Chapter 1: What historical crime case is explored in this episode?
This is Australian True Crime with Michelle Laurie. Our old pal Michael Adams from the Forgotten Australia podcast joins us again to tell us about an historical crime. This time we're travelling back almost exactly a hundred years to the gold mines of Kalgoorlie in Western Australia.
It's a classic Wild West scenario with lots of money to be made, lots of dodgy characters trying to get their hands on it and an under-resourced police department tasked with keeping it all under control. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation.
And a warning, this episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence. Michael Adams from Forgotten Australia joins us again. One of my favourite guests.
Oh, thank you so much.
Chapter 2: What were the circumstances surrounding the gold rush in Kalgoorlie?
Because you're just such a great storyteller. Thank you. And also I love historical crime. It tells us so much about Australia. What are you talking about today?
Talking about a case that I called Blue Murder on the Golden Mile because it's about the killing of cops on the Golden Mile in Western Australia, which was the area around Kalgoorlie, which was called the Golden Mile at the turn of the century because it was the richest place on earth.
The gold rush had started in the 1890s, and by about 1900, Kalgoorlie and Kilgardia and Boulder was producing a massive amount of gold, one-third of which was being stolen. So it was the heisterama back in the day.
I always thought Melbourne was the richest place in the world during the gold rush.
It was in the 1850s, but this was 50-odd years later. Right.
So they struck gold in Western Australia.
Struck gold in Coolgardie first, I think in 1891 or 92, and then very shortly after Kalgoorlie. And Kalgoorlie soon superseded it. I went from being a spot in the desert to I think maybe 2,000 people within a couple of years and then another 5,000 or so by the end of the century. So people flocked from all over to dig it up and they were sinking mines here, there and everywhere.
Then in 1906, it was reported this, I think it was an English journalist reported on the massive amount of systemic theft of gold. What was happening was miners would take ore out in their clothes And they'd either put it in dummy mines where it could then be found, or they'd take it out to process it in sort of bush smelting plants.
And then you could just take the gold to the gentleman thieves who were sort of the fences, the organizers. They would then take it to the Royal Mint in Perth. No questions asked, no paperwork required. you just sold the gold.
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Chapter 3: Who were the detectives involved in the Goldfields Murders?
So one of the detectives said that... A bloke rocked into town with two pennies to rub together, and three months later bought a house cash outright. There was big money to be made, so they started a gold detection unit. They actually set up a police force in Kalgoorlie, Boulder to stop people thieving gold. They got the miners, then had to actually go into the mine operation area.
undress, dress in work uniforms, go down, come back up, get back out of their uniforms into their civvies so they couldn't spirit stuff away quite as easily. Yeah, I'm sure it was still possible but not quite as easy. Yeah, it wasn't as easy.
This is reminding me of my great uncle who's very famous in our family. He worked at the abattoir and he used to walk out with chops in his pocket.
Oh, nice.
I know, right? So it's sort of like that.
Partially cooked by the time they got home, or at least warmed.
Yeah, on the tram. So this is that mentality, but they were a bit more ambitious than my Uncle Frank.
Yeah. Wow. Yeah, they were doing pretty well. I love it. And the cops got the power to actually search these dummy mines. So they really clamped down and they were really successful. So they set up this gold detection unit. And by, I think they had six cops full time. And within 15 years, they only needed two. That's how successful they'd been. But there were still guys stealing gold.
And there were these two veteran detectives, Detective Inspector John Walsh and Detective Sergeant Alexander Pittman. And they had both been in the gold detection unit almost from the start. They were veteran cops. Between them, they had like 50 years experience and half of that was on the gold field. So they knew what they were about. They lived in little huts, like little cottages,
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Chapter 4: What led to the disappearance of Detectives Walsh and Pittman?
Yeah, yeah. They knew what they were about. And, like, as far as I understand, it was kind of a bit good cop, bad cop. John Walsh would take a fairly generous view of blokes. If he got an idea that you were stealing gold, he'd have a word, lay off, or we're going to bust you. Pittman was a bit more of a hardliner, so he maybe had a few enemies. And everybody sort of knew everybody.
There were lots of blokes who'd been previously convicted, so they'd keep an eye on these guys. But the gold thieves would go to great lengths. This was a big business. Oh, yeah. I got the... WA police files for this case, two and a half thousand pages from the 1920s, includes like all the telegrams, the notes, the cables, the tips that had been reported, interview transcripts.
And it included like an annual report from a couple of years earlier. And they're talking about cases where they busted guys, you know, 300 ounces of gold, which, you know, these days is, you know, already close to a million dollars or more. But even back then it was a lot of money. So the gold thieves would go to great lengths to evade the cops.
And that could include actually monitoring the cops and also even breaking into the cops' huts to look at their records. So the cops operated completely on a need-to-know basis between each other. They didn't make notes that were intelligible to anyone else. They didn't tell anybody what they were doing.
So yeah, they would often go out on these stakeouts in the bush for three or four days at a time. No one knew where they were. And then they'd bust guys because people would set up these smelting operations in the bush.
I'm mad for these. Tell us about a smelter operation that you see. Because the heat, the level of heat you need, I would imagine, to smelt gold-
How do you do that? You're building a kiln out there. You've got roasting pots to roast the ore, crack it open, et cetera. It's a real little industrial operation. There's plenty of scrub land out there. Basically, they're hiding out in the scrub doing this and going out for a night and doing it in the nighttime and then coming back in the day in the morning. And it was 1926 in Kalgoorlie.
There weren't a lot of cars and there was no real reason to be out of a nighttime. So these cops saw a car out after dark. There's a good chance that's gold thieves. So what they would do is they'd go out late at night or early in the morning to catch these guys when they were sort of either setting up or about to come back in with their stolen gold.
So anyway, on the 28th of April, 1926, these two cops, and they operated on bicycles. They rode out of town on their bicycles.
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Chapter 5: How did the search for the missing detectives unfold?
They don't tell anybody where they're going so that it won't leak out. They're not keeping anybody apprised. They're not expected back at any particular time. And it's not until the 9th of May that the Sunday Times in Perth raises the alarm saying these two veteran detectives, Walsh and Pittman, aren't accounted for. There's some fears held for them.
On the goldfields, the fellow police had gone to their huts, looked through the windows, seeing that nothing had been changed. Eventually, they broke in. They looked through the occurrence book that they kept. There were just no clues as to where they'd gone.
But they saw that they hadn't taken any supplies, they hadn't taken warm clothing, and they hadn't arranged for their pays to be remitted to their wives in Perth. So it was clear that they had gone out probably for a short stakeout and not returned. So it was possible they'd gotten lost and succumbed to the elements. There were like thousands of abandoned mine shafts.
So it was also possible that they'd been investigating one of these dummy mines, there's been some rotten timbers, it's collapsed and they've gotten into trouble. Most likely, though, grave fears were held that they'd stumbled upon some operation and they'd been murdered. So there was a massive search. They got cops coming in from Perth. Now, like I said, these two between them had 50-plus years.
They'd worked in the CID in Perth. They'd worked in the gold fields. They knew all the detectives who were now investigating their disappearance. So there was a very... intense effort to find these guys.
Well, we know how police take it when a fellow officer is murdered, which is obviously what they were thinking, worrying had happened at this point.
Yeah. And with good cause. I mean, these guys are doing their jobs. They're both family men and they're They were also offered humongous bribes continually by the gold thieves, and these guys were reputed to be incorruptible. Clean skins. Yeah. There was no way they would take any sort of bribes, so they were looking for them. They did get a report. They put out a call for any witnesses.
They did get a report from someone who'd seen them riding out on the morning of the 28th going south, so they knew that they were looking in possibly the right area. But they were just looking everywhere for them and they couldn't find them. Like I say, there's thousands of abandoned mineshafts. They could be anywhere.
And we all know the Australian outback is notorious, no matter which part of the country and what the landscape is, desert or shrubbery, it's notorious for people disappearing.
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Chapter 6: What evidence was found at the site of the detectives' remains?
That was one in five people in Perth at that time. So a massive outpouring of grief. And this was a big story all over Australia. So the trackers found the bikes. And then they found close to the bikes, they found a camp. And at the camp, there was these missing bits of the gold processing kit. They also found tins of like empty food tins. And they weren't just your baked beans.
They were fancy stuff like chicken, crab, asparagus. So it's like, well, who in Kalgoorlie likes this fancy tucker? They also found tire tracks, the tires were Dunlop, balloon tires they were called. So they were fairly unusual as well, particularly at this time when there weren't that many cars.
So they were looking for someone who had a car with Dunlop tires, who liked fancy, fancy food, and also might have something to do with these dunlops. tailored trousers that had been found in there, which didn't belong to the police.
Is that what, sorry, I have been distracted a little bit by double-seated pants. I've been thinking, I must ask him, what are double-seated pants and what's the significance of that?
They're just really good because they'd be, well, but also they'd be hard wearing. Yeah, right, got it. They wouldn't wear out so easily. I think I could probably use some double-seated pants.
We all could, really.
We could, really. This is a new trend.
But in this case, what you're saying is added to the nature of the food that was found there. And we've got these rather expensive pants, tailored pants.
Tailored, yeah.
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Chapter 7: What were the key developments during the trial of the suspects?
So at the time, she wrote to the police and said, I know who did it. It's this Aboriginal youth who came back into the camp and he said that this bloke had done it. And she laid out why she should be in control of Aboriginal people of Western Australia because they respect and fear her, et cetera.
And she, just a couple of years earlier, put it out there that Aboriginal women were giving birth to children so that they could eat them. So to the credit of the police and the authorities at this time, they just ignored Daisy Bates. And she'd written directly to the Western Australian governor because she was so well-known and well-respected as this anthropologist. But that's just a side story.
That's a hell of a side story, by the way.
That's going to send me down a Google wormhole.
So they arrested these two. They stonewalled. And then Teddy's wife, Florrie, said to him, either you tell them, the cops, or I'm going to. So Teddy Clark blabbed. Now, Teddy and Philip at that point had got, as their defender, a barrister called Arthur Haynes from Perth. And this guy the previous year had gotten this young woman off on this murder case, which is absolutely insane.
She'd shot her ex-boyfriend during a dance in the government house ballroom in front of 300 witnesses, shot him dead with a revolver, and Arthur Haynes had gotten her off, acquitted. So he was now going to be defending these guys.
He's the guy you want.
He's the guy you want. So he's defending Teddy Clark and Philip Trefine, and then all of a sudden he drops Teddy Clark and he takes up Coulter, who's just been arrested because Teddy Clark, after his wife has opened her mouth, has decided that he'll tell the whole story. His version is that he was at the hotel, and yes, they were involved in this gold operation out in the bush, and
Philip and William Coulter had been out in the bush and they'd come back and they'd said, we shot those cops. And he'd freaked out and they kind of roped him, forced him into helping them cover it up.
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Chapter 8: What impact did the Goldfields Murders have on Australian society?
I reckon that's because of his lack of support of the other two fellows that went to the gallows, don't you?
I think so, yeah. I think people kind of felt, well, they swung, you should have swung as well.
And you can't trust him. If anything goes down, he will throw you under the bus.
immediately yeah so that was 100 years ago this year and the wa police had a memorial um on the 28th yeah out of the site where they where the bodies were found there is also a memorial in in wa to the fallen police so it's not a story that's been forgotten and i was very pleased that you know gold detection uh detective serving have been in touch to say you know they've all listened to the podcast i did a five-part podcast about this so if you really want to get you know the
three-hour version going into all the bits and pieces. So it's really been quite an honour to hear from police who are very much invested in it.
I can't believe there's still gold police.
Yeah, there's still a gold detection unit out in WA.
Tell me about that.
What do they do? Well, I guess they're just doing the same thing, making sure that people aren't thieving the good stuff.
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