The following is an edited extract from Unmasking the Killer of the Beaumont Children by Stuart Mullins and Bill Hayes
Over the decades, several suspects have been put forward and investigated by the South Australia Police Major Crime Investigation Branch, with all, bar one, coming to a dead end.
In 2006, an individual was put forward who has stood head and shoulders above all other suspects over the past five decades.
This individual is Harry Phipps, a man of wealth and standing in the community, a millionaire whose vast property portfolio included Castalloy, a large factory located in North Plympton with the front office facing the main thoroughfare of Mooringe Avenue, and which produced an array of parts for the Australian automobile industry and household products.
The company also carried out casting work for the Adelaide City Council, most notably the Victoria Square Three Rivers Fountain in the CBD. Phipps also owned an array of residential properties around Adelaide, including his main Glenelg residence, located on the corners of Augusta and Sussex Streets; a property at Flagstaff Hill; and a holiday house at Goolwa, a coastal town located seventy-six kilometres from Adelaide at the mouth of the Murray River.
He also owned another property on Sussex Street, one on Kincaid Avenue across from the back of his Castalloy factory, and a house located in Cygnet Terrace, Kingston Park – the suburb next to the seaside location of Seacliff. In all of these real estate locations, Phipps had access and control.
Phipps was a man with connections to the church and state, and was an individual who came into police focus in 2007, three years after his death, following the publication of Alan Whiticker’s book Searching for the Beaumont Children, the first definitive account of the event.
The release of that book ignited a media frenzy, and wayward and outlandish accounts abounded, full of rumour and gossip. Many calls were received from well-intentioned members of the public providing their proposed explanations and suspicions about the case.
Jane, nine, Arnna, seven, and Grant, four, disappeared from Glenelg Beach in January 1966
Others used the opportunity to release pent-up emotions, highlighting the poignant effect this disappearance still has and the emotional attachment the Australian public has to it. Not long after his book was published, Whiticker received a telephone call from Angela Fyfe (née Phipps), who was formerly married to Harry Phipps’ eldest son, Haydn.
What she said to Whiticker dramatically changed the course of this tragic tale. Angela presented an extraordinary possibility: that her ex-husband’s father, Harry Phipps, may have been involved in the children’s abduction.
She described him as a person of wealth, power, influence and standing in the community – part of Adelaide’s upper establishment.
However, behind the walls of his Glenelg mansion, according to his now-deceased son Haydn, Harry exhibited deviant sexual behaviour, including alleged paedophilia and a fetish for wearing and making women’s satin clothing.
Angela lived in Queensland in the 1990s and was married to Haydn Phipps for a decade until the early 2000s. Angela and Haydn had met at a café in south-east Queensland where they both lived and worked – Angela as a clinical nurse and Haydn for a short time in real estate. Even though she sensed he was troubled, she couldn’t put her finger on the cause. She saw a tender side to him and found him intelligent.
The pair could talk for hours about world events, and, for a time, they were happy. As the years went by, their marriage became turbulent due to Haydn’s growing dependence on alcohol and prescription drugs.
His behaviour grew more erratic, with his mood swings becoming frequent and severe. At times, Haydn fell into depression and also suffered from anxiety attacks.
Angela had found it difficult to sleep in the same bed as Haydn because his sleep pattern was one of constant restlessness. There were times when Angela needed to wake Haydn as his head was buried face-down in his pillow, making loud, panicked, muffled groaning noises, and he was hypervigilant if touched while he slept.
Angela’s suspicions were validated when she finally spoke to her husband about his erratic behaviour and sleep patterns. A few years into their marriage, Haydn made a startling admission: he had been sexually abused over many years by his father.
No trace of the three children (pictured) was ever found. Their devastated parents Nancy and Jim went to their graves never knowing what happened to them
Angela had no doubt Haydn was telling the truth. She had worked with victims of sexual abuse while employed in prisons and was well aware that only a small percentage of the people who say they were sexually abused as minors are lying.
Even though Angela believed him, she was also aware that Haydn had a brother, Wayne, four years his junior, with whom he shared a bedroom at the time of the alleged abuse. She asked Haydn whether his brother knew of or witnessed the abuse, to which Haydn replied that, in his opinion, he did not.
This sexual abuse – according to Haydn when speaking with us, and his former wife Angela on different occasions over the years – nearly always occurred in the early hours of the morning, when Haydn would hear the swish of satin rubbing together moving ever closer to his and Wayne’s bedroom door.
Wayne was a newborn when this sexual abuse began. The sexual abuse finished when Haydn was 14 and Wayne had barely turned nine. It’s more than likely that, at 2am, a very young Wayne was sound asleep and unaware, as these types of predators ply their sexual deviant behaviour by stealth. As we have seen over the decades, if a paedophile can fool adults close to them, fooling a small child would be easy.
Meanwhile, Haydn has said he protected Wayne and threatened to kill his father if he ever touched him. (Editorial note: Haydn died in 2016. Wayne has cast serious doubt on claims his father abused his ‘mentally deranged’ older brother.)
While Angela says she had little contact with Haydn’s family, she claimed to have spoken to extended family members regarding Harry’s deviant behaviour after learning her then-husband may have been a victim of his. She later formed the view Harry’s proclivities were not exactly a secret.
Harry Phipps, a suspected sexual deviant who died in 2004, has been linked to the missing Beaumont children. He was a wealthy factory owner and social figure in Adelaide
Being a clinical nurse, she had some understanding of the stealth and secrecy with which paedophiles ply their criminal trade.
Masters of deception, they fool everyone around them. Angela asked her husband if he had told anyone else of the abuse. He had not. Who would have believed him? Harry, after all, was powerful, wealthy, and influential.
Around the time that these matters surfaced, Angela watched a TV documentary with Haydn on the disappearance of the Beaumont children.
During the program, Haydn had unexpectedly told her, ‘I believe my father had something to do with that.’
‘Surely you don’t think your father could have done something like that?’ she replied.
Haydn responded: ‘They are in the pit.’
She asked what pit he was referring to. Was it the car pit at the family home in Glenelg – the one used to service vehicles?
Haydn said simply, ‘The sandpit,’ and then changed the subject.
Angela did not connect the dots until she read Whiticker’s book.
When she considered the information set out in the book – combined with Haydn’s comment and his mental state – alarm bells went off. Could her former father-in-law Harry Phipps have been involved in the abduction of the Beaumont children?
Angela had reason to be concerned.
She had already concluded that Harry Phipps – who died in 2004 – had sexually abused his eldest son. This concern was amplified by her conversations with some of Phipps’ relatives who had heard whispers of sexual abuse in the Glenelg residence.
Adding to all this was the physical description of the man seen playing at the beach with the Beaumont children on the day they vanished.
When considering photographs of Harry taken in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Angela noticed the description fitted him. She also knew that Harry was a keen swimmer at Glenelg.
What further worried Angela was the fact Jane Beaumont was given a one-pound note by the man they had met that day. The police regarded this one-pound note as a pivotal piece of evidence in 1966, and have continued to do so ever since.
She knew through speaking with associates of the Phipps family and a former friend of her ex-husband’s that Harry was known to hand out pound notes to Haydn and his friends.
Interviews with former senior Castalloy factory managers also revealed Harry’s habit of tipping pound notes to waiters so he could secure their undivided attention.
This tipping in one-pound notes in the 1950s continued until a little over two weeks after the children’s abduction on February 14, 1966, when pounds, shillings and pence were replaced by dollars and cents in Australia.
The tipping habit, the private talk of Harry’s sexual deviance, and Harry’s physical description in the ’60s matching the man seen with the Beaumont children that day… when Angela put all of these together, alarm bells rang.
Also concerning was the location of Harry Phipps’ home in relation to Colley Reserve. His residence was also 200 metres from Wenzel’s Bakery, where the children were last seen.
Angela’s suspicions are now shared by many with an interest in the case. Could it be that, for four decades, a predatory paedophile was living undetected near Colley Reserve? A man who was able to fly under the radar, camouflaged by a cloak of social respectability. A man who may have abducted the Beaumont children.
In order to create a clear picture of Harry Phipps, researcher Stuart Mullins, with Angela’s assistance, began the arduous task of identifying and contacting people who had known the man. This included family, former friends, and acquaintances of the extended Phipps clan, as well as retired Castalloy factory managers and workers.
What Mullins soon found was that Harry Phipps’ public persona was the polar opposite of his private life. He was an upstanding, successful businessman, well known in the local area – and a father hated passionately by his son Haydn and the subject of vile rumours regarding his sexual proclivities.
From as early as 2006, Mullins went on a long and, at times, frustrating journey to discover who Harry Phipps was. He sourced his birth, death and marriage certificates, his will and information about his real estate assets, club memberships, and the Castalloy factory that he built from scratch. After painting a clearer picture of Harry’s professional background, Mullins then delved into his private life.
After vetting Angela and finding her to be a reliable witness, Mullins contacted her former husband’s son from his first marriage, Nicholas, in 2008.
With his assistance, Stuart finally got to meet Haydn later that year. Then followed meetings with Haydn’s closest friends from the ’50s, ’60s and ’70s. As the net was cast progressively wider, it became clear that Mullins had uncovered a hornet’s nest of sexual depravity and abuse, much of which was hidden from public view.
As the circumstantial evidence mounted of Harry Phipps’ culpability in the disappearance of the Beaumont children, Stuart contacted the SAPOL Major Crime Investigation Branch and presented it with his detailed findings in a sizeable dossier which he’d compiled over two and a half years.
Initially, Mullins was in contact with the detective assigned to the Beaumont cold case, who found his information to be worthy of investigation.
However, this officer felt no need to interview Haydn Phipps or his former wife Angela to ascertain their truthfulness. This task should have been one of the first things to do, straight out of any detective manual.
Around this time – in Mullins’ view – the officer cherry-picked subjects to interview, namely Haydn’s younger brother Wayne, his third wife Irene, and select relatives who did not wish to speak to Mullins. They apparently disparaged Haydn’s and Angela’s character and alleged that both had made up stories to damage Harry’s reputation.
They claimed Haydn was delusional and that he and Angela were both after money and revenge as they’d been left out of Harry’s will.
Mullins would later learn that SAPOL’s Major Crime Investigation Branch had been bombarded over the years with ‘whodunnit’ theories about the case, as well as reporters requesting interviews or comments when chasing new leads. Mullins is now of the view this is why his dossier was treated with scepticism.
Frustrated by the efforts of serving police, Mullins met with former detective Mostyn Matters, who was stationed at the Glenelg station that fateful day in January 1966.
After reviewing the dossier, Matters said: ‘If this information is corroborated, it’s the most provocative, detailed information I have read pertaining to this case.’
So concerned was Matters that he introduced Mullins to his old detective mate Ken Thorsen, former head of the South Australia Major Crime Squad in the 1980s.
After Thorsen read the dossier, he agreed ‘this information has red flags all over it and you should shake the tree and see what falls out’. Both recommended that Mullins take his findings to respected private investigator Bill Hayes, and he did in late 2008.
Before moving into private investigations, Hayes had spent more than a decade as a detective with SAPOL, at least two of those with the Major Crime Squad, during which time he had access to the official Beaumont file.
Forthright and with an eye for detail, Hayes is known not to suffer fools gladly.
He was initially sceptical and left his office door open as he expected it to be a quick meeting, having heard every conspiracy theory about the Beaumont children to date.
Unmasking the Killer of the Beaumont Children by Stuart Mullis and Bill Hayes is out now
Hayes told Mullins that it had always been his belief that the perpetrator was most likely a local. Transporting three unwilling, distraught children any significant distance in a car would cause alarm.
The evidence Mullins presented that day had a lasting effect on Hayes, who described the dossier on Harry Phipps as being the most incriminating circumstantial evidence he had encountered.
Hayes was always of the view that the man seen with the children at the beach that day was not a classic villain. It was more likely a respectable, well-presented and articulate individual – like the man Harry Phipps pretended to be.
This opinion has only been strengthened by Mullins and Hayes working together on this case since 2008, gathering a mountain of corroborated circumstantial evidence linking Harry Phipps to paedophilia and the disappearance of the Beaumont children.
These accounts are supported by Australian criminologist Dr Xanthé Mallett, together with former detective and award-winning true crime author Duncan McNab, polygraph expert Steve Van Aperen, and criminal psychologist Terrance G. Lichtenwald, PhD.
All have stated that, as far as they can ascertain, Angela and Haydn have been truthful in their statements to Mullins and Hayes about Harry Phipps’ behaviour and the abuse Haydn claims he suffered.
We believe that if Haydn is being truthful – which he appears to be – then Harry Phipps must now be considered the main suspect in this baffling mystery.
It is our case that Harry Phipps – a deviant, callous, serial, predatorial paedophile – on January 26, 1966, was waiting for his unsuspecting prey to arrive at Colley Reserve – and arrive they did.
- Unmasking the Killer of the Missing Beaumont Children is out now
