Pod Insights True Crime Conversations He Killed His Entire Family, Then Walked Free To Start Another About this episode On September 7, 1971, at a remote farmhouse 40 kilometres south of Adelaide, Clifford Bartholomew killed 10 people. His wife, his seven children, his sister-in-law and her 19-month-old son. He shot them all dead.
He was sentenced to death, but because of changes to the law, he wasn’t killed. Instead, he was re-sentenced to life in prison and managed to serve just eight years before being released on parole.
He changed his name, his identity and created an entirely new family who knew nothing about his previous life or his crimes… until now.
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Guests: Craig Cook & Allen Arthur
Host: Gemma Bath https://www.linkedin.com/in/gemmabath/overlay/photo/
Producer: Tahli Blackman https://www.linkedin.com/in/tahli-blackman-205a891b7/?originalSubdomain=au
Audio Producer: Jacob Round
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Transcript 0:02 Speaker 00 In November 2002, at the age of 72, a man named Clifford Palmer died, a beloved husband of 22 years and stepfather of seven.
0:14 Speaker 00 Known as Poppy Cliff to his brood, his gravestone reads, "Devoted to and sadly missed by children and grandchildren."
0:23 Speaker 00 By his family's account, he was a hard-working, gentle and devout man, described as jovial, outdoorsy, and adamant about keeping his kids on the right side of the law. What they didn't know is that he had a secret. A whole other life he lived before them. A whole other family who he murdered.
0:47 Speaker 00 His crimes were so sinister, he was described by the detective who arrested him as the most hateful man he ever knew. And yet, he was allowed to start again. Allowed to shed the title of Australia's worst family mass murderer to reinvent himself. A title he still holds to this day.
1:11 Speaker 00 I'm Gemma Bath and this is True Crime Conversations, a Mamma Mia podcast exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them.
1:23 Speaker 00 On September 7, 1971, at a remote farmhouse 40 kilometres south of Adelaide, Clifford Bartholomew killed 10 people. His wife, Heather, aged 40. His seven kids. Neville, 19. Christine, 17. Sharon, 15. Helen, 13. Gregory, 10. Roger, 7. And Sandra, 4.
1:55 Speaker 00 His sister-in-law, Winus, 26, and her son, Daniel, 19 months, were also shot dead. So how was this killer, this mass murderer, able to reinvent his life and to have a second go at family across state lines? And why didn't we know about it before 2018? During this episode, we're going to hear two different voices. First, we'll be hearing from Craig Cook. He is the very reason we know about Clifford Bartholomew's second life. Craig's exclusive work as a journalist for the Adelaide Advertiser revealed the truth not just to the public, but also to the family Bartholomew had been helping raise for over two decades after he'd killed his own.
2:40 Speaker 00 Then we'll hear from former detective Alan Arthur, who was the first on the scene back in 1971. We felt it was important to bring in someone who's not only familiar with the latest details of the case, but also someone who lived through it, faced Bartholomew, and can explain how he was able to start over.
3:01 Speaker 00 Craig, why haven't we heard this story before? And I say "we" because I've never heard of it, my producers have never heard of it. I've asked around the editorial team, none of us have heard about this before. How has it flown so under the radar?
3:16 Speaker 01 Well, I'd never heard of it either. A great surprise to me, the reason I came across this story was an editor of the advertiser called John Whistler, who was as old as Moses, and he had heard of it. And he often dropped case studies on my desk and suggested that I might look through them and see if there was anything more to find. And one day he dropped these dusty papers and photographs of the Hope Valley murders, and I just, I'd never heard of them. I asked around the office and people had never heard of it either. It was unbelievable. I couldn't believe a man who killed 10 members of his own family was given a death sentence. And then was allowed out after eight years on parole, given a new identity and allowed to move interstate.
3:59 Speaker 00 Take us back to the nineteen sixties, early seventies. Who were the Bartholomew family and what did their life look like in Hope Forest, South Australia?
4:09 Speaker 01 Well, they were poor. They came from quite a rural area, South Australia, down the south, on the way to Victor Harbour, for anybody who knows that region, close to the wine and growing areas, but farmland back in those days. And Mr Bartholomew Clifford had a part town job as the abattoir. Then they didn't have much money. I think they were renting the property from a farmer. It was, only had four or five rooms, if I recall. Clifford and his wife and their seven children, so nine people in a small cottage. That's really all I know about them. Some people I've interviewed since who kind of knew them at the time, said they were very quiet, said he was very quiet, never, totally shocked by what he did on that day, Father's Day in nineteen seventy one.
4:53 Speaker 00 Well, Hope Forest is a very isolated area, isn't it? There's not many people there, it's not a big community.
4:59 Speaker 01 No, very small, everybody would know each other. But yeah, it's not a million miles from us, not up north in South Australia where you could be, you know, a hundred miles from anybody. Yeah, Strathalbes not too far away and, but yes, isolated for sure. And yeah, everybody would know, everybody would be one pub, everybody congregate there, that kind of thing.
5:19 Speaker 00 Do we know what state Clifford and Heather's marriage was in by late nineteen seventy one, just to help set the scene?
5:26 Speaker 01 Well, it wasn't in a good place. Basically, she'd asked him to leave. The story was that he suspected she was having an affair with a twenty two year old Vietnam vet who'd come to stay at their place and help them out. Basically, he'd become a lodger at their house and was helping around the farm and doing different jobs. And Clifford suspected that his wife was having an affair with him. There's, there's no evidence of it in particular, that there was any kind of sexual relationship. There was definitely a friendship. She went to Sydney with this person, but absolutely no evidence that there was any full blown affair. But he started to be acting quite weirdly, Clifford, and she asked him to leave.
6:10 Speaker 01 And on this day when the murders happened, it was Father's Day and he was invited back because it was Father's Day. Uh he left again that night and then he returned in the night and committed his slaughter. So the suggestion is he may have been under pressure and he may have been depressed, of course. And he was obviously fulfilled with rage and jealousy, but still an extraordinary action to take.
6:32 Speaker 00 Doesn't really excuse hunting down and murdering ten people.
6:37 Speaker 01 No, and your loved ones too.
6:40 Speaker 00 So there were seven kids, Heather.
6:44 Speaker 01 Yep.
6:44 Speaker 00 And then there were two other family members staying there that night that were also killed.
6:48 Speaker 01 Yep, Winus was her sister and she had a young baby, an eighteen month old child. They'd come down because it was Father's Day, I think. And then there was another child who'd come down too, a couple of children of Winus's, including Nolene, who was an eight year old child. But her brother, her older brother decided he'd take her back to Adelaide because he, he didn't like the atmosphere in the house, that was what he'd said. He felt like something bad was gonna happen and he was quite right. So that's the only reason that Nolene survived. Um was because um her brother took her back to Adelaide and stayed with relatives.
7:25 Speaker 00 How did this shooting unfold? Did it start with Heather and then he just systematically went through rooms? Were they asleep? Were they awake?
7:35 Speaker 01 It was the middle of the night and he went there with the intention of killing Heather. That's what he said. He made full statements. There's documented evidence of his state of mind and what he did and the order he did it. Uh it's incredibly graphic and very disturbing.
7:51 Speaker 00 Hmm.
7:52 Speaker 01 He got a mallet from the garage and he intended to stun Heather and take her to the garage and shoot her there so that nobody woke up. Once he hit her with a hammer and she woke up, all hell broke loose.
8:03 Speaker 00 Hmm.
8:04 Speaker 01 And, yeah, I I just can't imagine the scene after that. There's some terrible, terrible uh imagery around it all and some graphic details about his daughter begging him not to kill her. That was his eldest daughter and he loved her the best, he said in his statement. Uh but he shot her and then he he did systematically go around the house, um hitting people on the head with hammers and then shooting them. Um, unimaginable. I think some of the family members tried to stop him. One of his sons definitely tried to stop him. There was fights, but they couldn't overpower him.
8:43 Speaker 00 Well, he was quite forthcoming in his police interviews, wasn't he, about his wine, his state of mind. Do you remember some of the things he said? You you mentioned that he only meant to kill his wife, but I've seen it also said that he realised, once he killed one of the children, he couldn't leave any of them alive in his sick mind.
9:06 Speaker 01 Because he loved them too much, that's what he said.
9:08 Speaker 00 Because he loved them too much.
9:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, that was his statement about why he then had to systematically kill all the children. Most shocking to the police officer who investigated this case was the fact that he'd killed nine people. He went to the kitchen table, sat down, started drinking heavily. Uh, but after about thirty minutes, he realised the baby was still asleep in the cot. And he went back and he put a bullet in that baby's head. That's, um, that really, really destroyed the police officer who investigated this. And you could not see the sense of that. And that's what they, that's why they call him a monster. And he is, in their mind, the worst person they've ever had to deal with.
9:49 Speaker 00 So that would have been nineteen month old Daniel.
9:52 Speaker 01 Correct.
9:53 Speaker 00 His nephew.
9:53 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, who was asleep.
9:55 Speaker 00 The man that Clifford thought his wife was having an affair with, he was called Mr X in the trial.
10:01 Speaker 01 He was.
10:01 Speaker 00 You tracked him down.
10:03 Speaker 01 Mm hmm.
10:03 Speaker 00 Could he tell you anything about that time? Or was there a reason you decided not to name him?
10:09 Speaker 01 There's not even any evidence she did have an affair, but that was his argument. Um, I've got a couple of things to say about Mr X, actually, um, which we could include. Uh, so I found Mr X, but I chose not to put him on the record.
10:25 Speaker 01 Um, and the one thing that was of interest was, um, there was a medical report that he'd been shot in the groin in Vietnam and he didn't have any function. Um, so it wouldn't have been a sexual relationship, even if he was having a, an affair with his wife. He didn't have the capacity to perform sexually. So I spoke to a third party. I knew his name and I knew where he is and I spoke to a relative of his. And I gave them several opportunities to talk to me. And in the end, he chose not to. And I couldn't see any reason to pursue it any further, to be honest. So I just didn't think he was gonna add any more. And he was a twenty two year old kid and he didn't know anything.
11:09 Speaker 01 I think he'd said at the time that he didn't have an affair with Heather. He said it was a friendship. And the night this happened, um, Clifford had been told by his wife, Heather told him that they were moving out of the farmhouse and they were gonna move back into the city, basically, to the Port Adelaide area. And that's where Mr X was from. And this was something else that set Bartholomew off. He believed that this, um, Mr X was now gonna become the father to his children. This is what he strangely put together, that his family was leaving, not only leaving him, but leaving the area. I'm gonna set up house, Mr X.
11:46 Speaker 00 But you couldn't find proof that that was what was gonna happen?
11:50 Speaker 01 No, no proof at all, but no, nobody else confirmed it. But that's, um, it wouldn't have surprised that Heather was trying to get out of the situation. Her, her marriage were already broken down.
12:02 Speaker 00 Some of the interesting, horrific things in his police interviews that he did say was, you know, he tried to excuse it by saying he had five months of mental torture, thinking that his wife was having this affair. And then when he was shooting his family, he couldn't control the screaming noises in his head. And so he just kept going until it all went quiet. There's just something so chilling about hearing this man being able to articulate so clearly what he was doing.
12:35 Speaker 01 His whole processes and, and what he, so he's feeling the screaming and the only thing that's gonna stop the screaming is to keep killing people, frankly. Yeah, just very difficult to get inside his mind. These are his loved ones. These are not strangers. These are not people attacking him. These are the greatest loves of his life, and it takes fifty minutes. It's a long time of killing and beating and going back and. Yeah, at some stage you would think that something would say, stop, let's stop. Enough is enough. But obviously he must have got it in his head that um nobody, nobody could survive this because he loved them.
13:13 Speaker 00 But forty to fifty minutes suggests so much premeditation. You have to really be thinking as you're, as you're shooting to, to continue for that amount of time.
13:24 Speaker 01 Yeah, and he was having conversations with his children, especially at this time, his um discussions and begging and pleading and I think it was an incident with his son where he hit his son over the head and he kind of became unconscious and he went back to his bed, but then his son woke up again. And there was a fight and then um he ended up shooting his, his son. Um, after all of a sudden. Yeah, I, I just can't get inside his head to imagine why you would keep going. I mean, what are you trying to achieve here? Obviously, the obliteration of your family. Well, something that really annoyed the investigators is that he, they didn't, didn't have the courage to kill himself.
14:03 Speaker 00 Hmm.
14:03 Speaker 01 You really think if he'd gone through all this horror to save his family from a horror, why wouldn't he kill himself? What a selfish individual. That he would go back and shoot a baby, but he didn't have the guts to kill himself.
14:18 Speaker 01 That's why they're describing as the most horrendous man they'd ever met.
14:21 Speaker 00 How were the murders discovered? Was he arrested pretty quickly after all of this?
14:26 Speaker 01 He found his mother about four, five o'clock in the morning. He wasn't living too far away and she said, call the police. So he did. It was um the Monday morning after Father's Day, poor weather, middle of winter. And um yes, one police officer managed to find his way down there and um found the scene. Bob Farnham was still there in the kitchen. And then obviously he reported it in and um quickly escalated to a um senior police officers getting involved and heading down there.
15:00 Speaker 00 After the break, I asked Craig about what it was like interviewing Alan Arthur, the detective who arrested Clifford Barfolumu.
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15:48 Speaker 00 And you've spoken to some of the officers that had to look at that scene and kind of investigate that scene.
15:56 Speaker 01 I spoke to both senior officers involved. There's footage, video footage of the day, without sound, unfortunately, probably a good thing. And there they are, looking like young men, shocked young men. I interviewed them as 75-year-olds, and they're still shocked by this case. It really has disturbed them. And what they saw that day, they said, no, we should have to witness something like that. And they just couldn't make sense of it. But so, yeah, I just really chilled them to the bone, that story.
16:30 Speaker 03 I can never forgive him, never. No, it's unforgivable what he did. When it came to children, I mean, a two-year-old baby in a cot, puts the gun to its head and kills it. I mean, goodness gracious, mate.
16:49 Speaker 03 It's not normal, but it was for him.
16:55 Speaker 00 Do we know if it made headlines at the time? We're saying we don't, we haven't heard about it now. At the time, 1971, did people know about it?
17:04 Speaker 01 I've certainly made headlines. It was Australia's biggest mass killing. It still is Australia's biggest mass family killing. So yes, it made headlines all around the country. Why it then disappeared? I mean, Adelaide's now for a lot of murders and mysteries. Uh, this one kind of um definitely disappeared from the public consciousness. I I can't find a friend who remembers it. It's um yeah, definitely just uh, it got lost. I think, and there must have been a lot of publicity around when he was released. So that's seventy eight, seventy nine, but after that, um, the story disappears.
17:39 Speaker 00 He was sentenced to death by hanging, which was still a thing back then, in December nineteen seventy one. But that didn't happen, did it?
17:49 Speaker 01 He was sentenced to death by um Dame Roma Mitchell, who she became Dame Roma Mitchell. She was the judge. And yes, she sentenced him to death by hanging. Everybody thought that was probably a just, a just result. But even then, they knew the Dunstan government, um, if the Dunstan government came in, they were probably gonna um get rid of the death penalty and he probably would just serve life imprisonment. So that was already kind of known when he got a death sentence, but a life imprisonment, probably um. And if as long as it meant life imprisonment, I think everybody could cope with that. What became so shocking was, after eight years, he applied for parole. And Dame Roma Mitchell was head of the parole board, who gave him parole after eight years in prison.
18:33 Speaker 00 Why? Why, Craig? Do we know why?
18:37 Speaker 01 We don't. We have a few insights. Uh, the file apparently is one sheet of paper. That is the file that allowed Clifford Bartholomew back into the community, a man who killed ten people. And the piece of paper basically implies that he had mental issues at the time, depression. And that um the psychologist's report suggested he would never do this ever again. Which is quite a leap.
19:02 Speaker 00 It is quite a leap.
19:03 Speaker 01 And he probably shouldn't have had the opportunity to do it ever again, but so that was the logic. And then the other thing that came through was that this was considered a domestic violence incident. And therefore of a lesser, if he'd killed ten strangers, there's no way he would have been out of prison. But he killed his own family and therefore some kind of logic suggests that he he's not a threat to anybody else.
19:25 Speaker 00 That is mind boggling.
19:27 Speaker 01 Totally.
19:28 Speaker 00 Because even, I mean, you you try and wrap your head around the fact that, right, they think that this guy isn't going to do it again. So therefore we'll let him out, but it's also, he wasn't punished for the crimes he did do.
19:41 Speaker 01 He was called a model prisoner, which, I don't know what that means, but yeah, model prisoner, so didn't kill anybody in prison.
19:47 Speaker 00 He wasn't just released after eight years, he was kind of given a chance at a new life, he was given a new identity by the government, wasn't he?
19:57 Speaker 01 Eventually, he wasn't given a new identity initially, he moved back into the community where he came from, he moved back into Port Adelaide. Where he'd originally come from, and there were threats against his life, obviously, there was a lot of outrage. About the fact that he was back in the community. And it was mainly because, it took a few years, but mainly because of the threats against his life. But the decision was made to give him a new identity and he chose to move interstate, he went to Victoria.
20:25 Speaker 00 He went by Clifford Palmer, so he kept his first name.
20:30 Speaker 01 He kept his first name, just changed the second name to Palmer, not Bartholomew.
20:34 Speaker 00 And who did he reinvent himself as?
20:37 Speaker 01 That's a very good question, I don't think we know a lot of details about. Um, but definitely a Christian man, because he met his next wife at, I think it may have been a dance hall, but he definitely. Claimed he was a man of God and she was very religious, that was a very important factor for her. And probably, you know, one of the main reasons they got together was the fact that um he was, he said he was a man of God. By this stage, he was quite elderly, I can't remember what work he did after that, he had a few jobs before they moved to Queensland.
21:10 Speaker 00 So he married Merle, he had a a second marriage and a second family.
21:15 Speaker 01 Mel Gray, so, yeah, Mel Gray, born in Sri Lanka, emigrated to Australia, who had seven children of her own.
21:23 Speaker 00 It's kind of eerie, isn't it? Seven children again.
21:27 Speaker 01 Seven children again, yeah, it's um, yeah, we'll get to the stage where I found his graves down. And it was absolutely mind blown by what it says on the state, on the, on his graves down.
21:38 Speaker 00 Do we know if Merle was aware of what he'd done?
21:43 Speaker 01 Uh, the suggestion from the family, I later, I obviously had to talk to the family eventually, and I, I'm pretty sure he had said that he killed his wife. I think he declared that, but it was supposed to be a jealous rage. And the fact that he came out after eight years suggested that it was nothing, it was a fit of anger against one person. And that it was basically a manslaughter charge, so easily justified. He had his release papers, which were still in his possession, and if he'd shown those, then maybe he had admitted, the family, wider family seemed to know that he had killed his wife at some stage, but it was um, yeah, some misunderstanding or didn't mean to kill her and he only served eight years, so therefore it kind of been that serious.
22:25 Speaker 00 And what kind of stepfather was he?
22:30 Speaker 01 They could not have been more glowing in their praise for him as a stepfather. So seven children and then all the marriages of those children and then all those grandchildren. Can't remember how many there are, but there's a lot. And they said nobody could have a bad word for him. Um, the whole family um, enjoyed his company and never saw him raise a fist or be even angry in any situation. That's what they told me. And obviously, when they knew the full story, they were very shocked.
23:02 Speaker 00 Well, he was in their lives, he was married to Merle for over twenty two years. He died in two thousand and two, in his seventies. She died in twenty twelve. And by this point, the truth of, the magnitude of his crimes was still kind of hidden to the family, wasn't it? How did they find out?
23:22 Speaker 01 Uh, it didn't everybody knew, obviously, and that new life it created. They found out because I told them.
23:28 Speaker 00 Tell us about how you came into this story. You you mentioned at the start that you got this case report thrown onto your desk.
23:35 Speaker 01 Well, whenever John threw something my way, I knew it was going to be interesting. He only chose really interesting stories. And as we said, it was just, one, unbelievable, and two, I just knew there had to be more to it in some aspect. And I really did at that, even at that stage, I wanted to know what happened to him. But even more so when I met Nolene, who was the young girl who survived the massacre. Because she was still full of anger, hate and fear. This is a woman in her fifties who had lived an incredible trauma and she still feared from him, her uncle Barti. She had nightmares about him coming back and shooting her. So once I interviewed her, I definitely wanted to know what happened to her. Um, Clifford Bartholomew, I I thought we owed it to her to tell her if he was dead. There was
24:21 Speaker 01 strong chance he was, but she should know. And hopefully put her out of some kind of mi- misery. How she found out about murders was just horrendous. Um, she was, a police officer came to the house where she was staying. And um, her mother came in and told her to go and go in the bedroom. So it obviously shows she couldn't hear anything. The TV was on in the bedroom. And while the police officers were informing um, as her, so not her mother, um, I think it was an auntie who was looking after her about what had happened, it came up on the television and there were pictures. And Nolene saw saw that her mother and brother had been killed, plus her wider family, seven cousins
25:04 Speaker 01 found out that her family had been, and she sat there and watched the TV and that's how she lauded.
25:09 Speaker 00 That's horrendous.
25:10 Speaker 01 Yeah, unimaginable. So no wonder she's got a lot of trauma. And um, yeah, so that was the first story I wrote really was about her um, her journey and um, however. We wanted to know if he was alive. And then I kind of made an approach to police. So I interviewed the two police officers to to get the full story. They were very kind in their time. And then I approached the police and asked them if they could confirm if he was dead or alive. Uh, I took a couple of emails and then I got a very surprising email back. That's confirmed he was dead, but also told me his surname, which I was not expecting. So, um, with that, then I started looking for him.
25:54 Speaker 01 And I found him.
25:55 Speaker 00 Well, you found his, his.
25:58 Speaker 01 Found his grave.
25:59 Speaker 00 You found his tombstone and.
26:00 Speaker 01 Yeah, yeah, that's how I knew. And I, I, by the dates, I just worked out it had to be him. And what was on the tombstone was, um, greatest love from your children and grandchildren. Just the man who killed his first family.
26:15 Speaker 00 What did you think when you first saw that?
26:17 Speaker 01 Ah, just. One of the most surprising things I've ever seen, I think. Just you can't. I mean, at this stage, I didn't know there was seven children and all these grandchildren. So I just couldn't understand it. I thought, how did that happen? Well, maybe it's not him. Because, you know, here's the loving children and grandchildren, um, uh, giving their grandpop a lovely send-off. I just. Yes. And then when I told Noreen, of course, that was, that's far worse. That was, she couldn't believe he'd gotten another family and. Lived happily. I mean, even if he hadn't caused any more chaos, he'd, uh. He didn't deserve that. That was her opinion. He didn't deserve another life and another family.
26:56 Speaker 00 So how did you track down? The second family, the, all the kids and the relatives? And how did you have these conversations with them about his true identity?
27:09 Speaker 01 I tracked them down the same way I found Noreen properly, which is, um, social media. So. People who've got a presence on social media. So you just slow putting two and two together eventually. Um, I worked out where he was from, where Clifford must have been living, and then worked out, had Mills name by that stage. So eventually I worked out who he was, where he was and where he lived. I mean, we were ready to publish and you have to give the respect to that family and tell them. But what are we publishing? Uh, and warn them. Yeah, they're in Queensland, maybe it wouldn't have even reached them. Being published in Adelaide, maybe not. But they deserved the respect to know um. What was being published and what was being said about their grandfather and stepfather.
27:52 Speaker 01 Very difficult. I thought the family handled things magnificently. They had a family conference, they told everybody um of an adult's age about. What was going to be said and that it was probably true. In fact, it was true, they'd researched it all themselves and um. Yeah, they dealt with it very well. Terrible shock to them all. They just couldn't get their head around it.
28:15 Speaker 00 One of the family members that you ended up quoting in your stories. Kind of said he was glad he was dead by then.
28:23 Speaker 01 Yeah, it would have been obviously far worse if he'd been alive. Yeah, just an impossible situation if he'd been alive. So thankfully it had all happened after Clifford had passed on.
28:34 Speaker 00 I want to talk a bit more about Nolene. Because she seems like, you know, a bit like the forgotten victim in this story. How has that? The crime shaped her life?
28:49 Speaker 01 Uh, very hard to judge, but having interviewed her, I know it's, you know, it was the most traumatic. Um, incident of her life. And she's lived in fear basically. She had a. Um, some people might think it's not realistic that he'd ever come back and kill her, but she. She believed that was a possibility. That um, yeah, he was mad enough to kill ten people. Why wasn't he mad enough to come and find her? And kill her. And she had children as well by the time she had a few children of her own. And I think she suffered what all of us suffered, which is the, how, how could he have been let out? And how could he have been given a chance of a second life? She. She really struggled that he didn't, he wouldn't face punishment for wrecking her life. And ten other lives. I mean.
29:34 Speaker 01 And dozens of other lives potentially. There's a whole population that he killed that night. It wasn't just ten people, there's a futures. They all got married, they all had children, there. There's a continuation there that he obliterated. And that those kind of things, yes, she really struggled with. She wanted him. I mean, she was very frank about how she wanted him to die and he should die in pain, because she felt pain. And she wanted him to have had a miserable life and then she found out he'd had a an incredibly wonderful life for the last twenty years of his life.
30:03 Speaker 00 Is there an argument to the very least that she should have been told that he was dead?
30:10 Speaker 01 Like, absolutely. I um, I tried to get something happening at the time around this case that victims should be informed. This is an extraordinary case, but there are other incidences where victims do not know what happened to the perpetrator. I mean, other people have had um new identities and disappeared. And I, I think you should be told if somebody in that circumstances has died. I think it would make a difference. Rather than people wondering what's going on and if they're coming back and yeah, I think that's the least the police could do in those circumstances.
30:44 Speaker 00 Did you contact the South Australian Parole Board and kind of ask them retrospectively? Why did this happen? Could this happen again? Were they able to give you any answers?
30:55 Speaker 01 The South Australian Parole Board down the head is Frances Nelson QC. She's been head for thirty-three years. She's a great friend of Roma Mitchell's and she um, she's a little bit mystified too, but then she said that she um they don't have, didn't have the full story back in nineteen seventy-nine and that these days there would be far more evidence, far more interviews and psychological profiling. She believes the parole board today would have a lot more information to be basing their judgment on. She can't say whether they'd make the same decision or not, but I'm, I'm thinking probably not, but uh you know, but yeah, it's um, it's a surprise.
31:37 Speaker 00 Which I guess is reassuring, but what worries me is how many other Cliffords are out there from the sixties, seventies, eighties? That perhaps got new identities that we don't know about. Do you think that that's a common occurrence or am I kind of catastrophising it a bit?
31:57 Speaker 01 No, no, I definitely think it was a common occurrence back in the sixties, seventies, eighties. Maybe it still happens. Probably happens in cases less horrific and less high profile than this was at the time. Despite the fact that it disappeared from public view. But yeah, there must be a lot of people who get new identities.
32:13 Speaker 00 When you look back at your career and all the stories you've covered, how does this one compare?
32:19 Speaker 01 Covered a lot of stories, a lot of amazing stories. This is probably the most surprising and the fact, yeah, this would have to be the most surprising. Actually tracking down, thinking, a member was thinking, well, we're never going to find him. And then thanks to the police, I'd like to think somebody in the police officer did the right thing and gave me his name. Maybe it was an accident, but um maybe not. Uh and yeah, just from that point of view, are we ever going to find him again? I mean, I think we all knew he was dead, but then to actually find him and to find out um what had happened for those twenty odd years of his life. Yeah, definitely the most surprising outcome.
32:59 Speaker 00 It's been quite a few years since you kind of broke the news to his second family. Have you heard anything from them since, how they've fared since learning this?
33:10 Speaker 01 Nothing, no, I wouldn't expect to. I hope they've fared very well, I hope they coked and they put it behind them because what else can they do? I mean, there was, they had absolutely no knowledge. I don't imagine Merle had um full knowledge of what had happened. And where do you go and check up even on something like that? I mean, there are many famous murder cases in Australia, this should have been one of them, but it wasn't. So they had no way of finding out truth about what Clifford had done and whether what he was telling them was the truth. They did find in his papers after he died, the um release notes from the prison, which said he'd been released after eight years for murdering his wife. Of course, we go back to that time when he wasn't charged with the other murders.
33:55 Speaker 00 So it wouldn't have been, it wouldn't have been in the prison papers?
33:57 Speaker 01 It wasn't on his records, yeah. So that was a frustration for the police officers who believed he should have been charged with all the murders at the time. And then they were relaxed about it because he'd got a death sentence. And then ultimately, that probably paid off for him that he was not charged with all those other murders. So he could be made to look like he'd just killed his wife in a fit of anger.
34:18 Speaker 00 Did those police officers try to go back and get those charged once he'd been released? Were they like, okay, well, let's try and charge him?
34:27 Speaker 01 It was out of their hands. They weren't senior police officers. It's down to the prosecution by that stage. They did push. And I'm telling me they really thought, um, I think the police even higher up, the police thought he should be charged. But there was a consensus that why waste public money and he's going to prison for the rest of his life anyway, so let's not waste our time.
34:49 Speaker 00 I think the thing that surprises me about this story not being bigger in terms of one of those stories that all Australians know the name Clifford Bothellamue slash Clifford Palmer is that
35:03 Speaker 00 in the media, to have a good story, you need vision, you need photos, you need colour. And this had everything. We've got the photos of the victims. We've got photos of him.
35:13 Speaker 01 Exactly. There is footage of the day that they found the bodies. There's the body of Winnis laying out in the open in the rain with a cover over her. It's just, just to see that footage was just horrendous. You're there and you know how those police officers are feeling. You can see the look on their faces that they've just been inside that house and they've never seen like anything like it and they're never wanting to see anything like it again. Yeah, we've got all that. It's not like we're missing matter. We've got a full confession. There's no mystery about what happened in more order on that day. Um, so yes, that's another baffling reason for why this is not, not in the public consciousness.
35:53 Speaker 00 And you can't really, through your travels, explain why?
35:58 Speaker 01 No, I've got no understanding why I'm missing. The only thing I can think of is that it was a family affair. Somebody said that to me once. This was a family affair, a personal episode, and therefore, you know, it's not of particular interest. If he'd been hunting and killed ten people out in the forest, as other people have done, maybe his name would be more famous. But killing them in his own farmhouse was obviously not the same impact. A lot of people said he was a good bloke. I remember doing that. A lot of people who lived in the area at the time were involved in racing, and I used to cover racing. And that's when I got back. But, oh, he was a good bloke. He just had a mad moment.
36:37 Speaker 00 You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me, Gemma Bath. Up next, I talk with former detective Alan Arthur, who shares some more about the crime scene, his interactions with Clifford Bath-Ollamue, and the reasoning behind the sentence he received.
36:55 Speaker 00 Alan, where were you at in your life and your career in 1971?
37:01 Speaker 03 We were living in Adelaide, and it was a peaceful sort of life, except that I used to get called out to go to homicides and other violent crimes from time to time. Not the only one member of the homicide squad, but, yeah, it happened regularly, by the way.
37:17 Speaker 00 How long had you been a detective at that point?
37:19 Speaker 03 Seven years, and I was in my third year in the homicide squad.
37:23 Speaker 00 So you were fairly experienced when it came to being on the scene of really horrible murders and grisly crimes?
37:31 Speaker 03 Well, it's true. And I'd been to half a dozen or so murders in the three years preceding the Hope Rivers murders. So it wasn't a new event, but I must say, the size of the numbers of victims was far...
37:48 Speaker 03 More than I'd ever seen before.
37:50 Speaker 00 Do you remember when you first got the call asking you to attend the farm in Hope Forest?
37:56 Speaker 03 I certainly do.
37:58 Speaker 00 Take me back there.
37:59 Speaker 03 Detective Sergeant Giles was the desk sergeant. And he'd only just come on, on the early hours of the morning for the, for the morning shift. His job was to coordinate work and attending members, allocate them work to do. And he rang me, from memory it was still dark, and he said, we've got a job on. They've got ten people dead, a place called Hope Forest in the Adelaide Hills. We'll pick you up and convey you to headquarters and from there you will be off to Hope Forest.
38:34 Speaker 00 And when you arrived at the farm, what was that like? What did you first see? What, what was going on?
38:41 Speaker 03 On arrival, uh, uniformed police were there. And I think the doctor that came with the local uniformed police officer was there. That's from memory, but outside there was the body of a woman. Uh, and she was dead and had a gunshot wound to her head. I then walked inside and, uh, in, and it was just a short distance inside the back door to where the kitchen was located and sitting at the kitchen, having what I remember was a beer, was Clifford Cecil Bartholomew, the owner of the house, or the renter of the house.
39:22 Speaker 03 And the, uh, uh, relative of the woman lying dead outside. As I came into the kitchen, I just introduced myself and told him I'd be talking to him shortly. He continued with his, um, um, glass of beer. The uniformed police officer was standing not too far away and keeping a very close eye on him. And so I then inspected the crime scene and found bodies scattered throughout the house. There were nine bodies inside, including the passer's way. His wife was lying on her back in the main bedroom with a gunshot wound to the head. They all had gunshot wounds to the head.
40:02 Speaker 03 And including a two-year-old baby in a cot, which was related to the woman lying outside.
40:11 Speaker 00 That would have been Winas that was outside.
40:14 Speaker 03 That's right.
40:15 Speaker 00 What kind of state was Clifford in? Was he distressed? Was he? Did he say anything to you?
40:22 Speaker 03 Uh, when I spoke to him, he spoke pleasantly, so to speak. He didn't show any signs of distraught. Cool, calm and collected was the only way I can describe him, having just killed ten people, which surprised me to a point. But once I got to know him during my questioning of him, it was easy to understand that he just was able to do things and not get too flustered about it.
40:56 Speaker 00 Why do you say that? Why was he that kind of personality?
41:01 Speaker 03 I don't know what was behind his personality, but he was a slaughterman by occupation.
41:11 Speaker 03 And, I mean, that sort of fits in with what he did at the house, by the way.
41:17 Speaker 00 Yeah.
41:17 Speaker 03 But, but he, he seemed cool and collected. He was never flustered, not during the entire interview with him, where he made full admissions, clear admissions about what he did, the execution of his whole family and extended family members. He was just a very cool customer and didn't try to hide anything.
41:41 Speaker 00 You've described him as being the most hateful man you knew. Do you stand by that?
41:48 Speaker 03 I can never forgive him, never. No, it's unforgivable what he did when it came to children. I mean, a two-year-old baby in a cot was to go into its head and kills, I mean, goodness gracious me. Um, it's not normal, but it was for him.
42:10 Speaker 00 You were the one that actually arrested him at the scene, weren't you?
42:13 Speaker 03 I am.
42:15 Speaker 00 How did the crime scene, seeing what he had done to those children, to his wife, to his sister-in-law? How did it affect you, seeing all of that?
42:27 Speaker 03 Well, I'm looking at all the photographs now.
42:29 Speaker 00 Are you?
42:31 Speaker 03 And, uh, I mean, it's, it's just a despicable situation. Uh, you've got a wife lying on her back in the main bedroom, shot in the head. Got a four-year-old girl in a bed alongside her, shot in the head. They're all gunshot wounds to the head. You've got in the hallway, two teenage girls who woke up to the commotion and he gunned them down, all shot in the head. A boy, uh, also woke up, he's lying in the passage, gunshot wound to the head.
43:09 Speaker 03 You've got the two, the, uh, the young baby in the cot and a, a, another young boy in a bed alongside the cot, all shot in the head. It, uh, it, and the nineteen-year-old son, uh, he woke and, uh, and tried to intervene, but was bludgeoned with a mallet. And some of the other victims were belted with a mallet as well. But the, uh, the nineteen-year-old son, having been belted with a mallet, went back to his bed. And of course, he too was in shot in the head, as they all were.
43:47 Speaker 00 And Winnis, she was shot outside. Did he suggest that she was trying to run?
43:53 Speaker 03 Absolutely. She, it was clear that she had tried to get out of the house. He pursued her with the mallet and bashed her in the head till she was, uh, apparently unconscious or certainly stunned, very stunned. And then he went back, got his rifle and shot her in the head.
44:16 Speaker 00 It's just shocking to hear, isn't it? The details of what he did.
44:21 Speaker 03 Well, it is. Um, I have, um, I have one wish for his soul, that he rots in hell.
44:28 Speaker 00 Hmm. I can see why.
44:33 Speaker 03 I have no sympathy for this man whatsoever, never. I mean, it's now, what, fifty four years since this, since these murders occurred. I can tell you now, they're still quite fresh in my mind. And they will persist until I pass away, I suppose.
44:52 Speaker 00 The thing that I think about when I imagine Bartholomew going on this rampage is that it's not like it was happening within a few minutes. It happened over nearly the course of an hour. So that gives a lot of time and space to reconsider, to talk to his victims as he did it.
45:12 Speaker 03 Yes, that's, that's right. But the, but the, the incentive for him was his intent to kill his wife. And whether that was his only wish before he actually shot her, just to kill her. I, I, I don't wear that that's what he intended to do, but he got carried away. I think he had an intent to do more, more killings than just his wife. And the only reason I say that, because intentionally he went, he had to reload his single shot twenty two rifle each time. He had to have access to rounds of ammunition nearby.
45:55 Speaker 03 He had to unlock the, the breach, put the bullet in physically one hand, close the breach, pull the trigger and kill. Unlock the breach, discharge the expanded round physically by hand, put in a fresh round into the breach, close the breach and pull the trigger. He had to do that ten times.
46:15 Speaker 00 Hmm.
46:17 Speaker 03 There's just no, uh, there was, nothing happened automatically.
46:23 Speaker 00 When he was initially charged or went to trial, he was only tried for the murder of his wife, not the rest of the children. How did you feel about that?
46:34 Speaker 03 Well, that was my instigation. I charged him with it.
46:37 Speaker 00 Was it?
46:38 Speaker 03 It was. There's a couple of reasons for it. One reason is that there is ample evidence of intent to kill his wife, ample evidence. There was ample evidence to show that he went on to kill, to actively kill his family, but to have previous intent, there might have been some doubt that these are just sort of reactionary activities that took place following the intentional killing. So I only charged him with the one that we had the most evidence about because irrespective of whether you charged him with ten, he's only
47:18 Speaker 03 going to get, he's going to sit at the same time in jail. And so that was the one that the proof was in abundance, whereas the others, there might have been excuses for rage and mental problems and so forth. And he was admitting freely to having, wanting to murder his wife.
47:38 Speaker 00 And did you think it wasn't worth the risk of trying to go for the other nine charges?
47:45 Speaker 03 Well, the fact of life is the courts took into account those matters. You didn't necessarily have to charge him with ten murders. The circumstances of him committing the murder upon his wife included all the acts that he did to kill the others as well. So it wasn't necessary for him to be charged with ten counts of murder, although some people within the police thought I should have charged him with more, but I wanted to make sure I can, I got him convicted of murder where the evidence was most pronounced, that he,
48:25 Speaker 03 the intent was clear, whereas he might have used the defence of emotions and, you know, exaggerated behaviour and the lack of intent, whereas with the killing of his wife, it was just total intent.
48:42 Speaker 00 As much as I know of the justice system nowadays, if he was to be charged now with all ten murders, it would be a different story to back then. He would get more time now.
48:55 Speaker 03 I don't know whether he would.
48:58 Speaker 00 Really?
48:58 Speaker 03 I really, I don't know. I don't, I'm not quite sure that so. With the parole system, the way it is these days, what I read in the paper, there are people walk away after a very short time having committed some pretty atrocious crimes. I mean, he was sentenced to death.
49:13 Speaker 00 Yeah.
49:15 Speaker 03 And that in itself was a big deal in those days, although governments were commuting death sentence to life imprisonment. But when you got, when the sentence came out, I can tell you now, the, the atmosphere in the court was pretty high, you know. When the judge reads out a death sentence, it was really something.
49:36 Speaker 00 When the government came in and decided to overturn and abolish the death penalty in Australia, did you ever think that that could mean that he would be released? Was that a fear of yours?
49:47 Speaker 03 Well, the answer is that is yes, because it hasn't been a practice for decades where someone's been kept in jail for fifty years, for forty years.
49:56 Speaker 00 Hmm.
49:57 Speaker 03 And with the parole board system as it was back in the seventies, as I knew it, I mean,
50:04 Speaker 03 people were being let out after, after shorter periods than perhaps I thought they should have had. And as far as Bartholomew is concerned, I would have, what, sent him to stay there for twenty five years. In fact, if they'd executed the death penalty, I wouldn't have, I would have gone and had a beer in the pub by myself. You know, I, it's just, it's just my personal attitude. It was at the time, it still is. Uh, people don't agree with death penalties anymore, but in my mind, after a number of homicides that I've been to and intent shown by the killers, I just think there's room to put some of these killers, uh, to waste.
50:45 Speaker 00 So he ended up getting out after about eight years. Do you remember finding out about that? How did you feel?
50:52 Speaker 03 I can't really tell you in words because it would be rude.
50:55 Speaker 00 Yeah.
50:57 Speaker 03 Yeah, no, it's um, I got a call from him when he was, he spent eight years in jail. Some years during that time, I got a call from the Atla Labour Prison that he wanted a pair of his shoes footwear returned to him.
51:17 Speaker 03 So by appointment, I went to the Atla with his shoes and I was shown to a room and there's a table and two chairs, he sat on one side, I sat on the other and a prison officer stood at the background, keeping an eye on things. And I said, I believe this is what you're after. There was no nice attitude involved, I just treated him coolly. I might have said, how are you going? Anyway, I said, I believe this is what you're after. He said, yes. I said, okay, here. I'd like you to sign for these. He signed for them. And then he said, I suppose you want to know why I wanted to kill my wife? And I said, I know all I need to know about you, Mr Bartholomew, and none of us good.
52:02 Speaker 03 Thank you very much. Goodbye. And I left him sitting. He was sort of cuddling into the chair, looking for a nice friendly chat.
52:10 Speaker 00 Mmm.
52:11 Speaker 03 I I cut him short.
52:12 Speaker 00 Well, it sounds like he wanted to kind of confess his, but you just didn't give him the chance. You didn't wanna, you didn't wanna hear it.
52:18 Speaker 03 Well, I I knew all I needed to know, as I told him. I knew all I needed to know, and so did the court.
52:26 Speaker 00 Once he was released, eventually he, you know, moved states, went by a different name, kind of just blended into Australian society. And we didn't really hear about him for a very long time until a journalist named Craig came knocking. Had you heard about him before Craig uncovered his new life?
52:46 Speaker 03 Well, I I knew he had changed his name and that he'd moved to Victoria.
52:52 Speaker 03 I knew that he had partnered with a woman who had several children. And a number of those children were of or about the age of his own children that he'd killed.
53:09 Speaker 00 And I guess I do know how that made you feel, but please, put it into words. Knowing that he had a second chance at life with seven kids as well, the same amount that he murdered.
53:22 Speaker 03 Look, hate's a terrible word, it's a terrible experience. I won't admit to hating him, but what I, what I do wish is that the courts took a stronger approach to his future, whether they left him in jail for thirty years or if they'd carried out the death penalty, either way, it would have been better than what the outcome was, as far as I'm concerned. Justice wasn't done properly.
53:53 Speaker 00 Craig mentioned that those crime scene photos that you said you've got in front of you, you can't bear to get rid of them. Why is that?
54:02 Speaker 03 No, I can't, I, I definitely, I've got them on my lap at the moment, I've had a look at them this morning. Uh, no, I'd, well, I've got to admit, I've got most of the investigations that I've been involved in, there's about seventy-one homicides. Uh, uh, I have to retain a library of photographs. At my age, at eighty-five coming up, I've got to think what I'm gonna do with them, I can't leave them lying around.
54:28 Speaker 00 With some poor soul to find.
54:31 Speaker 03 I think the, the police historical society might be the place for them to go and then they can decide whether they wanna shred them, burn them or hang on to them. But they are of historical value if you've got a crime scene mine like mine, you know.
54:49 Speaker 00 Alan, why don't you think more Australians know about these murders, about Bartholomew? He seems to have kind of slipped through the cracks in terms of, you know, we all know who Ivan Malati is, we all know all these murderers through time, but I don't think many people know Clifford Bartholomew's name or Clifford Palmer.
55:06 Speaker 03 No, it's, um, it, I mean, it's come up over the years. What is it, it's fifty-four years since the murder, it's come up, I've, I've been contacted a few times over the years.
55:18 Speaker 00 Hmm.
55:19 Speaker 03 But, I mean, you've got to compare this with the other murders that have occurred in South Australia, which were horrendous as well, and in the state. And they compete with stories from overseas. Um, but, um. I think people should be reminded from time to time about what can happen in our state, in our cities, country towns, and to be mindful of people with whom you communicate with.
55:56 Speaker 00 Craig, we've heard from former detective Alan Arthur, but to close, I'd like to ask you, do you think that someone could reinvent themselves to this extent today? Say, they committed a crime, they're given a new identity, could they get away with it in 2025?
56:14 Speaker 01 Not if they committed a crime like this. Absolutely not. That's the difference. Yes, if you committed even a small murder that's not that publicised, maybe you could reinvent yourself, become a different person, and there's no real trace of what you'd done. But the murder of this magnitude, no way. The publicity would be enormous to that.
56:36 Speaker 01 Wherever you went, you'd be found. You'd have to leave the country, I think.
56:40 Speaker 00 I would argue that even if you committed murder and it wasn't overly publicised, we now have access to the databases, the criminal databases, the court databases, so we can Google people's names, we can find things out on social media that we couldn't back then.
56:55 Speaker 01 Quite true. You had to go to a public library and search through dusty documents if you're lucky to find anything back then. You've got little hope. So, yes, we have incredible access these days. I don't think it'd be possible.
57:14 Speaker 00 Thanks to Craig and Alan for helping us to tell this story. If you couldn't turn off this episode and liked hearing from two voices, let us know. Send us an email at [email protected] or use the link in our show notes to send us a voice note. True Crime Conversations is a Mamamia podcast, hosted and produced by me, Gemma Bath, and Tali Blackman, with audio design by Jacob Brown. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back next week with another True Crime Conversation.
57:50 Speaker 00 True Crime Conversations acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waters that this podcast was recorded on.
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