Larrimah: a little town with malice
The outback hamlet of 11 people and their internecine feuds have captivated us. Now we’re closer to knowing whether it also harbours a killer.
There are these little towns all over rural Australia, clusters of rundown houses that drivers whip past, briefly craning their necks to ponder who could possibly live there.
Larrimah was just such a place until Patrick “Paddy” Moriarty disappeared in late 2017. Then people began asking if one of the town’s 11 quirky, mostly retirement-aged residents might be a killer.
Audiences of The Australian’s hit podcast series Lost in Larrimah were captivated by tales from the dilapidated outback hamlet with no mobile reception or regular internet access, no shops or service stations nor any children, and the web of internecine feuds that bound its residents together.
Their stories also appeared in a book, a documentary and articles in faraway papers including The New York Times and The Times of London.
Yet, for all the attention, no one could answer the question: what happened to Paddy?
Outlandish suggestions included that he was hunted by a member of the Irish Republican Army, fed to a pet crocodile, or baked into meat pies.
Finally, on Thursday this week, a coroner decided Moriarty was “killed in the context of and likely due to the ongoing feud he had with his nearest neighbours”.
The inquest at Katherine Local Court heard chilling covert recordings of gardener Owen Laurie allegedly singing, strumming on a guitar and 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”.
Coroner Greg Cavanagh cannot legally say any particular person may have committed an offence, but he will refer his findings to the Director of Public Prosecutions.
The police still have no body and no murder weapon. Laurie expressed little about the recordings besides denying they were of him. The detective in charge of the investigation, Matthew Allen, says the “once-in-a-generation” case remains open.
“Paddy and his dog Kellie literally disappeared without a trace on December 16, 2017,” Allen says.
“We need to find Paddy.”
A $250,000 reward for information is still on the table.
Moriarty was born in Limerick, Ireland, in 1947. He was probably conceived out of wedlock and may have been raised as a foster child. He travelled to Australia at the age of 18 and spent most of his life working as a ringer, grader driver and station hand. He moved to Larrimah in 2008 and in 2010 purchased a disused service station for $30,000.
By the time he disappeared, Moriarty was a fixture at the Pink Panther-themed Larrimah Hotel.
The bougainvillaea-wrapped, ramshackle establishment has toys strung from the rafters, a giant beer bottle outside and the sense it is a relic of another time. A crocodile named Sneaky Sam lives in a pool out the back, and there is a makeshift zoo with dozens of birds.
Moriarty worked there in the mornings and spent afternoons propping up the bar regaling tourists with tales of a shootout at the Heartbreak Hotel or the shenanigans he got up to while working on Brunette Downs station.
On the evening he vanished, Moriarty had sunk his usual eight to 10 beers. He wobbled into the steamy December evening on a quad bike with Kellie riding shotgun. The last person to see him alive was a tourist who gave him some chicken for Kellie’s dinner.
The outback is notorious for misadventure, and when Moriarty did not reappear the next day as he had promised, locals suspected he had suffered a medical episode, been bitten by a snake or even fallen into one of the region’s many sinkholes.
But police officers found he had left behind his two hats, keys, bank card, medication and a plate of food ready to be eaten. Cavanagh noted Moriarty was “bald and sensitive about the shape of his head, so wore his cap or cowboy hat when out”.
“It appeared that in the midst of meal preparation, something unexpected happened. But not such that he did not have time to close the door and put the mat and besser block in place,” Cavanagh found.
Investigators also reasoned that if something innocent happened to Moriarty, they would likely have found Kellie. Whoever took Moriarty probably also took his dog.
Almost all of Larrimah’s residents have known each other for many years. Moriarty met Fran Hodgetts three decades before he vanished. They were initially on good terms when he purchased his property known as Top of the Town opposite her tea house and pie shop on the Sturt Highway. But Moriarty sided with Hodgetts’ ex-husband in their separation and provoked her by posting a sign outside his house telling tourists the best pies were available at the pub.
Hodgetts’ “famous” pies may or may not have originated at Woolworths. A sign outside her business proclaimed: “Very Sorry. No Eftpos. No toilets. No trees.”
Hodgetts accused Moriarty of stealing her property, threatening her customers and killing her plants.
Moriarty claimed she was the sort of person who liked to turn any spark into a bushfire. In 2016, they signed a court-ordered mediation letter agreeing to smile and wave at one another but otherwise limit their interactions. Sadly, it didn’t last.
In the period after Hodgetts hired former railway worker and “tent boxer” Laurie as a gardener, she and Moriarty exchanged kangaroo carcasses amid their ongoing dispute, and there were further allegations of plant poisoning.
Laurie admitted while giving evidence at Cavanagh’s coronial inquest in 2018 that he did say, “If anyone touches my plants, it’ll be the first murder in Larrimah”, but claimed the comment was a joke. He agreed he had a quick temper.
He and Moriarty had a noisy altercation and threatened each other a few days before the latter disappeared. Laurie denied knowing what happened to Moriarty and or seeing him come home, although he was at a phone box with a clear view when Moriarty would have arrived. Laurie also denied participating in a phone call between Hodgetts’ line and Moriarty’s on the night he disappeared and she was away.
The listening device was installed in Laurie’s home soon after Moriarty went missing. The dates on the tapes played at this week’s inquest imply police were aware of Laurie’s alleged monologues when he was first called to give evidence in 2018.
“Well they didn’t f..k’n find the hammer, well they can’t get me for anything!?” he allegedly says in one.
“You gotta find out who f..king done it mate, that’s if you don’t find the f..king body, to find out who done it … I can tell you, you are not finding out, I tell you f..king repeatedly, you are not finding out, you are not finding out.”
Another recording allegedly captures Laurie talking about “sand digging” and a “fight in the middle of the night”.
“He’s a good bloke … he’s a good bloke (inaudible) … he’s a good bloke. He’s terrible … No wonder I f..ken belted him. No good … (inaudible) f..king he would have been yee heee to the coppers, no wonder I f..k’n belt him mate, he would have been going yee hee hee to the coppers. I tell ya that. Yee hee, hee to the coppers I tell ya. I (inaudible) belt the c..t he would have been yee, hee hee to the coppers.”
Hodgetts struggled to explain how a stockpile of cash kept in her freezer dwindled from about $30,000 to just $7000 by the time police found it. She denied claims put to her this week that she offered an acquaintance $10,000 to “get rid” of Moriarty.
“I don’t know nothing about all this. You can put me on a lie detector if you want, but I don’t know nothing,” she told the inquest on Wednesday.
“I can tell you now, I never, ever, ever, paid anybody or wanted to pay anybody to bump Paddy off and I swear to God, on my mother’s grave, I know nothing about Paddy.”
Hodgetts’ grandson Brent Cilia, who is managing her tea house while she receives medical treatment in Melbourne, told the NT News he was shocked by the revelations at this week’s inquest but insisted his “Nan doesn’t know anything”.
“I called my sister and (she said) ‘They said that Nan tried to pay someone’ and I just started laughing,” he said.
“Because I was here in 2016 and I just know Nan, she’s been working her butt off to get the property settlement sorted. I just knew, these guys, she wouldn’t even know who they are and it just made me giggle a bit.”
He regretted not being in Larrimah when Moriarty disappeared because, “I think if I was here, probably, a bit earlier, she wouldn’t have needed to get Owen here”.
Drivers still speed past Larrimah, craning their necks towards the windows. Locals may feel it was better when the passersby did little more than wonder who lived there, and wish their town was known for something else.
Laurie has now moved to Katherine. At least those who became interested in Larrimah after Moriarty’s disappearance are a little closer to knowing whether the dilapidated highway hamlet contains a secret killer.
