How horrific ‘satanic’ Lamb family killings left legacy in Gympie, Wolvi

Almost 50 years ago today, a rural town was host to the brutal murders of three children and a visitor. The scars still run deep. *Warning graphic content

The faint white glimmer of a tiny child’s teeth in a sea of red haunted his colleague for decades.

Speaking shy of the 47th anniversary of the “satanic cleanse” killings that unfolded at a remote property in Wolvi, two hours north of Brisbane, Wayne Sachs still remembers the night with remarkable clarity.

The now officer in charge of the Gympie Ambulance Station was just starting out as a paramedic and only just finished his shift with co-worker Trevor Simpson when the call came through about the horror that was unfolding 20km northwest around midnight on February 20, 1977.

“Had it been reported an hour earlier, I could have been out there with Trevor Simpson,” he said.

Instead, Ron Lawrence rushed to the property.

The Wolvi farmhouse where Peter and Irene Lamb killed their children and a visitor in 1977. It has since been demolished. Contributed: Keith Smith

What he found was a scene so grisly and devastating, senior police officers, including members of Brisbane’s Homicide Squad, called it the worst they had ever seen.

Mr Lawrence himself would reveal to friends and family “the only white thing in the cot of the little child was her white teeth – she had been hacked so much”.

‘Walking to the Lord’

Known heavy drug users and new age spiritualists, Peter William and Irene Lamb had been living at the Wolvi property with their children, 17-year-old Thomas, 12-year-old Lorrie and three-year-old Brenda.

Details that emerged through the courts revealed 26-year-old New Zealand woman, Lynette Gail Oakley (who also was known as Tone Olivia Lavetti or Tone Ashby), had met Peter and Irene the day before the killings, while the couple was visiting friends at Brookfield, Brisbane.

They had invited her back to their home.

That night Mr Lamb became convinced Ms Oakley was an “evil force”, and he tied her up to stop the evil from spreading.

Soon after that, she was bludgeoned to death – her body was found by police with gunshot wounds and severe head injuries.

Following Ms Oakley’s murder, the oldest Lamb child, Thomas, was shot and beaten with garden tools.

One of the garden tools used in the Lamb killings at Wolvi in February, 1977. Picture: Contributed.

The two young girls, Lorrie, 12, and Brenda, 3, were chased down and killed.

A witness to the murders escaped to a neighbour’s house and raised the alarm.

It is unknown what time the murders started, but the emergency call to the ambulance was about midnight.

Police found Mr Lamb wandering down a dirt road either that night or the next day.

He told them he was “walking to the Lord”, and then took them back to the farmhouse.

Mrs Lamb spent about a week wandering in bushland between the farmhouse and Boreen Point, another 20km southwest of where the horror unfolded.

Police said she was found in a “depressed condition”.

A shotgun and garden tools they believed had been used in the killings were taken into evidence, and Mr Lamb faced Gympie Magistrates Court for the first time on Tuesday, February 22, 1977.

Reports say he confessed and was charged with four counts of murder.

He was held in custody but on November 21, 1979, committed suicide while on remand at Boggo Road Jail.

Mrs Lamb was found not guilty by a Supreme Court jury on the grounds she was of unsound mind.

A garden tool used in the horrific Lamb murders.

She spent years in a mental institution before being released into outside care in 1980.

The farmhouse, which was located at the southern end of Vines Rd, not far from its intersection with Neusa Vale Rd, was demolished in the ensuing years.

The land was eventually sold and redeveloped.

By extraordinary circumstances, the land is only a few kilometres from where another of the region’s most horrific crimes, the unrelated alleged murder of Kirra-Lee McLoughlin at her Beenham Valley Rd home, would unfold in 2014.

‘This doesn’t happen in Gympie’

One of the region’s longest serving mayors, Mick Venardos, was only one year into his first term as Gympie City mayor when he heard the news by “word-of-mouth” on Monday, February 21, 1977.

He was struck by a feeling of “disbelief that such an horrendous crime could be committed”.

“I said ‘you’ve got to be wrong’,” Mr Venardos said.

“This type of (thing) does not happen in Gympie.”

He said all reports he ever heard of the Lambs were that they “kept to themselves”.

Former councillor and head of engineering, Bob Fredman, was 22 years old and only two weeks into his new job at Widgee Shire Council when the Lamb murders happened.

He said for Gympie residents, the Lamb killings were like the Kennedy assassination: Many still knew exactly “where you were and who you were with” when you heard.

Mr Fredman was at the local council offices talking with draftsman Phillip Hayes.

Front page of The Gympie Times on Tuesday, February 22, 1977, about the Lamb family murders at Wolvi near Gympie.

The horror killings seemingly came from “another dimension”.

With the internet and mobile phones still little more than science fiction at that time, he said Wolvi “wasn’t a community I knew”.

“I just couldn’t understand it,” Mr Fredman said.

“What sort of people could do this?”

“At the time I couldn’t understand if they were human beings or not.

“It’s one of those events which gets imprinted on your mind.”

Mr Fredman said the Lambs’ crimes “hasn’t helped our good name”, but Mr Venardos said it spurred the community to start building social support networks to keep people from being isolated.

“While we could not affect any change to what happened, people said let’s make sure this does not happen again,” Mr Venardos.

Mr Sachs said the scars still remain.

“It was an eerie thing,” Mr Sachs said.

To this day, Mr Sachs still finds he cannot entirely put the crimes out of his mind.

“Every time I go out along Neusavale Rd I always think about those Lamb murders,” he said.

Originally published as How horrific ‘satanic’ Lamb family killings left legacy in Gympie, Wolvi