Excavation to begin at Castalloy factory site in final bid to find Beaumont siblings’ remains

There is a final hope for Australia’s longest-running cold case.

Excavators will this weekend begin digging up an Adelaide factory site in a final bid to find the remains of the Beaumont siblings, before the government-owned land is sold to developers.

The week-long excavation at the former Castalloy site is expected to dig deeper and include a new search area.

The remains of nine-year-old Jane, seven-year-old Arnna and four-year-old Grant have never been found in the almost 60 years since they went missing from Glenelg Beach on January 26, 1966.

Eldest daughter Jane had been entrusted by parents Jim and Nancy to look after her younger siblings on the five-minute journey to the beach from their Somerton Park home.

Around midday, the siblings had visited nearby Wenzel’s Bakery where they bought lunch with a £1 note – more money than Jane’s mum said she gave her.

A shop assistant at the bakery recalled the children mentioning “the man” and witnesses said they saw the children playing at Colley Reserve with a tall, blond, thin-faced man who appeared to be in his 30s.

The leading suspect is businessman Harry Phipps, who died in 2004.

Phipps owned the who at the time lived about 300m from the Glenelg beach.

He became a prominent suspect after the release of Alan Whiticker and Stuart Mullins’ 2013 book The Satin Man: Uncovering the Mystery of the Missing Beaumont Children, along with claims from his estranged son Hayden and other family members.

Excavation is to begin at the former Castalloy factory site at North Plympton from 9am on Saturday.

The first search at the factory site was sparked by two brothers telling police they had dug a grave-like hole at the property at Mr Phipps’ request, only two days after the Beaumont siblings vanished.

The two previous searches in 2013 and 2018 were both unsuccessful.