Grant Alfred Beaumont, father of missing children Jane, Arnna and Grant, dies at age 97

The father of the three Beaumont children – whose 1966 disappearance from Glenelg beach remains one of Australia’s greatest mysteries – has died.

For almost 60 years, Grant Alfred Beaumont was forced to live with an agonising grief amid an ever-diminishing hope his beloved missing children would be found.

But Mr Beaumont, known as Jim, is now “reunited in heaven” with his children Jane, Arnna and Grant, after he died earlier this month aged 97.

The death of the devoted father, announced on Saturday, comes three years after his former wife, Nancy, died in September, 2019, at the age of 92.

The disappearance of the Beaumonts’ three children, on Australia Day in 1966, became one of Australia’s most baffling unsolved mysteries.

A funeral notice published in The Advertiser on Saturday says the “loved father” is “reunited in heaven” with the three children, who were aged nine, seven and four when they vanished from Glenelg Beach during a family outing.

Jim Beaumont with his children Grant, Jane and Arnna in 1966.

The three Beaumont children disappeared on Australia Day, January 26, 1966.

Jim Beaumont and his wife Nancy in 1966.

Inside the lives of the Beaumont children

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Police believe it was a case of abduction and murder.

It became one of the largest police investigations in Australian history and remains an open file.

Mr Beaumont died on April 9 and was privately cremated, his death notice said.

“Forever in our hearts, resting peacefully,” his family said.

He had become a reclusive figure in the decades after the disappearance of his children.

The front page of The News, January 27, 1966.

In their later years, Mr and Mrs Beaumont separated.

Mr Beaumont lived quietly in the suburbs of Adelaide; his surviving family were intensely private.

Commissioner for Victims’ Rights, Bronwyn Killmier, said it was “heartbreaking” for any family to not know what happened to their missing relative.

“How hard it must have been – just like other families who don’t know what happened to their loved ones,” she said.

“It’s heartbreaking for a lot of people who have missing loved ones to have that constant in their minds, wondering what’s happened to them.”

The Beaumonts’ lives, and that of their wider family, were thrown into the national spotlight after the disappearances.

The last people to see the children alive said they saw them with a tall, thin man at Glenelg. One of their final acts was to buy pasties and meat pies from a nearby bakery, using a one-pound note.

Some of the 56 police cadets comb the sandhills north of Glenelg in 1966 in the search for the children.

Detective Superintendent Des Bray inspects the dig site at a factory in Plympton in 2018. Picture: AAP / Roy Vandervegt

The parents described their children as shy and unlikely to accompany strangers.

A massive search, combing the beach and surrounding suburbs, failed to locate them.

Major Crime detectives are offering a $1m reward for information on the disappearance.

The case continued to obsess detectives and journalists long after the trail went cold. Books were written and leads followed, all to no avail.

The last vestige of hope was a dig at the New Castalloy factory in North Plympton, in Adelaide’s inner southwest, in February 2018 in an attempt to locate the children’s bodies.

A search of the site in 2013 failed to uncover new details.

The 2018 search also found nothing and any link with the owner of the factory in the 1960s debunked.

Over the decades high-profile child predators have been linked to the abduction, including Bevan Spencer von Einem.

Another sex offender, aged 71, was interviewed in 2016.