Beaumont children disappearance.

Jane, Grant and Arnna Beaumont, went on a family trip to the Twelve Apostles in Victoria, Australia in late 1965.
Jane Nartare Beaumont (aged 9), Arnna Kathleen Beaumont (aged 7), and Grant Ellis Beaumont (aged 4) were three siblings collectively known as The Beaumont Children who disappeared from Glenelg Beach near Adelaide, South Australia on Australia Day (26 January) 1966.

Their case resulted in one of the largest police investigations in Australian criminal history and remains Australia’s most infamous cold case.

The huge attention given to this case, its significance in Australian criminal history, and the fact that the mystery of their disappearance has never been explained, has led to the story being revisited by the press on a regular basis. It is also viewed by many social commentators as a significant event in the evolution of Australian society, with a large number of people changing the way they supervised their children on a daily basis.

Background

The beachside suburb of Glenelg, where the Beaumont children were last seen
The children lived with their parents Jim and Nancy Beaumont in Harding Street, Somerton Park, a suburb of Adelaide. Not far from their home was Glenelg, a popular beach-side resort, which the children often visited. On Australia Day 26 January 1966, a hot summer day, the children took a five-minute bus journey from their home to the beach. Jane, the eldest child, was considered responsible enough to care for the two younger children, and their parents were not concerned. They left home at 10am and were expected to return home by noon. Their mother became worried when they had still not returned by 3pm.

Police investigation.

Children with a tall, blond man.

Police investigating the case found several witnesses who had seen the children near the beach, in the company of a tall, blond man, of thin to athletic build and in his mid-30s The children were playing with him, and appeared relaxed and to be enjoying themselves. The man and the children were seen walking away from the beach some time later, which the police estimated to be around 12:15 pm. A shopkeeper reported Jane Beaumont had bought pastries and a meat pie with a £1 note around the same time.

Police viewed this as further evidence that they had been with another person, for two reasons:
The shopkeeper knew the children well from previous visits and reported that they had never purchased a meat pie before.
Mrs. Beaumont had given the children only enough coins for their bus fare and food and had not given them a £1 note. Police believed it had been given to them by somebody else.

Last confirmed sighting

At about 3 pm the children were seen walking alone, away from the beach, along Jetty Road, in the general direction of their home. The witness, a postman, knew the children well, and his statement was regarded as factual. He said the children had stopped to say hello to him, and seemed cheerful. Police could not determine why the reliable children, already three hours late, were strolling alone and seemingly unconcerned. This was the last confirmed sighting of the children.

Mr and Mrs Beaumont described their children, particularly Jane, as shy. For them to be playing so confidently with a stranger seemed out of character. Investigators theorised that the children had perhaps met the man during a previous visit or visits and had grown to trust him. A chance remark at home, which seemed nothing significant at the time, supports this theory. Arnna had told her mother that Jane had “got a boyfriend down the beach”. Mrs Beaumont thought she meant a playmate and took no further notice until after the disappearance.

Several months later a woman reported that on the night of the disappearance a man, accompanied by two girls and a boy, entered a neighbouring house that she had believed empty. Later she had seen the boy walking alone along a lane where he was pursued and roughly caught by the man. The next morning the house appeared to be deserted again, and she saw neither the man nor the children again. Police could not establish why she had failed to provide this information earlier.

Sightings of the children were reported for about a year after their disappearance. The case attracted widespread attention in Australia and is widely credited with causing a change in many people’s lifestyles. Parents began to believe that their children could no longer be presumed to be safe; earlier generations had routinely allowed their children the same freedoms the Beaumont children had enjoyed.

Psychic investigation.

The case also attracted international attention. Gerard Croiset, a parapsychologist and psychic from the Netherlands, was brought to Australia, causing a media frenzy. His search for the children proved unsuccessful, with his story changing from day to day and offering no clues. He identified a site in a warehouse near the children’s home (and also near the Paringa Park primary school attended by Jane and Arnna) in which he believed the children’s bodies had been buried. At the time of their disappearance it had been a building site, and he said that he believed their bodies were buried under new concrete, inside the remains of an old brick kiln. The property owners, who were reluctant to excavate on the basis of a psychic’s claim, soon bowed to public pressure after publicity raised A$40,000 to have the building demolished. No remains, or any evidence linking to any of the Beaumont family, were found. Police established that between the three children they were carrying 17 individual items, including clothing, towels, and bags, but none of these items were ever found.

Later, in 1996, the building identified by Croiset was undergoing partial demolition and the owners allowed for a full search of the site. Once again no trace was found of the children.

False letters.

About two years after the disappearance, the Beaumont parents received two letters supposedly written by Jane, and another by a man who said he was keeping the children. The envelopes showed a postmark of Dandenong, Victoria. The brief notes describe a relatively pleasant existence and refer to “The Man” who was keeping them. Police believed at the time that the letters could quite likely have been authentic after comparing them with others written by Jane. The letter from “The Man” said that he had appointed himself “guardian” of the children and was willing to hand them back to their parents. In the letter a meeting place was nominated.

Mr and Mrs Beaumont, followed by a detective, drove to the designated place but nobody appeared. It was some time later that the second letter purported to be from Jane, arrived. It said that the man had been willing to return them, but when he realised a disguised detective was also there, he decided that the Beaumonts had betrayed his trust and that he would keep the children. There were no further letters. Some 25 years later, new forensic examinations of the letters showed they were a hoax. Fingerprint technology had improved and the author was identified as a 41-year-old man who had been a teenager at the time and had written the letters as a joke. Because of the time that had elapsed, he was not charged with any offence.

The parents.

The Beaumonts received a lot of sympathy from the Australian public. It was never suggested that the children should not have been allowed to travel unsupervised, or that Mr. Beaumont and Mrs. Beaumont were in any way negligent as parents, simply because at that time in Australian society it was taken for granted that this was safe and acceptable.

They remained at their Somerton Park home for many years. Mrs Beaumont in particular held hope that the children would return and stated in interviews that it would be “dreadful” if the children returned home and did not find their parents waiting for them. Over many years, as new leads and new theories emerged, the Beaumonts co-operated fully in exploring every possibility, whether it was claims that the children had been abducted by a religious cult and were living variously in New Zealand, Melbourne, or Tasmania, or some clue that suggested a possible burial site for the children. Every search for their bodies failed to provide any further information. In recent years, the couple has sold the home and moved away, and while the case remains open, the South Australian Police Force remains informed of the couple’s address. The Beaumonts divorced and are living separately. They are reported to have accepted that the truth may never be discovered, and have resolved to live their final years away from the public attention that followed them for decades. They were devastated in 1990 when newspapers published computer-generated photographs of how Jane, Arnna and Grant would have looked as adults. The pictures, published against their wishes (Nancy Beaumont refused to look at them), caused a huge backlash of public sympathy from a community which is still sensitive to their pain.

This case has never been closed.