It’s 1935, Anzac Day. A shark on display at Coogee Aquarium disgorges a human arm which sets off a series of events too improbable for crime fiction. A medical examination of the arm reveals it was cut from the missing body with knife, and the focus of the investigation turns to murder. This incredible story takes place among the backdrop of Sydney’s criminal underworld and proves that truth really is stranger than fiction.
Sydney in 1935 was under attack from the sea. The shark was public enemy number one and bounty hunters were employed to help rid beaches of the menace. But there is one shark story from that year that still reverberates through popular memory and has become notorious in the criminal history of Australia.
On 25 April 1935 when a human arm was regurgitated by a captive 3.5-metre tiger shark. The tiger shark had been caught 3 kilometres from the beach suburb of Coogee in mid-April and transferred to the Coogee Aquarium Baths, where it was put on public display. Within a week the fish became ill and vomited in front of a small crowd, leaving the left forearm of a man bearing a distinctive tattoo floating in the pool. Before it was captured, the tiger shark had devoured a smaller shark. It was this smaller shark that had originally swallowed the human arm. The Shark Arm case had begun.
Fingerprints lifted from the hand soon identified the arm as that of former boxer and small-time criminal James (Jim) Smith, (born England 1890), who had been missing since April 7, 1935. Smith's arm and tattoo were also positively identified by his wife Gladys and his brother Edward Smith. Jim Smith lived dangerously, as he was also a police informer. Examination revealed that the limb had been severed with a knife, which led to a murder investigation. Three days later, the aquarium owners killed the shark and gutted it, hampering the initial police investigation.
Early inquiries correctly led police to a Sydney businessman named Reginald William Lloyd Holmes (1892-1935). Holmes was a fraudster and smuggler who also ran a successful family boat-building business at Lavender Bay, New South Wales . Holmes had employed Smith several times to work insurance scams, including one in 1934 in which an over-insured pleasure cruiser named Pathfinder was sunk near Terrigal, New South Wales. Shortly afterward, the pair began a racket with Patrick John Brady, a convicted forger and ex-serviceman (born Rozelle NSW, 18 October 1893). With specimen signatures from Holmes' friends and clients provided by the boat-builder, Brady would forge cheques for small amounts against their bank accounts that he and Smith would then cash. Police were later able to establish that Jim Smith was blackmailing the wealthy Reginald Holmes.
Jim Smith was last seen drinking and playing cards with Patrick Brady at the Cecil Hotel in the southern Sydney suburb of Cronulla on 7 April 1935 after telling his wife he was going fishing. Patrick Brady had rented a small cottage in Taloombi Street, Cronulla at the time Jim Smith went missing. Police alleged that Smith was murdered at this cottage.
Port Hacking and Gunnamatta Bay were searched by the Navy and the Air Force, but the rest of Smith's body was never found. This caused problems for the prosecution when Brady was eventually brought to trial.
Patrick Brady was arrested on 16 May and charged with the murder of Smith. A taxi driver testified that he had taken Patrick Brady from Cronulla to Holmes' address at 3 Bay View Street, McMahons Point, New South Wales on the day Smith had gone missing, and that "he was dishevelled, he had a hand in a pocket and wouldn't take it out... it was clear that [he] was frightened."
Holmes's statement to police.
Initially, Holmes denied any association with Patrick Brady but four days later, on 20 May 1935, the businessman went into his boatshed and attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head with a .32 calibre pistol. However, the bullet flattened against the bone of the forehead and he was merely stunned. Revived by a fall into the water, he crawled into his speedboat and led two police launches on a chase around Sydney Harbour for several hours until he was finally caught and taken to hospital.
In early June 1935, Reginald Holmes decided to cooperate with the police investigating the murder of Smith. He told Detective Sergeant Frank Matthews that Patrick Brady had killed Jim Smith, dismembered his body and stowed it into a trunk that he had then thrown into Gunnamatta Bay. He then claimed Patrick Brady had come to his home, showed him the severed arm and threatened Holmes with murder if he did not receive ₤500 immediately. Holmes also admitted that after Brady had left his home, he travelled to the Sydney coastal suburb of Maroubra and discarded Smith's arm into the surf.
On 11 June 1935, Holmes withdrew £500 from his account and late in the evening left home, telling his wife he had to meet someone. He was also very cautious when he went out the door of his home, hence he was accompanied by his wife as he went into his Nash sedan. Early the next morning, he was found dead in his car at Hickson Road, Dawes Point. He had been shot three times at close range. The crime scene was made to appear that Holmes had committed suicide, but forensic police had no doubt that he was murdered. Holmes was due to give evidence at Smith's inquest later that morning.
Reginald Holmes was cremated at Northern Suburbs Crematorium on 13 June 1935. He left an estate valued at over ₤34,000 in 1935, which would be worth millions of dollars today.
In his 1995 book The Shark Arm Murders, Professor Alex Castles claims that Reginald Holmes took out a contract on his own life to spare his family the public disgrace of conviction.
The coronial inquest into Smith's death began on 12 June 1935 at the City Coroner's Court led by Mr. E.T. Oram, the same day Holmes was found dead in his car with gunshot wounds to his chest. Although Holmes was the inquest's star witness, he was never offered police protection before his testimony could be heard.
The lawyer serving Brady, Clive Evatt KC (1900–1984), claimed to the coroner that there was not enough substance to begin the inquest. Evatt argued that an arm 'did not constitute a body', and that Jim Smith, minus his arm, could still be alive. The case has remained unsolved to this day.
The inquest's most important witness, Reginald Holmes, was now dead; the case against Patrick Brady fell apart due to lack of evidence. The Shark Arm Murders suggests that Jimmy Smith was killed by Patrick Brady on the orders of gangland figure Edward Frederick (Eddie) Weyman, who was arrested while attempting to defraud a bank with a forged cheque in 1934 and later during a bank robbery, apparently due to information Jim Smith had given to the police. As a police informer whose cover was now exposed, Jim Smith's days were definitely numbered. .
The police charged Patrick Brady with the murder of Jim Smith, although he was later found not guilty and acquitted. For the next 30 years, Patrick Brady steadfastly maintained that he was in no way connected to the murder of Jim Smith. He died at Concord Repatriation Hospital in Sydney on 11 August 1965.
The investigation into the murder of Jim Smith and his severed arm became legendary in Australia's legal history.
Source:
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_Arm_case
2. http://www.abc.net.au/dimensions/dimensions_in_time/Transcripts/s546563.htm
3. http://www.dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/shark_arm_murder_1935
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