From Peter Falconio to Port Arthur
Australia has been gripped by some shocking criminal cases that are forever etched in our minds and are now part of our folklore writes GLEN WILLIAMS
Who killed Betty Shanks?
For more thanh 6 60 years theh brutal bashing and strangling murder of 22-year-old Betty Shanks has chilled the nation.
Betty, a cheery public servant, had alighted from a tram at the Grange terminus in Brisbane and was walking home to Montpelier Street when she was set upon in the dark on September 19, 1952.
Her body was found early the next morning in the yard of a nearby house. Betty had shocking facial injuries. She had been viciously kicked and bashed, then strangled, but had not been sexually assaulted.
Police followed several leads but they got nowhere. Some thought the murderer could have been a soldierld on leavel f from theh Korean War, others suggested it was a case of mistaken identity.
In the recent investigative novel I Know Who Killed Betty Shanks, Desche Birtles says she believes her own psychoticsychotic father, Eric Sterry committed the crime. On the nightt of the murder, she says he forced her to scrub the floor of f hi his car and d clean his shoes, which she claims were covered in blood.
Desche says her father, a locksmith, had become obsessed with Betty after doing work for her. His marriage was crumbling and he hadh a deluded belief heh would marry Betty. DescheD thinks that he followedfollo ed BettyBet home, propositioned her, then killed her when she spurned his advances. Desche tried to tell authorities, but she was dismissed as a troublemaker, she says because her father was good mates with the police. The case remains unsolved.