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shyscyberchamber.com
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UNSOLVED CRIMES |
Date
Added |
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The Arm in the Shark
Case |
October 2002 |
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The story
hit the headlines on Anzac Day - 25 April 1935. It was labeled in
shrieking type across the front pages as 'The Arm in the Shark Case'.
To incredulous newspaper readers that day, to police and forensic
experts, it was one of the most bizarre mysteries ever.
The mystery began in the Sydney seaside suburb of Coogee. Fisherman
Bert Hodson had set out in his small boat to examine lines he had
baited with mackerel about 1.5km off shore. He was after shark. One
small shark was already firmly hooked to one of his lines. Another, a
4.2m (14 foot) tiger shark, was in the process of devouring the
smaller one. The fisherman hauled in the line and found the tiger
shark was now firmly ensnared. Turning his boat for the shore, he
headed home with the creature in tow.
Hodson would normally have killed the shark and hung it on the
boathouse scales. But the fisherman's brother, Charles, ran an
aquarium at Coogee and Bert knew that the prize shark would provide an
excellent attraction for the paying customers who crowded down from
the city.
And so it proved. The sharked circled menacingly round the aquarium to
the delight of the trippers for a few days. Then, on 25 April the
fascination on the faces of the visitors turned to horror as they
witnessed the most astonishing spectacle. The shark went into
convulsions. It surged around the water, disgorging the contents of
its stomach: rats, birds, parts of the smaller shark - and a human
arm.
Charles Hodson acted swiftly. He fished out the arm and telephoned the
police. They found the grisly specimen to be the left arm of a man,
with a tattoo of two boxers slugging it out. Attached was a length of
rope.
At first, police put the case down as a shark attack on a lone swimmer
or yachtsman until, over the days, their suspicions became aroused. No
one had been reported missing off a Sydney beach. And a police surgeon
who examined the arm claimed that it had not been bitten off by a
shark but cleanly amputated with a sharp knife.
Fingerprints were taken of the hand and, although they were blurred,
experts were able to match the prints of the thumb and ring finger
with those of a man in police files. They belonged to James Smith, who
ran a billiard room grandly titled the Rozelle Sports Club, and who
had once been arrested for illegal bookmaking. Smith had been missing
from his home for 28 days. His brother, Edward, positively identified
the arm but was unable to give any hint as to Smith's movements. And
all that the victim's wife, Gladys, knew was that her husband had left
home saying that he was taking a party on a paid fishing trip.
The police sought out Smith's friends. One of them John Brady, was not
easy to find for he was wanted by Tasmanian police on a forgery
charge. But he was eventually run to ground on 17 May, living with his
wife in a small flat in north Sydney. Under interrogation, Brady
admitted having stayed with Smith in a cottage at Cronulla, on the
same stretch of coastline as the shark had been caught, but denied
knowing anything about the crime.
Over the next few months, divers and chartered aircraft searched the
waters of Cunnamatta Bay, near Cronulla hoping to find further clues.
The police had a theory, however. They believed that Smith went to
stay with Brady at Cronulla to plan their next fraud, but that the two
men fell out over sharing the loot. Brady, they believed, killed his
accomplice and hacked up the body/ He placed the remains in a metal
trunk - but could not fit in the arm. So he roped it to the outside of
the trunk and dumped the terrible evidence into the sea. A small
shark, attracted by the blood, attacked the trunk, severing the rope
with its razor-sharp teeth. As the arm floated free, the shark
swallowed it whole.
The shark's next meal was the mackerel on Bert Hodson's line. And that
was when the shark became a meal for the larger tiger shark.
the police theory sounded far-fetched. But 'The Arm in the Shark Case'
was soon to prove that fact can be stranger than fiction.
The crime that detectives believed Smith and Brady had been plotting
was an insurance fraud over a yacht that had disappeared. Police
interviewed the yacht's former owner, whom they regarded as a key
witness. But the day before an inquest was due to be held into Smith's
death, the witness was found shot dead beneath the approaches to
Sydney's famous Harbour Bridge.
The following day, detectives received another blow. The coroner who
was to have held the inquest ruled that he could not do so without a
complete body. Nevertheless, Brady was charged with murder and sent
for trial.
The trial lasted only 2 days. The judge refused to admit as evidence
signed statements that had been taken from the witness before he was
found shot dead. Without this evidence, the jury was directed to
acquit Brady. Two men were charged with murdering the witness, but
they too were acquitted.
Brady continued his career of crime. In all, he spent more than 20
years of his life in jail. During all that time, the only person who
knew he full facts of the 'Arm in the Shark Case' never once hinted at
what the truth might be.
And the full story never will be known. John Brady suffered a heart
attack at the age of 71 in a prison repatriation hostel. His secret
died with him. |
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