Losing a child affects parents in a myriad of terrible ways, some
damaged worse than others. This is a story about one of them.
The birth of a son was one of the few gentle things in the life of
Archibald Beattie McCafferty, a 24-year-old
Scottish-born Australian with an extensive criminal sheet. McCafferty's
marriage to Janice Redington lasted a scant six weeks, just long enough
for her to fall pregnant. One evening, she fell asleep nursing her
infant and awoke to the horror she'd accidentally smothered her own
child.
Then things
turned worse, far worse.
In and out of mental and correctional institutions, Archie McCafferty
wasn't firmly seated to begin with, but the death of his baby unhinged
his teetering mental balance. More than ever, he embraced drugs and
drink. Combined with grief, they may explain his 'vision' seeing his
son hovering above the child's grave. In his hallucination, his son
told him he could be brought back to life if McCafferty killed seven
victims.
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first murder
scene |
Se7en Incarnate
McCafferty had forged a Fagin-like bond with a 26-year-old woman and
four teens, a relationship that involved alcohol, dope, and thievery.
He described his son's visitation to them and demanded their assistance
in carrying out his gruesome intentions. They acted immediately.
The first victim they choked, beat and stabbed in a bar's back alley
before they came up with a better plan. Posing as hitchhikers in the
rain, the teens rounded up and shot two more victims, wrongly described
as tramps. The car they seized from the third victim ran out of
gasoline, forcing the gang to postpone the final kills until the
following night. That delay saved lives.
One of the teens didn't trust McCafferty and he sensed McCafferty
didn't trust him. Rightly fearing he'd become one of the seven victims,
Rick Webster nervously returned to work at the
Sydney Morning Herald.
Glancing out a window, he spotted his fellow gang members waiting in a
van. He correctly guessed they intended to kill him as soon as he
stepped into the street.
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arrest |
Certain he couldn't leave the building alive, Webster phoned police and
asked for an investigator to come to the newspaper office. When
detectives grasped what Webster was telling them, they called in a team
that swooped in and arrested the entire gang. Without question,
Webster's call saved McCafferty's wife and her family.
In court, the news media compared the case to the Charles Manson gang.
Throughout, McCafferty had to be drugged with a quadruple dose of
tranquilizers. Candidly telling the court he'd kill until he reached
seven victims, he was sentenced to three life terms.
Prison
Only 26-year-old Carol Howes escaped a guilty verdict. The four teens
were sentenced to prison. Gang member Julie Todd hanged herself days
after her 17th birthday.
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in court |
McCafferty proved to be the hardest criminal in Australia's penal
system. He was convicted of murdering another prisoner and, as part of
an internal 'murder squad', may have been involved with three other
deaths. Interestingly, he denied killing the inmate, but a disbelieving
judge sentenced him to an additional fourteen years.
Over time, his rage seemed to abate. McCafferty gave testimony about
corrupt prison officials and other criminals. Eventually, wardens moved
him from a maximum security prison to a minimum security farm. He was
admitted to a work release program and allowed him to spend weekends
with his brother's family. A judge agreed to consider him for parole.
Meanwhile, parole officials discovered a legal wrinkle. When
McCafferty's parents brought young Archie to Australia as a child, the
proper paperwork for citizenship hadn't been taken care of.
Technically, McCafferty was still a British subject, meaning the state
could make him someone else's problem.
Escape the Past
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McCafferty
today |
Upon parole, authorities put him on a plane bound for Scotland along
with his jailhouse bride, Mandy Queen. McCafferty changed his name to
James Lok, whereupon he found work as a painter
and then a toymaker. Against all odds, the marriage lasted– he'd become
a family man. As far as Australia was concerned, the case was closed.
And so it seemed for more than two decades.
Twenty-five years after he landed in Scotland, he again fell under the
influence of alcohol. After a drinking and driving binge, he
threatened his wife and police. That was
peaceably resolved.
On a trip to New Zealand, authorities arrested and deported him for
failing to declare his criminal past. But, when all is said and done,
McCafferty, one of the more feared of killers, kept up his end of the
parole bargain better than expected.
That Manson Label
Manson's motivations embody pure evil, self-serving to the extreme. His
followers long repented and, harmless if not toothless, should be
released. But Manson– I can't imagine him other than the self-created
monster of malevolence, incapable of interacting with society in a
rôle other than predator.
McCafferty isn't anything close. Although branded as Australia's
Charles Manson, the label doesn't fit. We can at least understand the
sorrow and pain that drove the man. And, McCafferty made great efforts
to turn his life around. Life's imperfect, but he, his wife Mandy, and
the court system deserve high marks.