On Anzac Day 1935 a crowd at the Coogee Aquarium Baths watched a captive tiger shark throw up a human arm. It sounds like a tall tale from the pub, but it really happened, and it led to one of the strangest murder cases Sydney has ever seen. The arm had a tattoo of two boxers on it, and it belonged to a missing ex-boxer and small-time crook called Jim Smith. Before long, police were digging into forgery, insurance scams and harbour smuggling. A respectable McMahons Point boatbuilder named Reginald Holmes tried to shoot himself and led the water police on a four-hour chase around the harbour. Then he was found shot dead near the Harbour Bridge on the very morning the inquest began. The man charged with Smith's murder, Patrick Brady, walked free. Officially, nobody has ever been convicted of either death.
A Shark for the Anzac Day Crowds
Sydney was jumpy about sharks in the summer of 1935. The Dictionary of Sydney says that in late February and early March three young men had been taken by sharks at New South Wales beaches, and bounty hunters were being paid to clear the beaches. So a live man-eater in a pool was a guaranteed crowd-puller.
According to the Dictionary of Sydney, a fisherman hooked a small shark off Coogee Beach on 17 April 1935. A tiger shark of about four metres then swallowed the smaller shark and got caught as well. Rather than cut it up or sell it to the fish markets, he took the big one, still alive, to the Coogee Aquarium Baths as an attraction for the Anzac Day weekend. Wikipedia puts the catch about three kilometres off Coogee Beach and the shark at 3.5 metres.
The Sydney Crime Museum, drawing on Alex Castles's book The Shark Arm Murders, says business at the baths had been so bad that the proprietor, Charlie Hobson, put the four-metre, one-tonne shark in the pool hoping people would pay to look at it.
The Coogee Aquarium
The Coogee Aquarium and Swimming Baths officially opened on 23 December 1887, and the Coogee Palace covered the whole block bounded by Arden, Beach, Bream and Dolphin streets. Wikipedia lists what was on offer: an indoor pool about 25 by 10 metres, the aquarium, a great hall that doubled as a roller-skating rink, a Canadian toboggan running more than 70 metres down the hillside, fourteen donkeys to ride, swings, whirligigs, aviaries, a bandstand and an open-air bar. The Dictionary of Sydney says a promenade built in 1889 could hold 3,000 people, and that from the 1920s parts of the site were leased to shopkeepers and residents.
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Anzac Day, 25 April 1935
For a few days the shark seemed lively, and the Dictionary of Sydney says it ate well. On Anzac Day it turned slow, sick and disoriented. Then there was a great commotion in the water and, in front of the spectators, it vomited up a human arm. The Sydney Crime Museum gives the time as 4.30 pm and says a rat and a bird also came up.
Police from Randwick were called and pulled the limb out. The Crime Museum describes a left arm with a length of rope tied around the wrist. On the inside of the forearm was a tattoo about 20 centimetres high of two figures boxing. Wikipedia's version is that the tiger shark had eaten a smaller shark before it was caught, and it was that smaller shark that had swallowed the arm in the first place.
Cut, Not Bitten
At first everyone assumed it was another shark attack. The Dictionary of Sydney says a medical examination changed that: the arm had been cut off with a knife or some other sharp instrument, not bitten, and not in any surgical way. It was estimated the arm could have been in a shark's stomach for between eight and 18 days, yet the tattoo was still clear. Wikipedia adds that the Aquarium's owners killed and gutted the shark a few days later, which made things harder for the police. Wikipedia also names the forensic pathologist Sir Sydney Smith among those who examined the evidence.
Who Was Jim Smith?
Once a description of the tattoo appeared in the papers, Edwin Smith went to police and said the arm might be his brother James's. Wikipedia names the paper as the Sydney Truth. Because the hand was so well preserved, police were able to take fingerprints, and they matched James Smith's prints.
Wikipedia says Smith was born in England in 1890. He was a former boxer and ran a suburban billiard saloon, he had been missing since 7 April 1935, and he was also a police informer. The Dictionary of Sydney calls him a bankrupt builder, a former SP bookmaker and boxer, and a small-time criminal with minor convictions who had drifted to the edge of the underworld through illegal gambling. The Sydney Crime Museum says he had lived in Balmain with his wife and child and had worked at Tattersalls Club as well as the billiard saloon. A 2005 Sydney Morning Herald piece describes him as "James Smith, of Gladesville".
Holmes, Brady and the Rackets
Reginald William Lloyd Holmes (1892–1935) ran the family boatbuilding business on the harbour at McMahons Point, on Lavender Bay. The Sydney Crime Museum says he was married with two children, dined at the Royal Sydney Yacht Club and was a pillar of the local Presbyterian church. The Dictionary of Sydney says he also ran a lucrative smuggling ring, using speedboats built in his own shed to pick up cocaine, cigarettes and other contraband thrown overboard from ships passing Sydney Heads. Smith sometimes drove those boats.
Wikipedia describes Holmes as a fraudster who used Smith on insurance scams. One of them, in 1934, involved sinking an over-insured cruiser called Pathfinder near Terrigal. The pair then took up with Patrick Francis Brady (1889–1965), an ex-serviceman and convicted forger. In Wikipedia's account, Holmes supplied sample signatures of his friends and clients, and Brady forged small cheques on their accounts, which he and Smith cashed. The Dictionary of Sydney says Holmes and Smith had fallen out over a failed insurance scam, and there was speculation that Smith had begun blackmailing Holmes. Wikipedia goes further and says police were later able to establish the blackmail.
The Last Night at Cronulla
Smith told his wife he was going fishing. Wikipedia says he was last seen on 7 April 1935, drinking and playing cards with Brady at the Cecil Hotel at Cronulla. The two had gone back to a small cottage Brady was renting, which Wikipedia places in Taloombi Street and the Dictionary of Sydney places on the shore of Gunnamatta Bay. Police alleged that Smith was murdered there. The Navy and the Air Force searched Port Hacking and Gunnamatta Bay, but the rest of his body was never found.
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The Taxi Ride
The Dictionary of Sydney says the key lead came from a Cronulla cab driver. On the morning after Smith was last seen, Brady hailed his cab and asked to go to North Sydney, then directed him to a house that turned out to be Holmes's home. Wikipedia gives the address as 3 Bay View Street, McMahons Point. The driver later testified that Brady "was dishevelled, he had a hand in a pocket and wouldn't take it out", and that he was clearly frightened. The Dictionary says Brady seemed frightened that someone was following him.
Brady was arrested on 16 May and charged with Smith's murder. Holmes was questioned too, and denied ever knowing him.
The Great Harbour Chase, 20 May 1935
On 20 May Holmes tried to kill himself with a .32 pistol. Wikipedia says the bullet flattened against the bone of his forehead and only stunned him. The sources disagree about where it happened. Wikipedia puts it in his boatshed, while the Dictionary of Sydney has him speeding out into the harbour first and firing the shot there. He fell into the water, and the Dictionary says a rope caught around his wrist and stopped him drowning. The cold water brought him round, and he crawled back into the speedboat.
What followed was a four-hour chase. The Dictionary of Sydney says the water police followed him past Circular Quay, through the mid-morning ferry traffic and right down the harbour until he gave up just outside the Heads. The Sydney Crime Museum says he was finally stopped about two kilometres out to sea, with an empty brandy bottle in the bottom of the boat. It quotes him as saying, "Jimmy Smith is dead and there is only another left. If you leave me until tonight I will finish him."
Holmes Talks
According to Wikipedia, in early June Holmes told Detective Sergeant Frank Matthews that Brady had killed Smith, cut up the body, packed it into a trunk and thrown the trunk into Gunnamatta Bay. Holmes said Brady then came to his house, showed him the severed arm and threatened to kill him unless he paid £500. Holmes said he had then driven to Maroubra and thrown the arm into the surf. The Crime Museum calls his story rambling and not always convincing. These were Holmes's allegations, and they were never tested in court.
Shot Under the Bridge, 12 June 1935
On 11 June Holmes withdrew £500 and went out late that evening, telling his wife he had to meet someone. Wikipedia says he was very careful as he left, and his wife walked him to the door of his Nash sedan. The Dictionary of Sydney says that at 1.20 am on 12 June his body was found slumped over the wheel of the car in the deserted docks area of Dawes Point, and Wikipedia places it in Hickson Road. He had been shot three times at close range. Wikipedia says the scene was made to look like suicide, but forensic police had no doubt it was murder. Holmes was cremated at the Northern Suburbs Crematorium on 13 June and left an estate worth more than £34,000.
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The Inquest and the Trial
The coroner's inquest into Smith's death, before City Coroner Edward Thompson Oram, began on 12 June 1935, only hours after Holmes was found dead. Holmes had been the main witness, and Wikipedia notes he was never given police protection. Brady's barrister, Clive Evatt (made a KC that year), argued that there was not enough to found an inquest. In his argument, an arm "did not constitute a body", so Smith, minus an arm, could in theory still be alive. Evatt's Wikipedia entry says he successfully defended Brady.
Without Holmes, the Crown case fell apart. The Sydney Morning Herald says the senior Crown prosecutor, L. J. McKean, had little to go on beyond Brady being the last man seen with Smith and having told police a string of lies about his movements. The Dictionary of Sydney says the trial was over in less than two days, and the judge directed a verdict of not guilty. Brady walked out a free man. For the next 30 years he said he had nothing to do with Smith's murder, and he died at Concord Repatriation General Hospital on 18 April 1965, aged 76.
Who Killed Holmes?
Officially, nobody was ever convicted of killing either man, and the theories have piled up ever since. The Dictionary of Sydney says Smith had informed on a young criminal, Eddie Weyman, who was caught raiding a bank as a result. Alex Castles offered the opinion that Weyman was a likely suspect for Holmes's murder, though the crimes were never formally linked. Wikipedia says Castles's book suggests Smith was killed by Brady on Weyman's orders. Wikipedia also records Castles's claim that Holmes took out a contract on his own life to spare his family the disgrace of a conviction, and the Sydney Crime Museum says police concluded Holmes had probably been killed by a hitman he hired himself. The Dictionary of Sydney points out that this was the Razorhurst era of open gang warfare, when the one unwritten rule was never to squeal to the cops.
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Books, Plays and the Screen
- Vince Kelly, The Shark Arm Case (1963, and again in 1975).
- Alex Castles, The Shark Arm Murders (Wakefield Press, 1995).
- Phillip Roope and Kevin Meagher, Shark Arm: A Shark, a Tattooed Arm and Two Unsolved Murders (Allen & Unwin, 2020). Richard Fidler interviewed Roope about it on the ABC's Conversations in 2024.
- The 1960 TV play The Grey Nurse Said Nothing was inspired by the case.
- Wikipedia lists a 2003 episode of CSI: Miami, an episode of Psych, an episode of BuzzFeed Unsolved and the 2025 series Sunny Nights among the shows that have borrowed from it.
- Bill Bryson mentions it in Down Under, but, as Wikipedia notes, he wrongly suggests the arm belonged to a swimmer the shark had eaten.
The Aquarium Site Today
The Dictionary of Sydney says a conservation order was placed on the building in 1982. In 1987 it was restored and reopened as the Beach Palace Hotel. In 2014 the Merivale group bought it and reopened it as the Coogee Pavilion, a restaurant and bar complex. So the next time you have a drink at the Pavilion, you're sitting where the shark put on its show.
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Timeline
- 23 December 1887 – Coogee Aquarium and Swimming Baths officially opened.
- 1934 – The over-insured cruiser Pathfinder is sunk near Terrigal (Wikipedia).
- Late February–early March 1935 – Three young men are taken by sharks at NSW beaches.
- 7 April 1935 – Jim Smith is last seen with Patrick Brady at the Cecil Hotel, Cronulla.
- Next morning – Brady takes a taxi from Cronulla to Holmes's house at McMahons Point.
- 17 April 1935 – The tiger shark is caught off Coogee and taken to the Aquarium (Dictionary of Sydney).
- 25 April 1935 (Anzac Day) – The shark vomits up the tattooed arm.
- Days later – The arm is identified as Smith's by his brother Edwin and confirmed by fingerprints.
- 16 May 1935 – Brady is arrested and charged with murder.
- 20 May 1935 – Holmes tries to shoot himself, then leads the water police on a four-hour harbour chase.
- Early June 1935 – Holmes tells police Brady killed Smith.
- 12 June 1935, about 1.20 am – Holmes is found shot dead in his car at Hickson Road, Dawes Point.
- 12 June 1935 – The inquest into Smith's death begins before coroner E. T. Oram.
- 1935 – Brady is tried, and the judge directs a not-guilty verdict.
- 18 April 1965 – Brady dies at Concord Repatriation General Hospital, aged 76.
- 1982 – A conservation order is placed on the Aquarium building.
- 1987 – Reopened as the Beach Palace Hotel.
- 2014 – Reopened as the Coogee Pavilion.
Where the Sources Disagree
- The shark's size. Wikipedia says 3.5 metres. The Dictionary of Sydney and the Sydney Crime Museum say four metres.
- Who caught it. The Dictionary of Sydney and the Herald both say just "a fisherman" caught it. The Crime Museum, following Castles, names the Aquarium proprietor as Charlie Hobson, though it doesn't say whether Hobson caught it himself.
- Where Holmes shot himself. Wikipedia says in his boatshed. The Dictionary of Sydney says out on the harbour. The Crime Museum says off the shore at Lavender Bay, and it puts the episode "one day in April", where the others say 20 May.
- Where the chase ended. The Dictionary of Sydney says just outside Sydney Heads, and the Crime Museum says about two kilometres out to sea.
- Was anyone charged? The Coogee article on Wikipedia says nobody was ever charged over the murder. The main Shark Arm article, the Dictionary of Sydney and the Herald all say Brady was charged, tried and acquitted.
- When Holmes died. The Coogee article on Wikipedia says he was found the day before the inquest. The Dictionary of Sydney and the main Wikipedia article say he was found in the early hours of 12 June, the day the inquest began.
- The Aquarium dome. The Coogee article on Wikipedia says a storm brought the dome down in June 1945. The Dictionary of Sydney says the dome collapsed in 1984.
- Who killed Holmes. Castles suggests Holmes arranged his own killing, and the Crime Museum says police thought so too. The Dictionary of Sydney records Castles's opinion that Eddie Weyman was a likely suspect. None of it was ever proved in court.
My Earlier Posts
- Kate Leigh & Tilly Devine – Sydney's Razor Gang Queens
- The Battle of Blood Alley – Eaton Avenue – Kings Cross – 7 May 1929
- Darlinghurst Gaol & Darlinghurst Court
- Sherbrooke House – 20 Coogee Bay Road – Randwick
- Wedding Cake Island
- Sydney Trams – From Horse Trams to Light Rail
Sources
- Dictionary of Sydney staff writer, "Shark Arm murder 1935", Dictionary of Sydney, 2010 – https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/shark_arm_murder_1935 (including its linked entry on the Coogee Aquarium and Swimming Baths)
- "Shark Arm case", Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shark_Arm_case
- "Coogee, New South Wales", Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coogee,_New_South_Wales
- "Clive Evatt", Wikipedia – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clive_Evatt
- "The Shark Arm Murders", Sydney Crime Museum – https://www.sydneycrimemuseum.com/crime-stories/the-shark-arm-murders/
- "Murder, tried and true", Sydney Morning Herald, 11 February 2005 – https://www.smh.com.au/national/murder-tried-and-true-20050211-gdko81.html
- Alex Castles, The Shark Arm Murders, Wakefield Press, 1995 (cited through the sources above)
- Vince Kelly, The Shark Arm Case, Angus & Robertson, 1975
- Images: Wikimedia Commons, credited under each picture
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