Shocking cold case murder of Chrissie Venn haunts Aussie town
IT’S nearly 100 years since 13-year-old Chrissie Venn was raped, murdered and dumped half-naked in a tree stump, but events even more mysterious than her shocking death ensure she is never forgotten.
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IN 1901, the Tasmanian town of North Motton was renowned for its potatoes — said to be the best in the Commonwealth.
But a horrific — and unsolved — murder in 1921 quickly took over as the town’s claim to fame.
Even in recent years, the story of 13-year-old Chrissie Venn and rumours of her ghost have continued to attract people to the town.
Second-generation North Motton farmer Barry Smith said ghost-hunting had at times been like a rite of passage for North-West Coast youth.
“We’ve had them coming from as far as Burnie to yahoo around Allison Rd, looking for Chrissie’s ghost,” Barry told the Hobart Mercury Magazine in 2013.
“They’ve danced and lit fires and people have painted axes on the road, although we have no idea why because there was never an axe involved in the murder.”
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In fact, Chrissie was raped and strangled, her half-naked body found dumped head-first into a 3m hollow tree stump several days after she went missing while walking the 6.5km journey from her home to the North Motton shop.
Wire of the type used for tying hay bales was twisted around her neck and her mouth was stuffed with a piece of cloth ripped from her dress, a gold brooch still pinned to it.
A man who saw the body the morning it was discovered was said to have lost his faith in God.
But Chrissie, who had also been raped two years before her murder, was not the only victim.
George King, the former policeman and farm labourer charged with her murder, was acquitted — but his life was also destroyed.
During the 157 days he spent behind bars his home was broken up, his furniture sold and his wife Ruby admitted to the Hobart General Hospital after suffering a mental collapse.
The unsolved murder remains part of the town’s folklore, largely because of the continuing claims the spot on Allison Rd where Chrissie was murdered is haunted.
The claims, rife on the internet, include stories of cars shuddering, stopping or becoming engulfed with black smoke that evaporates as quickly as it appears.
Others say they have seen a young girl standing near the spot where Chrissie was murdered, or heard shrieking sounds, agonising screams and moaning coming from the bush.
Barry said although every North Motton resident knew Chrissie’s story, none of them believed her ghost existed.
As far as the locals were concerned, the only remaining evidence of Chrissie and her tragic story was her grave in the modest Methodist cemetery, which tells its own sad tale.
The plain block headstone, erected by public subscription because her family was unable to pay, sits alone in a corner, well away from the main cluster of graves because of her “shameful” demise.
Barry’s wife Maureen tended to the grave for many years and said it was tragic people could have ever believed Chrissie brought dishonour to the town.
“Especially when, ironically, Chrissie has ended up bringing fame to the town, which is now best known for her murder,” Maureen said.
“Before the murder the town’s claim to fame was growing the best potatoes in the Commonwealth, and although many residents would prefer potatoes were still the thing the town was most renowned for, Chrissie’s death is as much a part of the character of North Motton as our potato-growing history.”
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The first potatoes at North Motton were grown by the town’s two earliest settlers, young men named Elliott and Manning, who forced their way into the scrub and cleared a small piece of ground in 1860.
By 1905, the village had a state school, Anglican and Methodist churches, a commodious public hall, a library and reading room and a post office.
A roaming reporter that year wrote: “Anyone passing through North Motton now and seeing its stores, churches and prosperous farms would scarcely realise that in 1860 — only 45 years ago — there was not an acre cleared, not a building of any description, the place only being inhabited by the denizens of the bush.” But the residents still had to travel to Ulverstone to do most of their shopping and there was still no road. By 1921 — the time of Chrissie’s murder — North Motton, believed to have been named after a village in Devon, England, (which is spelled Molton), had become a thriving and tight-knit rural community.
An editorial at the time said: “If one were to search the world it would be impossible to find a more unlikely spot for such an awful thing to happen.
“Here, in a district inhabited by quiet law-abiding farmers, noted as they are for their hospitality and good nature, surely the last place a young girl should be fatally murdered in broad daylight.”
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Maureen, who was born in Sydney, said she had always had enormous empathy for the man acquitted of Chrissie’s murder.
“George King was an outsider, so he would have been an easy scapegoat,” she said.
• This is an edited version of a story first published in the Hobart Mercury Magazine in February 2013.
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