so prolonged that when news of it finally came, it was something that they had already imagined and suffered many times over.

  Graeme’s younger sister, Belinda, had long since ceased to enquire if her brother would be coming home. When Bazil and Freda informed their daughter that Graeme was definitely not coming home because he had ‘gone to be with God’, Belinda besieged them with questions: ‘Why has he gone there?’ ‘Will he be happy there?’ ‘Will he go to school there?’ ‘Will he have a mummy and daddy there?’ Extended family members and close friends rallied around the Thornes to lend support at this time of unimaginable pain.

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  News of the discovery of the body spread like wildfire around the country and caused an intense outpouring of grief from the whole nation. There also arose a terrible anger towards a person who could murder an eight-year-old boy when his parents had been so willing to pay the ransom money. Out of the grief and anger came a communal insistence that justice be done. In response, New South Wales Premier Heffron stated that the resources of the State would be applied to ‘run the guilty parties to earth’.

  The New South Wales Police approached their investigative tasks with renewed energy, resolute that they would find the person responsible for a crime so heinous that it had never before been committed in Australia. While there was a lot of pressure on the politicians to pass immediate legislation to remedy the gap in the law by creating a new offence of kidnapping-for-ransom, the Attorney-General advised the Premier that ‘it would be improper at this juncture to introduce into Parliament legislation to strengthen the law relating to kidnapping, and in the interests of justice any such action should await the determination of proceedings’.2 The government wisely decided to delay implementing any changes until after the matter had been finalised. In any event, any legislative amendment could never be retrospective and would have no influence on the outcome of this murder investigation.

  The picnic rug, scarf, twine and string from Graeme’s body were closely examined at the CIB laboratory. No fingerprints were found; indeed none of the items contained surfaces suitable for capturing them. A description of the rug, along with black-and-white photographs, was published in all the major daily newspapers, while weekly and monthly magazines carried full-colour images. Meanwhile, the unrelenting police search for the 1955 Ford Customline continued unabated.

  On 19 August, three days after Graeme’s body had been located, Mr William Telford and his wife Kathleen, who lived at 26 Moore Street, Clontarf, contacted the police to tell them of their suspicions about their former next-door neighbour, Stephen Bradley, at number 28. They had noticed that for about ten days prior to the kidnapping, Bradley – who had a strong European accent – had left home at about 6am in a Goggomobil Sports roadster. They informed police that Bradley also owned a blue Ford,3 which he had purchased only about a week before the kidnapping. They were struck by the coincidence that he and his family had moved out of their home on the very day Graeme Thorne disappeared, after living there for about six months. They reported that on the morning of the kidnapping, Mrs Bradley and the children had left their home in a taxi to go on a holiday to Queensland, but that Stephen Bradley had not come out of the house to see them off. Around the middle of the day, the Telfords had heard Bradley moving inside his home and various other strange noises that sounded like a baby whimpering and a man mumbling unintelligibly. During the day, removalists had arrived and taken the Bradleys’ furniture away, and later that day Bradley had called into the Telfords’ home to ask if he could leave some valuable paintings with them. By the time Bradley called back at the Telfords’ home ten days later to pick up his paintings, he had trimmed his eyebrows, which had previously been bushy, and his hair had been cut short. On a pretext, Mrs Telford had gone out and looked into Bradley’s car – the blue Ford – but she saw nothing unusual. Mr and Mrs Telford informed the police that they were utterly convinced that this man was the kidnapper. Despite the Telfords’ suspicions, they had inexplicably waited until 19 August, three days after Graeme’s body had been found, to approach the police. A report of their observations was filed in the police running sheets, arousing no special interest or attention and failing to prompt any further investigation – perhaps because of their delay in relaying the information to the police.

  On Wednesday 24 August, five days after the Telfords had provided their information to the police, Detective Sergeants Brian Doyle and Don Fergusson went to Nutt & Muddle Pty Ltd in Kings Cross to interview Stephen Bradley, who worked there as an electroplater. Their visit was not prompted by the Telfords’ information, but rather by Bradley being one of the numerous owners of a 1955 Ford Customline. Indeed, Doyle and Fergusson had no knowledge of the information provided by the Telfords. The large investigative group was constantly receiving vast amounts of information, and even with the benefits of a police running sheet it was impossible for every member of the team to keep abreast of every piece of information. The running sheet with the Telfords’ material was merely one of many thousands of reports that had been filed away and categorised as having no particular significance.

  Despite the fact that these two officers had given Bradley no warning of their arrival at his workplace, he appeared to be completely unfazed by their visit. He seemed relaxed, he was quite personable and he readily answered all their questions with great assurance. He gave them a history of his arrival in Australia and his marriage to Magda, mentioning that they had three children. He explained that he and his family had formerly lived in their own home at Clontarf, but that they had recently moved to rented accommodation in Manly. He readily agreed to his ownership of two cars: a 1955 iridescent blue Ford Customline and a Goggomobil. When Doyle asked him where he had been on 7 July, Bradley casually replied in his mid-European accent, ‘What day was that?’ Doyle told him it had been a Thursday, to which Bradley replied, ‘I remember it well. It was the day my wife and children went away for a holiday.’ Bradley told the police that he had had a couple of days off work at that time so that he could move house while the rest of the family was away. He told them:

  I got up at about 8am and had breakfast. My wife and children left by taxi at about 10am and the furniture removalists arrived at 10.45am or 11am. I was with them until they left at about 2pm.

  Bradley insisted that the Customline had never been out of the garage that day and that the only time he had left the house was to go in the Goggomobil to a hardware store in Balgowlah to buy some tie wire for packing cases. He had come straight home from the hardware store and seen his wife and children off soon after. Just to be absolutely clear, Sergeant Fergusson asked him, ‘Were your wife and children with you up till the time
they left the house?’ Bradley responded, ‘Yes, I saw them off and put them into a taxi at about ten o’clock. They were with me until then. Then I was on my own until the furniture men arrived.’ He convincingly assured the police that he had not been in Wellington Street, Bondi, that day and had never gone to the Thornes’ home posing as an enquiry agent. Sergeants Doyle and Fergusson left Nutt & Muddle without the slightest suspicions about the man they had just interviewed.

  Later, the two sergeants checked the information Bradley had given them and confirmed that he had indeed taken leave from his work, that his wife and children had flown to Queensland for a holiday on the morning of the kidnapping, and that he had indeed moved to a rented flat in Manly. From the point of view of the investigating police, this was another Ford Customline owner whom they could tick off the list, because he could give an account of the whereabouts of his car on the day of the kidnapping.

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  The visit by the two sergeants to Nutt & Muddle on 24 August did not, in fact, come as a complete surprise to Stephen Bradley. The previous Sunday, 21 August, as he was driving along Pittwater Road between Manly and Collaroy in his Ford Customline, the notorious Detective Sergeant Ray Kelly4 happened to be driving along the same road, but in the opposite direction. Kelly had an awesome reputation as an exceptional investigator with a remarkable instinct for sniffing out suspects and an uncanny eye for detail, as well as an unrivalled list of informants. He had been decorated many times for bravery while under fire in the course of capturing armed criminals and escaped prisoners. Knowing that police in the Graeme Thorne kidnapping team were looking for a 1955 blue Customline, when Kelly saw that model being driven along Pittwater Road, he immediately decided to do a U-turn and pull it over. Was it a whim or was it his instinct at work? Bradley initially assumed he was being stopped for a traffic violation, but after taking down his personal details, Detective Sergeant Kelly informed him that a Sergeant Doyle would visit him in the next few days to interview him about his vehicle as part of the investigation of the Graeme Thorne kidnapping. Bradley was taken aback at this information, however his concerns were partly allayed when Kelly told him that the visit by Sergeant Doyle was part of a routine enquiry into the owners of all 1955 Ford Customline vehicles. Trying to act as nonchalantly as possible, Bradley assured the detective that Sergeant Doyle was welcome to contact him at any time, and he provided his work address so that the interview could occur during office hours and away from his home.

  In reality, Bradley was deeply shaken and astonished to learn that the police had narrowed their search to focus on 1955 Ford Customlines, because early in the investigation the newspapers had reported that they were looking at a number of different vehicles – none of which was that model. He realised that someone must have seen his car in Wellington Street, and as he cast his mind back to the events on the morning of the kidnapping, he suddenly recalled that a vehicle had edged past him as he was getting out of his car just as Graeme was approaching. While this revelation was a setback, when he thought about it carefully Bradley rationalised that the Ford Customline was a common car in Sydney and that if the police had any solid evidence pointing to him, they would hardly have given him warning of the interview. He felt confident that the police had no evidence to link him to the kidnapping, and he quickly recovered his composure. He had the advantage of several days in which to thoroughly clean the Customline to remove any possibility of Graeme’s fingerprints being found, and also to carefully think about how he should respond to the police when they questioned him. While he felt perturbed at the prospect of a police interrogation, he was confident that he could withstand any questioning and convey the impression of being a typical, concerned member of the community. All he had to do was to act normally, not get flustered, and confidently assert that the vehicle had not left his garage that day. The police would then have no evidence to link him to the kidnapping.

  At the end of the interview with Sergeants Doyle and Fergusson, Bradley felt a sense of superiority that he possessed information that they desperately wanted, and that these plodders lacked the ability to extract it from him. In a real sense, he held the upper hand, rather than the police, and he was quite proud of the adept manner with which he had feigned cooperation with them. He thought to himself that a professional actor could not have done a more convincing job.

  However, while Bradley was sure that the two sergeants had accepted his story and discounted him as a suspect, he was realistic enough to appreciate that further investigations by the police might lead them in his direction. In particular, he was concerned that, as a man with a foreign accent who owned the same model vehicle suspected to have been used by the kidnapper, he might one day be asked to participate in an identification parade in front of Freda and Bazil Thorne or the woman who lived above them. If they identified him as the man who had come to their flats three weeks before the kidnapping, he had no viable explanation for his actions. Alternatively, he might be asked to provide a voice sample on one of the new electronic tape contraptions used to record sounds, which could then be played to whomever had answered his two telephone calls on the day of the kidnapping. The more he thought about it, the more Bradley became convinced that it would only be a matter of time before the police settled on him as a suspect. He concluded that the only solution was for him, Magda and the children to leave Australia at the earliest opportunity. They had often discussed travelling overseas to seek their fortune in another country, like Canada, but such ideas had always been shelved because Magda could not bring herself to take Paul away from his natural father. More recently – when he had expected the financial windfall of the ransom money – Stephen had suggested to Magda that they go on a world tour. But now there was a more pressing reason to leave: to place himself out of reach of the police. How was he to convince Magda that they should take such a major and unexpected turn in their lives?

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  Although Stephen Bradley had both a European accent and a 1955 blue Ford Customline, and he lived barely two miles from where Graeme Thorne’s body had been located, the combination of these qualities was not sufficient to excite any particular suspicions or prompt any additional enquiries about him. At this time, the police viewed Stephen Bradley as just another one of the numerous Customline owners whose car had neither been lent nor stolen. The police were blinded by the criteria they had set themselves in their search for the kidnapper.5 Having decided that no rational kidnapper would use his own car, they were immune to the suspicious circumstances pointing to Bradley as a potential suspect who had used his own car. All it would have taken would have been to show his photograph to Freda and Bazil Thorne or to Cecil Denmeade and the hunt for the kidnapper would have been over. Instead, the investigation still had a long way to go.

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  The funeral service for Graeme Thorne at St Mark’s Anglican Church in Darling Point on 28 August 1960 was a most sombre affair. A large contingent of older boys from Scots College and a police escort accompanied the hearse carrying the coffin to the church, where a huge crowd, including family, friends and numerous members of the public, had congregated. The whole nation grieved with Bazil, Freda and Belinda for the loss of their beautiful, young son and brother. While Bazil and Freda were grateful for the support of the public, at this time they craved their privacy and some emotional space to grieve for their son and give attention to their daughter. It was, indeed, impossible for either of them to venture outside without being waylaid by well-meaning people wanting to express their condolences. In their despair, Bazil and Freda had reluctantly become national celebrities.

  9

  FLIGHT AND RUSES

  On Thursday 25 August, the day after police spoke to Stephen Bradley at Nutt & Muddle, Magda Bradley went to the Union Steamship Company offices in the city to book and pay the deposit on a one-way passage to England for herself and her eldest son Paul on the P&O-Orient liner SS Himalaya, leaving Sydney a month later on 26 September. Four days after Magda�
�s purchase, on 29 August, Stephen Bradley went to the same travel office to book and pay deposits for one-way berths on the same liner for himself and the other two children. The Bradleys could not afford airline flights for all five of them, and the SS Himalaya was the first liner available, considering the preparations they still had to make prior to travelling overseas for an indefinite period. Stephen then began the process of disposing of much of their personal property in anticipation of the family departing Australia on 26 September. They informed nobody of their plans to leave the country – not family, not friends, not neighbours, not the estate agent managing their flat, not Stephen’s employer, not even Paul and Ross’s father, Gregor Weinberg.

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  While Stephen and Magda’s preparations for departing Australia are well documented, the process of arriving at the decision to leave, which was tantamount to another migration for them both, is largely a matter of conjecture. Magda Bradley much later provided her own explanation in an unpublished manuscript.1 She wrote the manuscript many months after their departure at a time when she was at a particularly low ebb and when she had every reason to justify their actions. She described the circumstances in which she came to fall in love with Stephen. She devoted much of the manuscript to describing how wonderful Stephen was as a husband and father. She gave an account of the many financial calamities and misadventures that had beset them, and how they had valiantly struggled to overcome their string of ‘bad luck’. She attempted to justify their decision to leave Australia with a detailed and lengthy explanation that went back as far as the fire in Katoomba. Her account went like this: After the destruction of their guesthouse at Katoomba in June 1959, Magda and Stephen considered going overseas for a period, and Stephen had suggested Canada. However, when they discussed the idea with Gregor Weinberg, he was vehemently against the plan, because it would mean losing contact with his son, Paul. When Ross secured a place at St. Gabriel’s School for deaf children, their decision not to go overseas was sealed. When it came to the crunch, Magda was also not keen on another migration, because she really loved Australia. When Stephen got the job at Nutt & Muddle, he was happier at work than he had been for a long time, and it paid him a good salary, but he still had an innate restlessness. In Magda’s words: