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In 1966, three children, Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont, went to the beach to celebrate Australia Day. Many people there saw the siblings having a great time, but they never returned home. They vanished without a trace. While a widespread investigation was launched, it turned up very little. To this day, we’re still unsure of what happened, but the case is still felt very deeply, effecting the way investigators search for missing children and the amount of freedom parents allow their children. Many see the disappearance as the end of an era when Australians felt that their kids were generally safe and the start of the modern era of “stranger danger,” and the suspicion that anyone could secretly pose a threat.

It was on January 26, 1966, that Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont, aged 9, 7, and 4 respectively, set out from their house, headed for the beach to participate in the Australia Day festivities. Their parents Jim and Nancy trusted 9-year-old Jane to look after her siblings. But something happened that day that prevented Jane from keeping herself and her younger siblings safe.  What happened to the Beaumont Children?  How do parents cope after losing all of their children in one tragic event?

Join us at the quiet end for And Then There Were None: The Disappearance of the Beaumont Children

David Brown, a man who masterminded the 1985 murder of his wife, died of natural causes in a prison hospital in 2014. He was 61. Brown was in a protective housing unit because of his notoriety for the killing of his fifth wife, Linda Brown. He was accused of persuading two teenagers —one his daughter, the other his sister-in-law and lover— to kill his wife. He went on to collect $835,000 from the victim’s insurance, including several policies started just months before her death. Brown paid $350,000 in cash for a new house within five months of the killing. Shortly after, he took a sixth wife.

Intermission song: Cinnamon Girl by Neil Young

Darren Burgess had married the wrong woman. Clinging to a dying relationship for the sake of his children, he turned to alcohol. Through 1998 and 1999, he drank heavily “just to numb the pain.” He started taking risks. In March of 2000, after a work meeting, he was arrested for drunk driving. He feared he would lose his job and his home, so he went to his boss, Kevin Matthews, for help.

Today’s Australian beer is Little Creatures Pale Ale

A young mother is shot to death while she clutches her 7-month old baby. Her husband lies executed in the next room. This isn’t the story of a Hollywood drama, but the tragic end to an average Tennessee working class family. Billie Jean Hayworth and her husband Billy Payne were going about their normal weekday morning routine when they were senselessly and violently murdered. The events that led to that morning are inexplicable, fueled by the petty ignorance of a woman who used social media to manipulate and hurt people.

It has been 8 and a half years since anyone has seen Haleigh Cummings alive. When she was last seen on February 9, 2009, she was 5-years old. She would now be 13.

As you may or may not know, we have a second podcast. It’s called Watching ID. This is a brief introduction and 3 minute sample of our most recent episode: Grave Mysteries’ Murder in the Chat Room. If you like what you hear, you can hear the full episode on iTunes or on your favorite podcast app. Thank you for giving it a try!

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Killers don’t wear name tags telling us who they are. They look like everybody else. They are fathers, brothers, neighbors, carpenters, doctors, men, or women. On an upper class suburban street in Kansas City, at 7517 Canterbury Court, Dr. Debora Green and her husband, Dr. Michael Farrar, lived with their 3 children. It was a beautiful home where the children were provided with every advantage. Michael made a generous salary as a Cardiologist; Debora was a full-time mother. This was the image of the perfect family.

Alma Sipple, a single mother in Tennessee, could not afford medical care for her ten-month-old daughter Irma when a knock on the door changed her life: there stood a woman with close-cropped grey hair, round wireless glasses and a broad, stern face.The older woman exuded authority as she explained she was the director of a local orphanage. She had come to help. Alma was relieved and excitedly rushed to show the lady her sickly child.

How well do we really know the people in our daily lives? Our co-workers, our boss, the clerk at the grocery store, our neighbors, our friends, or even our spouse? Many people thought they knew Colonel David Russell Williams. He was a decorated air force pilot and commander at the Canadian Forces Base (CFB) at Trenton, Ontario, and a respected member of his community when he was arrested in 2010, and charged with the murders of two women, and numerous other sexually related crimes. The realization that he was a sexual predator and a murderer shocked the military and the country and quickly became an international story.

Our intermission song is (quite appropriately) Creep by Radiohead

Of all the pain and struggles that are left in the aftermath of a murder, it may be the senselessness that haunts us the most. On February 9th, 2010, 17-year-old Mackenzie Cowell said she’d only be gone for 15 minutes when she left the Academy of Hair Design in Wenatchee, Washington. Four days later, police discovered Mackenzie dead and mutilated along the banks of the Columbia River. She still wore her beauty school uniform.