A hessian mask and 2 shallow graves: The hunt for 'mad' murderer Moxley.

The following is an edited extract from The Murder Squad by Michael Adams. Hear more about this case on Mamamia's True Crime Conversations. 

At around 8pm on Tuesday 5 April 1932, Frank Wilkinson and Dorothy Denzel went for a drive in his red Alvis sports car. 

This handsome couple were doing all right despite the Depression. Frank, 26, lived with his parents in Homebush, and worked as a compositor for The Sun. Dorothy, 21, previously a teenage beauty queen, had in 1931 lost her job as a GPO telephonist, but had since become a live-in nursemaid to a Burwood family.

After picking her up from this residence, Frank drove them towards a quiet spot near a Strathfield park that was popular with young couples.

There was plenty to talk about. In sporting news, everyone was still in awe of Phar Lap, and excited to know when he'd race for the first time in the United States. The Sydney Harbour Bridge had been opened with much fanfare - and the obnoxious intervention of fascist New Guardsman Francis de Groot - just a fortnight earlier. 

Just days ago, Frank had been at the wheel of the Wilkinson family car when they all drove across the mighty iron 'coathanger' together for the first time.

The lovers in the Alvis on Tuesday night were both sensible and hardworking young people. They were close to their families. That made it immediately concerning that, by the next morning - as radio broadcasts announced the sudden shock death of Phar Lap - they hadn't returned from their drive or slept in their respective beds. 

Dorothy and Frank's people called the police. A search of the hospitals turned up nothing. The Denzels and Wilkinsons quickly feared the worst.

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That day a man dropped off a red Alvis sports car at a garage he'd rented in Ashfield. 

This fellow took the license plate and some car parts with him and came back the next day with another chap to remove more components. When news of Frank and Dorothy's disappearance made the newspapers, the garage owner - who was likely in on the stolen car racket but not wanting to get mixed up in something far worse - reported the man's activities. 

Police staged a stakeout but he didn't return to the Alvis. 

The cops had made chilling discoveries in the car: a picnic rug missing strips torn from it and a rough mask made from a hessian bag with slits cut for the eyes. CIB Chief Inspector William 'Silent Bill' Prior kept the latter discovery out of the newspapers for the moment.

As Australia wondered whether Phar Lap had been murdered by the Yanks, police received more reports that seemed to confirm Frank and Dorothy had met with foul play. A Liverpool winemaker said that at 1am on the night in question, the driver of a red Alvis had called at his house saying he was out of petrol. The witness sold him a quarter-gallon of fuel.

The man had been alone but there'd been something bulky wedged beneath the partly folded down 'dicky seat' at the rear. Another witness had seen the same car hours later parked half a mile from Rookwood Cemetery.

These witnesses gave matching descriptions of the distinctive-looking man and, when shown photos of criminals from the area, both identified the same suspect: petty crook William Cyril Moxley. He was Superintendent MacKay's long-time 'fizzgig' or police informant. 

Later, MacKay would say that when he heard this news, he thought Moxley must've gone mad.

A witness told detectives that the man he'd seen had a bandaged right hand and torn clothes, which strengthened the police's theory that Frank and Dorothy had been killed in a robbery gone wrong. 

Frank, they thought, had fought back and injured his assailant. Everything pointed to murder.

A search of the Burwood residence he shared with his son, Douglas, and girlfriend, Linda Fletcher, turned up hessian bags in which he'd deliver wood. One had a piece cut from it that perfectly fitted the mask. Police also impounded Moxley's truck, which was found to have bloodstains on one running board. Moxley's identity and description weren't yet revealed to the press; reports simply said police were looking for a 'well-known criminal'.

Prior was assisted by Detective-Inspector John Walsh, who had recent form as a murder investigator, having nabbed a stick-up artist who'd shot a man dead. The inspectors commanded a party of some 200 police searching both for Moxley and for the bodies of his presumed victims.

Their efforts became more focused after a truck driver came forward with a black beret, inside which had been wrapped a nickel-plated cowl from a car's dashboard. He'd found these on a lonely road near Bankstown golf course around the time the couple were presumed to have been killed. 

The beret was identified as Dorothy's - the cowl came from Frank's car. After making these finds, the truckie told police, he'd gone to a petrol station at Milperra. When he apologised for calling so early, the owner told him he wasn't the first customer of the day. An hour earlier, an agitated Alvis driver had tried to shield his face as he got his tank topped up, and had appeared unsure how to work the vehicle before finally driving off.

Various witnesses told of dealings with the suspect, including the Milperra garage owner, and several men who'd bought Alvis parts from him. The search now concentrated on a vast tract of bush south of Moorebank. 

On Monday 11 April, a constable following a faint car track on a dirt road spotted blood on a tree near a pile of branches. Moving them aside, he saw three fingers protruding from freshly turned soil. Frank's body was facedown in a shallow grave.

That late morning, Moxley showed up at the Bankstown house of his former neighbour and workmate Frank Corbett. Corbett and his wife invited the man they knew as 'Hudson' in for a cup of tea and scones. Moxley didn't appear nervous, and left after making an arrangement to deliver four tons of firewood a few days hence. 

With the fugitive's name and description not in the newspapers, the Corbetts had no idea they'd just hosted a suspected double murderer.

Image: Supplied

Late that afternoon, a search volunteer found Dorothy's shallow grave, half a mile from where Frank had been buried.

She was facedown, her hands tied behind her back with a strip of rug. She wore a blue dress and a blue coat and the top part of her undergarments. Her bloomers were around her neck, though not tightly, and she had bruising on her throat. 

The Sun's headline the next day captured Sydney's feeling of shock, anger and urgency: 'Amazing Callousness of Girl-Murderer - Almost Naked Body Recovered - Cold Blood; Features Obliterated - Not Outraged - Efforts Redoubled in Man Hunt.'

Frank Corbett, presumably having heard through the grapevine that Moxley was wanted, told police of his recent encounter, including the fugitive's promise to return. If that happened, Corbett said, he'd shoot him on sight. But Prior and Walsh thought this so unlikely they didn't assign officers to stake out the house. 

Instead, heavily armed police and an increasing number of civilians drove out of Liverpool to search the thick bush beyond the rifle range.

By the next morning, Childs and MacKay had taken the unusual step of releasing a photo of Moxley. It appeared full-length on the front-page of The Daily Telegraph beside an article headlined: 'On the Track of the Wanted Man.'

This report included a detailed description, although his name and various aliases still weren't printed, and it also related his visit to the Corbett house, noting the police had conducted a fruitless search of its immediate surrounds. 

In making these details public, the CIB was now "opening out a manhunt on a scale never attempted before in Australia… [and they] will flood NSW with crime circulars and photographs concerning his appearance and habits."

Remarkably, Moxley did return to see Frank Corbett that morning. For the past couple of days, Corbett and a mate had waited in concealment with their rifles. They’d just given up on their ambush and gone into the house when Moxley came crunching up the path.

Corbett grabbed his gun. "Put your hands up, Bill," he said. "Don't move. I know what you have done."

Moxley bolted as Corbett fired a warning shot, which didn’t slow his escape into the scrub. Corbett phoned Bankstown police. The station didn't have a car and a constable had to catch a bus to the house. He didn't arrive until 10am. Only after he heard the story in person did he call the CIB. By the time Prior and his men arrived, Moxley had a two-hour head start.

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More than 100 plainclothesmen scoured a large area of scrub from Bankstown to Chullora. But the manhunt was hindered. The force still didn't have enough wireless cars, making coordination difficult, nor did it have a dog squad, which might have tracked Moxley to where he was actually hiding. 

After fleeing Corbett, Moxley knocked on the door of a nearby Bankstown home. When mother-of-two Marie Harding answered the door, the man she also knew as 'Hudson' forced his way inside and she became more terrified when she saw he had a shotgun under a blanket. 

Moxley said he needed to hide because he'd gone to see a mate about money and this fellow had shot at him. He ordered Marie to draw the blinds and to not answer the door to the butcher and baker when they called. 

Moxley also reassured her, saying he wasn't one to hurt women and children. He took a pair of socks, a hat and some old trousers from Marie. What he really wanted was that morning's newspaper. Presumably, Corbett had said something about it - or Moxley simply suspected he'd been named in the press. But Marie didn't have one. Moxley said: "You make sure." She was sure, repeating she didn't get the paper delivered.

Marie didn’t know his identity - or that he was wanted. 

She cooked him some chops, and cleverly put her clock forward an hour to make him think it was later. Moxley paid her a shilling for the meal and gave her children a penny each. Then, thinking it had reached four in the afternoon, he left them unharmed to continue his fugitive existence.

At one o'clock the next morning, Moxley approached a dairyman who was milking a cow and asked for a drink. The man saw that he fit the description of the suspect and threatened to unleash his dogs on Moxley, who melted back into the gloom.

Just after dawn, locals began their search, not waiting for police to arrive from the city. By now hundreds or even thousands of unemployed men and boys had joined the manhunt. Later that day, Childs and MacKay finally issued an arrest warrant and released the suspect's name: 'William Fletcher - aka Moxley'. His photo was published on the front page of The Sun, and 10,000 wanted posters were plastered up, not only in police stations, as was usual, but also in Sydney's hotels and billiard halls, which Moxley was known to frequent.

Prior made police history in New South Wales by making an appeal via the 'talkie' newsreels. 

Like Frankenstein's monster - now on dozens of massive billboards ringing the city and in thrilling coming-attraction cinema trailers - Moxley's face was everywhere. The public response was also akin to something from the upcoming film sensation. Civilians armed themselves with revolvers and rifles, clubs and other weapons, both to join the hunt and to protect themselves and their people. 

The Sydney Morning Herald reported: "Residents of the district are in a state of terror, men walking around with firearms being a common sight." 

Under the headline 'Terror Reigns', The Sun told its readers: "Milkmen have told the police that, in scores of places, they are greeted early in the morning by fear-stricken householders with guns." 

The paper worried that "the reckless use of firearms might be responsible for serious consequences", especially now that even "children are participating in the grave adventure". 

Police were inundated with more than 50 reports from people who reckoned they'd seen or heard Moxley near their homes, which sent officers rushing from one location to the next. But when it counted most, a local again let the suspect slip away. 

On the afternoon of Friday 15 April, in Lakemba, with police searching bush just 50 yards away, a resident disturbed a fellow in the scrub who jumped up and ran away from his camp. Thinking the bloke was just a drifter who didn't want to be rousted by the cops, the man didn’t bother to alert the search party. 

Then on the Saturday afternoon, curious because the hobo hadn't returned, the man went to see if he'd left anything behind. The witness found a shotgun, with cartridges jammed in its barrels, and its wooden stock split. Only then did he call the police.

Days went by without another confirmed sighting. Smith's Weekly ran a front-page article exposing Moxley's criminal history, including that this 'Pariah of the Underworld' was a suspected police informer who'd once taken a bullet to the head for his betrayals. In its details of his crimes, including all his daring cat burglaries in different suburbs, the article depicted a cunning character who knew both the city and the bush. 

Their profile was accompanied by a ghastly illustration imagining Moxley hiding somewhere in the scrub inside the vast search area. 

The effect on potential jury members can be imagined - as was true of much of the sensational coverage.

But Smith's Weekly and the police didn't have a clue that for the past week the search had been entirely in the wrong location. After Moxley fled his scrub hiding spot, he used an escape route never before available to fugitives. Traipsing through the bush to Earlwood, he stole a bicycle and rode it into the city. Plucking up his courage, he pedalled onto the Sydney Harbour Bridge, paid the threepenny toll to the collector, almost under the watch of constables, and continued his ride north.

The Murder Squad: How Australia's toughest cops hunted the monsters of the Great Depression, $34.99, by Michael Adams, is available to purchase now.

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Feature Image: Supplied.