John Myles Sharpe killed his wife and his daughter at their home in Mornington, a town on the Mornington Peninsula south of Melbourne, in March 2004. His wife, Anna Kemp, was 41, a New Zealander from Dunedin, and about five months pregnant. Their daughter, Gracie, was not yet two. He used a speargun he had bought for the purpose. For almost three months afterward he told his wife's family, and later the police and the public, that she had walked out on him for another man and taken the child with her.
The inquiry that ended that story did not begin in Victoria. It began in Dunedin, when Anna's mother told a police officer she could not get her daughter on the phone. That officer's questions moved the case through New Zealand Police to Victoria Police, who confronted Sharpe in June 2004. He confessed, the remains of both victims were recovered from a rubbish tip after a long search, and he pleaded guilty to two counts of murder. In August 2005 the Supreme Court of Victoria sentenced him to life imprisonment, with a minimum of 33 years before he could be considered for parole.
The law recognized two victims. Sharpe was charged with, and pleaded guilty to, two counts of murder: one for Anna and one for Gracie. No separate charge was reported over the child Anna was carrying, whom the family's priest spoke of at the funeral as her unborn son.
Very little about Sharpe's life before 2004 is on the public record. He lived with his wife and daughter in a house on a street in Mornington that ABC News called Princes Street and New Zealand Police called Prince Street. He was 37 when he was charged and 38 when he was sentenced. His mother, Valerie Sharpe, spoke publicly after the sentence.
What the court records and reports do make clear is how he explained himself afterward. He told police he had been unhappy in his marriage and that he had bought the speargun some time before the killings with the aim of killing his wife. When he came to be sentenced, Justice Bernard Bongiorno found that he had killed her out of resentment.
Anna Marie Kemp came from Dunedin, New Zealand. Her mother was Lili Gebler, and she had two brothers, Gerald and Joseph, known as Joe. The family were Catholics, and their parish priest in Dunedin, Father Tony Harrison, would play a part in what happened next.
In 2004 Anna was living in Mornington with her husband and their daughter, a long way from home. She was a first-time mother working from home, as the New Zealand police officer who later took up her case put it. She stayed close to her mother across the Tasman Sea: the two spoke by telephone at least once a week. When she died she was about five months into her second pregnancy.
At her funeral in Dunedin the family's description of her was read to the mourners. They remembered a lovely, vivacious young woman with an effervescent, bubbly personality, and someone who cared about the welfare of the people around her.
Gracie was Anna and John's daughter, their only child. The press used two surnames for her: Gracie Sharpe in most Australian reports and in the New Zealand Police release on the day of sentencing, and Gracie Kemp in some reports of the burial. Her age was also reported in different ways, as 19 months, 20 months, 22 months and two years.
She was a toddler in child care. That small fact became part of the case: she was dropped off at child care and collected on March 24 and March 26, 2004, and police said she was not seen by anyone outside the family after that. At sentencing, the judge described her as a defenseless child who was her father's legal and moral responsibility.
The killings took place in March 2004 in the family home. Reports given in court and summarized by ABC News establish the order of events: Sharpe killed his wife first, as she slept, using the speargun. He then buried her body in the backyard. Some days later he killed Gracie with the same weapon. Reports from 2004 and early 2005 put the interval at four days; the ABC's report of the sentencing put it at three.
The judge stated plainly why Gracie died. Sharpe killed her, Justice Bongiorno told him, simply so that his first crime would not be discovered. Sharpe himself had told police he decided he would also have to kill his daughter so that it would look as if his wife had left him and taken the child.
He later dug up his wife's body, and he took both bodies to a rubbish tip on the Mornington Peninsula, where they lay hidden for more than three months.
Sharpe then began telling a story that his wife's family did not believe.
His later account to police went like this. He said Anna had left the family home on March 23 and come back on March 28 to collect Gracie. Police noted that the last contact that appeared to come from Anna was a telephone call to her health insurer on March 28. Sharpe also told police he had stayed in touch with his wife and daughter after that and had last seen them on May 17. He said Anna was pregnant by another man.
In Dunedin, Lili Gebler noticed first that the weekly calls had stopped. A few days after she raised the alarm she received an email, written as if from Anna, telling her not to worry. In the weeks that followed only emails came. Messages left on the phone went unanswered. When she did reach her son-in-law, he told her Anna had left him for someone else.
On May 8, Lili received flowers for Mother's Day, sent in Anna's name, with a note that also wished her a happy birthday. Her birthday was not until June 18. Lili said the wording was not her daughter's, and that Anna would not have marked her birthday so early.
The officer Lili turned to was Constable John Woodhouse of the Dunedin police, a member of the same parish. He took up the matter at the request of Father Tony Harrison.
At first, Woodhouse said later, he was not greatly concerned. A week without contact between a mother and an adult daughter was not unusual, and he made the usual early checks. Then came the emails, the silence on the phone, and the claim that Anna had run off with another man. "It just didn't add up," he said. Anna was a first-time mother working from home, and he could not see how she could have met someone and vanished.
He began working the case from the other side of the Tasman. He read Anna's emails. He spoke to her friends, none of whom knew of any other man. He went to the library to study the area where she lived. He traced her midwife, who told him Anna had stopped coming to her appointments without explanation. A pregnant woman who simply stops seeing her midwife was, to him, another sign that something was badly wrong.
Woodhouse passed the file to the Criminal Investigation Branch. From there it went through Detective Inspector Chris Kelley, the New Zealand Police liaison officer in Canberra, to Victoria Police. Detective Senior Sergeant Kallum Croudis of Dunedin helped Woodhouse with the technical side of the inquiry. Woodhouse later insisted that he had only "started the ball rolling," and that the result came from cooperation across agencies and across two countries.
By June 2004 the Homicide Squad of Victoria Police had the case. On June 13, Detective Inspector Bernie Rankin said publicly that the disappearance of Anna and Gracie was now being treated as a homicide. Police had become increasingly pessimistic, he said, though they had not given up hope of good news, and he appealed to anyone who might be sheltering the child to come forward at once.
By then Anna would have been about eight months pregnant had she been alive. Police said they had found no evidence that she had been in a relationship with anyone else, despite her husband's claim. Earlier searches of a local lake and a nature reserve had found no trace of either of them.
Victoria Police interviewed Sharpe, and he confessed. According to the New Zealand Police account, he also told detectives where he had disposed of the bodies.
He was charged with two counts of murder. He appeared at an out-of-sessions court hearing at night and then, on June 23, 2004, before the Melbourne Magistrates Court. The ABC reported that it was alleged he had admitted killing his wife and then, four days later, his daughter, both as they slept. The prosecution asked for more time to prepare the brief of evidence. Sharpe told the court, according to the ABC, that the case was very much circumstantial and that more investigation was needed. He was remanded in custody, to return to court in November.
The same day police searched the house, digging in the front and back gardens and using two German shepherd dogs.
The search then moved to the rubbish tip on the Mornington Peninsula. It began in late June 2004 and was expected to take about a week. Wet weather slowed it. By early July police had narrowed the search to an area of 2,500 square meters where they believed the remains were buried, and they said they were confident they had the right place.
On July 6, 2004, police confirmed that they had found human remains, under about one and a half meters of rubbish and dirt. Detective Inspector Steven Francis of the Homicide Squad would not yet say whose they were, and said the forensic unit was examining them. "This has been a very thorough investigation and we're not going to worry ourselves with time," he said. The remains had been wrapped in a blue tarpaulin. Three days later forensic tests were due on another item found at the tip, and the search, then in its tenth day, went on. In all, police searched the tip for three weeks.
In August 2004 Anna's brothers, Gerald and Joe Kemp, traveled from Dunedin to Melbourne to take their sister and niece home. Constable Woodhouse went with them. Gerald Kemp said the family had been through hell, thanked the police, and said he had feared that Anna and Gracie might never be found, so he was relieved when they were.
The funeral was held on a Saturday in August 2004 at St Joseph's Cathedral in Dunedin, a traditional Catholic Mass attended by about 200 people. The coffins were covered with red roses, pink lilies and white daisies. Woodhouse was one of the pallbearers.
Father Harrison told the congregation that the family felt relief that they could at last bury Anna, her unborn son and Gracie with dignity, alongside sorrow that they could no longer share in their joy and love. He said trust in God and the support of their community had carried the family through. The new Catholic Bishop of Dunedin, Colin Campbell, told the mourners there was no apparent reason for what had happened, but that love would prevail. Gerald Kemp gave the only family address, thanking people on both sides of the Tasman on behalf of his mother and his brother Joseph.
On February 1, 2005, Sharpe pleaded guilty in the Supreme Court of Victoria to murdering his wife and his daughter. The court was told that he had been unhappy in his marriage and had earlier bought the speargun in order to kill his wife, and that he later decided he had to kill Gracie as well so it would appear that Anna had left him. He had buried his wife in the backyard of the Mornington house and later moved both bodies to the tip.
The plea hearing opened on April 26, 2005, when the plea was formally entered. The prosecution set out how far he had gone to cover up the murders, including the story that Anna had left him for another man and taken Gracie with her. As the facts were read, the ABC reported, Sharpe wept and wiped his eyes.
On May 20, 2005, the prosecutor, Jeremy Rapke, told the court that the crimes called for the severest punishment. Sharpe, he argued, should be denied his liberty for the rest of his life, and fixing any non-parole period would be inappropriate. Sentence was set for a later date.
Justice Bernard Bongiorno sentenced Sharpe on August 5, 2005. He imposed life imprisonment for each murder and fixed a minimum term of 33 years before Sharpe could be considered for parole. The ABC reported that he would be 71 before he became eligible.
The judge said Sharpe had killed his wife out of resentment. Of Gracie he said: "Gracie was a defenceless child who was your legal and moral responsibility. You killed her simply so that your first crime would not be discovered." He described what Sharpe had done as wicked in the extreme and barbaric, and found that he had shown no genuine remorse.
Anna's family in Dunedin watched the sentencing by video link from New Zealand, and the ABC reported that her mother wept as the details were read. Through New Zealand Police the family asked for privacy, saying they did not wish to be contacted by the media and that it had been, and continued to be, an extremely upsetting time. They thanked their church and their close friends for their support.
Outside court, Sharpe's mother, Valerie Sharpe, said her son's crimes were terrible, that he would serve the sentence he had been given, and that the sentence was appropriate. "He has given himself a life sentence," she said.
The court dealt with two crimes: the murder of Anna Kemp and the murder of Gracie. Those were the two counts on which Sharpe was charged in June 2004, to which he pleaded guilty in 2005, and on which he was sentenced. Every report and release describes two counts of murder and two victims named in them. None records a separate charge concerning Anna's unborn child, so in the legal sense the case had two victims, not three. The family's own words at the funeral, which spoke of burying Anna, her unborn son and Gracie, are the clearest public record of how they saw their loss.
Constable John Woodhouse received a District Commander's award for his work on the case. Looking back, he said he believed Sharpe would have been caught in the end, because "people like Anna and Gracie just don't disappear." What the early work on the file had done, he said, was to allow the bodies to be found quickly, which had meant a great deal to the family.
When New Zealand Police published their account of the case, about 2006, Sharpe was serving his life sentences in Victoria. Under his sentence he cannot be considered for parole until he has served the 33-year minimum; the ABC reported in 2005 that he would then be 71.
Proven by his own guilty pleas, and final: the murders of Anna Kemp and of Gracie, in March 2004 at the family home in Mornington.
Not the subject of any reported charge: the death of Anna's unborn child.
Unproven: claims by some of Sharpe's relatives, first published by a Melbourne newspaper after the sentencing, about his earlier conduct. They were never tested in court.
Details that vary between sources: Gracie's age (19 months, 20 months, 22 months or two years) and surname (Sharpe or Kemp); the interval between the two killings (four days in 2004 and early 2005 reports, three days in the ABC's sentencing report); the street name (Princes Street or Prince Street); the spelling of Sharpe's middle name (Myles in the court and police record, Miles in one press agency report); when the remains were found (July 6, 2004, in the ABC's report that day; "in June" and "two months later" in a later ABC report); and when the guilty pleas were entered (February 1, 2005, according to the ABC, and April 2005, according to New Zealand Police and the ABC's report of the plea hearing, which said the plea was formally entered on April 26).
March 2004: John Myles Sharpe kills his wife, Anna Kemp, 41 and about five months pregnant, at their home in Mornington, Victoria, and buries her in the backyard.
March 24 and 26, 2004: Gracie is taken to and collected from child care, the last times she is seen outside the family.
March 2004: Sharpe kills Gracie with the same speargun, days after killing her mother.
March 28, 2004: the last contact appearing to come from Anna, a call to her health insurer.
The following weeks: Lili Gebler in Dunedin receives only emails from her daughter's account; Sharpe tells her Anna has left him for another man.
May 8, 2004: Lili receives Mother's Day flowers in Anna's name with an early birthday note.
May to June 2004: Constable John Woodhouse's inquiries in Dunedin lead to a referral to Victoria Police.
June 13, 2004: Victoria Police announce they are treating the disappearance as a homicide.
June 2004: Sharpe confesses, is charged with two counts of murder and appears at an out-of-sessions hearing.
June 23, 2004: he appears in the Melbourne Magistrates Court and is remanded in custody; police search the house.
Late June 2004: the search of a Mornington Peninsula tip begins.
July 6, 2004: police confirm human remains have been found at the tip.
August 2004: Gerald and Joe Kemp take Anna and Gracie home; they are buried after a funeral Mass at St Joseph's Cathedral, Dunedin.
February 1, 2005: Sharpe pleads guilty in the Supreme Court of Victoria.
April 26, 2005: the plea hearing opens.
May 20, 2005: the prosecution argues for no parole period.
August 5, 2005: Justice Bernard Bongiorno sentences him to life imprisonment on each count with a minimum of 33 years.
About 2006: New Zealand Police publish an account of Constable Woodhouse's role; he has received a District Commander's award.