True Crime Collection

Graeme Thorne

By 1960, the construction of the Sydney Opera House was proving increasingly expensive, so the New South Wales government initiated numerous Opera House lotteries to help raise money. the £100,000 first prize for Lottery 10 was won by Bazil Thorne in the lottery drawn on 1st June 1960. As there was no real conception of the need for privacy for lottery winners at that time, and also for the sake of transparency, images and private details of lottery wins were published on the front pages of Sydney newspapers. It was also revealed that the prize would be paid by 7th July.

The Thorne family consisted of Bazil, his wife Freda, older daughter Cheryl, son Graeme, 8, and younger daughter Belinda, 3. They lived at 79 Edward Street, a rented house in the Sydney suburb of Bondi. Graeme's morning routine was to wait at the corner of Wellington and O'Brien streets, a walk of approximately 300 metres, where a family friend, Phyllis Smith, would pick him up and take him to school with her sons. On the morning of 7th July, 5 weeks after the win, Graeme left for school as usual at 8:30am, but when Phyllis came to collect him at 8:40, he was nowhere to be seen. Phyllis drove to the Thornes' home to find out if he was going to school. Surprise, Freda confirmed that he was and wondered if he might have arrived at the school by some other means. Phyllis drove to the school, The Scots College in Bellevue Hill, but returned upon finding out Graeme was not there. A concerned Freda then called the New South Wales police to report him missing. 

At 9:40am, 70 minutes after Graeme had left for school, a man with a noticeable foreign accent telephoned the Thorne household. Sergeant Larry O'Shea of Bondi Police had already arrived around 9:30, and took the telephone from Freda, pretending to be Bazil. The kidnapper stated: "I have your body. I want £25,000 before 5 o'clock this afternoon. I'm not fooling. If I don't get the money before 5 o'clock, I'll feed the boy to the sharks." Larry expressed doubt as to his ability to get hold of such a large sum of money, being unaware that the Thornes had recently won the lottery. The caller then said that he would call back at 5:00pm with more details, and hung up. At 9:47pm the kidnapper phoned again, but the telephone was answered by a different police officer, who stalled for time to allow for a phone trace to happen. The kidnapper started to give instructions that the money was to be put in 2 paper bags, but then hung up abruptly without providing further instructions. 

The police had been busy during the first day of the kidnapping, conducting a concentrated search near the Thorne house in Bondi. News of the kidnapping soon leaked to Bill Jenkings of the Sydney Daily Mirror, and at 8:30pm a public appeal was made on television from Bondi Police Station by NSW Police Commissioner Colin Delaney, then briefly by an emotional Bazil Thorne. 

The next evening, the focus of the investigation moved to Sydney's north eastern suburbs, when Graeme's school case was found near Seaforth. On the same day a tip was received that a boy matching Graeme's description was seen with 2 men heading out of Pennant Hills. On 11th July, Graeme's school cap and the contents of the case were found nearby. Soon after the discovery, an official reward of £5,000 was declared, and another £15,000 was offered by 2 newspapers, leading to a number of hoax calls. 

Investigators followed other pieces of evidence. Some weeks before the kidnapping a foreign man, acting as an investigator, had called at the Thornes' residence seeking a "Mr Bognor", also asking Freda to confirm their as yet unlisted telephone number. A similar looking man had also been seen numerous times by multiple witnesses in the park opposite the house. Also, at 8:20am on the morning of the kidnapping, some witnesses had seen an iridescent blue 1955 Ford Customline double parked on the corner of Francis and Wellington Streets, near where Graeme was usually picked up. Investigators, checking more than 270,000 registration records, established that there were 5,000 vehicles matching this general description. Assuming the car had been either borrowed or stolen, officers interviewed owners, including Stephen on 24th August, about car use at that time, but he denied having been in Bondi that day.