Missing Christina

by Whitford, Meredith

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  The Belinda Tate case started obliquely. It began on the Sunday two weeks before Christmas, with a man being taken into charge by police for loitering near the women’s toilets and changing rooms at Glenelg beach, accosting young women and saying he was looking for a prostitute.

  The first girl he approached ran away and told her boyfriend, who was waiting for her nearby. The man had gone when the boyfriend went back.

  The second girl the man accosted flagged down a patrolling police car and reported the matter. She described the man as elderly, with greying dark hair, well dressed and well spoken. The police cruised the foreshore and Esplanade for a while, then saw a man who met the girl’s description. He was still, or again, near the women’s changing rooms, and as the police watched he approached a third young woman and spoke to her; she backed away then in obvious relief waved the police over.

  They approached the man, who showed no alarm or fright at seeing them. They asked what he was doing and to their surprise he said quite openly that he was looking for a girl. One of the policemen, then a senior constable, and who has asked not to be identified, told me: “We probably would have arrested him then and there if he hadn’t seemed so respectable. These days we’d be more suspicious, but this was 1967, and he was well dressed, he spoke well, and he just didn’t seem like the usual perv. Of course we wondered what we were dealing with, but instead of arresting him we questioned him. He said he was looking for his daughter. I asked him, 'Why did you tell the girls you spoke to you wanted a prostitute?’ and he seemed both amazed and disgusted. He denied he had said anything of the sort. His daughter had come down to the beach earlier that day and hadn’t returned home. His wife was in a panic and had asked him to come down to the beach and look for her. He quite readily identified himself as Alfred Tate, and gave an address a few blocks from the Esplanade. He had no identification on him such as a driver’s licence because he said he had walked down to the beach from his home. One of the girls who had complained said, 'He told me that he was looking for a tart.’ At this Mr Tate looked puzzled and said that was right. My partner said, 'You claim you are looking for your daughter yet you admit that you accosted several girls and tried to pick them up, saying you wanted a tart.’ Again Mr Tate said yes, he was looking for his daughter. He said, 'She is about the age of the girls I asked. She’s a nice little tart of eighteen.’ I said, 'Why do you call your daughter a tart?’ and again he seemed puzzled. After some discussion it became clear that he thought 'tart’ was just another word for girl, like ʻchick’ or ʻbird’. We weren’t sure whether to believe him, but he seemed genuinely innocent, and he was not a young man who would understand current jargon. We drove him to the address he gave as his home, and there spoke to a woman who identified herself as Mrs Winsome Tate. She seemed relieved to see us. She said, “You haven’t found her, have you?” She then became quite hysterical, and for the first time in the case the word ʻabduction’ was said aloud. Mrs Tate said it. She said, ʻIt’s just like the Beaumont children. Belinda went to Glenelg beach and she’s disappeared just like the Beaumont children did.’ "

  Alarming though this raising of Adelaide’s, and indeed the whole country’s, bogeyman was, the police officers thought it more likely that a girl of eighteen would have met up with friends or a boyfriend, and decided to stay out late. Mrs Tate furiously refuted this, saying that Belinda had few friends and no boyfriend, and knew better than to stay out later than she had promised. ʻShe is not the sort of girl to attract men,’ she said, and again insisted that her daughter had been abducted. The police officers said that they could not take a ʻdisappearance’ seriously until the person had been missing for 24 hours. They advised the Tates to wait for Belinda to come home, as she surely would. Meanwhile, they should ring hospitals and any of Belinda’s friends or associates they could think of. If she had not returned by morning they should ring Belinda’s place of work. If she was not there, a formal report should be made and Belinda treated as a missing person.

  Next morning, the Monday, the Tates were at the Glenelg police station by ten a.m. They had three times rung her office and been told she was not at work. They had rung hospitals as advised, and got nowhere. No friends or ʻassociates’ knew anything of Belinda. And so she was at last officially reported as a missing person. The Tates were sent home to await CID officers, and the usual search procedures were begun.

  *

  The present writer’s mother was at the time what was then called a WPC, a woman police constable. Women officers were in those days used almost exclusively for cases involving children, or such things as rape; they were also used in support of male officers when breaking the news of a death to a wife or mother, or in such a case as this one. So WPC Hooper, as she then was, well remembered the Tate case, because she was involved from the start, if only in the usual capacity of someone to make cups of tea and calm any women involved.

  For this book she told me, in several interviews and with reference to her notes of the time:

  “I was only involved because I was the nearest WPC when Detective Inspector Bob Elder got the call about the missing girl, We both thought it would probably be a waste of time. Neither of us believed in the 'abduction’ story. I mean, a girl of eighteen was more likely to have gone off with a boyfriend. However, the powers-that-be had let us know that the Tates were 'well-connected’, meaning they were middle-class, well-off people with influential friends. Mrs Tate’s father had been a judge, their local MP was a close friend, and so on. We were told to tread warily and, although it wasn’t said out loud, to give them the benefit of the doubt.

  “It seemed an odd set-up from the start. We’d been told that the Tates were well-to-do farmers, with a large property in the south-east of the state, and their Glenelg house was a very big one, posh but a bit run-down, the sort that isn’t quite two-storeyed but has rooms up in the roof-space, with a tennis court at one side. We’d been told to go to “Flat 3” and this turned out to be at the back of the house, on the tennis court side. It was a horrible flat, shabby, small and sparsely furnished without any attempt at decoration. It could have been temporary housing for migrants, or a ʻhalfway house’. We learned later that the house had belonged to Mrs Tate’s mother and on her death they had divided it into three flats, two rented out and the other for the Tates’ use. Really it was only two rooms, bedroom and very small lounge-dining room, with an enclosed veranda or ʻsleepout’ at the side, a kitchen and bathroom, and one good upstairs bedroom. The place was clean enough, but long overdue for painting and repairing. Everything in it was old and cheap and worn out. There was no telephone in the flat. Apparently Mrs Tate lived here with Belinda while Mr Tate spent most of his time on his farm, visiting them every two or three weeks.

  “They were a rather funny couple, the Tates. They were both in their late fifties, I thought, and dark in their colouring, but where Mr was neatly dressed in summer casual clothes, Mrs was a slob. I mean she was a big woman, quite tall and very fat in the flabby way of someone who gets no exercise at all, but what shocked me was that her nails and her dress were dirty, and she wasn’t wearing stockings. This sounds odd now, and I don’t mean I expected a worried mother to 'dress up’, but back in the 1960s adult women always wore a girdle and stockings and proper shoes in daytime, unless they were at the beach or doing rough work, so to see a middle-aged woman barelegged with only rubber thongs on her feet was extraordinary. It was quite a hot day, but even so... In fact she looked like a slatternly old bag from the slums, yet she had a very la-di-da upper-class voice, and we knew they weren’t a poor family.

  “And getting information out of Mrs Tate was like pulling teeth. She very easily became hysterical, to the point where once I had to smack her face (which today would be considered assault but was OK then) and later she had to be sedated. Mr Tate seemed unable to control her behaviour and said only, ʻWinsome suffers from nerves a lot.’ He seemed sure nothing serious could have happened to Belinda, but neither coul
d he account for her being absent for more than 24 hours, and he was obviously worried but unable to admit it. Finally we managed to establish that Belinda had gone down to the beach just before lunch on Sunday, promising to be back within an hour. She had been wearing a pink cotton dress over blue bathers, sandals and sunglasses, and carrying her beachbag. Mr Tate had been at his farm as usual but was expected to arrive on the Sunday in time for lunch, to spend a few days with his wife and daughter. When he arrived about half-past twelve, Belinda wasn’t back from the beach. The Tates went down to the beach together, then waited, and later Mr Tate went down to the beach again to look for Belinda. Then they talked to the police.

  “When we asked for a photograph of Belinda, Mrs Tate went into her bedroom and came back with a shoebox half full of photos taken over many years. She said they did not own a camera and had never taken many photos of Belinda after she was a baby. My notes say that she laughed and said, ʻShe’s so ugly she would break the camera!’ Eventually she found two photographs of Belinda taken the previous Christmas and at a recent family funeral. Neither was useful for ID purposes, for in each photo Belinda’s face was half covered by her hair, which she wore with a fringe to her eyebrows and long at the sides and back. We persisted in trying to get a description, but the Tates kept contradicting each other. In the end they more or less agreed that Belinda was of medium height, although they could not agree on how much she weighed – Mrs Tate called her ʻnuggety’ but Mr Tate said she was slim – and had mousy or fair hair and hazel eyes. According to the Tates she had no hobbies or interests except dressmaking, singing in a church choir, and reading. She didn’t drink or smoke. She was in good health and had no distinguishing marks. She worked as a typist in a government office, the Registry of Births, Deaths and Marriages. Mrs Tate added that earlier that year they had decided to let Belinda try living independently at a women’s hostel in the city, but she had been unable to cope and Mrs Tate had returned from the farm to live with her here at this flat. By ʻunable to cope’ Mrs Tate meant Belinda was easily led, and unable to manage money, and had fallen in with a rather ʻrough’ girl at the hostel. ʻShe had started chasing men, too, and we were afraid she was turning out like her mother. We adopted her, you see, and we’ve always had to watch her in case she turned out badly. She was much better off here at home with me. She is a quiet, home-loving girl and very young for her age, and I’m afraid she’s not very bright. Perhaps we have sheltered her too much.’ When Bob Elder asked if Belinda had left a letter or anything to indicate she’d run away from home Mr Tate just looked disgusted, and Mrs Tate said, ʻCertainly not! Why can’t you understand she’s been abducted!’ and then started crying hysterically.

  “We asked to see Belinda’s room, and were shown by Mr Tate to the upstairs bedroom. This was nicer than the rest of the flat, in that it’d been painted within the last ten years and had pretty floral curtains that matched the bedspread, and quite nice furniture. It was very neat and tidy, and there were none of the usual teenage girl’s pop star posters or photos, no makeup, no ornaments. The only photo was of an elderly woman, and there were two rather nice paintings, landscapes, on the walls. There was a small bookcase, which held sets of the Anne of Green Gables and ’Billabong’ books, with some schoolbooks and a few paperbacks. There was also a Bible, a hymn book and a folder of sheet music for the Messiah. I remember that Bob Elder and I looked at each other with raised eyebrows, because although it was possible that Belinda really was this tidy and dull, it looked more as if the room had been ʻdone over’ to remove God-knew-what. Certainly it’d been recently cleaned, for we could smell Mr Sheen and Windex. (Later only Mrs Tate’s fingerprints were found in the room.) We had a quick look round. There weren’t many clothes in the wardrobe, just ʻwork’ clothes that were fashionable and in good taste except for a dowdy suit that seemed too old for a teenager. The drawer under the wardrobe held winter jumpers and slacks and two handbags. In the dressing table we found a small amount of make-up, white underwear, rolled-up stockings, an unopened packet of Modess, pyjamas, some cheap clip-on earrings, and so on. Everything was creepily neat and organised. There was an Agatha Christie on the bedside table, bookmarked with a bus ticket, and in the bedside drawer were a tube of hand cream, a small transistor radio and some Disprin. The suitcase on top of the wardrobe was empty. Also on top of the wardrobe was a shoebox marked “Pen Friends” full of letters and an address book. The letters were in their envelopes, and all from people overseas. We had a quick look at the ones in English (several were in French and German) but they seemed innocent enough, just chit-chat. The address book contained only things like ʻBrough – Auntie Vera and Uncle Robert’ or ʻDentist’, although one page listed all the pen-friends’ addresses. We took the address book with us just in case, but it turned out to be a dead-end. We found no note or other evidence that Belinda had voluntarily left home, but we did wonder.

  “We went downstairs and asked if they had noticed whether any of Belinda’s things were missing. They both said no. I said, ʻBut there aren’t many clothes, and no personal things, and her room looks as if she’s cleaned it out specially. And you said she likes dressmaking, so where are those sorts of things?’

  “This made Mrs Tate stop crying. She said very angrily that she’d trained Belinda to be ʻgood around the house’ and that she was always tidy, and she showed no interest in ʻpop stars and make-up and all that sort of nonsense.’ She did, however, say that Belinda did her dressmaking in the ʻsun room’. By this she meant that sleep-out, which was on the north side of the house and very hot because it had no blinds over the windows, just flimsy gingham curtains. Out here there was a single bed, a sewing machine on a card table and a sewing basket and box of dress patterns, and an old manual typewriter on another table. I noticed that the dress patterns were all for size XSSW, which today would be an Australian size 8. When we went back to the lounge I asked Mrs Tate why she’d described Belinda as big, but all she did was cry and ask why we were pestering them with questions when we should be out looking for Belinda. Bob Elder pointed out that searches had already begun for Belinda, but we needed the photo and description. He also asked for names of Belinda’s friends or cousins she was close to, and Mr Tate mentioned a cousin Anne, then seemed to be out of ideas.

  “Of course we did a quick search of the house and grounds, because you can never make assumptions, and we’d look silly if a ʻmissing person’ was lying in the back yard with a broken leg, or trapped in an attic. We found nothing.

  “Clearly we weren’t going to get anything useful out of either of the Tates. We drove off, then Bob asked me to stop and park on the Esplanade a few streets down. He went into a shop and bought two soft drinks, then he asked me what I thought. It was very unusual for a male, senior CID officer to ask for a woman’s opinion, but he wanted to know what my ʻwomen’s intuition’ told me. I said I thought there was something ʻoff’ about the situation, and he agreed, but we couldn’t say exactly what struck us as wrong. Then I said that Mr Tate was genuinely worried but couldn’t believe anything bad had happened, while for all her hysterics Mrs Tate seemed angry rather than upset in the usual way of a mother whose daughter was missing. Bob agreed, and suggested that we go and talk to the cousin Mr Tate had mentioned. ʻAnother girl will know much more about Belinda than her parents, I bet.’

  “What we didn’t know for a while was that the moment we’d left their place Mrs Tate had gone out and rung up every TV and radio station, and the two local newspapers and The Australian, and also her MP and the Attorney-General, whom she had known all their lives, and the Police Commissioner and the Premier, both of whom were the sons of friends of her parents, and complained loud and clear that her daughter had been abducted from Glenelg Beach like the Beaumont children, yet the police were doing nothing to find her.

  “This got Bob and me into some trouble, and the Super had to go on TV news that night to detail just how thoroughly Belinda was being searched for. At least we’d been able to g
ive him the photos and description of Belinda.

  “Of course it also sparked off an enormous panic in a community still reeling from the disappearance and presumed abduction of the Beaumont kiddies less than two years ago. Little children, however responsible they were said to be, could be easily conned, lured away – but a teenage girl? What was the world coming to? Was no one safe any more? It was probably the fault of all these hippies and radicals… It was genuine fear, though, and incredulity that this could’ve happened.

  “On the mat in front of the Super and the Commissioner, Bob and I said we rather doubted the abduction story and thought it more likely Belinda had simply run away from home, but no one paid much attention to our theories, which we had to admit were little more than hunches, gut feelings. The Tates, we were told very firmly, were not that sort of people.

  “And, to put us back in our box, an old lady rang up that night, after the ABC news, to say that she’d seen Belinda last Sunday, walking down towards the beach not long before noon. She described her exactly: fair hair, pink dress, wearing sunglasses and carrying ʻa beachbag or basket or something like that’. She didn’t exactly know Belinda or her family but they were neighbours, she often saw Belinda in the local shops, etc, and knew her well by sight. She had been alone, not hurrying, just walking towards the beach. The old lady had seen her because she (the witness) was expecting her married son and his family for lunch, and was in the garden picking flowers for the table.