QLD: Girls murder scene still eerie after 28 years

AAP General News (Australia)
12-04-1998
QLD: Girls murder scene still eerie after 28 years

By Derek Tipper

TOWNSVILLE, Dec 4 AAP - "It still gives me an eerie feeling being there," Queensland police
detective sergeant David Hickey said today as he pointed out the spot where two small girls
were found raped and murdered almost three decades ago.

"The body of the baby of the two, young Susan, was found here on her back, naked except for
underpants, in what was then a natural culvert in the dry creek bed," Det Hickey said of the
scene at Antill Plains, 25km west of Townsville where five year old Susan Deborah Mackay was
found strangled, stabbed, suffocated and sexually assaulted on August 28, 1970.

"Judith was found similarly dressed face down in the sand 70 yards from her sister as if
she had tried to run from the scene and was hunted down by the killer," he said.

"The dresses of the two girls were found close by, neatly folded with their school ports
and shoes with their socks stuffed inside."

The pair had disappeared two days before, on August 26, after setting off hand-in-hand for
a school bus stop just 100 metres from their home in Albert Street, Aitkenvale.

The girls were taken west along a weathered stretch of the old Flinders Highway. Their
bodies were dumped in a dry, isolated creek bed. Twenty-eight years later recent rain has
transformed the creek bed into a lusher place, and it is no longer so isolated.

Two thousand Townsville citizens, including defence force personnel, local residents, meat
workers and railway workers who were given the day off, joined the search for the girls after
the alarm was raised.

Det Sgt Hickey told journalists today railway fettlers had reported seeing a car in a
number of locations along the creek bed at the time of the murders.

The girls father Bill, a Townsville meatworker at the time, had just finished an
impassioned plea for information about his daughters when news came of the discovery of their
bodies.

Mr Mackay collapsed at the scene and the Townsville Bulletin reported: "The prevailing mood
of the city is sorrow for the dead children and their parents".

Speaking from his Toowoomba home today, Mr Mackay said only that it would not be hard to
imagine how he felt.

Chief investigating officer Det Insp Peter Barron today described the crime as one of the
worst ever committed in this country.

Today, 86-year-old Arthur Stanley Brown of Rosslea in Townsville, a former carpenter with
the Queensland Department of Public Works, faced the Townsville Magistrates court charged with
the murder of two girls.

Police said outside the court the arrest had come after they had acted on new evidence
uncovered following an audit of the case two years ago.

"Investigations have been ongoing since the children were found in August 1970," he said.

"An audit of the case two years ago led to new evidence and that led to the arrest of the
suspect."

AAP cas/plr/jc/rap

KEYWORD: MACKAY SCENE

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