The sisters, Susan Deborah (5) and Judith Elizabeth (7), went missing from a bus stop on their way to school just after 8 o’clock in the morning of 26 August, 1970. A local taxi driver, Ron Brooker, led the search. Drawing on his knowledge of the local roads, he reasoned the perpetrator would use Charters Towers Road to avoid built-up areas. The girls’ neatly folded belongings and school bags were found first.
Police take away the girls’ belongings.
Image courtesy of The Telegraph, 29 August 1970.
Subsequently, the bodies of little sisters were found in the dry sandy bed of Antil Creek, 19 miles south of Townsville. Post-mortem reports by a government medical officer stated both girls had been sexually interfered with and stabbed three times in the chest. Susan had been strangled to death, while Judith had died of asphyxiation. The examination established the girls died within four hours of their kidnapping. In his interview, Graham Tough, the man who found Susan, said ‘I went all to pieces. Don’t tell me about brave men…It was a hell of a shock. It hit me hard.’ (C-M, 29 Aug 1970) In October, Standard White Cabs Ltd was presented with a Departmental Plaque by the Minister in Charge of Police as a token of appreciation and thanks to all of the employees involved in the search. (Commissioner Whitrod to Standard White Cabs Ltd, 16 Oct 1970)
In the first week ‘hundreds of reports have come into the Townsville police headquarters relating to the murders of Judith and Susan Mackay’, but as the hefty case files confirm, ‘none has answered the question of how the two sisters “disappeared” so completely.’ (C-M, 31 Aug 1970) The bus the girls would have caught was running 15 minutes late that morning, but Judith and Susan were gone within a mere ten minutes of leaving their home. A woman living at Aitkenvale hostel near a Ross River bus stop, the stop the girls disappeared from, saw them getting into a car, a 1963-64 brown Holden sedan with grey/blue driver side door. The car was again seen parked on the creek bank at the approximate time of the murders.
Anonymous letters to police.
In describing the area, Police Reporter Jim Crawford said it was such as ‘likely to frighten any little girl unless she had complete confidence in the adult with her.’ (C-M, 31 Aug 1970) The tracks showed the girls playing in the sand barefoot, further confirming the operational theory the abductor was known to them. The sisters were sternly warned not to enter strangers’ cars. Posters offering rewards for the abductors or murderers of seven girls who went missing from NSW and WA between 1964 and 1965, still hung prominently on the Townsville Station front wall.
The suspect cars.
Image courtesy of The Telegraph, 29 August 1970.
The efficiency with which the girls were taken and the knowledge of the secluded creek bank, prompted the police to appeal to the locals to come forward with any details of recent sex offences against young children. Commissioner Whitrod was quoted saying the Townsville killer might have committed other sex offences. (Sunday Mail, 30 Aug 1970). The driver of the suspect car was described as a man 5’9”, ‘aged about 35, dark haired, grubby and wearing a white shirt’. (Truth, 30 Aug 1970) The state-wide manhunt was mounted with every police unit available patrolling city and country roads, while letters containing information concerning the gruesome crime continued to pour in drawing on the investigative resources without offering any viable clues.
Handwritten letter signed ‘Concerned Grandma’.
Suspects
- A leading Brisbane psychiatrist described the suspect as “the guy next door” and about 30 years old, a perfectly respectable citizen with a perversion. (C-M, 29 Aug, 1970) He went on to warn all other parents to watch their daughters, ‘the fact that he has committed these crimes means nothing to him,’ he continued, ‘he may commit more.’
- A Warwick man, born 28 Jun 1941, was interviewed at Mount Isa concerning his whereabouts on 26 August 1970, in relation to the murders. The inquest revealed, the man was arrested at Charleville on four Warrants of Commitment on 25 August and charged with Stealing as a Servant at the Charleville Magistrates’ Court.
- An inmate of Townsville’s Stuart Prison had confessed to the murder of the Mackay sisters, claiming he committed the crime while astral travelling from his cell.
- Lastly, a man seen at a service station in Ayr in a car containing two girls, late on Wednesday, or early Thursday, who bought $3 worth of petrol, was a person of interest.
The initial investigation produced no viable suspects. In 1986 Homicide Squad opened the review of the earlier investigation into the murders. In 1998, Mrs Thwaite’s statement describing a man with two young girls in his car purchasing petrol at an Ayr Service Station, aided the police in filing charges 28 years later.
to be continued…
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This information has been provided by the Queensland Police Museum from the best resources available. The article was written by Museum Volunteer and Crime and Policing Historian Dr Anastasia Dukova.
The Police Museum is open 9am to 4pm Monday to Thursday and 10am to 3pm on the last Sunday of the month (Feb-Nov) and is located on the Ground Floor of Police Headquarters at 200 Roma Street, Brisbane. Contact: E: museum@police.qld.gov.au
“FROM the VAULT – The Mackay Sisters Murder (Part 1)” by the Queensland Police Service is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (BY) 2.5 Australia Licence. Permissions may be available beyond the scope of this licence.
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