The 'Shark Arm' Murder

A bizarre event occurred on Anzac Day 1935, when a shark on display at the Coogee Palace Aquarium south of Sydney disgorged a human arm. After a series of sensational newspaper articles, and some clever forensic work from investigating detectives, the identity of the victim was revealed as that of small-time Sydney criminal James Smith. One of Smith’s associates, forger Patrick Brady, was charged, but the subsequent murder of informant Reginald Holmes on the eve of the coronial inquest into Smith’s death saw the investigation collapse. No-one was charged with the murders of Smith and Holmes, now known as the Shark Arm murders, in a case that included the unlikely elements of a captured shark, a severed arm, Sydney’s criminal underworld and smuggling on Sydney Harbour during the Depression.