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The Mitcham Murder

Syd Wright at the Whitehorse Historical society in June 1998

It is a facet of Mitcham’s history which is of interest to everyone. It was the perfect crime! It put Mitcham on the map at the time, and has remained a mystery ever since. What I have to say is in no condemnatory of any person. I don’t make any suggestion of guilt on anyone’s part. And what I say is all in the public domain. It is in the records of the Box Hill Historical Society, the Latrobe Library and the Public Record Office at Laverton. (Now at North Melbourne -2008).
In that pre-war period, in the 20’s when this occurred, the ..........had spread right up from Donvale into Mitcham – Ormond Avenue, Cook Street, Dunlavin Road, and this concerns two orchard families who were in Mitcham Road, in sight of the town centre. They were separated by a laneway which at the time was known as The Stock Route. When livestock was driven through Mitcham, which was pretty common, it was supposed to go through this laneway. On the north side of the road was an orchard family called Kleinert. He had a German background, Alf Kleinert - Alf and Annie- and they had two sons, Alfred Jnr, who was a student, and Ernest Ambrose, who helped his father on the orchard. He was 20. It was a big orchard and hard work for Ernest. On the south side of the lane was an Australian orchardist, Ted Sampson. He had only been married for fifteen months. He was married to Iolene, unusual spelling, she was the daughter of an Australian orchardist further down Mitcham Road, John Robertson. (Robinson)
The story, I suppose, began on the night of the 2 of January 1928. It had been a lovely summer’s day — 74 degrees. Ted Sampson said that he’d noticed some early peaches and lemons and some other fruit on the track when he left the market very early in the mornings. Then he and Iolene had a light meal about 7 o’clock, and they lay down to get some rest, and to sleep before he went to the market. About the same time that this was happening, about 9pm, there was a party beginning in Mitcham at Mrs Maloney’s in Whitehorse Road - I think near Rooks Road corner. You could say it was the younger set of Mitcham, and included Ernest Kleinert. They had put in money and bought a nine gallon of beer, which of course is a big lot to any party.
We don’t know what happened for some time, but about half past two, Ted Sampson rose to go to the market. The truck had a flat tyre, so he asked Iolene to put on a dressing gown and hold a torch for him while he changed the tyre. When that was done, presumably she went back to bed and he drove off to the market.
Nothing more is available for some time in regard to what happened, but at 25 past 5, at Mitcham’s first police station (that’s now the site of the Catholic Church Presbytery) Bert Hanlon (the policeman) was awakened by someone pounding on the door. When he went to investigate, there was a young man, highly excited, with blood on his person and clothing. It was Ernest Kleinert! He told the policeman that he found -on his way home from the party, he’d stumbled across a badly injured woman on the side of the road outside Sampson’s house.
I think Bert Hanlon was probably a bit skeptical, but anyway, he walked with Emest Kleinert. They walked down to the scene. She was there all right! She was certainly badly wounded! She had a massive head wound and she was naked from the waist down. Bert Hanlon sent Kleinert up to get Doctor Cochrane -he was a legend in Mitcham’s medical history - on the corner of Harrison Street. He (the doctor) rode his bicycle down, we presume with Ernest trotting alongside, took one look at the woman and was convinced she was very severely injured. He left the policeman and Ernest there and he went back to his surgery on his bicycle, rang for an ambulance, and came back with some dressings to try and stop the bleeding.
The ambulance duly arrived and she was taken to the Melbourne hospital. Doctor Cochrane went back to his surgery and Bert Hanlon to his police station and Ernest Kleinert went home, and he made no attempt to wash the blood from his clothes. He just threw them in the wash house for his mother. A lot of you will think that in seventy years things haven’t changed over much.
About half past nine, Ted Sampson returned from the market and he is surprised to find no sign of Iolene to welcome him. She’s not in the orchard, so he’s concerned and forced an entry in to the house. To his dismay, the bedroom is in a state of disorder; a nightie on the floor just like she'd stepped out of it; her powder puff and powder on the floor, but no sign of her. By now he was very concerned!
He hurried down the road to his in laws, John and Mary Robinson, but she wasn’t there either. Suddenly Mrs Robinson was assailed by a terrible thought. Someone had told her that early that morning a woman had been found on the road injured, and taken to a Melbourne hospital. So Ted Sampson and John and Mary Robinson hurried in to the Melbourne Hospital, but Iolene had died just as they got there. She never regained consciousness!
Now Mitcham was horrified at such a brutal murder, as was Melbourne really. It got great coverage in the Melbourne press, and also interstate papers. A team of detectives were arranged to solve it. There was an inquest on the 2" February and on the 7” February, the police found, in the dam which was opposite Quarry Road, a blood-stained axe which they were convinced was the murder weapon. In those days, everyone had a chopping block and an axe, which usually left just up against the chopping block so there was nothing odd the axe being ..... But if Mitcham was horrified at the murder, they were even more surprised on the 9" February when the police announced that they’d arrested Emest Kleinert and charged him with the murder.
Now the Kleinert family were so horrified at this that they engaged the leading criminal barrister of the day, Eugene Gorman KC... . He was well known! He was like a combination of Frank Galbally and Perry Mason. He was the top man!

At the first trial, which started on the 22™ February ~ justice was fairly swift in those days — and it lasted for three days. I don’t want to go into all the evidence but some points are very interesting. One of them particularly is the cleverness of Eugene Gorman. At the police station, Ernest Kleinert told the police that the mud on his person and his clothing was because he had picked the woman up and was going to carry her to the police station. It seems a bit odd but that’s what he said. The crown said that the suggestion that anyone who would pick up an adult person, badly injured, and attempt to carry them nearly half a mile to the police station was ridiculous. But Eugene Gorman built in the biblical story of the Good Samaritan. He said that Kleinert could have been like those two Pharisees. He could have crossed the road and just ignored it, but Good Samaritan that he was, he endeavoured to help her. It must have been a telling point for the jury. Doctor Cochrane recalled that when the

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ambulance had gone with Iolene, he noticed Sampson (insert Kleinert here) sprinkling dust and dirt over the blood on the
footpath. The crown said this was incriminating, but Eugene Gorman said, “No. It showed how considerate Ernest was to this
poor woman that he was covering up her blood on the footpath.”

So they were the main points of interest. One thing the police complained about Ernest was that he told them he hadn’t been
drinking at the party when obviously he had, quite a bit. He said the reason why he told that ‘white lie’ was that his parents
were against him drinking and he didn’t want them to know, which is not unreasonable. But then another point you see, he told
the police that when he and the doctor were at the scene, he looked for her bag, and they said, “Why were you looking for her
bag?” He said, “The way she was dressed in her good clothes, out on the street.... (This is an interesting point — in her best
clothes, out on the street with a hat) Every woman he knew who went out like that carried a handbag. That’s why he said it. At
the time, the police hadn’t told him her bag was missing. The big point that the jury could not get over, was, if she had been
left in bed when Ted Sampson left, why was she out on the street dressed in her best clothes?

The crown said that Kleinert has gone to her door and given her a bogus message - possibly that her husband had been injured
and she was to go to him, or alternatively that something had happened and she had fled from the house in fright or in terror.
Nevertheless, it was a mysterious business that she was out on the street. I think this gave the jury no end of trouble. So, it’s not
surprising, on the 25" - that’s the fourth day after the trial started - they returned and told the presiding judge, Sir William
Irvine - the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court - that they had no hope of agreeing on a verdict. He was probably relieved he
didn’t have to put a dreadful piece of black cloth on top of his wig to announce the death sentence. He did order that Kleinert
stand trial again in the next season of that Supreme Court, which was in a month.

So the second trial started on the 28 March. How swift justice was! The second trial started a month from the first one. If it
was today, they would be still arguing as to who was going to pay the bills. Anyway, this was before a new judge — Judge
Wasby - and the evidence was a repetition of the other. But there were two interesting points! The crown said, “Obviously,
Iolene had known and recognised her attacker!” That’s why she had to be silenced you see, because dead men and women tell
no tales, which is quite an interesting point. But then I think what must have influenced the jury again was that Eugene
Gorman had said the most telling point in his client’s favour, was that whilst the policeman and the doctor were standing in
front of the woman, each side of the woman really, and Kleinert was standing there in front of her, he must have realised that at
any moment she could have recovered consciousness, even for a second, and said, “That’s the man!” He said that the fact that
he stood there, confident, showed that he was innocent. This jury of course had the same trouble, I think, as the first jury, about
the mystery of what she was doing out in the street. At one stage they returned to tell the judge they had a couple of questions.
One was, ‘Who left the party at Mrs Maloney’s? Who left the party first or last, and what time they left?” I think they’d all
had a few drinks and no one was sure who left first or last you see, and it was that uncertainty. And the other thing was, they
asked the judge if he could he help them about her being out in the street? Judge Wasby said, and I think his words were pretty
prophetic, “We may never know!” I think this must have influenced that jury because, on a wet, dreary, Saturday at about 10
to six, they returned a verdict of ‘not guilty’. There was the usual pandemonium in court. The Kleinert’s friends and relations
embraced. We don’t know what Ted Sampson’s thoughts were, but there the matter should have ended, I suppose.

It was to erupt in more violence in three to four months. I don’t know if any of you remember but there were two big events in
Mitcham on a Saturday night. There were the movies at the Memorial Hal! and the arrival of the train, at about a quarter to
seven, with the Herald and the Sporting Globe. Everybody bought those two papers for their Sunday reading. This particular
night, people were on the footpath outside the Swan’s Newsagency, milling around waiting for their papers, when who should
literally bump into one another but Ted Sampson and Ernest Kleinert. Old sores were re-opened, hot words were said, and they
grappled. Now Ted Sampson was a big, powerful man. He’d had four years in the war in France, and Ernest Kleinert was
knocked to the ground. He promptly feared for his life because he called out, “Dad. Dad.” Alf Kleinert senior was there and he
lashed out and then there was a three-way contest, and Ted Sampson was knocked down, and perhaps he feared for his life. He
arose with a knife in his hand. Now there was nothing unusual in that because he was a pipe smoker, and all pipe smokers at
that time carried a knife. In the ensuing melee, Ernest Kleinert was stabbed in the neck, seriously. He was carted off to a
private hospital in Blackburn where a doctor staunched the flow of blood and said he could easily have bled to death. Bert
Hammond was called again. I think by this time, Bert Hammond must have been seriously thinking of applying for a transfer,
because Mitcham was getting just too hot. That was on the Saturday night the 21* July. On the 2“ August, Sampson appeared
in the Box Hill Court charged with malicious wounding. He was defended by Frank Menzies, brother of Sir Robert, who was
just as important in legal circles as Eugene Gorman. Peter (read Ted?) Sampson had been a friend of the Menzies family and
had stayed there when he was a boy, so Menzies convinced the magistrate at Box Hill Court that poor Ted Sampson, he’s been
in terrible provocation. He is still grieving over the loss of his wife only four months before, and he got the magistrate to
reduce the charge to simple ‘assault’. He was fined £5, which isn’t very much when you think of it, but of course in those days
it was pretty sizable. I think from then on, Ted Sampson, thinking that blood had been spilt, he had regained some honour for
Iolene, and things settled down. I think they both went on with their fruit growing, casting baleful looks across this laneway.
That went on for five years, until the final chapter in this tragedy. Alf Kleinert was a genial and generous man. He was well-
respected and well liked in the district.

It’s 1933 now, and in the middle of the depression, and he was very good to other families in the Mitcham area. At the market,
if he saw vegetable being given away or sold for a song, he’d bring them home and distribute them. He was a lovely chap, Alf
Kleinert! But this tragedy had cut him down. He had brooded over the disgrace to his family, even though Ernest had been
found not guilty. Alf Senior thought the family’s honour had been besmirched, but just as importantly, he felt the loss of his
life savings, I think. Some thought that it had cost him well in excess of £2.000 for the trial. Now £2,000 seventy years ago was
an awful lot of money. So those two factors didn’t help Alf at all, and on the morning of the 1* September 1933, just like Ted
Sampson, Alf was about to go to the market. He drove his truck out of the shed with fruit on and then he stopped to adjust a tail
light. Now he did something that I'd probably do. He put a round block of wood under wheel of the truck. Of course it rolled
back and he suffered a very painful injury. The family doctor, a Doctor Phillip Collins from Doncaster, was called and he had

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Alf put to bed and he said he’d come back in the afternoon and give him a pain killing injection. But during the day, I think
everything got Alf down, and late in the afternoon, he got out of bed, took a shotgun from the wardrobe , and in his stockinged
feet, so as not to alert the family, he crept out the front door. He had a magnificent grove of lemon trees about where the
Mitcham North shops in Andover Avenue are now. It was very sad. He walking into this lemon grove that I suppose he was so
proud of, and there he put the gun to his head and took his own life. Ironically, it was Ernest sent by his mother to look for his
father, and who found his father in the same bloody state that he had found Iolene. The coroner was satisfied it was suicide. If
it was too much for Alf, it was too much for his wife, and it wasn’t long after that that she suffered a major nervous collapse,
and she was hospitalised and never really returned home. I’ve been able to trace Alf Junior who was a pharmacy student. There
is a suggestion that he changed his name to make it easier in his profession, and Emest... I developed a lot of sympathy for
Ernest while researching this. He had a life of hard work on the orchard. | think that Alf was probably a hard task master. He
had come across Iolene in such terrible circumstances: he’d been accused of her murder: He’d gone through two traumatic
trials. Now either of those trials could have caused him to be hanged by the neck until he was dead, which is not a very
pleasant experience I suppose, for anyone. And then you see, having found his father in that condition, and what happened to
his mother, I think Ernest drifted away into the city and lived something in the way of something of a recluse. The Kleinert
family, through no fault of their own, virtually disappeared. The only one who came out of it with any degree of normality was
Ted Sampson, because some years later, quite a few years later, he remarried and as far as I know he lived happily ever after.
Today, there’s very little to remind us of those troubled times in Mitcham. The Kleinert property is all homes and houses and
streets. Their family home is now the site of a 24-hour convenience store. Ted Sampson’s property ~ his orchard, is the whole
of the campus of the Mullauna Secondary College and the Mitcham Primary School. That laneway that separated the two
orchards. It’s now a busy highway- Springfield Road. Doctor Cochrane perhaps is remembered by the Stanley Cochrane ....
Garden. If nothing much remains there, there are three things that still remain.

Who was it that so brutally took the life of Iolene Sampson? Was it the perfect crime? Why was she out on the street? We’ve
never had any satisfactory explanation!

Questions from the floor.

hadn’t been able to find it. I don’t know what that means. But she was dressed in her best clothes — a white silk blouse,
grey skirt, a hat, brown coat. Why had she fled from the house? She could have run across the road to Bullens, They were
nearly opposite, but for some reason.

Q. One story was that she was going to go to her mother and father’s.

A. Yes. That’s right! They were opposite where the Mitcham North Medical Centre is. But at that hour of the morning,
none of it sort of makes sense. She could have stayed in the safety of the home. See, Eugene Gormon said to the jury, “
The Crown are seriously suggesting to you that my client knocked on the door, delivered this bogus message, patiently
waited while she got dressed, came out, locked the door, then he walked with her, still swinging the axe in his hand, out on
the street where he murdered her.” It demolished the Crown’s main case!

Q. The newspaper said that the key was found on the footpath, and market money.
A. Yes. There was a key and they found £20.

Qe,
A

Q
A

. Yes they were satisfied it was Sampson’s axe, but as I say, there was nothing unusual in that. Everyone had an axe.
Q. The other story was that they found the axe in the dam. The police wanted to drain the dam, but Ted wanted the water
so he could water the garden.

A. Well you see it was February. He would want to conserve the water, but eventually he didn’t object when they said
they would prefer to do it. So they did.
Q. Was it an axe or a tomahawk?
A. An axe, they said.
Q. Well everybody had an axe.
A. That’s right. And it was just stuck into the top of a log.
Q. Was the Sampson’s house, the school caretaker’s house?
A. Yes it was. I just wish I'd taken a photo. If anyone walks past there now, the driveway that was there, and the
concrete driveway later on, that’s recently been altered to make it a fork ..... so you'll see the fresh concrete, but I
know many people in the district who walk past there will realise, well at the time, in those days, it was a talking
point in Mitcham.
beeen teeta eee reas (Something about the dark and having to walk past there as kids)
1 was 11.

Speaker asks... Where was Mrs Maloney’s house?

It was somewhere between Richard Street and Rooks Road

So it was another family. It wasn’t a boarding house.

No. As I said before, it was just the young set of Mitcham. I think the saddest feature was for the Kleinert family
because it was no fault of theirs. They were the main sufferers.

It was strange how the other son disappeared?

No, we can’t find out! We can only go on anecdotal stories of what happened.

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A. It does seem as if it was the perfect crime. There were no other suspects, and there was very little evidence. When
Ernest Kleinert was committed for trial it was a Judge Mann who took the unusual step of granting him bail. In
those days, with a capital charge like murder you didn’t get bail. I think Judge Mann probably thought the evidence against Kleinert was pretty thin.

This was only one policemen’s statement so they would have brought in a lot of others.

Yes there was a team. The murder was the biggest thing that Bert Hanlon had ever had in his career.

Bill Robinson was Iolene’s brother. and a bit further down was John and Mary Robinson, the parents.

They were very quiet people. They were friendly but they kept to themselves,

I tried to talk to a brother, Roger. I said to him one day, “ About your sister” but he didn’t want to talk about it. As
he grew up, I think he would have heard his parents talking about it, but it’s tantalising that there is a solution there
somewhere.

Do you think that when the young that when the young fellow came home and just flung his bloody clothes in the
laundry, was there any significance of that in the trial?

Usually in these cases, the murderer will go to great lengths to wash the clothing. I think the fact that he threw them aside, he obviously wasn’t thinking he would be accused. There’s a lot of evidence from analysts in the court about the clothing. There was still residue of bloodstains although Mrs Kleinert had washed them, but we knew that because he told the policeman how he got the bloodstains in the first place.

Was the husband ever suspected?

I'd rather not comment on that! There was trouble in the court. Eugene Gorman tried to bring it into the case and at
one stage the judge complained that they were creating a climate versus Sampson, which he objected to. But from
what I can read in the evidence, we'll know more after 2003, because then the transcripts of the trials will be
available. 75 years! There’ll probably be some interesting cross examinations we don’t know about.

Ernest? Yes. When he was arrested, he told them in the court that he was innocent, that he’d known Mrs Simpson
for ten years because the properties were so close, but he said, “I’m innocent!” | think he was grateful to the juries,
because when the second jury said not guilty and they filed out, in a low voice he said, “Thank you gentlemen.”

I would think so. See there was quite an enclave of orchard families there in Mitcham North right up from Donvale,

right up to Mitcham. They would have known.

The Public Record Office at Laverton, there’s a number of anonymous letters there. Always anonymous you see.

People writing to the police suggesting what the police should be doing.

The whole family was pretty well-respected about the whole district?
Ted Sampson had only been married about 15 months. She was in the early stages of a pregnancy.

Ted Sampson was a gruff sort of a chap. He was a man of few words.
He actually attended Christ Church. The family did, his second wife.
You mentioned the RSL. When he was at the Box Hill Court, and was dealt with so leniently, there was a big
contingent of the Mitcham RSL there, and when he came they gave him a very good time. Ted was moved by the
Comradeship that the RSL fellows had showed him. They supported him really well.

. .. (something about why Ted didn’t move away from the scene of the murder)
You see he had a very productive garden, Ted Sampson. It was small but it was very well looked after and it was productive. He had built it up. Perhaps he didn’t want to leave it.