The Beaumont Children

April 02, 2022

Has the Beaumont children cold case been solved over five decades later?

If you’re into unsolved cases you’ll be familiar with the case of 3 children who vanished without a trace from a beach in South Australia in 1966. The case came to be known as “The Beaumont children disappearance”.

The three siblings (between 4 and 9 years old) excitedly set off for a fun filled day at Glenelg beach near the city of Adelaide at round 10AM on the 22^nd of January 1966. It wasn’t unusual for the three to take the 5 minute bus journey to Glenelg under the supervision of older sister, Jane Narte Beaumont, who was 9 years old at the time. The kids regularly went to the beach without adult supervision and usually returned home by early afternoon. Sadly, this sunny day in January would be their final trip, from which they would never return.

Nine year old Jane Nartare Beaumont, seven year old Arnna Kathleen Beaumont and four year old Grant Ellis Beaumont would never be seen again. None of their belongings were ever recovered.

The case was covered extensively in the media, coaxing out hoaxers and so-called psychics in the process. Letters were sent to the parents of the Beaumont children, supposedly written by an unidentified man claiming to be the kidnapper, who agreed to return the children if the parents showed up to a specific meeting place. The letters turned out to be penned by a teenager as a cruel joke.

A famous psychic also got involved in the case, which resulted in several excavations that predictably provided no further leads in the case.

There have been many suspects over the years, including already incarcerated paedophiles and child murderers who were active in and around the area, but no one has ever been convicted of the kidnap, abduction or murder of the Beaumont children.

Recently, however, there has been chatter about the now 50 year old cold case, pointing an accusatory finger in the direction of two local men who frequented Glenelg in the sixties.

According to the Sydney morning Herold Now 72 year old Anthony Alan Munro (pictured above) and 80-something year old Allan McIntyre (Known informally as Max) have both recently been convicted of abusing young boys around the time of the Beaumont children’s disappearance. One of Munro’s victims was McIntyre’s own son, Andrew, who after recently discovering a journal he kept as a child handed it over as evidence in the hopes of convicting Munro and McIntyre for what he believes to be their involvement in the disappearance of the Beaumont kids in 1966.

Apparently, entries in the journal puts Munro at the scene of the crime around the time it happened. He was said to be frequenting the beach leading up to the disappearance.

Now, the day of the disappearance, two witnesses, an elderly couple, claimed that they had seen the three children playing with a man in his early thirties. They described him as tanned with blonde hair and a slim build. They commented that the Beaumont kids looked comfortable playing with him and didn’t seem afraid. Could this indicate that the man was local or that they had met him before?

That same day a local shop owner who knew the kids well claimed that they bought items they didn’t regularly purchase and paid with a $1 note. The Beaumont’s mother had never given them a $1 note, suggesting that they were given it by another adult, possibly the tanned, blonde man. According to the diary entry, Munro, who you can see in the image above as fitting the witness description, had been around Glenelg beach for a few days- is it possible he had been grooming the kids? The missing children had been at the beach the previous day, so they could have met the perpetrator the day before their disappearance.

A detail on the Wikipedia article about the case states that the younger sister, Arnna, had talked about her older sister Jane having a boyfriend down at Glenelg beach, but their mother dismissed it as she believed it was probably a friend of the same age.

Anthony Munro (informally known as Tony) was apparently a scout leader at some point too, which sadly might suggest he has further victims who never came forward. According to this article he did a few months in prison in the 1990’s for the abuse of an 11 year old boy.

Munro relocated to Cambodia where he ran his own bar (described in reports as a “gay friendly lady boy bar”) for several years until he was forced to return to Australia on the aforementioned child abuse charges. Cambodia’s high rate of child abuse may have been what attracted him to the country. This article also states that he is also wanted in Cambodia for child abuse crimes and had been under surveillance for a couple of years. I found a discussion on a Cambodian expat forum that revealed Munro was involved in some charities related to orphanages and that the bar he was ran was “The Station Wine Bar in Siem Reap”. A photograph printed in this article here can be traced back to a post made on trip advisor for a bar of the same name and location. The site lists it as permanently closed. Here’s a YouTube clip showing the area.

As for McIntyre, his daughter also accused him of being involved in the case back in the mid 2000’s. However, due to lack of evidence, the claims could not be taken any further.

Although no portions of the journal have been released, McIntyre’s son, who co-wrote entries in the book with a friend, claims that his father and Munro neglected to take him to the beach as they had promised and later returned home cursing and acting panicked and upset. Both he and his sister claimed to see what appeared to be a mixture of blood and sand on the backseat of their father’s vehicle. One of the children alleges that they even saw the bodies of the Beaumont children in the trunk and both claim that the remains of the three are hidden in what is now a disused well that their father had filled in with (presumably) concrete. The well (as I write this) has not yet been investigated.

Has the over 50 year old cold case of the Beaumont children disappearance almost been solved?