Arthur Stanley Brown

Arthur Stanley Brown (20 May 1912 – 6 July 2002) was an Australian man charged for the 26 August 1970 rape and murders of Judith and Susan Mackay in Townsville, Queensland.

Brown was nicknamed the "Scarlet Pimpernel" based on the verse from the play[1] as he could be anywhere at any time due to flexible work hours and self-supervision.

One relative recalled that Brown was not grieving the day Hester died but was "shaking with fright" and appeared worried.

Hester once gave a female relative the "prized" lacework she had inherited from her mother, saying that she did not want "[Brown's] next lady love to get it".

After this, many more of the Andersen extended family came forward to say they also had been molested and shown pictures of dead women in a secret room at his home.

However, as an entry in relative Christine Millier's diary, dated 23 January 1991, and produced at Brown's trial in 1999, reads: "Kids and I went for walk to Strand.

The police, believing the car seen parked near the murder scene was the offender's, concentrated on finding the vehicle rather than the driver, thus no sketch or photofit picture of the suspect was ever released.

Despite evidence from Thwaite that the suspect's car's petrol cap was on the left side which ruled out the vehicle being a Holden, the media only ran pictures of FJs.

[citation needed] Sergeant David Hickey of the Queensland homicide squad, who was conducting the cold case review of the Mackay murders, returned the call three days later.

The ensuing months of investigations by Hickey and Detective Brendan Rook, including interviewing other family members, resulted in forty-five cases against Brown relating to paedophilia and circumstantial evidence linking him to the Mackay murders.

Brown, who had been working as a carpenter at the Mackay sisters' school at the time, had been obsessed by the case, falsely claiming he knew the girls' father and had offered to take two of his wife's cousins to view the crime scene two weeks after the murders.

Brown had replaced the odd-coloured door from his Vauxhall Victor, buried it, then later dug it up and took it to the rubbish tip, explaining to his family he did it because he didn't want anyone interviewing or annoying him.

After his arrest for the double-murder of Susan and Judith Mackay, Australian authorities investigated Brown for links to other additional crimes of a similar nature.

Although evidence regarding Brown's paedophilia had been given at the committal hearing it had been ruled prejudicial at trial and therefore could not be put before the Supreme Court jury.

The Attorney-General lodged an appeal and the court concluded that the tribunal did not have the jurisdiction to overrule the jury and commissioned an independent psychiatric report.

In July 2001, the report concluded that Brown was unfit to stand trial because he was suffering from dementia and Alzheimer's disease.

Ostracised by his family, Brown moved into a nursing home in Malanda, where he died three months later on 6 July, officially an innocent man.