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AJ Blythe: Welcome to the Down Under Mystery Club. I’m AJ Blythe and joining me is fellow mystery author Ava Ness. Every week we dive into curious cases, cracking Goodreads and all things mystery. Grab a cuppa, settle in and let’s get sleuthing.
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AJ Blythe: Welcome to episode one of the Down Under Mystery Club. I am AJ and joining me is my co-host and fellow mystery author, Ava. Thank you for joining me, Ava.
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Ava Ness: It’s a pleasure to be here, AJ.
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AJ Blythe: We’ve been planning the show for months and we’re so glad you’re here to kick things off with us. In today’s episode, we’re heading back in time to a dusty outback town in 1932 to look at a crime that has baffled police for decades. In a moment, I’m going to outline the mystery. I’ve done the research.
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Ava Ness: And I’m coming in cold.
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AJ Blythe: After we’ve discussed the case we’ll talk about some of the mystery novels it brings to mind.
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AJ Blythe: So picture this, Ava. It’s the 11th of June, 1932. The Great Depression is hitting Australia hard and the remote red dirt town of Cloncurry in Queensland is unusually buzzing. It’s state election night. Everyone is glued to their radios or down at the local pubs waiting for the political dust to settle. But while the town is distracted, one of the most brilliant, non-violent and boldest bank robberies in Australian history is being carried out. They are about to walk away with over 14,000 pounds, which is about 1.5 million Australian dollars in today’s money. Today we are discussing the legendary unsolved Cloncurry bank robberies, a crime so perfectly planned the banks didn’t even realise they’d been hit until Monday morning business hours.
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Ava Ness: My goodness.
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AJ Blythe: Now, because no one was ever caught, this story lives in two worlds. We’ve got like the hard and fast historical facts, and then of course like the wild beer-soaked outback folklore. So I thought we’d start with the absolute facts so we can see what the story really is.
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AJ Blythe: So I have three main facts.
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AJ Blythe: The first is that over that election weekend, someone cleanly unlocked and walked into the strong rooms of two different banks in Cloncurry, the Queensland National Bank and the Bank of New South Wales. So they were a little bit lucky because they stole 10,750 pounds from the first bank. But while they were inside that first vault, they found the keys to a second bank down the street.
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Ava Ness: They just left the keys out.
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AJ Blythe: So yeah, they had the keys for one bank locked in the vault of the other bank. So they then took those keys and walked down the road and robbed a second bank and took another 3,600 pounds.
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Ava Ness: I mean, at this point, who could blame them?
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AJ Blythe: I mean, that’s right. And apparently, according to the newspaper articles which I’ve tracked down and have with me, they also found the keys to a third bank but it was in Mount Isa. And Cloncurry and Mount Isa today are a couple of hours drive away. So back in the day, it would have been a bit of a distance. So they just threw those keys on the ground and left that bank to be.
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Ava Ness: Left it for the next bank robber to come in and collect the keys and head off to Mount Isa.
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AJ Blythe: And the third fact was they took so much physical currency that by Monday morning, ordinary businesses in Cloncurry all ground to a halt because there literally wasn’t enough cash left in the town to buy a loaf of bread.
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Ava Ness: Can you imagine? That is just unbelievable. They stole all the cash in the town.
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AJ Blythe: Yeah, so they couldn’t do anything. They had to, in fact, I’ve got the newspaper articles here and it says that there was an arrival of a plane from Longreach with 3,000 pounds for the Queensland National Bank, which enabled that bank to resume normal business. And later in the day, the inspector of the Bank of New South Wales brought money by car from Richmond.
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Ava Ness: It’s just like, you can’t, you just can’t imagine now what that must have been like.
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AJ Blythe: No, and there were a few businesses that had been open on Saturday morning and they came in Monday morning to bank their takings. So that gave the banks a tiny bit of money just to get started, but they had to wait really for these sort of shipments to arrive with some more cash. Obviously the police descended on the town. There were tracking dogs brought in, a 500 pound reward, which was massive in those days, was posted. But the town basically hit a wall of silence. No one saw anything, no one heard anything, no one was ever charged.
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Ava Ness: Wow, this just sounds like something out of a novel.
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AJ Blythe: I know, it’s quite amazing. And the newspaper articles at the time were quite interesting. It says no suspects and no further developments. And as we know, it’s still unsolved today. They sent detectives through by train and they interviewed quite a few people.
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AJ Blythe: There was a lot of speculation that it was an inside job, obviously because they just walked in with no issues. But the methods used by detectives were quite frowned upon, which is possibly one of the reasons why they did hit a bit of a brick wall.
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AJ Blythe: It says here that, “We will take the case of 1 bank teller. He was informed they would like to see him at the station. On arrival, he was cross-questioned by two and sometimes 3 and detained for 28 hours. All through this ordeal, he was bullied, threatened and called all the imaginable. As a matter of fact, at the end of the 28 hours, he was beginning to think he had committed the crime, had been tried and convicted and was on his way to jail. Such a state was his mind in.”
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Ava Ness: Wow. Well, you can’t really blame them. I mean, as you said, it had to either be an inside job or in one way or the other. Like I think either way it must have been because either the whole town was on it and then they all left and lived their life of luxury or no one in the town must have been in it because there’s no way you could have some people in the town that wouldn’t talk about it.
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AJ Blythe: No, well, that’s right. And I think this is where the history books end, because of course, where the facts stop, the Outback legends begin. And I think that, as always, people, when they’ve got a mystery, try to piece answers together to make sense of it.
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Ava Ness: Oh, my mind is running wild. My imagination is in full throttle.
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AJ Blythe: So, you know, this is the big question. How do you walk into a high security vault without breaking a single window? And local folklore says it all started with a party, a swimming hole and a very blundering bank manager.
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Ava Ness: Again, this just sounds like a novel.
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AJ Blythe: It does, doesn’t it? According to town legend, a group of five local larrikins knew they needed the manager’s keys, but they couldn’t mug him or anything like that because everyone that was a tiny town would have known what had happened. So they threw a massive party down on the Cloncurry River. They plied the bank manager with alcohol and charmed him into escaping the heat of the brutal outback heat by going for a swim. So while he was in the river, completely oblivious, it was a covert operation happening on the banks. And one of the thieves had some wax with him and he went over to the bank manager’s jacket took out the heavy iron keys and took impressions of them and then put the original keys back in the pocket of the jacket with the bank manager, none the wiser. Local whispers spent 90 years guessing who those five thieves were and gossip points to the ancestors of famous cattle station owners. And as for the 14,000 pounds that they did steal, myth says the crew panicked after the police lockdown and they buried the loot deep beneath the red dirt of a local cattle station.
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Ava Ness: Oh, hidden treasure.
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AJ Blythe: Yeah, there is some theories that it still is there today.
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Ava Ness: You can’t have a good legend without a hidden treasure.
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AJ Blythe: Well, that’s right. Apparently there was nobody in the town who suddenly started spending money, nobody who’s suddenly had a flashy car or anything like that. So I guess the perfect crime.
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Ava Ness: No one left town unexpectedly.
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AJ Blythe: No, that’s right. Everyone just carried on. So, you know, the perfect crime it might have been. History says unsolved, but folklore says brilliant, I think is really the way I read it.
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Ava Ness: Absolutely. And it just, it seems like it’s such an Australian cultural kind of thing to happen, not just the robbery in itself, but then the aftermath.
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AJ Blythe: That’s right. And, we have our bushranger legends and, really they were quite nasty individuals. They murdered people and they robbed. But in Australia, we’ve kind of got this sort of a culture around the legend of the bushrangers and they’re not quite seen in the same way. Whereas this one here, I think the town rallied because it was the Great Depression, people were struggling, it was the harsh outback. And it was probably maybe almost a bit of a Robin Hood thing. Maybe they distributed the money amongst the whole town and that’s why they all kept quiet.
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Ava Ness: Well, maybe. Now, this is interesting because when you told me that we were going to do this episode on a bank heist, I thought you actually meant the bank heist from 1978 in Murwillumbah.
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AJ Blythe: No.
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Ava Ness: And now I’m wondering if those bank robbers were inspired by these ones.
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AJ Blythe: Possibly. This one here is quite legendary, especially at the time, it was in the newspapers around the country because it was quite brazen and they didn’t catch them and then the money never seemed to appear again.
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Ava Ness: Yeah, so there’s a lot of similarities with that case in 1978. A similar sort of situation in that the bank was Bank of New South Wales, I think at the time. And it was a storage facility, I think, for all of the cash, perhaps for the region. And under the dead of night, the robbers, I think they tunneled into the bank vault, stole $1.7 million, which was about $10 million in 1978, jammed the bank vault and left and no trace ever been found in the money and no one knows who actually did it still to this day and similar situation where you had the cops unable to get into the vault because they jammed it. The whole town came under suspicion so it’s like literally just a copy and paste of this. This bank robbery, I feel like this original one was the blueprint for this one.
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AJ Blythe: Maybe it was the same people because, if they’d been in their early 20s in Cloncurry, then they would have been late 40s, 50s then.
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Ava Ness: Maybe, yeah. So, and apparently there was a saying that became very popular, sort of went viral back in 1978 version of going viral where when they, in a very Keystone Cops way, when the cops finally got into the vault, a police officer famously declared, they got the lot. And it became, and in a typical Australian fashion, of course, it ended up on T-shirts and mugs.
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AJ Blythe: Of course it did.
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Ava Ness: It became an absolute legend in this area, in this town. So yeah, now that you’ve told me about this mystery, I feel like this was the blueprint for that one and possibly others as well.
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AJ Blythe: Oh, absolutely. Because when the police did get into the vaults in Cloncurry, they found that documents and jewellery, all those things were not only left behind, they’d been completely undisturbed. So they hadn’t even looked there or tried to take those things. They knew just what they wanted, which was the cash and that was all that was taken.
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Ava Ness: Well, you know, it’s probably enough.
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AJ Blythe: Well, that’s right at the time, one and a half million. I mean, that’s still a fair whack of money today.
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Ava Ness: Interesting though, because, you know, the 1978 bank robbery, they took all the cash, but it was noted as being untraceable because they were banknotes. But in 1932, were they also have just been banknotes? Like I’m just wondering in terms of moving that amount of cash, was it coins or?
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AJ Blythe: No, I believe it was mostly notes. They were coins as well. But it was mostly notes. And that was one of the things that had been discussed at the time was how did they actually move that much money and not be seen. And the fact that it was election night, so everybody was at the pub watching it or at home listening to it, I think was a distraction. There are some theories about how it was done. And because it is a crime that’s lived on for over 90 years, it’s actually been turned into an award-winning Australian short film called The Bank Manager. And interesting, the local filmmakers Their own great grandfather was rumoured to be one of the masterminds behind it. It did win two major awards at the Australian Independent Film Festival and stars an Australian Logie Award-winning actor, Gyton Grantley. And I will include that on the website for this podcast because it’s a great production and I highly recommend watching it. And they really take that folklore and present it as part of the movie. So it’s very good, I think. So definitely watch that if you haven’t seen it.
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Ava Ness: Yeah, I will definitely watch that. And I wonder if there was any suspects, because I know in the 1978 robbery, there was a lot of speculation that it had been committed by the magnetic drill gang. You know, and it seems like gangs and bank robberies are really linked together. And I wonder if there was any like gangs in the 1930s who?
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AJ Blythe: Yeah, so that it wasn’t a gang. There was a lot of suspicion that it was a couple of friends who were, from the local cattle properties who came up with this idea and to rob the bank. And that’s the story that the film takes. So they don’t try to make it seem like they don’t know. They kind of go, this is who did it. And that’s how the film is presented, which is where the rumours all came from with the Cloncurry bank heist. But I guess because they never solved it at this point, I don’t think it’ll ever be solved unless one day a farmer happens to dig up a great big trunk full of old banknotes.
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Ava Ness: That’s astounding, isn’t it? I wonder if there was a reward because in the 1978 robbery, there was a reward posted and never claimed. It was $250,000. But it kind of seems so like insignificant compared to what was actually stolen. And I was thinking, I wonder like in 1930s currency, what a suitable reward would have been or if even offered a reward.
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AJ Blythe: Yeah. So they offered 500 pounds, which was again never claimed.
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Ava Ness: If that was a lot of money, especially in the Depression, you’d think if somebody knew something, they would have said something.
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AJ Blythe: Unless it was a bit of a Robin Hood thing and they stole from the bank and then distributed amongst everyone.
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Ava Ness: Well, you’d like to hope that’s what happened.
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AJ Blythe: I like to think that’s what happened because I think that makes a great ending and everybody loves a Robin Hood story.
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Ava Ness: Absolutely. Let’s just go with that. That’s the ending we should go with, I think.
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AJ Blythe: I think so. I think that whether the stolen money is still buried out somewhere in the red dirt or was spent a long time ago, the mystery does remain frozen in time. But for now, I think we’ll have to say case closed.
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Ava Ness: Definitely case closed until further notice, until that treasure gets dug up.
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AJ Blythe: That’s right. Maybe one day. [transition music]
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AJ Blythe: I think there’s a lot to talk about when it comes to mystery novels that echo this heist. I think readers are drawn to bank heist and robbery books because they provide an adrenaline rush. They pick clever underdogs against corrupt institutions. They tap into that universal fantasy of beating the system and reflect that Robin Hood ethos of the poor taking from the rich. So I think for that reason, authors tend to regularly write about them.
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Ava Ness: I think you know that heist books are one of my favourite sub genres. So, I think that bank robberies probably fall into the category of a heist. And I think it is just such great conflict because it’s all of the smarts that are needed to pull off the crime. But then there’s all the conflict that happens between the members of the gang or the group that’s undertaking it. And it’s just so entertaining and such high stakes.
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AJ Blythe: Yeah, really high stakes. And I think also that’s why, you know, Hollywood also embraces it because there’s always heist movies coming out, there’s been some this year, so I think it’s definitely something that attracts an audience.
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Ava Ness: Yes, absolutely.
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AJ Blythe: When I was trying to think of books that related to this, there were so many aspects to take from. So I think I’ve got about six different books from, you know, six different themes that come from bank robberies. But the obvious one, as you just said, is that high stakes and suspense where, you know, the reader experiences that kind of vicarious thrill and fear of being caught. And there’s that ticking clock, which always, you know, heightens tension.
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Ava Ness: Yes, the ticking clock is great.
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AJ Blythe: And that tension that gets increased. I don’t know if you’ve read any of the books from this series, the Everyone In by Benjamin Stevenson. The book this year was released this year is Everyone in the Bank is a Thief. And it’s a whodunit and the characters are all locked inside a bank during an active armed robbery. The stakes are immediately life or death. There’s that ticking clock adrenaline of a bank heist and that kind of classic locked room mystery as well.
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Ava Ness: Yes, I love that series. I have not read that one yet, but it is definitely on my TBR.
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AJ Blythe: Yeah, so I think that, I mean, there’s a lot of different mysteries that have the high stakes and suspense, but I think, you know, as we said, that ticking clock really amps it up. I think that, you know, the mastermind characters, if you look at this Cloncurry case, the fact that they were able to get copies of keys, and I think in total, there’s some conflicting reports, but for the Cloncurry heist, they needed it between 6 and 8 keys to actually get through to the vault. So they didn’t just need to get one key, there was multiple keys they needed to get. So that kind of mastermind character, you know, watching characters perform at the, you know, outer limits of human ability or using elite skills and intellect and teamwork to, you know, outsmart security systems.
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AJ Blythe: And there was another book that was published this year by Holly Hepburn called The Locked Room. And this is sort of a Sherlock Holmes kind of story where a bank worker receives a public letter from a Professor Moriarty figure challenging someone to solve an impossible heist before it happens. And then a high profile vault is breached without any signs of entry. So it triggers that battle of wits between a criminal mastermind and a brilliant investigator.
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Ava Ness: It’s just got all the elements. They’re just going to keep you turning the pages.
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AJ Blythe: Yeah, it really does. I always like those ones where you’ve got to be really like they’ve got to have some smarts or they’ve got to solve some puzzles to actually get to the answer.
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Ava Ness: That’s the best bit.
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AJ Blythe: Yeah, and I think it’s that intricate puzzle that I’m always very drawn to and the Cloncurry Heist has that because how did they get the keys? Books where you know there’s this meticulously constructed plan and the reader kind of follows along and has to watch all the little pieces kind of click together or what eventually click in the reader’s mind and then sometimes disastrously fall apart and the reader goes, how on earth can this all come back together again?
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AJ Blythe: And there is a tea ladies mystery series by Amanda Hampson.
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Ava Ness: Yes, I love those.
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AJ Blythe: And there’s one in particular called The Cryptic Clue. They receive a cryptic coded message directing her straight to the hidden spoils of a major bank robbery. And so it becomes like a literal logic puzzle as the characters have to decrypt codes and track down the physical treasure. So I guess that classic treasure hunt, I suppose.
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Ava Ness: Yeah, that’s right. Because, you know, treasure is, again, is such a hook for the reader and then the two are linked.
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AJ Blythe: That’s right. A bank robbery, there’s always going to be money or diamonds or something. And it doesn’t have to be necessarily, you know, a bank that the money is being robbed from. It could be somebody’s home safe or, an art gallery or something, anywhere where that treasure is.
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Ava Ness: Yeah, but it could even be a person. One of my favourite books is Six of Crows by Leigh Bardugo, and in that it’s a fantasy book, but it’s an ice court, which in itself just sounds amazing.
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Ava Ness: And then there’s a gang that are, you know, infiltrating this impenetrable fortress to kidnap a very valuable person.
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AJ Blythe: Yes.
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Ava Ness: So, it’s just always that high value of what’s being stolen.
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AJ Blythe: That’s right. And it has to have high value, not just to the criminal masterminds, but also to the person or organisation that it’s been stolen from. So that it has meaning and triggers that whole hunt and trying to solve the case. And I think that also comes, into that kind of escapism. So when you have something like you just said, you’ve got to get in, but you’ve got to actually think about getting out as well.
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Ava Ness: Yeah, that to me is always where the stakes lie because I’m someone that doesn’t like caves or anything like that, you know, like how do you get out of something? That’s where the real hook for me.
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AJ Blythe: Yeah, especially because some of them have one way in and therefore there is only one way back out again. So if you’ve got in, but what if somebody stumbled across you or heard about it or a secret alarm’s gone off and you’ve got to get back out. I don’t know if you’ve ever read any Joe Nesbo books?
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Ava Ness: No.
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AJ Blythe: One of the books is called Nemesis and it’s a string of bank robberies and the criminal mastermind behind that basically taunts the police with cryptic clues that are left behind. They know these robberies are going to happen and this mastermind keeps getting away. I think that there’s quite a few stories that I’ve read where That’s the big puzzle. It’s not so much even who did it, but how did they do it.
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Ava Ness: Yeah, the how did it?
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AJ Blythe: And I think that’s with the Cloncurry case it’s how did they do it? There’s a theory that they were down at the river and they took wax impressions, but I’m not quite sure how they then made the keys so precisely from these wax impressions.
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Ava Ness: Well, that’s what I was thinking when you said that, because, you know, it’s not like they had movies or TV to get these ideas from. as you might have a few decades later. So how do they even know to do that?
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AJ Blythe: Yeah, I’m not sure. And I kind of wonder if maybe there had to be like a blacksmith involved because surely they would be the ones who would know how to melt the right type of metal and pour it into a mould and do something with. But none of the information I read ever referenced a blacksmith, although there would have to have been one out in that district somewhere because there would have still been a lot of horses that required the horseshoes and so on.
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Ava Ness: It sounds a little bit too much hard work. I think maybe just the keys got stolen.
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AJ Blythe: Yeah, possibly, although the bank manager just swore that he had the keys with him at all times, except when he was swimming in the river. And I guess that’s why they came back to that it had to be an inside job.
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Ava Ness: Yeah, that did.
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AJ Blythe: Another book that I probably should mention is that there is actually one called The Six Keys, which has been written about the Cloncurry heist specifically, and it takes all that fact and the folklore and turns it into a story. And they don’t use the names of the people that were actually suspected of carrying it out. But it takes that whole supposition of the bank robbery and stealing the keys and making wax impressions while the party was happening and the bank manager was swimming. Yeah, I haven’t actually read that book, but it does sound very interesting. And I think that, well, I’m not sure if libraries have it, but I think you actually have to go to the Cloncurry Historical Society to actually get copies of it.
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Ava Ness: That’s a great title, The Six Keys.
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AJ Blythe: It is, isn’t it? It sounds very intriguing and I guess it comes back to how many keys had to be stolen to be actually get into the Cloncurry Bank.
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Ava Ness: So when I was doing the research to have a look at these books, I came across one that I haven’t read, but I actually bought it because I want to read it now. And I think this was a movie, Can’t Buy Me Love.
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AJ Blythe: Okay.
00:24:10.000 –> 00:24:28.000
Ava Ness: So it is set in New York City in 1964, the night the Beatles performed. And there was a claim that no major crimes were committed the night Beatles performed in New York because it was such a, you know, everybody was watching them on TV. They were on the Ed Sullivan Show, I think.
00:24:28.000 –> 00:24:30.000
AJ Blythe: Yeah, absolutely.
00:24:30.000 –> 00:25:43.000
Ava Ness: And so this book is set during that time and the blurb says, “Sonny Carter, an aging bank robber, just recently released from prison after a 25-year stretch for bank robbery. Unrepentant, he’s determined to finish what he started back in 1939, knocking over New York City’s prestigious Hudson National Bank and Trust Company. It’s not going to be easy though. Banks are a whole lot tougher than they used to be and members of his old gang are just about ready for the retirement house. And if that wasn’t enough, adding insult to injury is the fact that the stool pigeon responsible for his lengthy incarceration is now the president of the very bank he wants to desperately hit. This time, however, he has a plan that might prove to be foolproof. Thanks to two unlikely sources, a sexy bank employee with secrets and a shady past, and the four unsuspecting mop tops from Liverpool about to make their historic American debut on The Ed Sullivan Show. A light-hearted and suspense novel featuring 4 ex-cons who plan and execute a $5 million heist. In one night, these partners in crime face conflict with New Jersey mobsters, unexpected love, loss and bittersweet triumph during one of the most important eras in American rock and roll history.
00:25:43.000 –> 00:25:46.000
AJ Blythe: Oh, that does sound very intriguing.
00:25:46.000 –> 00:26:02.000
Ava Ness: It does. I don’t know if that’s the movie that came out in the 80s. I can’t remember. I’ll have to have a look and see if it’s the same one. I mean, I know there’s been lots of movies with Beatles titles, but just something about it made me think, oh, is that? Was that the one?
00:26:02.000 –> 00:26:13.000
Ava Ness: No, I don’t think it was. I don’t think it’s based on the same story. Someone should make a movie about that because that sounds like an incredible story. I can’t wait to read that book.
00:26:13.000 –> 00:26:17.000
AJ Blythe: It does, doesn’t it? Oh, you have to let us know what it’s like because it does sound really good.
00:26:17.000 –> 00:26:18.000
Ava Ness: Yeah, I will.
00:26:18.000 –> 00:26:56.000
AJ Blythe: I think that there’s so many elements of this Cloncurry bank story that I’m kind of intrigued to know what happens. And I’m really glad that they did make a short movie out of it, but I think they could have actually built upon it and made a full length feature. And I’m glad that there is a book, The Six Keys, which does sort of meld that fact and fiction together. So I’m going to have to see if I can, you know, track down a copy of that at the local library, because I think that would be really interesting to actually see how it plays out from somebody who did a lot of research before actually writing the book to blend as much fact into the fiction as possible.
00:26:56.000 –> 00:27:03.000
Ava Ness: My TBR is growing ever longer. And I know you’ll put it in the show notes, but that book, Can’t Buy Me Love, it’s by Dan McNeil.
00:27:03.000 –> 00:27:17.000
AJ Blythe: Okay, lovely. And I will have all the links to all the books we’ve talked about and links to the research for the Cloncurry Bank Heist and also to the YouTube, which is the short film made about that Cloncurry heist as well.
00:27:17.000 –> 00:27:34.000
AJ Blythe: Thank you so much for joining us for the very first episode of the Down Under Mystery Club. Launching this has been an incredible journey and I’m so glad you’re here for day one. Next week we’re going to look at the mystery of Australia’s Titanic. So until then, pick up a good mystery book and keep sleuthing. Bye for now.
00:27:34.000 –> 00:27:35.000
Ava Ness: Bye.
00:27:35.000 –> 00:27:53.000
AJ Blythe: Thanks for joining the Down Under Mystery Club. If you enjoyed the show, follow so you never miss an episode and share it with a fellow mystery lover. We enjoy hearing from you, so drop us a comment at ajblythe.com/podcast. Until next time, club adjourned.