Bundaberg Mail train murderer Herbert Kopit shocked Queensland in 1936

The brutal deaths of two innocent passengers and the bludgeoning of another aboard the Bundaberg to Brisbane train known as the Bundaberg Mail or Bundaberg “express” left a scar on the Qld psyche.

It is a story that bears all the hallmarks of a whodunit, but the bloody and terrifying events that took place on the Bundaberg to Brisbane train, the Bundaberg Mail, one fateful night in 1936 were all too real.

The bodies were discovered by a porter as he checked on the first-class sleeping carriages shorty after 6am on April 2, not long after the train arrived in Brisbane.

The condition of the sleeping quarters led police to suspect the actions of a “maniac”, but investigations would prove the motive had been robbery.

The victims, both in their 30s, were identified as Brisbane engineer Harold Edwyn Speering and Innisfail accountant Frank Costello.

Mr Speering was dead when found, with Mr Costello succumbing to his injuries, which included skull fractures, five minutes after being admitted to hospital.

Reports at the time stated that Speering had been attacked so horribly that his entire body was nearly drained of blood.

The men, who both boarded the train at Maryborough, had been so brutally beaten in the head that blood had covered every surface in the rail cars, running down into the floorboards.

Conductor Thomas William Boys, who would have been checking tickets, was found unconscious with horrific injuries to his head.

He would survive, but remained permanently maimed by his injuries.

Police suspected the weapon to be some kind of small hatchet, later to be revealed as a tyre iron, and set about investigating the horrendous scene.

One of the earliest pieces in the puzzle was the discovery of a ticket surrendered at Brisbane‘s Wooloowin Station.

The ticket had been a special type of pass for federal government employees, of which Mr Speering was one.

That information would lead to a taxi driver revealing he‘d taken a fare from the station, and afterwards had found two blood-stained coins in the back of the cab.

Another taxi driver then came forward, and after seeing a number of police mug shots, identified one man - Herbert Kopit.

But it wouldn‘t be an easy job for police to catch the killer, because he had purposely started changing up his transport methods in order to baffle the investigating police.

Kopit, 23, had fled from Wooloowin to Southport, then on to Murwillumbah in New South Wales where he headed to Casino, then Kyogle and Sydney.

The offender then dressed as a woman before spending a night at a hotel in Sydney, before catching a train to Melbourne.

But a hotel booking clerk thought something was up when a woman entered her hotel, dressed in a pale grey one-piece, a red hat, beige stockings and black shoes.

The supposed woman, calling herself Mrs Williams, had an angular face covered in stubble.

It was enough to concern the clerk, and police were soon on the case, catching Kopit shaving off his facial hairs as his Mrs Williams ruse came undone.

Officers opened his luggage, finding bloody men‘s clothes. They didn’t know it yet, but they’d caught a killer.

The details of Kopit‘s disturbing history of crime were soon revealed. It was the sinister story of a man who stole a commercial traveller’s pass in Cairns, giving him the freedom to move down the coast of Australia.

Police would eventually discover that he had spent time in Rockhampton, Mount Morgan, Maryborough, Pialba and Gympie, trashing the hotel rooms he stayed in along the way.

At Gympie, Kopit stole a tyre iron from a truck, wrapping it in newspaper and hiding it on the Bundaberg Mail, planning to attack and rob his victims after the train left Gympie.

Gympie Train Station. At Gympie, Kopit stole a tyre iron from a truck, wrapping it in newspaper and hiding it on the Bundaberg Mail, planning to attack and rob his victims after the train left Gympie.

But the offender would fall asleep, waking up at 5am.

He attacked Mr Boys first, waking Mr Costello who tried to pull the emergency cord.

But Kopit noticed this and attacked the man, telling a court he “rushed over to him and hit him on the head”.

Kopit bludgeoned Mr Speering in his sleep.

Kopit was covered in blood after the attack, and swapped his clothing with some of the items in his victims‘ luggage.

At his sentencing in June of 1936, Kopit attempted to claim insanity, however, a jury found him guilty of the murder of Speering and he was sentenced to life in prison, with a condition he never be released.

Kopit died in 1951 at the age of 39, after suffering an asthma attack.