THE LOTTERY WIN
THAT CHANGED AUSTRALIA
One image of an overjoyed Sydney man clutching his winning lottery ticket prompted a series of events that would ultimately result in the death of a child, shattering the lives of many.
On June 1 1960, Bazil Thorne was pictured on the front pages of many Sydney newspapers, holding the Opera House Lottery ticket which had won him £100,000 – about $3 million in today’s value.
Just over a month later, Bazil’s son Graeme, 8, was kidnapped in Australia’s first – and to date only – child kidnap for ransom case. The kidnapper was demanding £25,000 for Graeme’s return.
However, what abductor Stephen Bradley thought would be a simple snatch and return of the boy became a murder case when Graeme died during the ordeal.
“This case in so many important respects changed Australia, as the country lost its innocence,” lawyer Mark Tedeschi, the author of the book Kidnapped: The Crime That Shocked the Nation, says. Tedeschi is also the former NSW senior Crown prosecutor.
“We realised a child walking to school was not safe, and it made parents far more aware of stranger danger. It also changed the way we looked at celebrating a lottery win. For the Thorne family, it had a tragic outcome.”
Early on July 7, 1960, Graeme Thorne set out for the corner store in Bondi, NSW to wait for a classmate’s mother, Mrs Smith, to give him a lift to school.
Stephen Bradley had, however, been trailing the Thorne family for five weeks, ever since seeing Bazil’s picture on the front of a newspaper. He was already waiting outside the store and convinced Graeme that Mrs Smith was ill and he was instead taking Graeme to school. The boy climbed inside the car, and they drove off.
According to Tedeschi, Bradley later drugged Graeme, bound and gagged him before placing him in the boot of the car. Tedeschi believes it’s there the boy died of suffocation.
On the drive across the city to his home, Bradley stopped at a phone
THE MURDER OF PRIZE WINNER BAZIL THORNE’S YOUNG SON SHOCKED THE NATION
‘THIS CASE CHANGED AUSTRALIA … OUR COUNTRY LOST ITS INNOCENCE’
box and made the ransom call, demanding a payment of £25,000 from Graeme’s distressed mother, Freda. He ended the call with the chilling threat, “If I don’t get the money, I’ll feed the boy to the sharks.”
Once Bradley discovered the boy was dead he continued to make ransom demands, but soon dumped Graeme’s body on a rock ledge in bushland
near his home.
As for the kidnapper’s motive, Tedeschi says: “Bradley thought it was just grossly unfair that he and (his wife) Magda hadn’t acquired the wealth that he thought they deserved. “Bradley was severely deluded. He was utterly convinced he could conduct this kidnapping and that within 24 hours it would all be over.” What he had done, however, was leave a trail of incriminating clues, including eyewitnesses who spotted him waiting outside the shop the morning Graeme disappeared.
Most incriminating was the forensic evidence on items such as a rug wrapped around Graeme’s body that was covered in fur belonging to Bradley’s dog, as well as soil and garden samples that were linked to the Bradley’s home.
By the time Bradley was identified as a key suspect, he had fled Australia and was on the way to England with Magda and their children. He was arrested in Sri Lanka and deported back to Australia where he confessed to the kidnapping. Only weeks later, however, he changed his plea, insisting he had nothing to do with it.
Bradley went on trial on March 20, 1961 for Graeme’s murder, and after nine days, was found guilty and sentenced to life in prison.
“The whole of Australia rejoiced at his conviction because the case against Bradley was just so overwhelming,” Tedeschi says. “There was literally dancing in the street outside the courtroom.”
The impact of the case was felt for years. In December of 1961, the NSW parliament passed an amendment to the Crimes Acts which introduced the new crime of kidnapping.
There was also a significant change to the lottery rules.
“Following the crime, laws were changed so that a Lotto winner’s name is withheld from the public,” Tedeschi explains, adding that winners had previously been publicised for the sake of transparency.
“In the Thorne’s case, it backfired tragically.”
Bradley’s life sentence in prison turned out to be much shorter than anyone expected. In 1968, only eight years after his arrest, he dropped dead of a heart attack, aged 42.