No rest for the wicked... and no forgiveness

Barry John Watts and Valmae Faye Beck, killers who outraged us all

Then detective Alan Bourke with Valmae Faye Beck, who was serving a life sentence as accomplice to Barrie John Watts over the 1987 rape and murder of Noosa schoolgirl Sian Kingi. Picture: SUPPLIED

THE good Lord may forgive people like Barrie John Watts and Valmae Faye Beck.

But we should not have to.

Watts and Beck were the brutal killers who outraged and terrified Queensland with the horrific murder of 12-year-old Noosa schoolgirl Sian Kingi in 1987.

Few living creatures have ever suffered as she did, and that is about as much detail as nearly anyone can really deal with.

I had a couple of after-work beers with some of the police who gave evidence at their trials many years ago. I asked them how they coped and they could not really say.

I also asked how they solved such an appalling crime, with hardly any clues. I really only received that answer much later, when I interviewed then retiring Gympie police superintendent, the late Alan Bourke.

That story is on Page 3 and is the beginning of a series in The Gympie Times about some of the crimes and events that shook us all.

Sian Kingi would be in her mid-40s today, possibly planning tennis or a latte with her girlfriends. She might have had a couple of kids of her own, probably in high school, as she was when she died.

But those children will never know life, because poor Sian Kingi never got the chance to be a mum. Let us spare a thought for her parents and all the children of Gympie and the Sunshine Coast who grew up in the shadow of her death.