Hope Forest mass murderer Clifford Bartholomew had a secret second family that only just learned of his monstrous past
THE SA mass murderer who slaughtered 10 people — including all seven of his children — raised another family of seven children in Queensland following his inexplicable release from prison, a Sunday Mail investigation can reveal. His stepchildren only learned this week about the monstrous crimes of the man they knew as “Poppy Cliff”.
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- LAST WEEK’S EXCLUSIVE: Clifford Bartholomew’s secret life
- ‘People die in terrible ways. I hope that’s what he gets’
- How toxic jealousy sparked the massacre at Hope Forest
THE South Australian mass murderer who slaughtered 10 people — including all seven of his children — raised a second secret family with a woman who had seven children of her own, a Sunday Mail investigation can reveal.
And his adoptive family in Queensland say they are stunned at the horrendous crimes of the man they knew as “Poppy Cliff”.
They never suspected Hope Forest killer Clifford Cecil Bartholomew — who assumed a new identity as Clifford Palmer — was Australia’s worst family mass murderer.
The family has been left reeling at the revelations about the man they lived with for 22 years and are grappling with how to tell their own children and grandchildren about their grandfather’s monstrous crime.
Family spokesman Ralph Gray, one of Palmer’s stepsons, says they knew very little of Bartholomew’s sinister past.
“I couldn’t believe it, none of us can,” he said.
“To know the full story is horrendous — he just isn’t the man we thought we knew.
“He never disrespected our mother and they hardly had a raised voice in more than 20 years together.
“He was a gentleman. He loved us and we all loved him.”
In a decision never adequately explained by the Parole Board headed by Dame Roma Mitchell, Bartholomew served less than eight years in Yatala jail for the killings before being freed in 1979.
With his new identity — provided by the state — he reinvented himself as a man of God, moved to Victoria and married again to a devoutly religious woman who believed in the “power of forgiveness”.
The Sunday Mail last week learnt that Bartholomew died 16 years ago, aged 72, in Queensland. His gravestone carries the chilling inscription: “Devoted to and sadly missed by children and grandchildren — rest in peace”.
Buried in the same plot is his second wife, Merlyn Juliet Palmer, known to all as Merle, the woman who took him into her home and entrusted him with the care of her children and later her grandchildren.
Bartholomew’s seven stepchildren were almost exactly the same ages as his own whom he systematically shot dead on Father’s Day at a remote farm at Hope Forest, south of Adelaide, on September 7, 1971.
Those slain were estranged wife Heather, 40, children Neville, 19, Christine, 17, Sharon, 15, Helen, 13, Gregory, 10, Roger, 7 and Sandra, 4; sister-in-law Winnis, 26; and her son Daniel, 19 months.
All 10 were shot in the head and several were also bashed with a mallet by the 41-year-old, who said he only ever intended to kill his wife.
Mr Gray, one of four sons of Merle, said his family had known Poppy Cliff killed his wife in SA but knew nothing of the circumstances or that the rest of his family had been murdered too.
Alerted about last week’s exclusive story in the Sunday Mail, the family have finally uncovered the chilling truth.
Mr Gray said he was relieved his stepfather and his mother were dead now that his brutal past was known.
“If this had come out when he was alive I don’t know how we would have coped,” he said.
“Any man can crack up in a moment of insanity but it’s hard to imagine a man going through that rage and killing everyone. Killing one person is one thing but all the others?
“When I told my (second) wife, Kwan, she wanted to know what all my secrets were.
“But the truth is I don’t have a bad word to say about him and I’ve never heard anyone in the family have a bad word to say about him, either.
“Maybe he should have stayed in jail longer but the best part is he came out a reformed man, kept his temper and helped raise a family.”
Bartholomew’s niece, Noeleen Paltridge, 55, who, as an eight-year-old, was fortunate to survive the mass slaughter that saw her mother and brother killed, said she was shocked “Uncle Barty” had helped raise another family.
“Oh God, I can’t believe it … and seven kids, as well,” she said when informed by the Sunday Mail.
“So she (Merle) risked her kids to be with a man who murdered his own family?
“This man killed his own kids and they were babies. How do you get with someone like that?”
Ms Paltridge has lived in fear he might one day appear and kill her.
She says it is a “terrible injustice” that Bartholomew lived a happy family life while she and other family members were torn apart by his actions.
She compares the case with that of Derek Bromley, still behind bars in SA after 34 years for a murder he claims he did not commit.
“Yet they let my uncle out after eight years and he killed 10,” she said.
“They gave him a slap on the wrist and now we know he got to live with kids again. It stinks … something’s not right.”
The Sunday Mail investigation has found Bartholomew — who had a brother and sister — lived in SA for several months after his release before moving to Victoria in late 1980.
It was in Melbourne’s western suburbs, as Clifford Palmer, that he met and romanced Merle, a mother of seven whose first husband, William Gray, had died in their native Sri Lanka.
With her religious faith, Merle, born of an Indian mother and English father, who followed eldest son Derrick in emigrating to Australia, considered she could “save the soul” of the murderer.
Bartholomew and Merle met at a country and western dance and married soon after in 1983, living in the suburb of Ashburton, where he was an interstate truck driver. In 1990, they followed Merle’s son Ralph, a builder, to Nerang, an inner suburb of the Gold Coast. Later, they lived at nearby Southport before Ralph built a granny flat on the property of his eldest sister, Winitia Simmons, at Highland Park, the suburb next to Nerang.
The family say Palmer — a heavy smoker — lived the final months of his life there after having emphysema and seven heart bypasses, before dying on November 27, 2002.
Merle died in 2012, aged 83, and it was only then, clearing through her belongings, that her children finally knew for certain she lived with a murderer for 22 years.
Son-in-law Roy Djurovitch was first told of his father-in-law’s murderous past when he married Merle’s daughter, Philomine.
“We all knew something or other about Cliff but it all became more evident clearing up Merle’s belongings when we found his (prison) discharge papers,” he said.
“That confirmed he spent time at Her Majesty’s pleasure for murder but the way it was told was that he found his wife in bed with another bloke and lost his mind.
“He served his time and you have to forgive. But with what we’ve read now … if you knew the guy that we knew you’d never think it for one moment what he actually did.”
Mr Djurovitch, who has seven children with Philomine from their first marriages, said he had never worried about the children being left in the care of Palmer.
“No, I never was because by that stage he was quite elderly and Merle’s children and family were all comfortable with the situation.” he said. “Once we knew about your inquiries around Cliff, we sat down and told our own children for the first time that night.”
In an eerie coincidence, some of the grandchildren of Merle and Clifford have the surname “Bartholomeusz”.
Mr Djurovitch said his father-in-law, who bore a striking resemblance to comedian Robin Williams, was “a jovial chap who liked his drink and loved his grandkids”.
Merle and her children were regular churchgoers at St Brigid’s Catholic Parish, in Nerang, but Palmer never attended.
“The only time you’d see him at church was for a wedding or funeral,” Mr Djurovitch said.
“Merle was very spiritual and devoted to her Christianity. The talk among family after her death was that her faith was the driving force for why she got involved with him. You know, saving a soul.”
The family describe Palmer as an “outdoorsman — a bushman and larrikin — who loved camping, fishing and shooting”. They say he lived a quiet existence but was a stickler for discipline.
“He was never in trouble with the police here as far as I know and never even had a parking ticket or a speeding fine,” Mr Djurovitch said.
“He was always very adamant about keeping the kids and grandkids on the right side of the law.”
His appraisal of Palmer as a “hard worker always willing to lend a hand” was echoed by a prominent member of the South Australian sporting community who knew the Bartholomew family well and lived close by when the massacre happened.
Speaking on condition he was not identified, the man said he would drive past the Bartholomew children most days as they stood out on the road to catch the school bus.
“They were all lovely-looking kids,” he said.
The man confirmed Bartholomew was working as a truck driver for local businessman Gil Smith and was renting the farmhouse from him.
After killing his family, Bartholomew rang his mother, with whom he was living at nearby Meadows, to tell what he’d done. He said he was going to kill himself but when police arrived just after dawn he was asleep in a drunken stupor at the kitchen table.
In his confession, Bartholomew claimed “five months of mental torture” caused by his belief that his wife Heather was having an affair with a 22-year-old Vietnam War ex-serviceman, only identified as Mr X in the trial, led to his bloody shooting spree.
The previous evening, while he was visiting the children for Father’s Day, Heather dropped the bombshell that there would be no reconciliation and that she intended to move the family back to Rosewater, in Adelaide’s northwest, where they had lived 10 years earlier.
Bartholomew was aware Mr X was living close by at Taperoo and suspected he had found them a house.
“I had to kill my wife, there was no other way out but to stop her from ever seeing (Mr X) again,” Bartholomew later confessed.
“But somehow, with all the screaming noises that was splitting my head wide open, and that horrible look on my wife’s face, I couldn’t control my actions and just went on (killing) until everything was finally quiet.”
Asked in a later police interview why he had killed the children, Bartholomew said: “Once I had shot Christine (his eldest daughter), I realised I had to kill them all. I couldn’t leave any behind. I loved them all too much.”
The Sunday Mail is aware of Mr X’s identity and that he is living in the north of the state.
Bartholomew was convicted only of the death of his wife because the prosecution could prove premeditation and that crime carried a mandatory death sentence.
His full confession and guilty plea meant very few details surrounding the events of the gruesome murders were ever publicly revealed at the time
Police argued for a prosecution on all 10 murders but say they were told Bartholomew would never walk free once convicted and, if he did, he could then be tried for the death of nine other people. He never was. In the event, Bartholomew was sentenced to hang by Justice Roma Mitchell in December 1971.
The sentence was commuted to life imprisonment when the death penalty was abolished by the new Dunstan Government in the mid-1970s.
Justice Mitchell, who would later become a Dame Commander of the British Empire and serve six years as Governor, was head of the Parole Board which released Bartholomew.
The detective who arrested Bartholomew, Allen Arthur, now 78, was astonished to discover what happened to “the most hateful man I ever knew”.
“Here was a bloke who found a full life after being sentenced to death,” he said.
“It’s an incredible story and an amazing outcome, mind-boggling — and particularly if he’s been a good boy. You just couldn’t make this stuff up.”
The Hope Forest murders are the most difficult of Mr Arthur’s career and he remains scathing of the decision to release Bartholomew so soon.
“It was indecent haste to let him out,” he said. “The Parole Board gambled with other people’s lives.
“Knowing what we know now they would say, ‘How clever are we that he lived a good life. Well they still made a major mistake.
“I’m guessing the second wife never threatened to run out on him and we all know what happened when his first wife did just that.”
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