The body in the blanket: The dark history of Sydney Opera House

Today, June 1, 1960, is the day for the 10th draw of the Opera House Lottery, and the press is here in force to see it.

The large barrel starts to turn and 100,000 balls begin to whirl. Each one bears the fate of a family upon it, the question being, which one will emerge first? Ball 3932. An official plucks out the winning ball. The fate of one family is now sealed.

Construction continues on the Opera House in a view from Mrs Macquarie’s Point.Credit: Mitchell Library

Up in Gunnedah an hour later, soft goods salesman Bazil Thorne is talking to buyers in a local store, when – to his amazement – he is told someone from Sydney’s Daily Telegraph wants to talk to him.

“Mr Thorne? You have won first prize in the Opera House Lottery!”

“You’re kidding!” And he first thinks they are. But once the reporter gives him the number of the ticket he has in his wallet, he knows it’s true … cue the hullabaloo.

Everything becomes a blur as the word spreads, people crowd around, pump his hand, slap his back and even ask for his autograph. What he most wants now is to get back to Sydney, to his wife, Freda, and children, Graeme,8, and Belinda, 3. He is soon on the 1pm flight. “I believe in the saying ‘charity begins at home’ and I intend to make this my policy,” he tells the gathered press at Sydney Airport, before catching a taxi home to the family’s humble flat in Bondi.

As ever, the papers cover the win extensively, noting among other things that the newly rich “Mr Thorne lives with his wife and two children, Graeme 8 and Belinda 3, in a flat in Edward Street.”

July 7, 1960, Bondi, halcyon days

It has been a wild few weeks for Freda Thorne, what with the windfall from the Opera House Lottery, the attention from the press, the excited calls from friends and family. Through it all, Mrs Thorne is determined to make sure their children’s lives remain as stable and regular as they were before this all happened. So today is no different from any other. She kisses Graeme goodbye as he heads off to school all spick and span in his Scots College blazer and cap.

Bazil and Frida Thorne, the Sydney winners of the Opera House Lottery.Credit: Staff photographer

Young Graeme is trotting cheerily down Wellington Street, Bondi, to Mr Mallouk’s shop to buy his morning packet of chips before waiting for Mrs Smith to pick him up out the front.

He is about to cross the road at the Francis Street intersection but pauses when he sees it blocked by a blue car with the passenger door open. There is a man standing near it with sallow skin, a greasy grin and a funny way of speaking.

“Hello,” the stranger says, “I am to take you to school.”

“Why?” Graeme asks, a slight tremble in his voice. “Where is Mrs Smith?”

“I’ve been sent to pick you up to take you to Scots, because the lady who normally picks you up is sick.”

Graeme Thorne, aged 8, of Bondi was kidnapped on his way to school.

Disappointed and a little confused, but raised to trust and obey what adults tell him, Graeme climbs inside the car and sits next to the stranger, his little eyes only just peering above the dashboard.

Some 10 minutes later, Phyllis Smith is with her two boys in her Holden station wagon when she pulls up outside the Mr Mallouk’s shop.

She sends her eight-year-old son in to get him, only for him to come back to the car … “He’s not in there, Mum”. Strange.

She drives to Edward Street and goes in to see her friend Freda Thorne. Is Graeme here?

Why no. He left 30 minutes ago.

How very . . . odd. And a little alarming. It is so unlike Graeme to be anything other than reliable. Still, surely there must be a logical explanation. Telling Freda not to worry, Phyllis and her boys head off to Scots together. It will be fine, Freda. I’ll give you a call, no doubt in 20 minutes or so.

It is all a bit odd

Little Graeme knows the way to Scots and asks the stranger why they are going the wrong way.

Mrs Smith never takes me through Centennial Park on the way to school! “We are going to pick up some other boys,” says the stranger.

Which also seems odd, because what boys live in the park? And now they are going even further into it, and he has stopped the car at a very isolated spot.

Mister . . . ?

But the man doesn’t speak, and after pulling something out of a small travel bag he’d had on the back seat, there is a sudden sweet but chemical smell in the car, as the stranger holds a rag in his right hand and looks at Graeme with sudden intent.

Mister . . . ?

There is no sign of Graeme at Scots! Not even when the headmaster calls a full-school assembly and asks who has seen Graeme Thorne. They all know who he is – after the Opera House Lottery win, he had been the talk and envy of the school.

Phyllis Smith goes straight back to the Thornes’ in Bondi.

Barely able to stand still, and struggling to put sentences together, Freda Thorne calls the police.

“I have your son”

Sergeant Larry O’Shea of the Bondi police has only just arrived at the Thorne home, to settle down the crying woman and get to the bottom of this, when the phone rings. It is 9.47am. Mrs Thorne snatches up the receiver.

“Hello . . . ?”

“Is your husband there?” comes a heavily accented voice. “What do you want him for?” asks Mrs Thorne tentatively. “I have your son . . .”

Mrs Thorne, just managing to hold things together, hands the phone to Sergeant O’Shea, who identifies himself to the caller as her husband. “I have got your boy,” the voice repeats. “I want £25,000 before 5pm.”

“Where would I get money like that?” O’Shea replies, as yet unaware of the Thornes’ £100,000 win.

“You have plenty of time before 5pm,” the caller says, though pausing, realising that anyone who does not know of the big win is not Mr Thorne at all, and probably the police. “I am not fooling. If I don’t get the money, I will feed him to the sharks.”

Stephen Leslie Bradley, the man responsible for kidnapping Graeme Thorne, in police custody, December 6, 1960.Credit: Staff photographer

“How will we contact you?”

“I will . . . call back at 5 pm.” The phone goes dead.

As unbelievable as it seems, Graeme Thorne has been kidnapped.

The boy was now awake

From a telephone booth on the corner of Spit Road and Medusa Street, just to the south of Mosman’s Spit Bridge, the thickset European man walks back to his Ford, glancing nervously at the boot, whence comes a regular thumping. Back in Centennial Park it had been a relatively easy matter to hold the chloroform-soaked rag to the eight-year-old till he was unconscious, bind his hands and feet and gag him, before wrapping him in a blue tartan picnic blanket and then putting him in the boot and shutting it – but clearly, the boy has now awoken.

The banging had stopped

It has been a tough day for the thickset European man.

So much drama, so many scares, including when the furniture removalist had arrived at the time that a distinct if muffled banging could be heard coming from the garage. Mercifully the removalist had obeyed instructions to steer clear of the garage, and the banging had stopped soon enough in any case.

Now that the twilight hour has set in and all is quiet, it is time to check on the lad. He opens the boot and, tremulously, he reaches out his hand.

It is every bit as bad as he had feared.

August 16, 1960, Grandview Grove, Seaforth, hush! – a woven crypt

More than 300 police and 200 soldiers searched new areas of Frenchs Forest for clues to the kidnapping of Graeme Thorne on July 13, 1960.Credit: Staff photographer

Birds sing, dogs bark, and kids play in the street. It is true that since the kidnapping last month everyone has been just a little more careful, but still the kids of Sydney are largely left to their own devices. See now Phillip Wall, Eric Coughlan Jnr and Andrew McCue, scabby-kneed boys of seven and eight years old, playing in the cubbyhouse they’ve made in a vacant lot, just over the side fence of Eric’s house.

They’re playing ‘dare’, and just as it starts to get dark, young Phillip Wall decides he’s brave enough to go over and lift up the lumpy blanket that had turned up in the vacant lot a few weeks ago.

He approaches slowly. A fly buzzes by. His hand shaking, Phillip pulls back a fold of dirty blanket. “Geeeez! It looks like the back of a head! Is that . . . hair? And below it the collar of a shirt?”

He screeches and bolts back to the others. They huddle together for a matter of seconds . . . Are you sure, Phillip? YES! . . . before running home as fast as their little legs can carry them.

Peter FitzSimons’ new book The Opera House. Credit: Hachette

Body in a blanket

David Wall gets out of his car after a long day and goes inside to find his 11-year-old daughter Diana bursting to tell him a story about the boys having found a dead body on the vacant lot, before his deeply upset wife rushes in with Phillip in tow, indeed telling him a garbled and highly unlikely story about having found a body in a blanket.

Eric Coughlan Snr – who has heard the same story from son Eric – holds the torch as David Wall kneels and carefully unties one of the blanket’s knots to reveal . . . two arms, tied with twine at the wrists, hanging down.

Good Lord! It is clearly a child, wrapped in a rug. But dead. David Wall gags and reels back.

In the small apartment at Edward Street there is a knock on the door.

It’s 9.15 pm. Bazil Thorne snatches the door open – good news, perhaps? – only to see their friend, the Reverend Clive Goodwin, standing there with a stricken expression on his face. “Oh God, please don’t say . . . ? You haven’t . . . ? They haven’t . . . ?”

Yes, Bazil, I am desperately sorry to tell you, they have. Three boys found him while playing north of the Spit Bridge, late this afternoon. The police are sure it is Graeme, and he has been dead for weeks.

Bazil Thorne turns pale and wobbles. Freda Thorne can only just hear the muttered conversation coming from the door. There is no mistaking what it means. She collapses to the floor in a heap, choking on her own sobs and clutching at the terrible pain in her heart.

This is an edited extract from Peter FitzSimons’ new book The Opera House, published by Hachette on March 30.