Pete and Sally Bowman with their two daughters Wendy and Marion managed Glen Helen station in the Northern Territory.
The Bowmans agreed to travel with Whelan back to Adelaide via Alice Springs by car.
They had £85 in cash and were last spotted at Kulgera Homestead near the South Australian border, where the party purchased petrol.
[1] Eight days later, the vehicle was spotted by a Royal Australian Air Force aircrew under a clump of trees at the deserted Sundown Station.
First reports announced that witnesses had seen a grey Ford Zephyr towing a green trailer travelling north to Alice Springs in the area around the time of the slayings.
He purchased a black 1938 DeSoto in Renmark in September 1957 and took a rifle he had agreed to buy but never paid for in Wirrulla.
Bailey was arrested in Mount Isa in January 1958 on charges of false pretences in relation of a motor vehicle and being in possession of an unlicensed weapon.
[9] David Iles met Bailey when both men worked around Wirrulla, South Australia, in September 1957.
Bailey and a fourteen-man team of police trackers, lawyers and gaol wardens flew to Alice Springs then drove south to the crime scene at Sundown Station.
Author and investigative journalist Stephen Bishop claims that detective Glen Patrick Hallahan lied on oath and in records of police interviews with Raymond Bailey.
[11] In February 2013, Bishop appealed to the Governor of South Australia, Kevin Scarce, to grant a posthumous pardon for Bailey, but was declined.