Kidnapped
Page 25
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Stephen Bradley’s greed for the ransom money was so intense that it created a form of psychological tunnel-vision that prevented him from seeing what other people would have viewed as patently obvious: that his venture was fraught with a high risk of failure or misadventure and that the chances of eventual detection were high. It was as though blinkers had been placed around his eyes, like those on a racing horse that force it to look only straight ahead so as to prevent it being distracted by anything on either side. Bradley’s psychological blinkers prevented him from seeing how likely it was that his plan would come unstuck, and how great was the risk that he would be caught. His sense of entitlement to the money was so strong that he gave not a moment’s concern to the long-term psychological harm an abduction would inevitably cause to Graeme or the torment that would be suffered by Bazil and Freda. He also failed to appreciate the depth of feeling that would likely be engendered in the community towards a monster who could commit such a heinous crime that sought to take financial advantage of the greatest bond of love – between parent and child. His utter commitment to achieving his goal led to a brazenness and overconfidence in his own capabilities and judgement, so that he remained unaware that many of his actions were needlessly foolhardy and incautious.
A common feature of those who commit murder for greed is the quality of narcissism. Narcissism is far more than a mere focus on self or an overly selfish attitude. The classic narcissistic murderer has so little capacity to empathise with other people that he, or less commonly she, can kill without any sense of personal responsibility. Narcissists have an implacable belief in their own superiority and the priority of their own needs over those of others. They consider that they can perceive connections that other people miss and that their capacity for planning makes them immune to detection. In fact, their delusions are so profound that they fail to see that their chosen path will almost inevitably lead to detection, denouncement and doom. Stephen Bradley falls firmly into this category.
I can do no better to convey the qualities of the narcissist than to quote the words of a modern-day Sydney forensic psychiatrist, Dr Michael Diamond, in a completely unrelated matter:
Narcissism refers to a very insecure, very fragile sense of worthiness of a place in the world that causes the individual to feel very precariously placed and very much in need of incessant reassurances. The way it is manifested with [the offender] was in his behaviour towards other people. A large part of his effort habitually goes into ingratiating himself to people in doing things in a way that is likely to elicit support and affirmation that he is a worthy person; to be really quite obsessively focused on that need to overcome any sense of vulnerability and insecurity.
But the underside of that behaviour is his inability to take criticism, his inability to be advised. It takes the form of opinionated or grandiose views of his ways of dealing with the world around him, and it is well evidenced by his treatment when he clearly was not coping with life events. There were very serious parts of that where an overriding part of his nature is to be concerned about his own self needs and a deficiency to properly consider the needs of others.
That might sound reasonably trivial, and I might assess that as being selfish, but he is far beyond that. This is an inability to balance up one’s own needs against the needs of others. Perhaps that goes to the heart of this particular condition.
The narcissistic state is not simply one of being overly selfish or overly opinionated or overly concerned at how others see you. It is really the extreme effect that it has on the way people make decisions and behaviour. It is far beyond the scope of normal behaviour. The other part of his behaviour is the histrionic and dramatic way he expressed his concern to me because he was prone to be a little larger than life, a little more colourful and seductive in a way to try and get people to see his way.6
These words describe Stephen Bradley as though they were written about him. If Magda’s 1960 manuscript is to be accepted, Bradley had a childhood in which he was deprived of love and attention. Such a poor start in life can result in the adult constantly looking for external, self-affirming support and verification. The fear is that if the scaffolding around self is removed, the edifice will collapse into nothingness. The fear is so great that the person is oblivious to the needs and rights of others – even the right to life itself. The kidnapping and murder of Graeme Thorne were crimes of the ego, frantically trying to protect itself from disintegration into oblivion. Stephen Bradley’s lack of thought for the welfare of Graeme or his family demonstrates these same qualities. Even after being apprehended and while on his way back to Australia, his only concern was what would happen to himself. Even when he admitted his involvement in the kidnapping to the police, he completely distanced himself from how the boy came to die, as though the eight-year-old child was somehow to blame for his own, and Bradley’s, misfortune. At no time did he acknowledge the enduring agony he had caused to Freda and Bazil. Nor was there any sense of having brought any misfortune upon his own family. His idea that Helen should be returned from Aden to a convent in Sydney to await his return and release illustrates not only his lack of reality about his own prospects, but also his preoccupation with his own needs above those of his daughter.
The author has come to the conclusion that an irrepressible and profound need to possess and impress (which often go hand-in-hand) drove Stephen Bradley to commit the kidnapping and murder of Graeme Thorne. Bradley’s unrelenting needs derived from the lack of a solid core of the personality; from a frantic desperation to build a scaffold around that personality to prop it up, lest it collapse into nothingness; from a sense of panic and unrelieved anxiety that without the physical and monetary acquisitions and frequent self-accolades, the very essence of the individual would crumble; and from a fundamental laziness that impelled him to seek a quick and easy path to the riches that he so desperately craved.
The lack of an inner core, in my view, derives from the very earliest years of life. Whether it is caused by poor parenting or by an underlying, innate incapacity within the young child to attach to his or her primary carer, I do not know. At its base, I believe that it is caused by a deep fear of being unloved, unlovable and abandoned to death. Murder for greed is the unrequited cry of the infant, demanding to be loved and cared for, echoing endlessly unheard through the decades of adulthood. Murder for greed is essentially a crime born of an abject fear of nothingness.
Bazil Thorne after his television appearance, pleading for the safe return of his son.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
The police reward notice.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
Freda and Bazil Thorne.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
The Thorne home at 79 Edward Street, Bondi.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
The general store at the intersection of Wellington Street and O’Brien Street, Bondi, near the location of Graeme Thorne’s abduction.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
Magda Bradley.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
Stephen Bradley.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
The Bradleys’ residence, 28 Moore Street, Clontarf.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
Stephen Bradley’s Ford Customline.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
Police and civilians ready to search near the Wakehurst Parkway, where Graeme’s school case had been found.
© FAIRFAX SYNDICATION
Magda Bradley and the rug.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
The garage and entrance to the alcove at 28 Moore Street, Clontarf.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
The location of Graeme Thorne’s body under a rock in Grandview Grove, Seaforth.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
The peeled apple found in Graeme Thorne’s lunchbox.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
The funeral service for Graeme
Thorne at St Mark’s Church, Darling Point.
Stephen Bradley is escorted by police after his arrest in Colombo.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
Extradition proceedings in the Magistrates Court, Colombo.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
Stephen Bradley’s handwritten confession.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
Police arrive at the Darlinghurst courthouse with the exhibits for the trial.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
The public queuing for entry during Stephen Bradley’s trial at Darlinghurst Courthouse.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
Frederick Vizzard QC, Public Defender, who represented Stephen Bradley at his trial.
© ESTATE OF FREDERICK VIZZARD.
Magda Bradley visits her husband at Long Bay Gaol.
© FAIRFAX SYNDICATION.
A gaol photograph of Stephen Leslie Bradley two days after his trial in March 1961.
© JUSTICE & POLICE MUSEUM.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Mark Tedeschi AM QC is the Senior Crown Prosecutor for New South Wales. He has practised in the criminal courts for 38 years, both for the prosecution and the defence. He is a Visiting Fellow at the University of Wollongong, a Member of the Board of Directors at the National Art School, and a Trustee of Sydney Grammar School. He is also an accomplished photographer, whose works are held in many galleries and private collections. Mark lives and works in Sydney.
For more information, see his website:
www.MarkTedeschi.com.
SIMON & SCHUSTER
simonandschuster.com.au
authors.simonandschuster.com/Mark-Tedeschi
Also by Mark Tedeschi
Eugenia – A True Story of Adversity, Tragedy, Crime and Courage
END NOTES
Chapter 1
1 The equivalent of about $4 million today. The magnitude of the prize can be understood by the fact that a modest Sydney home could then be purchased for about £8000.
2 The equivalent of about $350,000 today.
3 It was not until October 1960 that the French police received their first serious lead in the investigation, and only in February 1961, ten months after the kidnapping, that the world was informed of the arrest of the three kidnappers. They had already spent virtually the entire ransom. The following year they were sentenced to imprisonment for twenty years.
4 In fact, it later appeared that some others had taken tentative steps towards carrying out a similar crime against the Thorne family.
5 The Goggomobil was a micro-car, originally produced in Germany from 1955 to 1969. An Australian sports version, known as a Goggomobil Dart was produced between 1957 and 1961.
6 Hire purchase was a means of buying an item on credit with payments by instalments. It has largely been superseded by leasing arrangements.
Chapter 2
1 I have used pseudonyms to protect Magda’s two natural children, who were incidental, secondary victims, and do not wish to have their identities disclosed. This has necessitated using the same pseudo-surname for their father and for their mother before she married Bradley.
Chapter 3
1 For the basis of this version, see the Preface.
2 In those days it was not as commonplace as it is today for people to use the park for daily exercise during the working week.
3 At that time, chloroform was readily available as a solvent cleaner.
4 Now the suburb of Beauty Point. The modern-day Spit Bridge had been opened in 1958.
Chapter 5
1 For the basis of this version, see the Preface.
Chapter 6
1 The kidnapping of Charles Augustus Lindbergh, the son of the famous aviator, Charles Lindbergh, in March 1932.
Chapter 7
1 5 and 10 degrees Celsius.
2 Sydney Morning Herald, 3 April 1961.
3 Within a short time of this investigation the ‘running sheet’ had become standard practice. About thirty years later, the running sheet became computerised.
4 An exercise on a comparable scale to locate a vehicle – not subject to such flaws – was conducted by NSW police investigating the 1997 disappearance of Kerry Whelan. A number of even more extensive searches – this time for a missing child, and subject to serious flaws – were conducted by police investigating the disappearance of baby Tegan Lane, who vanished days after her birth in 1996.
Chapter 8
1 The author, who was the same age as Graeme Thorne, had a newspaper photograph of him which he pasted onto a cupboard in his bedroom.
2 Submission to the Attorney-General by the Under Secretary of the Department, 24 October 1960 (State Records NSW).
3 At this time, the police had still not disclosed to the public that they were looking for a blue Ford Customline.
4 See Australian Dictionary of Biography, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/kelly-raymond-william-10678.
5 In the case of the disappearance of baby Tegan Lane, the investigation only began in earnest more than seven years after her disappearance in 1996. The searches for her were seriously flawed in that the police sent questionnaires to every primary school throughout Australia asking for information about any girl called Tegan or Lane whose birth had been registered on the day of Tegan’s birth, or on the two days on either side of it. This failed to take into account that a person who may have informally adopted her – as her mother Keli Lane claimed – could have changed Tegan’s name or registered her birth as having occurred on another day. At the trial, the Crown admitted that the searches could never definitively prove that Tegan was dead. They merely showed the extent to which the police had gone in their attempts to find her.
Chapter 9
1 My Story, unpublished manuscript by Magda Bradley, 1961 (courtesy of the Justice & Police Museum, Sydney Living Museums, NSW). This manuscript was written about four months after their departure.
2 op. cit., Part 5, pages 2–3.
3 op. cit., p10.
4 op. cit., p11.
5 op. cit., pp11–12.
6 op. cit., p12.
7 Sun Herald, 25 September 1960, page 3.
Chapter 10
1 It is unlikely that modern-day forensic pathologists could be any more precise than this.
Chapter 11
1 The Himalaya remained in service with P&O until 1974.
2 Sydney Morning Herald, 21 October 1960.
3 Sydney Morning Herald, 26 October 1960.
4 Sydney Morning Herald, 9 November 1960.
5 The SS Strathmore was much older than the SS Himalaya, having been constructed in 1935. In 1961 she was converted into a single-class ship, and her final voyage as a P&O liner was made in 1963, when she was sold to a Greek shipping line. She was demolished in 1969.
6 The author has been involved in only one extradition – of one of the murderers of heart surgeon Dr Victor Chang, who was extradited from Malaysia.
7 Now the Central Local Court.
8 Sydney Morning Herald, 18 October 1960.
9 Corea was later released and gave evidence for the prosecution at the trial of the assassins in 1961.
10 Sydney Morning Herald, 23 October 1960.
Chapter 12
1 Sydney Morning Herald, 19 November 1960.
2 Police Monthly, May 2014; see also: http://www.police.nsw.gov.au/__data/assets/pdf_file/0008/292490/The_incredible_career_of_Det_Sgt_Jack_Bateman.pdf.
3 Sydney Morning Herald, 20 November 1960.
4 Sun-Herald, 20 November 1960, page 2.
5 op. cit., pages 2, 4.
6 op. cit., page 4.
7 It was not the practice at that time for police to record interviews, as the technology was not yet generally available to police. All police interviews are taken from the trial transcript: R v. Stephen Bradley, Supreme Court, 1961.
8 The author was an articled clerk to Mr Richard Holt of Gilbert M Johnstone and Co in 1972–73. At the time this was the practical training requir
ed for those intending to practise law.
9 Bill Archibald, The Bradley Case, Horwitz Publications Pty Ltd, 1961, page 77.
10 Today, the previous identification and the earlier publication of the photograph in the paper would render inadmissible any evidence of a subsequent identification.
Chapter 13
1 Today in New South Wales there are more than twenty-five.
2 Manuscript by Chester Porter QC, written for the opening of new Chambers for the Public Defenders, 2012.
3 Today almost any confession to the police is inadmissible unless it has been electronically recorded, so challenges to police interviews are almost unknown.