“The Government must see that every possible step is taken to see that girls can walk about our streets in freedom”.
Christmas Day, 1937, and the little girl had been missing from her home in Windsor, just outside Sydney, for 30 hours.
A German Shepherd called Tess - one of the first two recruits for the NSW K9 Squad established in 1932 - while unable to prevent a tragic outcome, would make history in the case of six-year-old Marcia Hayes. Not only did Tess locate the victim, she tracked down the perpetrator as well.
From the scent of a dress belonging to the child, Tess would take police to the nearby dwelling of a 65-year-old gardener and British ex-serviceman - who’d already been questioned.
He’d admitted to knowing Marcia as one of the neighbourhood children and had on occasion presented her with a penny. While offering that he’d given her some flowers the previous evening and having seen her earlier that day, he had no clue as to her current whereabouts.
Hours later, with Tess alighting upon his bed inside his ramshackle “hut”, the tracking dog was given a shirt for his scent. Immediately she made her way to South Creek as it snakes away from the Hawkesbury River.
Swimming to the middle of the waterway, Tess attempted to drag back a bag. On recovery, it was revealed to contain Marcia.
According to the book, Cold Nose of the Law, it’s believed this dual discovery is "unequalled in police dog records the world over”.
For the “villainous, atrocious and abominable a crime as could be conceived", the following year Alfred Spicer would be the second-last person hanged in NSW.
Accounts suggest Marcia's body may still have been in the hut of the dishevelled, beak-nosed, war-impaired man at the time police were making their inquiries. Having raped and strangled her, in the killer’s estimation at about 11am, it was approximately 5pm before he disposed of her remains. Placing her in the bag, he dragged her through a barbed wire fence, before throwing her in the creek.
Marcia’s father, a pastry cook, had apparently crossed paths with Spicer during the course of the night. As Mr Hayes had continued his desperate search, a figure suddenly emerged from the darkness, muttering “caught at last”. While Mr Hayes recognised him, it wouldn’t be until Tess’s arrival that the sinister nature of that nocturnal journey would be revealed.
Among the extensive newspaper reports of the time it was claimed Spicer was “one of the few prisoners in the history of Australian courts who wanted to plead guilty on a capital charge” - despite the protestations of his legal counsel. His only defence: “I don’t know what made me do it”.
When the death sentence was handed down, there were attempts to have it overturned on the grounds Spicer was a “mental degenerate”. Public sentiment however, was in favour of it being enacted.
One returned soldier from Coogee, NSW, even offered to undertake the role of executioner without fee, writing in a Letter to the Editor, “he had shot men at the war with sincere regret, but Spicer was one man whom he could kill without the slightest regret.”
A meeting of the Howard Prison Reform League arguing for leniency was interrupted by a man appearing in their midst admonishing them, “you have no right to do this”. It was Marcia’s father.
While disavowing revenge, Mr Hayes passionately argued it was necessary to set an example in order that “other children will be safer”.
Even the President of the Reform League would come to disassociate himself with the condemned man, of the view that “for people like Spicer he was in favor of hanging” and that the law should be permitted to take its course.
The official response from Minister for Justice, Mr L.O. Martin was that the “Government must see that every possible step is taken to see that girls can walk about our streets in freedom”.
For Spicer, his final response on the verdict: “I am ready to die. I deserve to die.”
At 8am on May 26, 1938, having “refused the administration of drugs or alcohol”, Spicer ascended the steps of the Long Bay Gaol gallows. His “spiritual adviser”, Brigadier Egan of the Salvation Army, would later reiterate that the prisoner had “embraced death eagerly” believing in both “a life for a life” - and that he’d had an otherworldly visitation.
Spicer had claimed that as he sat in his cell one night awaiting his fate, he "heard a voice singing a hymn" - one written by blind songwriter Fanny Crosby in 1891 when she was 71, "Saved by Grace”. Frantically asking the warder if he too, had heard the words - “oh I will see Him face-to-face, and tell the story, saved by Grace” - he was told no. Spicer thereafter proclaimed it to have been “the voice of an angel”.
An opposing suggestion: it was his young victim come to rightfully haunt his final hours.
As for Tess, at Spicer’s trial in the Central Criminal Court in Sydney, Crown Prosecutor, Mr McKean, K.C., “described the excellent work performed by the police Alsatian Tess, in finding the body of Marcia Hayes.”
“Police and civilian searchers had fruitlessly combed the countryside for more than 30 hours before the body was discovered,” he’d reminded all present.
On her own eventual death in 1940, the nine-year-old canine hero was preserved, her taxidermy-self still to be found in the Justice & Police Museum in Sydney.