Why is this interesting? Let's take a step back and look at the big picture.
You can read the full story on Wikipedia here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tatts_Group
In short, Tatts got going in Tasmania in 1895 when George Adams' gambling ventures on the mainland were shut down by moral wowsers. Similar to the current "Lockout Laws" - you get the idea.
Adams ran the lottery in Tasmania and amassed a fortune which he plowed into political power. Funding everything from infrastructure, business deals, horse breeding and political figures, he stayed behind the scenes as an apparently benevolent puppet master.
His key employee and Lottery Manager was a man named David Hastie Harvey.
George Adams died childless in 1904 and left all the shares in Tattersalls to his closest friends. Over the next almost-century, these were split amongst various heirs and sold in smaller parcels until at the new century there were over 590 shareholders. Their names were released when the company was floated as Tatts Group.
Let's look at David Hastie Harvey.
George Adam's faithful manager and student was also a successful businessman, farmer and horse breeder. Living in Mansrea, he owned property all over Tasmania and had eight children:
Horace was a breeder and trainer, who owned Studley Park at Sorell.
Harold was a farmer who owned Font Hill at Oatlands
David became an engineer, worked for State Hydro
Lorimer (Born 1907) was an electrician and plumber
Of the daughters, one died very young.
The oldest, listed simply as "Mrs Maddox of Melbourne" obviously married into high society and disappears from public records.
Violet was a nurse at Gallipoli and died in 1975
Daisy travelled the world, including a stint in India, dying in 1968
David Hastie Harvey died in 1927 aged 71. He had inherited ten percent of Adams' estate and built his own property and business empire using the same network.
Now it gets interesting:
David Hastie Harvey's youngest son Lorimer Harvey marries Hilza Kalbfell on 12 July 1932. He is 25 years old.
Their daughter, Helen Mary Harvey is born the same year. Do the math...
Mary is developmentally delayed, but has a very comfortable life. She finishes school, has a clerical job for a while but her father dies in 1961, aged 54. Hilza and Helen live Hobart, but Helen's inability to keep house leads to increasing squalor.
Hilza died on 27 July, 1990 and left the entire estate to her daughter Helen. What was it worth? There's an entry on http://encyc.org/wiki/Tattersalls which says $26 million, however it also says Helen was the owner of the company, which is not correct. She inherited shares which provided an income, that's all.
Helen was killed on 20 October, 1992 when her car crashed head on into a truck. She was killed instantly, as were several dogs that were in the car at the same time. Her other passenger received a spinal injury and spent a while in hospital. His name was Martin Bryant.
Helen had recently changed her will, leaving everything to her new friend, however there is uncertainty about how completely her instructions were carried out. Both Helen and Martin's money was managed by the Public Trustee, but it is not known if the estates were ever merged before 29 April 1996.
Bryant's funds included $250,000 of his father's life insurance money, and $143,000 from the sale of a farm in Copping. The Age noted the compensation fund at $1.3 million, (link below) based on seized assets which is probably those figures, plus the sale proceeds of the New Town mansion. If anyone has more data about the compensation fund, I would love to see it. The State Archives are still locked for another 5 years...
Tatts Group was floated in 2005 and the shareholder register became public for the first time ever. There are 5 Harvey family members who were shareholders at the time, and the Public Trustee is listed as holding two parcels of shares. Parcel #9 is 13,608,771 shares and #154 with 531,591 shares. Was one of these parcels the property of Helen Mary Harvey? If so, it wasn't included in the payout to victims and what happened to the dividends paid on those shares?
It's always bothered me, why Martin himself was selected as the patsy. There are several possibilities:
1. He came up on the MK Ultra radar when Dr Eric Cunningham Dax interviewed him aged 14. As a gullible young man, he would be easily hypnotised and an excellent mind control subject.
2. He annoyed someone connected to the plot on one of his overseas trips, and was tapped as the fall guy as punishment. This is the fiction I went with in my novel, The 2nd Empty Chair.
But when doing any investigation, the first rule is always: FOLLOW THE MONEY.
So option 3 is, he was set up by people who knew what was being planned, and used the massacre to steal or reclaim Helen Harvey's shares, before Martin wasted all the money on overseas travel. There is precedent for this - the Jack Reacher novel One Shot is about a mass shooting that is a cover for a business-related execution.
Option 4 is that the whole thing is a coincidence and somebody in the Public Trustee saw an opportunity and took it on the fly, while everything was confused.
Set emotion aside and look at the probabilities and possibilities.
Analysing these options, we are forced to the following conclusions:
Is it probable? Maybe not.
Is it possible? Definitely.
The Tasmanian State Library Archives contain records of the compensation fund, and I applied for access. The email I received back advised that those files are closed until 2023, unless I get permission from the Attorney General AND the Tas Justice Department.
Good luck with that...
Anyone with information about the Harvey family or Port Arthur is encouraged to contact me in complete anonymous confidence: o_zim@protonmail.com
Everyone who smells something fishy about the official story should read my fiction novel - available from one of the links in the sidebar. Based on the witness statements and court documents, it tells a plausible alternative that "pokes more holes in the official story than a pastafarian's colander".
Resting places of Lorimer, Hilza and Helen Harvey. I wonder at the significance of burying Helen with her great grandparents, rather than the Harvey clan. Is there anyone in Tasmania who knows anything about the family history - can you shed light on any family tensions that might explain this?
Newspaper link:
https://www.theage.com.au/national/a-daughter-gone-a-life-in-ruins-20060401-ge2203.html
No comments:
Post a Comment