Sian Kingi murder: Vital clue that exposed Barrie Watts and Valmae Beck

Racing against the clock, detectives scrambled to piece together the details of Sian Kingi’s disappearance. They had one clue, multiple sightings of a very popular model of vehicle. But one keen-eyed witness snagged the lead they needed to catch a killer.

This is part two of a series into the story of Sian Kingi’s horrific rape and murder in 1987, and how they caught the diabolical couple behind her death.

It was around 7.30pm, 16 days after the attack on Cheryl Mortimer, when then-Detective Sergeant Bob Atkinson, walking through the Noosa police station, spotted a woman at the front door.

The self-described “small town detective” would rise to the rank of Police Commissioner, a role he’d hold for 12 years.

The Sian Kingi investigation, he said this week, was the most important of his 44 years in policing. He provided his most detailed account of it yet because of his strong belief that Watts should never be released from jail.

“She was terribly upset of course,” he said, of greeting Sian’s mother Lynda at the front of the station.

“She came in and said that her daughter was missing.”

Sian’s bike was in the back of the Kingi’s car. Det Atkinson went back inside and rounded up Darrell Geisel, the dog squad officer on duty that night, and together they returned to the park to look around.

“And I just had this terrible feeling about it, right then,” he said.

“This wasn’t a 12-year-old who was about to turn 13 who just decided to do something silly and go off with friends.

“I had a really bad feeling about it and of course you look out in the night sky and you know that the answer is out there somewhere, where she was and what had happened to her.”

It was late when Det Atkinson made a phone call to the local paper – the Sunshine Coast Daily.

He told them there was a missing girl. Could they run a story for him? He needed to get an appeal for information in the next day’s edition.

“They were good enough to hold the paper,” he said.

“We had about half a dozen people come forward because it was still fresh in their minds.

“The consistency was that they’d all seen this white 1972 Holden station wagon.

“The difficulty was that it was a very popular vehicle. There were 17,000 of them registered in Queensland. Ten thousand of the 17,000 were white.

“And as it turned out, it was a Victorian registration anyway.”

Their first major breakthrough came from a dogged Sunshine Coast detective named Alan Bourke.

Alan Bourke.

“This is the sign of a good detective,” Mr Atkinson said. “You ask the extra question.”

Det Bourke always asked the extra question.

On November 30, three days after Sian disappeared, a young woman phoned police to report something strange she’d seen at the beach at Castaways Creek.

There’d been a naked man in a cowboy hat running around. It was the same day Sian was abducted.

Detectives were taking every piece of information seriously. Det Bourke spoke to the young woman. Then he asked her: Were you with anyone that day? Did you see anyone you knew?

She had. A surfboard manufacturer named Bill Wallace had been at the beach. Det Bourke tracked him down too and asked whether he’d seen the man in the hat. He had.

And then: Did you see anything else unusual that day?

He had. He told the detective he’d seen another man in the carpark acting suspiciously. He’d had his car broken into recently and he thought perhaps the man was looking for cars to rob.

“Well, did you get the number plate,” Det Bourke asked.

“I did,” Mr Wallace replied. “I wrote it down on a bit of paper.”

The registration, LLE-429, came up to a 1972 white Holden station wagon. The registered owners: Barrie Watts and Valmae Beck.

CONFIRMING THEIR WORST FEARS

ON December 3 – about a week after Sian was taken – a trainee teacher was driving his 4WD through the forest at Tinbeerwa hon the Sunshine Coast when he discovered the body of a little girl in a creek bed.

A post-mortem examination would later determine she’d been strangled and stabbed. There were 13 stab wounds in her chest. Her throat had been cut. There were other terrible, unspeakable injuries to her body. There was evidence of savage sexual assault.

The murder scene.

Det Atkinson had been keeping the Kingis up to date with the progress of their investigation.

On December 3, he had to drive to their home and tell them their daughter had been found.

“They were gentle people, very decent people,” he said.

“When I got there, I think the media had perhaps been reporting that a body had been found in the state forest. So really it was just a confirmation of their worst fears.”

PIECING IT TOGETHER

INVESTIGATORS, Mr Atkinson said, had been struggling up until the moment Det Bourke got hold of the slip of paper from Bill Wallace.

“The thing turned then,” he said. “And when it turned, it never stopped turning.”

The detective who’d investigated the attack on the Target employee saw the alert for a white 1972 Holden station wagon and its connection with Sian’s murder.

There’d been a white Holden station wagon in his investigation too.

“With Cheryl Mortimer, in the fight with her, (Watts) had put his hand on the roof of the car to brace himself,” Mr Atkinson said.

“They did a good piece of work there because it was raining when they got there and the police forensic people wouldn’t let anyone move the car (from the underground car park).

“And so they got the print off the roof. And of course it was Barrie Watts.”

There was another police officer who had been thinking about that white Holden station wagon.

In 1987, Lowood had a two-officer station. They knew their town well. One had noticed a white 1972 Holden station wagon that had been driving around in recent weeks.

His curiosity led investigators to the rental property at Lowood where Beck and Watts had been living.

By now, the couple had become the main suspects in Sian’s abduction and murder. Cheryl Mortimer was called in to look at photo line-ups of Beck and Watts. She picked them out immediately.

By the time police tracked the couple to the house at Lowood, they were long gone. On the floor inside the house was a copy of The Courier-Mail. It was the December 4 edition. The front page story was a report on the discovery of Sian’s body, with a photograph of a white 1972 Holden station wagon.

Barrie John Watts and Valmae Beck.

Detectives went from the house to the real estate agency that managed the property.

The agent told them she’d received a rent cheque from Beck and Watts in the mail – postmarked from The Entrance in New South Wales.

“The NSW Police were good enough to put a whole lot of coverts into The Entrance for us to look for the car,” Mr Atkinson said.

“The Entrance police station is opposite a shopping centre. One of these coverts, who obviously didn’t look like a police officer, was sitting on the front brick fence of the police station having a cigarette.

“And out of the car park comes Watts and Beck in a white Holden station wagon. So he follows it back to a motel. They callus. We go down. And it just rolls on from there.”

‘A PSYCHOPATHIC KILLER’

FIVE Queensland police officers, Det Atkinson among them, travelled to The Entrance to arrest Beck and Watts and bring them back to Noosa.

Initially, they were only charged in relation to the attack on Cheryl Mortimer. But crowds gathered to shout and jeer as the couple fronted the local NSW court.

Detectives separated Beck and Watts and kept them talking. Beck had plenty to say – none of it especially believable.

Barrie John Watts.

She eventually agreed they’d been at Pinaroo Park on the evening of Sian’s abduction. She said she and her husband had had an argument and she’d walked away, leaving him behind.

She’d lied, but she’d put them at the scene of the kidnapping.

Watts was not so forthcoming. He denied his name was Watts. Denied being identical with his police photo. Denied his own criminal record. And denied he’d even been in Queensland.

“It was clear that Watts was a determined, ruthless, cunning man who was unlikely to confess or display any remorse,” Det Atkinson would later write in a report.

“It was later to become apparent that Watts was a psychopathic killer who enjoyed his murderous activity.”