EP222: The Speargun Murders - podcast episode cover

EP222: The Speargun Murders

Mar 18, 202439 min
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Episode description

In 2004, John Sharpe and his wife Anna Marie (Kemp) were the parents of a beautiful 20-month-old named Gracie.  They were also expecting their second child, a boy whom they were going to name Francis.  However, on March 23rd of that year, and unspeakable and gruesome tragedy occurred that would cost the lives of three of the Sharpe family members.

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Sources
  1. Leigh, Natasha.  “The dreadful case…”  Medium.  12 Jun 2023.
  2. Staff Writer.  “Fatal mistake of a …” Mercury.  02 Feb 2005.
  3. Staff Writer.  “A Real Madness…”  Herald Sun.  13 Aug 2006.
  4. Associated Press.  “I killed wife…” The Sydney Morning Herald.  02 Feb 2005.
  5. Staff Writer.  “Man in Court…”  The Sunday Age.  24 Jun 2005
  6. Find a grave.  Anna Marie Kemp.
  7. Staff Writer.  “An act of …”  The Sunday Mail.  07 Nov 2004.
Staff Writer.  “Family Letters Reveal…”  Sunday Herald Sun.  13 Nov 2005.

Transcript

This episode may contain content of a graphic nature, including descriptions of physical and sexual violence against adults, children, and animals. Listener discretion is advised. Hi everyone, I'm Talia and I'm Tanya, and together we are Crimes and Consequences, a true crime podcast. Welcome back, everybody to this week's episode of Crimes and Consequences. I am Talia and I'm Tanya, and we are two friends that are also law partners yep, that love true crime and I

have a really good story. It is very gruesome. It's just very twisted, and it's not for the week, but it's not the most gruesome episode we've ever done. But this one, this includes a spear okay, okay, And it was suggested by Ben f from Australia who's a listener of ours. And we'd love to do suggestions from listeners, so thank you Ben as Ben And if you guys haven't done it, done so already hit the subscribe like follow button, whatever, Tell your friends, tell your family, because

we appreciate all the support we can get. And we'd like to think True Crime Daily for hosting us. And with that, I'm gonna give you a little background. Okay, I'm going to start out very we call Vanilla. Okay, this is about the Sharp family, and I had never heard the story. I did write half of it, and it was also written by a friend of ours or writer I should say, Rachel. So this is a group effort and it's really really disturbing. All right, let's get into

it. Okay. So the Sharp family consisted of John, Anna and their daughter Gracey Gracie. They resided in this picturesque Mornington Peninsula area. It's in Australia story and I always say it wrong. It's located in south of Melboyn Melvin. I always want to say Melbourne Melvin. And they had like an idyllic existence. They seemed happy, They're young, got this beautiful baby, and they were going to have another baby in two thousand and three, and

that was going to be a baby boy. However, there was a lot of fresh sure in this young new family, and that seemingly perfect facade, as you will find out, faded away as their family expanded with the second pregnancy. So I'm going to tell you a little bit more about it. Anna had Gracie, and Gracie had some health problems which I'll describe later and then she found out, surprise, she's pregnant again. And John, her husband, got really stressed out because it's a lot of pressure. These babies

are only going to be less than two years apart. So he takes up fishing. He's never fished before, he's never been a fisherman. On February sixth, he purchased some fishing supplies and he's basically needing a release, a way to like a way to relax, right, get away from everyone, just go out on the lake or whatever and fish right. One of the things that he bought, besides bait and whatever you buy, was a high

powered spear gun. Oh no, it was just a way for him to escape, like the pressures of everyday life and this new baby that's coming, and something ended up snapping. I'm just going to give you a fore warning. I mean, John didn't handle the second pregnancy very well. So John Miles Sharp was born on February twenty eighth in Victoria, Australia, and he met this woman he was really attracted to. Her name was Anna Marie Kemp and she was from New Zealand. They both but she came to Australia and

they both met while working at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia. They started dating and they fell in love and they got married in October of nineteen ninety four. Through the years, they didn't have children. There was a while where it was just them and they moved to various locations around Australia, eventually settling into one one six Prince Street in the Mornington, Pennsylvania area south of Melvin Melvin. You is a Pennsylvania peninsula, I'm sorry, in the Mornington earlier,

in the peninsula of Melvin Melvin. Yes. Eventually John left the banking world and Anna she discovered she was pregnant. She when she first discovered she was pregnant, and she stopped working and in August of two thousand and two, that's when Gracie was born. Her name was Gracie Louise Sharp. But Gracie was born with something called hip dysplasia and it's a congenital condition and she

had to be in this orthopedic in her uh. She had this a hoist a harness okay, some orthopedic harness because of her hip dysplasia for the first three months of her life. And these were big challenges because Gracie was uncomfortable and she would cry, oh alive, oh poor thing. And she was always uncomfortable. It made it difficult for the little baby to sleep. So gus, that's what happens when the baby can't sleep. Nobody sleep, nobody. No. So you have this young they're still young, this couple.

They can't sleep, they have a crying kid. And she had trouble eating, I think because she was maybe in pain. And it got to the point where Anna actually saw it professional counseling. A little over a year after Gracie was born, in November of two thousand and three, that's when Anna found out she was pregnant again. Oh boy, And it was a surprise.

It was a surprise that John didn't handle very well. Yeah. So now I'm going to go to March twenty first of two thousand and four, the Sharp family, they went to this nephew's birthday party, and according to everybody there, they seem fine. Everything seemed fine. There was great, there was John, there was Anna, and there was nothing out of the ordinary. The next day, which is a Monday, so the party was on a Sunday. In the morning, Anna took Racie to a childcare center,

and she returned home about noon after picking Gracie back up. But while Gracie was at this childcare center, and she's about twenty months old, Anna called her mom in New Zealand just to catch up. She always talked to her mom. She was very close to her family. She just wanted to know how things were doing. At eight twenty four that evening, she called a really close friend to chit chat, and nothing seemed out of the ordinary,

according to her friend. The following morning, now this is Tuesday, March twenty third, Anna made a call to the family's health insurance company to see if the unborn baby, like just to make sure that when the baby's born, it's the baby's covered in all of that. And then she made plans with another friend. Her name was Samantha Jeffrey. She was very close to Samantha. They were gonna meet up on Friday morning. So this is

Tuesday, Okay, They're gonna meet up on Friday. And Anna even puts it on the calendar, like going to meet with Samantha, but she never made that appointment. And when I tell you what happened, you're gonna be really, you're gonna be really upset. Later that night, John and Anna got into an argument and they were fighting a lot. There was a lot of hostility, and a lot of it came from still dealing with Gracie's health conditions, not getting enough sleep, and now there's another child on the way.

Anna went to bed between nine and ten pm, and when John woke up in the morning, Anna was gone. So Thursday morning, John calls Samantha Jeffrey, Anna's friend, and he also calls Anna's best friend, Don Henry. He told him both that that he believed Anna left him for another man, a pregnant woman left him for another man. She'd been having an

affair. And this was a big surprise to her best friends because they didn't know anything about don't know anything about what you didn't tell your best friend. I know you don't guy or something. I know. But what was really shocking is that he told them that she left Gracie behind. And Anna was devoted to Gracie. And by the way, Anna was a devout Catholic too, so she took her marriage vows really seriously, and so none of this

made any sense to her friends. It's completely out of character. Anna's mother, her name was Lily. And remember I told her that I told you that she would talk to her family all the time, so she's always calling mom, right, calling Lily. Lily was getting really concerned because this is Thursday and she hadn't spoke to Anna since Monday. Wow, and she'd been

trying to and she's not getting anything. Didn't get any answers. Thursday, John called her Lily, his mother in law, and said Anna had left him for a man she was having an affair with, and that that man was actually the father of the unborn baby. Stop it, Okay, surprise, yes, surprise, probably like what Yeah, she's probably like, what the hell she said to devote devout Catholic with a child that has special needs? You know, moms don't usually leave their babies behind and then to leave,

yeah, to just run off with another man. Yeah, Like it's like she's just gonna start a new family with this new boyfriend and their new baby and leave Gracie behind. Okay. He said that as far as he knew, Anna was with this unknown man and they were living in nearby Melbourne,

which was a suburb of Chelsea. On Sunday. So now we've started this with a Monday Now, on Sunday, March twenty eighth, John phoned Anna's family and told him that Anna had shown up at their home, the family home, in a cab with another man and took Gracie with her. Oh, she came back for Gracie. Yeah, okay, and then they this unknown man, Gracie and Anna left in a cab. Anna's mother, Lily is like, right, nope, no, and she got really concerned

and she took action. She actually reached out to the So Anna's mom, Lily is in New Zealand still, so she reaches out to the police. They are in New Zealand, okay, and she files a missing person's report in New Zealand, so they will do something about it, even though it's not technically their jurisdiction. What they ended up doing is they got the records for the local cab companies, oh, to see if anybody had been to one point one six Prince Street and guess what had been there. It's a

lie. So then the New Zealand whatever the authorities were in New Zealand, they reached out to the Victoria Police and they became involved on March twenty nine. So this started on March twenty third is when she was last seen. In March twenty ninth, and this is two thousand and four, Anna's mother received an email from Anna. Oh. I don't know exactly what the email said, but it didn't give her any relief at all. She was just

like, no, she became even more suspicious of John. I believe the email said something along the lines of I need space, because she sent another email later which I'll explain, I need space, I need some time, don't contact me, don't look for me, something like stuff like that. And in early April, because again we were just at the end of March, Anna allegedly sent an email to her brother saying she needed time and space

away. So I'm assuming the one, to her mind is pretty close to the same as the investigation into Anna's disappearance, and now Gracie's unfolds twists emerge. Anna's mother received an unexpected flower arrangement from her daughter on her birthday, which was right around that time, and she's just like, why would my daughter not contact me? Why would she not call me? Yeah, call her happy birthday, But instead she sends a flower arrangement. And by that

point, friends and family were very suspicious of John. John was touching by the police on multiple occasions. He stuck to a story. She left with another man, she was having an affair, took Grace, came back a couple of days later, took Gracie and she he's just gone. And this is released. This is one of the cases that reminds me of help me out the guy that with the oil Chris wats. Yes, John is very vocal. He is. The media like interviews him. He's crying. Oh

so he's on the news lot. He's on the news a lot. He's vocal. He seemed to feed off of their attention and just crying come home. You don't even have to come home, just bring Gracie back. Okay. Well spoiler alert, he's full of shit. Yeah, And what he did, it's so horrible, Tanya. I don't even want to talk about it, but I will. He had all these emotional impeals for information, imploring anybody that knows where Anna and Gracy are to please, you know,

have reach out, reach out. But he also says he knows where there are there they're in Melvin and they're you know, outside of Chelsea and with the weird But some clues emerged that add to the complexity of this case. There was activity on Anna's cell phone and her ATM card was used in various areas of the suburbs of Victoria and to buy flowers like oh, that's right, yep, hinting. So the police are seeing this, and it's hinting

at the possibility that Anna and Gracie might still be alive. What if she did just yeah, maybe she did run away because she's pregnant with some unknown guys. Yeah maybe, I'm sure it's happened to someone. So there was a little bit of a mixed feeling as to what happened. But anybody that

knew Anna knew there's no way she ran off with some strange guy. The turning point in the investigation, which I told you started in March at the end of March, came on June tenth, nearly three months after Anna and Gracie disappeared. John Sharp had been interviewed a few times and he underwent more questioning with the police. He again insisted March twenty third, she left and he kept But the thing is he kept referring to them in past times like

they didn't exist, like Gracie was right, Anna was That's clue. The police end up putting some officers on a surveillance team that was instructed to tail John, and they observed John engaged in some suspicious activity. Oh nice.

They witnessed him retrieving Anna's phone and ATM cards from this conceal location in the bushes near a public restroom in Mornington, and he had so what he did is he had this blue bag, like a plastic bag, and he put it by the bushes by a public restroom, and then he went back to the bag and he got in his phone. So they believed that the bag had been there and he would retrieve like a credit card or a phone when he needed it, and then he would put it back in the bag and

hide it again instead of leaving it at the house. Maybe I don't know, he's not thinking wow. And they also saw him disposing of what they believe was evidence in a dumpsters in Mount Martha, which I don't know where it is, but he's going to dumpsters, yeah, And I don't know exactly what he dumped, but I don't go to dumpsters. Drive around to different dumpsters. And that's when they just knew Okay, yes, something, this guy did it. But what but what did he do? Right?

What did he do? The events of June twenty second, two thousand and four. They it was a dramatic change of the police. I mean, now they actually have proof that he's dumping things and he's getting a cell phone and getting a car of his card, taking it and then putting it back in the bushes. So they interrogate him again, and this time John crumbled finally and he can finally, he cracks, He confess and you just what he confessed to Tanya. It's so bad. He confessed and murdering Gracie and

Anna. In the chilling admission, John spoke to authorities about his motivation behind these heneous actions, and I'm gonna start with that. He described Anna as controlling and moody, painting a picture of an unhappy and strained marriage. He also revealed that he had thought about raising Gracie alone, but the chaos after Anna disappeared drove him to the brink, and he said, in his own

words, quote that's when I lost the plot. And I'm gonna tell you what the plot is, Investigators. You know, dug deeper and he's got this confession, and I told you that about a month earlier before a little more than a month earlier. Before the murders, John purchased a high powered spirit gun yeah, and additional spears from a local shop in Mornington, despite having no prior history of spearfishing. And this speargun is used to spear large

marine fish or whales in the ocean. It's that big. It's big. It's huge. I mean, I don't know anything about Maybe it's a normal speargun. It just looks big. I don't know anything about spear guns. John had actually practiced sessions with a speargun in his backyard of his home, saying that it was a way to alleviate his stress, okay, And to Anna it appeared as a harmless hobby. Okay. Well yeah, well you don't think your husband's gonna kill you, so, I mean, of course

it's a harmless hotness. Yea, he's stressed out. I don't know what he's feel about a spear gun because it's really violent. But it's Australia and there's fishing. It's true, and he's fishing. It's true. So John reveals the gruesome details of what he did and This is according to his account. He says tensions grew between the couple and it reached a boiling point on March twenty third, two thousand and four. They'd gotten into an argument as

Anna drifted asleep. He's just roading, brooding, brooding, brooding, not brooding, it's probably a verb. Though. He's seething, he's angry, and he gets so upset he goes to the garage and he retrieves the spear gun from the garage. And this is again, this is not something normally like if you need to, not need, we're gonna kill somebody. This is a very just kill somebody. And she's a pregnant woman. Yeah, yes, she's pregnant with a little boy. She's got to be like seven

months pregnant. I'm not sure how far along she is, but it was a little boy, and they were gonna name Francis. He, while Anna is sleeping, goes up to her with a spear gun and at point blank range, he shoots it into Anna's left temple. Oh my god, killing her. That wasn't enough for him? Oh no, he fired. I don't know that would yeah, fired, I guess a second spear into her head oh my god, really, just to make sure she was dead. So it's like a spear, and then there's this long show. Yeah,

and then yeah, it's got to be a huge like arrowhead. Yes, it's meant for like a whale or like a big fish. I'm thinking like maybe a big giant swordfish or something. I don't know, it's gotta be huge. Oh my god, and shits or twice. And then he ends up covering up her lifeless body with towels. And after that he guess what he did? What went downstairs and went to sleep on the couch. Oh, he just left her there, just left her. Didn't even try to

clean, No, just laught her. Now he wakes up in the morning, and the following that day he was normal. He well, I shouldn't say that, because he did attempt to remove the spears from her head. Good. Really, yeah, he needed to use them again. Oh no, but he couldn't get him out, I know, what the fun He

was only able to remove the shafts, like from the spear. So he left Anna there all day with two spears in her head, covered by towels, and went about his routine, which included dropping Gracie off to childcare, okay, all the while knowing his wife is just dead on their bed. He comes back home and Anna had booked an appointment for a cable guy to come to the house. They knocks on the door and John opens it and makes up an excuse why the cable guy, like why can't come in?

Knowing okay, wait, I can't let anybody in this house. My wife is dead with two spears in her head. He takes and he moves her body into the garden, grabs a shovel, he digs a hole, and he burries her in the backyard. He buries her in the backyard and berries her in the backyard. Oh my god, But that's not all he did that day. Oh fuck. He picked Gracy up and he took her to the marine shop where he had purchased the spears and spear gun, and he

bought another spear with Gracie, which he later used to kill Gracie. Oh man, he spared the baby too. Yeah. I will get to that. But you know what's interesting was when he picked up Gracy from her childcare. Yeah, he told them this was a Friday, that that would be the last time Gracie would be there, and she wouldn't be coming back. Wow, so you had planned it out. That shows he's planning it. And while buying the fucking spear also shows he's planning it. But holy god.

Okay, So that night, it's March twenty seventh, he puts Gracie to bed and he gets drunk off whiskey and cokes. He has a lot of whiskey and cokes in a premeditative act. Clearly, clearly, he retreated spear gun from the garage. He loaded it within the new spear he bought with Gracie, and he pointed it at her head while she was sleeping, and he fired the spear into her head. I fucking can't believe this story. Again, it's not it's not like I can't. It's bad, it's

horrible. But the worst part is Tony she didn't die. She didn't. Oh no, she started crying in pain. Oh my god. But that didn't stop him from continuing. He went and retrieved a spear shaft or got the spear from Anna somehow, because he only had one spear when he bought it with Gracie. He only had one, so he ended up getting another spear from Anna's body or a spear shaft, and he ended up repeating the

act. It was a spear shaft. So I don't know how. I don't know any maybe because you said he was able to remove the shaft from Anna, but he couldn't remove the ar. I don't know. Maybe he just loaded the shaft into the I don't spear, gu I don't know how it works, but I guess so he did it four times? What four times? Oh my god? Who fucking does this? John Sharp? Yeah?

John Sharp? And then the next day, In the next following days, he went to a hardware store and he ended up buying some supplies, duct tape, tarps, an electric chainsaw, and he went out to the backyard where Anna was buried and he dug her up. Oh my ex and he used the electric chainsaw. Oh my god, and he dismembered, are you fucking kidding? Like if we couldn't get any worse, it just did Anna's body. Wow, this is crazy. He cut her remains into three

pieces and then he put a tarp. He can seal them in a tarp each piece, and then he threw them in dumpsters. Oh that's what he was doing around the dumpsters. Wow. I don't know when they saw him at the dumpsters when the police did, if that's the evidence, but I'm not sure. But he dumped her in multiple dumpsters. Then he wrapped up Gracie in a tarp and he placed her in some garbage bags, and he

dumped her in the garbage too. He had discarded other evidence I told you about, including the spear gun, spears, a mattress, and some of Gracie's clothes and toys. Oh probably, like yes, I'm sure, yes, wow, And this is what he confessed to. So law enforcement ends up searching the landfill in Melbourne, Melbane, Melvin, Yes, Malvervin. I thought it looks like Melbourne, yes does. And it took them weeks to find three weeks, three weeks to find all the remains. They found

them all they did. Wow, the three separate tarps Anna and then Gracie's body three weeks in the landfill, a landfill, Like what the fuck? I know? Who does that? Sharp twenty month old special needs daughter Really Anna and Gracie were laid to ross at the Green Park Cemetery in Dunden, and her family made sure that she was buried with her maiden name, which is kunt. Yeah, and the grave site, which we have a picture of is honors Gracie's buried with her and then also honors their unborn son,

Francis. Oh. John's arrested. Yeah, forced to face justice for his crimes. He pled guilty by the grace of God. He pled guilty to the brutal murders of Annon Gracie. On August fifth of two thousand and five, John's fate was sealed with a sentence that fits his crimes. He was handed down two consecutive life imprisonment sentences, so he could I would say, never be out, but he could be paroled in thirty three years. He won't be I'm sure. I'm sure he won't be. I mean, what

the fuck, that's a long time. And yeah, and if he is, he probably won't and be old man. Yeah, thank you, That's what I was going to say. So there was some justice for Anna and Gracie and Francis. Jeez. At first, John was put in isolation for reasons we can imagine, imagine, and he was getting threats from other I'm sure inmates. Somebody, Yeah, somebody's gonna whoop his bid. So, yeah, he was in solitary confinement. He is still he's not in solitary

confinement, but he's still locked up. And to me, like why he did? I don't. I don't see Australia in Canada are so kind to their criminals. Yeah, I mean, to me, he should get life without but I don't have any We've done stories where people have committed brutal,

brutal rude all murders and gotten out. He literally exhumed his wife's body in the backyard and use a chan and a chainsaw for what the What they really believe is he didn't want Francis to be but it's probably true he didn't want it, but really, like killing everybody and going to prison for the rest of your life is better. And how did he think he would get away with it? Exactly? That's what I think too, Like how do you think exactly that you're gonna get away with it? But it's true because he

pretended to be her in a weak ass way. I mean, but you would because it's just so like he's it's it's all a plan for him. I don't know, And he was trying to keep up this facade that she was still alive, and that's what ended up getting them. If he wouldn't have went back to where he had that blue plastic bag in the bushes by the public bathroom, the police wouldn't I have wouldn't have that much evidence. I continue to follow whatever. Yeah, that was dumb, but so that

is the really sad story of Anna Gracie. Francis Sharp or we'll call him Kemp, and how evil speak. He thought he could keep He thought he could handle Gracy on his own, but decided her one day. He had her one day and took her to take her, took her to daycare too. He couldn't handle her for one day, you know, give her to Grandma and grammar. Right, it'd be like, I can't I'm a single dad this much, guy, I can't handle it. I mean, can

you help? Right? No, I guess, And to kill Grace, to have Gracie be in pain by surviving it, and then it takes time. It took him time for him to go get the next like was it spear or shaft? I mean it wasn't just like available, And then four times he didn't have four so he had to like use it again, use it again? Man, sick, sicker, Sorry, I'm sorry if that offends people, I don't care. It doesn't offend you. No, fuck

him, man, So that's a story. Fuck. And I want to take a second just to thank all of you guys for listening to this episode and to think True Time to Crime Daily for hosting us on their website. If you have something bad to say, just keep your mouth shut. We'd appreciate that. Do you have something nice to say, leave a comment, hit like subscribe, follow us, tell your friends and family. We have a lot of people don't know exactly what Patreon is. I think more and

more people are learning. But you can go to Patreon, which is like Patron, but it's p A T R E O N dot com and it's slash T and the letter N and T crimes and their Tanya and I release audio where it's very much more raw and more relaxed because it's a little uncomfortable with cameras. I'm not gonna lie. I don't even know where to look half time. I don't because we have four cameras and we're not trained professionals. Unless it's law, you can go there and subscribe and then you get

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mean it's hard for your drive to work. You have something to listen to, you it's right, Or I clean in the house or yeah, exercising, yeah, exercising or you know all the great things that you do. Trying to sleep, ye, trying to sleep, I don't know. So with that said, with that said, until our next episode, don't kill each other. Bye bye,

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