Grant Beaumont, father of missing Beaumont children, dies aged 97

The final devastating chapter in one of Australia’s most heartbreaking and enduring mysteries has come to an end.

Grant Arthur Beaumont died last week without ever getting answers to one of Australia’s most enduring tragedies and greatest mysteries.

He never got to learn what happened on the Adelaide beach 57 years ago when his three precious children disappeared.

“Jim”, as he was known, was 97 years old when he died on Tuesday.

A death notice in Adelaide’s daily newspaper on Saturday reads: “Loved father of Jane, Arnna and Grant, reunited in heaven.”

His wife, Nancy, died in a nursing home four years ago, aged 92. The pair were separated.

Jim’s death brings to an end the final chapter of a heartbreaking story that captivated Australians from the moment the children — aged nine, seven and four respectively —vanished at Glenelg Beach on Australia Day in 1966.

Grant “Jim” Beaumont with his children, Grant, Jane and Arnna.

Grant, Arnna and Jane Beaumont, who disappeared in 1966.

The children never returned after leaving their parents’ home for an afternoon at the beach. There was an intense search but they were never found despite reports they had been in the company of a tall, slim man with a dark tan.

In 2013, investigators scoured a factory west of Adelaide, after two brothers told police they had spent the 1966 Australia Day weekend digging a large hole on the site at the request of the owner Harry Phipps.

Phipps died in 2014 but his son, who accused his father of sexual abuse, believed he was linked to the missing children.

The factory site was excavated in early 2018 but no trace of the children was found.

Despite the story of the Beaumont children remaining in the country’s collective consciousness for more than half a century, the three children have never been found, and the identity of the 30-something slim man who was spotted with the children that day by numerous onlookers remains a mystery.

Two strikingly similar child abductions occurred around the same time but definitive links between the cases was never made.

Numerous leads went nowhere.

In late 2016, South Australian Police identified a 71-year-old former Adelaide scout leader as a person of interest in the mystery.

Millionaire bar owner and convicted paedophile Anthony Munro is in jail for unrelated child sex offences in South Australia dating back to 1962 — four years before the Beaumonts vanished.

Jane, Grant and Arnna Beaumont went to the beach at Glenelg on Australia Day 57 years ago and never came home.

For a story that played out so publicly for more than half a century his death stayed unreported for more than a week. Mr & Mrs Beaumont knew pain and loss on a scale impossible to comprehend. https://t.co/8WxjRaf4MB

— Peter Ford (@mrpford) April 15, 2023

Police interviewed Munro in June 2016 about Australia’s greatest child abduction mystery after a child’s diary said he was at Glenelg beach in the days surrounding the Beaumont children’s disappearance.

The “salvage and exploration club” diary was kept by one boy, and contributed to by another, tracking their adventures diving off the Adelaide coast that summer.

Police have previously said there is no evidence linking Munro to the disappearance of the Beaumont children.

In 2018, investigators’ attention was focused on a small section of ground at the North Plympton site where scientific tests revealed the possible presence of a large hole dug there around the same time the three children went missing in 1966.

Detective Chief Inspector Greg Hutchins said before the dig started there were innocent explanations for the anomaly those tests uncovered but it could also be a major breakthrough in Australia’s most enduring cold case.

“We have our fingers crossed, we hope for the best but we do want to temper expectations,” he told reporters at the site.

“Clearly the parents of the three Beaumont children have suffered significantly over the last 52 years.”