Son says his father could be the killer in mother-daughter murder of Margaret and Seana Tapp

WHAT sort of man murders a nine-year-old girl and her mother? A man strong enough to subdue and strangle Ferntree Gully mother Margaret Tapp, a fit 35-year-old fighting to save her daughter from a murderous sexual predator. Now a son has come forward with a new shocking revelation — he thinks that man might be his father.

Seana Tapp.

WHAT sort of man murders a nine-year-old girl and her mother?

It would have to be a man strong enough to subdue and strangle Margaret Tapp, a fit 35-year-old nurse fighting to save her daughter’s life.

It must be a man who was a sexual deviate.

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Margaret’s daughter Seana was sexually assaulted, meaning this was a sex crime committed by a man driven to murder to cover up his powerful sexual obsession for young girls.

It would be a man who knew the victims well-enough to be let in the front door – or who was familiar enough with the house to know that the back door did not lock.

Finally, and crucially, it was a man who wore Dunlop Volley sandshoes.

The only solid clue found at the crime scene (apart from a body fluid, since contaminated) were distinctive ripple-sole footprints where the intruder had walked across papers Margaret Tapp had spread across the floor while studying.

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Find the man who wore the Volleys and you’ve found the killer – that’s the opinion of the homicide sergeant whose crew was called to 13 Kelvin Drive in Ferntree Gully late next day. It was true then and still is, 34 years later.

When the precise anniversary of the murder came around last week – Tuesday, August 7 – a troubled potential witness finally revealed his suspicion about who wore the sandshoes into the Tapps’ house that night.

He believes it was his father.

Seana Tapp.

Seana, Margaret and Justin Tapp. Picture: Supplied

IN the winter of 1984, the son, who now believes his father is a killer, was a young child.

His mother was heavily pregnant. His father was a well-known professional man and his mother ran her own thriving business from home – a spacious house on a huge block in the Dandenongs, a short drive from Ferntree Gully.

The family seemed to have it all.

In an era when recreational past-times were relatively more expensive than they are today, the family regularly snow-skied, went on exotic overseas holidays and lived well – at least in a material sense.

Some of their neighbours seemed jealous or wary and avoided the professional and his family, a decision on which they might later have congratulated themselves.

Others, such as a former political leader who lived in the district, were attracted to fellow high-flyers. It was a natural fit, as the dashing professional and his attractive wife were well-connected in medical, legal and political circles.

Some others took a middle course, mixing socially with the family. Several local women who didn’t mind their well-heeled neighbour’s champagne and canapés and tennis parties preferred to consult others when they needed professional help.

This was despite the fact the man’s office was close by, a quick drive from home. His professional work often took him to the Angliss Hospital in Ferntree Gully.

The trip to and from Ferntree Gully was an easy run in his sharp European sedan.

The vehicle was a common sight parked outside his office or at the Angliss, where he would inevitably have met Margaret Tapp, who nursed there.

The professional’s house enjoyed commanding views over the ranges to the sea. It had a big garden and a tennis court. The man was tall and well-built and a keen tennis player. His rugged good looks attracted women’s attention and, some wondered, let him get away with dubious behaviour.

Margaret Tapp could have known the medical man through the hospital where she worked.

He played tennis at home with friends and neighbours but also competed in a winter competition at Ferny Creek with three other men.

One of the tennis regulars recalls the man would often stick around for a beer and a chat after the weekly sessions at the Ferny Creek courts.

He saw him at the time as “a man’s man” but would later change his mind.

A woman who worked at the man’s offices in that era describes a rogue male with a roving eye.

Women who worked with him knew of his reputation but noted he was too careful to act inappropriately with them. But it was a different matter with the female representatives that some supply companies hired to drum up new business.

“He was always charming and it was a wonderful workplace,” recalls a former receptionist at the man’s busy office.

“He was a womaniser but not with any of us. The reps would come in – they were always attractive little creatures and he would spend plenty of time with them.”

The man in question was a “very complex, spoiled guy”, the receptionist concludes.

A former Angliss Hospital nurse backs this judgement, describing him as a narcissistic man used to getting his own way.

“Very physically attractive people get away with a lot,” says the former emergency department sister, who worked at the hospital throughout the 1980s and knew Margaret Tapp.

“Beware of the good-looking one.”

The man was not regarded highly by his peers, she says. Compared with more serious professionals, underneath the surface he seemed lazy, vain and too close to behaving unethically, if not illegally.

“He had great casual charm – a charmer – but you didn’t cross him.”

In a workplace that was small enough everyone knew everyone else, his appetite for women was “well-known and discussed” by female staff members, she says. “Some of us were trying to be professional, but not everyone was.”

The other nurses often discussed Margaret Tapp, a vivacious divorcee who was popular with senior male colleagues.

“She was a very sociable woman. She emanated high energy and men were smitten with her,” says the former nurse.

Margaret Tapp, a theatre nurse, was shunned by some because they saw her as a potential “home wrecker”.

She was known to have taken a snow skiing trip with a prominent urologist and to have had an affair with a general surgeon and an anaesthetist, among others.

Then there was her longer-term relationship with Dr John Bradtke, the doctor who would buy her the house in Kelvin Drive, Ferntree Gully, to help support her while she studied Law part-time at Monash University.

There was no doubt that in the real-life soap opera of interlocking relationships and secret affairs around the hospital, she knew the rogue male with the expensive car and silver tongue.

Whether he had a secret sexual relationship with Margaret Tapp is open to speculation but, on form, it seemed highly likely.

In which case, he knew where she lived, just five kilometres and five minutes from the hospital by car.

That is how it strikes the man’s adult son, who is well placed to know.

He is one of three surviving children of a marriage that broke down long ago – after it was finally revealed his father was a ruthless child molester and sexual predator.

Margaret Tapp was found murdered in her home in 1984. Picture: Supplied

Seana Tapp was found murdered after being sexually assaulted. Picture: Supplied

THE law moves slowly, especially against difficult targets.

The smooth professional man offended for 21 years – from 1974 until at least 1995 – before his reprehensible actions caught up with him.

Naturally, he used expert defence counsel, a leading Queens Counsel, to beat all but one of the charges.

But he could not beat the social disgrace and the sanctions of his own profession’s self-regulating body.

He was charged with several criminal sex offences but convicted of only one, in 1997.

This was probably because each case was tried separately so courts never heard “similar fact” cases – only the accusations of one nervous girl at a time.

But more of the truth was exposed in a practitioners’ board hearing in late 1998, when the board was told the man had preyed on girls as young as four years old in his place of work, at his home and their homes and on holidays. Some of the children were school friends of his daughters.

The board heard evidence from nine complainants whose ages ranged from four to 29 during the two-decade period of abuse.

The revelation cast him in a far more sinister light than as a lecherous “ladies’ man”.

Family and friends shunned him once the full extent of his offending was known.

His wife changed her name and left him, eventually remarrying. His adult children have struggled terribly with the stigma of his disgrace – and the effects of being raised by a secret monster.

Two of them have been so traumatised they became drug addicts. The other son is not as obviously damaged. But he cannot ignore what he knows to be a powerful circumstantial case against his father, who is alive.

The son lives with the knowledge his father was a repeat sex offender against young girls. He knows that someone known to the victims, as his father was, would have a motive to murder to prevent immediate exposure.

Then there are the shoe prints left in the murder house.

Margaret and Seana Tapp were killed almost certainly between 10pm and midnight on that Tuesday night, August 7.

That is the night the man in question played tennis, as he did at Ferny Creek every Tuesday in the winter of 1984. The courts were so close he could drop in on Margaret Tapp and her little girl on the way home.

His son says his father always wore Dunlop Volleys to play tennis. “Size 11.”

Originally published as Son says his father could be the killer in mother-daughter murder of Margaret and Seana Tapp