It’s September 19, 1952, and Betty Shanks’ father is waiting up for her to arrive home from her evening classes. The Shanks family lives on Montpelier Street in the safe and peaceful suburb of Grange in Brisbane, Queensland. Betty was routine and punctual and should have arrived home around 10 pm at the latest, so by 1:30 am when she still wasn’t home, her father grew concerned and reported her missing to the authorities.

Just 4 hours later, at 5:30 am, Alex Stewart who was one of the neighbours and an off-duty police officer, went outside his home to grab his newspaper when he saw the violently beaten body of a woman on his neighbour’s property line on the corner of Carberry Street and Thomas Street. The body was that of 22-year-old Betty Shanks, who had last been seen at 9:32 pm the night before when she got off a tram (streetcar) at Days Road Terminus in Grange after attending her night classes in the city. The foul play that she met on her short walk home to Montpelier Street has led to one of the oldest and most notorious unsolved murder cases in Queensland, Australia…