By HEATHER TYLER
A jailed child killer in Australia is being investigated over the disappearance of three Adelaide children nearly 40 years ago, as reports of their sighting in Dunedin are being followed up by police in New Zealand.
The disappearance of the Beaumont children -- Jane, 9, Arnna, 7 and Grant,
4 -- gripped Australia's attention in the mid-1960s. The case was never solved and it remains one of the country's most baffling mysteries.
Derek Percy, the state of Victoria's longest-serving prisoner, is being investigated over the disappearance of the three, Adelaide's Advertiser newspaper said today.
Australian police have also reopened the cases of several other unsolved child murders.
Percy, in jail since 1969 over the murder and mutilation of a 12-year-old girl he abducted, was in several cities when children went missing, the newspaper said.
A confidential Victoria Police circular had revealed detectives were investigating Percy over the cases.
Meanwhile, South Australian police are waiting on further information from New Zealand police about an apparent sighting of the Beaumont children.
A butcher's shop worker told New Plymouth police this week a customer made chance comments about the children.
A man recently walked into the Peoples Meats butcher shop in New Plymouth, where he noticed the Australian accent of a female worker behind the counter.
The customer told her he grew up in Dunedin next to the Beaumont children, and gave the names and work details of the people he said had raised them.
The butcher's shop worker had never heard of the Beaumont case but after reading about it in a magazine, she went to the police.
New Plymouth Senior Police Sergeant Fiona Prestidge said today the inquiry had not yet shifted to Dunedin.
"We're still doing our own groundwork here first before anything goes to Dunedin. We're not ready to report on our inquiry yet to South Australian police."
The disappearance of the Beaumont children sparked a massive manhunt in Australia at the time.
Their mother went with them to the bus stop at 10am on a hot, humid January 26, 1966, and put them on the bus to nearby Glenelg Beach, a popular swimming place for Adelaide families.
The trio were to return on the midday bus, where their mother would meet them again at the same bus stop.
They didn't return, no evidence was ever found of them at the beach other than sightings of them, and the next morning they were officially declared missing.
Police thought they had either drowned or, more likely, they had been abducted.
Although no suspect was ever identified, four witnesses, who had identified the children at the beach, said they had been seen with a tall, fair-haired man.
After a massive search failed to reveal any evidence, the South Australian police commissioner made a public appeal to residents, asking them to search their own properties.
Jim Beaumont went on national television to plead for his children's return.
Eventually the search was scaled down. No evidence was ever uncovered, although for some months police continued to receive hundreds of calls about supposed sightings.
A psychic's vision once resulted in the excavation of a site underneath a warehouse in Adelaide but no trace of the children was found underneath the concrete floor.
The Beaumont files have never been closed and Adelaide police still receive tip-offs, although none have so far resulted in any leads.
The children's parents still live in Adelaide.
- NZPA
By HEATHER TYLER
A jailed child killer in Australia is being investigated over the disappearance of three Adelaide children nearly 40 years ago, as reports of their sighting in Dunedin are being followed up by police in New Zealand.
The disappearance of the Beaumont children -- Jane, 9, Arnna, 7 and Grant,
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