appeared on the streets with headline
stories of the kidnapping and, from then
on, the phone rang constantly. Some of
the calls were from reporters and radio
and TV stations. Others were from
well-meaning citizens who thought they
may have useful information. Others
were from the curious and the cranks.
The kidnapper didn’t call.
Accompanied by police, a dazed,
broken-hearted Bazil Thorne went to a
Sydney TV station, where he broadcast
a nationwide appeal over radio and TV.
“The kidnapper will get his money if he
will return my boy safely,” he said. “If
this man is a father of children, I appealhistory that a child had been kidnapped
for ransom. The country did not even
have adequate laws for the prosecution
of kidnappers.
T
hroughout late 1960, the Graeme
Thorne abduction was the biggest
news story in Australia – and the
newspapers splashed each new
development.
Graeme, big for his age, had dark
hair and was stocky. Quiet-mannered
and cool-headed, he had a sense of
responsibility. Being brought up in a
secure, happy home, he was friendly
and inclined to trust people. Freda
Thorne believed that, while waiting for
the car on the street corner, he had got
to talking with a stranger and somehow
been persuaded to go off with him.
Bazil Thorne was out of town on a
selling trip, so Mrs. Thorne frantically
phoned the police. A few minutes
later, Detective Sergeant Larry O’Shea
arrived from the Bondi police station.
Freda told him her fears. “Graeme
would not wander off by himself,” she
said. “Someone must have picked him
up in a car.”
Then she told the officer about the
money her husband had won. O’Shea
tensed.
Freda’s young friend said she had
been taking Graeme to school every day
for two months. “He’s been waiting for
me at that corner every single morning,
sitting on his school case.”
O’Shea said that the police would
begin looking for the boy at once. Freda
Thorne produced a recent photograph
of Graeme. She said he was wearing
his grey school uniform, consisting of a
cap, short trousers and a jacket with a
blue lion emblem on the pocket. He was
carrying a school case which contained
his books, a raincoat and a lunch of
sandwiches and an apple. His name was
written on a tag fixed inside the case.
O’Shea jotted down the description,
then asked to use the phone. Just as
Freda Thorne led him towards the
phone, it began to ring. She picked
it up and heard a man’s voice, soft
and low-pitched, with a slight foreign
accent. “Is that you, Mrs. Thorne?”
“Yes,” she replied. “Who is this?”
“I have your boy,” the voice said. “Is
your husband there?”
Freda Thorne fought back her panic.
“Just a moment,” she said. She turned
The store where Graeme bought his crisps on the way to school. He was
abducted from this corner“The kidnapper will
get his money if he will
return my boy safely,”
Bazil Thorne said. “If
this man is a father of
children, I appeal to him
as another father – for
God’s sake, send my son
back in one piece”
to O’Shea. “I – I think it’s Graeme’s
kidnapper,” she whispered. “He wants
to talk to my husband.”
O’Shea took the phone. “Yes? This is
Thorne,” he said.
“I’ve got your boy,” said the voice
with the foreign accent. “I want 25,
pounds by 5 o’clock today – or I’ll feed
your boy to the sharks!”
O’Shea, thinking quickly, tried to play
for time. He was even hoping to trace
the call. “Where am I going to get that
sort of money?” he asked.
The voice said: “You’ve got that
much. You’ve got plenty. You’ve just
won 100,000 pounds. I want 25,000 by5 o’clock today. You will hear from me
again this afternoon.”
“Perhaps I can get the cash by then,”
the detective-sergeant began. But the
caller had hung up.W
ithin an hour, the streets of the
seaside suburb were swarming with
police cars. Dozens of officers, under
the direction of Detective Inspector
Alfred Windsor, acting head of the
CIB (Criminal Investigation Branch),
questioned all residents near the corner
shop where the boy had last been
seen. Pedestrians were stopped and
questioned.
The owner of the corner shop told
police that Graeme had been coming in
practically every morning to buy a bag
of crisps. “He was here this morning,
as usual,” the shopkeeper said. “Then
he went out to the corner and sat on his
school case, eating the crisps, while he
waited for the lady to come and pick
him up.”
He hadn’t noticed anyone talking to
the lad or any strange cars parked up.
Windsor later learned from Mr.
Thorne’s employers that he was in the
town of Dunnedah, 200 miles north of
Sydney. He rushed home and waited for
another phone call.
The Sydney afternoon papers soonThe metallic blue 1955 Ford
Customline used in the
kidnapping