Author Alan J. Whiticker with his book. Image supplied by Alan Whiticker
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Author Alan J. Whiticker with his book. Image supplied by Alan Whiticker
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"On Australia Day 1966, the three Beaumont children left their home in the Adelaide suburb of Somerton Park for a morning at Glenelg beach. By the end of the day, the worst fears of every Australian parent were realised when Jane, aged nine, Arnna, seven, and four-year-old Grant did not return home.
"Over four decades later, many questions remain: What really happened at Glenelg on the day Jane, Arnna and Grant disappeared? Who was the man last seen with the children that day? What links are there to the abduction of two young girls from Adelaide Oval in 1973 and the infamous Family Murders in the early 1980s?
"Searching for the Beaumont Children paints a picture of a sunny city and a carefree era in which children explored the suburbs and went to the beach alone -- a seemingly innocent world with a dark underbelly. This moving story destroys the urbans myths, explores the more likely scenarios investigated by police, and compassionately recounts the heartache of those who suffered most: the Beaumont parents.
"Accomplished writer Alan J. Whiticker carefully details the events leading up to the Beaumont children's disappearance and their movements on that fateful day. He describes how, in the days and years that followed, clairvoyants captured headlines, wild theories were promoted by the media and ordinary lives were changed forever. After forty years, the unsolved mystery remains one of the defining events in our history."
If you really want the best-detailed, most comprehensively researched, publicly available account of the disappearance of the Beaumont children, complete with commentary on the effect that the disappearance had on both Australian society and culture, then buy this book.
If you can't afford to buy book, borrow it from a library. Most public libraries in Australia will should soon have a copy.
If you don't want to buy the book and don't want to borrow it, in fact if you don't want to pick up a book at all, then keep looking at this website. Before the book was published, this website was the best-detailed, most comprehensively researched, publicly available account of the disappearance.
Before I go any further, I must declare three possible sources of bias:
Possible bias aside, this really is a very thoroughly researched account of the Beaumont children disappearance. Whiticker has covered all of the obvious angles as well as a few of the non-obvious ones. Moreover, he examines in some detail the context of the disappearance - the social attitudes that permitted the Beaumont children to visit the beach unaccompanied, and the consequent change in parenting habits in Adelaide and Australia following the disappearance.
He also provides a more general analysis of the culture and society in Australia and Adelaide specifically both before, during and after the disappearance. While this analysis is partly driven by necessity – there isn’t enough information on the disappearance itself to fill a book – the wider ramifications of the disappearance arguably had an impact on more lives than the disappearance itself did.
There are obvious flaws in the book. The first chapter or so are almost superfluous, explaining the history of the geography of Adelaide, why Adelaide is known as the city of churches, and what sort of city Adelaide was in the 1960s. Whiticker rather overdoes this and shows a hint of parochialism.
The book starts to work just before chapter 3, "The Disappearance". The basic facts of the disappearance are well known, but Whiticker explains them well and with as much detail as anybody else has managed to do. Anybody looking for an account of the case need go no further.
It is in dealing with the aftermath of the disappearance, however, that the book really proves its worth. As has been pointed out before, the disappearance of the Beaumont children was a significant event, not simply for the horrific nature of the disappearance but also for the way in which it had a very real effect on people's lives. Surprisingly, Whiticker doesn’t analyse this as much as might be expected. He hardly covers the effect that the disappearance had on the wider community, and certainly not in comparison with the over-explained early chapters of the book. However, he superbly shows how the disappearance effected the people most intimately involved - the Beaumonts, and the people who came to know them personally.
Several of the later chapters of the book deal with the more famous theories and personalities associated with the case. Having researched it myself, I can confirm that Whiticker's account of the "Family murders" is a clear and well written as any. He rightly denounces Gerard Croiset. Another chapter is devoted to the activities of the late Stan Swaine, the detective who famously became obsessed by the case. Swain's obsession was clear to anybody who spoke to him in his last years, but he attracted more attention than his theories deserved. Whiticker gets it right.
As indeed he does with his description of the Beaumonts. Everybody who ever encountered Mr and Mrs Beaumont in a professional capacity after their children disappeared, agrees that they are utterly decent people. Despite this, nasty things were said at the time and I can confirm that ugly rumours continue to circulate 40 years later 63. Whiticker denounces these flatly: "It needs to be clearly stated for all time," he says, on page 220, "the South Australia Police cleared Jim and Nancy Beaumont of having any part in the disappearance of their children. Nothing in their behaviour, or in any information supplied by the public, has changed that stance in the ensuing forty years."
The book is not all good though, and if I have any main grumble, it's about the structure. I’ve already pointed out how the opening chapters are superfluous. The structural problems continue. The introduction to the chapter "The Media" begins by hinting that the chapter will detail the media reaction to the case and the effect that it had on the journalists involved. In fact the chapter barely does any such thing and leaves this angle to the later chapter "The Legacy". I can’t help but think that the reader would be better served by having several of the chapters combined together.
This structural irregularity occurs in other ways, too. Whiticker’s research has uncovered some information that was certainly unknown to the author of this website – that the South Australia Police have concluded that the postman Tom Patterson's sighting of the Beaumont children occurred at 10:15 and not the early afternoon, and that the unidentified suspect’s blue swimming trunks had a white stripe down the outside of each leg (which were apparently the colours of the Henley Beach Surf Lifesaving Club). Why then is this information tucked away in the chapter 11, "The Case Today", rather than chapter 3, "The Disappearance"? It doesn’t seem right.
I have some other small grumbles. While the book has extensive footnotes, it doesn't have a proper bibliography, which anybody doing true-crime research knows can be half the value of a book 64. Distances and measurements are given in imperial measurements, which seem off even given the historical context (and despite what it says on page 53, six foot one does not convert to 180cm. It is closer to 185cm). But perhaps I'm simply envious of Alan Whiticker for having been able to write such a book.
For, despite this not being the perfect book about the case, it is nevertheless an excellent book that I highly recommend. I know more about the case than most people and Whiticker has managed to unearth enough information to make his book interesting and informative even for me. Other critics may comment, as was said of his book about the Wanda Beach Murders 65, that this book hasn’t really added anything to the case. That is true, but neither has anybody else and it doesn’t stop this book from being the best account yet published. For anybody who doesn't know much about the case but is curious, this book is where you should start reading.
Searching for the Beaumont children by Alan J. Whiticker was published by John Wiley & Sons on 1 February 2006.
ISBN: 174031106X
RRP: $29.95