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  Sleuth's corner - Case 5 Sink or Swim? Spy or Suicide?
Holt was cast as a '007' wetsuit-clad James Bond character by the popular press because of his enthusiasm for watersports. But after he entered the water at about noon on December 17, he was never seen again.
A colleague tells me of how he recently heard a classic Holt conspiracy yarn: While travelling in far North Australia he bumped into a man who claimed to be a former spook for the Australian Government who had helped Holt return to Australia several times since his death. Holt travelled incognito from a home in France. It appears the PM had swum around to the next bay, hopped in a car driven by a lover, and slipped out of the country. The spook claimed Holt had later died of a heart attack on the French South Coast sometime during the 1980s. The conspiracy theory has it that many people know about this, including one very senior Liberal Party figure. Just when we were trying to laugh away this theory, one former very senior Labor Minister told us he had "the astounding truth" about Holt buried in his confidential files -- only to be released in the event of his and his informant's death.
A Victorian State Court officially declared the Prime Minister dead, presumed drowned. Nothing, not even a piece of clothing, was ever found of the PM's body.
The cop in charge of the investigation, then Inspector Lawrence Newell, told the Melbourne Age in 1992 that he thinks Holt fell for his own publicity about his swimming prowess, and in fact the PM, "believed he couldn't drown. Remember, he wasn't a young man anymore. When you are 59 years old you don't have the reserves to draw on that you used to have. And he had a bad shoulder. He got into trouble and couldn't get himself out." And so, that's the end of the matter...or is it? We discount the wilder claims surrounding this mystery, but that still leaves many questions unanswered. If you think you know more about the disappearance of Harold Holt in 1967, you know who to call: 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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On a beautiful sultry Summer's day, just before the Christmas of 1967, Australia's then Prime Minister Harold Holt - a keen and highly competent skindiver - went out for a snorkel at Cheviot Beach, just near his Portsea beach house.
Thirty years on, conspiracy theories still rage about what happened to Australia's then 59-year-old Prime Minister.
Some of the wilder theories had it that Holt was assassinated by the CIA because he wanted to get Australia out of Vietnam. The best one of all came in 1983 when British author Anthony Grey published a book claiming that Holt was a Chinese spy and fled Australia via a Chinese submarine parked off his beach.
There were always rumours of an official cover-up because the public had been falsely led to believe that only one person had been with Holt - a Mr Alan Stewart, who was chief of the local quarantine station. But, in fact, the PM had been on the beach with an alleged lover, Ms Marjorie Gillespie, and other young women. There were also rumours that the PM might have suicided because of the recent death of his brother and threats to his leadership. His then press secretary, Tony Eggleton, pooh-poohed such claims at the time, saying his boss was quite happy.
