Speaker 1: And he panicked. He looked at her and thought, oh,
Speaker 1: couldn't feel a pulse. She's gone, She's dead. And he
Speaker 1: actually took her body out to the foreshore in a wheelbarrow,
Speaker 1: had burnt some stuff and essentially buried her at sea.
Speaker 1: That's his story. I mean, it was completely horrendous. Slashed
Speaker 1: the telephone cord and basically grabbed the baby, ran to
Speaker 1: the carpoard, absolutely terrifying.
Speaker 2: I'm Andrew Rule's Life and Crimes. Today we welcome back
Speaker 2: to the studio at South Bank an old friend of ours,
Speaker 2: not that she's old, but she's been a friend for
Speaker 2: a while, and that is Emily Webb, one of the
Speaker 2: better crime writers around town and been at it now
Speaker 2: quite a while. I used to think of her as
Speaker 2: sort of a young girl, you know, learning the craft,
Speaker 2: but now, of course she's a veteran and I'm, in fact,
Speaker 2: like Moses, I'm a Methusela. Emily's written yet another book.
Speaker 2: This one is called Murder in the Suburbs and it
Speaker 2: seems to me that it covers stories from all around
Speaker 2: Australia and perhaps the odd one from overseas. But because
Speaker 2: we're sitting in Melbourne, will probably open Emily with talking
Speaker 2: about something from greater Melbourne, maybe even Frankston, would that
Speaker 2: be right? And welcome to Life and Crimes.
Speaker 1: Welcome back, Thank you, because I listen to Life and
Speaker 1: Crimes every week. It is one of my all time
Speaker 1: favorite podcasts.
Speaker 2: I am on it beautiful. Now you've been just telling
Speaker 2: us off, Mike, all the work you've been doing, a
Speaker 2: lot of the work you've been doing is getting this
Speaker 2: book done. There's a lot of stories, isn't it? How many? Oh?
Speaker 1: This is about fifteen eighteen.
Speaker 2: And inside some of those are multiple stories. Inside some
Speaker 2: of those long chapters are more than one story. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And we're going to delve into one of those in
Speaker 2: a minute. But the Frankston Vanishing case, what is that
Speaker 2: I'm not familiar with? And I'm really curious.
Speaker 1: Well, I came across it. I'd never heard of it before.
Speaker 1: And I know, you know pretty much all the crimes
Speaker 1: that have ever happened. But I always feel really thrilled
Speaker 1: when I find something I don't know about. So this
Speaker 1: happened in nineteen fifty and in Frankston.
Speaker 2: How old do you think I am?
Speaker 1: I was not born then, No, I know you wouldn't,
Speaker 1: but I thought you might have come across it in
Speaker 1: your you know, in your research.
Speaker 2: I have not so delighted to hear about it because
Speaker 2: I'll steal it absolutely.
Speaker 1: Hey, we help each other out. So this happened in
Speaker 1: nineteen fifty in Frankston and a woman in her fifties disappeared.
Speaker 1: Her name was Caroline Scully. She lived in a house
Speaker 1: that was right in the main guts of Frankston where
Speaker 1: the street. Actually there's a shopping center there now, but
Speaker 1: Frankston was not the Frankston we know back then.
Speaker 2: It was like Bayside Holiday. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, But so she was like a mother and grandmother,
Speaker 1: had four adult children. Her husband, Edward Scully, had been
Speaker 1: in the navy for many years. They were both actually
Speaker 1: from the UK and came out to Australia in the
Speaker 1: late nineteen tens early nineteen twenties and were married and
Speaker 1: had their family. And Edward had recently left the navy.
Speaker 1: He was a cook, he started as a cook and yeah,
Speaker 1: like Caroline just went missing. And there was a bit
Speaker 1: about the situation though. So Edward and Caroline had been
Speaker 1: living apart. I mean, he was away a lot when
Speaker 1: he was in the navy.
Speaker 2: But was it a case of in the navy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, definitely. I think it was a bit of that.
Speaker 1: And they married, but they're not living together.
Speaker 2: It was a village village people, well that's.
Speaker 1: It, and they were well known around the village and
Speaker 1: Caroline lived in the house that they had purchased. But
Speaker 1: Edward was kind of he was in a relationship with
Speaker 1: someone else, shall I say, a younger woman he'd met
Speaker 1: working as a cook at like a holiday camp at
Speaker 1: I can't remember the name of it. It was an
Speaker 1: old migrant camp, you know, that had then been sold
Speaker 1: to a group who wanted to make it into almost
Speaker 1: like an Australian Butler's you know, like those yeah, like
Speaker 1: Heidi High campers, that kind of thing. And that went
Speaker 1: on for a few years. But then I believe the
Speaker 1: government bought that land back and it's now a defense
Speaker 1: based down on the peninsula somewhere.
Speaker 2: Oh that's fine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So he had met a younger woman in her thirties,
Speaker 1: a waitress called Jean Baker, and look, yeah, he was
Speaker 1: in a relationship. People kind of knew, but there were
Speaker 1: some attempts to reconcile. So Edward came back and it's
Speaker 1: like Caroline, like let's sell the house and make a
Speaker 1: fresh start. So that actually sold the house in Frankston.
Speaker 1: And yeah, they were going to buy a business and
Speaker 1: maybe move to the country somewhere Bendigo, Ballarat, somewhere like that.
Speaker 1: But Caroline sort of just disappears. She doesn't turn up
Speaker 1: for work one day. She actually worked for a really
Speaker 1: well known book maker who you might know of called
Speaker 1: Lenn Juson. It was a pretty prominent bookie. She was
Speaker 1: like a housekeeper a few days a week for Len
Speaker 1: and his wife Alma, who lived in a very beautiful
Speaker 1: home in Frankston that's heritage listed. But she didn't turn
Speaker 1: up to work that when she was expected. And yeah,
Speaker 1: like it's believed Edward had rung up Alma juice and
Speaker 1: and said, oh, Caroline won't be in We're packing for
Speaker 1: a trip or something like that, or the house move.
Speaker 1: The thing is, no one hears from Caroline. She didn't
Speaker 1: turn up for something she was meant to. And the
Speaker 1: kids are like, well, where's mum, what's going on? The
Speaker 1: kids are adults, some of them have children. One of
Speaker 1: the daughters is expecting a baby very soon.
Speaker 2: So potential Grandma's not about this bomb.
Speaker 1: Night and Caroline and her daughters were particularly close and
Speaker 1: spoke a lot. I think the kid A few of
Speaker 1: the kids lived locally. One of the sons was in
Speaker 1: the navy as well. And what happened was Edward told
Speaker 1: people a few weeks later that Caroline had left a
Speaker 1: note that she'd gone on the Spirit, which was a
Speaker 1: train that went to Aubrey I think, and then you
Speaker 1: could move to Sydney. He said he came back one
Speaker 1: night and found this note gone on the Spirit. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's strange, and he was just very evasive about what
Speaker 1: had happened, and the kids were like, what's going on,
Speaker 1: where's mum. One of the daughters had checked the house
Speaker 1: and said, well, mum never travels without this croached blanket,
Speaker 1: which is still there. You know, her possessions were there,
Speaker 1: but things like she knew that her mum if she traveled,
Speaker 1: and they had lived in other parts of Australia, so
Speaker 1: it wasn't beyond the realm that maybe she might have
Speaker 1: gone somewhere, but not when she was about to be
Speaker 1: a new grandmar again. So yeah, they almost had to
Speaker 1: press gang their dad actually to go to the police
Speaker 1: and report Caroline missing. And this was almost a month
Speaker 1: after she'd gone. Caroline hadn't collected the money from the
Speaker 1: house sale. It just was all a bit weird. So
Speaker 1: the police got involved. The homicide squad got involved pretty quickly.
Speaker 1: But there was a very big, big search like across
Speaker 1: Frankston obviously foot police talking to witnesses, looking at There
Speaker 1: was some pine groves back then. I don't believe they're
Speaker 1: there now. In Frankston. There was like pine plantations. They're
Speaker 1: probably where the pines are, you know. The housing and
Speaker 1: stuff was you know, just looking for and from what
Speaker 1: I was reading in the newspapers and other things like
Speaker 1: because there was quite a few articles, you know, please
Speaker 1: for have you seen this woman? Went all around Australia.
Speaker 1: But they were on the back foot because really the
Speaker 1: last time she'd been seen was at the end of
Speaker 1: May in nineteen fifty and police won't alert it till
Speaker 1: sort of early June, a couple of weeks into June.
Speaker 1: And yeah, it was a big search Australia wide.
Speaker 2: But so the police took it pretty seriously.
Speaker 1: They certainly did. They dug up the garage at the house.
Speaker 2: They they clearly were looking for a body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they were saying, oh, she's missing, but I think
Speaker 1: they believed she was dead. Edward would say, well, she
Speaker 1: could be in the Blue Mountains in Katoomba because we
Speaker 1: lived there once when we were married, or maybe she's
Speaker 1: in Queensland, or maybe she's in Tasmania. Just so evasive.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile it was a big media story and papers
Speaker 1: like the Truth, you know, like great, look, I love
Speaker 1: the truth. Issues of the truth. Salacious crime reporting, but
Speaker 1: usually pretty good crime reporting. But he was back with
Speaker 1: the girlfriend, Jean Baker. He had given some of Caroline's
Speaker 1: jewelry to Jean, and they'd actually at one point were
Speaker 1: working together at the Black Stump Hotel out in the
Speaker 1: Ara Valley in Nabathon and would sign in as mister
Speaker 1: and missus Scully. So it's looking pretty dodgy really, And
Speaker 1: witnesses would say that they knew that the marriage was
Speaker 1: a bit rocky. The lawyer who did the house sale said, well,
Speaker 1: they said they were going to have a new start,
Speaker 1: but Caroline didn't seem too happy. So there was a
Speaker 1: really massive search all over, but nothing, nothing came up.
Speaker 2: This just fell off a cliff. What led you back
Speaker 2: to look at it again and bring it up?
Speaker 1: I just found it when I look, I don't really
Speaker 1: have a great plan when I'm writing. I'm not a
Speaker 1: very well planned writer. I just research read you know
Speaker 1: that rabbit holes would go down, and I just noticed it,
Speaker 1: and I thought, wow, I don't know about that. This
Speaker 1: is really interesting. I do find missing person's case is
Speaker 1: really fascinating. And I think what drew me in was
Speaker 1: as this evolved. I mean, Edward Scully was arrested for
Speaker 1: and charged with the murder of Caroline, and it was
Speaker 1: to be the first case in Victoria for someone to
Speaker 1: be charged with homicide without a body. And we know
Speaker 1: that that has happened.
Speaker 2: It's hard to prove, but it can happen.
Speaker 1: And I thought, well, that's interesting, but also the scale
Speaker 1: of the search. They eventually, you know, went and arrested
Speaker 1: him in Queensland. He was living with his girlfriend Jean.
Speaker 2: And he ended up up there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, he moved up there. He lived up there with
Speaker 1: Jean for a bit of a fresh start. The thought
Speaker 1: is that he kind of forced the house sale under
Speaker 1: the guise of let's make a fresh start Caroline, so
Speaker 1: he could get the cash to make this start with
Speaker 1: sort of hapless gene Baker, who was splashed all over
Speaker 1: the newspapers a bit, but I don't know. It seems
Speaker 1: a bit of a younger woman. But you know, hey,
Speaker 1: we've all been silly in love before. Yes, it happened,
Speaker 1: hopefully not to that extent, you know. But he was
Speaker 1: arrested in Queensland.
Speaker 2: And what was he like? Were the photographs in the truth?
Speaker 1: Yes, so he seemed quite a tall man, dark.
Speaker 2: Hair, don't trust them, tall blade.
Speaker 1: He was younger than Caroline, so he was probably in
Speaker 1: his early fifties. Caroline was about fifty six or fifty seven,
Speaker 1: and you know the way papers describe women and the
Speaker 1: clothes they wore. You know, she had like brown hair
Speaker 1: that was pulled back in a Gaberdine last scene wearing
Speaker 1: a Gabardine suit. And yeah, in the photo she does
Speaker 1: look a bit older than him. She, you know, had
Speaker 1: a very established life in Frankston. She had that job
Speaker 1: with the bookmaker and his wife doing the cleaning. She
Speaker 1: had friends that she caught up with regularly, and she
Speaker 1: was very close to her kids. But the homicide squad
Speaker 1: back then were like, yeah, she's dead, but where.
Speaker 2: Is she any idea of what happened to the family.
Speaker 2: Any of those kids, you know, are they out there somewhere.
Speaker 1: I actually got in some contact through ancestry dot com,
Speaker 1: very handy with like the wife of the son of
Speaker 1: one of the kids. It was a bit convoluted, but
Speaker 1: she does remember, she said, we weren't able to catch up.
Speaker 1: The people were sort of scattered around and you know,
Speaker 1: stars did in the line. But I did make some contact.
Speaker 1: But they seem to have very scant knowledge about things,
Speaker 1: and I'll send a book to them. She did mention
Speaker 1: that Auntie bet Bet was one of the children of
Speaker 1: Caroline Edward. You know that her husband has always said, yeah,
Speaker 1: Auntie Bet always thought her mother would never go go away,
Speaker 1: like never leave. It was just weird. Now look a
Speaker 1: bit of a spoiler alert, but look, Caroline's body was
Speaker 1: never found. But Edward did make a confession of sorts.
Speaker 1: I mean that the issue is, though you've only got
Speaker 1: one voice, like Caroline's voice can't be heard. So he
Speaker 1: actually told his son when he was in the watchhouse
Speaker 1: in Brisbane that they had been having an argument in
Speaker 1: the kitchen of the Richie Street, Frankston home that they
Speaker 1: just sold, and Caroline had suddenly fainted and hit her
Speaker 1: head on the stove in the kitchen and he panicked.
Speaker 1: He looked at her and thought, oh, couldn't feel a
Speaker 1: Pulse's she's gone. She's dead. And he actually took her
Speaker 1: body out to the foreshore in a wheelbarrow, had burnt
Speaker 1: some stuff and essentially buried her at sea. That's his story,
Speaker 1: which probably did bury her at sea. But whether or
Speaker 1: not she fainted, the doctor gave evidence. Caroline's family doctor
Speaker 1: gave evidence that you know, back then, they seem to
Speaker 1: have inquest really quickly. Did you know that that really quickly.
Speaker 2: And then there was no bog.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it was like weeks after and that.
Speaker 2: Wasn't clogged by legal process and lawyers and scientific stuff.
Speaker 1: They just banged it on and they had all the witnesses,
Speaker 1: you know.
Speaker 2: As a clerical exit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you can get quite a lot of information
Speaker 1: from that. But the family gp gave evidence. I've never
Speaker 1: known Caroline to have fainted before.
Speaker 2: So these sort of crimes are as old as time,
Speaker 2: aren't they. We see versions of them every you know,
Speaker 2: there's been that big money in Queensland and other places
Speaker 2: where usually hasband kill's wife, sometimes the other way around,
Speaker 2: usually because of a third party.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and who knows what the argument was about probably understandably,
Speaker 1: Caroline was probably frustrated because he's you know, off with.
Speaker 2: You know or nearly always money and see yeah, and.
Speaker 1: Reading between the lines of all the information, I think
Speaker 1: Caroline was probably reluctant to sell the Frankston home. That
Speaker 1: that is what it sounded like. But look, he ended
Speaker 1: up he pled to lesser charges of I think the
Speaker 1: charge was interfering with the coroner's ability to you know.
Speaker 2: So what sort of time did he get?
Speaker 1: He did about three years, not too long, and then
Speaker 1: he ended up actually back up in Queensland married to
Speaker 1: Jene Baker.
Speaker 2: This underlines a theory I've got that sentences have not
Speaker 2: got a laxa. They've gone the other way. When you
Speaker 2: go back in time, you think that's amazing. You'd get
Speaker 2: three times that now, Yeah, it is amazing.
Speaker 1: Well, especially with some of the episodes you do where
Speaker 1: I was listening to one about like completely heinous murders
Speaker 1: of young women and the two guys kind of got
Speaker 1: out pretty quickly.
Speaker 2: Naughty Rosalind. Yeah, that's one of the worst murders anywhere
Speaker 2: in the world ever, shocking torture murder. They were both
Speaker 2: out before they were forty they've gone in nineteen or twenty.
Speaker 2: They are out at the age of thirty nine. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and I should have had the key just never never
Speaker 2: to be released.
Speaker 1: You'd never be released now, well, shouldn't be. I thought
Speaker 1: you'd find interesting though as well. Is the homicide Squad
Speaker 1: at the time. There's probably some names. You know. There
Speaker 1: was a guy called Frank Bluey.
Speaker 2: Adams, Yes, and so it was famous.
Speaker 1: And then when I was, you know, like researching, I
Speaker 1: thought I need to I need to mention this. I'm
Speaker 1: not saying that the homicide Squad did not do their
Speaker 1: investigation properly, but later on some of those guys were
Speaker 1: embroiled in the Big abortion inquiry.
Speaker 2: Ordon Matthews, Jack Ford and Jack Matthews, the two Jacks.
Speaker 1: So they were like getting you know, oh, kickbacks because
Speaker 1: doctors and that didn't want to be jailed for performing abortion.
Speaker 2: There were, yeah, there were abortioners who paid homicide Squad
Speaker 2: to possibly refer not only protect them, but bring clients,
Speaker 2: of whom there were plenty, because that's how it went then.
Speaker 2: Now it's something that I've never done much of, but
Speaker 2: you know a bit about it. They're strange cases of
Speaker 2: people snatching babies now there's been the meaning relatively recent times.
Speaker 2: There's one involving would you believe one of the big
Speaker 2: Calabrian families, funnily enough, funnily enough by chance.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they picked the wrong baby, that's for sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Barbara, one of the Barbaras of all the people
Speaker 2: in all the world. That's a bart bro baby. But anyway,
Speaker 2: tell us about the baby snatching story and you've got
Speaker 2: a long chapter here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's quite a few cases. And look there was
Speaker 1: in the nineties. There was some really big cases in
Speaker 1: the UK that really exposed deficiencies in hospital security. But
Speaker 1: I did one even further back because I read about
Speaker 1: this case years ago and I just farted away. It
Speaker 1: was actually a young woman, a waitress snatched a baby
Speaker 1: from a hospital in Sydney in the nineteen forties because
Speaker 1: she just wanted a baby and she just rocked on
Speaker 1: in and after a dance and took this baby.
Speaker 2: A psychological thing that affects.
Speaker 1: Some definitely mostly women. And there is a theme with
Speaker 1: the big UK cases, like Abbie Humphreys was one. I
Speaker 1: mean it was massive. They're women who have experienced usually
Speaker 1: a loss like a child loss or a pregnancy loss.
Speaker 1: Then you've got probably mixed in there, some mental ill health,
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff, you know. Or trying to keep
Speaker 1: a relationship is another theme that they fake pregnancies to
Speaker 1: try and keep a relationship. But so there's a few
Speaker 1: of those. I kind of went, I went pretty wild
Speaker 1: with this chapter. I just found it interesting. I even
Speaker 1: touched on the Lindbergh kidnapping only because that was probably
Speaker 1: the most famous of.
Speaker 2: Of course time, one of the biggest.
Speaker 1: Crimes, biggest crimes ever. And you know, there's a lot
Speaker 1: of theories about what happened there, you know, But I
Speaker 1: did find one locally, because you know, I grew up
Speaker 1: in the Outer East and I live out that way.
Speaker 1: There was one in lily Dale in the nineteen seven
Speaker 1: really nineteen seventy six, remind yeah, and actually just it
Speaker 1: was probably a few months before I was born. I
Speaker 1: am getting along in The.
Speaker 2: Truth was after I started work, sadly.
Speaker 1: Doing all that great reporting. Well, what happened was as
Speaker 1: a family they're living in Lilia, which you know, the
Speaker 1: gateway to the Arra Valley, you know, an out of suburb.
Speaker 1: The couple have got three children, they've got their new
Speaker 1: two week old baby was born at the probably either
Speaker 1: the William Angus Hospital or I think there was a
Speaker 1: lily Dale Bush Hospital back then. Back then, and you know,
Speaker 1: back in the day, you'd have all the baby announcements
Speaker 1: in the paper and it's all I think I had
Speaker 1: one in the Leader when I had my younger daughter.
Speaker 1: But you know, just going about the day. It's like
Speaker 1: in the morning, midweek, the mom's got you know, the
Speaker 1: little kids, and she's feeding the baby and there's a
Speaker 1: knock on the door and one of the children goes
Speaker 1: to answer answer it. They're under ten, these kids, and
Speaker 1: there's a woman at the door, you know, wanting to
Speaker 1: speak to the mum and saying, oh, my name's Sue,
Speaker 1: I'm here to take the baby, check the baby, and
Speaker 1: she actually entered the home. But it took a really
Speaker 1: dark turn here. So this woman threw pepper in the
Speaker 1: woman's face her name was Janine, who has the newborn
Speaker 1: baby and the two other kids, and held a button
Speaker 1: knife to her back and forced her into the kitchen
Speaker 1: and basically tied her up with you know the kind
Speaker 1: of sticking plasty use for like jeris plasts, that kind
Speaker 1: of stuff. I mean, it was completely horrendous. Slashed the
Speaker 1: telephone card and basically grabbed the baby, ran to the carport,
Speaker 1: absolutely terrifying. So she'd put the younger children in a bedroom.
Speaker 1: So this mother, I mean, I cannot imagine the terror,
Speaker 1: like I having had my own kids, just that absolute terror,
Speaker 1: broke free and ran to the neighbors. The baby's gone,
Speaker 1: called the police, called her husband. It's absolutely all systems go,
Speaker 1: and the police are pleading going. This is a young baby.
Speaker 1: The baby is breastfed, it's in danger. So the husband
Speaker 1: obviously spoke for the wife. There's a fair bit of
Speaker 1: press coverage about this. I mean, I think things are
Speaker 1: a bit looser back then. Yeah, with like access to
Speaker 1: families or just a bit more impromptu. It's not as
Speaker 1: polished as it was, but still seemed extremely effective, you know.
Speaker 1: And they just pleaded, please bring our baby back. Interestingly,
Speaker 1: once police had started doing investigations, they found out from
Speaker 1: talking to the parents of the stolen baby that a
Speaker 1: woman had called the house and claimed to know the mum.
Speaker 1: He said, oh, my name's Sue, I know the mom
Speaker 1: from you know, the hospital, and the dad's like, well,
Speaker 1: we don't know anyone of that name. But it turns
Speaker 1: out the abductress, the woman who abducted the baby had
Speaker 1: actually been calling people literally from you know, looking at
Speaker 1: the birth notices just so she's kind of punting, well
Speaker 1: organized hunting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's a sort of an irrational mad crime,
Speaker 2: and yet she'd gone about it very rationally.
Speaker 1: This is the thing.
Speaker 2: It was completely yeah, fairly well planned.
Speaker 1: I feel like it was, you know, a bit rudimentary,
Speaker 1: but she, you know, she threw the pepper in the
Speaker 1: face and did all that.
Speaker 2: You went prepared.
Speaker 1: She went prepared, and you know, there was a fair
Speaker 1: bit of planning going on in like calling and looking.
Speaker 1: And so a few days later, so the baby's missing.
Speaker 1: But a few days later they get a call. Now
Speaker 1: I couldn't find out exactly who had made that call,
Speaker 1: but I think it's pretty safe to say it was
Speaker 1: the hut of the woman who had taken the baby,
Speaker 1: because this is where it gets a bit weird, weirder
Speaker 1: than horrifying than usual. You've got to maintain a facade
Speaker 1: of being pregnant, right, like if you're suddenly coming home
Speaker 1: with a baby. So it turns out that the woman
Speaker 1: who'd taken the baby was from Tacoma, up in the hills,
Speaker 1: a thirty six year old woman called Elsie Robison. She
Speaker 1: already had six kids, and you know, pretty sure her
Speaker 1: husband was the one who called and said, okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: we've got this baby here. And she told him that
Speaker 1: she had given birth at the angles and then you know,
Speaker 1: been discharged so like within a day. But also the
Speaker 1: baby's two weeks old, and I thought, if you've got
Speaker 1: six kids, surely you can tell a bit if.
Speaker 2: It's like had some sense of it. Yeah, look, it
Speaker 2: seems someone who's seen all those new ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, the real freshies.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's so good that the family were reunited. But the
Speaker 1: story of why this woman did it is it's really interesting.
Speaker 1: It's believed that she was having a phantom pregnancy. Now
Speaker 1: I had to do a bit of research. It's apparently
Speaker 1: a thing where you know, maybe you really want a
Speaker 1: baby so much, or you think you might be pregnant,
Speaker 1: and you know it's a psychological thing, but you know,
Speaker 1: you have a scan and you can't deny if there's
Speaker 1: not a little fetus in there. You can't you know,
Speaker 1: fake it. But the psychological thing is so strong and
Speaker 1: it can actually mimic symptoms in your body of pregnancy,
Speaker 1: like your period stops or you know, other things. But
Speaker 1: going back to when I said about the baby being
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks old, it did go to court
Speaker 1: and the police prosecutor did ask Elsie Robison's husband about
Speaker 1: the fact that the baby his wife presented to him
Speaker 1: at home saying oh, look, we've got a new child,
Speaker 1: was not a new bond and he said, I could
Speaker 1: not tell the difference between a brand spanking new baby
Speaker 1: and one that was two weeks old. And I just noted,
Speaker 1: that's a bit odd considering you've got six kids. I
Speaker 1: don't know, I thought that was a bit strange. But
Speaker 1: she told him she gone into labor at the Anglos
Speaker 1: Hospital that morning and was just discharged the same day.
Speaker 2: Covering up the fact that he hadn't immediately collected.
Speaker 1: And I think it look, it must be a shock,
Speaker 1: Like I mean, honestly, if your your wife is stealing
Speaker 1: a baby, you're pretty unwell. And you know, she thought
Speaker 1: she was pregnant, but then she'd had tubal ligation six
Speaker 1: years before. It's kind of all a bit shady, but
Speaker 1: you know, she really wanted another baby, so I think
Speaker 1: there was a bit of trauma that her husband had said, hey,
Speaker 1: we've got enough kids. Like, let's, you know, sort it out.
Speaker 1: They'd explored fostering and adoption. They actually even had a
Speaker 1: foster baby who'd stayed with them for six months, but
Speaker 1: then they had to return that baby, and so that
Speaker 1: was traumatic. So I sort of see how this.
Speaker 2: Sort of loss of yeah, ligation, yeah, painting the other
Speaker 2: one baby.
Speaker 1: It's all happening. But they, as I said, the detectives
Speaker 1: found out that she had been making phone calls to
Speaker 1: other parents, pretending to have a legitimate reason to visit
Speaker 1: their homes, trying to say, oh, maybe I'm a visit
Speaker 1: nurse nurse. I don't know what they called them back then, mothercraft.
Speaker 2: Nurses or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, she didn't get jail timing. Mostly these women need
Speaker 1: intensive psychological help, and well that's.
Speaker 2: The system was actually, I think pretty tolerant of women
Speaker 2: with problems in Fanticide was on the books, and any
Speaker 2: child that was killed by its mother under a certain age,
Speaker 2: under twelve months or something, it was written off as infanticide,
Speaker 2: not murder, and the penalties were much lower. It was
Speaker 2: sort of a recognized thing that sort of a de
Speaker 2: facto acknowledgment.
Speaker 1: Of postpartum depression or psychosist.
Speaker 2: Post always always recognized it in a way.
Speaker 1: In some ways, I feel like courts were more woke
Speaker 1: back there, like a bit more understanding or there was
Speaker 1: a probably a ground swell at that time as well
Speaker 1: to have more understanding about mental health. I think from
Speaker 1: the tush days it was.
Speaker 2: But yeah, there was discretion magistration. Judges had discretion, and
Speaker 2: I think they used it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, she was committed to stand trial. She was
Speaker 1: released on bail. Her husband gave assurance, I'll keep an
Speaker 1: eye on airy. Change the way he worked so he
Speaker 1: could be at home, you know, like probably had to
Speaker 1: travel a bit being in uplay to like go to
Speaker 1: wherever he worked. He rearranged his hours. She pleaded guilty
Speaker 1: to abduction, but not guilty to aggravated burglary. I thought
Speaker 1: the aggravated part of what she did was actually extremely serious,
Speaker 1: like you know, let alone just taking a baby and
Speaker 1: tying I'm in terrifying, absolutely terrifying, And she showed a
Speaker 1: lot of remorse. Four years probation. But the judge did
Speaker 1: say his name is Roland Lackey, and her use of
Speaker 1: forced it against the mother was appalling. You know, it
Speaker 1: caused appalling distress. But you know, then the newspapers followed
Speaker 1: up after the court case, and that a photo of
Speaker 1: a like the the woman who'd abducted the baby with
Speaker 1: her youngest child was probably about five or six, sort
Speaker 1: of you know, hugging her and you know, I feel terrible,
Speaker 1: you know, something that just built up. So the journals
Speaker 1: are like interviewing it, going what the hell happened? She
Speaker 1: wanted to personally apologize, but she couldn't face her and
Speaker 1: well that's really all I could find after that. But
Speaker 1: I just found it. I was like, that's just scary.
Speaker 1: It's like one of those chilling suburban crimes, like completely wild.
Speaker 1: But you know, who knows what her mental health was like,
Speaker 1: presumably she got some help.
Speaker 2: A lot of crime it's happening to the people next door.
Speaker 2: You know, that's.
Speaker 1: Mushroom murders, I mean exactly. You know, the more I
Speaker 1: think about that, the more I hear and I listened
Speaker 1: in a bit to the pre sentencing stuff, it's actually
Speaker 1: so chilling. Like the more I hear about what happened
Speaker 1: to those poor people and what Aaron Patterson did, I
Speaker 1: find it terrifying. I cannot lie, Like it's so scary.
Speaker 2: She with melos a forethought for months, as long as
Speaker 2: if she sort of got out of bed one morning
Speaker 2: and said, I'm going to do this, got to cook
Speaker 2: a florid episode of she planned it for a long time.
Speaker 1: And the ripple effect, you know, like you think about
Speaker 1: the trauma, the terrifying nature of what happens. Your baby's abducted,
Speaker 1: You're tied up, You're like just in bits for two days,
Speaker 1: you know, listening to and hearing what some of the
Speaker 1: witness statements were in the Aaron Patterson case. You know,
Speaker 1: just the fallout for everyone. You know, the children will
Speaker 1: have to see their mother in jail, Like why, I
Speaker 1: just keep thinking, why would you do that? If you're
Speaker 1: a devoted mother?
Speaker 2: Why? Yes, there's something loose there. Yeah, Emily, member, is
Speaker 2: it fair to say that anyone who wants your new book,
Speaker 2: Murdering the Suburbs can get it from all good bookstores
Speaker 2: and all bad ones as well and online.
Speaker 1: Correct? It is in quite a few bookstores. I know
Speaker 1: it's in the bigger name ones, but you can also
Speaker 1: go into your little indie and request it to be ordered,
Speaker 1: and also your library. You can go and ask your
Speaker 1: library to order it.
Speaker 2: Recommended retail price it's.
Speaker 1: About thirty that sounds yeah, different places looks about thirty Yeah,
Speaker 1: like different places do different they do.
Speaker 2: And thanks for telling us that. One next week you're
Speaker 2: going to come back again and talk to us. I
Speaker 2: think about some poisoning cases.
Speaker 1: Certainly am I have a chapter.
Speaker 2: In the book Poisoning with a Twist. Yes, thanks for listening.
Speaker 2: Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for
Speaker 2: true crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns,
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