Kidnapped Read online

  He still had the feeling that things were against us, and was sure that if we went away for a couple of years to another country, we might be able to break the spell of bad luck which had been following us for so long. But still we didn’t come to a definite decision. I wasn’t altogether against the idea of leaving Australia for a while … I thought that it would take some time to sell the properties, especially the house in Clontarf, so I felt that there was still plenty of time to make a final decision as to whether we were going to stay in Australia and try to make a go of another business, or to go abroad for a year or two. It was such a hard decision to make, and I tried to stall for time – or perhaps I was waiting for Steve to make up his mind for us – but I don’t really know. All I know is that it was very difficult to decide and a great responsibility.2

  After returning from their holiday in Queensland and moving into the flat at Manly, Stephen and Magda began looking for some land on which they could build a house. They found a lovely block at Narrabeen, and paid a deposit on it, but the owner then changed his mind about selling. Magda was terribly upset:

  Everything was pointing to the fact that we were not very lucky, and I got to the stage where I was sick and tired of everything. I lost interest in life, and became very depressed in that flat in Manly. What with all those old things and the rather odd smell that hung about the place it was not very encouraging at all. I wish that I had never agreed to sell our home in the first place. Steve got worried about me and wanted me to go and finish my holiday for at least another fortnight, and then when I had had a proper rest I would be able to make up my mind what we really wanted to do. I must say that I didn’t especially want to go, particularly without Steve and the children, but I realised that I was badly in need of a rest.3

  Magda then spent fourteen days on her own at Hayman Island. Although she missed Stephen and the children dreadfully, she came back refreshed. It was while she was on the island that, according to her version, she decided to go to London:

  During my stay on the island I had done a great deal of thinking, and I had decided to go to London to find my uncle and try to publish some of my songs. But when I arrived home I couldn’t tell Steve straight away. I wasn’t at all sure that I liked the idea of being parted from him, even only for six months. Especially when I saw him and the children again, my plans to go to London with Paul did not seem so good after all … I told Steve what I had been thinking during my holiday. I told him that I would like to go to England for a few months, and if I saw that we had a better chance to progress there and I could find a market for my writing and songs, I would ask him to join me and we could stay for a couple of years. As usual, Steve agreed with me. He thought it would be a good idea if he kept his job, then if I didn’t find what I wanted I could come back and regard my stay in England as a holiday. I intended to take Paul with me as it would be such a chance for a boy of his age to see another country. Also I wouldn’t be so lonely.4

  With this plan in mind, Magda made the booking on the Himalaya for herself and Paul. The reality that Magda and Stephen would be parted from each other for a long time then struck them both:

  I made our bookings and at that very moment, Steve and I began to say goodbye to each other. Every hour that passed I felt worse and worse about the thought of having to part from my husband. Perhaps that sounds ridiculous but even though I had wanted to go in the first place, I was realising how difficult it would be to live without Steve even for a few months. Steve became sad too, and after a few days we admitted to each other that we could not go through with it. I asked him to come with us. We would all go together. But there was the question of booking their passages on the same ship as well as organising everything in such a short time, should we be able to get extra bookings … We eventually agreed that if we were able to get extra tickets for the same ship we would all go together. If not, I would go with Paul as originally decided.5

  After work the very next day, Stephen went to the shipping company’s office and found that he was able to get tickets on the same ship. They were all overjoyed:

  That night we were very happy, because that was really what we had wanted. I was already hoping that I might be able to find some new solution or method for curing little Ross’s deafness in England. I was hearing every day about new possibilities for deaf people and new surgery too. Also Helen still had a slightly deformed thigh from the car accident, and I was planning to ask my uncle, who is an orthopaedic specialist, what we could do for her. Steve was excited like a little boy going to an unexpected party. I felt that God must have wanted us all to go together, and perhaps a journey like that would change the bad luck which had been following us around for years.6

  * * *

  Was Magda’s peculiar step of booking tickets for only herself and Paul, followed by Stephen’s separate reservation for the remainder of the family, a ruse so as not to attract the attention of the police to the family’s plans to depart Australia? Did this rather lame manoeuvre mean that Magda knew why they urgently had to go and that they needed to adopt furtive tactics to hide that fact? Did she know or suspect that Stephen had committed a crime so heinous that it warranted leaving the land she dearly loved that had so readily accepted her after the Holocaust? Or was this a fabulous adventure for the whole family in order to seek their fortune elsewhere, as she and Stephen had often discussed?

  Magda’s tortuous explanation is convenient, self-serving and gives the impression of being contrived. It weaves a scenario to account for all the facts then known about their departure. Her loving descriptions throughout her manuscript of Stephen as the ideal husband and father render her reasons for leaving Australia unconvincing. Not only does she ask one to accept that she had been prepared to leave behind the best husband in the world, but also her own handicapped son, Ross, and Helen, the child she had come to mother and love. If her explanation is rejected, it leaves open the tantalising prospect that Magda was complicit in the surreptitious steps to flee Australia. If she was an accomplice in that subterfuge, one possible reason would be that she knew or suspected that her husband had committed a wicked crime. This, of course, does not imply she had any knowledge of his plans before the kidnapping. Alternatively, were her actions merely a device to avoid Gregor Weinberg taking steps to prevent his sons being taken overseas for an indeterminate period?

  A more plausible explanation than the one provided by Magda is as follows: About six weeks after her return from Queensland to Sydney, Stephen came home from work and told Magda that he had been questioned by police about the registration on his Ford Customline. Stephen did not provide her with any further details of the police visit, and she did not enquire. However, it was unheard of for police to speak to a car owner at his workplace about something as mundane as car registration, and Magda strongly suspected that Stephen had given her a sanitised version of the police interview.

  When, later that night, Stephen stunned her with the news that he wished to take the family on an extended trip to England at the earliest opportunity, Magda deduced that the police interview must have been far more serious than a mere discussion about a registration irregularity. She thought back to Stephen’s sudden decision to send her and the two older children by plane to Queensland, while he remained in Sydney to drive up in the Customline. She knew only too well that the day she and the children had flown to Queensland was the day of Graeme Thorne’s kidnapping. She had read the newspaper descriptions of the man of interest to police having a European accent, but she refused to contemplate that her loving husband, who was so adorable to her and their children, could be capable of committing such a contemptible crime. Stephen tempted her to go overseas by suggesting that Ross might be able to get some advanced treatment in London for his deafness – he had read about a new transistor device – and she might well be able to sell the musical compositions she had been writing so avidly over the years which had repeatedly been rejected by Australian publishers. He assured her that they would return to Aust
ralia at some time in the future.

  This sudden change of direction in their lives exacerbated Magda’s recurrent fears about her husband. She found his desire to urgently leave Australia highly suspicious, and she became increasingly suspicious that his reason for wanting to go was much more serious than just a few creditors harassing him. She knew that it had something to do with the police interview, but she deliberately did not ask him for details, intuitively feeling that it was best if she did not know. Magda was truly conflicted by her desire to live with her husband and children in the land that had adopted her after the war and by her fear of crossing Stephen, coupled with her abiding determination not to undergo the ordeal of another divorce.

  While she was scared of what Stephen might do if she refused to comply with his wishes, she also loved him dearly and considered that her marriage to him was far better than her previous one to Gregor Weinberg. Stephen had always been kind and generous to her, he had never spoken harshly to her or the children – even if he was often domineering – and she had every reason to believe that he had always been faithful to her.

  In the end, she reconciled her conflicting emotions by deciding that the only way to stay married to Stephen and to allay her concerns for her safety and that of her children was to fully cooperate with him in whatever he wanted to do – even if that meant leaving Australia for a time. She also had to admit that the prospects of getting further treatment for Ross and selling her songs in Britain were particularly compelling.

  * * *

  Several days after booking the sea passages on the SS Himalaya, Stephen Bradley went to a second-hand furniture shop in Liverpool Street in the city operated by the firm AG Jones Auctions Pty Ltd, where he spoke to the proprietor, Mr Max Mauer. After a few days of negotiations, Mr Mauer agreed to pay £260 for all of Bradley’s furniture and household goods that had been transferred by the removalists from the Clontarf house to a storage area. A few days later, the furniture and goods were delivered to Mr Mauer at his shop. Among the numerous items included in the sale were a vacuum cleaner, a standard lamp (which had its flex tied with a piece of string), and a dirty carpet. Bradley had no idea that in selling these items he was leaving evidence that could later be used against him.

  Bradley returned to the shipping company and used the £260 to pay the balance of the fares for the whole family. He asked the booking clerk if he could store some paintings in his cabin on the ship, because they were very valuable and he was afraid they might get damaged in the cargo hold. He mentioned to the clerk that he had already made arrangements to send the family’s Pekinese dog, Cherie, by air freight to England.

  On 20 September, Bradley took his blue Ford Customline to Christy’s Motor Auctions on Parramatta Road at Granville. He told the salesman that there was still £593 owing on the car, so an agreement was reached that he would be paid a mere £32, being the difference between what the vehicle was worth and what was still owing on his hire purchase contract. The next day, Bradley sold the Goggomobil, on which there was also a large amount of money still outstanding.

  Before their departure, Magda and Stephen took other steps to sever all ties with Australia, telling a variety of people different stories in an attempt to camouflage their real intentions. The three children were told that they were going on an extended holiday with both their parents, and that the destination was a surprise they would be told about on the day of departure. On 23 September, Bradley withdrew his stepson Ross from St. Gabriel’s, telling the headmaster, Brother John Regan, that the family was relocating to Brisbane. Brother Regan kindly gave him the name of a similar school in Brisbane and a letter of introduction to the headmaster. On the same day, Bradley went to Stewart’s Veterinary Hospital at Rushcutters Bay and made arrangements to ship Cherie to an address in London. He also withdrew his stepson Paul from his local high school, telling the headmaster that they were moving to Victoria. The next day, Saturday 24 September, Bradley drove up to the Blue Mountains with Paul to see the boy’s father, Gregor Weinberg, at his Leura guesthouse. He told Weinberg that the family were all going on a business trip to Melbourne for several days. Weinberg wanted Paul to stay with him for the weekend, but Bradley put him off, telling him that he would see Paul the following week when they came back from Melbourne. There was no mention of the planned journey to England.

  As the days drew closer to their scheduled departure, Bradley informed his employer at Nutt & Muddle that he was required to go into St Vincent’s Hospital at Darlinghurst the very next day for an operation on an old spinal injury that might require some months for a full recovery. When his employer enquired how he had first received this back injury, Stephen told him it was ‘from jumping out of an aeroplane some years ago in Hungary when he had to parachute from the aircraft’.

  Bradley wrote several letters, which he kept to post when the Himalaya berthed in Melbourne on the afternoon of 27 September. One was addressed to the estate agent who had rented them the flat at Manly, advising him that they had vacated it. In partial payment of outstanding rent, Bradley included in the letter two vouchers for deposits he had paid to have the electricity and gas connected; however, the amounts outstanding to the utility companies were more than the value of the vouchers, so the agent was left out of pocket. Stephen asked Magda to write a letter to Gregor Weinberg, in which she explained that they had decided to go on an extended holiday – without saying where – which again he kept to post when they arrived in Melbourne. Stephen and Magda left several bills unpaid, including the telephone bill and twelve parking fines totalling £42 acquired by Madga over the previous twelve months.

  Stephen and Magda Bradley had taken all the necessary steps to prepare for their family’s departure on the Himalaya on Monday 26 September.

  * * *

  On Sunday 25 September – almost six weeks after Graeme Thorne’s body had been found – the newspapers all carried two pieces of highly sensational news. The first item was the launch the previous day in Newport, Virginia, of the USS Enterprise, the first atomic-powered aircraft carrier and the largest ship ever built at that time. The second piece of news – closer to home – was a notification to the public for the first time of the police search for an iridescent blue 1955 Ford Customline suspected to have been used in the kidnapping of Graeme Thorne, and a full description of the man seen in the vicinity of the car at the time. The Sun-Herald reported:

  Moments after the car was first observed, a man was seen to leave the driver’s seat and walk around to the Francis Street footpath. In this position he stood between the car and the approaching Graeme Thorne. Police have learned the same man was seen in Francis Street during the morning of either the Monday or Tuesday before the kidnapping . . .

  The Driver: Aged between 35 and 40, 5ft 7 in tall, stocky build, olive complexion, jet black hair which was very long and extended noticeably from beneath his hat. Some people have told police the man had a foreign appearance. He was dressed in a fawn gabardine overcoat which appeared to be very creased and wore a brown felt hat . . . Detectives are working ceaselessly to find the man.7

  * * *

  Stephen Bradley read the article about the kidnapper and his car with considerable alarm and trepidation, acknowledging that the description fitted him to a tee. It supported his belief that someone in the passing car had provided the police with a description of his vehicle. It also confirmed that he had made the right decision to leave Australia and thereby preclude the possibility of being asked to participate in a line-up in front of Freda and Bazil Thorne. His only consolation was that the very next day, Monday 26 September, he and his family were due to sail from Sydney on board the SS Himalaya.

  * * *

  One day after the publication of the information about the blue Ford Customline, Mr Neville Browne, a tenant at 49 Osborne Road, Manly, contacted the police to tell them that his neighbour, Mr Stephen Bradley, had a foreign accent as well as a car of the same description as the one they were looking for. Once again, the informat
ion provided was duly noted in a police running sheet, filed in the investigation archives, and given no special attention.

  * * *

  What Stephen Bradley did not know was that during the month that he had been making extensive preparations for his family’s covert departure from Australia, a variety of highly skilled forensic scientists had been conducting minute examinations of the items that had been found on, and with, Graeme Thorne’s body, and that these had revealed significant pieces of trace evidence that were gradually weaving a web of evidence to identify and trap the kidnapper.

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  LEAVES, SEEDS AND GENERAL VEGETABLE MATTER

  The investigation of the kidnapping and murder of Graeme Thorne marked the beginning of a new era of forensic science in Australia. Never before had so many peripheral items of physical evidence from a crime scene been so intensively examined as they were in this case. Many items were of a kind that had not previously featured in forensic scientific examinations. The existence of this unheralded scientific exercise was not disclosed to the public at the time.