straightforward, and Doyle saw no
particular reason to suspect the man.
Bradley had no police record. He was,
apparently, a prosperous citizen who
lived a quiet family life. There were
plenty of people in Sydney with slight
foreign accents.
However, the detective drove round
to Bradley’s former home in Clontarf
where he spoke to a young man who
said he had bought the house from
Bradley and moved in on July 9th. “I
talked to Bradley several times and he
seemed a fine chap, very successful in
his work,” the man said. “He needed a
larger house, because his children were
growing up.”
So Doyle checked Bradley off his
list and continued his canvass of
Customline owners.D
uring the next week, the police were
at a virtual standstill in the case. And
then the reports of the scientists were
submitted. Dr. Cramp reported that
the hair found on the blanket and the
boy’s clothing was of two types – human
hair and dog hair. The human hair was
brown and not over three inches long.
The dog hair appeared to have come
from some soft-coated animal with
hair at least four inches long. It was of
a reddish colour, though lighter at the
roots. Dr. Cramp suggested that it was
from a Pekingese, or a dog of a similar
type.
Dr. Vickery reported that the boy’s
clothing and the blanket had contained
fragments of the leaves of two flowering
shrubs not ordinarily found in the
Sydney area. She had visited the vacant
site and had not found the shrubs there.
She believed that they might have come
from the garden of a private home.
Dr. Whitworth’s report stated that,
while the blanket and clothing contained
soil of the type found in the vacant site,
they also contained soil of an entirely
different type, which clearly came from
some other location.Detective Sergeant Clark, of the
scientific bureau, presented these
reports to Walden and Delaney. The
soil and the leafy material indicated that
the boy had been taken to an unknown
place. There, either before or after his
death, Graeme had apparently been
lying on the ground. Later, his dead
body had been bundled into the blanket
and taken, probably in a car, to the
vacant site. The kidnapper had then
thrown away the boy’s belongings in
French’s Forest.
The officers saw no reason to think
that Graeme Thorne had ever been
taken out of the Sydney area and were
sure the kidnapper was a local man.
They assigned more than 200 detectives
to the task of checking every private
home in Seaforth and nearby suburbs
for shrubbery of the type of the leaves
found.The body of Graeme Thorpe
was discovered by a group of
children playing on wasteland
(above) on August 16th, 1960.
The corpse was found wrapped
in this recognisable car rug
(right) – which proved to be
laden with evidence for the
forensic examinersThis search was conducted
patiently and methodically throughout
September. With no new leads, the
kidnapping lost the big headlines. Many
people thought it would never be solved.T
hen Detective Inspector Edward
Freeman, now in active charge of the
case, hit on a new line of approach. He
realised that owners of blue Customline
Fords had been checked before the
police had received the reports from
the scientists. Freeman now ordered
that the homes of all these car owners
be revisited and the shrubbery carefully
examined.
And so, on October 3rd, Detective
George Shiell went to the house in
Clontarf where Stephen Bradley had
formerly lived. He introduced himself to
the new owner of the house, then asked
to see the garage.
As they approached it, he noticed
two large flowering shrubs of different
types, one on either side of the door. He
compared the leaves with photographs
of leaves taken from the murder blanket.
They looked identical.
“Do dead leaves from these bushes
ever blow into the garage?” he asked the
new owner.M
eanwhile, the hunt for the
suspicious car had been continuing.
After checking through the registrations
of more than 200,000 cars in Greater
Sydney, the police had found that there
were about 200 blue 1955 Customline
Fords registered in the area. Detectives
were sent to question the owners of each
of these cars.
On August 24th, Detective Sergeant
Brian Doyle visited a factory in
Darlinghurst, where he spoke to
a man named Stephen Bradley,
an electroplater, 34 years old – a
handsome, sturdily-built man with
slightly wavy dark brown hair.
Doyle asked if he owned a 1955
Customline Ford. “Yes. It’s AY0-382,”
Bradley replied.
Speaking with a slight foreign accent,
he went on to tell Doyle that he was
a naturalised Australian citizen of
Hungarian birth – and that he was
married with three children. He had
changed his name from Baranyay, he
said.
“Can you tell me where you were on
the morning of July 7th?” Doyle asked.
“What day was that?” Bradley asked.
“It was a Thursday – the day of the
Thorne kidnapping.”
“I remember that day,” Bradley said,
after a moment’s thought. “It was the
day I moved from my home in Moore
Street, Clontarf, to the new place I
bought in Manly.”
Doyle asked what he did that day.
“Well, I took the day off from my job.
I didn’t get up very early – maybe about
8 o’clock. I had breakfast. Then I helped
my wife and children get ready to leave.
They flew to Hayman Island that day
for a holiday. I saw them off in a taxi at
10 o’clock.
“Then I was busy around the house,
until the removal men came at 11. I
worked with them all afternoon. I even
helped them carry the piano out. We
didn’t finish until nearly 5 o’clock.”
“Where was your Ford all that time?”
Doyle asked.
“It was in my garage.”
“Did you drive to Bondi at any time
during the day?”
“No, I certainly did not.”
After asking Bradley a few more
questions, Doyle thanked him for
his help and left. The electroplater’s
answers had been prompt and
Graeme’s body discovered here