1966 | Glenelg, South Australia, Australia | Kidnapping / Murder | Unsolved
TLDR
On Jan. 26, 1966, Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont, aged 9, 7, and 4, took a bus from Somerton Park to Glenelg Beach in Adelaide for a morning at the beach. They were last seen at a local shop just before lunch. Their mother expected them home by 2 p.m. They never came home. No confirmed suspect has ever been charged. No remains have ever been found.
The Case
Australia Day 1966 was a hot summer Wednesday, and the Beaumont children had done the same trip to Glenelg Beach before on their own. Jim and Nancy Beaumont were comfortable with it. Jane, the eldest at nine, was responsible. Grant, the youngest, was four. The bus fare was a few cents.
What investigators were able to reconstruct afterward: the three children arrived at Glenelg, played on the beach, and at some point during the morning were seen with an unknown tall, thin man with blond hair in his 30s. Multiple witnesses reported seeing them with him, buying them food at a local shop, and playing with them on the sand. A postal worker said Jane had a five-pound note when she bought food at the shop, which was more money than the children had left home with. Someone had given it to her.
Nancy Beaumont expected them home by 2 p.m. for lunch. They did not come. She assumed they had taken a later bus. By evening, Jim had reported them missing.
The search that followed became one of the largest in South Australian history. Volunteers combed beaches, parks, and scrubland. Divers searched the waters off Glenelg. Letters poured in from across Australia. Psychics contacted the police. A Dutch clairvoyant named Gerard Croiset visited twice and identified a site in Glenelg where he believed the children were buried. Excavations at that site produced nothing.
Investigators developed several persons of interest over the decades, most prominently Arthur Stanley Brown, a convicted child killer from Queensland, and Derek Percy, a Victorian man convicted of a separate child murder in 1969. Both died without being definitively connected to the Beaumont children.
In 2013, a property in Castalloy, an industrial suburb of Adelaide, was excavated after a former worker told investigators he had seen something buried there in 1966. The excavation found nothing relating to the children. A second excavation was conducted nearby in 2018. It also produced nothing.
Jane Beaumont would be in her late 60s today. Grant would be in his early 60s. Nobody has ever come forward with credible firsthand knowledge of what happened to them at Glenelg Beach on Jan. 26, 1966.
Where to Find More
Documentaries: The Beaumont Children: Australia’s Most Heartbreaking Mystery (2018) is available on Australian streaming services. 60 Minutes Australia has covered the case multiple times, with segments available on YouTube.
Books: The Beaumont Children by Alan Whiticker and Stuart Mullins (2006) is the most thorough book-length investigation of the case.
Podcasts: Casefile True Crime covered the Beaumont Children in Case 100. It remains one of the podcast’s most-listened-to episodes. Available on all major platforms.
References
- Wikipedia. Beaumont children. Wikimedia Foundation.
- Casefile True Crime. Case 100: The Beaumont Children
