Aussie Digger’s senseless murder on home soil

In 1944, a soldier was bashed to death in Townsville after returning from New Guinea. A new book uncovers what happened.

Warwick Meale with his parents Irene and Sydney.

One night in 1944 a young Australian soldier named Warwick Meale was bashed to death beside a creek in Townsville after a night of revelry.

The killer strode up to the young, sleeping soldier and swung a blacksmith’s hammer three times into his skull – then left him for dead.

Meale is the subject of today’s new episode of the free In Black and White podcast on Australia’s forgotten characters:

Eight decades on, Meale’s descendant, Jonathan Butler, has reopened the case files and made some surprising discoveries about the tragic unsolved murder.

Butler tells his story in a new book called The Boy in the Dress, about the murder of Meale on home soil after returning from service in New Guinea.

Warwick Meale in Sydney in 1942.

While a number of Australian and American servicemen were considered as suspects, the killer was never caught.

“Essentially, the theory was that there was a soldier or a sailor who had returned from a forward base with a destroyed mind, and was ranting and raving, and he just randomly killed Warwick with absolutely no explanation,” Butler says.

The photo that inspired the title of The Boy in the Dress. Warwick Meale (right) and his cousin Winifred, Jonathan Butler's grandmother.

The book’s name was inspired by a photo (above) of Meale as a young boy dressed up as a woman, which hung on Butler’s mother’s bedroom wall.

It was one of the reasons Butler suspected Meale may have been gay, and his sexuality perhaps played a part in his murder.

“There were also other whispers and rumours and suggestions that my mother could recall from when she was younger that there potentially was an element of gay hate crime in Warwick’s murder,” he says.

Butler theorises that while it was gay hate that inspired the murder, Meale was never the intended victim.

Warwick Meale was murdered near Victoria Bridge in Townsville, pictured in 1931. Picture: State Library of Queensland.

He believes a drunk Australian sailor, who was dismissed as a suspect during the police investigation, stumbled upon two American sailors having sex under a bridge.

Butler believes the sailor, nicknamed “Snowy” because of his white-blond hair, may have been enraged by the sight, and left the scene to unsuccessfully try to recruit another Australian soldier to help take on the two men.

The Boy in the Dress book cover.

Jonathan Butler, author of The Boy in the Dress.

Butler’s theory is that Snowy then broke into a nearby blacksmith’s shop to find a weapon.

“But while he went into the blacksmith’s shop to get this weapon, these two American sailors who (Snowy) had heard disappeared,” Butler says.

“Little did they know that nearby Warwick is sleeping, totally unaware of everything that’s unfolding around him.

“(Snowy) returns to the site. It’s a brownout, it’s incredibly dark, has no idea, stumbles on this big body nearby where he thought that these people were, and swung the blacksmith’s hammer three times into his skull.”

To learn more, listen to the interview with Jonathan Butler about Warwick Meale’s murder in the In Black and White podcast on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or web.

See In Black & White in the Herald Sun newspaper Monday to Friday for more stories and photos from Victoria’s past.