Nigel McAree beheading murder: Forty-year-old cold case

Publish date: 2024-04-23

NIGEL McAree appeared to be an ordinary, dedicated family man.

But the manner in which he lived is not why he will be remembered — it’s the brutal way he died.

“Bullet found in headless body at cliff,” was the newspaper headline that first told readers of the 42-year-old’s violent death in 1975.

His body was found on a September afternoon in the bushes at Governor Game Lookout, in Sydney’s Royal National Park.

He’d been shot and — in several savage blows — his head cut off, likely with a machete, and thrown onto bushes a few metres away.

Large pools of blood indicated he was shot in the back of the head with a .22 calibre rifle and then dragged to bushes close by where the head was removed.

It was tourists who made the grim discovery.

They found the blood pool near Nigel’s Ford Fairlane and rang the park ranger who went to investigate. The body and then, about 4.5m away, its head close to the cliff, were found.

Despite a major police inquiry, a reinvestigation and the offer of $200,000 reward money in 2010, the killer has never been found.

His son Stewart McAree has never spoken publicly about his father’s murder and rarely even discusses it with his family. It’s something he lives with every day.

“It just shattered me. My whole life as I knew it was gone,” he told news.com.au.

It changed the way Stewart lived and how he viewed people. He had few friends and had trouble forming relationships with people.

“My whole life ... I haven’t known if I’m shaking hands with someone that killed my father. We just don’t know.”

In the aftermath, his mother Kathleen struggled to cope and had to be told in stages Nigel was dead. The death broke her.

Stewart said he wasn’t sure what he would say to the killer if they are ever found.

“What can you say to someone that takes your best mate away and changes your whole world? “Nothing can change what happened.”

But Stewart has a theory about his father’s death. He believed the murder could be linked to a discovery he and his father made of a two rifles at the Police Boys Club in Sutherland, where he was a band member.

Stewart said something that worried him was the idea someone may have “snuck up on” his father.

There have been countless theories over just what happened to Nigel over the years, including the possibility he was the victim of a thrill-kill, or that he’d stumbled across something he shouldn’t have and was targeted as a result.

In 2005 someone called Crime Stoppers and nominated three teenagers who lived nearby at the time of the crime. When the NSW Unsolved Homicide Unit became involved in 2008 they tracked the men down and found they had criminal backgrounds — but have not been able to link them in any way to the murder.

For many years, Kathleen McAree suspected he may have become involved with corrupt members of the police.

But, aside from the vision of a psychic, there was no evidence to support that.

Another possibility that the family only became aware of recently, were reports Nigel was seen with a woman at the national park on the day of his death.

According to locals, it was a popular place for lovers to meet and a piece of paper with a number and the name ‘Lisa” in the car fuelled rumours.

But “Lisa” was never found so it remains unclear who she was.

Mr McAree’s niece Narelle Spencer told news.com.au the family wanted closure.

For that to happen they needed to know who killed him. And why.

“My aunty [Kathleen] has said she just wants to know before she dies. Why and what happened.”

It baffled her how someone could be so barbaric towards another person.

“I don’t know how anyone could commit a crime that brutal and live with themselves — and if they did do it, have they done something else?”

Narelle said any death would be hard secret to keep “but something that brutal” would be impossible.

It was her belief some teenagers seen acting suspiciously in the park in the days leading to the murder hold the key to solving the mystery, although the prospect he was killed so brutally simply for a thrill sickens her.

The lookout where he was slain was a favourite spot for Nigel. He would stop there often, mainly to break up his days on the road as a salesman for a plastics company.

“Maybe he tried to play hooky one day and went to the park with a lady. And it was the wrong day to do it,” Narelle said.

Even if that was true, she said the family bore no malice towards the mystery woman.

“We would love her to just come forward. No one really cares what they were doing ... But if she can help fill in a timeline, we want her to come forward.”

Another person the family wants to come forward is whoever called police back in 2005.

“Our family, they were all interviewed at the time because we were all shooters and all their guns collected. But none of us were connected obviously. And that was troubling too — we’d just lost a loved one and were shell-shocked and they were all being interviewed.”

Detective Inspector John Lehmann of the State Crime Command’s Unsolved Homicide Team has spoken of his determination to close the case.

Speaking to the Daily Telegraph when the reward was announced, Detective Inspector Lehmann said it had been “a particularly brutal, vicious crime”.

As the 40th anniversary of his death approaches, Nigel’s family have appealed directly to those who have information to do that right thing.

“People who have murder victims in their family ... It effects them every day of their life. And if we could get closure, someone has done a really bad thing, how do they know that person isn’t one day going to stop and do it again?”

Have you got any information?

Crime Stoppers 1800 333 000

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