A Larrimah crime? True story of Paddy Moriarty’s disappearance
Netflix’s latest true-crime hit has the world talking about this one outback Aussie town and the 2017 disappearance of Patrick ‘Paddy’ Moriarty. Who killed him?
Larrimah is one of those weather-beaten outback Australian towns that most of us might never have heard of if not for the disappearance of resident larrikin Patrick “Paddy” Moriarty.
Now, the town that once risked being forgotten by time has captured the world’s attention, courtesy of a documentary climbing the global Netflix charts: Last Stop Larrimah.
The small town mystery is ideal true-crime fodder: Ireland-born Moriarty, 70, and his dog Kellie disappeared without a trace on December 16, 2017. He was last seen at the Pink Panther pub, Larrimah’s sole watering hole.
After his disappearance, the entire town — population ten, all aged over 70 — became suspects, including Fran Hodgetts, the meat-pie queen and Moriarty’s arch-rival. The two were embroiled in a long-running, bitter feud, with Hodgetts accusing Moriarty of warning tourists against eating her pastries and poisoning her plants.
At an inquest into the outback mystery in 2018, Maurice Darby — Hodgetts’ former kitchen hand and gardener — described an incident where Hodgetts threw a dead kangaroo over Moriarty’s fence, which he then tossed back under her kitchen window.
Lost in Larrimah: listen to the podcast series here
Also a suspect in the disappearance was the “hot-tempered” retired gardener and ex-tent boxer, Owen Laurie. At a coronial inquest into Moriarty’s presumed death in April last year, the Katherine Local Court heard a covert police recording of Laurie allegedly singing and strumming on a guitar, muttering to himself that he “killerated old Paddy… killerated him, basherated him” and “doonged him on the head… smacked him on the f**k’n nostrils… with me claw hammer.”
Naturally, the documentary, with its gonzo cast of characters, has earned widespread comparisons to the Netflix lockdown-era true crime hit, Tiger King, which told the story of former zookeeper Joe Exotic, who was sentenced to 22 years in prison for 17 counts of animal abuse and two counts of attempted murder for trying to kill his big-cat-owning rival Carol Baskin. But before there was Last Stop Larrimah, there was Lost in Larrimah — a hit podcast by The Australian.
Over six episodes, released in 2018, journalists Caroline Graham and Kylie Stevenson introduced listeners to the crackpot town of Larrimah, its underlying feuds, and Moriarty’s case — which to this day has not been solved. Stevenson had actually met Paddy on a writers’ residency at Larrimah in 2016. “He was just an old guy living in a small town in the outback,” she told The Australian.
It was only a matter of time before Lost in Larrimah, which won a Walkley Award in 2018, piqued the interest of Hollywood.
Stevenson and Graham confirmed that the podcast and their book have been optioned by NBCUniversal / Matchbox Pictures, for a production separate to the current Netflix show.
The film had its world premiere at South By Southwest in Austin, Texas in March this year. The film arrived in Netflix worldwide on October 8, where it took out the No 7 position in the streamer’s Top 10 in the UK on the week commencing October 30.
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