By Tom Cowie
Sydna Ferguson crept down the hallway of the Colonel's house.
She was scared and worried because her friend had failed to turn up for their regular night of dinner and cards. So she came to look for him.
Retired Colonel John Norman Duncan was shot, execution-style, at his Mount Eliza home.Credit: Victoria Police
Ferguson had entered the house by using the key from behind the garden wall, where the Colonel always kept it. Another friend, Nan, waited outside in her Volkswagen.
Two hours earlier, Ferguson had circled the driveway but left because she thought no one was home.
This time, a light was on inside. In the loungeroom, she found the Colonel's Labrador dog, Prince, but no sign of his owner.
The Colonel wasn't in the bedroom or the kitchen either. She noticed both rooms were messier than usual.
Suddenly, the phone rang. The Colonel's brother was calling to see if they'd found him yet. Ferguson said no.
Nearly overcome with fear, Ferguson went to the laundry. But as she tried to enter, she felt something pushing against the door.
Two years later, at a coronial inquest, Ferguson recounted what happened next:
"I saw there was something on the floor. It appeared to be a material. On the floor under the material was something that looked like beetroot juice.
"I ran out the front door and called out to Nan. I was upset; I think Nan came up to the house, but I am not certain. I said to Nan, 'I think something dreadful has happened,' or words like that.
"Nan said, 'What's happened.' I said, 'I don't know, I don't know.' Nan and I then drove straight home and rang the police."
At 9.15pm, the call came through to Frankston police station that a body had been found in the laundry at Glenburn, 1 Old Mornington Road.
Police arrived 20 minutes later, where they found the Colonel lying in a pool of his own blood.
He had been shot twice in the back of the head and once through the right shoulder blade. A pillow was used to muffle the shots. It was sufficiently intact that you could still sleep on it.
Police also discovered that the Colonel was not where Ferguson said she found him.
Before the police got there, someone had dragged his lifeless body to the patio.
The unsolved murder of Colonel John Norman Duncan is one of Victoria's oldest cold cases.
His violent execution-style death on September 5, 1966 rocked the small community of Mount Eliza and remains a mystery of the Mornington Peninsula.
Police believe Duncan's killers could still be alive and that someone in the community knows something that could bust the case wide open.
However, the investigation is not a priority for the homicide squad. There hasn't been a fresh call for information for almost 15 years.
But back in 1960s Melbourne, Duncan's murder was front-page news. The slaying was shocking in its brutality and the victim's backstory made it even more compelling.
Duncan was a dashing man, particularly in uniform. He was one of the Rats of Tobruk and was mentioned in dispatches during World War II.
After the war, he built on wealth already made in mining by becoming a shrewd investor. There were dealings with friends on the Mornington Peninsula. The founder of Clark Rubber invited him to join the board.
Duncan also lent money with interest rates of up to 10 per cent, a possible motive for his death. When he died he left an estate of $210,000, worth $2.6 million in today's money.
Handsome in his day, Duncan also built a reputation as a ladies man with a dangerous taste for married women.
A divorcee, newspaper reports referred to him as the "lonely colonel" but he still managed to keep his bed warm at night. It may have cost him his life.
He had charm, drove a distinctive gunmetal grey Jaguar mark 10 and was involved in the local theatre group. The audiences were mainly female. He was spotted on the Frankston foreshore in his car with much younger women.
"It conjures up images of a 1960s era James Bond, with the car, the money and the women," says Detective Sergeant Gordon Hynd, who handled the case when it reopened in 2002.
"A man of that era, we referred to him as a playboy."
One of those women was Sydna Ferguson – the person who stumbled across his blood in the laundry on that rainy evening 50 years ago.
Their relationship didn't come out at the time but Hynd now believes that the pair were in a sexual relationship with the agreement of Ferguson's much older husband.
That "agreement" may have gone sour, says Hynd, and become a possible motive for murder.
Whether that's true or not has become hard to prove. All three members of the love triangle have taken what they knew to the grave.
Police struggled from the start trying to piece together where Duncan was the day he died.
One key witness saw Duncan in the hours leading up to his murder in his Jag along with a group of two or three men in their teens or early 20s.
Police believe those men are probably Duncan's killers, however their motive remains murky.
The method of the murder – execution style, hand restraints, a pillow to muffle the sound – suggests a contract killing.
Whoever organised the murder could have been on the wrong end of a dodgy business deal or may have been a jilted lover.
There was a third theory, that Duncan surprised a group of youths in the middle of a robbery.
Hynd says police made an arrest when they last reopened the case in 2002.
Investigators believed the suspect may have been one of the men in the car but could not connect him to the crime.
"One of the challenges of a cold case that old is how do you give an alibi? How do they remember what they were doing, unless it was connected to something significant," he says.
Adding to the mystery is that Duncan's death didn't go completely to plan.
Police think Ferguson turning up when she did probably interrupted the murder, forcing the abandonment of efforts to fake Duncan's disappearance.
Suitcases were stuffed haphazardly with his belongings, including his glasses which would normally be used for such a task.
A brand new shovel and pick were also found near the scene with price tags still on. The tools would have probably been used to dig Duncan's grave.
In a chilling twist, the killers may have been pushing the other side of laundry door when Ferguson tried to open it.
The murder weapon was never found.
Fifty years later and the killing is still a talking point on the Mornington Peninsula, although some newer residents may be completely unaware it ever happened.
Duncan's social circle included membership of the Mount Eliza Country Club, a men's only establishment which grew out of meetings in the garage of Hendra, the historic estate of the Coles family.
Captains of industry like Sir Reginald Ansett were members. Then premier Henry Bolte was said to have granted the club a rare liquor licence.
One recent committee member describes the club as reasonably exclusive, particularly in its heyday when people could be blackballed for no apparent reason.
Duncan used to drink at the club and there has been speculation that someone he knew there was involved in his murder.
The rumours were so persistent that one member was referred to as "the suspect" when he would walk into the country club bar.
"He didn't take kindly to that but he was definitely interviewed in the 1980s about what he knew," recalls a former committee member.
Other locals are not so sure. A fellow bar fly says the so-called suspect "couldn't have done it, his wife used to make us lunch on Fridays".
Andrew Duncan, the Colonel's nephew, was 16 at the time of the murder. He remembers being on school holidays when his uncle was shot.
"At the time it was pretty traumatic for the family," he says.
"My father and I went into Frankston that day and we were going to call in and see John but we were running late and just didn't do it."
In the aftermath, Andrew's father, Colin, issued a $5000 reward to catch the killers, which was matched by the state government. Both went unclaimed.
So after five decades will the murder remain unsolved?
Hynd thinks the killer could still be alive but concedes the case will only progress if police get a fresh lead.
The key, he says, is whether the culprit ever spilled the secret.
If they did then someone out there, even after all this time, may have the information police need.
"Often, the ones that don't tell anyone are the ones that get away with it," he says.
"In this case they've got away with it for a long time."