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The coastal suburb of Coogee boasts what many consider to be the best beaches in Sydney, Australia. Tourists and locals alike are drawn to the four tidal pools carved out of its headlands. They separate us from the ocean, but only just. The waves of high tide routinely wash over their walls, replenishing the rich marine life that calls each basin home. However, these walls don't only hold creatures in, they also keep them out.
In the summer of 1935, swimmers were particularly grateful for the sanctuary these pools offered after a string of shark attacks terrorized Sydney's southeast coastlines. Three young men succumbed to the beasts between late February and early March alone. Even with the tidal pools, however, the usual beachgoers opted to spend their weekends at public pools, and the businesses that lined the coast inevitably took a hit.
none felt the blow like Albert Burt Hobson, the owner of the local aquarium. His business, the Coogie Aquarium Baths, had been slowly suffocating since the famed Coogie Pier was demolished in 1934. With sharks prowling the shores and no penny arcade or 1400 seat theater to draw tourists in, the usual foot traffic slowed to a trickle. Worse still, the world was still battling the Great Depression.
travelers were anchored to their homelands, and locals were left with little money to spare for family outings, which were now considered a luxury. Luckily, Bert knew exactly how to entice the public into setting a few pennies aside for a trip to the aquarium. He was an avid fisherman who sensationalized his hobby by catching sharks and displaying them in his aquarium pools.
His theatrical stunts made for especially juicy headlines and the publicity, in turn, lured in crowds of paying customers. Although tragic, that summer's shark attacks had created a hype that Bert couldn't ignore. People were itching to see one of the apex predators in captivity. So, in April of that year, he and his young son, Ron, set sail to catch one.
It wasn't long before a small shark took the bait just a few miles off Coogee Beach. When Bert began reeling it in, however, it became bait itself. Its blood had attracted a 15-foot, 1-ton tiger shark. In a matter of seconds, the leviathan devoured the smaller shark, becoming caught on Bert's fishing line in the process. The fisherman fought the monstrosity as it struggled in the surf.
Miraculously, he managed to haul it onto the boat and, with the help of Ron, got it safely to shore. Bert was ecstatic. He'd found his star attraction, or so he thought. Instead, his catch became the catalyst for a complicated homicide investigation that unearthed the most bizarre murder mystery Australia has ever seen.
one rife with high-speed boat chases, mafia-style executions, forgery, and drug smuggling. This is the story of a tiger shark, a tattooed arm, and two unsolved murders. Part one, "Armed and Dangerous." Bert's new exhibit proved to be everything he'd hoped. It was rare to see a shark of this size in person back in the '30s. In the week following its capture, the fearsome tiger shark became the talk of the town.
Scores of curious onlookers flocked to the Coogie Aquarium baths to watch it stalk through its in-ground enclosure. The beast had the makings of a man-eater. Aside from its staggering size, its voracious appetite and powerful jaws thrilled spectators during feeding time. The fanfare surrounding the shark persisted longer than Burt expected and peaked on Anzac Day.
A national holiday observed on April 25th that's akin to America's Memorial Day. Schools were closed and locals had the day off from work. Seduced by the exciting media coverage, crowds of families and residents bought tickets to the aquarium to see the captive creature for themselves. Some reporters even made an appearance to cover Burt's latest and arguably greatest catch.
They wanted a show and that's exactly what it gave them, though not the kind they were hoping for. To Bert's dismay, the shark had deteriorated seemingly overnight. It was listless, disorientated, and unusually disinterested towards food. The fish crawled sluggishly around its 25 by 15 foot pool, bumping into the walls and sinking to the floor as if weighed down by something. Suddenly, it began convulsing and thrashing about
As the audience gazed down into the pool, foul-smelling brown muck erupted from the turbulent waters, followed by a bird, a rat, and a partially digested human arm. Aquarium officials immediately ushered the crowd away from the tiger shark enclosure while Bert fished the limb out of the pool. It was the left arm of a man with a rope tied around the wrist and a tattoo on the inside of the forearm. He alerted the authorities who promptly took it in to be examined.
Though Burt, like his customers, was quick to blame the shark, the truth proved to be far more unsettling. Coroner Edward Oram's report revealed that the arm hadn't been torn off a live man with a powerful bite, but severed from a dead one with a sharp instrument. This was no longer an inquest into a shark attack. This was a homicide investigation, and a particularly complicated one at that.
The shark at the center of this sordid story was slaughtered and gutted three days later, but no more evidence nor human remains were found. With their star witness dead and nothing but a disembodied arm, the police had to work backward to crack the case. Orem discovered that the limb had actually been swallowed by the smaller shark Bert had originally caught before it was eaten by the tiger shark. This made it difficult to determine a time of death or dismemberment.
Even so, he estimated that the arm might have been in the latter stomach for about eight to 18 days before being regurgitated. Fortunately, despite the shark's highly acidic gastric juices, it was surprisingly well-preserved and investigators were able to gather the information they needed to hopefully identify the victim. Armed with fingerprints, a tentative timeframe and a tattoo, the police began searching for the arms unfortunate owner.
it didn't take much effort on their part. The gruesome discovery was on the front page of every newspaper in Sydney. After law enforcement released the grisly details of the severed limb, the story reached one of the victim's relatives. Edwin Smith was reading an article about the disturbing incident in the Sydney newspaper, Truth, when a startling detail caught his eye, the description of a distinctive tattoo inked into the dismembered arm.
It was portrayed as two boxers facing each other, fists at the ready for a fight. His brother, who had been missing for several weeks, had the same tattoo on his forearm. Edwin was initially hesitant to reach out to the police. He was afraid that the arm belonged to another poor soul and that he'd never find out what happened to his brother. However, he also feared the opposite.
In the end, Edwin contacted the officers at Randwick Police Station who, after conducting a rather rudimentary forensic analysis, confirmed that the severed arm did indeed belong to his brother, James "Jimmy" Smith. Part Two: Jimmy Smith's Descent into the Underworld The idea that Jimmy Smith had been murdered and most likely fed to the sharks was shocking but not altogether unbelievable.
Whilst accurate to some extent, his reputation as a family man and hardworking builder doubled as a convenient front for his shady side hustles. Jimmy's popularity amongst locals made it easy for him to keep his criminal activity largely under wraps. Even his family was none the wiser. However, in the years before his untimely demise, he'd become entangled with some dangerous people, people who wanted him dead.
Jimmy's descent into Sydney's underworld began in 1890 when he moved there from Lancashire, England as a spirited 17-year-old. Determined to make an honest living, he became a boxer and earned a name for himself as a promising lightweight fighter. His boxing career lasted for several years until the stress became too much for his mother. When she begged him to throw in the towel, he reluctantly obliged.
Jimmy then found himself at a crossroads. He had no income and no practical experience to earn one outside of the ring. He drifted between odd jobs before finally landing a position as a scorekeeper at a local billiards bar called City Tattersall's Club. Jimmy worked his way up the ranks from keeping score and replenishing drinks to managing the club itself. However,
The promotion wasn't enough for the ambitious young man who dreamed of owning his own pool hall one day. After saving up enough money, he made this dream a reality. Jimmy bought a billiards bar in Rozelle, a Sydney suburb about 8 miles southeast of Coogee. He was well liked by his customers and, curiously, made far more money than one would expect of a bar owner.
He eventually outgrew the billiards scene and entered the building trade, hoping to make his fortune. Aside from a few unforeseen challenges, Jimmy did well for himself. He settled in Gladesville, a relatively remote but quaint suburbia where he lived with his 18-year-old son, mother-in-law, sister-in-law, and wife, Gladys Smith.
Life was good for a while. Jimmy earned a stable, above average income, and often treated himself to long fishing trips. On April 8th, 1935, two weeks before a tiger shark would vomit up his severed arm, the 45-year-old boxer turned builder embarked on one such trip. He informed his family that he was going fishing for a few days and went on his way with no mention of who was joining him or where they were going.
That was the last time Jimmy Smith was seen alive, by his family at least. Just before heading out on his trip, Jimmy told his wife and mother-in-law not to worry. He'd be back soon. Except, of course, he wouldn't. Days passed by without any word from him, but the Smith family didn't let his absence concern them. Jimmy was known for extending his fishing excursions for far longer than expected. Then came the phone call.
That Friday, Gladys received a call from a mysterious man. "Don't worry, Jimmy will be home in three days time," the voice declared. When Monday came around, her husband never arrived. Although she hadn't seen or heard from him in a week, Gladys never reported him missing to the police. Maybe she genuinely thought he was still out fishing, or perhaps she knew the truth about her husband. Jimmy Smith wasn't on a fishing trip.
nor was he the upstanding citizen he masqueraded as. In truth, after quitting the ring for good and getting a job at City Tattersall's club, he turned to crime to supplement his income. He tried his hand at illicit gambling and built a reputation as a skillful and reliable, albeit unlicensed, bookie. The small-time criminal used his profits to fund his business ventures, but after a few bad deals, he found himself facing bankruptcy.
Jimmy was running out of options. Finding a legitimate source of income to claw his way out of debt would be difficult while weighed down by a criminal record, riddled with then minor offenses. However, the connections he'd made in Sidney's underworld proved to be more fruitful than he originally thought. Jimmy began working with some particularly seedy characters whose dealings were far more high risk than he was used to.
Though daring, his decision was actually a calculated move. Jimmy wasn't just a career criminal, he was a police informant. Part three, a million to one chance. The Gladesville community regarded Jimmy Smith as a man who had no enemies. However, the police were well aware of the snitch's precarious situation. While orchestrating illegal betting at the billiards bars, the bookie began rubbing shoulders with Sydney's captains of industry.
He became particularly friendly with Reginald William Lloyd Holmes, a wealthy and seemingly respectable entrepreneur who owned a thriving boat building business on the harbor of Lavender Bay. Holmes fooled those around him with his charade as a pillar of society, but not the police. He'd been on their radar for years. Like Jimmy, the husband and father of two led a double life. Holmes wasn't just a big shot in business,
He was a local crime lord too. The boat building mogul's business was just a front for a far more lucrative and far less legal enterprise, drug smuggling. He was the leader of an extensive trafficking ring that controlled the harbor using speed boats built in secret at his boat shed. His lackeys would drive out to sea to collect kilos of cocaine, cigarettes, and other black market goods that were thrown overboard by sailors on ships passing by the Sydney heads.
The packages would then be smuggled into the harbor and sold throughout Sydney. That's not all. Holmes was also a notorious scam artist who committed insurance fraud under the guise of submitting legitimate claims. Shortly after falling on hard times, Jimmy began working for the crime kingpin as a drug smuggler and eventually became one of his right-hand men.
Holmes used the former bookmaker on his building sites to cheat contractors out of their materials and would also order him to burn down buildings and sink boats that he'd purposely overinsured. It was the latter that would lead to Jimmy's inevitable demise. Unbeknownst to Holmes, Jimmy was ratting him out to the local police in a bid to avoid being persecuted himself.
the unassuming entrepreneur had big plans to cash in on a big boat and ordered Jimmy to help him execute them in 1934, just months before the discovery of his partially digested arm. After over-insuring a yacht named the Pathfinder, Holmes instructed his double-timing lackey to discreetly sink the vessel so that he could file a claim for the damages. His scheme was a dismal failure. The claim was unexpectedly rejected,
and Holmes was forced to cover the costs of the pleasure cruiser. Enraged, he leveraged his connections to find out what, or who, had thwarted what was meant to be a foolproof plan, only to discover that the culprit was right under his nose. Holmes learned that. After wrecking the Pathfinder near Terrigal, Jimmy went straight to the authorities and told them everything. Needless to say, the men's relationship took a deadly turn.
When Jimmy suddenly went silent in early April, the police feared the worst. The informant was a prime target for a gangland assassination, and it was only a matter of time before he slipped up. It wasn't the small-time criminal safety that concerned them though. If their informant had truly been exposed, then Holmes and his goons would be on high alert. Finding another thug willing to infiltrate and snitch on the tight-knit syndicate would be near impossible at this stage.
Investigators thought they'd never be able to put the kingpin behind bars for his litany of crimes until Jimmy Smith's arm happened to be barfed up by a tiger shark. That is, the police couldn't believe their luck. Even the coroner, Edward Oram, was in disbelief. He captured the lucky break rather poetically when he told reporters, "It was a million to one chance that this one shark in all the sea should have been placed in an aquarium." Though fate had been on their side,
Investigators couldn't rely on good fortune alone to solve Jimmy's disappearance and bring down Holmes. They needed a body. Part Four: Dealt a Deadly Hand The investigators' detective work eventually led them to the Cecil Hotel in Cronulla, Sydney. Jimmy Smith was last seen drinking and playing cards at the hotel bar on April 8th with ex-con Skilled Forger and fellow member of Holmes' syndicate, Patrick Francis Brady.
Before Jimmy's police connections were uncovered, the pair worked together on a signature forgery scheme. Holmes provided them with sample signatures from his friends and clients, which Brady would use to forge checks for inconspicuous amounts of money under their names. Jimmy would then go to different banks to fraudulently cash these checks. After Holmes found out that Jimmy had foiled his plot to cash in on the Pathfinder, investigators believed that the snitch panicked.
They suspected that Jimmy tried to save himself by blackmailing the boat building mogul using his position in society as leverage. As the last person to see Jimmy alive, Brady was the link investigators needed to connect Holmes to their informant's disappearance and hopefully find the rest of his remains. The staff at the Cecil Hotel maintained that nothing seemed to be amiss between the two men.
after a night of boozing. The pair paid their bills and relocated to a small cottage Brady was renting on nearby Tulumi Street. Investigators began questioning local Cronulla taxi drivers in the hopes that one of them had been hailed by the men that fateful night. While none of them saw the pair together, one driver claimed to have picked Brady up at his cottage the following morning. The ex-con appeared disheveled, agitated, and pressed for time.
The taxi driver also noted that he was obviously frightened and had a hand in his pocket that he suspiciously refused to take out. Jimmy, on the other hand, was nowhere to be seen. Brady asked to be driven to Northern Sydney, where he directed the taxi driver to a swanky manor in the harborside suburb of McMann's Point. It took a moment for the cabbie to recall the address, but when he did, everything started to fall into place. It was Three Bay View Street,
Reginald Holmes' home address. The investigators believed that Brady had executed Jimmy Smith at the cottage on Holmes' orders, most likely a few hours before hailing the taxi. Even so, it wasn't enough to charge him or Holmes with the 45-year-old's murder. They had two promising prime suspects, an obvious motive, and Jimmy's severed arm, but they had no evidence to conclusively prove that a homicide had taken place.
Without a body, securing a coroner's inquest would be risky. The coroner wouldn't be able to legally confirm that it was Jimmy Smith who'd been killed, nor could he determine the manner or time of death. Going to trial with circumstantial evidence and weak testimony from the coroner could result in the case being thrown out. The investigators had to think fast, so they hatched a cunning plan. On May 16th, 1935,
Patrick Brady was arrested on forgery charges unrelated to Jimmy's murder. He endured six long hours of intensive interrogations before he finally cracked and confessed to what the police already suspected. Reginald Holmes had masterminded Jimmy Smith's execution and Brady had carried out his dirty work. The ex-con was subsequently charged with first degree murder.
While he awaited trial, the police initiated a search of the surrounding coastlines to hopefully find the rest of Jimmy's remains. The Navy and Air Force were deployed to comb the seas from above and below, but his body was never found. Although securing a conviction would be difficult, Brady's confession was enough to charge Holmes with Jimmy's murder too. Before the authorities could bring him in, however, he caught wind that they were onto him.
Four days after Brady spilled the beans, on the morning of May 20th, Holmes grabbed a bottle of liquor, hopped into a speedboat and did something no one expected. He drew a 32 caliber pistol and shot himself in the head. Part five, suicidal suspects and high-speed chases. By the time the police had arrived at Holmes's residence to arrest him, he was already gone. The boat building mogul was floating in the middle of Sydney Harbor. Astonishingly, he was alive.
To the surprise of those watching from the wharf, Holmes regained consciousness and laboriously hauled himself back onto his boat. Although miraculous, his survival was by no means divine intervention. He, like the detectives, had gotten very lucky. Instead of shattering his skull and tearing through his brain, the bullet had flattened against his cranium. One might say he was thick-skulled.
The sheer force of the impact knocked Holmes out and his limp body keeled over into the water. As he fell, a rope snagged his wrist and saved him from drowning. If only the binding around Jimmy Smith's arm had done the same. Onlookers alerted the water police about the rogue skipper brandishing a pistol and in a matter of minutes, two officers arrived in speedboats of their own. Undeterred by the bullet pressing against his skull,
Holmes took another swig from the bottle and sped off in a bid to escape. He led the water police on a dramatic high-speed chase around the harbor and passed the circular quay. Weaving between the mid-morning ferry traffic as he went, the water police pursued Holmes relentlessly for four hours, even following him past the Sydney Heads. Eventually, he gave up and came to a standstill just over a mile out to sea.
The officers boarded his vessel and promptly arrested him. As the cuffs were snapped around his wrists, Holmes uttered an ominous demand. "Jimmy Smith is dead and there is only another left. If you leave me until tonight, I will finish him," he slurred. He was immediately transported to the hospital and despite his obvious guilt, he tried to deny any association with Brady or Jimmy's murder.
In early June, just over a week later, Holmes was discharged from the hospital and finally ready to cooperate with the authorities. Unsurprisingly, he blamed Patrick Brady for Jimmy Smith's murder. Holmes insisted that the ex-con had acted alone and portrayed himself as a victim. He was simply an innocent bystander who was acting under the duress of blackmail.
In Holmes' version of events, Brady lured Jimmy to his college in Cronulla, where he slaughtered his partner in crime in cold blood. Holmes never offered a motive for the murder, though it was likely because Jimmy had been exposed as a snitch, a grave offense in the cutthroat underworld. Brady then allegedly dismembered Jimmy's body, stuffed his friend's remains into a trunk, and dumped it in Gunnamatta Bay. However, he hung onto the informant's arm,
It was an essential ingredient in his treasonous plan. According to Holmes, Brady arrived at his home the following morning and presented him with the dead man's severed arm. He wanted something in return though. Apparently, the ex-con demanded that Holmes pay him a generous sum of money lest he end up like poor Jimmy Smith. He then left his former boss with the bloodied limb to drive his point home.
After Brady left, Holmes panicked. He was petrified that Jimmy's murder might be linked back to him. The boat building mogul claimed to have driven 10 miles east to the coastal suburb of Marobra, where he disposed of the arm in the surf. It eventually ended up in the stomach of a small shark, which in turn ended up in the stomach of Bert Hobson's star attraction. Although Holmes managed to greatly lessen his own involvement in Jimmy's murder,
His confession painted a far clearer picture of how the informant met his eventual demise. Perhaps he was telling the truth. Who knows which crook actually came clean. Nevertheless, the police didn't care to pursue the matter any further. They had a convicted criminal who'd confessed to the murder and a prominent businessman who, although partly to blame for the heinous act, was willing to testify against him. The case was closed, or so they thought.
Part Six: An arm without a body does not a murder make. On June 11th, 1935, the day before Holmes was due to attend the inquest into Jimmy Smith's murder, the entrepreneur withdrew a large sum of money from his account. He wasn't himself that day. Later that evening, a noticeably tense Holmes asked his wife to accompany him to his car. He explained that he urgently needed to meet someone before getting into his Nash sedan and driving off.
That was the last time she saw him alive. At around 1:20 a.m. the following morning, mere hours before he was due to testify against Patrick Brady, 43-year-old Reginald Holmes was dead. The police discovered his body slumped over the wheel of his car with three bullet holes in his chest at the deserted docks of Dawes Point. He'd been shot at close range. At first, the responding officers thought that Holmes had committed suicide.
However, after forensic examiners arrived, it quickly became apparent that the crime scene had been staged to lead the police astray. Holmes had been murdered in what investigators believed to be a contract killing. Several locals thought otherwise. It was speculated that Holmes had actually hired the hitman himself in a bizarre act of suicide.
Many figured that he wanted to spare himself and his relatives from the embarrassment of going to trial and, instead, chose to take his own life and leave his family with one final gift: his £34,000 estate. However, these accusations simply made no sense. Holmes was working with the police to testify against a convicted criminal in court, and much of his testimony centered around his alleged innocence.
In a sense, he would have been heralded as the hero of the story, more so. Being shot in the chest leaves little room for crying suicide. A team of detectives was assigned to investigate the strange circumstances surrounding Holmes' death, while those handling Jimmy Smith's case came face to face with another hurdle. On June 12th, the much anticipated inquest began at the city coroner's court, and the prosecution was missing their star witness.
The Crown's case against Brady relied almost entirely on Holmes' testimony. Everything else was just circumstantial evidence. If only they'd had the foresight to put their witness under police protection ahead of the trial. The taxi driver who picked Brady up after he allegedly murdered and dismembered Jimmy Smith took the stand as a witness. He testified about the ex-con's suspicious behavior that morning.
but it wasn't enough. The defense claimed that one arm doesn't constitute a body and therefore couldn't prove that a murder had taken place. In fact, Brady's lawyer argued that even without his arm, Jimmy could still be alive. The lack of physical evidence against Brady was palpable and the case quickly fell apart. In less than two days, the judge had handed down his verdict. The trial was over.
Patrick Francis Brady was acquitted of Jimmy Smith's murder. Though an acquittal doesn't necessarily mean he was innocent, he walked free. Case closed, or was it? Part seven, murder, mutiny, and more unanswered questions. In the years following Brady's narrow escape from justice, more incriminating information against him was unearthed.
It came out that the ex-con and accused murderer had actually been working for Edward "Eddie" Wayman, a gang leader, bank robber, drug smuggler, and one of Sydney's most notorious criminals at the time. In 1934, Wayman became aware that his syndicate had a mole in its midst after several operations were suspiciously thwarted. On one occasion, he was arrested after trying to cash fraudulent checks.
On another, Wayman and his henchmen were caught red-handed whilst robbing a bank. It wasn't until 1935 that he realized why. Months before the infamous Tiger Shark incident, Brady informed Wayman that Jimmy Smith was a snitch. More so, that he was the mole who'd ratted Wayman out to the police. Sydney's underworld was far from noble, but its members followed one unwritten rule, the code of silence. After Jimmy was exposed as a police informant,
Authorities believed that it was Wayman who ordered Brady to silence him. Interestingly, in more recent years, Eddie Wayman has been implicated in the murder of Reginald Holmes too. Professor Alex Castles published a book in 1995 titled "The Shark Arm Murders" in which he claimed that Wayman likely put a hit out on Holmes. Sidney experienced an alarming crime wave in the 1930s and was awash with violence.
The suburbs of Kings Cross and Darlinghurst were bathed in blood as gang warfare tore through the streets, with each side hoping to gain control of cocaine distribution. Holmes' cocaine trafficking ring was at its most profitable during this time, and it's likely that his success made serious enemies out of his competitors, one of whom was Eddie Wayman. Holmes was already a target for a gangland-style assassination,
after blaming Jimmy Smith's murder on Brady and ratting the ex-con out to the cops. The crooked businessman's fate was sealed. Professor Castles alleged that Wayman ordered Brady to execute Holmes for breaking their code of silence. The author's accusations are merely speculation at this point, even so, his theory supported the evidence that was uncovered by the detectives who investigated Holmes' death many, many years ago.
In November of 1935, allegations that Holmes had orchestrated his own death were dismissed when a witness came forward with new evidence. Oliver Summers, a local chiro-podist, claimed to have seen the businessman's killer fleeing the scene. On June 11th, the night Holmes was killed, Oliver heard three gunshots tear through the silence of the night
He went to investigate the sounds and noticed a suspicious man hurrying down Hickson Road, the same road where Holmes' body was found the following morning. After being interrogated by police, Oliver identified the man as Albert Stannard, the dock's launch proprietor and close friend of Reginald Holmes.
Despite Albert vehemently denying any involvement in his best friend's murder and Holmes' own wife supporting his innocence, he was charged and taken to court anyway. In the end, Albert was found not guilty and the charges against him were dropped. Once again, the authorities were left with another unsolved murder. Considering the allegations against Brady and the fact that Holmes was set to send him to prison, one would think the ex-con would have been a suspect in the homicide.
that wasn't the case. Even after those close to the businessman directly implicated Brady. When interviewed by the police, one of Reginald Holmes' brothers, Leslie William Holmes, stated that the boat building mogul had been outspokenly afraid that people were out to get him in the final months of his life. In fact, Holmes had explicitly said that he was scared. - Brady's crowd would get him.
Even with this new information, Brady was never charged with killing Reginald Holmes nor convicted of Jimmy Smith's murder. For the next 30 years, he lived out his life as a free man. Patrick Brady firmly maintained his innocence until he eventually died at Sydney's Concord Repatriation General Hospital at the ripe old age of 76.