The Murchison Murders Read online

  Returning to Narndee later, Manning, with Constable Hearn, Mr. Bogle, part-owner and manager of Narndee, and Douglas Bell, a half-caste who had worked for Ryan before Ryan left for Burracoppin, motored down to Challi Bore, Ryan’s camp, and there discovered eight sites of fires similar to that at the 183-mile Rabbit Department Reserve, among the ashes of which were found eyelets of boots or shoes, metal parts of an accordion (Lloyd had owned one), and a quantity of bones burned and broken up so small as to defy any expert to say if they were human or animal remains.

  Now there were three men of whom nothing could be learned after they had been last seen in the company of this “Snowy” Rowles. To Manning, as to any other reasoning man, it now appeared that among the facts he had gleaned were those that strongly supported the assumption that Rowles was a murderer thrice over. Motive was evident – the motive of gain. Rowles owned a truck possessed formerly by one of two mates, and he had cashed a cheque made out for wages paid to a third man. Certain relics had been found at the 183-mile Rabbit Department Reserve among the ashes of a big fire, and at Challi Bore eight big fires had consumed at the least boots and or shoes and an accordion.

  It admits of little doubt that sergeant Manning and the two constables were convinced that Louis Carron’s body had been destroyed at the 183-mile Government Reserve and that Ryan and Lloyd had been similarly destroyed at Challi Bore. Being bushmen they arrived at certain facts:

  Three men had disappeared.

  Each of the three when last seen alive was in the company of Rowles. At Ryan’s camp near Challi Bore were the sites of eight large fires, and the very first question which arose was: What had been burned in those eight fires? Answer: Boots, clothing and an accordion. Assuming that Ryan and Lloyd decided, preparatory to leaving, to jettison worn boots and clothes, and that the accordion having in some manner been broken, it was also discarded, still, as bushmen leaving a temporary camp they most certainly would not have gone to the trouble of burning those articles. They would have dropped them to the ground, packed up the necessary gear, and left. Only one construction could be put upon the action of the man who lit those fires. He wished to destroy something of vital import, something that would prove that Ryan and Lloyd no longer lived, no longer required boots and clothes and an accordion.

  (This contrary to Mr. Curran’s remarks at the inquest that no man wishing to destroy evidence of a crime would do so in the vicinity of a hut.) The locality of the 183-mile Reserve was an ideal one for the purpose. Lance Maddison, the boundary rider, stated that he never camped there. There was no fresh water. The hut was half a mile west of the fence, and bushmen do not travel one full mile without necessity. His duty compelled him to visit the hut – but not the bore – twice every year to effect repairs. None but Maddison went there.

  A Bush Detective’s Conclusions

  Manning’s probable reasoning might be put thus:

  “Assuming that a man intended to copy the details of Upfield’s murder plot, and that he burned the body of his victim in the open bush, the first stockman who chanced to pass the site of the fire would examine the ashes, and would logically ask himself: ‘What fool went to the trouble of burning a kangaroo here?’

  “In Central Australia kangaroo-shooters would not earn tobacco money if they spent time burning the carcases of kangaroos in the open bush; but they most certainly would burn carcases of animals they shot near a dwelling or a water-dam to destroy pollution.

  “Whoever burned Carron’s body near the hut and bore at the 183-mile Reserve knew the plot of Upfield’s book, and appreciated the value – to himself – of allaying suspicion regarding a fire site. Wherever he destroyed Carron’s body, he had to create a false reason as to the purpose of the fire, besides providing a superficial reason for the situation of the fire.

  “That Government Reserve is an excellent place in two respects. Those respects are applicable also to Challi Bore. Maddison at the hut, and Ryan at his camp, would assuredly burn carcases from time to time: Maddison from duly, Ryan for his own health. Maddison would burn carcases of kangaroos that had lingered at the bore – smelling the water till they died; and Ryan would burn the carcases of kangaroos he shot during his work and took into his camp for meat; mutton from Narndee not being regularly purchased. At both places would be a quantity of animal bones, and at both places the burning of animal bones would be a normal task.

  “To sum up: Whoever destroyed those three men had first to find a place where a fire would not arouse suspicion, and had then to avert suspicion of the real reason of the fires by providing evidence that kangaroo carcases had been burned for a normal reason. Both at Challi Bore and the Reserve a chance visitor would remark that at the former Ryan had left a clean camp, and at the letter the boundary-rider had recently done his work.

  “It remains to be explained, if only animal carcases were destroyed, why the burned bones should further have been broken up small.”

  By this, or an almost similar chain of reasoning, Sergeant Manning would be entitled to argue that the man calling himself “Snowy” Rowles either had killed the three men for their small property effect, or knew what had become of them. If Rowles had indeed killed those three, he must have planned to do so. It was highly improbable that he would be roused to three separate killings by passion or on abnormal impulse. It the first assumption was correct, Rowles must be thoroughly cold blooded and callous – a cunning and highly dangerous personality.

  Rounding Up Rowles

  So it came about that Sergeant Manning and Constables Hearn and Penn travelled to Hill View Station, dressed in worn bushmen’s clothing. There they learned that Rowles was stationed at the outcamp several miles from the homestead: and, instead of travelling direct to the outcamp, they made a wide detour, planning to reach the outcamp from the opposite direction and at a time when Rowles would be out on his work. Had Rowles been at home he would have thought the police officers were merely kangaroo shooters, or prospectors.

  But Rowles was not at his hut when the police arrived, and it was not until 2.30 on the following afternoon that he drove up in a sulky. Manning then was a little distance away in the bush; but the other two policemen were nearby their car. Rowles began to unharness his horse from the sulky, and whilst he led it away Constable Hearn took from the back of the sulky a 0.22 bore rifle. Having let the horse go, Rowles returned to the sulky, where Hearn was casually examining the rifle, and Penn and Manning converged upon him.

  Manning then recognised Rowles as a man wanted for gaol-breaking, whose name was John Thomas Smith, Manning said:

  “How long have you been known as Rowles?”

  To which Rowles replied: “You know very well who I am, and if I had known who you were, you wouldn’t have got me so easily.”

  Manning said that, they were looking for a man named Carron, who was last seen in his, Rowles’s, company. They were also looking for James Ryan and George Lloyd.

  “What are you trying to put over me now, Manning?” Rowles demanded.

  To which the Detective-Sergeant counter-questioned: “Where did you get the utility truck over in the shed?”

  “I bought it from Ryan,” Rowels said. “I can soon satisfy you on that point.”

  It appears that there was a small box nailed to the door of the hut, in which the key was left; and when the door had been opened they all entered the hut, where Manning and Hearn each picked up a 0.32-bore rifle, both weapons proving to be loaded. Manning asked Rowles if everything in the hut was his property, and Rowles said it was, excepting the rifles, a sewing machine, and a gramophone.

  Permission then was given the suspect to cook for himself a meal, and whilst he was doing this the police began searching the hut. A pair of hair-clippers found in a drawer of the sewing-machine (a most unusual object to be found in a stockman’s hut) Rowles said he had bought from one Sher Ali for 12/6. On a high shelf was a parcel wrapped in newspaper. When one of the policemen reached for it, Rowles said:

  “Where the
hell did you get that? I know nothing about it.”

  The parcel contained a wrist-watch, three shirts, a razor marked as being made expressly for a firm in New Zealand, a watch-chain, and a pair of scissors.

  Later the police went to the utility truck with Rowles, and found set in the dashboard an open-faced watch that Rowles said was there when he bought the truck from Ryan.

  Without doubt these two watches furnished the most damning evidence against Rowles. Both bore marks that Manning traced to the Perth jewellers, Levinson & Sons. The marks made on each watch tallied with record cards that proved that the firm had received the watches from Louis J. Carron, Wydgee Station, on April 11, 1930, and that, as was the custom, the watches had been returned to Carron in particular boxes, held by certain wire stitches.

  At a later date, it transpired, Rowles himself sent the watches to Fleming & Co., of Mount Magnet, who dispatched them to Levinson & Sons. There could be no argument, therefore, that Rowles did not know what the parcel he disowned contained.

  After Rowles had eaten a meal he asked to be allowed to change his moleskin trousers and flannel into a blue serge suit. Detective-Sergeant Manning pointed out that it was hardly necessary, for he had a long dusty ride ahead; but Rowles persisted, and was allowed to change before the car journey to Meekathara was started, a distance of approximately 80 miles.

  Statements and Admissions

  The following morning Detective-Sergeant Manning visited Snowy Rowles in the Meekathara gaol and obtained a statement from him regarding his association with Louis J. Carron, and a second statement regarding his association with James Ryan and George Lloyd. When Rowles had signed these two long documents, he said:

  “What are you going to do with the truck?” Then: “A man must have a kink to do this sort of thing. I am sorry I did not take my old lady’s advice.” (This sounds genuine, since Rowles always referred to his mother as “my old lady.”) “She wanted me to give myself up when I escaped from Dalwallinu, and if I’d taken her advice I would have had that all over by now, and would not have had this other thing to face.

  “What other thing are you referring to?” Manning asked, for Rowles had not then been charged with murder but with goal-breaking.

  “Oh,” replied Rowles; “the less said about that, the better.” Subsequently Rowles was taken to Perth and charged with breaking and entering, and sentenced to three years’ imprisonment. Had Rowles not committed burglary, the Crown doubtless would have been obliged to arraign him on a capital charge at the June Criminal Sessions, 1930, when time would not have permitted the attendance of three important New Zealand witnesses.

  Where Rowles Failed

  Months of hard work followed the arrest of Snowy Rowles for breaking gaol at Dalwallinu. The correspondence with the New Zealand police regarding identification of the teeth and the ring found among the ashes near a lonely bush hut was enormous. Since the witnesses, Mrs. Brown (Carron’s wife), Mr. Sims, the dentist, and Mr. Long, the jeweller, could not be extradited, they could but be persuaded to travel to Western Australia in the interests of justice. Their expenses and remuneration for loss of time in their businesses cost the State £1,000.

  Eminent pathologists studied the bones Sergeant Manning had brought down from the Murchison. The Government Pathologist would not say if the pieces of skull bone belonged once to the head of a white man or a blackfellow, but after further study Dr. McKenzie gave it as his opinion that the hones belonged to the skull of a while man.

  And those few bones that were fitted together into larger pieces were the only human bones identifiable from the remains of three men. Had the slayer of Louis J. Carron further broken up the pieces of skull – as it can pardonably he assumed that he did in the case of the bones of Ryan and Lloyd – it could not have been proved that a human body had been destroyed at the 183-mile reserve. Had the slayer of Carron sieved the ashes for those metal objects he would have escaped the net Manning drew around him with quiet persistence; for the Crown had to prove that Carron’s remains were among the ashes before it could hope to prove that Rowles had killed him.

  That Rowles did not smash into smaller pieces those few portions of a human skull, that he did not carefully through the ashes for metal objects, can only be attributed to his belief that that those three men from Central Australia’s floating population would never be missed; and that, after all, the care with which he destroyed Ryan and Lloyd was not necessary with regard to Carron.

  Pre-Trial Impressions

  The most sensational murder trial in the history of West Australia came before Mr. Justice Draper and a jury on Thursday, March 10, and continued until late on the following Saturday week. An unusual feature of the case was that Rowles’s defence was being kept a close secret, despite the efforts of keen pressmen to get a “line” on it. Public interest was enormous, and public opinion – created by the inquest – was heavily against the accused man, even in the botanical gardens surrounding the Court, where I waited my call as one of the many witnesses.

  Sitting on a seat beneath an English oak from which the acorns were falling, with the cooing of a dove, the twittering of several pigeons and numerous small birds in my ears, my mind was oppressed by a sense of unreality – as though I dreamed an ill dream, yet was fully conscious I was dreaming. Sometimes that glimpse of the interior of the court, revealing to me the tense faces of the jurymen, indicated that there was being staged a theatrical drama, for which all the actors had been released, and myself one of them; that it was a play within a play; and that presently it would be over, and we all would then realise how great a play it had been. But, the ever-present dread lurking at the back of the mind, like the knowledge that one is only dreaming, produced a kind of stunning horror that banished from the play-goer the gay mood of the play.

  The sense of unreality was combined with a depressing sense of inevitability. I was like the man to whom the future has been revealed. I knew that presently I should hear my name called in a loud voice, as it were an actor summoned by a call-boy. But beyond that point I knew nothing. The actor has had experience; he knows just what he will see when he goes on the stage, and what he will say. I had had no previous experience of a court-room, nor had I the slightest idea of the questions I should be asked. Doubtless questions would be put for the purpose of trapping me, and if I wished to avoid being trapped I must remain clear-headed. Panic seized me for a little while when I found that I could not remember several dates that had been burned on my brain by constant repetition.

  New impressions gained ascendancy. The power of the law became something tangible, shaping, like an octopus. Within that great stone building lived an octopus whose many tentacles had reached as far away as the Murchison, and farther still, to New Zealand.

  A tentacle had come out writhing, feeling for and fastening about a young man whose gameness and sunny nature had made him ever a welcome guest. And with terrible quickness the tentacle had been withdrawn, wrapped about Snowy Rowles, who never again would laughingly chase us on his motor-cycle, and make and accept outrageous bets. And other tentacles of this great octopus called the Law came outward from Perth, dexterously searching for some fifty of us, until one by one we had been found, examined, drawn from as far away as New Zealand, to testify against Snowy Rowles.

  I may state, in parenthesis, that without doubt a great majority of the Crown witnesses wanted to believe that Rowley was innocent of the charge laid against him, and would have welcomed with joy the production of proof that he was not guilty. Had it been established that he was innocent, his return to the Murchison would have been a triumphal progress.

  We witnesses knew more than those city people who had carefully read our evidence given at the inquest. We had been moving behind the scenes, as it were. We were conversant with bush conditions and the psychology of the bush people. We had been able to compare notes, which had given us a clearer understanding than the newspapers could possibly have given their readers. Rowles had said one thing to one
and something else to another, and yet a different version to a third, on one particular point. He had told so many lies. In my own experience he had told three different stories of how he acquired Ryan’s truck.

  We knew that men could disappear in the bush and their skeletons not be found for years afterwards, if ever. We knew that sometimes a member of the great floating population of Central Australia might have sound reasons for a voluntary disappearance. We knew that it would be possible – nay, probable – for Carron, Ryan, or Lloyd, to disappear voluntarily for some reason or other; but improbable, if not impossible, that three men about the same time should voluntarily disappear, and two of them give their property to “Snowy” Rowles.

  For me, as for those others, it was impossible to disassociate the disappearance of Carron from that of Ryan and Lloyd. There came the rumour that Carron had been seen at work on a station after May, 1930; but I could not give this story credence. There was no rumour that Ryan or Lloyd had been seen after they went to Challi Bore, on Narndee Station, with Rowles.

  Whilst the acorns dropped about me, whilst semi-consciously I wondered why someone did not gather them in to feed to a pig, I tried to imagine what Rowles’s defence would be. What defence could he possibly put forward? How was he going to explain his possession of those two watches? How account for the shirts of a kind not sold in Australia? How explain the strange fact that the rifle Carron look away from Wydgee Station was found in his hut on Hill View Station? How was he going to account for two full days, May 18 and 19, 1930, which he said he had spent at Windimurra homestead, and which three witnesses had said, in effect, he had not?

  If he left Carron trapping at the Windimurra homestead when he went to Paynesville to cash Carron’s cheque, why did he go direct to Youanmi from Paynesville? Why in the name of common sense did he not reply to Lemon’s telegram of inquiry when it was given to him and he knew it was a reply-paid telegram?