Beaumont children: Behind the latest bid to solve Adelaide’s greatest mystery
After many false leads and two unsuccessful digs, a third search at an Adelaide factory will seek answers to the Beaumont kids’ disappearance. Will new evidence solve the mystery?
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It’s been almost 60 years since the three Beaumont children – Jane, Arnna and Grant – went missing but it’s a tragedy and a mystery that still fascinates South Australians and the hunt for an answer continues.
The latest quest will see a third dig at the site of the former Castalloy site in North Plympton – a final bid to prove or disprove the long running theory that the children’s remains were buried there by Harry Phipps, a long running person of interest in the disappearance, who owned the site at the time.
WHEN DID THE BEAUMONT CHILDREN GO MISSING?
The children went missing after they left their Somerton Park home to head to Glenelg beach on Australia Day, January 26, 1966.
The last confirmed sighting of the children was at 3pm on January 26, 1966, three hours after they were due home, walking alone on Jetty Rd.
Witnesses claim to have seen the children leave the beach with a tall, blond-haired man.
To this day the children have never been found, nor have their bodies, despite many searches, including one in 2013 and in 2018.
THE CHILDREN’S FINAL HOURS BEFORE THEIR DISAPPEARANCE
Most South Australians have walked on Glenelg Beach, swum in the shallows and strolled along the jetty.
Jane, Arnna and Grant Beaumont loved to do all three. The children were locals, happy at home, at school and happiest of all being together at their favourite playground by the sea.
That they could literally disappear without any trace is still hard to believe.
It remains the story that haunts Australian parents.
January 26, 1966, was a hot one, forecast to be the second day in a row to exceed 38C.
Every radio and TV broadcast carried the news that, after more than 16 years in office, Australia’s longest-serving Prime Minister had retired on the morning of Australia Day to be succeeded by Harold Holt.
At the Beaumont’s house on the corner of Petersen and Harding streets in Somerton Park — nine-year-old Jane got up early but as usual during holidays she chose to read in her bed rather than jump straight up for breakfast. An intelligent, talented child, the Paringa Park Primary School student was reading the Louisa May Alcott classic novel Little Women.
They all loved the beach, although Grant hated seaweed.
After breakfast they were angling for their mother to let them head back to Glenelg.
They had been to the beach the day before and come home on their own.
Jane could swim but the others couldn’t but liked paddling in the shallows.
The Wednesday they went missing, with the heat up early and promising to be yet another scorcher, they were keen to be beachside and began pestering their mother.
Each child had been given a bicycle for Christmas and already that holidays had ridden down to Broadway, left the bikes chained up and walked to Glenelg along the shorefront.
That morning Nancy decided they would be safer taking the bus that dropped them in the centre of Glenelg and insisted they be on the midday bus back to be home soon after 12.15pm.
She gave Jane eight shillings and sixpence — about 85 cents in pre-decimal currency — for bus fares and lunch and told her to bring her a pastie home for lunch.
Shortly after 10am, Nancy Beaumont waved off her youngsters from the gate and watched them walk the 100m to Diagonal Rd.
Her normal life was about to come to an end.
Jane carried three towels in an airline-style shoulder bag and all three children wore bathers with shorts over the top, which was common attire for those living close to the sea.
From Stop 26 on Diagonal Rd it was a 10 minute bus ride to Glenelg on the route that began at Seacombe Gardens.
The red and white bus was owned by R. Worthley and Sons Ltd and the driver was a Mr I.D. Munro, of South Brighton, who remembered the children getting on the bus but not where they got off.
A female passenger also recalled seeing them and was taken that the oldest was reading Little Women, which she thought might be a little old for her.
She said the children left the bus at the Moseley St stop just around the corner from Jetty Rd.
What happened in the next 45 minutes is not clear but several witnesses suggested the children followed their usual routine of swimming in the shallows near the jetty before running up to Colley Reserve.
A MYSTERY MAN AT GLENELG
A sighting occurred around 11am by a 74-year-old woman seated on a bench in front of the Holdfast Bay Sailing Club, who saw them playing under a sprinkler on the Colley Reserve lawns.
A school friend of Jane’s also claimed to have seen them there at that time, but did not stop to speak.
The elderly woman said she saw a blond man in dark blue swimming trunks lying face down on a towel, watching the children wash down.
Around 15 minutes later, she saw the same man playing with the children who were laughing and clearly having fun.
The younger girl and the boy were jumping over him as he lay on the grass and the older girl was hitting him with her towel.
They were still playing together when she left the area just before noon, when the children should have been on their way to catch the bus home.
An elderly couple told police they were approached by a man with a similar description to the suspect in the company of three children who asked, “Did any of you people see anyone with our clothes? We’ve had some money taken from our clothes.’’
Another witness, a middle-aged woman sitting nearby, saw this interaction and said the man was clearly “with the children” as she then watched him help the children put their shorts on over their bathers.
The next sighting was around midday, when the children purchased pasties, a pie and some drinks from Wenzels cake shop using a £1 note that could only have been given to them by someone else. The shop was on Moseley St, and the stop where they should have caught the bus home was just outside.
The last corroborated sighting was by the elderly couple back at Colley Reserve, who said at the time they left the beach — 12.15pm — they saw the three children waiting on a seat close to the Colley Reserve changerooms.
They assumed they were waiting for the man with the blue bathers to come out fully dressed.
The woman was able to describe the children’s clothing, right down to the airline-type bag the oldest girl was carrying.
It was the Beaumont children and they had missed the midday bus home.
Two additional possible sightings of the children later that day proved difficult to corroborate.
A tourist from Broken Hill said at 1.45pm he saw a man matching the description of the suspect leaving the beach with three children — but that leaves 90 minutes with no other sightings.
Someone who knew the children well was the family postman, Tom Patterson, of Kipling Ave, Glengowrie.
He told police he saw the children in Jetty Rd on their own “holding hands and laughing”. “We all stopped and the children said ‘It’s the postie’,’’ he said later.
But he couldn’t remember if he saw them at the beginning of his round at 1.45pm or the completion of the round at 2.55pm.
Given the unsubstantiated nature of these sightings, police determined that they could not be relied upon.
Nancy Beaumont spent the morning visiting a friend and arrived home before the noon bus to be home for her children.
But they never arrived.
ARE THE BEAUMONTS’ PARENTS STILL ALIVE?
Grant, known as Jim, and Nancy Beaumont, who separated in the 1970s, were the parents of Jane, 9, Arnna, 7, and Grant, 4, who disappeared from Glenelg on Australia Day in 1966.
The children’s father Jim Mr Beaumont’s died aged 97 followed that of his former wife Nancy who died in September 2019 at the age of 92.
WHY IS A NEW NORTH PLYMPTON DIG HAPPENING?
The latest dig is being organised by independent MP Frank Pangallo said the new excavation was being held because “we do not want to go on wondering whether or not their remains are here.”
The excavation will start on February 22with the state government allowing the site to be searched for seven days.
WHEN WAS THE LAST DIG FOR THE BEAUMONTS?
The last dig was conducted in February 2018. SA Police, the SES and forensic scientists searched the site for eight hours on a hut summer’s day but were unable to add clarity to the mystery.
There was some excitement when bones were discovered, but they were not human, coming from a cow or a horse.
At the time, the head of the Major Crime division, Detective Superintendent Des Bray, expressed his disappointment at the result but said his detectives remained committed to solving the case
“It is disappointing but not surprising and we will continue to work to find the Beaumont children,” Supt Bray said. “Sadly this means for the Beaumont family that we still have no answers. But we will always do anything humanly possible to locate the Beaumont children and take them home to their family.”
The hole was dug at the site following testing which showed a large hole had been excavated around the same time as the children went missing on January 26, 1966.
The dig was prompted after two brothers told police that they had dug a grave-like hole at the site at the request of owner Harry Phipps two days after the children vanished. Phipps, who died in 2004, had been a long-time person of interest in the case with his son accusing him of sexual abuse and playing a part in the Beaumont’s disappearance.
Police subsequently concluded they may have been digging in the wrong spot in an earlier dig in 2013.
BEAUMONT FAMILY CALLS FOR CORONIAL INQUEST
A family member this week told the Seven Network there should be a coronial inquest into the disappearance.
“I’ve kept across developments about my cousins’ disappearance and I am aware of the theory about Harry Phipps’ alleged involvement which I believe warrants a coronial inquest,” the niece, who declined to be identified, told Seven’s new true crime documentary series, The Hunters.
In 2017, Supt Bray said while “police have some outstanding inquiries to complete in relation to Mr Phipps; however, at this time, there is no proof that he had anything to do with the disappearance of the Beaumont children’’.
IS THERE A MEMORIAL AT GLENELG FOR THE BEAUMONT CHILDREN?
There is no memorial for the missing Beaumont children because the parents “never asked” for one.
Holdfast Bay Mayor Amanda Wilson said in 2023 “that Jim and Nancy did not want to talk about it and never asked for a memorial” for the children.
Fresh talk of a memorial surfaced that year with news of the death of the children’s father Grant Beaumont, aged 97.
“The ongoing trauma of this event is still felt by many Glenelg residents,” Ms Wilson told The Advertiser.
“The parents never asked for one and so there will not be a memorial at Glenelg.”
The Holdfast Bay Mayor said “the entire family is remembered here in our hearts”.
Originally published as Beaumont children: Behind the latest bid to solve Adelaide’s greatest mystery
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