Arthur Stanley Brown - Suspect For Mackay Murders

Suspect For Mackay Murders

In 1998, a cousin of Brown’s wife who was now living in Perth, Western Australia, who had been one of Brown’s victims and also had suspicions about his involvement with the MacKay sisters, decided to phone Crimestoppers after they aired a program on the case.

Sergeant David Hickey of the Queensland homicide squad, who was conducting the cold case review of the MacKay murders, returned the call three days later. After interviewing other family members police had 45 cases against Brown relating to pedophilia and circumstantial evidence linking him to the MacKay murders. Investigations continued and evidence accumulated. Brown, who had been working as a carpenter at the MacKay sisters school at the time, had been obsessed by the case, falsely claiming he knew the girls' father and two weeks after the murders he had offered to take two of his wife’s cousins to view the murder site. He had replaced the odd-coloured door from his blue Vauxhall Victor, buried it, then later dug it up and took it to the rubbish tip explaining to his family he did it because he didn't want anyone interviewing or annoying him. Many of his victims were taken to Antill Creek to be molested and one instance was only 20 metres (66 ft) from where the girls bodies were found.

Brown had twice previously confessed to the murders. In September 1970, Brown was drinking with 19 year old John White in the White Horse Tavern in Charters Towers. White, who did not know Brown, claimed that Brown had asked if he had been following the murder of the Mackay sisters a few days earlier and had then stated that police were looking for the wrong car and that he had committed the murders. White reported the conversation to the local police who had dismissed the claim after speaking to "Arty Brown". In 1975, Brown confessed to the murders to his apprentice John Hill who said he never came forward before because it seemed totally out of character and he thought Brown was joking.

Brown was arrested on 45 charges of sexual assault and the rape of six children three to ten years of age and for the murders of Susan and Judith MacKay.