THE KILLER WHO DROWNED THE BABY IN THE BATH

Cliff was 25. He spent most of his days on the back of an Appaloosa horse, looking after a herd of deep red cattle on the Palmer Ranch. The pay was $55 a week. It wasn't a lot, even back then, but the job came with a roof over their heads, and for a young family that mattered.

That roof belonged to a plain, white, wood-frame cottage at the southern tip of the ranch. It sat at the end of a shell road, with pasture all around it and hardwood forest beyond. Their nearest neighbour was half a mile away. Out in the yard they kept three hound dogs, the kind of dogs a hog hunter relies on.

It sounds peaceful, and I'm sure most days it was. But I want you to picture just how alone that little house was. No streetlights. No house next door. No one close enough to hear a car pull up, a door slam, or a woman scream.

Cliff was never one to go looking for trouble. He worked hard and kept to himself, and detectives who later went through every page of the case file described Cliff and Christine as devoted to each other and to their children. His best mate was another Palmer ranch hand, Don McLeod. The two men worked the ranch together, and whenever they could, they went out hunting wild hogs. The McLeods lived on Palmer land too, and Christine was friendly with Don's wife, Lucy.

Christine had her own treasures, and one of them was her old drum majorette uniform. She kept it folded away safely in a chest, because she was saving it for Debbie to wear one day. I can just picture her lifting the lid of that chest and imagining her baby girl all grown up, marching in that uniform. Hold on to that picture, because the uniform comes back into this story, and not in a good way.

Christine drove a 1952 Plymouth, and Cliff had a work Jeep from the ranch. Money was tight, but they were starting to think about trading her old car in for something newer. Christmas was coming too, and the plan was to spend the holidays with family in Arcadia, back where it had all started for the two of them.

From the outside, it was a simple, happy little life. But there was a shadow hanging over that cottage, and it had a lot to do with Christine.

Being bubbly and pretty in that part of the world in 1959 came at a price. Even after she was married, men just wouldn't leave her alone. Police later recorded at least half a dozen men who had made passes at her, patted her on the bottom, grabbed her or tried to kiss her. Most of the time they had been drinking, and around Osprey, a lot of men drank a lot.

There was one man in particular that Christine had come to dread. He kept turning up at the house, and he couldn't keep his hands to himself. You'll meet him properly later in this book. For now, I'll just tell you that Christine was frightened of him, and that Cliff had finally had enough and warned him to stay away.

There was something else too. The day before she died, Christine told her mother and her mother-in-law that Cliff had been in a fight. In her words, he "liked to got killed yesterday." Nobody seems to know for certain who he fought with, or why. But it's one of those little details that has nagged at investigators ever since.

I can't find much written about Jimmie and Debbie as little people, like what made them laugh or what their favourite toys were. They were simply too young to have left much behind. And to me, that's one of the cruellest parts of this whole story. They never got the chance to become anyone at all.

On the morning of Saturday 19 December 1959, the Walkers got up for what should have been a busy, ordinary day. There were errands to run and cars to look at in Sarasota. Christmas was six days away.

By the next morning, all four of them would be dead.

End of chapter one. 11 more chapters in the full book.