On April 17, 1935, Coogee Aquarium owner Bert
Hobson thought he struck gold when he and his son Ron caught a 14-foot-long (4 meters),
1 ton tiger shark. With his profits dwindling thanks to the Great
Depression, Hobson thought this deadly sea creature would turn the tide for the struggling
aquarium, especially in the midst of a spate of shark attacks in Australia, so he put the
shark on display. Eight days later, as families wandered around
the shark tank around 5 PM, the tiger shark started to convulse. In front of a huge audience, it vomited a
rat, a bird, and eventually - (pause) - a human arm. The shark was killed and the rest of its stomach
searched, but no other human remains or parts were found. The arm would eventually be identified as
belonging to former boxer and current saloon keeper Jim Smith. But was this a shark attack? Or had Smith been brutally murdered and thrown
in the ocean, where the shark had found his severed arm and mistaken it for lunch? If so, by who? Born in England, Jimmy Smith had moved to
the Balmain suburb of Sydney, where he lived for many years with his wife and child. At the time of his disappearance, he was 40
years old. Smith managed a billiards saloon that attracted
a shady cast of characters. It’s perhaps here where he met a man that
would change the course of his life - a criminal boss named Reginald Holmes. To all outward appearances, Holmes appeared
to be a respectable member of the community. He was happily married, a member of his local
Presbyterian Church and the Royal Sydney Yacht Club, and father to two children. In his professional life, Holmes followed
in his family’s footsteps by running his own boat-building business. However, at some point he realized he could
use his boats to make more, and less legal money. Holmes hired men to take speed boats out into
the water and collect packages of smuggled illegal goods he arranged to have thrown overboard
from incoming ships. A man of many criminal skills, Holmes also
dabbled in other shady ventures, like insurance scams and check forgery. Jim Smith began working as a builder for Holmes
in the early 1930s, where he initially helped Holmes with small crimes, like scamming other
builders out of supplies. Eventually, he moved into Holmes’ smuggling
operations, and was even put in charge of Holmes’ prize boat, “The Pathfinder”. Because crime apparently requires a good division
of labor, Smith brought in one of his old pals, Patrick Brady, to help out with some
check forgery scams. Brady would forge checks from Holmes’ rich
clients to steal their money. Things were going well, until an incident
with “The Pathfinder” boat. Holmes over-insured the boat and sent Smith
out to sink it, but accidentally reported the sinking as suspicious to police. The insurance fell through, and led to Smith
blackmailing Holmes. On April 7, Smith and Brady met up for a night
of drinking at the Cecil Hotel. This was the last time Smith would be seen
alive out in public. Brady then took Smith to a small nearby cottage
he owned on the beach community of Cronulla. A cab driver remembers encountering Brady
later that night. He says he drove a terrified Brady from his
cabin near Cronulla to Holmes’ house that night. The driver also noted that Brady was hiding
something under his jacket, although he probably didn’t guess it was someone else’s arm. Smith’s wife Gladys became concerned after
her husband failed to re-appear from the fishing trip he told her he was on, and reported him
missing. A mysterious man called her some time later
and told her that Jim would return in three days’ time. Since Jim’s arm was coughed up by a shark
a few days later, this turned out to be a lie. When the arm was found, it was easily identifiable
as Jim’s because it had a large tattoo of two boxers fighting inside the forearm, a
unique tattoo of Smith’s. Fingerprint analysis confirmed that the arm
belonged to Smith. When the authorities determined that the arm
had been cut off rather than chewed, they realized this was not a “Jaws” prequel,
but murder. Additionally, the arm had some rope attached
to its wrist. As sharks are not known to tie up their victims
before killing them, this made police reasonably sure they were looking at a homicide. While looking for a possible killer, authorities
uncovered Smith’s connection to both crime boss Holmes and forger Brady. They arrested Brady and took him in for questioning,
but after six hours of interrogation, Brady still refused to admit any involvement in
Smith’s death. Eventually, Brady agreed to speak to the police
and immediately pointed the finger towards Holmes, stating that he ordered Smith’s
murder. Holmes was questioned about this, but denied
even knowing Brady. A few days later, with police still trying
to determine what had happened to Smith based off a shark-saliva covered arm, things took
an even stranger turn. Holmes took one of his speed boats out on
a ride on Sydney Harbor. With him, he had a bottle of brandy and a
pistol. Unsurprisingly, he got drunk. Surprisingly, he shot himself in the head. Even more surprisingly, he survived a direct
gunshot wound (spoken with emphasis) to his head and kept driving the boat! As you can imagine, navigating a boat with
a hole in his head proved to be difficult for Holmes. His boat driving was so risky and erratic
that he almost hit another boat out on the harbor. The driver of the second boat called the police
and told them to be on the lookout for Holmes. When asked how they would identify Holmes
and his boat, the witness reportedly told police “you won’t mistake him. He has a bullet hole in his forehead”. Since relatively few captains speed around
Sydney Harbor with air whooshing through their skulls, police found Holmes fairly quickly. However, the crime boss appeared to have little
intention of surrendering. After shooting himself in the head and surviving,
maybe Holmes imagined himself to be completely invincible. It’s also possible his decision-making skills
weren’t great after his blood loss and the still-open bullet hole in his brain. Police had to chase him for four hours before
catching up to him. Holmes, now either completely delusional or
just lying, said that someone else had shot him, and that he hadn’t stopped for the
police because he thought they were the people that had tried to kill him. Holmes went on to make a weird semi-confession
to police, reportedly saying “Jimmy Smith is dead and there is only another left. If you leave me until tonight, I will finish
him.” Since the police weren’t keen on letting
a bleeding man wander around Sydney until he found another victim to murder, they arrested
him. After a few weeks in the hospital where they
patched up his head, Holmes pointed the finger for Smith’s murder back at Brady. He told authorities that Brady had murdered
Smith and blackmailed Holmes for 500 Australian pounds, showing up to Holmes’ house with
a severed arm and threatening to pin Smith’s murder on him. Holmes went on to say that Brady cut up Smith’s
body, put the pieces in a trunk, and threw the trunk into Gunnamatta Bay. Even though this may seem like an excessively
cruel and brutal way of disposing of a body, it was quite a common practice in Sydney in
the 1920s and 30s. It was so common, in fact, that it had a nickname:
the “Sydney send-off”. Which goes to show you that the good ol’
days were rarely that good; people just look at the past through rose-colored glasses and
forget about all the body dismemberment that happened. Holmes told police he paid Brady off, after
which Brady, naturally, left the arm with him, and Holmes decided to throw it into the
ocean. Authorities pressured Holmes to testify against
Brady at the inquest on June 12. This was made difficult by the fact that on
the morning of June 12, Holmes was discovered in his Nash sedan with three bullet holes
in the chest. As Holmes’ chest was apparently had less
internal Kevlar than his head, he was now officially dead. Though Brady’s trial continued, without
Holmes’ testimony there was no solid evidence to pin him as the murderer. Brady’s lawyer also pointed out that with
no body and just an arm, no one could even be certain that Smith was dead. Brady was eventually released, though most
of Sydney believed him to be guilty anyway, making him the O.J. Simpson of Sydney. Which leaves us with a few interesting, and
contradicting theories, as to what could have happened to Smith. The most likely and obvious theory is that
Holmes, who was running a huge criminal enterprise and was supposedly being blackmailed by Smith,
ordered Brady to kill him to get him out of the way. However, there are a few problems with this
concept. If the killing was done at Holmes’ request,
and Brady was just a hired hand and underling, who killed Holmes while Brady was in prison
awaiting trial? Why did Holmes withdraw 500 Australian pounds
right before he drove out of his house and was killed? Did he lie about paying off Brady and was
going to pay him off then? Or was he paying off someone else? If Brady had someone else murder Holmes, a
feared criminal, under his orders, perhaps he occupied a higher position in the criminal
food chain than the authorities thought. This made it possible that Brady was the one
who orchestrated Smith’s murder as well. However, there is an alternate theory about
Holmes’ death that lets Brady off the hook. Before he was shot, Holmes had taken out a
generous life insurance policy that would benefit his wife and children. As his name was being dragged through the
mud during Smith’s murder investigation and Brady’s criminal trial, it’s possible
that Holmes, keen on saving his family further embarassment, ensuring their future, and not
seeing a clear way out of his troubles, arranged for his own death. Professor Alex Castles, who has extensively
studied the case, believes that Holmes hired a hitman to kill himself. So what if Brady killed Smith without being
ordered to by Holmes? There are a few problems with this theory
as well. First of all, Brady was only 5 foot 4 inches
tall. It would have been hard for him to take down
Smith, unless of course Smith was really drunk and unable to fight. Also, why was Brady so scared in the cab ride
leaving his cabin? And why did he go straight to Holmes’ house
after the murder to blackmail his dangerous crime boss? The most unusual, but not so far-fetched theory,
is that Jim Smith wasn’t even dead. The only part of Smith that was found, after
all, was his severed arm from the elbow down. It’s a strange coincidence that the only
limb found was one that featured a unique, identifying tattoo, which would immediately
tie the arm to Smith. Perhaps Smith had realized he was in too deep
with Holmes’ criminal activity, and wanted a way out. Either by himself, or with help from his wife,
he could have severed his arm at the elbow and thrown it into the ocean. That way, when it was discovered, he would
be presumed dead by Holmes’ criminal ring, who would then leave him alone. Even though the arm was also confirmed to
be Smith’s via fingerprinting technology, so in theory Smith could have just cut off
a finger or two and still been ID’d, this technology was relatively new at the time
and not commonly known. Since there weren’t seven versions of “CSI”
floating around making everyone an amateur forensic specialist, Smith may not have known
he could even be identified via fingerprints, and thus wanted to make sure his whole forearm,
tattoo included, was found. However, this theory has a couple of holes
too. First and foremost, if Holmes wanted the arm
found so he could be presumed dead, why would he throw it into the ocean? It would make more sense to leave the arm
somewhere conspicuous, where it would be found almost immediately, rather than hoping a shark
would get hungry, find it, and chew it up. Then again, perhaps Smith had left his arm
somewhere more conspicuous and it was then thrown into the ocean, either accidentally
or by a passerby who found it and didn’t want to report it or deal with it. Years later, it was discovered that Smith
had been working as a “fizgig”. This was not a failed soda brand, but Australian
slang of the time for a police informant. Strangely, this information could still support
multiple theories of Smith’s death. If Holmes or Brady discovered that Smith was
leaking information about their illegal activity to the police, it gave both men more reason
to want Smith dead. However, if Smith saw himself working as a
double agent and was dealing with increased stress from two-timing his friend and boss
while also collaborating with the police, he may have thought disappearing by faking
his own death was the only way out. Being called a “fizgig” could only add
to that stress. However, this new evidence of Smith’s role
as an informant also added another suspect in Smith’s possible murder: Eddie Weyman. At the time, Weyman was one of the most dangerous
and infamous bank robbers in Australia. Smith had leaked some information to the police
that led to them catching Weyman and his partner in a bank robbery in progress. So did Weyman break into Brady’s cabin that
night and kill Smith? If Brady was truly the amateur criminal it
appeared he was, Weyman could have threatened him into silence, and told him to bring Smith’s
arm to Holmes’ house to show the crime boss that Weyman meant business. After all, if Weyman knew Smith had ratted
him out, he could have easily believed it was done on Holmes’ orders. That would also make Weyman a good suspect
for Holmes’ later murder as well, and could explain both why Brady seemed so terrified
after leaving the murder scene, and why Holmes tried to run away and kill himself. To his dying day, Brady continued to deny
that he had any involvement in his old friend Smith’s murder. Whatever may have really happened to Jimmy
Smith, the most interesting thing to note is that in this mystery, a shark probably
ended up saving lives. If the tiger shark in Coogee Aquarium hadn’t
thrown up Smith’s arm, it’s unlikely that Holmes’ criminal empire would have come
crumbling down so soon. That means it’s possible many others would
have been murdered thanks to Holmes’ scams and smuggling if it wasn’t for one shark’s
upset stomach. What we can all agree on is that no matter
what, that tiger shark did not deserve to die. a shark getting food poisoning from a nasty
human arm and then being killed after it throws the arm up is a horrible way to go. We here at Infographics demand justice for
the Coogee tiger shark. why not keep the watch party going?! Go ahead and click on this video over here
which is funny and informative, or this video here which is informative and - you guessed
it - funny!
