Murder A new look at a notorious case of the 1970s
A new book examines the chilling details behind one of Australia’s most horrific murders
It’s late afternoon in Brisbane’s inner city suburb of Highgate Hill on January 16, 1974, and devoted single mum-of-two Barbara Mcculkin is busy at her sewing machine.
She’s lovingly handcrafting yet another little dress for one of her girls. Next to her, a neat pile of newly covered exercise books are laid out ready for her daughters Vicki, 13, and Leanne, 11.
The two girls are across the street at their friend’s birthday party, their squeals of laughter resonating through
their working-class neighbourhood. With not a care in the world they skip on home, not knowing pure evil was about to knock on their front door.
Their disappearance that fateful night went on to become one of the most chilling cold cases in Australian crime history.
Why Barbara and her two girls willingly got into a 1974 orange Valiant Charger with two hardened criminals, Vincent O’dempsey and Garry “Shorty” Dubois, no one will ever know.
Despite their killers eventually ending up behind bars, the Mcculkins’ remains have never been found.
What happened to Barbara, Leanne and Vicki is documented in a compelling new book, which details the tragic events that unfolded on that warm summer’s evening 45 years ago.
The shocking crime continues to haunt prize-winning author and journalist Matthew Condon, who has penned 10 bestsellers and hundreds of crime stories.
BRUTAL MONSTER
“[O’dempsey] is a man, a brutal monster, who quite literally has no fear. He revels in
death. To put it into perspective, a veteran prison officer of 30 years I spoke to described O’dempsey as the most evil he’d ever encountered. After writing this book, I am one hundred per cent convinced that he’s right,” Matthew, 57, tells Woman’s Day.
He titled his book The Night Dragon after discovering that O’dempsey hates the sunlight, “comes for you at night” and has dragons tattooed on his torso, front and back. He is described as one of the most extraordinary killers that no one has heard of, a man feared for decades by criminals and police alike.
Linked to Brisbane’s infamous Whiskey Au Go Go fire, which left 15 people dead in March 1973, O’dempsey began his crime spree in the 1950s in his home town of Warwick on Queensland’s Darling Downs. Not long after he was sent to a psychiatric facility where he was diagnosed a classic psychopath.
According to Matthew, mum-of-two Barbara may not have seen her fate coming. “She was married to a petty gangster in Brisbane by the name of Billy Mcculkin. They were separated and not together at the time of her disappearance. He was averse to working, so Barbara was forced to take a job in a local sandwich shop to put food on the table for her family,” the author explains.
“During the time leading up to the Whiskey Au-go Go fires, a parade of hardened criminals made their way in and out of the Mcculkin home – men like O’dempsey, Dubois and John Andrew Stuart, who was convicted of the Whiskey killings. And Barbara suspected something big was coming.
DEADLY FIREBOMBING
“I think Barbara and the girls were aware of the individuals who were behind the deadly firebombing before it occurred. On the morning it happened, the Daily Telegraph front page was the Whiskey story, and Barbara, as she did every day, went up to the corner store to pick up the newspaper, and she said to the shopkeeper, “Oh God, they actually did it.”
“O’dempsey was clearly motivated to kill them over fears Barbara would implicate him in a number of crimes. What I suspect he did to them still keeps me awake at night.”
In October 2014, O’dempsey and his co-accomplice Dubois were charged with the Mcculkins’ abduction and murder. They were sentenced to life in prison in 2017, ending a 40-year mystery and providing some closure for the Mcculkin family.
“No one knows where O’dempsey is locked up, it’s that highly secretive. The amount of security [involved] is unprecedented,” says Matthew.
“Barbara would have done everything she could to protect her girls, but when you look into the face of such evil, she knew they had no chance.
“That dress in the sewing machine she never finished… and they never got to go open their brand new school books. That was the saddest for me. It’s too sad to even imagine.”