In March 1966, a Dutchman living in Adelaide named Jan Van Schie thought that a psychic might locate the Beaumont children where conventional methods had failed. The psychic he had in mind was another Dutchman, Gerard Croiset, then 57. According to reports, Croiset had successfully located missing children in Europe. Van Schie wrote to Croiset to explain about the Beaumonts.
In July 1966 Croiset replied to Van Schie. He said that the children were within about half a mile (800m) of where they had last been seen. He wanted to have a film of the area around Glenelg beach.
A Brighton car dealer named Barry Blackwell, who was a family friend of Mrs Beaumont, offered to pay to hire a helicopter. Croiset's name began to appear in the press and in the beginning of August the television station ADS7 became interested in Croiset. Television personality Brian Taylor spoke to him. Croiset said that he wanted as many photographs as possible, but articles of the children's clothing would not be any help to him. He also said that the children were "under the earth in a cave." 74
The film was made for Croiset, and this, along with a documentary showing the possible movements of the Beaumont children, was sent to him. Croiset was excited and pointed out features that he had "seen" when first told about the case. He also "saw" the children's movements. According to Croiset, the children walked away from the beach, turned right, then walked towards it. There was a pole with a warning sign, and near it a hole surrounded by dead grass. The children passed this to find a similar hole about 180 metres away. They were crawling through this when it caved in, and Croiset's visions ceased.
Mr Blackwell went to the area described by Croiset and discovered two stormwater drains, one of which was blocked six metres from the entrance by sand and rocks. The Glenelg fire brigade used a hose to try to unblock the drain. Mr N. C. Dunstall from the council was sceptical. He said that the drain had become blocked a week before, and had been clear and had been searched by police a day after the children had disappeared.
Meanwhile a local man, Dr Douglas Buxton Hendrickson, had been conducting his own search for the children. Hendrickson was a staff member at the Minda Home for retarded children, and had formed the belief that the children might have been buried in dunes near the oval belonging to the Home. Assisted by his 14 year old son and another member of staff, he'd been digging in the dunes for a month.
The three found nothing except a dead crow, part of the sleeve of a football guernsey, and a straw hat. However the last item excited them and they contacted Croiset to tell him the news. Croiset replied on 20 September that the children were within half a metre of where the hat had been found.
By 24 September Croiset had changed his mind. The children were buried within 16 metres of where Hendrickson had uncovered the hat. A container with red, yellow and blue stripes, or a green bag, would be found 120 centimetres from the bodies. Beside this would be a "kinderwagen". The next day the remains of a pram were found. The searchers were excited, but then found out that an inmate of the Home had left it there, trying to be helpful. Nothing more was found.
Hendrickson refused to give up. Despite the area being extensively searched he was sure that people had not dug far enough. He continued to try to find the remains of the children. His digging was eventually restricted to hours of darkness, so after he had finished work each day he would head for the dunes armed with his spade. He never found anything, and the dunes have since been leveled and replaced with a football field.
With the difficulties in Croiset's efforts from afar, it became increasingly clear to Blackwell and others that Croiset would have to be brought to Adelaide. Blackwell offered to pay half the cost, and another businessman, Con G. Polites, agreed to pay the other half. On the evening of Tuesday, 8 November 1966, Gerard Cloiset flew into Adelaide.
The reception was huge, and compared to any that the Beatles had received in Australia. Croiset seemed embarrassed by the reception, and complained that he did not want sensation but had come to try to locate the Beaumont children. He easily handled the press conference, however, and despite apparently not speaking English, answered questions while they were being interpreted.
The Beaumonts themselves did not meet Croiset at the airport, Jim Beaumont explaining that they had no wish to make a carnival out of their tragedy. The Beaumonts did meet Croiset during his visit, however, and presented him with a gift of a writing case covered with kangaroo skin. Mr Beaumont said later: "We have a police force to cover all these things. I am glad, and I will say it again, that I don't believe in clairvoyancy." 1
The day after his arrival, Croiset made a long tour of Glenelg beach, watched by a large crowd. He dictated observations into a tape recorder. The police maintained a polite but sceptical interest. As a matter of course they take interest in such matters in case the "psychic" turns out to be the person responsible.
Croiset received a phone call from a woman who told him that the floor of a food warehouse in Wilton Street, Paringa Park, had recently been concreted. Croiset changed his mind for a third time and decided that the children were buried under the concrete, some 3 metres thick. He suggested that the police should dig up the warehouse up but both they and the warehouse owner were reluctant. Croiset then left for America.
The warehouse was on the site of an old brick factory, referred to locally as the Paringa Brickworks. Children had once played in the abandoned kiln. The factory had been leveled and the concrete floor poured within a week of the children’s disappearance. However, police had already investigated. The builders assured them that any bodies would have been found during construction. According to the then deputy police commissioner, Geoffrey Leane, in his memoirs 2 , he advised Frank Walsh, then the South Australian Premier, of this:
Eventually the government was asked to put up more money, and I advised the premier not to agree.
”Premier Walsh said: ‘I'll take your advice Geoff and let's hope you're not wrong’.
”I replied: ‘They are digging now in virgin soil, and in my opinion it is now not possible to locate the children under that floor’.”
Also, according to the journalist Jack Ayling 3, Croiset did not even believe that the children were under the concrete slab of the warehouse. He was secretly convinced that they were buried under a block of flats on the outskirts of Glenelg. They had fallen into a trench and a worker had unwittingly covered the bodies. The block of flats was then constructed with the children buried beneath it. Rather than have people worrying about whether the Beaumont children were buried beneath them, Croiset instead nominated the warehouse as the place to dig, a location which was much more easily excavatable. The full rationality of this reasoning was not explained.
The South Australian government said that they would not pay for an excavation. People were still not satisfied and the money to dig up the floor, some $7000, was raised by a committee formed for this purpose.
On 1 March 1967 digging began. On 3 March the walls of the warehouse were removed and workmen dug a one square metre shaft down 2.2m. Digging finished on 11 March with the shaft around 3.6m deep, with no remains having been found. That should have been the end of the matter, but only one of the parts of the warehouse that Croiset had indicated had been excavated.
Croiset commented in 1977 that he still thought he was right. A year later, on the anniversary of the children’s disappearance, Con Polites said that he still wanted to excavate the warehouse. Croiset died in 1980, still insisting that he knew where the children were buried. Con Polites believed him.
On 14 December 1995, the man who had been manager of the warehouse in 1967, Mr John Schouten, said that the excavation had been done in the wrong place. He said that the area dug up was virgin ground that was not above the old brick kiln but in front of it.
The owner of the warehouse, Mr Grant Walter, said that he would be willing to cooperate with a new excavation as long as business was not disrupted too much. There was speculation that ground-penetrating radar like that used in the British “House of Horrors” case the previous year could be used to try to locate any bodies. The radar had not yet been used in Australia but it was believed that the Australian army might possess it. Con Polites said that if it needed to be imported he was willing to pay the bill.
Commenting on the case, Sergeant Swan of the South Australian police said that police did not have any reason to conduct a new search of the warehouse.
On 22 March 1996, Mr Polites met and spoke with a 38 year old man who as a child had played at the site of the old brickworks. The man pointed out a series of tunnels fanning out from the main area excavated in 1967.
Mr Polites now said that he'd abandoned any thought of using ground-penetrating radar. Experts at both the CSIRO 4 and Scotland Yard had told him that any human remains would have deteriorated too greatly to be detected by radar.
On 25 April 1996, Mr Polites explained: “I have got to dig 5." He announced that the dig was due to begin on 29 April. The next day it was announced that the dig had been delayed for two days and would not begin until 1 May. In the meantime, Superintendent Riach of the South Australian major crime taskforce said that: “If something turns up, then we will get involved." 6
On 30 April, fifteen holes were dug into the floor of the warehouse. Two appeared to have been filled with gravel and sand and samples of these were taken for examination by Geraldine Hodgson, a forensic geologist. It was expected that it would take a week for the results to be known.
Polites explained: “If we find the children, then we'll solve the mystery. If we don't find them then I'll be very happy because at least we tried and the children could be alive and living somewhere else." 7
Drilling began again the next morning, 1 May. Frank Church, an investigator, had found two people who had played in the brickworks as children. They explained that they used to play in a cellar, which the team was now drilling to try to locate. The drilling found nothing except a second layer of concrete.
On 10 May Polites announced that “...no organic evidence of human remains was found in recent drill samples.” 8 He said that the dig would continue, in approximately two weeks.
There were no human remains, but drilling samples did show that there were two pits. Excavation of the first pit began over the next weeks. On the weekend of 23-24 June, two cadaver dogs owned by Janet Havey-Crease became agitated and started digging furiously at one side of the pit, against the wall. The next weekend they were even more excited at the same place. Nothing was found, however.
By the next week the excavation was half completed and no human remains had been discovered. There was then a halt for several weeks.
Digging resumed in early September. The closest the excavation came to finding anything was on 13 September when a 13cm bone was uncovered. Forensic tests established that it wasn't human.
The excavation of the warehouse ended with no human remains discovered. There is no possibility that the Beaumont children were ever buried there.
So how can Croiset's suggestion be explained? There is one possible answer. The fact is that there has never been the slightest evidence that Croiset knew where the children were buried, if indeed they were. His interpreter said that Croiset secretly thought the children were buried under a new block of flats on the outskirts of Glenelg, but that Croiset did not say anything because he didn't want anybody to lose their home. He nominated the warehouse instead as a place that could be easily excavated. This plainly does not make sense.
One rational explanation is that Croiset didn't have any idea where the children were, but didn't wish to reveal himself as a fraud. He therefore nominated a location which could be excavated without ruining anyone's home, but which would still take time to investigate. This would give him time to leave the country before he was exposed. He could hardly have imagined that 30 years would pass before a complete excavation took place. Nor did he appear to know that police had already checked all the building sites in the Glenelg area. There was no more chance that the children had been buried under a block of flats on the outskirts of Glenelg than there was that they had been buried under the warehouse.
Other False Leads: