Kidnapped

by Mark Tedeschi

  Several years after the trial, Magda quietly returned to Australia. She passed away in 2002.

  * * *

  Soon after the kidnapping and death of Graeme Thorne, arrangements were introduced to all State lotteries to allow for the privacy of winners’ details.

  * * *

  In September 1960, one of the many people who had attempted to extort money from the Thornes, and one of the few to be caught and prosecuted, pleaded guilty in the Sydney Quarter Sessions.11 Forty-four-year-old Newcastle photographer Alfred Vercoe appeared for sentence charged with attempting to obtain £25,000 from Bazil Thorne by falsely pretending that he was in a position to assist in the return of Graeme Thorne. In a written statement, Bazil Thorne testified that on 4 August 1960 after speaking to a man on the phone who claimed to be holding Graeme, he went to Newtown Railway Station and spoke to a man whom he identified as Mr Vercoe. The man told him that Graeme was safe and would be returned on payment of £25,000, claiming not to have actually participated in the kidnapping, but to have been in the same street when the boy was taken away. Bazil decided that the man was not telling the truth, and so he neither offered him nor gave him any money. Mr Vercoe admitted in court that he had said the things as alleged by Bazil Thorne, but denied that he had had any intention of obtaining money when he met with Bazil. He told the court, ‘I wanted to make myself big in confronting Mr Thorne.’12 As a result of raising this exoneratory explanation, Vercoe’s plea of guilty was rejected and he went to trial in May 1962 before Judge Clegg and a jury. In his dock statement, Vercoe agreed that Bazil Thorne’s evidence was correct, but again asserted that he had not intended extorting any money, saying:

  I wanted to be seen with Thorne and let everybody know that I had been with him. Why I did this I am simply at a loss to explain.

  Vercoe was convicted by the jury on 25 May 1962. When sentencing him, Judge Clegg told Vercoe that he had been callous and inhuman to prey on the mind of a man who did not know if his son was alive or dead. Referring to a recommendation for mercy from the jury, the judge said:

  I regard your crime is almost deserving of the same penalty as awarded the actual kidnapper. The law provides a maximum sentence of five years for this type of offence. Until I heard the jury’s recommendation, I had intended to impose that sentence on you.13

  Vercoe was sentenced to imprisonment for two years.

  * * *

  In December 1961, the New South Wales Parliament passed an amendment to the Crimes Act which introduced the new crime of kidnapping (detention for ransom or any other advantage). To the author’s knowledge, there has not been another kidnapping for ransom of a child in Australia.

  16

  HYPOTHESES AND SYNTHESES

  The evidence linking Stephen Bradley to the kidnapping and death of Graeme Thorne can only be described as overwhelming. The combination of direct evidence (the identifications and confessions), circumstantial evidence (the car, accent, previous connection to the location of the body, statements consistent with expected future wealth) and the expert scientific evidence (plant material, mortar, hair, tassels, rug, twine, string) amounted to a case that would be the envy of any prosecutor in a homicide trial. The extent of the police investigation was unparalleled at the time, and rarely matched to this day.

  Stephen Bradley’s assertion to the police in his oral and written confessions that Graeme Thorne sat meekly in the front passenger seat of his car while he drove through the city, over the Harbour Bridge and down to the Spit Bridge was quite unbelievable, as was the idea that he left Graeme unattended in the car while he made the ransom call to the parents. It was equally incredible that the boy remained calmly in the vehicle while Bradley drove into his own garage, and that it was only when they were inside the garage that Bradley forced him into the boot.

  It is inconceivable that Bradley left Graeme in a conscious state in the boot of the car while the removalists went about their work just metres away, or that he left him there from approximately 10am (when they arrived at Clontarf) until it was dark (at about 5.30pm in July) – a total of over seven hours – before he went back to the boot to find that he was dead. It should be noted that when the body was found there was no twine wrapped around Graeme’s wrists – only around his ankles. If he had been confined to the boot in a conscious state, he would surely have used his hands to remove the gag in order to breathe more freely and to call out for help. The time of Graeme’s death, based on the forensic pathologist’s examination of his stomach contents, was at least two or three hours after Graeme had ingested his breakfast. The mode of death – a combination of blunt force trauma to the head and asphyxiation – is consistent with him being locked in the boot of the car while unconscious, after a severe blow to the head and at a time when his breathing was restricted by the gag and the close confines of the Customline’s boot. By the time they arrived at Clontarf, it is likely that Graeme was already suffering from oxygen deprivation. In hitting him on the head with a metal tool, Bradley had no idea how hard he should strike in order to render him unconscious for an extended period of time. This was not something he had planned in advance.

  Stephen Bradley’s attempts to explain the death as a tragic accident that occurred through no fault of his own were seriously flawed and inherently unbelievable at the time, and with the benefit of hindsight they are equally unconvincing now.

  It is quite plausible, however, that Bradley had no intention to kill Graeme Thorne. He would have realised how the boy’s death would make it far more difficult to obtain payment of the ransom. It can be accepted that Bradley did not realise that, with the scarf tightly wrapped around Graeme’s mouth and the boot lid closed, there was very little fresh air entering the confined space, so that even without a blow to the head he was at risk of dying from asphyxiation. The question arises: assuming that Bradley did not intend Graeme Thorne’s death, was he properly convicted of murder?

  Because Stephen Bradley adopted the defence at his trial that he had had no involvement whatsoever in the kidnapping, there was little consideration given to the question of his liability for murder in the event that Graeme’s death had been unintended. In fact, neither counsel referred to this issue in their closing address, leaving it to Justice Clancy to explain this question of law to the jury. If Bradley had taken the same approach at his trial as he did during his police confession – that Graeme’s death had been accidental – this issue would have loomed much larger.

  Murder occurs where the accused has caused the death of another person with the intention either to kill or to do ‘grievous bodily harm’. Grievous bodily harm means very serious bodily injury. To deliberately render someone unconscious by striking them on the head undoubtedly amounts to grievous bodily harm. Based on the scenario described in this book, involving the use of chloroform to render Graeme unconscious, and later a deliberate blow to his head to maintain that state of unconsciousness, Stephen Bradley was undoubtedly properly convicted of murder. Even if Bradley’s oral police confession had been true (which clearly it was not), and Graeme somehow violently struck himself on the head while enclosed in the boot, Bradley would still have been legally liable for murder, because there was another category of murder in which the accused has acted with ‘reckless indifference to human life’. Reckless indifference did not require any particular intent on the part of the accused to cause harm to the victim, but merely a ‘don’t care’ attitude to whether the victim lives or dies.1 It was inevitable that the jury would have found that merely by imprisoning Graeme in the boot of the car with the scarf wrapped around his mouth, Stephen Bradley was recklessly indifferent to the risk of the boy dying from a lack of oxygen.

  Bradley’s tactic when he was interviewed by the police – of trying to minimise his responsibility for Graeme’s death – was therefore doomed from the start. Even if he had admitted his involvement in the kidnapping at the trial, his lame account to the police of how the boy had died would not have spared him from a conviction for mur
der. In fact, whatever approach Bradley could have taken at his trial, he was inevitably facing a conviction for murder.

  * * *

  The author’s hypothesis about what happened in Centennial Park is based upon a synthesis of all of the evidence. The Senior Crown Prosecutor who conducted the trial clearly came to the view that Centennial Park was the location where the initial violence occurred. However, it would appear that the police were rather sceptical about this scenario. In a 1991 letter to journalist and author Malcolm Brown, the retired Detective Sergeant Brian Doyle wrote:

  I refer to Knight’s mention of Centennial Park. As I told you at my place, there was never any evidence or even a suggestion of anything happening in Centennial Park. That was a shock suggestion by Knight himself at the trial, and for the very first time. It was pure speculation. There had not been any previous mention of it. Some of us for weeks later wondered where he had got the idea from, and what effect it may have had on the jury. In all our discussions with him he never mentioned it.2

  On the other hand, Detective Inspector Albert (‘Bert’) Windsor, the acting chief of the CIB who was extensively involved in the investigation, told journalist Bill Archibald:

  There seems some doubt where and when the murder was committed. I suggest that the most likely spot was Centennial Park. I believe Bradley drove to a secluded spot in the park and then hit the boy on the head with a heavy instrument. I believe he then bundled the boy into the boot of the car.3

  The author’s Centennial Park scenario is based on the assumption that Stephen Bradley would never have taken the risk of conveying his kidnap victim in the front seat of his car across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, where he had to briefly stop to pay the toll to a collector. By that stage, if Graeme had been unrestrained, he would certainly have been panicking that this man had taken him far away from his school. This version is also based upon a complete rejection of Bradley’s account that he left the boy calmly sitting in the car while he went to the telephone box near the Spit Bridge and made the first ransom demand. The author has concluded, as Bill Knight QC clearly also did, that at some stage between Bondi and the Sydney Harbour Bridge Bradley converted a voluntary lift into a forced abduction. By the time he arrived at the Harbour Bridge, he must have been satisfied that Graeme was safely secured in a manner that did not allow any possibility for the boy to communicate with the toll collector. The most obvious location for rendering the boy immobile and unable to communicate was in the ample, green spaces of Centennial Park, which was sufficiently close to Bondi so that Graeme would not yet have panicked.

  The author’s hypothesis about the use of chloroform is predicated on the ready availability of that substance in 1960. Its use as an anaesthetic had been widely known since its discovery in the 1840s and there were numerous references to the criminal uses of it in literature and film. Chloroform was the way in which Bradley could most rapidly and easily render Graeme Thorne unconscious, with the least likelihood of being observed or of contaminating his car with obvious clues of a violent altercation. He could well have believed that he would not cause any long-term harm to his victim by using chloroform, despite the dangers associated with it. The state of Graeme’s body when it was found many weeks after his death meant that it was impossible at that time to detect any trace of the substance. The author has prosecuted a more recent case of kidnapping of an adult for ransom – also a rare crime in Australia – in which the convicted perpetrator was in possession of a bottle of chloroform at the time.4

  * * *

  In assessing the police investigation with the benefit of hindsight and more than 50 years of progress in forensic science, it is important to remember that many of the techniques that were used by the police to weave the web of evidence against Stephen Bradley had never been used before. I doubt that there had been a case before this one where so many different strands of forensic science had come together to implicate an offender. However, despite the impressive array of scientific techniques that were used, there were other aspects of the police investigation that can, in my view, be legitimately criticised.

  In retrospect, it seems obvious that the perpetrator of the kidnapping and murder was an inherently careless and lazy person. On the day of the kidnapping, the police already knew that the kidnapper had shown himself to the Thornes three weeks earlier. This was an incredibly brazen and unwise step. When Graeme’s school bag and its contents and his cap were found, it was clear that no attempt had been made to properly dispose of these items or to conceal the fact that they had belonged to Graeme Thorne. When the body was found one suburb away, the killer had left a number of items of personal property with it. Putting all of this evidence together, the police ought to have deduced that the killer was an inherently careless and lazy person. For this reason, it now seems like an egregious error for the police to have assumed that the kidnapper would not have used his own car when carrying out the kidnapping. If they had not made this assumption, it is likely that Stephen Bradley would have become a suspect much earlier. It should also have been a priority for the police to focus their search for the car and the kidnapper much closer to where Graeme’s property and his body had been discarded. Instead of questioning many thousands of owners of 1955 Ford Customlines on a statewide basis, if they had begun by questioning owners within a five-mile radius of the Wakehurst Parkway and Grandview Grove, again they would have located Stephen Bradley much sooner.

  It is hard to criticise the police for the shortcomings of the running sheet system of recording information in a massive investigation like this one, because this was the first major case in which it had been used. Today, there are many techniques to try to avoid shortcomings of the kind that arose when the police received, but ignored, the valuable information from the Telfords and Mr Browne – information that was duly filed away in the running sheet archives, where it remained until after Bradley had been identified by other means as the principal suspect. There have been other major criminal investigations since in which highly valuable information has similarly been ignored and filed away. Police are constantly seeking to adopt measures to deal with this pervasive problem, especially in investigations involving large teams of detectives. The advent of computers has only exacerbated this issue.

  * * *

  Magda Bradley was subjected to an enormous amount of public odium at the time of the trial. The combination of her convenient trip to Queensland on the morning of the kidnapping and the covert travel arrangements to book their passages on the Himalaya convinced many police,5 journalists and members of the public that Magda had known all along about her husband’s plan. Crown Prosecutor Bill Knight QC clearly put to her in cross-examination that she had had advance knowledge of the kidnapping and had deliberately placed herself far from the action by flying to Queensland on the morning of the crime, thereby leaving the house at Clontarf free for her husband to use as a staging post. Knight also insinuated that it was not a mere coincidence that Magda had purchased berths on the Himalaya for herself and Paul the day after the police had first interviewed Stephen at his workplace. Magda’s explanation in evidence – that she was planning to depart Australia, leaving behind her beloved husband, her handicapped son and the stepdaughter she adored – defies belief. It is much more credible that Stephen and Magda made separate bookings to disguise their planned departure – but from whom: from the police or from Paul and Ross’s father, Gregor Weinberg? At the trial, it was never explored with Magda what she knew about Stephen’s many early morning departures from their house to conduct surveillance on the Thornes in the weeks before the kidnapping.

  The tumultuous row that the neighbours heard coming from the Bradley household on the night of 6 July was undoubtedly about the sudden change of plan that meant that Magda and the two older children would fly to Queensland the following morning instead of driving in the car with Stephen. But who had come up with this? Was it Stephen attempting to ensure that he had a free rein in the house the next day, or was it Magda
– as she asserted at the trial – insisting on flying because she had tired of the packing and wanted to start her holiday immediately? Alternatively, was Bill Knight QC right that Magda had learnt of her husband’s plans for the next day and wanted nothing to do with it, and so decided to insulate herself by going as far away as possible with the children?

  The author is of the view that Magda had no prior knowledge of Stephen’s plan to kidnap Graeme Thorne. If he had told her, she would surely have appreciated the extraordinary risks that the plan entailed for their whole family and would have refused to allow him to pursue such a venture. However, she must have read or heard of the kidnapping when she was in Queensland, and would also have learnt at a very early stage that the kidnapper had a foreign accent. Did the early publicity cause Magda to harbour suspicions that her husband had been involved? Did she suddenly understand why he had been taking her around to look at expensive homes that they could not afford? The discovery of Graeme’s body and his belongings so close to their home must also have deepened her suspicions. There is a good basis for concluding that at some stage after the kidnapping Magda secretly feared that her husband had been responsible for the kidnapping and death of Graeme Thorne, and at the same time desperately hoped that her suspicions were wrong.

  The author has prosecuted and defended many cases in which spouses, partners and other family members turned a blind eye to overwhelming evidence of an accused’s involvement in a serious crime, because the idea was just too horrible to contemplate. By the time Stephen informed Magda that he had been interviewed by the police at Nutt & Muddle, she must have had a fair idea of his involvement. Magda’s cooperation in the surreptitious and sudden departure from Australia suggests that by that stage she knew or suspected the real reason they needed to leave. Her continued support of him suggests that she grappled with those suspicions and tried to dismiss them, based upon her knowledge of the man she had married and lived with for some years. If one reads between the lines, Magda’s unpublished manuscript, written in London in 1961 before the trial, describes this internal struggle.