The Graeme Thorne Murders

The 1960 kidnapping and murder of eight-year-old Graeme Thorne from his Bondi home was seen as an attack on Australia’s very way of life. That the innocent boy’s parents had recently won £100,000 in the lottery only made the kidnapping more offensive to the Australian public. The capture and subsequent trial of Stephen Bradley (a Hungarian immigrant, born Istavan Baranyay) was played out in the national media and fired up deep-seated xenophobia in the conservative Australia of the time. But the fundamental basis for community hatred was the fact that Bradley chose kidnapping and murder as his way to gain a foothold on the ‘Australian dream’, at the expense of the Thornes’ good luck – resulting in the death of a little boy.