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Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shand. I am your host Adam Shand. July nineteen seventy two, two young women, Anita Cunningham and Robin Hoyneville Bartram, set off from Melbourne to hitchhike to Robin's family home in Bowen, North Queensland. Two bright young design students leaves to hitchhike up the
East Coast. They were never seen alive again. In November of that year, Robin's body was found under a bridge at Sensible Creek near Charters Towers, with two bullet holes in the back of her head in a way that she was killed two bullets in the back of the head two months loger execution. Anita has never been found. It's one of Australia's most baffling unsolved murders.
The worst thing that you could possibly imagine happened to this family.
The Cunningham family continues to seek answers, and I'm joined by Nita's brother David, who keeps the flame of the investigation alive.
We were actually deliberately kept in the dark. Such a tragedy. What happened to them? You know, you want to do something good for as the years and the decades have gone by, the hope of that is just dissolved into nothing, not that there was much hope of that in the first place.
Welcome David, Hello Adam, it's great to see you again.
Well, thanks for the opportunity.
You and I have travelsome roads on this story. And I've got three or four of these long term missing persons cases that I vow to solve or at least follow through to the end of my career. Yours is one of them. It's on a yellow post it note on my wall, completion. It needs to be completed.
Well, let's hope we're getting closer to it every day.
Yeah, tell me who was Anita.
Anita was a delightful, strong, very gregarious, happy girl. She was full of promise and she was a keen horse rider. She rode in the Royal Melbourne Show. She was an art student. She had the whole world going for her. She was a beautiful girl. You know she was your young sister. She was. Yeah, she was a year and a half younger than I.
You're a wild boy back in your day. Ye're off doing your things at the time. Remember what you were doing in July nineteen seventy two.
July nineteen seventy two. I was young and stupid, following the hippie trail and living a life of self discovery and partying basically, I think you'd call it.
And so Anita goes away for what was going to be a two or three week trip. What are your memories of what was going on? Happened?
I was away, really I had seen Anita a bit before they left, and I'd struck up a little bit of a relationship with Robin. But like in those days, life was sort of fancy free and there was nothing sort of permanent. Were just sort of had a bit
of a fling. And then next thing I heard they were heading That was the school holidays and they were heading up north, and my parents contacted me and said that they were really worried and they were trying the hardest to convince the girls to accept a free airline ticket, but they were determined to take off hitchhiking and sort of have a happy, go lucky hippie life kind of thing.
We were all very naive then, and you know, sort of middle class kids from a middle class background and middle class school and zero experience of life so she she fell in with the wrong crowd. That was the end of it.
Do you have any any evidence or clues to that?
Yeah, And the evidence and the clues are set out in Gern's book which was published recently called Here Our Cry. It's published by Ingrin Spark and it's by Michael Gern and he sets out all his evidence. He believes it was a gang of local hooligans, perhaps assisted by Ivan Mullatt.
That's a big name in true crime. Ivan Malatt.
Yep.
Mick mcgern, I should say, is a retired Queensland Police officer. He's now in his nineties. I believe he is.
He's ninety two. He's an ex senior detective. He used to have his own department in the Queensland Police and he's got a pretty good reputation in the police.
Of course he does. And I think he's incredibly selfless what he's done. And the love for your family and the love of finding an answer is still driving him. His health has a bit infirmed these days, but he doesn't give up.
He's so tenacious and he's powers of investigation and his ability to get people to talk and interview people, and he is just incredible. He's a born detective really.
And mixed efforts stand in stark contrast to the general performance of the Queensland Police Service over all the years of this mystery.
Yeah. Well, I'm aware that back in those days, just far north out back, Queensland was like a foreign country. It was just it was nowhere and dirt roads, and you know, the superintendent of police there at that time was well known to be the biggest criminal in the district and policing wasn't what really we expect it to be. It was a different time, and so I always thought put the police performance down to that general sort of neglect of the time, because it was like cowboy country
and so on. But recently I've learned that actually, I think there's more to it than that. I think there was that deliberate cover up by the police, and more evidence to support that is coming out all the time, and so that's what we're pursuing at the moment, that we were actually deliberately kept in the dark by the police and we were steered in the wrong direction. Now, whether that was because they've got something to hide and they're trying to protect somebody, or whether it was just
a sort of an accident of fate. I don't know, but our investigations coming up, I think we'll shed a bit of light on that. We'll see how go.
I think you've got some new leads. And that's what I find amazing about you, Davi, is you've not given up, and you think with these cold cases to give when they're so you get to the point where you think to yourself, there's about two or three people in the entire world who were thinking about this case and working hard on it, because they just move on and unless you, as a family continue to agitate, continue to ask questions,
it will just disappear. And I've seen this in other cases that I cover, where when the last family member passes away, there's virtually no chance of resolution. So you've got a real urgency about what you're doing.
Well. The reason is because, for you know, forty five years we were told only two things are known, and that is the date, time and place the girl's left and the date, time and place Robin's body was found. Nothing else is known. Nobody saw anything, nobody knew anything. There is no hope of anything being known, So you
might as well give up and go home. That was what we were told basically, But it's only since Mick gern has just pulled the whole thing together and just found witnesses, and it's only since then that we have a chance to maybe find Anita's remains and give her a decent burial that she deserves.
How important is that to you? I mean it's self evident, but I think if you've never been in this position where you've lost a loved one and you've not got the remains to bury, what does that represent to you and your family?
Well, you can imagine what it represents, but especially when they've been treated so badly, you know, when it's such a such a tragedy, what happened to them, You know you want to do something good.
For because I think missing person's detectives have always told me that without a body to bury, there's always that glimmer of hope that one day they're going to walk down the driveway and say, well, I've been off somewhere else for forty plus years. But as terrible as it is to discover, and I'm sure for Robin Hoynevil Bartram's family that was a difficult discovery, finding those remains is some form of closure for you.
Yeah. Well, you know, in early days we perhaps had that hope that Anita might turn up, but she was not the sort of girl who would just disappear. You know, we were a strong family. She just wouldn't do that. But you know, as the years and the decades have gone by, the hope of that is just dissolved into nothing. Not that there was much hope of that in the
first place. I think we pretty well knew that something bad must have happened to them, you know, fairly soon after they left because other you know, no money was spent, they didn't have much hash with them, and their bank accounts weren't touched and they never made any phone calls. So you know, whatever happened took place fairly soon after they went missing. I think.
So you think it might have as mixed theory is that they fell in with a group of crooks or hooligans as you put it, This might have happened days after they left Melbourne, do you think, Well.
Either that or they were somehow not kidnapped but certainly misled and led astray pretty strongly. And then I don't know a matter of days, matter of weeks, but it couldn't have been more than more than months, because I'm sure she would have I don't know anyway. Look, it's all just supposition, really, who knows that's right.
But what's not supposition is that at least Robin made it to Sensible Creek near Pentland there, just near Chater's Towers where her remains were found. And when you and I walked those streets talked to people up there, more information came out and you start to see the shithouse investigation that was conducted by Queensland Police. I've got mates up in Queensland Police, so I'm not characterizing all of them this way, but the way that they failed to
follow up local leads. Let's look at some of those things.
We know.
A lady called Merle White saw the girls at the Pentland Hotel when there was a music night on there, and she was absolutely adamant that she'd seen them, and that they had taken a ride with a guy in a cowboy hat who may have even called himself cowboy, who bore a striking resemblance to Ivan Mulatt. Police never
told you that, did they No? And then later that night Merle and her mother are driving back to Charter's Towers and they're getting near the area Sensible Creek and they see in the headlights in the distance a car parked on the side of the road, a group of men, one man jumping up and down on something. And Merle's mother said, this is not right, keep going, Merle, let's go. The following day, they're back in Charter's Towers. Merle sees the same man that she saw in the Pentland Hotel.
Now he's got a big scratch down his face. How does this happen? And she was menaced or threatened by that individual, who she believed to be Ivan Malatt. Did the police tell you any of this? No, the police spoke to Merle White, she tried to give her evidence. What happened to it?
Well, the particular policeman who I won't name, who was tasked with getting Merle's story and taking her out to the scene of the crime, made Merle very very suspicious and very uneasy. He was very creepy and was sort of trying to it seemed like he was trying to
put the hard word on her. And then as she got close to her Sensible Creek, she started to think that this is according to Merle's daughter, she started to think that she better not say too much because he might try to implicate her in the crime and make her seem like she's one of the guilty party. Because he was acting so suspicious himself, she didn't trust him at all, so she threw him off the scent and just refused to cooperate and nominated at a different place
just to get out of the situation. Really, And then after that police refused to take her seriously or refuse to have anything to do with her, and refuse to take her dying declaration and threatened her daughter to leave the whole thing alone, and you know, not have anything to do with it anymore.
Yeah, we make no allegations. Usually in my career, when I got the choice between a conspiracy and a fuck up, I always go for the fuck upright, But there may indeed be a conspiracy in this case. And the idea that Merle's testimony was not reliable or somehow motivated by malice or something. You have to look at that in relation to what she told her husband John on her deathbed, that she told him he has to pursue this story.
And we interviewed John and his story was crystal clear the way that I've related it to you, and he was thumping the table and in tears trying to get people to understand what Merle said was correct and should be followed up.
Well, I'm like you, I have no grudge against police in general. In fact, you know, we've had really good policeman members of the family. You know, I've got the greatest admiration for some of the individuals and for the difficult job. But you know, it's a job that does attract the sort of people who you wouldn't really want in that job. And maybe some of those people were involved, I don't know, but certainly the performance of the police in this case has been shabby.
When we are on the ground in Pentland talking to locals who had been there for a long time, the first thing they said was look at corrupt police. They mentioned a guy called MERV Stevenson who was the former head of the Stocks and I'm going to do a whole other episode on him because there's a lot of murky doings around his career and his possible involvement in murders or cover up the murders. And you also get back to this attitude that was taken to hitchhikers generally
that silly girls. They shouldn't have been hitchhiking. They almost deserved what they got.
Yeah, Well, one of the local residents said, oh, hitchhiker is a fair game, aren't they.
And they also told us that there was a number of people in that area passing through working at the meat works on the way to mining jobs and so forth, and under assumed names. And these two young attractive girls, quite naive, quite suggestible, up for fun adventures, might have been gold into a full sense of security. And I can see that scenario happening, and it's such a tragedy.
And when we went to Sensible Creek and we looked at the location where Robin's remains were found, my sense was that there hadn't been a big enough search upstream. And there's an assumption that Robin must have been killed under that bridge, and I don't think that there's sufficient evidence to confirm that. When I looked at the rainfall records at that time in seventy t there were big floods, it was quite possible that they might have been killed
further away from the road, which would make sense. And therefore another search out on that floodplain might reveal something new.
Yep. And there's a lot of confusion about exactly where Robin's body was found too, because in the newspaper of the date when they were found, the text of the article says that they were found near or under the railway bridge, but the photo of the police digging is under the road bridge. When we talked to one of the crew who found the body, well, he seemed to indicate that it was somewhere in between the railway bridge
and the road bridge. But I've got to get back up there and get a more accurate idea from him.
Yeah, you're talking about Shorty who he found at home, knocked on his door. He was in the middle of a couple of libations in the afternoon when we spoke to him, and he had been there that day wet weather, it was thirsty weather indeed, So her body was found there, badly decomposed, virtually a skeleton. And that was in November of nineteen seventy two. Another suspect was in the area
very soon before that, John Andrew Stuart. We know he was in Pentland because he actually robbed a local man called Randall Wilson of some items and a suitcase and a transistor and so forth that he also pitched into Sensible Creek. So I think John Andrew Stewart is a reasonable suspect to considering what a callous, nasty individual he was. He went on to murder multiple people in the fire bombing of the Whiskey A Go Go in nineteen seventy three.
But the problem is, if we believe the rate of decomposition, which the police suggested Robin had been killed up to three months earlier, that doesn't work for Stuart.
Yeah, you're not the only one who suspects Stuart, But to me, there's a couple of things working against it. One is the rate of decomposition. And I know the decomposition is much faster up there in the hot, humid conditions, but not that much faster, you know. I mean the body was found in November. He was up there in November. You know, I couldn't have got like that in just two weeks, even if the pigs had been worrying the body,
and you know, the wild pigs and all that. It just to me that it doesn't add up on that count. And the other thing is I just put myself in John Andrews Stewart's shoes, and think if I had buried a body under a bridge and tried to conceal it, I wouldn't be throwing somebody's stolen goods on top of it, which could lead straight back to me, because I would be trying to dissociate myself from from the whole thing. You know.
Well, here's the thing though, when we were there, the creek was virtually dry, and then a huge thunderstorm came through and suddenly it was running a banker while we were there, And I can see a situation where Anita and Robin could have been murdered upstream and then floodwaters carry them down. True, And then it kind of makes sense because I don't believe this idea that wild pigs could have attacked Robin's body and not left it completely scattered,
because the skeleton was not disarticulated. She was whole, and there was clothes with her still and so forth.
So we have to consider the decomposition rate, and I just can't conceivably see how it can get into that state in two weeks. You know, If John Andrew Stuart was there early in November, the body was found I think on the fifteenth of November, so that leaves no time for decomposition to happen, you know.
Yeah, my personal view is that that wasn't the murder site, that it was further upstream. And unfortunately we don't have Robin's remains to refer to either, because in a flood in nineteen seventy four, the forensic headquarters in Brisbane was flooded and her remains were carried away for a second time in a cruel irony, which also hampers any reinvestigation of her remains.
Now, yes, it is sad, but there are still witnesses alive so pursuing that avenue, and there may be some other avenues which may yet still prove fruitful, so we still plug away at it.
Which I really admire you for. And you've dealt with some absolutely bizarre, insulting, awful scenarios. For instance, when a psychic came up with the idea that your ex partner, the mother of your daughter, was Anita somehow, that she had decided to take on this new identity and not alert the family and then become your partner. I mean, you're involved in the conspiracy.
Yeah, she's supposed to have come down from Queensland, had an incestuous relationship with me which produced a daughter, and then she's gone back up to Queensland and she's living there under a false identity. Yeah, the whole thing seems bizarre, but it would have taken the police five minutes on the computer to look on the Internet, and they would have seen that Anita and Jody were two totally different looking people, and they could see Jody's family background on
the computer too. I mean, it's like there's been other, much more solid seeming leads which they've discounted out of hand and haven't even bothered to follow up, and yet this sort of crazy psychic pops up and produces a totally unbelievable story which they don't bother it's and they do this Dawn raid. You know, it's just laughable.
It is laughable. It is laughable. And I've been doing a running survey of detectives over my career to ask them, has a psychic ever actually assisted you to resolve a crime? But I'm still zero after all these years. Despite the fact that some of these psychics do purport to be successful, I'd love to hear from a psychic. If you do have evidence that you can solve crimes, you can also find my car keys that I lost last week. So your parents went to their graves not finding out, that's right.
How do you deal with the idea that you may never find out either?
Oh, well, it's nothing new. I mean I've been resigned to the fact that I would never find anything out for forty odd years until Mick Gern actually did some first class detective work and found witnesses, evidence and so forth. And the book it's called Here Our Crime. It gives all the steps, all the evidence, So if anybody wants
to follow it up, that's what I recommend. We're actually trying to call for a Commission of Inquiry to try and get witnesses onto the witness stand to testify under oath, because it's the only way we really get people to open up. You know, people who I know had firsthand knowledge of the girl's disappearance said to me, oh, I don't remember anything from that time. Sorry, I just can't remember. Whereas everybody else in the town, everybody else we talked to, had really strong memories of.
It, that's right, And we found new evidence just walking around last year. So you wonder what the police could do with their compelling powers, if you like, with these witnesses, because I think Pentland in particular is a small town with a big secret.
It's an interesting town, Pentland, and we met some love people there and I think somehow we've got to get the secrets to open up. You know, a lot of those people seem to know more than they were letting on.
Well, I certainly hope that this will come to some kind of resolution. We're going to keep fighting. I'll never stop trying to get this story back in the media, trying to see if some new evidence can come to light, because you deserve it. I Needa deserves it, and Robin Jynvill Bartram deserves it as well.
Well. I really appreciate your help with his Adam, and you know you've really you've put in a lot of effort too, I've got to say, and it's greatly appreciated you.
Not as much as you, mate, but I'm proud and pleased to be alongside to do it again here in this podcast. So thanks for you time today, mate.
Thanks.
It was David Cunningham, the brother of Anita Cunningham, missing since July nineteen seventy two. There are people out there who know what happened, and if you're listening, it's time to come forward. If not to me, you can send me an email on Adam shannded writer at gmail dot com, or if you're not comfortable talking to the media, call crime Stoppers one eight hundred, triple three, triple zero. There's
somebody out there who knows someone who knows something. It's time to resolve this mystery and to bring Anita home. This has been real crime with Adam Shanned. Thanks for listening.