In early 1935, business at Sydney, Australia’s Coogee Aquarium and Swimming Baths was floundering. The world was in the depths of the Great Depression and aquarium owner, Bert Hobson, needed something to lure customers and keep his business afloat.
His spirits were buoyed when on April 18th, Bert and his son, Ron, caught a 14 foot one ton tiger shark off the coast and put it in their pool, there had been an increasing wave of shark attacks and this monstrous shark was just the attraction Hobson thought needed to turn the tide on his slumping enterprise.
About a week after catching the shark, and in front of crowds of families enjoying the aquarium during a holiday weekend, the behemoth suddenly began convulsing and vomiting, spitting up a rat, a bird, and finally, a human arm.
Hobson called the police, who fished the arm out of the pool and found a large tattoo of two boxers fighting inside the forearm. The shark was killed and its stomach was searched for additional remains, but none were found.
Using new fingerprinting technology, the police were able to identify the arm’s original operator, as 45 year old Jimmy Smith. A local paper, Truth, described Smith as, «a well-known suburban billiards saloon keeper, «one-time promising lightweight boxer, «and a man with seemingly not an enemy in the world.»
In the early 1930s, Smith began working as a builder for one Reginald Holmes, a well-respected member of the community on the surface, but who hid undercurrents of criminal activity. In addition to operating a successful boat-building business, Holmes conducted insurance scams and organized drug deals using his speedboats to collect drugs from ships. After the first building job, Smith plunged
into more work for Holmes and became netted in his various, illicit schemes. On Holmes’ orders, Smith would scam builders out of their supplies, operate Holmes’ speedboat and was the caretaker of a pleasure boat called the Pathfinder, more on that later.
Smith and Holmes also worked with an old chum of Smith’s, Patrick Brady. Brady began his life of crime in World War One when he realized that he was good at forging the signatures of military generals. The three men began forging checks for small amounts of money for well off clients of Holmes’. Eventually, Holmes and Smith had a disagreement over one of the check forgery scams and it’s reported that Smith began blackmailing Holmes.
Fast forward to April 7th, 11 days before Bert Hobson caught his tiger shark. Jimmy Smith and Patrick Brady were out drinking and playing cards at the Cecil Hotel. Afterwards, the two went to small cottage that Brady had in the beach community of Cronulla. It’s widely thought that this was where Smith met his fate, a cab driver reported driving a disheveled Brady from the cottage to Holmes’ house later that night. The driver would later testify, «it was clear «that he was frightened,» and that Brady was obviously hiding something in his jacket.
Smith’s wife, who Smith had told he was going fishing grew nervous when he didn’t return after a few nights. One night, a man called her and said, «don’t worry, Jimmy will be home in three days time.» of course, Jimmy Smith never returned. Days later, the shark at the Coogee Aquarium vomited his arm.
On May 17th, Brady was arrested on forgery charges, which were merely a way to keep him in custody. Authorities interrogated him for six hours but he refused to admit anything. It was only after the police questioned his wife that Brady agreed to make a statement. Brady implicated Holmes in Smith’s murder and when police questioned Holmes, he claimed to not know Brady.
A few days later, Holmes took a speedboat out in Sydney Harbor along with a bottle of alcohol and a pistol. The facts of the following trip are described in various ways, but with a grain of salt, the gist of it goes like this, Holmes got drunk on the boat and shot himself in the head with the pistol.
Another man who was out boating with his children reported almost being hit by the erratically moving boat. When talking to police, the man said, «You won’t mistake him, he has a bullet hole «in his forehead,» for you see, Holmes survived the gunshot, which knocked him into the water, now with a gunshot wound in his head, Holmes climbed back into his boat and tried to drive back to Sydney Harbor.
Police boats chased him for four hours until they eventually caught him. Holmes reportedly told police that he had been shot by strangers and was trying to escape. He apparently claimed he thought the police in pursuit were the people who shot him which is why he didn’t stop. It’s hard to know what Holmes was really thinking because again, he had a bullet hole in his head.
Holmes allegedly said to police, «Jimmy Smith is dead «and there is only another left. If you leave me until tonight, I will finish him.» Holmes claimed that instead of Brady’s story accusing him of being the organizer of the plan to kill Smith, he had actually been extorted by Brady, Brady had surfaced at Holmes’ house with Smith’s severed arm and attempted to blackmail him, claiming he’d pin the murder on Holmes’ instructions. Holmes said that Brady had murdered Smith, cut his body up, put the pieces in a trunk and threw the trunk into Gunnamatta Bay. In the 20s and 30s, this act was apparently so common that it had a name, the Sydney send-off.
Holmes told police, he paid Brady the blackmail money who in turn, left the severed arm in Holmes’ living room. Holmes claimed he than panicked and threw the arm into the ocean where it was presumably eaten by the shark that was eventually caught and placed in the aquarium. Police said they would charge Holmes with being an accessory to the murder unless he agreed to testify against Brady at the inquest into Smith’s murder, set for June 12th. Holmes agreed and on the morning of June 12, Holmes was discovered in his car with three bullets in his chest, this time dead.
Brady’s trial still went on, but without Holmes to serve as witness, the case fell apart. Brady’s lawyer argued that, according to a British statute from 1276, a body was necessary to conduct an inquest and a limb could not be considered a body. The defense also argued that sharks typically digest food within 24 hours. Yet, in order for the prosecution’s timeline to be correct, the arm would have had to been in the shark anywhere from 8 to 17 days, the defense also claimed it was possible someone had thrown the arm into the pool where the shark was kept at Coogee Aquarium and that it was never in the shark at all.
The prosecution came back with ichthyologists, fish scientists, who said the arm could have upset the shark’s digestion and impeded its function. They also brought forth 14 witnesses who said they watched the shark vomit up the arm.
-Did you guys see the shark vomit up the arm?
-Yes, they all voiced at once. After a day and a half, Brady was acquitted and released.
Theories
The first theory is that Holmes’ story to police was correct and that Brady murdered Smith and tried to extort Holmes. This is bolstered by the idea that Brady could have contracted Holmes’ murder so he couldn’t testify, however, at Brady’s trial, defense attorneys pointed out that Brady was only five foot four making it unlikely he could have killed Smith alone, of course, his small stature wouldn’t have prevented Brady from using a gun, but because no body was ever found, it’s impossible to know how Jimmy was actually killed.
Which brings us to a second theory. No one killed Jimmy Smith. Because no body was found, we cannot definitively say Smith was murdered. It’s possible he didn’t want to bow to the pressure of Holmes’ criminal activities and wanted out, but didn’t think he could do so safely, so he faked his own death. Admittedly, this theory seems unlikely, as Smith could have probably gotten away with just a severed hand instead of an entire arm.
Our final theory, the only one that I can see has a clear motivation is that Holmes orchestrated Smith’s murder. Remember how Smith was the caretaker of a yacht that Holmes owned, the Pathfinder?
It turns out Holmes and his associates had purchased, insured, and destroyed the boat as part of an insurance scam. Holmes, however, never received his insurance money. As Smith had reportedly become a police informant telling authorities that the yacht’s destruction was suspicious, this coupled with Smith’s reportedly blackmailing of Holmes over their check forging scams, could have led Holmes to arrange with Brady to have Smith killed. Once Brady murdered Smith, he brought the arm to Holmes as proof, Holmes would have disposed of the arm in the ocean, where a particularly unlucky shark happened upon it. In this theory, Holmes actually did get away with one last insurance scam, police suspected that Holmes had contracted hit men to kill himself after buying a generous life insurance policy.
His wife and children would get the money and not have to endure the sinking embarrassment of his various crimes surfacing. Holmes’ wife reportedly knew what happened to Smith and was about to share this information when she died mysteriously in a fire in 1952. It should be noted that Brady didn’t die until 1965.
When Bert Hobson and his son fished a tiger shark out of the ocean, they were trying to lure attention to their floundering aquarium. What they actually hooked was a mystery that would draw the attention of the entire country and end a local criminal’s life. As for how Jimmy Smith’s tattooed arm finally found its way into the shark, that remains, unsolved.
What do you think that happened?
TP Times 
Muy buen artículo, sigue así
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