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THE CHINA MAIL, SATURDAY, JULY 2, 1955.
"She wouldn't have played at Wimbledon in things like that when I was a girl."
THE 'SHARK ARM'
MURDER CASE
E
CONTINUING THE WORLD'S STRANGEST STORIES
By John Knox
VEN the most in- arm. They had a great many he had been
genious
month
after Brady's discharge two sther
mer
shot by som.CONC novelist interviews with this excitable, whom he knew well and who
erratic boat-builder, whose for had beer, in the car with him.
But even If Holmes was dead there was still his wife, weeping were charged with the mur- and collapsing in the coroner's
Her der, but they. court to have her say. story' was that Patrick-Brady too were acquitted for much home on the the same reasons; Whoever had visited their morning of April the day threw James Smith to the sharks and silenced Reginald Holmes after Smith was first missed
She said that Brady's arms with three bullets had succeeded were cut and blood-stained and in his (or their) purpose. that he carried a kitbag which she recognised as Smith's.
would have been un- tune they had good reason to likely to think up believe was founded on a big the ingredients for the great smuggling ring operating round Australian "Shark Arm" Sydney.
All of what they learnt from mystery which became the
Holmes we do not know be main topic of conversation cause (for legal reasons which on tram and ferry in Sydney will soon be obvious) his full during the
of statements never came out
court. 1935.
autumn
in
הברוכה
But talk he undoubtedly did, Here was a gruesome murder with the result that, less than discovered in the most improb- a able way; one murder led to a fated the fattooed arm.
a month after the shark regurgi second in order to silence an named Patrick Brady was ar- important witness; smuggling rested and charged with the
blackmail were involved;
murder of James Smith. Brady and, to thwart police and jus- Lice,
there was a tangle of legal was known to the police but there were .nd convictions complications.
against him for violence,
and
It all began one April day
when two fishermen an the warm, white sands of Coogee
sort
in
Beach, the Sydney seaside re- noticed something big and immensely strong tangled Their nets.
After a terrifle struggle they landed a man-eating tiger shark 14.
a magnificent a long and example of its type.
A Sensation
3
Despite protests from Brady's counsel she was permitted by the coroner to say that her husband had told her that Brady, had murdered Smith,. had put his body in a trunk and afterwards emptied it into the
sca
had
Damning as all this seemed agains: Brady he was not con- victed. Two things helped his acquittal
There, as dar as official zerords are. concerned, the story mids. If Brady is alive he is not heard of now, and both the other men accused of the mur der disappeared" with the newspaper headlines.
Two Theories
וי
London Express Service
The girl with a thousand
gestures
dances on
Page
SMANTS BAO-n 1. posle danse för six hours,
Shanta curving, spiking gestures on
INDIAN dancer Shanta curving Piking gest of the
look. "I would not get out stage,
of breath even if I were to I had seen her arms and move. with the swift, dance six hours continuous leg ly. I have done this.
strong precision of a place at mechanism while her know.
The claim, seemed improbable coming fram this. shall quiet-voiced
meekly girl wrapped in her red shawl and satt fellow sari.
But to that other Shanta RAD ·I had seen on the stage the evening before all things are possible,
I had seen her fingers bend .back
as though they had no printing thousands of
bones,
There was a 14ft. tiger shark in their net.
but
they did not know that their catch would be the start of Australia's most astonishing murder mystery.
Later when the police put the heat on Holmes X saw the dan- ger to himself if Holmes ever went into the witness-box and decided he must be silenced.
There were two theories about the arm. Most of the detectives
endless
The rest is bar-room talk, the In the Sydney Homicide Squad. speculation in Sydney believed that Smith's murderer about what
really happened overlooked the arm when pack- The first was that, as the The most obvious theory was ing the trunk and threw it, Supreme Court ruled, an arm that James Smith
been weighted had
separately,
the
Eagerly Sydney awaited to hear what Holmes had to say to the coroner at the inques, on
did not constitute a body and persuaded by Holmes to destroy water, where the shark got it. James Smith and as a witness
murder charge required a the yacht is the previous year at the trial of Brady.. But he body. In vain the precedent of by offers of a
handsome cut
A more gruesome version was was not to give that testimony. the Crippen case (in which the from the insurance money, but that the murderer kept the arm unmistakable tattoo Seeing the value of the shark In the early hours of the very production of a vital organ was when the suspicious insurance with its 'as a live exhibit, the fishermen morning before the inquest the held sufficient) was cited.
company had failed to pay up marks to show Holmes that he ignored unwritten Australian
the
had done the deed, and then to The second city was given another. senza-
was because the Smith never got his money. law that all sharks must be lion.
Holmes was fourd mur- judge refused to accept Mrs.
He turned nasty and began to get rid of it, fed it to the shark killed
in Coogee Beach Aquarium. and took it to Coogee
Holmes's evidence. Her state threaten Holmes with exposure, dered. Aquarium.
There it swam about
The list theory seems improb- Huddled over the wheel of his ment about what her murdered and so Holmes decided he must tank, providing a clear
car almost under the pylons of husband had said could only be be got rid cf. He employed able but it does help to explain warning to the hundreds visitors who saw it of the in Sydney Harbour Bridge, Holmes regarded as hearsay; he was not
to murder Smith, and X, after cannot explained--how it advisability of
Harbour. three bullets in his body. The judge also refused to admit the dismembering the body put it in was that the arm remained for Exactly a week after its cap-
cap- passenger door was open and statement, Holmes made to the a weighted trunic and threw it at least a week inside the shark
in the sea,
without being digested. ure the shark, which had re- there was evidence to show that police before his death. fused
all food, suddenly came
me furiously active. It lashv-| ed the water of the tank into a foam, and about twenty people watching
in
3
minately in sing indis- was discovered at 1 a.m. with there to corroborate it.
Saw it
Dea
disgorge several objects. There was a piece of another shark, a part- y digested bird....and
hing which held their other thing horrified, gaze.
one
Out of the mouth of the shark had emerged a human
The police were called in and examination showed that the arm which had a piece of rape| lashed to the wrist had been severed, but roughly
not as result of a shark bite,
One Clue
someone, who we must cal: X, one mystery which
be The
- PARIS NEWSLETTER FROM SAM WHITE
otherwise
Make your bow to King Beetroot-
He can drag down a government
Paris. root to be distilled and con- Francë. passed decree JACK BUCHANAN has been chosen to play the part of ever you drive south verted into raw and Industrial instituting the gradual transfer
alcohol
of two-thirds of the beetroot the mildly cynical, slightly from the Chamnel ports This alcohol, of which dor the production from the distilleries dandifled retired Indian Army bow slightly to right last few years there has been an to the sugar refineries. He officer who is the central charac- and left of you
at the annual surplus of a million, and fell shortly after, and these ter in the best-selling, gentle
then
decrees remain în abeyance, satire, "The Diaries of Major vast fields of beetroot a halt hectolitres; is
bought and stocked by the State.
The leader of the beetroot Thompson." The alcohol costs the State
growers lobby in Parliament is You will thereby the axed price of two shillings
handsome 49-year-old Right making obeisance to a litre. It is then sold Wing MP, M. Jean Legendre. for it carried the tattoved ple- King Beetroot, the
a market for un- if and when ture of two boxers.
of the surplus can be His parliamentary speeches are
In their quest to discover if stretching as far as the eye the arm was the result of acci- dent, suicide or murder, the can see. police had one important clue, be
#
From the, tattoo mark, and acknowledged maker and found for the top available devoted to only two subjects:
from Angerprint impressions breaker of French Govern- price of between 6d, and Ed. a the insuficiently high price of they were able to take, the arm ments.
was identified as belonging to The story of France's beetroot James Smith, à Villiard-maker growers is so outrageously and
weeks.
ite.
JETTISONED
Meanwhile, with ia
beetroots and anti-Communis on which, too, he is a consider. able authority.
SPECULATION
There are one and a alcohol, the pressure on ***THERE is some speculative
Constitut
The film will be made in by Preston France, directed Sturges. Martine Carol will be playing opposite Buchanan,
Buchanan's pay: £1,500 week for 10 weeks:
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
Marshal Juin-Every public of 45, WHO had beer missing cynically funny that it might
statue should wear a hat. growing for about three charged on a have be
have been invented by a great accumulation of
Minister of the Interior, M. “unwanted
Bourges Masonry Don't sneer stor minor offence some time pre-half mil
million of them,
age space is so wreat
that every
gambling here on the out at our Faris pigeons. They are viously. Other
Information ing the best organised pressure
of what has quantities of alcohol come
become migratory and exactly the same about him was that he had been group in the country, and linked are simply, jettisoned to make known as the Dubonnet divorce as hope you photograph outde bora in Lancashire, had been with the alcohol interests the room for
St. Mark's Cathedral. fa Venice. new supplies It all stakes, a boxer
one time, and also most powerful lobby the started during the 1914-18 war, It is the case of mother and at
Comedian Jean MarENGI saloon proprietor. time of his
French Parliament.
Nowhen-France was ' in Until about The
Governmen's defy them at need for alcohol for its
urgent daughter suing for divorce Women love to bring the beast the police dis their
peris, s
as Have he had been employed ex-Premier, Mendes-France so t
history of plosives and decided to subsimultaneously and the betting out in men, especially if it is a
is on which will get there first minica siäise an Increase in beetroot The mother, Mrs Puckle, wife shower
Flaywright Herny do Mon-
Herny do production.
of a retired London sackbroker tertant Women would be the builder, Feginald Holmes,
Since then the production and former wife of M. Andre most enchanting creatures in the Holmes and Smith had been invalved together in the ending Art while Governments come of beetroots has continued to Dubonnet of the French aperitif world if in falling into their of an over-insured yacht a year and go they continue to bleed increase until it now covers Birma suing for divorce for arms one did not fall before. Holmes had owned the the French Treasury to the time 1,200,000 acres. Because its the seventh time.
is 22-year-old -Political Jacht; Smith had been the only of 20 million pounds a year a useless production is so profit Her
Sydney beat-strik THE RACKET.
their
neutralist
Millhandah berva
man on board when she Chugh? Sin which is more in the nature, able, many farmers in region", Ann D30-15 suing political weekly,
fire and foundered
of an outright gift than a sub- other than the traditional beet for divorce after only eight servateur served dry So, it was to Holmes that the sifty.This is how the racket growing north have taken to it months of marriage to M. Claude served day martinis police went to see if he could works every year farmers take in recent years,
Fatale proprietor of the rival champagne and throw any light on the
their-enormous surplus-of-beste- When in power Mendes. Perond aperit Brune de anmmal birthday
by
Anne Sharpley
face, cruel, seductive, laugh ing, withdrawn, reflected the stories
that her hands and
feet were telling.
And, further, just when the dance seemed most strenuous. I had heard her join in the strange, thin, trembling music with a tow clear notes of her OWD,
To do such a thing requires astonishing breath control.
But Shanta Rao's Training would have made a guarCNTUAL desert and a monk feel self. indulgent
Added to it are feats of learn ing and memory such speak- ing ten Indian languages and Auent English, She Ja
trained singer and musician, is deeply read in Indian mythe.
Also
would dance, At 230 we would continue dancing until slx, when we would bathe again and from 7 o'clock we would practise facial expression and eyebrow movements."
Yet this rigorous life was her· own choice.
Being of the highest Brahmaza caste Shanta. Rao had a life of -- comfort before her,
But at the age of nine ak decided she wanted to dance,
"I must dance,” I said. Just like that."
Now, at 25, she is acknow ledged as India's greatest dancer and can command in her own country a fee of £150 a per- formance, a high sum in India..
EXPLOSIVE
She and British ballerina Beryl Grey have recently, do- monstrated the comparative. merits of the dancing styles of the East and the West on tele. vision,
*. One feels from wint she has to say on the Western hället that she thinks I as insipid as
she finds our cooking.
"It is graceful, some of the
logy, philosophy and art, Added classical ballet she will may to this is the knowledge of non-committally. thousands of gestures and move- ments at her dancing,
Ou
STATUESQUE
A day's training when she was learning the Kathakall kid dancing with the master Hamuni Menon began at 2,30 in- the morning and ended at mine
at night,
"At 2.30 we would get up to do pur eye practice. There are 14 movements of them to prac tise, So we would sit in a statuesque pose and roll car eyes for almost an hour.
"There are no gestures or facial expressions, of course, but I loed the beauty of the flight of some of the move. ments
11
Her own style of dancing has none of the languid stuousness usually associated with Eastern dancing.
It is fierce and explosive,
Her guardianship of Indian tradition makes her as stern with herself as she is with the "spineless" ones (her nama for the languid school of Eastern
1 dancers),
"I want to keep on dancing for eyer but know that cace, I no longer dance as I do now I must stop.
*Then we would have an hour's foot and body exercises, Then both and breakfast, After will give it up at one breakfast until 12 o'clock we stroke Just Ake that
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