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  Sleuth's corner - Case 2 The Disappearance of Juanita Nielsen
Her name was Juanita Nielsen. Nearly a quarter of a century later, her disappearance still intrigues people around Australia. What nobody in the know doubts is that Juanita is dead and somebody murdered her. A long Coronial Inquiry probed her disappearance. But the problem faced by investigators was that so many people had so many reasons for wanting her dead. Her boyfriend John Glebe said in evidence to the Inquiry how Ms Nielsen had told him of telephone threats. He said she'd carried cassette tapes in her handbag which she had said could "blow the top off" an issue she was working on. Journalist Bob Bottom reports in his book "Connections - Crime Rackets and Networks of Influence Down-Under" [Sun Books. ISBN 0 7251 0491 0], that John Glebe was later threatened by an anonymous caller who said: "Juanita has been killed...it was an accident. Back off, or accidents can happen to other people." Her last appointment before her disappearance was with a man called Edward Trigg, then a manager of the Carousel Nightclub in Kings Cross - a club owned by Abe Saffron and managed by James Anderson. She has never been seen since that meeting. Her black handbag and personal effects were found on a freeway in Western Sydney. Two and a half years after she disappeared, Trigg and two others were arrested and charged with conspiring to abduct Nielsen. Trigg pleaded guilty and got three years jail. Bar man Shayne Martin-Simmonds was convicted in 1981 and got two years. A third man, Lloyd Marshall, then a PR man for the Carousel Nightclub, was acquitted. But there has always been concern that the full story of the disappearance of Nielsen has never been told. The Coronial Inquiry heard how Juanita Nielsen was a thorn in the side for some crime bosses and developers. When Trigg was apprehended in the US by American Police he was quoted as having said: "It's all bloody politics, anyway....It's all about crooked cops, dirty politics and one big cover up. The guy who is benefitting from this is an alderman who made megabucks out of this." More recently, the Bulletin magazine in 1995 ran claims by journalist Barry Ward that Nielsen was given dossiers on some of Sydney's unsavoury high rollers by a private detective called Allan Honeysett. The article speculated that with these documents Nielsen could have lifted the lid on the principals involved in Sydney's illegal gambling industry. It said Honeysett claimed that the documents were the reason why Nielsen was killed, because it seemed likely she was about to expose some big names in vice and illegal gambling. The Bulletin story also interviewed two anonymous female staff who had been showgirls at the Carousel nightclub. They named three men who did the murder and the story went on to detail how the men who ordered the murder are still at large. Do you know more about the Juanita Nielsen case? email me or send me an Anonymous email. The safest way to contact me if you have some really hot info is via snail mail. Address it to: Ross Coulthart, Reporter |
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It remains one of Australia's most enduring mysteries. On July 4, 1975 a wealthy heiress who had been at the forefront of a crusade against redevelopment of Victoria Street in Sydney's redlight Kings Cross district, went to an appointment at a Kings Cross nightclub - and then disappeared.
