Speaker 1: What brought him undone was fingerprints, specifically the genius of
Speaker 1: those people who could memorize them. The police assumed later
Speaker 1: that he was the only person with a strong motive
Speaker 1: and that fact screwed up the investigation for a long time.
Speaker 1: And he thought if he drags in other young people
Speaker 1: and belts enough of them, that one of them is
Speaker 1: going to tell him something that will lead to the killer.
Speaker 1: I'm Andrew rule is his life in crimes. It's forty
Speaker 1: years since Raymond Ebens, mister Stinky was locked up in
Speaker 1: Penridg Prison. He was put there on remand for a
Speaker 1: terrible crime for the double murder of Gary Haywood and
Speaker 1: Abina Medill at Shepperton back in nineteen sixty six. So
Speaker 1: this Listeners is a man who was on the loose
Speaker 1: for nineteen years around Victoria and around Australia, and the
Speaker 1: fact is that he should have been caught in the
Speaker 1: first few weeks. Our listeners, we have looked at the
Speaker 1: case of mister Stinky Raymond Edmunds several times before, but
Speaker 1: it's a long involved story with many aspects on What
Speaker 1: we didn't do on the other occasions was look at
Speaker 1: everything that the police did and also what they didn't
Speaker 1: do today we do a bit of that. Currently, Raymond
Speaker 1: Edmonds is back in the news after all these years
Speaker 1: because he and others like Julian Knight and other high
Speaker 1: profile high security prisoners, it looks as if they will
Speaker 1: be moved to medium security prisons to make room for
Speaker 1: the rising number of young offenders who are going to
Speaker 1: be placed on remand instead of being grant to bail.
Speaker 1: And that is what makes this story more relevant this
Speaker 1: month than it was. I now propose to tell the
Speaker 1: story of mister Stinky in not so many words. After
Speaker 1: the first round of interviews, they took the Quiet Killer
Speaker 1: to the remand Yard Pentridge for his first taste of
Speaker 1: the rest of his life. It was early nineteen eighty
Speaker 1: five and Raymond Edmonds had never been in jail before,
Speaker 1: and he's never been out of one since. They call
Speaker 1: him mister Stinky, and he's one of the damned, those
Speaker 1: destined to stay inside until they die or a so
Speaker 1: frail they're beyond committing harm. He's eighty one now, the
Speaker 1: flabby old man who was once a cunning and ruthless predator,
Speaker 1: and so he's close to his use by date. Unlike
Speaker 1: some lifers if he's moved from a high security prison
Speaker 1: to make way for young remand prisoners hardly going to
Speaker 1: be a security risk. So it's exactly forty years since
Speaker 1: Edmonds was locked up in Penridge the first time. He
Speaker 1: fronted the City Court on April the eighth, nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: be remanded back in custody to await the trial that
Speaker 1: would put him away for life with no parole. For
Speaker 1: almost twenty years, Edmonds had gotten away with a double
Speaker 1: murder that shocked Australia. He probably wouldn't have been caught
Speaker 1: at all, except that his twisted urges had driven him
Speaker 1: to rape dozens of women in Melbourne's Eastern suburbs over
Speaker 1: fourteen years. Even then, he might have gotten away with it.
Speaker 1: What brought him undone was fingerprints, specifically the genius of
Speaker 1: those people who could memorize them, who could read fingerprints
Speaker 1: and recall them. That's what caught mister Stinky. At one
Speaker 1: of the rape scenes at Donvale in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 1: the then unknown rapist left a print on a fly screen.
Speaker 1: With a little lark and some brilliant police work, the
Speaker 1: print was later matched with an unidentified partial print taken
Speaker 1: from a car at Shepperton two decades earlier. The print
Speaker 1: on the car was found and kept secret after the
Speaker 1: abduction and murder of Sheperdon teenagers Gary Haywood and Abina
Speaker 1: Medil on a summer night in nineteen sixty six. Gary
Speaker 1: Haywood was eighteen. He was an apprentice in the family
Speaker 1: panel works. He was an apprentice panel beater. His father
Speaker 1: was a panel beater and his uncle owned the panel works,
Speaker 1: the biggest panel works in the Goblin Valley. I think
Speaker 1: a Beena Medil was just sixteen. She'd left school just
Speaker 1: the previous year and had just spent the first few
Speaker 1: months of her first job working in the office at
Speaker 1: Haywood's panel works. Chance had brought these two workmates together
Speaker 1: at a pop concert at the Shepherdon Civic Center on
Speaker 1: that Thursday night, February tenth, nineteen sixty six. Older listeners
Speaker 1: will recall that this was just four days before the
Speaker 1: introduction of decimal currency. Decimal currency would come in on Monday,
Speaker 1: February the fourteenth. This was four days earlier, so these
Speaker 1: two youngsters were abducted and murdered with pound shillings and
Speaker 1: pence in their pockets and by the time their bodies
Speaker 1: were found a couple of weeks later. The people that
Speaker 1: found them were carrying dollars and cents. That was right
Speaker 1: on the cusp of the new era in Australia, and
Speaker 1: this crime in some respects marked the end of innocence.
Speaker 1: On that night, that Thursday night in Sheperdon, Gary's girlfriend,
Speaker 1: Gail didn't want to go out because it was the
Speaker 1: night before payday, and she assumed wrongly that he Gary
Speaker 1: wouldn't go out either, But she didn't know that he
Speaker 1: wanted to go out because he didn't tell her. He
Speaker 1: dropped her home after work and then away he went
Speaker 1: in his British racing green FJ Holden, which he'd done
Speaker 1: up himself for most beautiful car that everyone in Sheperdon
Speaker 1: knew and many admired. Abina Medill's boyfriend, Ian Urkert was
Speaker 1: a mechanic at a local tractor dealership. He was working
Speaker 1: late that night trying to get a tractor running for
Speaker 1: a farmer or orchidist, and so he had to work
Speaker 1: late into the night, could not go to the pop
Speaker 1: concert with Abina, and probably that cost her her life.
Speaker 1: It was just one of those things because in the
Speaker 1: absence of Gary that was working. I went to the
Speaker 1: concert at the Sheperdon Civic Center. It was a very
Speaker 1: big concert. Shep was a big place, still is a
Speaker 1: big place, but it was a place that ran big
Speaker 1: rock and roll events. At the civic center, two or
Speaker 1: three thousand teenagers would flock there from all over the
Speaker 1: River Arena, from the Murray River region, from Bendigo right
Speaker 1: over there, Yarrawonga. They would come to Shepperton to see
Speaker 1: pretty big acts in Norman Row would play there. MPD
Speaker 1: Limited would play there. Eyvon Barrett would play there. A
Speaker 1: lot of nineteen sixties rock and roll and pop acts
Speaker 1: that appeared on television would end up performing at Shepardon
Speaker 1: because it really was one of the biggesttual centers outside
Speaker 1: the capitals. So on this night, while roadies unloaded the
Speaker 1: gear for four different acts that were playing that night,
Speaker 1: Gary Haywood tall, fair haired, charming, good looking, popular, popular
Speaker 1: with girls. Popular with these mates, He persuaded a beaner
Speaker 1: and a friend of hers to drive around town in
Speaker 1: his immaculate FJ. Holden. They were probably pleased to be
Speaker 1: seen going around with him in his flash car. They
Speaker 1: just left school, and you know, he was a pretty
Speaker 1: big deal. So it was all harmless teenage stuff until
Speaker 1: it wasn't because at some point that night and we
Speaker 1: don't have to chase every rabbit down every burrow here,
Speaker 1: but at some point that night they were parked next
Speaker 1: to Victoria Park Lake, which is the lake right in
Speaker 1: the middle of Sheperdon, and there are trees around at
Speaker 1: this parkland and it's a natural place to go park
Speaker 1: to look at the water and the sunset and all
Speaker 1: that sort of good stuff. It was while they were
Speaker 1: parked there at some point in the evening that Raymond Edmonds,
Speaker 1: a young man of twenty two at this stage, abducted
Speaker 1: them at gunpoint and forced we imagine this is what
Speaker 1: he did. He forced Gary Haywood to drive the three
Speaker 1: of them to Murchison East, which is about thirty seven
Speaker 1: kilometers south of Sheperdon. It's quite a drive now. Merch East,
Speaker 1: as they call it locally, Merchison East is an area
Speaker 1: that was sort of between the old Highway, the Goblin
Speaker 1: Valley Highway and the River Golbin. And particularly back in
Speaker 1: those days, that whole district that had lots of bush
Speaker 1: paddocks along the river. There were hundreds of acres along
Speaker 1: the river with river red gums on them. I think
Speaker 1: a lot of it might be crown land or parkland.
Speaker 1: And in those days local farmers would rent this land
Speaker 1: to run cattle in at certain times of the year.
Speaker 1: And it was to one of these places, one of
Speaker 1: these bush paddicks, that Edmonds forced Gary Haywood to drive.
Speaker 1: Presumably Edmunds had been there before, it must have known
Speaker 1: where it was. There was what they call a cocky gate.
Speaker 1: That's just a little gate, not a real gate. It's
Speaker 1: just made up of little light posts and fencing wire.
Speaker 1: It was pulled down and they drove through. They left
Speaker 1: it down and they drove into the bush paddock. No
Speaker 1: one else knew that they were there. No one knew
Speaker 1: anything about that. Meanwhile, back in Sheperdon later that night,
Speaker 1: by about midnight, people are starting to panic. The Medill
Speaker 1: family are very worried about Abina. She was supposed to
Speaker 1: be with her younger sister. They were supposed to be
Speaker 1: picked up by their father Fred, and Abuna's gone a
Speaker 1: Buna's missing. The Medile parents are obviously very worried. They're
Speaker 1: quite probably quite annoyed and angry. And then as the
Speaker 1: night wore on and there was no sign of her.
Speaker 1: They became more and more fearful. Meanwhile, Ian Urkert, who
Speaker 1: is emotionally Abena's boyfriend, he's finished work, he's cleaned up,
Speaker 1: we got all the great and stuff off, had a shower,
Speaker 1: got changed and he and one of his mates has
Speaker 1: gone off to a particular cafe or whatever to wait
Speaker 1: for a beana to finish at the concert too, so
Speaker 1: he also is looking for a beaner. He hears from
Speaker 1: one of his other friends that she's been driving around
Speaker 1: with Gary Haywood and his mates. This makes him quite angry.
Speaker 1: He goes around to I think Haywood's place, Similar goes
Speaker 1: around somewhere to a house in Sheperdon where he thinks
Speaker 1: Heywood might be, and he's saying things like I'll kill
Speaker 1: that bastard, I'll kill him. He's not happy, and that threat,
Speaker 1: which is the sort of threat that a teenager is
Speaker 1: going to make about a rival boyfriend, was held against
Speaker 1: him for a long time because the police assumed later
Speaker 1: that he was the only person with a strong motive
Speaker 1: to harm Gary Haywood and have been a madill, and
Speaker 1: that fact screwed up the investigation for a long time.
Speaker 1: The night wears on sometime before dawn. Local policeman Frank
Speaker 1: Ayir as in e y A. Frank Air been a
Speaker 1: copper around Sheperdon, forever, good bloke. Everybody knew him, everybody
Speaker 1: liked him. He is on night shift and he lives
Speaker 1: around the lake routine patrol, and he sees Gary Haywood's
Speaker 1: F J. Holden parked near the lake and he jumps out.
Speaker 1: This is just before dawn, it's quite early in the morning.
Speaker 1: He jumps out and he puts his hand in front
Speaker 1: of the radiator at the front of the seat. It's warm,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't. It was quite cold, which suggests that
Speaker 1: the car had been there for several hours, which makes sense.
Speaker 1: We're thinking that when the bad thing happened around midnight,
Speaker 1: within half an hour, the car would be back in
Speaker 1: Sheperdon less than half an hour possibly and abandoned there
Speaker 1: probably by one am or something like that. And so
Speaker 1: by the time Frank Air gets to it, it's cold.
Speaker 1: But interestingly, the car is left open, it's not locked,
Speaker 1: and it is parked crookedly. It's not neatly parked up
Speaker 1: against the curb with the front wheels angle correctly, It's
Speaker 1: been left very carelessly, and as soon as Gary Haywood's
Speaker 1: father and his brother saw it, they knew that something
Speaker 1: very bad had happened because they knew that there. Gary
Speaker 1: would not leave his car sitting there. He wouldn't park
Speaker 1: it like that, and he would not abandon it, and
Speaker 1: he certainly wouldn't leave town and run away without taking
Speaker 1: the car. And the other fact that goes to their
Speaker 1: theory is that he was over to day's wages. Friday
Speaker 1: was payday. He's gone missing on a Thursday night. So
Speaker 1: there is no way that Gary Haywood He's going to
Speaker 1: skip town without his pay and skip town and leave
Speaker 1: his beautiful car that he spent hundreds of hours doing up.
Speaker 1: His family knew from that first few hours that something
Speaker 1: had gone tragically wrong, that if he wasn't dead, he
Speaker 1: was certainly being held against his will. Gary's girlfriend, Gail,
Speaker 1: totally agrees with the Haywood family. She knew he wouldn't
Speaker 1: leave without the car. She knew he wouldn't leave without
Speaker 1: his pay. She never thought for a second that he'd
Speaker 1: run away from town. And so the initial police theories
Speaker 1: that you know, two young lovers have bolted were nonsense.
Speaker 1: They were never a goer, because what are they going
Speaker 1: to bolt in and what are they going to bolt with?
Speaker 1: No money, no car, crazy stuff. They were young, they
Speaker 1: were teenagers, but they had regular jobs. They are from regular,
Speaker 1: hard working families. They weren't just going to run away
Speaker 1: from shepardon. They weren't the type. But the police initially
Speaker 1: didn't realize that. The first thing the police do is
Speaker 1: they drag in a Bena's boyfriend, Ian Urka, the young mechanic,
Speaker 1: and his best mate. They dragged them into the Shepherd
Speaker 1: and Police repeatedly, not just next day, but the day
Speaker 1: after that, and the day after that, and someone regularly.
Speaker 1: And this is a pretty ugly scene because one of
Speaker 1: these local policemen is a detective called Peter Parkinson. That
Speaker 1: name is Peter Parkinson, and he was a smooth but
Speaker 1: very tough man. I met him when he was a
Speaker 1: middle aged man, about twenty years after these events, and
Speaker 1: by this stage he was a retired policeman. But you
Speaker 1: could see that he had been a pretty hard case.
Speaker 1: He'd started life Peter Parkinson up in the Riverina, I
Speaker 1: think in farming district. He'd been a shearer who could
Speaker 1: win his share of fights in the local pubs against
Speaker 1: other shearers, and when the boxing tents came to town he
Speaker 1: could win fights with the gloves on. And then he
Speaker 1: joined the police force and rapidly became a detective. And
Speaker 1: that would be code for he was an old school
Speaker 1: detective who was a bash artist and didn't mind copying
Speaker 1: a quid of corrupt money. He was posted to Sheperdon
Speaker 1: interestingly earlier in the sixties after a stinting the homicide
Speaker 1: squad in Melbourne. Now that may or may not mean anything.
Speaker 1: The posting might be as he said it was because
Speaker 1: he had a child that had asthma and that his
Speaker 1: family needed to move to a warmer climate where the
Speaker 1: asthma would not be such a problem. That may well
Speaker 1: be true, however, Interestingly, in the nineteen sixties, the Victorian
Speaker 1: homicide Squad was led by two men, one called Jack Ford,
Speaker 1: one called Jack Matthews, and they were crooks. They were
Speaker 1: crooks who had a big finger in the pie of
Speaker 1: illegal abortions. Because abortions were illegal, there there was so
Speaker 1: much money to be made in performing illegal abortions, and
Speaker 1: the homicide Squad essentially franchised that because they could go
Speaker 1: easy on particular abortionists. That his doctors who would perform
Speaker 1: abortions for cash, providing they got kickbacks, and so effectively
Speaker 1: the homicide squad ran the abortion racket in Victoria, and
Speaker 1: a very good racket it was. It was right up there,
Speaker 1: just behind sp bookmaking and very similar in some ways,
Speaker 1: very like the current tobacco shop shop shops, the illicit
Speaker 1: tobacco trade. And it might be that Peter Parkinson had
Speaker 1: been mixed up in that sort of stuff and then
Speaker 1: was transferred to sheperd and to get him out of
Speaker 1: the way. I don't know, but he certainly had a
Speaker 1: few bad habits. He tended to be more a bash
Speaker 1: artist and a standover man there then a sleuth, and
Speaker 1: he was an opportunist. And when this happened, he said, well,
Speaker 1: I'm a local detective, I'm here at SHP, I know everybody.
Speaker 1: I also have had experience in homicide squad. And so
Speaker 1: they sort of made this guy the de facto head
Speaker 1: of the de facto investigation. Once all the homicide guys
Speaker 1: went back to Melbourne, Parkinson became the de facto leader
Speaker 1: of the investigation and it didn't go that well. And
Speaker 1: it didn't go well because they really didn't run an
Speaker 1: investigation on scientific lines, or at least Parkinson did not.
Speaker 1: He was just keen on the idea that someone close
Speaker 1: to Gary Haywood must have done it or know something
Speaker 1: about it. And he thought, if he drags in Urkit,
Speaker 1: and he drags in Gary Haywood's mates, and he drags
Speaker 1: in other young people that knew other young people and
Speaker 1: belts enough of them that one of them is going
Speaker 1: to tell him something that will lead to the killer. Now,
Speaker 1: that's fine if any of them knew anything. But they
Speaker 1: didn't because it wasn't one of them. It was not
Speaker 1: anyone to do with the dead kids. It was a
Speaker 1: total outlier, not someone from Melbourne or Sydney or from Queensland.
Speaker 1: But it was a total outlier. It was not one
Speaker 1: of their social group. It takes sixteen days for the
Speaker 1: bodies to be found, and in that time there is
Speaker 1: a great kerfuffle. It becomes the biggest story in Australia.
Speaker 1: I would suspect I was. I was nine years old
Speaker 1: at the time that this happened, and I can recall
Speaker 1: the story in the newspapers, I can recall it on
Speaker 1: radio and television. It was certainly one of the biggest
Speaker 1: stories of my primary school years, and it was riveting
Speaker 1: because basically it was the sort of thing that didn't
Speaker 1: really happen much in Australia. Although it was only about
Speaker 1: two weeks after the Beaumont children met missing in Adelaide.
Speaker 1: So in one summer in Australia, within the two weeks
Speaker 1: between Australia Day and the tenth of February, we've had
Speaker 1: two of the biggest abduction murders that have ever happened
Speaker 1: in this country. Despite all the searches that the police arranged,
Speaker 1: volunteers went out. They closed down I think one of
Speaker 1: the big canaries up there, and all the people went
Speaker 1: searching along the river banks. The local pony club has
Speaker 1: all got together and rode ponies and horses through bush.
Speaker 1: Everybody who could went out searching for these kids, for
Speaker 1: the missing pair. Didn't find a thing. What happened is
Speaker 1: that two weeks later, on Saturday, the twenty sixth of February,
Speaker 1: two teenagers from Melbourne came up to Murchison. One of
Speaker 1: these two boys had a relative living at Murchison. His
Speaker 1: relative was a farmer and this young bloke and his mate,
Speaker 1: his mate was I think Peter Jacobi. They would come
Speaker 1: up on the train from Melbourne from Spencer Street station
Speaker 1: as it was then known, and they would bring with
Speaker 1: them a twenty two rifle and a shotgun or something,
Speaker 1: as you used to do in those days, and they
Speaker 1: would go shooting on the relatives farm out at Murchison East,
Speaker 1: and they'd hop off the train at Murchison and they'd
Speaker 1: walk to the paddocks, the bush paddocks where they would
Speaker 1: shoot rabbits and stuff. And when they got sick of
Speaker 1: it and got hungry and thirsty, they would go across
Speaker 1: the paddox to granddads or uncles or whoever it was.
Speaker 1: And on this day they're shooting away at rabbits and
Speaker 1: they smell something and then they find the body. They
Speaker 1: find a ben and Medill's body, which is a shocking thing.
Speaker 1: It's been in the summer heat for sixteen days. The
Speaker 1: body is only half closed, all the bottom garments are removed,
Speaker 1: and she spread eagled on the ground. And of course
Speaker 1: all the flies and the ants and the animals have
Speaker 1: got involved in the body, so it's a terrible, terrible sight.
Speaker 1: The boys are shocked and distressed. They run across country,
Speaker 1: I think for probably almost two kilometers and raise the
Speaker 1: alarm with the relatives and with the local policemen. Local
Speaker 1: policeman comes down with the local farmer and the farmer says,
Speaker 1: funny thing. I was down near that clump of saplings
Speaker 1: over there, a few hundred meters away the other day,
Speaker 1: and I smelt something dead and I thought it must
Speaker 1: be a dead kangaroo or a dead dog. Maybe somebody
Speaker 1: shot a dog. And the policeman said, doesn't sound good,
Speaker 1: and they headed over there, and sure enough, that's when
Speaker 1: they found Gary Haywood's body. Gary Haywood had been shot
Speaker 1: through the head. There was a neat bullet hole in
Speaker 1: his head. And subsequently, when a site was searched by
Speaker 1: the forensic ballistics experts, they found I think two at
Speaker 1: least two twenty two shells that matched each other. And subsequently,
Speaker 1: of course, when the post mortems were done, they were
Speaker 1: able to retrieve the lead bullet or slug from Gary
Speaker 1: Haywood's skull, which forensics were able to examine and they
Speaker 1: could see the rifling marks on the bullet. They could
Speaker 1: also check the firing pin marks on the shells. The
Speaker 1: police also found a small plastic what they call a beetle.
Speaker 1: It was a small piece of plastic trim from a
Speaker 1: particular sort of rifle. And by the time the experts
Speaker 1: looked at the bullet, the shells, and this piece of plastic,
Speaker 1: they were able to narrow down the search for a
Speaker 1: rifle or a make of rifle to a Mosburg semi automatic,
Speaker 1: probably what they call a model three point fifty two
Speaker 1: K I think was called. But they were able to
Speaker 1: narrow it down to a very tight group of Mosburg
Speaker 1: twenty two rifles. So there were more than one hundred
Speaker 1: rifle makes in the police library, but within days they
Speaker 1: knew what sort of rifle they were looking for. Now,
Speaker 1: initially they kept that secret, but it was probably the
Speaker 1: best clue of all. Meanwhile, there is some other good
Speaker 1: police work happening. A lot of bad police work's happening,
Speaker 1: but there's some very good police work, and that is
Speaker 1: Peter Parkinson, the bash artist detective. He did one good thing.
Speaker 1: He got Gary Haywood's FJ Holden and he carefully got
Speaker 1: in it without putting his hands everywhere, and he drove
Speaker 1: it to shed at the Shepherd And Police station and
Speaker 1: locked it up so that the forensic experts could come
Speaker 1: and have a good look at it. They came there,
Speaker 1: they dusted the whole car and they got several sets
Speaker 1: of prints. Now, the big thing with that is you
Speaker 1: have to eliminate the prince. So they were able to
Speaker 1: eliminate Ben and Medill's prince, Gary Haywood's own prince, Gary
Speaker 1: Haywood's brothers, Allan's prince, Gary Haywood's father, I think, Charlie
Speaker 1: his prince, and even Gary Howood's girlfriend. Gail, the expert.
Speaker 1: Fingerprint expert went out to see her at her place
Speaker 1: and she said, the last time I saw Gary, he'd
Speaker 1: dropped me off home here on that Thursday afternoon after work,
Speaker 1: and as he was backing out of the drive, I
Speaker 1: put my hands on the bonnet and pretended to push
Speaker 1: the car, and so my prince will be right there
Speaker 1: on the bonnet, and indeed they were. The fingerprinting expert
Speaker 1: found her prince and he said, that's great, you're the
Speaker 1: last set of unidentified prints on his car. And that
Speaker 1: was a white lie. What he was doing was obscuring
Speaker 1: the fact that there was one other set of unidentified
Speaker 1: prints on the car, and it was that other set
Speaker 1: of unidentified prince that would help, many years later solve
Speaker 1: this whole murder and a series of rapes. It was
Speaker 1: a tiny, tiny pair of prints. It was just from
Speaker 1: two fingers, but it wasn't even the top of the fingers.
Speaker 1: It was the second joint down and it was just
Speaker 1: a very small patch on the car. And they kept
Speaker 1: it secret that they had it, and that stayed secret
Speaker 1: for many years until the early nineteen eighties, when an
Speaker 1: enterprising reporter called Steve Ober managed to winkle the truth
Speaker 1: out of a New South Wales police contact O bar
Speaker 1: in two would hear just a tiny mention of something?
Speaker 1: He heard a senior policeman say something quietly to another
Speaker 1: reporter about Sheperdon and Obar, who was an American. I
Speaker 1: remember him quite well. He was a very popular figure
Speaker 1: in journalism in Melbourne in those days. He was a
Speaker 1: tabloid expert. He worked for the Sunday Press and Steve
Speaker 1: Ober had contacts everywhere and he was very friendly with people.
Speaker 1: And he rang a policeman in New South Wales and said,
Speaker 1: I've just heard something about a case at Sheperdon and fingerprints.
Speaker 1: Have you heard anything? The blug said, hang on a
Speaker 1: minute and checked with somebody, and he got back to
Speaker 1: Obar and said yes, indeed, a couple of Victorian detectives
Speaker 1: have been in Sydney looking out prints because they think
Speaker 1: they've got someone for rapes and maybe a murder, and
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. And Oba went with the story,
Speaker 1: a huge story that Sunday which made the connection that
Speaker 1: police had a fingerprint clue to the big nineteen sixty
Speaker 1: six murders. Now that was true, but what a bummer
Speaker 1: for the police because the police at that stage in
Speaker 1: the eighties were hoping to keep it secret that they
Speaker 1: had the prints from the murder car. They were hoping
Speaker 1: to keep it secret that those prints had also turned
Speaker 1: up at rape scenes in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne.
Speaker 1: It's that connection between the nineteen sixty six double murder
Speaker 1: and these rapes in Melbourne in the seventies and eighties.
Speaker 1: That was the big link, the big connection, because it
Speaker 1: was through a brilliant piece of police work that they
Speaker 1: realized that their rapist from the eastern suburbs, a Donvale
Speaker 1: rapist they called him, was in fact probably the Shepherd
Speaker 1: and killer. They would not have known that if it
Speaker 1: had not been for a young, brilliant fingerprint man called
Speaker 1: Andy Wall. Now Andy Will was very young. He joined
Speaker 1: the police force after coming out from England as a youngster.
Speaker 1: He came out with his parents. I think as a teenager.
Speaker 1: He hadn't even been in Australia when the murders happened
Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty six. He had never heard of those murders. Naturally,
Speaker 1: he joined the police force in the late seventies. He
Speaker 1: goes to the finger print branch because he's very good
Speaker 1: at that sort of detail and he's extremely skilled at it. Now,
Speaker 1: this is the pre computer era, so the police, like
Speaker 1: everyone else in those days, relied on human brains, human
Speaker 1: memory to do things that now a machine will do.
Speaker 1: Andy Wall used to review prints from unsolved cases. They
Speaker 1: would have sort of like a top ten or top
Speaker 1: twenty list, and they'd say, this is this murder, this
Speaker 1: is that murder, this is this rape, whatever it might be,
Speaker 1: and here's the prince of the unknown crook. And now
Speaker 1: and again he would flick through these prints and he
Speaker 1: would memorize them. And these particular ones associated with these
Speaker 1: particular prints which had come from Gary Haywood's car, were
Speaker 1: distinctive in some way that he was able to remember it. Now,
Speaker 1: this is an astonishing feat of memory and eyesight. Andy
Speaker 1: Wall was looking through some fresh princes that had come
Speaker 1: in from rapes in the Eastern suburbs. This is early eighties.
Speaker 1: When he goes that looks for me that don Vale rape.
Speaker 1: These princes have found on a fly screen at don Vale.
Speaker 1: They remind me of something and he goes, oh, I know,
Speaker 1: and he goes over to the drawer where they keep
Speaker 1: all their old stuff and he flicks her and he
Speaker 1: pulls out the secret prints from Gary Haywood's car, which
Speaker 1: had been in that draw years before Andy Will even
Speaker 1: arrived in Australia. But he'd somehow memorized them. He was
Speaker 1: able to make the connection across all that time and space,
Speaker 1: and it was him who made the link, and that
Speaker 1: is the link that ultimately caught the man who became
Speaker 1: known later as mister Stinky for reasons we will shortly explore.
Speaker 1: Bottom line is fingerprint work brilliant normal cop work at
Speaker 1: Sheperdon no good at all because the other really good
Speaker 1: clue the police had, but they muffed it was the
Speaker 1: Mosburg rifle. Now, what they did was eventually they publicized
Speaker 1: the fact that they were looking for Mosburg semi automatic.
Speaker 1: That was good, probably, but what it meant was that
Speaker 1: it brought in hundreds of tip offs, leads, whatever, people
Speaker 1: getting in touch on all over Australia and saying, I know,
Speaker 1: Bill Smith, he's got a Mosburg. You know my brother
Speaker 1: in law's got a Mosberg, and he's also got cross eyes,
Speaker 1: you know, all this stuff. And eventually it was very
Speaker 1: confusing because when the police contacted the Mosburg factory or
Speaker 1: manufacturers in America, they said, oh, no, we've only exported
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty of those semi automatics to Australia.
Speaker 1: Well that was true, the Mosburg factory had only exported
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty to Australia. But what they didn't
Speaker 1: realize was that independent dealers had brought in hundreds of others.
Speaker 1: There were many hundreds of them, not thousands, but many hundreds,
Speaker 1: and so over some months the police had volunteered to
Speaker 1: them I think three hundred and fifty two or three
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty three Mosburg semi automatics. And what they
Speaker 1: would do they would come to Sheperdon one way or
Speaker 1: another and the police would have a bucket of water
Speaker 1: under the fire stairs outside and they would shoot a
Speaker 1: bullet into the bucket of water and then they would
Speaker 1: keep the shell and they would retrieve the slug, and
Speaker 1: they would hand it over to the ballistics experts to
Speaker 1: look at the marks on them. And they were able
Speaker 1: to eliminate those three hundred and fifty three mossbergs. Well,
Speaker 1: that's all very well, and that's wonderful, But their problem
Speaker 1: was they needed the mossbergs that weren't being handed in.
Speaker 1: They needed to find the people that had one who
Speaker 1: wasn't turning up to have it tested. And here is
Speaker 1: where they made a shocking basic error. Okay, gun laws
Speaker 1: were fairly lax and open in those days, sure, but
Speaker 1: there was a basic rule that is that gun dealers
Speaker 1: selling new and used guns had to have a gun
Speaker 1: dealer's book. They still have to have one, and every
Speaker 1: time they sell one, they have to write in it
Speaker 1: what it is, serial number, description, and the full name
Speaker 1: and details of the buyer. Now, if every gun dealer
Speaker 1: has that book, it's a pretty good mud map of
Speaker 1: who's got what gun out there in the world. Every
Speaker 1: dealer in Victoria should have such a book, or did
Speaker 1: have such a book. The police, in their wisdom or
Speaker 1: lack of it, looked only at gun dealers books in
Speaker 1: Sheperdon or Sheperdon and Marupna or locally. Essentially, they didn't
Speaker 1: go any further. Had they gone across the highway and
Speaker 1: up a valley or two to other districts up in
Speaker 1: the northeast such as Bright and Myrtleford and those other
Speaker 1: places Banella and these places are only you know, within
Speaker 1: an hour hour and a half drive, not that far,
Speaker 1: they would have found a sports store at Myrtleford that
Speaker 1: had sold a Mossburg semi automatic model K back a
Speaker 1: few years earlier, like in the late fifties, so only
Speaker 1: eight years earlier, something like that, seven years earlier to
Speaker 1: a man called Edmunds, a man called Harold Edmonds, who
Speaker 1: was the father of Raymond Edmonds. And had they done
Speaker 1: that in those first few weeks and tracked down mister
Speaker 1: Edmunds Senor and said where's that rifle, he would obviously
Speaker 1: have had to say, well, my son owns that rifle.
Speaker 1: I gove to him, and he's a chief armer at
Speaker 1: Ardmona near Shepherd. And at that point the police would
Speaker 1: get very interested and they would go over and knock
Speaker 1: on the door at MNA and say where's Raymond Edmunds,
Speaker 1: and where's his rifle, and that would have just about
Speaker 1: solved the whole thing then, But they didn't do that.
Speaker 1: They didn't do that, they didn't go through the gun
Speaker 1: dealer's books, and so a very strange thing happened. Somebody
Speaker 1: did go out to the farm where Raymond Edmunds was working.
Speaker 1: Raymond Edmonds was a young cheer farmer. He was out
Speaker 1: on a farm at Ardmona was owned by people called Gorn,
Speaker 1: and he share farm. That meant he lived in a
Speaker 1: house on the property. He would milk the cows for
Speaker 1: the people and I would split the milk check every
Speaker 1: month of Salaga. You're not on wages, you're co farming.
Speaker 1: And Edmunds had grown up milking cows around the place
Speaker 1: and in You're a bit about farming and so on.
Speaker 1: He had lived at Mona since about nineteen sixty three
Speaker 1: with his very young wife. He was very young himself,
Speaker 1: but his wife, Leslie was even younger, and they had
Speaker 1: three tiny little kids, all close together. And he was
Speaker 1: a moody, brutal, nasty piece of work. But he was
Speaker 1: also a few other things. He was physically very strong.
Speaker 1: The Gorn family remembered that had a heavy duty trailer
Speaker 1: there that they could hook behind a tractor or behind
Speaker 1: a truck, and that he could lift the toe bar
Speaker 1: of it quite easily, and it took two other men
Speaker 1: to do it. He was a crack shot, very good shot,
Speaker 1: and he had a semi automatic rifle. Now, some months
Speaker 1: before the murders, young Stuart Gorn, son of the farm owner,
Speaker 1: had rushed over and knocked on the door of the
Speaker 1: sheer farmer's house and said, Ray Ray you're there. I've
Speaker 1: just moved the pig stye and he's a heap of
Speaker 1: rats there. Can you get your rifle and we'll shoot
Speaker 1: the rats. Now, this is what people on farms do.
Speaker 1: You've moved something at a pig stye, you move haystack,
Speaker 1: stuff like that is going to be rats and snakes
Speaker 1: and rabbits and all sorts of things, and what you
Speaker 1: do is shoot them. And normally Stuart Gorn, who was
Speaker 1: a teenager, and this young cher farmer Raymond Edmonds, would
Speaker 1: grab guns rifles and they would shoot things with great glee.
Speaker 1: But on this particular occasion, and this was some months
Speaker 1: before February nineteen sixty six, ray Edmond said no, no, no,
Speaker 1: just closed the door on him, and that was very
Speaker 1: interesting because normally he would have been very keen, but
Speaker 1: on this occasion he closed down the whole topic of shooting.
Speaker 1: And years later, when the truth all came out, it
Speaker 1: turns out that there's a good reason for that, and
Speaker 1: the good reason was he had sorn the barrel of
Speaker 1: he's twenty two. Raymond Edmonds had sworn off his own
Speaker 1: twenty two. And that, of course, is something that no
Speaker 1: legit farmer does. It is a criminal act committed by
Speaker 1: somebody who wants to hide their weapon in a coat
Speaker 1: pocket or in a car door or something like that,
Speaker 1: so that it's easily hidden, easily transportable, and can be
Speaker 1: used to do bad things like rob people or hold
Speaker 1: them up or whatever. And so the fact that Raymond
Speaker 1: Edmonds owned a Mosburg rifle was just one of the
Speaker 1: greatest clues of all time. A policeman did go out
Speaker 1: to the farm at Gorn's at Mona about seven weeks
Speaker 1: after the murders. What we don't know is why that
Speaker 1: policeman did that. I did once speak to this policeman.
Speaker 1: His name was Joe Ogden. He ended up living at
Speaker 1: Banella and he died there a few years ago. Good
Speaker 1: wealth respected he told me that he couldn't remember anything
Speaker 1: about any of it, which might be true, but clearly
Speaker 1: there'd been some form of tip off, and that would
Speaker 1: be one of two things. Probably he'd either been told
Speaker 1: that a young fellow called Edmunds lived at Mona and
Speaker 1: he had a Mosbog rifle, or he'd been told that
Speaker 1: Edmunds drove a new Falcon Sedan, which he did a
Speaker 1: red Falcon, and that Sudan might have been seen around
Speaker 1: town at the appropriate time of the murders. Probably they
Speaker 1: would be the most likely things to make a policeman
Speaker 1: go out to check Ray Edmonds. But when he gets
Speaker 1: there in probably May or June of nineteen sixty six,
Speaker 1: and he asks where Ray Edmonds is Raymond Edmunds by name,
Speaker 1: he had his name that would indicate car registration or
Speaker 1: the gun dealer's book, one or the other. You'd think
Speaker 1: the Gorns the owner said, oh, he's left. He left
Speaker 1: us suddenly, Oh yeah, where's he gone? Oh, come in
Speaker 1: here and we'll show you. So he walks in to
Speaker 1: the office at the Gorns farm and they look in
Speaker 1: their book and there it is. He's moved up to
Speaker 1: may Rung, which is near Finley, New South Wales working
Speaker 1: for people called Clark at a farm called Sunny Banks
Speaker 1: or Sunny whatever. And there it is. There's the address,
Speaker 1: there's the name of the farmer's phone number. It's all
Speaker 1: there now. Finley, of course, and may Rung. Finley is
Speaker 1: in New South Wales. It's just over the Murray River.
Speaker 1: It is only one hundred and thirty nine kilometers from Sheperdon,
Speaker 1: which is funnily enough, about one hour and a half
Speaker 1: driving time. It wasn't that far away. But it is
Speaker 1: a different state and a different jurisdiction. Now. Had Raymond
Speaker 1: Edmonds moved south, had he gone to Hamilton or to Gippsland,
Speaker 1: probably they would have looked him up. But what happened
Speaker 1: was Joe Ogden, old copper, said oh, I'll get the
Speaker 1: boys up there to look him up, no worries, and
Speaker 1: that did not happen. What we don't know is is
Speaker 1: what went wrong. Did Ogden get in touch with the
Speaker 1: New South Wales Police They didn't help this, didn't go
Speaker 1: and check, or did the New South Wales Police go
Speaker 1: out to the farm up at Finley Mayrong and find
Speaker 1: Raymond Edmunds working away milk and cows and interview him
Speaker 1: about whatever was that your red falcon or where's your
Speaker 1: rifle or something? And possibly they did, and possibly Raymond
Speaker 1: Edmunds just told them a good lie and got away
Speaker 1: with it because he was a pretty clean liar. And
Speaker 1: if he'd said something like, oh, yeah, I did have
Speaker 1: a rifle like that, but you know, I lost it
Speaker 1: three years ago, I sold it to a bloke or
Speaker 1: whatever that might have been. That we will never know
Speaker 1: what really happened there. But what we do know is
Speaker 1: the police did have Raymond Edmond's name in Sheperdon in
Speaker 1: the weeks after the murders and it all went wrong.
Speaker 1: They never nailed him. What went wrong? Well, whatever it was,
Speaker 1: it cost more than thirty women peace of mind because
Speaker 1: they were savagely raped in very distressing circumstances. Because Edmonds
Speaker 1: became a prolific rapist. He would hide in the eastern
Speaker 1: suburbs of Melbourne. He would hide and wait and watch.
Speaker 1: He would sometimes crawl under people's houses and he would
Speaker 1: know when young wives. He would pick young wives with
Speaker 1: little kids, usually whose husbands would work night shift or
Speaker 1: were away. He would know what they were doing. He
Speaker 1: would hear them talking. He would watch the husband's drive
Speaker 1: off to go to work, and then he would strike.
Speaker 1: And the implication always was that if there were little
Speaker 1: children in the house, that he might hurt the children
Speaker 1: if the children's mothers did not go along with him.
Speaker 1: And so he was very predatory, very ruthless, very cunning,
Speaker 1: and very frightening. There's no doubt that he raped more
Speaker 1: than thirty women, and it might be, you know, sixty,
Speaker 1: it might be seventy. We will never know how many
Speaker 1: women he attacked in the many years that he was
Speaker 1: on the loose, because he was on the loose for
Speaker 1: nineteen years between the murders and his ultimate arrest. Ultimately,
Speaker 1: he was charged only with five of those rapes and
Speaker 1: convicted of five of them. In recent times they've added
Speaker 1: some more to it, probably not all of them. So
Speaker 1: how did he finally get arrested? Well, in the end,
Speaker 1: he was sort of like the shark who jumps into
Speaker 1: the boat, because what happens is in early nineteen eighty five,
Speaker 1: a shop assistant in Albury, just over the border in
Speaker 1: New South Wales, looks out and sees a man exposing
Speaker 1: himself in a car parked in the street in the
Speaker 1: middle of a busy morning in Aubury. She rings the
Speaker 1: local police. The police turn up. They grab this bloke
Speaker 1: who's just a bloke in overalls or something and he's
Speaker 1: fell con station wagon or whatever, and they take him
Speaker 1: down to the cop shop in Aubury, New South Wales
Speaker 1: police and because it's New South Wales, they automatically fingerprint him,
Speaker 1: which is not what happens in Victoria. In those days
Speaker 1: you didn't get printed automatically, but in New South Wales
Speaker 1: she did. Had he done this across the river three
Speaker 1: minutes away in Wodonga, he would not have been fingerprinted.
Speaker 1: But it's Aubrey. They print him fine. The princess sent
Speaker 1: to the Central Database Registry Fingerprint Bureau, which is in Sydney,
Speaker 1: I think it was. It's up north somewhere, it doesn't
Speaker 1: matter where, and there routinely a fingerprint person looks at
Speaker 1: it and he goes, hang on, I can match this up.
Speaker 1: That's that one they're looking for. That's the one that's
Speaker 1: mixed up with the murder and rapes Invictoria. And he
Speaker 1: holds it up. The next thing, he gets in touch
Speaker 1: with his people, and his people get in touch with
Speaker 1: the Victorians, and the Victorians go, oh my goodness mate,
Speaker 1: because in Victoria they had a task force looking for
Speaker 1: mister Stinky. They had several detectives working on it. They
Speaker 1: had a database full of names from gas bills and
Speaker 1: electricity bills and every database you can think of, because
Speaker 1: computers were just coming in and they thought they were
Speaker 1: going to find him eventually by working out who lived
Speaker 1: at Sheperdon in the sixties, who'd moved to these other
Speaker 1: places east of Melbourne where the rapes were in the
Speaker 1: seventies and eighties, and that eventually they would work out
Speaker 1: who was on that list and they would interview them
Speaker 1: all and find the bad guy. And they probably would
Speaker 1: have had they been given enough time, but they didn't
Speaker 1: have to because Raymond Edmonds exposed himself in Aubury and
Speaker 1: so in the end what happened was the task force
Speaker 1: that had spent months looking for him just went around
Speaker 1: and knocked on his door down in a bayside suburb
Speaker 1: of Melbourne where he was working in a small factory
Speaker 1: I think making gates of fences or something, and they
Speaker 1: rested him. And that was I think Friday, the twenty
Speaker 1: second of March of nineteen eighty five, which is forty
Speaker 1: years ago, and the rest, as I say, is history.
Speaker 1: He ends up planning guilty and he gets sentenced to
Speaker 1: life with no parole. And on this occasion, on this occasion,
Speaker 1: that has worked. Unlike the puzzling case of Lowry and
Speaker 1: King in the Roslyn Naughty Murders, mister Stinky Raymond Edmonds
Speaker 1: has stayed under lock and key all these years. He's
Speaker 1: now eighty one. He's still in there and I think
Speaker 1: he'll stay there until he comes out in a pine
Speaker 1: box or on a walking stick. Thanks for listening. Life
Speaker 1: and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for true
Speaker 1: crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns,
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