Brisbane True Crimes author Ken Blanch, will call on Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie to reopen the case of the 1938 mysterious disappearance of a Brisbane social identity when he launches his latest book nest Sunday November 5 at Boggo Road Gaol.

In Marjorie Norval: The Girl a railway Station Swallowed, Ken Blanch recalls the sensation and the massive police and fatal air force search that resulted when Miss Norval failed to return from a trip to Bundaberg to see a sick relative. He also produces evidence that her inquest was manipulated to avoid a political scandal.

Marjorie Norval was well known in Brisbane - the social secretary to the wife of Premiere William Forgen Smith was driven to Brisbane’s central railway station on the 11th of November 1938 and was never seen alive or dead again.
Miss Norval told her friends and work colleagues that she was going to Bundaberg, but had told her sisters that she was going to the North Coast with secret business for the Premiere.

The coroner, Mr J Leahy, concluded that she had died at the hands of an unidentified abortionist. The inquest was held was the first held in Queensland into a case where a body had not been found.

In this book Ken Blanch reconstructs Marjorie’s movements on the night she disappeared and shows she would have exited the railway station unobserved and walked the short distance to the rooms of Brisbane’s most active medical abortionist of the time in Edward street.

Blanch also accuses a former Police Commisioner of failing to properly investigate a sighting of Marjorie Norval the next day at the Doctor’s Caloundra holiday home and uncovers the men who conspired to perjure evidence given at the inquest to prevent a political scandal.

Blanch has published reviews of homicides that he covered as a Police rounds reporter during the 1950s with Jack Sim’s Classic Crime series, but is now self-publishing as Seagle Crime Stories. His new book Marjorie Norval: The Girl a railway Station Swallowed is the first in a series of a small books about unsolved Queensland crimes and is available from Blanch’s website www.seaglecrimestories.com and the Boggo Road Gaol Shop.

BOOK LAUNCH In Marjorie Norval: The Girl a railway Station Swallowed
When: Sunday November 9, 10.30am
Where: Boggo Road Gaol Shop at Boggo Road Gaol Precinct, Annerley Road, Dutton Park

Hear who Ken Blanch believes had a hand in the disappearance of Marjorie Norval Thursday 6.11.2014 on Australia’s longest running true crime show “True Crimes” – presented by Jack Sim on 4BC Nights with Walter Williams. Thursday evenings 9.35pm on Radio 4BC.
 

This Halloween Jack Sim talks with Kelly Higgins-Devine on Brisbane radio 612 ABC.

In this interview, Kelly Higgins discusses the topic of Halloween and all things ghostly and creepy about Brisbane with Jack Sim. 

Jack reveals the details of things about Brisbane that most of us find both macabre, thrilling and surprising.

You can listen to a recording of this interview here: http://blogs.abc.net.au/files/khd-301014-jack-sim.mp3

37 years ago the Sunday Sun Newspaper published a story titled “ON THE RUN IN JAIL”.  Prison officials were forced to transfer an inmate from Boggo Road to Wacol Prison following a confrontation with the Whiskey Au Go Go killer John Andrew Stuart.

Hear what Stokes had to say on on Australia’s longest running true crime show “True Crimes” – presented by Jack Sim on 4BC Nights with Walter Williams. Thursday evenings 9.35pm on Radio 4BC.

Come and have a chat and I will personally autograph any of your copies from the Murder Trails Series, Ghost Trails Series, Classic Crime or Boggo Road Gaol series from 10:30am.

This year marks 75 years since Derwent Evans Arkinstall murdered taxi driver Howard Thomas Chambers at Holland Park on Brisbane’s Southside. In June 1939, Brisbane was shocked when it was learnt that the killer was only 18 years of age. An electrician’s apprentice Arkinstall seemed a most unlikely killer. Indeed when interviewed by police soon after his arrest in Bangalow New South Wales where he had fled after committing the crime, he seemingly did not realise the gravity of what he had done: “It was not an accident, and I did not do it deliberately, yet I do not know how I did it. I just took the revolver out of my pocket and fired it.”

It was truly a terrible crime. Tom Chambers was a veteran cabbie, 74 years of age. His body was found at Slack’s Creek. He had been shot twice in the back of the head and once in the forehead – to make sure he was dead.

When he appeared in Brisbane Police Court Arkinstall was asked whether he admitted he had fired the shots that had killed Chambers. Cold-bloodedly the youth responded “They say there were only two shots, but I am sure I fired three”.  Arkinstall was found guilty of murder in the Supreme Court soon after.

His release 31 years ago was controversial. He had only one word for reporters at the time when asked what it was like to be leaving prison – “wonderful”.

Listen to True Crime – every Thursday at 9.30pm on Radio 4BC for this and more crime stories.