A city’s innocence is lost

The kidnapping and murder of Graeme Thorne in 1960 is one of many crimes that have shaped and changed our great nation.  We have always had murders and crimes, being a country settled by convicts. However the day that Graeme Thorne was kidnapped in Sydney and a ransom demand made, was a time that Australia hoped would never happen.

Graeme Thorne was an average eight-year-old boy. His school routine included being picked up from the corner of O’Brien and Wellington Streets around 8.30am each weekday morning by a family friend and driven to nearby Scotts College.

So how did Graeme Thorne become Australia’s first kidnapping for ransom? The case begins several weeks earlier:

At the time, Sydney was building her centrepiece. A one of a kind opera house. The building was amazing and would continue to be an icon of our great city and country. To fund the building works, Sydney held a lottery. People would buy tickets, a jackpot would accumulate and a winner announced. On June 1, 1960, Bazil Thorne won the £100,00 lottery. The win of an amount equivalent to $5million these days was obviously front page news and great publicity for the Opera House’s construction.

The Thorne’s lottery win in Sydney was before the term “security conscious” was in our vocabulary. We had our own share of thugs and crimes, but no-one would consider trying to extort money from a normal family after winning a lottery. Nowadays the identities of lottery winners are kept secret to protect their newfound wealth and their families. In 1960, this was unheard of. The Thornes were photographed and appeared in newspapers across the city.

Bradley’s plan

A man called Stephen Bradley read the stories of the Thorne’s windfall and he too decided he should have a piece of their proverbial pie.

Bradley began putting his plan into action. His first step was to find out where the Thorne family lived. He called the telephone exchange and asked for the telephone number and address of the Thorne family. He was given the details without question.

Bradley went to the Thorne house on June 14, 1960. He was calm and had his conversation rehearsed. When Mrs Thorne answered the front door, Bradley asked the young mother using a thick accent if a Mr Bognor was at home. Mrs Thorne shook her head acknowledging that  no such person lived at that address.

Bradley continued his act and appeared perplexed. He took out a piece of paper and confirmed both the address and phone number of the Thorne’s household. Mrs Thorne verified the details, concerned that the man had the family’s unlisted number. She also said that they had lived at the address for only a short-time but knew that the previous owners were the Baileys. Perhaps he should speak to the Lord family upstairs in the apartment building when he told her he was a private investigator checking on the Bognors. Bradley then thanked Mrs Thorne for her troubles and headed upstairs. He spoke to Mrs Lord briefly about the Bailey family, and said nothing about the imaginary Bognors. Bradley was just confirming that he had the right house. 

At the time it appeared to just be a misunderstanding, however Bradley had taken his first step towards extortion and murder.

The stranger’s visit was forgotten until three weeks later when Graeme disappeared.

The Kidnapping

On July 7, 1960 eight-year-old Graeme Frederick Hilton Thorne, dressed in his school uniform and headed to the intersection of Wellington and O’Brien Streets in Bondi to await his lift to school. On the way to the meeting place, Graeme was abducted.

Stephen Bradley had been watching the routines of the Thorne family for weeks and today was the day that his plan was to come to fruition.  Around 8.15am the man parked his 1955 bright aqua-blue Ford Customline at the corner of Wellington and Francis Streets, where anyone walking past would have to go around the car.

Bradley counted on Graeme walking by his car around 8.25am, so the man stood at the back of his car, he had the boot open. He waited for the unsuspecting boy, to walk past with his school bag.  As the young boy diverted his trip around the car on his way to O’Brien Street, Bradley grabbed him and pushed him into the boot of the car, slamming it shut. The kidnapper drove away with Graeme bashing on the inside of the car.

At 8.30am, the friend, who would normally pick up Graeme, arrived at the designated pick-up spot and Graeme was nowhere to be seen. It was possible that he was sick and was not coming to school so the friend drove the short distance to the Thorne house to see if Graeme was sick or just running a little late. Mrs Thorne told the neighbour that Graeme had left for school on time.

A check at the school also failed to locate Graeme and a call was made to the Bondi Police.  The officers quickly arrived at the house, it was unthinkable that the disappearance of Graeme was a kidnapping, let alone a demand for ransom; however by 9.20am Bradley brazenly called the Thorne home and asked to speak to Bazil Thorne. A police officer took the call, claiming to be Bazil who was away on business at the time.

In his thick accent Bradley demanded £25,000 by five o’clock. He then threatened to feed Graeme to the sharks should the ransom not be paid before hanging up the phone. Instantly police knew that the plot had to do with the Thorne’s lottery windfall. 

Later in the day Bradley called again. This time he spoke to another police officer again claiming to be Mr Thorne. Bradley asked if he had the money ready for delivery and gave the officer instructions to put the money into two paper bags. Bradley again disconnected the call abruptly.

By now Mrs Thorne remembered the strange man with a thick accent who was at her door several weeks earlier. She told police of his visit and the man became the prime suspect.

The police were extremely concerned. The kidnapper had been planning the abduction for several weeks and so far had the upper hand. Clues were needed to help police find the boy before it was too late.

On July 8, the day after the abduction, Graeme’s school bag was found. It had been emptied of all of the boy’s belongings and dumped beside a statue along Wakehurst Parkway, Frenchs’ Forest. Police hoped they would find fingerprints or other evidence from the kidnapper on the bag. So far it was their only hope. Within a few days the rest of Graeme’s school bag’s contents were found scattered along the same road.

Police continued their search, hoping to find Graeme alive. But the outcome was sadly not as the family, the police or indeed the country had hoped.

Graeme is Found

The kidnapping turned to tragedy on August 16, 1960. Five weeks after Graeme was abducted his body was found on a vacant block of land at Grandview Grove, Seaforth.  He had been hidden under the overgrown vegetation that covered the land. Eight-year-old Graeme had been gagged and bound, the scarf was still around his neck and twine tightly cut into his ankles. His body was also wrapped in  a blanket and he was still fully clothed in his school uniform. 

With the discovery of Graeme’s body there was an over abundance of evidence. Bradley had been extremely careless with disposing of the body.  There were a number of pieces of trace evidence that would eventually link Bradley directly with the abduction.

· A number of hairs from a Pekinese dog were found on the rug, Graeme’s school jacket and trousers.

· Soil found on Graeme’s body and the rug contained minute trace elements of pink limestock mortar.

· Also pieces of foliage from two distinct trees, Smooth Cypress and a Squarrosa False Cypress were close to where Graeme’s body had been stored.

Armed with details of the man with a heavy accent and the iridescent blue Ford seen near the abduction site, police began to canvass the area starting at Seaforth and moving out from there. The trees were the obvious evidence for police to start with and by October 3, 1960, they had found the house they were looking for.

The Bradley house in Clontarf prominently featured the two trees on either side of the garage. Closer inspection of the house proved that it also had dark brick with prink mortar. Bondi police knew that they had found the right house. Graeme Thorne had been kept at the premises sometime between his abduction and the discovery of his body.

Police also found a Pekinese dog, owned by the Bradley family that had been surrendered only a few weeks earlier. The police investigators soon found the blue iridescent car and began a detailed search of the vehicle. Inside the boot of the car police discovered a dog brush, full of hair. The hair matched that found on the blanket and Graeme’s body.

By the time police found the Bradley’s home it had been deserted. Stephen Bradley had sold the house and was moving on the day he had abducted Graeme. By now he had already left the country.  

It gave police more time to put together the pieces of the puzzle.  Photos of Bradley were shown to Mrs Thorne and Mrs Lord, her neighbour, as well as witnesses who had seen the car before Graeme was snatched. All recognised Bradley as they man they had seen.

A roll of film was also discarded showing the tartan picnic rug that was wrapped around Graeme’s body. In the photo Bradley’s youngest child was sitting on it.

Now it was time for Police to discover what type of man had committed the crime.

The Abductor and Killer

Bradley was born Istavan Baranyay in 1926 in Budapest, Hungary and moved to Australia ten years before the abduction of Graeme. He had had two wives in Australia, one dying in a car accident leaving Bradley to look after their daughter.  He married another woman who also had two children.

On the day of the abduction. Bradley had shipped his wife and the three children to  Sydney in a taxi to organise a trip. The family was moving to England and Bradley supposedly remained behind to organise the removalists. Once the family had gone, Bradley abducted Graeme on his way to school and bundled him in the boot of the car. Bradley then drove the car back to his home and locked the car in the garage, while the moving company emptied the house upstairs.

According to Bradley when he returned to his car in the garage, he found Graeme dead in the car’s boot, evidence however proved that Graeme was clubbed with a blunt instrument, that fractured his skull and caused significant bruising. He died from his injuries and was dumped at least three hours and no more than a day after his abduction.

Bradley had panicked after realising that the police had answered the phone at the Thorne household and murdered the boy. Bradley then dumped the body of Graeme on the vacant lot before meeting the rest of his family in Sydney. Their belongings were all placed in storage.

The Bradley family left for England via Colombo on September 26, 1960. A little over a week before the police came knocking on the door of their Clontarf home. When the Bondi police found that their trip would include a stay over in Colombo, they organised for Bradley to be arrested and deported. When the Bradley family arrived in Colombo on October 10, 1960 police were waiting for them.

Bradley was arrested and flown back to Sydney. On the flight he confessed to the abduction, but claimed that Graeme had died accidentally. Once back in Sydney, Bradley wrote and signed a confession that sealed his fate at trial in March 1961.

Bradley was found guilty of Graeme Thorne’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. 

On October 6, 1968, Bradley suffered a heart attack and died in Goulburn Prison.