I Know Who Killed Betty Shanks Third Edition

Ted Duhs

Betty Shanks was brutally murdered 70 years ago. This book’s third edition reveals Betty’s secret life as documented in an ASIO file, which states that:

• Betty was in an ‘intimate association’ with a young married man who was a member of the Communist Party of Australia.
• Betty’s best friend from schooldays at Brisbane Girls Grammar School and at the University of Queensland, Winifred Cowin, worked for ASIO before committing suicide in 1958.
• An ASIO officer arrived in Brisbane on Sunday 21 September 1952 to recruit Betty, only to be told that she had been murdered the previous Friday night.

Ted Duhs alleges that Betty was killed by a man she met at the Grange tram terminus as she returned home from a night class at Brisbane’s Central Tech. This man, referred to as ‘the man in the brown suit’, was seen by four witnesses, including Marie Patton who is still alive. Minutes before Betty was attacked, Marie saw him 30 yards from the murder scene. Evidence suggests he was Eric Sterry. His daughter, Desche, is still alive, and in 1999 her story “My Dad Killed Betty Shanks” was published in The Courier Mail, after her earlier attempts to persuade the police were unsuccessful.