What Happened in Boulder Cemetery???

Did the Murderers Visit the Burial Ground
And Seek to Dispose of the Bodies ?
A Plan That May Have Miscarried, But If It Had Succeeded
Would Probably Have Hidden the Secret for Ever

It is believed that some time in the late hours of April 27 the murderers of John Walsh and Alexander Pitman, set out to hide their awful burdens from the sight of man. No living human being has come forward to say that he saw them during those terrible hours. But there is more than a mere suspicion that before the unseeing eyes of Boulder’s buried dead they made their first attempt to dispose of those they had so foully murdered.

What happened in Boulder Cemetery on the night of the murder?

Right throughout the efforts to solve the Kalgoorlie mystery there has always been the impression by those in disposing of the bodies by throwing them down a shaft. This was not only crude; It was clumsy. It was not in closest touch with the investigations of a dominant brain which planned the concealment of the remains and the accord with THAT COOLNESS AND CARE that must have been incidental to the cutting up and burning of the remains and destruction of the evidence with a callous coolness and a more than ordinary keen regard for the circumstantial evidence.

WHO SET THIS TAP RUNNING ? WERE THE MURDERERS HERE?

The only contradictory point in this line of thought, is the final method of, and to the careful removal of, the worst traces of the tragedy. Nobody knows who directed these terrible operations, but it is apparent that whoever the man was, his first purpose was not to attempt to hide the crime by throwing the bodies down a shaft which was afterwards not even partly filled in. There was more cunning in the master mind of the group than shown by this form of concealment. That is why, those who have followed the train of investigation very closely, are asking the question: ‘What happened in Boulder cemetery on the night of the murder’. That something happened is very certain. In the Boulder cemetery are a number of taps which, ordinarily speaking, are only used by the cemetery staff. One of these taps was

USED ON THE NIGHT OF THE MURDER.

It wasn’t used by any of the cemetery employees. It was turned on for a considerable time. The soil in the vicinity was saturated with water next morning. Some body had used that tap in the night hours. It couldn’t have been merely left running, by some careless person in the day time, it would have been noticed. Now who was using water in the night in this quiet ‘God’s Acre’ at Boulder? Probably it will never be known, but a fairly accurate theory can be formed.

The intention of the murderers, even though they had succeeded in reducing the remains of their victims to unrecognisable fragments, was obviously to ultimately bury these and all the articles associated with the killing. They set out then for that purpose, and if this theory be correct, they set out deliberately for the cemetery. Burials here are fairly frequent, but of course every grave is checked and numbered and any haphazard attempt to dig a hole there would bring down more suspicion than the throwing of the bodies down the shaft.

But the suggestion is that the devilish cunning of the brain that planned these operations had something more than this in his mind in coming to the cemetery. At this period, and indeed at almost any other period, there would be several recent graves in which persons had been lately buried. The mound on top would be of fresh earth.

DIGGING THERE WOULD BE EASY

seeing that the ground had already been dug up just previously. Did the murderers plan to open a newly filled in grave; throw the bodies down on top of the coffin and fill it in again just as it had been after the funeral? That is the suggestion that has grown in people’s minds since the discovery among other things of the circumstance of the running tap in that cemetery. It was possibly one of these fiendish inspirations that come to cold-blooded murderers driven to the utmost limits to conceal their crime, and obviously, it would have suited their purpose better than any other means. All newly made graves in a cemetery are similar; all have the little mounds of fresh earth, which take some weeks to subside. Nobody looks for, or expects interference with them. Nobody would for a moment dream that the remains of two other dead persons had been deposited with the original tenant of the grave during the silence of the night.

The majority of the graves are never opened again, the interment of a near relative only occasioning such a reopening. It is probable then that bodies thrown into a grave at the Boulder Cemetery would remain undisturbed till the Resurrection. In truth, if the murderers had planned this, and had been successful in their plans, the mystery of the disappearance of the two detectives would have been a mystery for ever. Why then, did they give up their plan? There are several reasons. Obviously they would have used the taps to wash their hands or clothes. Strangely enough there is an instinct even with murderers to cleanse as soon as possible the hands that have shed blood. The washing was then their first process. Afterwards, or during the washing, they were disturbed. Sometimes grave diggers come in the early dawn hours to dig an urgently required grave or what is more likely, they fancied they saw someone coming along the road or heard vehicles in the distance.

It is pretty plain that they would not have come to the cemetery merely to wash their hands. Yet it is fairly plain that they had to hurry away after these ablutions. Panic in some form thereafter seized them. Who knows but the very surroundings of God’s Acre set their nerves ajar! Certain it is that in the last stages of their terrible work a panic feeling entered – the panic that led to the haphazard interment in the shaft, an interment which later led to the discovery of the bodies.

They left the cemetery and took their burden with them. Who they were who visited the burial ground that night, and what they did, the dead alone can tell. And the dead keep their secrets well! Nevertheless it is reasonable to assume, that if we knew who visited the Boulder Cemetery in those silent hours we would know who murdered John Walsh and Alexander Pitman !