Murder mysteries haunt City of Churches

Adelaide's picturesque charm is sullied by an unsavoury reputation

ADELAIDE, Australia (CNN) -- The South Australian city of Adelaide has a reputation for genteel charm. Not for nothing is it known as the "City of Churches".

But the million-strong center also has a more sinister reputation -- for bizarre and grisly murders -- which has earned it the more dubious tag of the "City of Corpses".

Whether that tag is justified or not, it is a label which Adelaide is struggling to shake-off.

The issue has resurfaced recently following a documentary by Britain's Channel 4 television network which reportedly describes Adelaide as "the murder capital of the world".

This has drawn an angry reaction from the locals, particularly South Australian independent MP Nick Xenophon who has demanded a retraction and apology from the network.

He says the claim is an "outrageous lie" which damages the city's world reputation and could do considerable harm to its tourist trade.

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Adelaide is located near some of Australia's largest and most prestigious wine-growing districts and is also a handy setting-off point for tourists to explore the vast Australian Outback wilderness areas.

Even Australia's Prime Minister, John Howard, has defended the southern city, saying such statements about Australia's safety are "absurd".

"Every country from time to time has horrific murders take place, there are horrific murders in European countries," he said Wednesday.

"People overseas who take cheap shots at this country and its security are themselves cheap and to be condemned."

The Adelaide statement was made during a program screened in Britain into the disappearance of British backpacker Peter Falconio in the Northern Territory in July last year.

Falconio and his girlfriend Joanne Lees were abducted by a gunman near Alice Springs, more than 2,000 kilometers, north of Adelaide, just over one year ago.

While Lees managed to escape, neither Falconio nor the gunman have been found and police are struggling to make progress in the case.

'Lot of cheek'

Adelaide locals are angry about an unfair potrayal of their city

Xenophon is so offended by the linking of the Falconio case and Adelaide that he has released figures showing South Australia's murder rate over the past decade was just 1.9 per 100,000 people.

That is, he says, well below the rate of 50.82 for Washington, 27.47 for Pretoria and 18.2 for Moscow and even below the 2.36 per 100,000 recorded in London from 1997 to 1999.

"The Poms (British) have a lot of cheek calling Adelaide the murder capital of the world when a UK inquiry just days ago handed down a finding that Dr Harold Shipman was responsible for killing 245 of his patients," Xenophon told Australian Associated Press.

So why does Adelaide have such a gruesome reputation?

It seems to be more related to the nature of the murders which have occurred in Adelaide, rather than the sheer numbers.

The bizarre and sinister details of many recent murders in South Australia have attracted international coverage, a situation exacerbated by the Adelaide media's own obsessive coverage of the killings.

Acid vats

The most recent case to hit the headlines was the discovery in 1999 of six bodies contained in casks of acid and stored in an abandoned bank vault in a small town, Snowtown, just north of Adelaide.

The subsequent trial of the suspected murderers, complete with horrendous details of torture and degradation, has been a media staple in South Australia.

Up until Snowtown, the deaths of five young men at the hands of a sinister homosexual gang called "The Family" had dominated the town's grisly reputation.

Between 1979 and 1983, the "Family" -- reputed to be a group of high-profile Adelaide professional people -- abducted, drugged, sexually assaulted, mutilated and murdered the young men.

A few years earlier, South Australia was also in the news for what was then Australia's worst serial murder case.

Enduring interest

A missing children case from 1966 continues to intrigue Adelaide citizens

Seven young women went missing in and around Adelaide over a 51-day period from Christmas 1976.

Their remains were later discovered in the Truro district in the Adelaide Hills.

While one man is now serving a life sentence for his part in the killing, many believe others, who have never been caught, were involved.

But the most enduring of the Adelaide murder mysteries has been the 1966 disappearance of three children, aged 4, 7 and 9, from a popular beach in 1966.

No trace has ever been found of the Beaumont siblings -- a mystery which to this day continues to intrigue the citizens of this picturesque city.