The Diamond Dakota Mystery

by Juliet Wills

  detective for eighteen of his nineteen years on the job. The controversial cop would be dismissed from the force a decade later on charges surrounding the treatment of illicit gold tailings and withholding information in relation to jewellery thefts.

  Blight would work closely on the case with Inspector Cameron, who had been sent to replace Cowie after his hasty departure from Broome, and with the military who were in control of the area. With news of more diamonds appearing in the

  Kimberley he headed north, hoping to build a career-making case against Palmer in what was becoming a national headline story.

  Blight summoned Palmer to the Broome police station,

  where he had set up a temporary office. He demanded the

  coastwatcher come clean. Palmer said he had already made two statements and had nothing further to add, but when presented

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  with evidence of further diamonds he agreed to make a third statement to ‘tell the truth and get it over’. He said he found the paper parcel containing the wallet with all the stones, which he put in a bamboo basket on his lugger, but insisted he had handed all of them in to the military aside from those given to Frank Robinson.

  ‘I was going to keep them for a while, sell some of them

  to the chaps in Broome and then take the balance south and get rid of them. Later I decided to enlist and hand the diamonds over to the military authorities. Robinson told me that if I handed them over I would get a good reward.’ After further questioning Palmer said, ‘The military got all the diamonds I had in my possession except the few I gave to Robinson and Mulgrue. They were lucky to get what they did, for if I had known as much then as I do now the military would not have got any of them.’

  Detective Blight tracked Robinson down in Derby. Blight

  recorded Robinson’s version of events and then warned him he might face charges. Robinson told Blight he believed the

  diamonds were salvage as Palmer had found them, and if Palmer had not recovered them before another tide had come and gone, the diamonds would probably have vanished forever. ‘There may be a court case in Broome, and before you sign this

  statement I tell you that this may be used in evidence.’ Robinson, still believing he’d done nothing wrong, signed the statement.

  The intrigue, mystery and rumour surrounding the missing

  gemstones accelerated with the discovery of further diamonds.

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  THE DIAMOND DAKOTA MYSTERY

  Another fifteen were later handed to Police Inspector Peter Cameron by George Turner, a public works foreman in Broome.

  Turner had been given the diamonds, wrapped in a small pale green rag tied with red worsted, by Joe Albert, one of the Aborigines who had assisted in the rescue of survivors from Carnot Bay. Another two large diamonds, recovered a year after the crash at Carnot Bay, were traced back to Joe Albert.

  On 18 March, a Chinese tailor from Broome, Ching Loong

  Dep, flew south to Perth. When he landed in Perth detectives were there to meet him, charging him with ‘possessing diamonds, reasonably suspected of being stolen or otherwise illegally obtained’. Four hundred and sixty diamonds were found among his belongings. He claimed Aborigines had traded the diamonds for a shirt and a pair of trousers. Found guilty of the charge, he was fined £20 and the diamonds were confiscated.

  Detective Blight decided to make his move. In all, 6136

  diamonds had been recovered, and even though the exact

  quantity of diamonds had not been documented due to the

  haste in which they were packed, it was certain that many more were still missing. The Dutch were eager to recover them.

  It had been a year since Palmer had scoured the wreckage

  of the Pelikaan and come up with his find. At 10 a.m. on 20 March 1943 he was arrested for the theft of the diamonds.

  That same day, James Mulgrue was also arrested.

  Robinson had found some work helping out with mainte-

  nance at Fossil Downs Cattle Station, 180 kilometres east of Broome. He had hoped it was far enough away to exclude him

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  from all the trouble brewing over the diamonds. He was wrong.

  A week after Jack Palmer’s arrest, two police constables arrived at Fossil Downs and arrested Robinson. On the way to Broome, the crippled man sat silently in the back of the police car, cursing the day Jack Palmer had sailed into his life.

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  THE TRIAL

  The trial

  By May 1943, news of the diamonds had hit the headlines.

  Journalists put the total value of the diamonds that left Java on Smirnoff ’s Dakota at a quarter of a million pounds—though it is certain this figure was exaggerated. But the diamonds Palmer handed in amounted to only about twenty-four lots, less than half of the sixty-five lots that left Java; the additional diamonds found later brought the total returned to the Dutch East Indies authorities to around thirty lots. This fuelled wild speculation in the media.

  Prior to the trial of Jack Palmer, Detective Blight wrote to Jan van Holst Pellekaan, the Australian representative of the Netherlands Purchasing Commission, asking for the diamonds to be returned to Perth from the Commonwealth Bank in

  Melbourne for use as exhibits in the courtroom. Pellekaan informed Blight in confidence that some of the diamonds had 190

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  already been sold by the Netherlands Purchasing Commission which was, at the time, attempting to raise finances to secure arms and air transport in the United States in the hope of reclaiming the East Indies. The Perth jeweller who had valued the diamonds at the outset heard from Blight that they were on the market and wrote asking if he could purchase some.

  Pellekaan was outraged and berated Blight for the breach of confidence.

  Jack Palmer, who had spent his life escaping the confines of city life for the vast open spaces of the north, now found himself locked in a tiny stone-walled cell in one of the most oppressive prisons in Australia. Fremantle Prison was built in the 1850s to house convicts, but had been taken over by the military for the duration of the war. Jack’s cell was only 1.2 metres by 2.1

  metres with a crude bunk and table and a metal bucket for a toilet. The small barred window let in little light and the room was cold and dark. There was absolutely no fresh air. The memories of vivid warm colours, of red cliffs, white sandy beaches, bright sunlight and turquoise seas faded in the misery of the stone walls and iron door. He was awaiting trial for the theft of the Dakota diamonds.

  James Mulgrue and Frank Robinson, because they were

  civilians, were taken to Barton’s Mill after being transferred from Broome, a prison set up in 1942 in the bush east of Perth, with huts instead of cells, an orchard and workshop. On a cold

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  Wednesday morning, 12 May 1943, they were driven to the

  Supreme Court in Perth, with its grand columned facade. They were led into the holding cells in the bowels of the court.

  The bailiff unlocked the cell door and beckoned for Palmer to follow. He could have handcuffed him but he chose not to.

  Jack Palmer joined his co-accused in the dock but neither Mulgrue nor Robinson acknowledged him. The cooler weather of the south played havoc with Robinson’s arthritis and he could not stand without the aid of walking sticks.

  Journalists scribbled shorthand on notepads as the seven

  male jurors were sworn in. Mulgrue’s estranged wife, Lilian, joined the curious onlookers who piled in
to the public gallery.

  Chief Justice John Northmore was notorious for his sour

  disposition and his florid, stern face. He was known to make even the most experienced lawyer quiver and his abrupt exchanges with counsel were legendary in legal circles. He frowned down at the accused from the bench as the Clerk of Courts read out the charges. Jack Palmer stood to attention. His lawyer, Nathanial Lappin, had advised him to wear his army uniform. So many people had lost relatives in the war that the sight of the uniform was sure to invoke sympathy.

  Leonard Seaton appeared on behalf of Mulgrue and Robinson.

  From the beginning he requested the pair be tried separately from Palmer, but the Chief Justice refused.

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  Jan van Holst Pellekaan, Trade Commissioner for the

  Netherlands East Indies, was the first witness called to the stand.

  Pellekaan explained how the fear of Nazi invasion caused the diamonds to be moved from Amsterdam through Bandung to

  Australia. He identified the seals of the Javasche Bank and N.V.

  de Concurrent that had been impressed on the package in Java and later found at the site of Smirnoff ’s crashed plane.

  Van Holst Pellekaan was also Australian representative for the Netherlands Purchasing Commission (NPC). When police

  had asked to use the diamonds as an exhibit at the trial, the NPC had informed them that the diamonds had been put on

  the market in accordance with the owners’ wishes (the owners later disputed this). Pellekaan, however, had withheld some of the diamonds and presented them as exhibits.

  Jeweller Charles Williams, of Dunklings in Perth, testified that he had valued the 6136 diamonds at £20,000.

  Next, Major Clifford Gibson told of the arrival of beach-

  comber Jack Palmer at his office in Broome, and his surprise delivery of a substantial portion of the diamonds. When cross-examined by Lappin, Gibson described Palmer as ‘uneducated rather than simple’.

  Then Captain Ivan Smirnoff took the stand. More than a

  year had passed since he had fled Java and crash-landed in Australia’s north. His injuries still plagued him, and while he had continued to fly for a few weeks after his return to Sydney, KNILM, the East Indies arm of KLM, had been coerced into

  selling their aircraft to the US Air Force in May 1942. Without

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  planes to fly, Smirnoff was grounded for almost a year along with other Dutch pilots. At every opportunity, he had begged for the chance to fly for the Americans until eventually they had given in and allowed him to fly transport planes to active bases in the Pacific. He was given leave to attend the trial.

  The courtroom was silent as Smirnoff recounted the ordeal of his escape from Java with ‘the package of great value’, the deaths of three of his passengers and one of his crew, the desperation and fear on the lonely beach at Carnot Bay, their rescue and his meeting in Melbourne with the director of the

  Commonwealth Bank. Lappin thanked Smirnoff for his story, and pointed out he had used the word ‘hallucination’ on more than one occasion. Smirnoff felt the lawyer was throwing doubt over his story. He was offended by the insinuation that he might have imagined parts of what happened. Nonetheless the events surrounding the disappearance of the package of diamonds were not clear in his mind—so much had happened on the

  beach that parts of it were just a blur. He reluctantly agreed with the lawyer that he had used the word ‘hallucination’ on a number of occasions.

  Questions were raised about the integrity of the men on

  board the Dakota, but both Detective Blight and Ernst Smits from the Javasche Bank testified that the survivors from Carnot Bay had been put through the mill and come up clean.

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  Jack Palmer’s case was not helped by heated exchanges between his lawyer, Nathanial Lappin, and Chief Justice Northmore.

  When Lappin questioned the Aboriginal couple who had crewed on Palmer’s lugger the day he discovered the diamonds, Bonnie Bundigora and Tinker, the Chief Justice ordered Lappin to

  ‘drop the pidgin English and trickery’. Bonnie remembered the trip and that Palmer had carried a parcel out from the plane, but she had not seen the diamonds.

  James Mulgrue then took the stand. He told his version of the escape from Broome in the days following the Japanese air raid, and of the meeting with Palmer. Mulgrue said he had no idea if Palmer had had any intention of retaining any of the diamonds for his own use. Next, Frank Robinson said he had believed that, as the diamonds were salvage, they were at Palmer’s disposal to give away or otherwise do as he liked. Robinson said he had intended to hand his share in until Palmer told him to say nothing. He thought that if he gave them to the soldiers ‘it might confuse things’.

  Crown Prosecutor Gordan D’Arcy raised his eyebrow. ‘Might implicate someone else?’

  ‘No,’ Robinson replied unconvincingly.

  ‘Might implicate you?’ D’Arcy continued.

  ‘No, not exactly.’

  Robinson was then asked why he didn’t report the diamonds to the patrolmen who visited him at Little Bay, Cape Leveque.

  He answered, ‘I didn’t place much importance on them. I had other things to think about.’

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  Jack Palmer never took the witness stand. In summing up,

  his lawyer described Palmer as a poor simple fool who, after removing the diamonds from the plane, had no idea of their value and did not know what to do with them. A polished

  performer, Lappin knew how to play the jury. Lappin claimed that Palmer’s statement to Detective Sergeant Blight was the truth, but Jack Palmer was ‘by nature a windbag’.

  Various other things which he was supposed to have said to other people amounted to nothing more than mere expulsions of wind. His attempts on several occasions to hand over the stones to the proper authorities were acts which spoke far louder than his random words. He admitted that he took

  possession of the diamonds and gave some away, but there is no evidence of any criminal intention on his part and he made not a penny profit out of the whole deal.

  Lappin appealed to the jury to look at the soldier who stood before them. ‘Though simple, he has proved himself a good and loyal soldier; he was the type the Australian Army wanted.’

  Facing the jury, Lappin continued, ‘Every member of the jury should ask himself what he would do if he found himself in circumstances similar to those in which Palmer had been placed.’

  Palmer stood staring up at the crest of the Supreme Court above the judge, trying to look sincere.

  The prosecutor D’Arcy had empathy with the survivors of

  the wrecked Dakota, having survived his own gruelling ordeal

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  in 1930 when he was a passenger on a recreational boat which sank off the coast of Rottnest Island. He was the sole survivor.

  He had swum for more than eight hours to reach safety. The thought that a man might profit from the tragedy of others was no doubt abhorrent to him. He told the court the three accused had enriched themselves with stones tainted with blood, and that they had created a red herring in telling the authorities that they were cooperating by handing in only a portion of the diamonds and claiming that portion to be the total amount they had found. ‘Lives of people have been lost in the transport of these diamonds. The men should be found guilty.’

  After four days of evidence, Chief Justice John Northmore calmly outlined the cases that had been put forward by both the prosecution and the defence. He explained there was no doubt about the
origin of the stones and that the actions of the accused were suspicious. He expressed regret that the majority of the stones had not been traced.

  The jury retired and the journalists jumped from their seats, racing to be first to the telephones outside, as witnesses and onlookers stood in the hallway, smoking cigarettes and chatting about the evidence they had heard. ‘I know what I would have done if I’d found the diamonds,’ more than one person was heard to say.

  Despite the judge urging the jury to take their time and

  consider all the evidence, they took just thirty minutes to make up their minds. The hall again filled and the crowd looked on silently in anticipation. The three accused sat waiting. So quiet

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  was the scene that one could hear the rustle of the judge’s robes as he took his seat on the bench.

  Turning to the jury, the Clerk of Arraigns pronounced the familiar words, ‘Do you find the accused guilty or not guilty?’

  The foreman rose from his chair and drew in a deep breath before announcing the verdict: ‘Not guilty.’

  The Clerk of Arraigns turned to the three men in the dock.

  ‘You are free to go, gentlemen.’

  A smile spread across Palmer’s face as he turned to his lawyer and then to his co-accused and shook their hands.

  In his autobiography, Ivan Smirnoff recalled the judge

  summing up:

  You have been lucky with this finding. Whether your conscience will come to the same conclusion I cannot judge but I can tell you this, that under circumstances such as these which have been explained to us, the sudden discovery of these

  immeasurable riches in the wreckage on a lonely beach would have been too great a temptation for any man.

  Smirnoff thought he saw the wisp of a smile around the

  judge’s mouth and surmised that the old man possessed a large measure of knowledge about human nature.

  As the doors swung wide for them, the three men waved

  cheerfully to sympathisers in the public gallery. ‘Diamond’ Jack Palmer, as he became known, smiled—he was a free man and