Vincent O’Dempsey murder charge laid in Australia’s oldest cold case

“Tommy” Allen vanished after agreeing to testify against Vincent O’Dempsey: the man now charged with his murder.

Vincent O'Dempsey is driven into the police watch house in Brisbane this morning. Picture: Dan Peled/AAP

Queensland detectives have levelled Australia’s oldest cold case charge, accusing Vincent O’Dempsey of the 1964 murder of his missing associate Vincent Raymond “Tommy” Allen.

Police today charged O’Dempsey with the murder of Allen, who vanished 55 years ago after agreeing to give evidence against O’Dempsey about the alleged robbery of jewellery stores near Warwick, 130km south west of Brisbane. Charges against O’Dempsey over the alleged robberies were dropped following Allen’s disappearance.

Australian police have had mixed results with prosecutions in historic murders. In 2017, two men were jailed for life for the murders of Barbara McCulkin, 34, and her daughters Vicki, 13, and Leanne, 11, in January 1974.

Also in 2017, NSW police charged a man with murdering three-year-old Cheryl Grimmer, who disappeared from Fairy Meadow Beach in Wollongong in 1970, believed to be the nation’s oldest cold case arrest, but the charge was withdrawn before trial.

Police last month offered a $250,000 reward for information on Allen’s suspected murder.

Homicide squad Detective Inspector Damien Hansen said at the time the reward was announced that police had identified a person of interest and believed the case was “solvable”.

O’Dempsey and Allen met when they were working on construction of the Leslie Dam near Warwick.

The last known sighting of Allen was of him getting into a maroon Holden sedan with a white roof in Grafton St, Warwick, on April 18, 1964. Allen was due to play rugby league for Eastern Suburbs the next day but didn’t arrive.

Police had called for a person to come forward who had a conversation with one of Allen’s teammates in the dressing sheds at the game.

“That conversation concerned what we believe is the murder of Mr Allen,” Detective Inspector Hansen said.

“We see this in cold cases … people aren’t as fearful as they once were in coming forward.”

During the trial for the McCulkin murders, the jury was told Mrs McCulkin might have been killed because she had information about the Whiskey Au Go Go firebombing which killed 15 people in 1973.

Allen disappeared nine years before the Whiskey attack and 10 years before the McCulkins vanished. Allen, who was 22, and the McCulkins have never been found.

Vincent O’Dempsey, right, seen here in 2014, is accused of the 1964 murder of Vincent Raymond “Tommy” Allen, left. Pictures: Supplied/Channel 9