Airdate: Seven News Investigates: The Beaumont Children: What Really Happened

This may prove to be a scoop of Walkley proportions if it turns out to be accurate…

True crime doco Seven News Investigates: The Beaumont Children: What Really Happened will screen on Wednesday night. The revelations attracted headlines last week after SA police confirmed they will return to excavate a factory site in Plympton.

It remains to this day the most infamous cold case in the country’s history.

On Australia Day 1966, nine-year-old Jane Beaumont, her sister Arnna, seven, and brother Grant, four, left their home in Adelaide’s Somerton Park for the short bus ride to Glenelg beach. The day was a scorcher and it was a trip they’d made before. Mother Nancy gave Jane some small change for the bus fares and lunch and farewelled her children. They were due back early that afternoon. But they have never come home.

Despite a massive search and investigation, not one shred of evidence was found to tell of their fate. It was the day Australia lost its innocence. Over the last 52 years, there have been countless theories, suspects and speculation on what happened that day, ranging from the credible to the intriguing and bizarre.

Now, in what criminal experts and former police who worked on the case are describing as the most significant evidence to ever emerge in five decades, the Seven News Investigates team has uncovered a potential gravesite.

The result of a year-long investigation, the possible burial site at a factory in Plympton, near Glenelg, was scanned using state-of-the-art geophysical technology. Results showed a significant anomaly – an area of disturbed earth measuring about a metre wide, two metres long and two metres deep. The size of a grave and now officially a crime scene after Seven News shared findings with police investigators. South Australian police have confirmed they will excavate the site in coming weeks.

Following a comprehensive and painstaking re-investigation led by award-winning journalist Michael Usher and featuring expert analysis from the country’s leading criminologists, new and compelling evidence will name affluent businessman Harry Phipps – the former owner of the Plympton factory – as the Beaumont children’s suspected killer.

Chilling new details will emerge from exclusive, first-hand accounts from those closest to the case including Harry Phipps’ son and detectives who investigated at the time. A key witness takes us back to the exact spot at the Plympton site where Phipps ordered he and his brother to dig the grave-sized hole the weekend following the Beaumont’s disappearance. And, the shocking revelation from one of Phipp’s victims.

The last piece in Australia’s most compelling mystery may soon be in place.

9.00pm on Seven.