Yahoo Lifestyle Shock confession: I know who killed the Beaumont children
It’s a mystery as baffling as the disappearance of the Beaumont children, who vanished ‘off the face of the Earth’ on a carefree trip to the beach 50 years ago.
Ex-policeman Mostyn Matters has been haunted by the Beaumont affair ever since the children’s distraught father, Jim, reported their disappearance on Australia Day 1966.
‘It was a chaotic situation. ‘Really, we didn’t have anything to go on except the normal crackpots. There were no clues, no witnesses and no bodies,’ recalls Mostyn, then a young constable stationed at seaside Glenelg in Adelaide.
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The Beaumont children
It was a sweltering morning that fateful January 26 when the three youngsters – ‘mother hen’ Jane, aged nine, Arnna, seven, and four-year-old Grant – set off on a short bus ride to the beach.
A local postman, Tom Patterson, saw the laughing children strolling away from the beach at around 3pm, seemingly unconcerned that they were already several hours late.
But there the trail ended – until authors Alan Whiticker and Stuart Mullins built a convincing case against a wealthy, well-connected Adelaide industrialist they dubbed ‘The Satin Man’.
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Their main points included that he matched the description of the mystery man playing with the children, he was an alleged paedophile, he lived within the very small triangle of streets where the Beaumonts were last sighted, and the man's own son claims he saw the children in his father's backyard the day they disappeared.
Fifty years later, there is still no definite answer as to what became of the children – despite the involvement of a Dutch clairvoyant, numerous false leads, a few Beaumont ‘pretenders’ few Beaumont ‘pretenders’ and a $200,000 reward.
For years, the children's grief-stricken mother, Nancy, would quietly visit a Glenelg pub. Locals knew not to disturb her solitude, but would comfort her whenever she told them: ‘I miss my children.’
Read the full story in New Idea, out now.
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