Etched into the memory of Australians is the horrific kidnapping and murder of Sydney boy Graeme Thorne in 1960. It represented such a loss of innocence for our country.
However, this was not the first time that the kidnapping of a child accompanied by a ransom demand took place in Sydney.
On February 24 1938 Ronald Powles called at the Roxy Picture Theatre at Narrabeen where he was the projectionist. He only wanted to make a quick check on the equipment, so he left his two and a half year old son Philip. in the car. When he returned the child had disappeared.
Initially he thought Philip had somehow climbed out of the little soft-topped vehicle and wandered off. but there was no sign of him. He rounded up some shopkeepers and they made an extensive search of the scrub along the shores of Narabeen Lake. The little boy still couldn’t be found, so Powles called the police then went back to Dee Why to let his wife know. Powles worked at several theatres in the area, including one at Dee Why.
THE RANSOM DEMAND
Mr Powles arrived at Dee Why around 1 o’clock and met James Johnson, who had been working in the Dee Why theatre. Straight away Johnson said, ‘I had a queer message for you this morning. About 11.20 o’clock a man telephoned for you. He seemed strange in his manner and said he would call again at 2 o’clock. ‘
Dee Why picture theatre, circa 1950.
Ronald Powles informed his wife and the couple waited at the theatre until the second call came in. A demand was made for £300. When R0nald protested that he didn’t have that sort of money the caller said. ‘That doesn’t matter, your family does.’ He warned Ronald to call off the police and said he would call again in a couple of hours. The comment about the family having money referred to Joyce’s mother, Lillian Williams, who was comfortably off. She had recently been widowed and was living with her daughter and son-in-law,
Ronald Powles with one of the detectives on the case.
Naturally the police were not called off and an expanded search for the little boy began, though still without success. Preparations began ready to drag the lake and Middle Harbour. The anxiety level for the heavily pregnant Joyce must have been off the scale.
As part of the extensive media coverage, a photo of Ronald and Joyce Powles was published, with Philip as an infant.
There was also a photo of Philip, with a detailed description of what he was wearing at the time he disappeared.
That night a police guard was set up outside the Powles’ small cottage on Dee Why Parade. No further contact was made about where to leave the ransom money.
LITTLE PHILIP POWLES IS FOUND
On Thursday morning at about 10.00am, the nurse in charge of young children at Quest Haven private school in nearby Mona Vale received a phone call. It was from a man arranging for a boy to be admitted to the school. He said he had to go to the country suddenly for a few days, but would drive down to see the child at the weekend. He told her the little boy would arrive shortly, by bus. The nurse, Miss Nunn, had been off work the previous day and thought details of the toddler’s reception must have been completed earlier.
Miss Nunn duly met the bus and took the boy into the school. He was quite happy and enjoyed playing with the other pupils until he was put to bed. She was perplexed that he had no luggage and was not wearing shoes, but assumed the person who rang her would bring them at the weekend.
That evening Bryan Lynch, a former employee of the school, met up with Miss Nunn and in conversation she told him about the odd circumstances of the new child’s arrival. Lynch didn’t think much about it and went home to bed. He was woken when his mate came home and spoke about how strange it was that a kidnapping would happen in a place like Narrabeen. Lynch agreed and when he got up next morning he saw the photo of the missing Philip Powles. He was sure it was the child his friend had told him about, and contacted the police.
Meanwhile the principal of Quest Haven had told various friends about the boy’s sudden arrival. They began calling and telling her to check the newspaper stories about the kidnapping. She was shocked to realize that her school was ‘harbouring’ the young victim.
It wasn’t long before police arrived at Quest Haven to return the still perfectly contented Philip to his home, and the arms of his father.
Joyce Powles had been through so much that she collapsed when she saw her son. Afterwards she and her mother Lillian tried to get Philip to tell them what had happened to him, but all he would say was, ‘Pippa on a big bus!‘
Detectives now turned their attention to trying to find out who had put the child on the bus at Narrabeen. Unfortunately there were so many people getting on and off the vehicle, and it had all happened so quickly that the conductor, George Thornberg, wasn’t able to give a good description, except that it was a young man. A kindly woman passenger had nursed the little boy until he was dropped off at the school.
POLICE AT DEAD-END IN LOST CHILD CASE
Without being able to identify the suspect there was little more detectives could do. They were sure it must have been someone Philip was familiar with, or he would have been scared and upset. The Powles insisted there was no-one they knew who would do such a thing
‘Police practically gave up hope yesterday of substantiating theories they had formed in the Powles case. …A report will be submitted to the Chief of the C.I.B. (Mr. Prior) and then forwarded to the Commissioner’. (Daily Telegraph, March 4 1938)
The shocking truth was that those theories the police formed were that Ronald Powles, probably with the assistance of an unknown accomplice, had kidnapped his own child in an effort to extort money from his wife’s family.
There was a telling comment published in the Sydney Morning Herald on March 3. ‘Other features may prompt the detectives to make a report, if no arrests are made, that they have formed the conclusion that the child was not abducted in the ordinary way. ‘
No charges were laid against Ronald Powles, due to lack of concrete proof and perhaps in deference to Joyce Powles, who gave birth to her second son on February 28. Powles’ behaviour was an unthinkable betrayal of his pregnant wife. She was seemingly unaware of what he had done, and if she did have her suspicions she probably suppressed them for the sake of her sanity.
The Powles moved from Dee Why to Concord in 1941, where Ronald bought a butcher’s shop. In April the following year he suffered a mental breakdown and after leaving hospital he went back to live with his mother in Dee Why. Joyce begged him to come home, but in the end he said he had a girlfriend he loved and wouldn’t be returning.
An insight into Ronald Powles personality came when he rang to tell Joyce that the girlfriend had died. With remarkable grace she offered words of sympathy, to which he responded; ‘Oh don’t worry, there’s plenty of others to take her place.’
It seems that Ronald’s breakdown was due in part to depression and he was sometimes suicidal. In 1943 when he was working as a truck driver in Dee Why, he was found almost dead from carbon monoxide poisoning.
The couple’s family had grown to three, as a little girl they named Jennifer was born in 1941. Joyce ran the butchers shop at Concord on her own and supported the children. As late as 1944 she was still urging her husband to return, but in 1945 she’d had enough and filed for divorce. Ronald did not attend the hearing, but sent the following ‘confession’.
I left my wife on July 23 1942, and have since that time have been employed as a radio artist, and in that occupation I have had the opportunity of meeting many girls whom I have attracted by the glamour of radio work. On a number of occasions since July 1942, I have committed adultery with a number of girls whose names and addresses I refuse to divulge. I have committed adultery at both Manly and Darlinghurst.
According to Joyce he was actually working at a grocery chain at the time of the divorce hearing. Unfortunately, there was a problem for her in that the Judge thought Ronald’s written evidence was a lot of narcissistic rubbish;
‘Considerable reluctance was expressed by Mr. Justice Edwards in the Divorce Court the other day, in accepting Ronald Charles Powles as a modern ‘Don Juan’ who devastated feminine hearts. His honour suggested that Powles might be a poseur who boasted of amorous conquests.’ (Truth, May 13 1945)
However, he granted Joyce a decree nisi, awarding her custody of the children. No doubt he considered she was far better off without her husband on many levels. Subsequently, Ronald took little interest in the children apart from occasional visits and phone calls. On one occasion when Joyce was ill he had a married mistress take care of them, incurring the wrath of her husband, who said she should have been looking after her own young family,
Joyce remarried in 1949 and one can only hope it was to a decent, caring man. She lived until the age of 90, passing away in 2005.
Alcohol took its toll on Ronald, who died in Sydney in 1968 aged only 54
Philip, the boy at the centre of the kidnapping, appeared in the press once more when he fell off his bike at Dee Why and fractured his skull, He then disappeared into obscurity. Records show that he married in 1962 and died in Sydney in 1996, aged 60.
The life of Philip’s younger brother, Ronald Jnr, was anything but obscure. Being given his father’s name turned out to a very bad omen. When he was nine years old, Ronald wrote to the children’s pages of The Sun with a trick involving placing a piece of paper over a glass of water then slowing turning the glass upside down. Ronald was right in that at first the water does not spill….amazing! However, when it does there is a torrent and not a drop is left in the glass, Metaphorically, this is what would happen to him in adult life.
FOR PART TWO, CLICK HERE.
