WHO KILLED THE BEAUMONT CHILDREN?

It was the missing persons case that stole our innocence – three children snatched from an Adelaide beach in broad daylight on Australia Day, 1966. Now, almost 60 years later, an amateur sleuth and a retired police detective believe they have finally identified the man who abducted the Beaumont children.

- ANGUS FONTAINE

Parents know the panic. A lost child, even for a few agonising seconds, can be a nightmare. If those few seconds stretch into minutes – or God forbid, hours – whole worlds can cave in. So imagine what Nancy and Jim Beaumont experienced when their children – nine-year-old Jane, seven-year-old Arnna and four-year-old Grant – vanished on January 26 in 1966. An unsupervised trip to busy Glenelg Beach on a swelteringly hot Adelaide day in the last week of the summer holidays quickly detonated into the most chilling mystery in Australia’s history.

Glenelg is, and always has been, a popular playground for families. But on that fateful day it was also the hunting ground for a cold, calculating predator. He watched Jane, Arnna and Grant arrive by bus after their mother had waved them off from nearby Somerton Park. He watched them splash in shallows by the jetty then frolic under sprinklers at Colley Reserve.

Witnesses said little Grant approached the man first and Jane flicked him with her wet towel. The man and children were soon playing like so many other happy families there that day. Witnesses said the man was tall, about 30-40 years old, with a long face and high forehead. There was a flurry of activity. Jane’s purse had been stolen, the man told people close by.

Somehow the man then enticed the children away, not kicking and screaming, but quietly. They were spotted again 20 minutes later at Wenzel’s Cakes, buying pies, pasties, buns and fizzy drinks. Despite ‘losing’ her purse carrying the few coins their mother had given them for the bus fare, Jane paid for the big lunch with a one-pound note – the equivalent of $140 today.

It was 12.30pm. That was the last confirmed sighting of the Beaumont children.