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Chapter 1
Best Friends Next Door
Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock were fifteen years old, and they lived side by side in the Sydney suburb of West Ryde. Only a fence separated their homes. By the summer of 1965 the two girls were best friends, the kind who did everything together and told each other everything. Both of them had already known more loss than most girls their age.
Marianne was born in West Germany. In September 1958 she arrived in Melbourne with her parents, Helmut and Elisabeth, and her brothers and sister, Helmut Jr, Hans, Peter, Trixie and Wolfgang. The following year another baby, Norbert, was born, making seven children in all. Like so many post-war migrant families, the Schmidts came to Australia hoping for a better life, and like so many of them, they started with very little.
Their first home was a migrant hostel at Unanderra, south of Sydney. From there the family moved inland to Temora, a farming town in the Riverina, and for a while that was home. Then, in 1963, Helmut Schmidt was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s disease, a cancer of the lymphatic system. He moved his family to Sydney, closer to the help he would need, and they settled into a house in West Ryde.
It didn’t save him. Helmut Schmidt died the following year.
So by the time Marianne turned fifteen, she had lost her father, and her mother was raising seven children on her own in a country that still wasn’t quite theirs. Marianne wasn’t the baby of the family, and she certainly wasn’t treated like one. With so many younger brothers and a little sister in the house, she was expected to help, and she did.
Next door lived Christine Sharrock. Christine’s own father had died in 1953, when she was just a little girl. Her mother, Beryl, later remarried and made a new home with her husband in Seven Hills, in Sydney’s north-west. Christine didn’t go with her. Instead she lived in West Ryde with her grandparents, Jim and Jeanette Taig, and she lived there by her own choice. Why she preferred her grandparents’ house to her mother’s has never been explained, and I’m not going to guess at it. What we do know is that when the Schmidt family moved in next door, Christine found a girl her own age who understood what it was like to grow up without a dad.
The two of them became inseparable.
They were ordinary teenage girls. They thought about boys, they kept diaries, and they couldn’t wait for the long summer holidays. In Sydney, that meant the beach.
Cronulla was a favourite spot for the Schmidt family. It sat on the far side of the city in the Sutherland Shire, a long train ride from West Ryde, but it had the surf, the rocks, and the great rolling sandhills behind Wanda Beach to the north. The Schmidts had gone there for picnics before. For a family without much money, a train ticket and a packed lunch made for a cheap, happy day out.
On New Year’s Day 1965, Marianne and Christine went to Cronulla together. It was a good day. We know that because of what the girls wrote in their diaries that night. They had met some boys at the beach, and they had kissed them.
It is the most innocent thing in the world, two fifteen-year-olds giggling over a stolen kiss on a summer’s day. But it says something about what happened later that those diaries were opened and read after the girls were dead. Their private thoughts became part of a murder investigation, picked over by detectives and newspapermen looking for a reason. Who were the boys? Had the girls arranged to meet someone? Had someone followed them? Two schoolgirls who should have been allowed to keep their little secrets ended up having everything about them laid bare.
The very next day, 2 January, the Schmidt children went back to Cronulla again, this time without Christine.
Then things at home became harder still. Elisabeth Schmidt was admitted to hospital for a major operation. With their mother gone, the running of the household fell to the two eldest at home, Helmut Jr and Marianne. Marianne was fifteen, and she was suddenly helping to look after a house full of younger brothers and a little sister in the middle of the school holidays.
Anyone who has had a pack of bored kids at home in January knows what that’s like. The little ones wanted to go to the beach. Marianne and Christine wanted to go to the beach. It was summer, and the beach was where everyone wanted to be.
On Saturday 9 January, the girls asked Elisabeth, who was still in hospital, whether they could take the younger children down to Cronulla the next day. She said yes. She had no reason not to. It was something the family had done many times, and Marianne was a sensible, capable girl. In 1965, teenagers took the train across Sydney with their younger brothers and sisters all the time, and nobody thought twice about it.
But on Sunday 10 January, it rained.
The trip was off, and the girls had to wait one more day.
On Monday morning, 11 January 1965, the rain had cleared. Marianne gathered up four of the younger children, Christine came over from next door, and the six of them set off for the station with their bags and their lunch.
If it had rained on the Monday too, two girls might have grown up, married, had children of their own, and become grandmothers. Instead, they were heading for Wanda Beach.
End of chapter one. 11 more chapters and about 12,067 words in the full book.
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What's inside: 12 chapters
- 1. Best Friends Next Door
- 2. A Windy Day at Cronulla
- 3. The Boy Hunting Crabs
- 4. “You’re Going the Wrong Way”
- 5. The Last Train Home
- 6. The Mannequin in the Sand
- 7. What the Sand Hid
- 8. The Post-Mortem
- 9. Seven Thousand Interviews
- 10. A Bloody Awful Thing
- 11. The Beauty Queen Killer
- 12. The Man Who Never Talked, and the Evidence That Vanished
About this book
"THE KILLER WHO BURIED THEM IN THE SAND" is a general book by Leigh Ralph with 12 chapters and approximately 12,067 words. It covers key insights and practical takeaways on the topic.
This book was created using Inkfluence AI, an AI-powered book generation platform that helps authors write, design, and publish complete books.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is "THE KILLER WHO BURIED THEM IN THE SAND" about?
"THE KILLER WHO BURIED THEM IN THE SAND" is a general book by Leigh Ralph covering key insights and practical takeaways on the topic.
How many chapters are in "THE KILLER WHO BURIED THEM IN THE SAND"?
The book contains 12 chapters and approximately 12,067 words. Topics covered include Best Friends Next Door, A Windy Day at Cronulla, The Boy Hunting Crabs, “You’re Going the Wrong Way”, and more.
Who wrote "THE KILLER WHO BURIED THEM IN THE SAND"?
This book was written by Leigh Ralph and created using Inkfluence AI, an AI book generation platform that helps authors write, design, and publish books.
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