Suspect in the Tynong North murders a prude with secret taste for porn, prostitutes

Harold Janman trying to pick up women at bus stops doesn’t make him the Tynong North killer. But the fact he lied about it might.

Harold Janman was a suspect in the Tynong murders case before his recent death. Now the case may never be solved.

Investigators interviewed more than 2000 people and took 11,000 pages of notes in the years after women’s bodies were found in the bush at Tynong North in 1980.

But of all the millions of words spoken and written, one sentence still hangs ominously over a cold case now highly unlikely ever to be solved.

Several women told police about a man in a black van offering unwanted lifts. When one woman had refused, the driver looked at her and said: “You don’t know what you’re missing.”

That man was Harold John Janman. We will never be sure he was as sinister as his words sound. What we do know is that he was a prude with a secret taste for pornography and prostitutes. Whether a sex killer or just a serial pest, he was weird.

The former film projectionist died last August at 88 but the suspicions dogging him for decades did not.

The stridently religious husband and father and closet gutter crawler had never been the only suspect for the cluster of murders referred to as the “Tynong North” case, but he was the strongest suspect for five out of six women abducted and killed over 18 months in 1980 and 1981.

Some investigators believed there were at least two, or even three, killers whose crimes overlapped by coincidence. No “sole killer” theory made complete sense.

What everyone agreed was that Janman was a strange man who led a double life. The circumstantial case against him was damning.

On May 30, 1980, Allison Rooke, 59, tried to start her old Holden at her home in Hannah St, Frankston. She wanted to drive to the shops but the car wouldn’t run, so she headed off to catch the bus.

Her body was found five weeks later, on July 5, in scrub near Skye Rd, Frankston. She was abducted in the few minutes she was at the bus stop.

But would a sober, sensible woman accept a ride from a stranger? The answer to that is: possibly, providing the driver looked respectable and harmless, which the middle-aged Janman did.

Allison Rooke was the first of two Frankston victims found near Skye Rd. But before the second local (and last victim), Joy Carmel Summers, was snatched from another bus stop 18 months later, the Tynong bodies were found.

It happened on the first weekend in December. Three Garfield men were butchering sheep. Two of them drove the offal up Brew Rd, which leads into the bush off the Princes Hwy at Tynong North. The pair knew it as a good spot to dump it where foxes could clean it up.

They drove into the bush nearly 2km, towards an old sand quarry. When they stopped to unload, they stumbledover two bodies. Police found a third a few hours later.

Because all three victims were abducted within a few weeks of each other — from August to October, 1980 — and the bodies are found within sight of each other, it seemed to be the work of one killer.

Two of the victims are teenage girls, found naked and clearly the target of sexually-motivated attacks.

The third is a 73-year-old woman, found fully clothed. The motive for her abduction, apparently by the same man, is not sex — but presumably money — and this twist later diverts the investigation down a different path for some years.

Bertha Miller, aged 73, let her house to catch the tram to church but never got on.

Ann Marie Sargent often hitchhiked to save money.

The older woman was first of the three to be abducted.

Her name was Bertha Miller. She was a quiet, churchgoing “spinster”, aunt of the then police chief commissioner “Mick” Miller.

On Sunday morning, August 10, Miss Miller left her home in Kardinia St, Glen Iris, to catch the same tram to the same Prahran church as she always did. But she didn’t board the tram and was never seen alive again.

Her relatives, including the chief commissioner, believed she must have been persuaded to get into a car by someone she knew or trusted. With a tram arriving any minute, and in fine weather, she had no reason to take a lift from a stranger.

The two younger victims, on the other hand, were probably more inclined to hitch a ride if it was faster and cheaper.

Schoolgirl and pony clubber Catherine Headland, 14, had visited her boyfriend John McManus near Berwick on August 28 before running out to catch the bus to Fountain Gate shopping centre. Police believe she accepted a lift before the bus arrived.

Ann-Marie Sargent, 18, vanished the same way 39 days later, on October 6, while waiting to catch a bus from Cranbourne to Dandenong. She often hitchhiked to save money.

Then comes the wildcard, a body found more than two years later and a fair distance away from the sand quarry area of Tynong.

Narumol Stephenson was a Thai national who had married a Victorian dairy farmer and come to Australia with him in 1979. By November 1980, she was tired of the cold weather at his Otways farm, and the two had come to Melbourne to visit friends and attend a George Benson concert.

Catherine Headland left her boyfriend’s house to catch a bus from Fountain Gate, but police believe she accepted a lift before the bus arrived.

After shopping for ingredients to make a Thai dinner, Narumol reluctantly accompanied husband Wayne and his friends to visit others in Park St, Brunswick.

Narumol sat outside in the car. Her husband periodically checked on her. He sat in the car and talked to her a long time but before dawn went indoors for a shower. When he came back she was gone.

Narumol Stephenson’s remains were not found until early 1983. It happened by chance. Former VFL footballer and coach Barry Davis and a friend were driving east on the Princes Hwy when their trailer had a flat tyre.

While the friend went off to fetch a jack, Davis took a walk up a nearby track. About 50 metres from the highway he saw a large bone on the ground.

Davis, a lecturer in anatomy and physiology, recognised it as a human thigh bone. The homicide squad was alerted that a fourth body had turned up in the same area but investigators concluded it probably wasn’t connected to the other three victims.

It is true that Narumol Stephenson was abducted within weeks of the other three, and that her remains were found close to Brew Rd. But nothing else suggests it was the same killer.

That she was picked up in Brunswick doesn’t fit the pattern. Neither does the fact her body was left so close to the highway, and not hidden. Bodies have often been dumped in the nearest patches of bush outside the suburban area, and Tynong is the first dense bush on the Princes Hwy after kilometres of farmland.

The consensus is that Harold Janman did not kill Narumol Stephenson. But he is the best fit for the other five murders.

Investigators know that killers almost always choose a familiar place to dump bodies. Janman knew the Skye Rd area well because he had worked at a drive-in cinema there. And he had once also worked at Tynong, at the local pub … and at the sand quarry in the bush.

The murders stopped as soon as Janman was interviewed. The fact he knew the spots where the bodies were found and that he tried to pick up women at bus stops does not make him the killer. But the fact he lied about it might.

Lawyers call it consciousness of guilt.