Crime flashback The Society Murders

Fifteen years ago these brutal slayings rocked an Aussie family to its core

Millionaire Melbourne socialite Margaret Wales-king lived a charmed life. A doting grandmother, she enjoyed a close relationship with her five adult children and their families, and she was delighted to have found love once more with her second husband Paul King in 1995.

They enjoyed a comfortable retirement in the affluent Victorian suburb of Armadale, socialising with friends and playing bridge with society’s elite.

But for Margaret’s son Matthew Wales, her privilege created pure and raw jealousy. His greed and desire to get control of his inheritance would lead him to poison and beat the couple to death in a vicious murder that left the community in complete shock.

Alarm bells rang for Margaret’s daughter Emma on April 8, 2002, when her mother failed to turn up to a planned breakfast date – a move she claimed was “out of character” for Margaret.

Her concerns escalated when she arrived at the million-dollar home Margaret, 68, shared with Paul, 75, and found the lights on, the car gone and plates and glasses lying unwashed.

Emma reported the pair missing to the police and enlisted the help of her siblings Sally, Damian and Prudence in a public plea to help find them.

“They didn’t do things on the spur of the moment and had a very regimented lifestyle,” Damian said in a statement to the press.

The mystery deepened just hours after the appeal, when the couple’s silver Mercedes was found locked and undamaged in a place they had no connection to.

Margaret’s youngest son Matthew, 34, appeared distressed, surmising his mother and stepfather had been attacked by a drug dealer or even carjacked.

What he failed to mention to his siblings was that he and his Spanish-born wife Maritza were the last people to see the couple alive a few days earlier.

Matthew, a former hairdresser, told police he and his wife had hosted a family dinner for his mother and stepfather at their townhouse in Glen Iris.

He said his mother was in good spirits, playing with their toddler son, and seemed happy when they waved her off at 9.45pm.

The pair told police they could shed no light on why Margaret and Paul never made it home.

As days passed with no trace of the couple, the case was dubbed “The Society Murders”, and theories ranged from double murder to kidnapping, a staged disappearance to a suicide pact.

The public were intrigued by the case, reporting numerous false sightings at supermarkets and country bed and breakfasts.

Then, 25 days after the couple’s disappearance, two rangers in the Yarra Ranges National Park made a grisly discovery.

Margaret and Paul’s bodies were found dumped, one on top of the other, in a shallow grave.

The gruesome find not only confirmed their children’s worst fears, but investigators now knew they were dealing with murder.

By now, Matthew’s siblings had begun to suspect their younger,

Twenty-five days later, rangers made a grisly discovery