Within a week, it became ill and vomited in front of a small crowd, leaving the left hand and forearm of a man bearing a distinctive tattoo floating in the pool.
[3] Holmes had employed Smith several times to work insurance scams, including one in 1934 in which an over-insured pleasure cruiser named Pathfinder was sunk near Terrigal.
With specimen signatures from Holmes' friends and clients provided by the boat-builder, Brady would forge cheques for small amounts against their bank accounts that he and Smith then cashed.
Smith was last seen drinking and playing cards with Patrick Francis Brady at the Cecil Hotel in the southern Sydney suburb of Cronulla on 7 April 1935 after telling his wife he was going fishing.
Port Hacking and Gunnamatta Bay were searched by the Navy and the Air Force, but the rest of Smith's body was never found.
A taxicab driver testified that he had taken Brady from Cronulla to Holmes' address at 3 Bay View Street, McMahons Point on the day Smith had gone missing, and that "he was dishevelled, he had a hand in a pocket and wouldn't take it out... it was clear that [he] was frightened.
"[5] Initially, Holmes denied any association with Brady but four days later, on 20 May 1935, the businessman went into his boatshed and attempted suicide by shooting himself in the head with a .32 calibre pistol.
Revived after falling into the water, he crawled into his speedboat and led two police launches on a chase around Sydney Harbour for approximately four hours until he was finally caught and taken to hospital.
He told Detective Sergeant Frank Matthews that Brady had killed Smith, dismembered his body and stowed it into a trunk that he had then thrown into Gunnamatta Bay.
Holmes also admitted that after Brady had left his home, he travelled to the Sydney coastal suburb of Maroubra and discarded Smith's arm in the surf.
[22] In his 1995 book The Shark Arm Murders, Professor Alex Castles claims that Holmes took out a contract on his own life to spare his family the public disgrace of conviction.
Bill Bryson also mentions this case in his book Down Under (known as In a Sunburned Country in the U.S.), but wrongly implies that the arm belonged to a swimmer who was eaten by the shark.