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I'm Kate Winkler-Dawson. I'm a journalist who's spent the last 25 years writing about true crime. And I'm Paul Holes, a retired cold case investigator who's worked some of America's most complicated cases and solved them. Each week, I present Paul with one of history's most compelling true crimes. And I weigh in using modern forensic techniques to bring new insights to old mysteries.

Together, using our individual expertise, we're examining historical true crime cases through a 21st century lens. Some are solved and some are cold. Very cold. This is Buried Bones. ♪♪

Hi, Kate. How are you? I'm great, Paul. How's it going? I am doing good. What's going on? Well, before we start talking about the case, I have a question for you. This case that we're about to discuss involves teenagers and secrets, keeping secrets, we think. Were you the kind of teenager who kept secrets from your parents, or were you what I predict is a Boy Scout teenager?

Dudley do right kind of kid or were you sneaky? How do I answer this knowing that my dad is probably listening? I most certainly, you know did things my parents were unaware of, you know, I think you know most teenagers do that that's a time when you are starting to become independent you're trying to transition into adulthood and

And I was very independent. And so I would just kind of go and do things that I wanted to do and not let my parents know. And, you know, I feel like I sort of did that, too. But I went to a high school that was pretty geeky. And I say that in the sweetest way. You know, it was a kind of a magnet school and it was science oriented and all my friends who are listening didn't.

We're really fun nerds. Nobody really did anything. We didn't drink, you know, really, I think until senior year and that was at graduation. I just didn't get into the traditional kind of trouble that I think some teenagers get into now. So I'm grateful for that and I'm grateful for not having social media. Yeah.

Yeah. When I was 14, where my kid's age is. So, and I'm sure you feel the same way. I am not a fan of social media. I have, you know, a couple of social media accounts, but that's basically for work purposes. And, uh,

I'm not one that likes to draw attention to myself, but I know that the people out there want to know a little bit about me and my personal life. So every now and then I give updates on Cora, my fish tank, my mountain biking, my jeeping, you know, so I at least will engage, but I am not on social media hardly at all. It's like once every few months and I never, ever look at the comments. I post and I move on. Yeah.

And if anybody tries to get a hold of me on social media, it's not going to happen. You can DM me all you want. I don't even look at the messages.

A PSA from Paul Holes about social media. Well, this went down a road I didn't think we were going to go down. I am really glad I didn't have social media when, you know, I was my kid's age because I know that there are benefits from it. But I think for me, with keeping secrets from my parents, I had a really hard time doing it. But I know that my dad would have been on... I mean, he would have, like, figured out IPs and gone through every kind of account. I would have been busted for...

stuff that is probably silly now, but I really, my father was one of those fathers who would say, you know, you make the decisions that you make, I will tell you, I will not bail you out of jail. And that was enough to scare the crap out of me, pretty much. So that kept me in the straight and narrow. So that was enough. I was scared straight there for sure. So,

You know, as I said before, the story that we're talking about up next is about secrets. And, you know, I was just telling a class of mine the phrase you use, and I need you to remind me of what it is. So sometimes I will say, Paul, I'm going to tell you something that the victims did, and I don't want it to be interpreted as victim shaming. And you say it's not victim shaming. It's something else. What is it? Risk assessment? What is the phrase?

You know, it really depends on the context. You know, I always say victimology is huge. And so understanding why this individual became a victim, I need to look at that victim's life. What is their normal life, their known life, and evaluate is their lifestyle something that brings them into a world in which they may more likely become victims?

a victim of a crime? Or was this a unique circumstance in their life that they normally aren't operating in that caused them to become a victim of a crime? Was this a circumstance that they chose, made a purposeful decision, or was this something as a matter of circumstance? They made the wrong turn down the dark alley.

And what this does is it informs me about, okay, the lifestyle the victim leads, there's a level of risk that us in law enforcement understand comes with certain territories, whether that's lifestyle, whether that's geographic, you know, the dark alley, high crime area, or is there something that the victim unknowingly did that caused that victim to come to the attention of the offender?

So it is a risk assessment, but it has nothing to do with putting blame on the victim. It's just evaluating the victimology. Well, that's what we're going to be doing. So I just want to make that clear before I set the scene here is that this is not blaming the victims in this case. It is the risk assessment and what we think. But this is about teenagers and some of the decisions they make. So let's go ahead and set the scene.

You know, I start out with a trigger warning here. This is about the sexual assault of two children. This is a famous case with our friends in Australia. We do have a lot of listeners in Australia. I get notes from people all the time. So hi, Australia. We're so happy that you join us. This is the case in your country called the Wanda Beach murders. And I bet a lot of those listeners have heard of it.

So this will be a good story. Have you heard of the Wanda Beach murders, Paul? No, I don't think I have. This is a big story. And I'm going to warn you, there's a lot of backstory. I've been spending a lot of time with my documents, sort of cutting things out and narrowing things down based on what you need. But there's a little bit of a hefty backstory about how we end up with our victims where they end up.

And I do have, thankfully, I have photos because this is 1965. So this is one of our newer cases. I know. I saw, I see you perk up a little bit. He's like, oh, thank God it's not 1512. There might be something I can work with from a visual standpoint.

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Experience the glamour and danger of the roaring 20s from the palm of your hand.

In June's Journey, you have the chance to solve a captivating murder mystery and reveal deep-seated family secrets. Use your keen eye and detective skills to guide June Parker through this thrilling hidden object mystery game. June's Journey is a mobile game that follows June Parker, a New York socialite living in London. Play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s

while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. There are twists, turns, and catchy tunes, all leading you deeper into the thrilling storyline. This is your chance to test your detective skills. And if you play well enough, you could make it to the detective club.

There, you'll chat with other players and compete with or against them. June needs your help, but watch out. You never know which character might be a villain. Shocking family secrets will be revealed, but will you crack this case? Find out as you escape this world and dive into June's world of mystery, murder, and romance. Can you crack the case? Download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android.

Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. That's June's Journey. Download the game for free on iOS and Android.

So, 1965, Sydney, Australia, and a lot of coastal teenagers love to go to the shore, of course, during the summer months. We are looking, though, at wintertime. So if we're flipping it here, this would be a really nice warm day. It's in early January.

And we have a lot of people on the coast, very excited about enjoying this weather. And it's beautiful. And the center of the story are two 15-year-old girls. So one is Marianne Schmidt and the other one is Christine Sherrick. They both live in a Sydney suburb. I think it's good to show you the victims, you know, for you to be able to put kind of the faces to the names here as we move forward because it's

It really is. They're at the center of the story. So let me show you. There we go. Christine's on the left and Marianne's on the right. Jess looks, you know, they look like two typical teenagers. They look a lot alike, which is surprising. They're not sisters. No, I, in fact, when I saw these photos, I thought they minimally are sisters, if not twins.

That's how much they look alike. The clothing is similar, but in terms of their heights are about the same, the color of their hair, the hairstyles about the same, even their facial features are similar enough to where at a glance, I would have thought they were related. One thing I wanted to note with you on this is they both look petite. I

I don't know how much that comes into play. I mean, we talk about how much you think someone could defend themselves if they become the victims of a violent crime. Weight doesn't have anything to do with it. But I think if you write, if you have someone who looks like they're muscular man or woman, then that's something that's part of the victimology for you.

Well, it's the physical characteristic, you know, and that's going to be part of it. But also it's assessing, again, victimology. Do they have certain skill sets? You know, have they trained in martial arts? You know, are they into weightlifting?

something that is going to cause them to have maybe greater physical abilities than what they look like. And that's part of what I do because when I look at these crimes in which the offender is in physical contact with the victim, whether we have a male offender, female victim, or a male offender, male victim,

I'm assessing the physical characteristics. And, you know, typically, the average male offender is going to be bigger and stronger than the average female victim. And so, therefore, in that scenario, that offender is going to be more dominant in that physical confrontation.

But there are females out there that are very capable of defending themselves, even against very robust males. And so I need to know that so I can start assessing, okay, how much did this offender have to

struggle with the victim. How much am I expecting this offender to have been injured? Does that leave evidence at the scene? Does it tell me if I'm looking at the victim and it's a prolonged struggle, does that tell me that maybe I'm dealing with a male offender that isn't as physically capable as the average male, etc.? So that's just part of my assessment.

There doesn't seem to be any sort of notes about any acumen that these girls have in sports, or we don't have an indicator that they are particularly active or they do martial arts or anything like that. It just seems like two typical 15-year-old girls, both petite,

best friends. They live next to each other and they are like sisters. Marianne's family went from West Germany in the 50s to Australia and her father died from Hodgkin's lymphoma in 1964, so the year before this. And then he leaves behind his wife, Elizabeth, as a single parent and

And Marianne is one of seven kids. I know, ranging from age five to age 16. And I have a list of, you know, everybody's ages because they actually become pretty important in a little bit as far as witnesses go.

So in January, Elizabeth, the mom, checks into a hospital to have a surgery that's going to last a couple of days. It doesn't sound life-threatening. I don't have a detail on what it is. But the important part is Elizabeth leaves her son, whose name is Helmut, who's 16, and Marianne, who's 15, in charge of the younger kids. So there's a young boy named Hans. There's a 10-year-old named Peter, a little girl who's 9, a little boy who's 7, another boy who's 5.

So you've got these two teenagers who are in charge of one, two, three, four, five kids, five little kids, the oldest being probably 10 or 11.

So that's a lot of responsibility because Elizabeth's gone for several days. And Marianne goes to visit her mom at the hospital on January 9th of 1965. And she says that she and Christine, the next door neighbor who she's best friends with, want to take all these little kiddos to a beach called Cronulla Beach.

And this is just the south of Sydney. You could take a train there. Christine and Mary Ann have been there before, and actually they had been at that beach with their families for New Year's Eve, which was a little over a week earlier.

So she says, you know, I want to go with Christine. Christine had also lost her father when she was young. So that was another thing that they bonded over. And they're just very, very close. And they share everything. So Elizabeth knows that

The two girls are very familiar with Cronulla Beach. You know, they can get there by train. Everybody knows it. You know, so she says, I think this is probably fine. But the girls decide that they are going to the beach on a Sunday, January 10th, the next day.

And they pack up the kids, but the weather is awful. And they decide to call the trip off. And they decide that they are going to go the next day, which is a Monday. So I think that's going to be key because we do talk about the schedules that victims keep. And if there's somebody watching them or stalking them or, you know, anybody who knows what their potential schedule is,

Can't that tell you the difference between an offender who is known to them, who knows what kind of schedule they have, versus a stalker, versus a crime of opportunity? That becomes absolutely critical. When you have a victim that is...

a crime is committed against that victim during their normal routine. It's kind of wide open. Is it somebody who knows that routine either because they know the victim or has watched the victim or was it a victim of opportunity? When you have a scenario like this where they had planned to go to the beach one day and then at the last minute decide, no, we're going to go the next day, that starts to narrow the pool of people that would have knowledge about that change in their schedule, which then tends to shift the

That when they do become a victim of a crime for something that was at the last second change tends to suggest that they're more likely a victim of opportunity. Not necessarily, but investigative information. I always kind of use the analogy of a seesaw.

So you have a seesaw that is perfectly balanced, but as information comes in, one set of circumstances may become more heavily weighted, but it doesn't eliminate the other end of that seesaw. There's still weight on that other end, and more information could come in, which can cause the seesaw to shift the other way. But right now, with the information that you told me, which is very broad, but I'm starting to shift going, okay, it sounds like they are, I know they're going to become victims.

Sounds more like possibly opportunity because they had somewhat of a last-minute, last-day shift in their schedule, change in their schedule. Except, remember, I told you that teenagers do keep secrets. And, you know, this story really unfolds in such an interesting way because you're really trying to figure out

what the kids are doing, all of these kids are doing. So let me fill in a few blanks. Christine goes to her grandmother. She lives with her grandparents, and she tells the grandmother, listen, you know, we want to walk across what she calls the sand hills, which are the sand dunes, of a place called Wanda Beach, which is why this is called the Wanda Beach Murders. So Wanda Beach is on the same bay as Cronulla Beach, but just north.

So in order to get to Wanda Beach, you have to go from Sydney on the train to Cronulla train station. Then they have to go through a bunch of little neighboring beaches to get to Wanda. The grandmother says, this is an awful idea. She said, you're going to regret this because they're going to be dragging along these little kids. And you and I both know little kids are...

with all of their excitement and enthusiasm, are going to poot out pretty quickly. And then you're going to have two 15-year-old girls stuck with three or four kids under the age of 11 or so. So the grandmother advises, don't do it. And unfortunately, Christine ignores her advice. So, you know, they decide they're going to do it anyway. She goes over to Marianne's house and

and says, who's coming with us? And there's a boy named Helmut, who's the 16-year-old named after the dad. And there's a boy named Hans, who it seems like is just a little younger. We don't have an exact age for Hans. And fortunately, they decide to stay home. So what started as what I thought was going to be a trip...

of two 15-year-old girls with an older 16-year-old brother and, you know, a gaggle of kids now turns into four little kids with two teenage girls who want to go to the beach.

And that leaves them vulnerable. If you are someone who is an offender and you are seeing two teenage girls with a teenage boy, I'm assuming for some offenders that would deter them just because that's an extra person, you know, potentially a strong teenage boy that you have to deal with.

versus two teenage girls and a bunch of little kids? Or am I completely wrong and that wouldn't throw off any offender? No, I think most certainly the presence of the male is always going to be of concern to an offender. Now, certain offenders may have the confidence in their ability, whether physical ability or the control mechanism, such as having a gun.

that they would be able to control the three teenagers, the male and two females. I think the offender is going to be much more concerned about the little kids because little kids cause commotion. They scream. And when little kids scream, you know, people who may be out in public, they instantly look, why is this little kid screaming? So that's going to be part of the assessment.

You know, if an offender is watching this group of kids from afar and is deciding to victimize Marianne and Christine, you know, they have the little kids that are a variable that they have to consider. And I think you're going to be right about that.

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So, as I said, Christine's grandmother said, this is not a great idea. You're going to have four whining kids to drag along with you. Christine and Marianne talk. They decide they're really highly motivated to go to this beach. So they pack up. The four younger kids are Peter, Trixie, Wolfgang, and Norbert.

And they set off on that Monday around 8.30 in the morning. It's quite a journey to get to where they're trying to go, Wanda Beach. They have to get on a train. There's a transfer. They have to go on a different train. Then, you know, they're lugging along, besides four little kids, which I don't envy at all. Christine has a beach bag, and it's filled with a thermos that's got soda in it. It's got a towel, a small purse, water.

one Australian pound, which now it's the Australian dollar, but in 65, it would have been an Australian pound. So just one pound. Sunglasses, a radio, transistor radio that was a Christmas gift. She doesn't have any food in her bag, but Marianne packs sandwiches for the group, like cucumber sandwiches with some fruit. Marianne is wearing her bathing suit, but Christine is on her period.

So she's chosen to leave her bathing suit behind, so it doesn't seem like she's going to get in the water. They learn that the beach is closed. The one we were so excited about, Crownella Beach, is closed because the winds are really dangerous for swimming at this point. But they decide not to head home. They're determined. They take the children to the southern end of the beach and set them up on a large rock slab right next to the water.

Everybody, it sounds like, eats sandwiches and fruit. We don't know how much Christine and Marianne ate, but, you know, the kiddos eat the sandwiches and the fruit. And then to pass the time, since that beach is closed, Marianne and Christine suggest that they all hide the belongings and walk away.

up the shoreline toward Wanda Beach, which is what I think they really wanted to do anyway. It's isolated. I have a photo to show you. I will tell you, it feels isolated enough to me that I would not feel comfortable having my kiddos go out there on their own. And my girls are 14, you know, just one year younger than these girls. I

I know that you don't have a huge perspective here, but that's a lot of sand and it seems pretty isolated to me. Yeah, you know, and I've gone onto Google Maps and I'm looking at Wanda Beach, you know, a variety of photos. And it's up along the beach. You know, it's basically a very wide open beach area.

up against the waterway. But then the sandy area starts to slope up as you go away from the water up into where now you're getting into the parking area and basically the town that's right next there. So somebody who's down on the beach likely isn't visible to somebody who's potentially

just driving by or walking by. But most certainly, if the beach is closed and there's very few people, you know, it is isolated. And I personally would not be allowing my 15-year-old girls and then these little kids to be alone in this environment. Number one, just because of the dangers of being close to the water with the little kids, but also the possibility you could have somebody who has bad intent

having free access, and there isn't anybody around to kind of scare somebody off from doing that. And what I noticed here is all the vegetation, which I didn't expect. Sounds like a great place to hide or a great place to hide a body. I'm not saying that that's what happened here. I'm just saying there's an even bigger added thing, you know, layer here of there are places that, you know, you can really crouch down and spring up on someone. What I'm looking at is a photo called the Sandhills at Wanda.

And it is these undulating sand hills that have, it's somewhat low-lying bushes, but at certain areas, you can see these bushes look like they have some height to them and they're dense. So somebody who is trying to hide something or hide themselves possibly has good spots in order to maybe watch the kids out there on the beach.

So they get to Wanda around 1:00. I will say this is a long day. But, you know, they leave Sydney and then it looks like they arrive at Cronulla at about 11:00 a.m. And so this is a long time to drag around four little kids. But, you know, they're doing it. So they leave Cronulla with the kids and they arrive in Wanda around 1:00. And this is about a mile and a half, a little under a mile and a half. Gosh, that's a long time with little kids.

The kids are exhausted and they're complaining about the wind. And the wind, Paul, is so gusty that it is whipping against the little kid's legs, sensitive skin, and it's painful.

And the girls want to press on until they get to Wanda, which at this point in reading through all of this research and the story, I just thought, man, there's something going on here. Why are they so motivated to get to this part of the beach? Yeah, well, this sounds like a miserable experience. You know, I've been on a beach with wind whipping like that, and that's sad. It's like being sandblasted.

So that's what these little kids are complaining about is the sand being whipped up and then hitting their bare skin, possibly getting into the eyes. And it does beg the question, why stay? Because this does not sound like a fun experience. It seems like something that I know I probably would say, I'm out. I'm tapping out of this. Kids, we're going home.

So the next couple of points are going to be what I had once called victim shaming. And this is really, you're right, risk assessment here because they make some pretty bad decisions. Marianne is, I'm sure, tired of hearing the complaining. So she tells the little kiddos, go sit behind this dune where they're going to be protected from the wind.

They sit, they turn on the transistor radio that she had, music's playing, but they left all their stuff a mile and a half back-ish at Cronulla Beach. So this is what happens, and this is where things start to turn. Marianne looks at her little siblings and says, Christine and I are going to go back there. Stay here, play the radio. You know, we're going to cover you up with towels. Everything's fine, but we want to go back and go get our stuff.

Here's the problem. They walk in the wrong direction. And Peter, who is 10, knows this is the wrong direction. And he calls out and says, where are you going? And they either can't hear him because of the wind or they ignore him. But they are going together, two 15-year-old girls, without these little kids in the wrong direction of where they're saying they're going to go.

and this is where problems begin. Yeah, so they're two bright 15-year-old girls, and I'm assuming that, you know, they are fairly competent at navigation.

So it sounds like this is a purposeful act. They are purposefully walking in the wrong direction, and they are using this ruse with the little kids, oh, we need to go get our stuff, and thinking that the kids won't be paying attention, that they're actually going in the opposite direction. Now, why are they going in the opposite direction? Right, that's the big question, and that's what we're gonna try to figure out here. Okay, so they leave the kids, they go in the wrong direction,

And not long after, when this starts to unfold, of course, witnesses come forward. There's a man named Dennis Dostein, and he says he was at the beach. He didn't see the little kids, but he was with his son, and they both see the girls walking over the sand hills, the sand dunes. He says one of them, he didn't know which because, of course, you know, they look almost exactly alike, keeps looking over her shoulder like they're being followed. Right.

But Dennis looks around. He's a dad and concerned. He looks around and he doesn't see anybody. But he kind of makes a mental note that it's weird that one of the girls seems like she's concerned that she's being followed. Or because you're saying they're now walking around.

up into the sand dune area. Maybe she's wanting to make sure nobody is seeing them go there. It could be. I hadn't thought about that. Yeah. And as of now, we don't know what's happening with them. What I do know is that it's five o'clock and the little kids, the Schmidt kids, have been alone for four hours. They've been sitting against the sand dune, covered up, listening to this radio and

And they don't show up. And so these kids, who I think are amazing. So the eldest is Peter, the 10-year-old. There's a 10-year-old, a 9-year-old girl, a 7-year-old boy, and a 5-year-old boy. They, as a group, walk south the way that the girls were supposed to go. They end up getting their stuff from Cronulla Beach. And I can't even believe it. They get on a train at 6 o'clock by themselves. Last train of the night.

They arrive at their house around 8 o'clock all by themselves. And they tell Christine's grandparents, who are next door to Mary Ann's house and their house, that the teenagers left them alone. And they made that big trip all on their own, a two-hour train trip. I mean, they walked a mile and a half at the beach, 5 o'clock. It was probably still light outside, but still, they made that big trip all

all alone, the eldest is 10. That's amazing and frightening. - Yeah, it is, you know, but I think we're also talking 1965. You know, this is where kids that age oftentimes had a lot more independence. I remember, you know, I'm a child of the '70s. I was born in 1968, and so I was these kids' age in the mid-'70s, and I would go do things far and abroad in the neighborhoods surrounding my house, and my parents had no idea where I was. That just was that era.

But to think that this group of four kids were able to have the wherewithal to get on the train and get home, you know, that is amazing.

And I know as a parent in this day and age, I would be absolutely frightened if I was like, where are my kids? What, they're on a train by themselves? You know, bad things are going to happen. That's my instant instinct. Right. And I think Christine's grandmother was petrified. She finds out about it and she says, this is not like my grandchild and her best friend. She immediately reports them missing. Yeah.

And the police get involved very quickly. This would have been incredibly unusual, even for a big city like Sydney, you know, for two teenage girls to go missing in these circumstances, to leave, you know, one of them, Mary Ann's four little siblings, who she's always been very responsible. I mean, neither of these girls...

have sent up red flags for their families. Otherwise, they would be much more concerned about letting them take these little kids off. They must have been responsible teenagers. Yeah, so now the question is, where's Marianne and Christine? Okay. The next morning, so this is 12 hours later, there's a teenager named Peter Smith.

He's taking his little nephews out for a walk near Wanda Beach. This is not far at all from the shoreline, but it does feel very isolated and private. He's in the dunes, and Peter sees what he thinks is a mannequin. It's partially buried in the sand. So he leaves his nephews behind. He walks over and pushes away some of the sand.

And he realizes that it's the corpse of a young girl. And he panics and takes his nephews and runs to a lifeguard outpost. And they call the Cronulla police station and the detectives, you know, show up. But now at this point, they are putting two and two together.

I have a photo in a second, but let me tell you kind of the details because it might help put the crime scene photo together for you. The police think that the girls at one point had been completely buried, but remember, it was very windy. And when I show you the photo, you'll see part of Mary Ann's head covered

and then Christine's feet. They had been buried one in front of the other with Mary Ann's feet touching Christine's head. And, you know, of course, I'll talk to you about more details. We've got two big things to talk about. The rigor and the position of their limbs and how they were found is interesting. And then, of course, I'll talk to you about their injuries. You might need to zoom in, or I can if you want me to. You can see the feet, and you can see her head, I think. But I can definitely see the feet. Okay.

Okay, so I'm looking at a photograph that appears to be taken from a little bit of an elevated position where the photographer's standing, looking down on the sand, and there's a depression in the foreground in the photograph, and then way too many individuals, all men in suits, which I'm presuming are the investigators on this case.

that are on the other side of this depression. And then I can see the sand dunes behind this location, and I believe the ocean behind that. There's not a lot of contrast, but it's a black and white photo, of course. And so focusing in on the depression,

There is a photographer with an old-style camera, probably something similar to what I used early on in my career, a 4x5 speed graphics camera on a tripod.

And this is how they would document crime scenes back in the day with the old-style film photography. And so this camera appears to be focused down into this depression, and there appears to be an area which I believe is what you are describing as two feet. And at least at this zoom, I can't verify those are feet, but at least from far away, it appears that it could be feet.

And then if I go somewhat to the right of where those feet are located, I see a dark mass. I'm not sure if there's something by that mass, which appears at least initially maybe hair, you know, like one of the girl's heads. Yeah.

What I'm assessing right now, you know, of course, is, okay, if they were buried, even in sand, it takes some time, you know, to dig enough sand in order to be able to have a deep enough depression to put two, who in essence are adult-size women. They're 15-year-old girls. Now, was this depression existing, and did they just shift sand over them, or did they actually dig? In this photograph, I can't see. Is there any...

You know, sometimes when you dig, the sand on the surface is very dry, but you get down deeper and now you have the moist sand and it's clumpy. You know, I'm not seeing anything to indicate that there's that aspect where now they're having to dig into sort of a harder packed area. But

The offender not only interacted with the victims, killed the victims, but had the time to try to hide the bodies and actually did a reasonably good job. Burying bodies, for the most part, is always in a shallow grave, even in this type of sandy environment, because it is hard and it takes time. But the offender felt comfortable enough to take the time to dispose of the bodies versus just killing the victims and running off.

So Marianne is the one whose head was uncovered, which we presume is her dark hair that we saw. And Christine's feet are uncovered. So Marianne is discovered to be lying almost in a fetal position on her right side. And according to, there's an author named Alan Whitaker, and according to his reporting, this is what he says, her left leg is bent at the knee at a right angle to her body.

Christine, so we see Christine's feet, is found lying face down in the sand with her right arm bent at the elbow, with her forearm close to her face as if shielding it. What does that mean exactly?

As far as is this someone in the middle of an action of defending herself and somehow with rigor she's frozen in that action once she dies? Or what does all of that body positioning mean to you? The body positioning may just be how the offender left the victim's bodies.

You know, and whether it's one offender, two offenders, we can't say at this point or more, you know. But right now, we know the offender took the time to position these two victims' bodies and cover them up. And, you know, at the time that these victims are killed, there's no rigor.

So their bodies are freely manipulative, if that's a word. But you know what I'm saying. And are they just dumping these bodies in this depression they created and then covering sand up? And that's what we're seeing.

Were the victims killed at this location? And so is there, when you start talking about Christine's, her positioning of her arm, is she shielding herself from maybe being stomped on? I know nothing about how they were killed. So is this a defensive posture and she dies in this position? I don't know right now. I can't draw any conclusions. I need more information. Yeah.

Okay, well, let's give you more information. So, folks, this is graphic, what we're about to talk about here. Let me tell you, Paul, first how they died, and then I will talk about the potential for sexual assault. And then there is the physical stuff around that will be helpful.

Mary Ann, who we see her hair, has been stabbed a total of 14 times. One of these stab wounds is directly to her heart. Another is to her throat, which they describe as a very severe cut. Christine has been bashed in the back of the head with a blunt item.

Her skull is fractured, and Christine has had six stab wounds. So what do you think about that? Just based on the superficial information without being able to see anything, the difference is right off the bat is Christine received blunt force trauma to the back of her head.

plus stab wounds. And then Mary Ann has numerous stab wounds, one to the heart, and then her throat is cut. That's not, you know, at least you initially described it as a stab wound, but they're saying it's a cut, an incision, like this was a purposeful execution.

her throat is cut. I'd need to see more, but right off the bat, my initial impression is that, well, why is Christine getting hit in the back of the head? Is she being disabled first so the offender can turn the attention to Mary Ann or

And then after he kills Marianne, and I'm assuming there's sexual interactions going on, he then goes back and stabs Christine to make sure she's dead. You know, there's that type of scenario just based off of this superficial description of the injuries that I am immediately starting to run through in my head. So I'll tell you the order that they think that this happened and the reason why. They notice a drag mark, which is 37 yards long.

leading into a dip between the sand hills. And there's blood on the sand and in the grass. There are pools of blood along this pathway that end with Christine. They think Mary Ann was attacked first. She's the one with the 14 stabs that Christine ran and was dragged back. They also think that because of the concentrations of blood, he had to take blood

They don't think he's strong. They think that Christine was either fighting or she was heavier than he thought because there are pools of blood along this pathway until you get to her final burial spot.

She was very light. So this is all of them thinking maybe we're not thinking about a, we don't know if this could be another kid who's not very strong. What do you think about that theory? Pools of blood kind of along the way of this pathway of a drag mark.

Right now, the thing I'm struggling with is the single offender theory. You've got these two 15-year-old girls, and if one of them is running away prior to the other one being disabled, how is the offender maintaining control? You know, if the two victims are so divided, do we have multiple offenders present or

Right now, I'm not entirely convinced that the original investigators have a good handle on this crime scene. Well, let's talk about motive. There are signs that the attacker tried to rape both of these girls. So Christine was wearing, I don't know if you've ever heard of this, but Christine was wearing a sanitary belt.

which, you know, would have been a little belt that women would wear or girls would wear around their waist. And it had kind of two little clips in the front and back. And you would take a sanitary cloth and clip it at the front and clip it in the back. And then, of course, just remove it when you needed to change it.

She was the one I told you was on her period. They say that her sanitary belt and the napkin had been removed, and her shorts that she was wearing were shoved into her crotch area. And Marianne's shorts had been cut down the side and rolled up around her breasts, exposing the lower half of her body. There were scratch marks on their inner thighs, and semen was found on Marianne's body.

Of course, we're going to come back to this. The hymens were still intact. We know that that does not really say anything. So we know the motive, it sounds like. Does this sound like one guy? This is where I need to really look at the victim's injuries, the crime scene, the location of the bloodstaining, the drag marks.

to see if I can sequence how this went down and is it something that could be accomplished by one offender or does it require multiple offenders? Right now, what stands out to me, I'm assuming that there's actual insurgency.

insertion of Christine's shorts up into her vagina. You know, and this is something that I see in sexually motivated crimes where you have objects, whether it be the victim's own clothing or other foreign objects that are inserted vaginally. In this case, Christine is menstruating. Was the offender putting that into her in order to maybe stem some of the menstrual blood flows?

But this act in and of itself suggests that I don't think I'm dealing with a teenage boy. I don't think I'm dealing with somebody who's going to be very inexperienced with a woman who's been on her period. And I did have a – I'm going to kind of go into, you know, the Golden State Killer series.

where part of the reason I thought I was dealing with an older offender, whereas some investigators, including original investigators, were looking at teenage boys.

was the offender was removing women's tampons before he was raping them. This is now suggesting that maybe I'm dealing with somebody who has some sexual experience, possibly in a sexual relationship with a woman, has a comfort with a woman on her period. But that's, again, this is such superficial information.

I do want to know more. I mean, this case is, all of a sudden, I'm very fascinated with this case. You know, of course, with semen being found on Mary Ann, you know, in this day and age, this is a solvable case. And right now, I don't know if this is a solved case or not with what you've told me.

Well, let's continue on here. They are trying to predict when this happened, how closely the girls died together, if the offender kept one alive longer. They think that they died within a half an hour of one another. But they said that the hot sand made it difficult because it delayed rigor. Is that true? Hot sand? Well, it's not so much. It's the temperature. It's not the sand.

Rigor is something that does vary in terms of its onset based off of temperature, those environmental factors. In a cooler environment, because everything slows down in the cold environment, the decompositional process slows down, it does take longer. So it's possible that this hot sand could have sped up rigor. And so I'm thinking about the temporal aspects. They isolate themselves naturally.

at 1 o'clock in the afternoon. We don't know right now, were they killed in the afternoon and were their bodies buried with this hot sand in that afternoon, or were they out there for a period of time and now they're killed and the sun has gone down and things are cooler. But the heat, if they were buried with hot sand, that could speed up rigor.

But then they go overnight. They're not found until the next day. I will tell you, the sand is a real pain in the ass because, and you can talk about sand at a crime scene, they have to use mechanical equipment to sift through the area to see if they can get any evidence. And the sand is just falling all over the place. They eventually recover an old knife and a piece of steel that was broken off of the piece of a knife.

And they link that to Christine and Marianne's deaths, but they don't find anything else. They don't find any other clues. And I know that sand must be just awful to deal with as a crime scene. Did you ever work any cases where sand was involved, beach stuff? Yeah.

Well, you know, I had the east end of my county, even though it wasn't necessarily up against the water, is very sandy. You know, so, you know, dealing with the sand on some of these crime scenes can be difficult. I have cases in which I've been up on the coastline, you know, and really it was the muck that was a pain in the butt.

Being in the tules and this muddy area was really tough to deal with. I think I would rejoice with sand because it's easy to sift through. You know, if I'm trying to find something, that's relatively easy with the types of tools that we would bring out to do crime scene processing versus trying to sift through mud where you need to have running water.

Now, I know Christine's shorts were found. Were the rest of their clothing found at the crime scene? Yes. Nothing was taken, as far as they can tell. Ripped, but not taken. And now things get confusing, as far as I'm concerned. They look at Christine's stomach contents. She did not bring food with her. That doesn't mean she didn't eat any food. But they know that the only food that the kids had with them was fruit and sandwiches. Right.

And what they say was Marianne had undigested what they say in quotes, vegetable matter, which one media source says was actually cabbage and celery. They did not have cabbage and celery with them. And they think it was eaten sometime in the hour before Marianne's death.

Now, Christine has a blood alcohol content of 0.015, which they say is about the amount of alcohol produced by 10 ounces of beer. Does that sound right to you? So typically a 12 ounce can of beer, like for 150 pound male, will raise the blood alcohol level up about a 0.02 percent.

Now, she's at a 0.015, and you're telling me she's petite. So likely, if she had, let's say, one beer, and then she's eliminated, maybe she would rise up 0.03, and now she's eliminating some of that alcohol. So at the time of her death and when the sample's collected, she's down at the 0.015. In her system, at the time of sample collection would be the equivalent of 10 ounces of beer. In all likelihood, she drank more.

and then had eliminated some of that before she was killed. I mean, this girl probably, I would bet, is 110 maybe pounds. They look tiny. Would that 10 ounces of beer plus maybe another 10 ounces or something, we don't know, would that have been enough to really disable her or what

state would she have been in with little food? Actually, there's no food in Christine's stomach. Yeah. You know, I'm assuming she's a novice drinker. You know, victimology again. In all likelihood, she probably has never consumed alcohol or has maybe experimented with it a few times as just a teenager. But, you know, physiologically, she's a novice drinker. And if she drank

let's say, two cans, two 12-ounce cans of beers, she would be feeling it. Now, she's not completely blasted

But she is most certainly going to be feeling, you know, two beers in her system. And, you know, she's at this state of probably relaxed, uninhibited, you know, somewhat giggly, you know, after two beers. And that's kind of my guess is that she probably had one to two beers and is just kind of enjoying whatever the scenario that's going on before things turn violent.

So, remember, Paul, Mary Ann doesn't have any alcohol in her system. She just has food. So now I think back and think, is that why she got 14 stab wounds? Because she was more difficult to kill. It doesn't seem like she was drunk at all. There was no alcohol in her system. So wouldn't she likely have put up more of a fight?

She may have put up more resistance to the offender's advances. You know, she's got her wherewithals about her. Whether or not she's more capable of putting up a physical fight than Christine, and Christine is definitely in a very inebriated state.

It's likely, I would say so. Does that mean that's why the offenders had to inflict more stab wounds? Not necessarily. Okay. I have some more information for you that wasn't in research, but I was just curious about. I was wondering...

because it's beer, what the legal drinking age was in Australia in this time. I assumed it was 18. It wasn't. It was 21. So I've got some information, a witness who you've got to tell me if is reliable or unreliable, but I'm telling you, we've got people pointing to kids about this crime. And...

I just wonder, I mean, I guess a kid could steal a beer or two or three or four from his dad's refrigerator. But, you know, I know we, you and I kind of talk about our teenagers, young teenage boys able to do something like this. But I'll tell you, you know, they're really going to start thinking about kids maybe coming up. Yeah, well, in terms of physical capability, you know, a 16-year-old boy physically is

would be able to commit the type of violence that you see on these two girls. Now, this is where, you know, digging into, like I talked about before, you know, with if Christine's shorts are shoved vaginally, not that it eliminates the teenage boy, that just suggests to me that I'm dealing with somebody that maybe has greater comfort

with women on their period and has been in a maybe a longer term sexual relationship with a woman, which would suggest maybe somebody a little bit older, not necessarily a lot older. But the scenario, you have two 15-year-old girls sneaking off and there's alcohol and food. It's like they have this prearranged meeting

And is this with older boys? Is this with, you know, a couple of guys that are in their early 20s, mid 20s? Or is it with boys that are their same age? I think it's probably going to be somebody a little bit older. Well, let's find out what we have a witness saying. So this is Wolfgang and he is seven. This is what Wolfgang says. He's one of the kids who was there. He's leaning up against the dune.

He says that he had seen the girls walking into the sand dunes, you know, far away after they had left them behind with, this is what he describes as a fat boy who was in his teens, 14 to 16, who had light hair, a quote, smooth face, a blue towel, light gray pants.

He can't remember all the details about this boy, can't put together a sketch even. And he's seven, so of course, but he does remember some specific things. What do you think about the reliability of Wolfgang's statement about seeing the girls with this chubby boy? Well, you know, first, of course, is his age. Second is the distance that he's seeing this boy with the girls. So, you know, both...

factor in as to the veracity and the accuracy of the information that he's able to provide. But also, we have another witness, an adult male, Dennis, who had seen the girls walking up into the sand dunes. He sees one of the girls looking over her shoulders, right? You would think Dennis would also say there was this boy with them, and he's not saying that.

I probably put greater weight on Dennis's information. When Wolfgang is seeing the girls with this heavier kid,

You know, is this at the same time that Dennis is seeing the girls walking into the sand dunes or not? We don't have time stamps on that, unfortunately. I wish we knew. Yeah, you know, so it's something to register, you know, because maybe Wolfgang is accurate, but I wouldn't put too much weight on it. Well, Wolfgang adds to his story, which I think is interesting. Two days later, he says, I've remembered some other things.

He had seen that boy, who he described as a fat teenage boy, the same young man before they left Cronulla Beach and headed toward Wanda Beach. He said that the boy was a teenage boy, was trying to catch crabs from a rock slab where the kids had eaten their sandwiches and stored their belongings. So this very large rock slab. He is on one end.

And he is using a spear gun and a knife to catch craps. He doesn't say there was any interaction. He said the teen that had the knife, it was holstered on his side. And he said that the boy tried to chat up the girls and they ignored him. So then he says 10 minutes after Christine and Marianne left the kids, this is a mile and a half later at Wanda Beach,

that he had seen that same teenage boy walking toward Cronulla Beach by himself. Wolfgang, because the teen was in the direction of where the girls went and now he's heading back 10 minutes later, Wolfgang yells out, where are the girls? Where's my sister and her friend? And the boy completely ignored it.

And he says that the knife on the kid's hip was gone. And this is an issue because none of the other kids say that they remember seeing this at all. Not even the 10 or the 11-year-old. I don't know if it's somebody coaching him or if these are real memories or if this is just something he made up in his head just to figure out what the heck happened to his sister.

Well, and that is a phenomenon that does occur, you know, and I've seen it with some of the cases that these older cases I've worked in where you have these young witnesses and some of the details that they provide to turn out to be false details. You know, they do construct evidence.

details as time goes on. So, of course, this is where if Wolfgang is bringing up these details, this is interviewing because there's several older kids in this group. There's a Peter that's 10. Do we have corroborating information from the other kids about

this heavier set boy that's out there spearfishing with the knife on his hip, girls interacting with him. We know we have this man, Dennis, you know, who's out there. Does he see this boy? This is where now tracking down anybody who's

on the beach, you know, that day and saying, hey, you know, was this boy seen? Who is this boy? He sounds like he's a local, you know. He's possibly somebody who goes to this beach on a periodic basis. You know, with enough boots on the ground, you possibly could identify this boy and interview him and find out

if he had any involvement with it. I do have concerns about the details Wolfgang is providing over the course of time. And does this boy have like a cache of alcohol and food tucked away in the sand dunes, you know, while he's out spearfishing?

How old is this boy? You know, there's a lot of questions that I have about this. So here's the problem for the police. First of all, just like you, they're very skeptical of Wolfgang's story. He said, listen, I saw this kid when I was alone. I was worried about my sister. I got up. But still, you know, nobody remembers the interaction between the teenage boy and the two girls where they brush him off.

But let's move past that. I mean, really, if I shorthand this story, there are...

countless teenage blonde boys on these beaches. This is beach season. There are, I'm telling you, Paul, perverts that they interview. There are teenage boys that they interview. At the end of this story, they interview 14,000 people. And this goes on for a decade. They don't let this case go. And they are having the worst time because this is a beach that attracts

People who are soliciting sex, who are trying to molest teenage girls on the beach. There are ne'er-do-wells. Every time you throw a rock, you're going to hit one. And then there are these surfer boys. So it is just an endless amount of suspects for these police who are desperately trying to figure out who murdered these girls.

Yeah, you know, and this is a nightmare scenario in terms of suspect pool. You know, and you get to where when you start talking about numbers like that, you know, an interview just is not going to cut it. You know, you really can't sort through that number of males with just sheer circumstances to figure out which one is, unless the person says, yes, I did it.

or really hinks up, you really aren't going to be able to get in depth, particularly a decade later. You know, this is where this case is a physical evidence case. This is where the offender intimately interacted with these two girls, whether it's one offender or multiple offenders. There's transference of physical evidence. We know we have semen on Marianne. We know the offender or another offender physically interacted with Christine to the point where he is

shoving her shorts up into her. That's where today, what have they done with the physical evidence? Well, let me kind of wrap this up here by telling you a couple of things. One I think is very interesting, which is the detectives get a hold of the girls' diaries, and they find out that Christine and Marianne met some teenage boys on the beach during New Year's Day. I told you they had a visit there.

And according to the researcher Whitaker who wrote about this, the girls had parted with a kiss with these boys and they made a promise to meet them again. We don't know if that's what happened here, but

But we do know that they had met boys, teenage boys, and that was sort of their best lead. This is an unsolved case. This has gone on for years and years and years. I read an article in 2012. They got the killer's blood type from the semen left at the scene, and they have not been able to link the DNA back to a specific individual. I do not know if they've used, you know, genealogy. It doesn't sound like they did. But they do have a sample is what it sounds like to me.

You know, some countries have started to use genealogy after we did it with Golden State Killer. I mean, we're much more progressive here in the United States using genealogy on criminal casework than many other countries. I

I think Australia is starting to use it, but I don't know to what extent. But in this day and age, that's how this case would be solved, is that semen sample for Mary Ann, they need to do genealogy on and see where that leads them. Well, let me read you this. This is from a newspaper article from the Sydney Morning Herald, and this is a long time ago, 2014.

The identity of the Wanda Beach Killer may never be revealed through scientific means. After it was revealed, a DNA sample taken from one of the victims almost 50 years ago has been, quote, lost. So the semen sample, which holds a DNA profile, was listed as an exhibit. But despite exhaustive searches of the Glebe forensic laboratories where it was housed, it has not been located. It was from Marianne where the semen was located. Yeah.

They can't find it. They said it's the NSW Unsolved Homicide Unit says there's not a trace of it. He said that testing of the girl's clothing was continuing and he believed could be the key to solving the case was still through the physical evidence. Trace DNA was detected on Christine's shorts.

She was the one who had him shoved into her crotch, but it was very old and degraded. It only indicated female DNA. Christine's, we're assuming. There's an indication of male DNA, but it has not been definitively identified as yet. We just have to keep on reexamining all the available evidence as science improves. This was a long time ago. This is 2014. I don't know where they stand now, but that is, from what I see, the most recent article. I have run into this on CNN.

way too many cases where the most probative evidence turns out to be misplaced. But it sounds like at one point in time, during the DNA era, you know, they got the ABO type, but it also sounds like they did generate a DNA profile from that semen sample from Marianne. Is that right? Yeah, the one they lost. You know, this is where it is literally walking through where that sample went during that DNA testing. And

What ends up happening is that during the process of evaluating, you know, the swab or the clothing item, you know, cuttings may be taken, tubes are generated, and then subsequent tubes with DNA extracts are generated, and then samples from that DNA extract is then run on the instrument. But along each step, there's potentially...

offender DNA still left and you have to go through and look at all these potential repositories and maybe

in a freezer in the lab somewhere tucked in the back is the DNA extract tube or the tube that was generated during the screening process or a cutting from whatever item the semen was found on. I would think they would do that, but I've seen agencies that, because oftentimes it's the investigators who are going to the property room and going, okay, where's the sample? And the property room's going, we can't find it. And they call up the lab and the lab said, well, we returned it.

but nobody's actually looking at all the various individual steps that that sample went through during the analysis process to see is there something there.

Maybe the tube is gone, but the original packaging that the swab was put in, if it was a swab, still remains. Well, that swab, while it was moist, probably touched the inside of that packaging and you have a sample from inside the package that looks empty, but the DNA is in there.

People often overlook that. So that's part of what I would hope that they had done to say it's all gone, you know, and it can be. I've run into cases where it's like, no, it's just not there. But at least they have other physical items that could potentially have offender DNA on it.

1965, did they collect Marianne and Christine's fingernails? Did they collect the toenails? I do believe that based off of the intimate interactions that the offender offenders had with Marianne and Christine,

that there is the possibility, and I hope it still is possible, that they could recover offender DNA in this day and age and potentially solve the case. I mean, it would be so sad, you know, that if this case is now rendered unsolvable because somebody misplaced that semen evidence.

We'll see. This case is the oldest one under review by the Unsolved Homicide Unit there in Australia. So it seems like it's active, but there have been confessions. One of the latest, latest articles is that a pedophile who was abusing his own daughter and sister confessed, quote unquote. But there's nothing about an arrest. So we know that happens all the time. And they have a list of

Yeah, did they identify the boys that the girls had met up with in the diary? Never did.

Really? Yeah. Or if they did, they were crossed off immediately, but they were not focused in. They're not even listed as potential suspects. It was either they were not found at all because they probably didn't use their names in their diaries, or, you know, they were immediately crossed off the list for whatever reason. But they were never serious suspects. It was interesting, though, to the police that they had met these boys. One of the items that I think would be high priority is the knife.

The girls didn't bring that knife. The offender brought the knife. You know, how rigorously have they gone after DNA from the offender off of the knife? Yeah. Or even latents, depending on, you know, the surfaces that are present on that knife.

Well, I told you this is a hefty case. This was a lot, especially for one episode. And I think that this is a case because of these two teenage girls who just went out there. We don't know why they took some actions that they did. But this has really been a case that has just endured years and years and years and years. I know that.

Some of Marianne's siblings are around, and they've spoken out about it, and everybody just wants answers. So, you know, I know that this was a difficult case for me to get through just because I have twin girls who are just, you know, six months younger than these girls were

And that's hard, but it's also good to be able to review these cases because I learn something every time. So as always, thanks for that, Paul. Yeah, you know, and I'm looking at this going, okay, whatever agency is investigating this case, fly me out there. This is a case I would want to work.

I would love for us to get involved in one of these cases, so we'll see. We are off next week, which is why I was okay with us having such a big case here because we need a rest. So we're off next week, but I will bring back another fantastic case the following week. I'm looking forward to it. Thanks, Kate. ♪

This has been an Exactly Right production. For our sources and show notes, go to exactlyrightmedia.com slash buriedbonessources. Our senior producer is Alexis Amorosi. Research by Maren McClashan, Allie Elkin, and Kate Winkler-Dawson.

Our mixing engineer is Ben Talladay. Our theme song is by Tom Breifogel. Our artwork is by Vanessa Lilac. Executive produced by Karen Kilgariff, Georgia Hardstark, and Daniel Kramer. You can follow Buried Bones on Instagram and Facebook at BuriedBonesPod.

Kate's most recent book, All That Is Wicked, a Gilded Age story of murder and the race to decode the criminal mind, is available now. And Paul's best-selling memoir, Unmasked, My Life Solving America's Cold Cases, is also available now.