Larrimah is a tiny settlement in Australia's Northern Territory. Until December 2017, only 12 people lived here.
Now 11 people live here, mostly very elderly people, and none of them knows what happened to the twelfth, and the circumstances of his disappearance are mysterious and incomprehensible even to experienced investigators.
According to The New York Times, December 16, 2017 was a hot winter day (more precisely, a summer day, since December is the beginning of summer in Australia). At lunchtime, 70-year-old Paddy Moriarty went to the small bar "Pink Panther", the only place of entertainment in the village.
With him was his kelpie dog named Kelly. She ran after her master everywhere. Paddy drank eight beers at the bar, which was his normal dose, and then slowly went to his house. More Paddy and his dog no one has ever seen, either alive or dead.
Four days later, when residents missed Paddy, the district police came to Larrima and ransacked his home. All of the man's belongings were in their places, including his favorite cowboy hat, and in the microwave there was a chicken skewer that Paddy had saved for dinner.
All the other 11 residents of the village were immediately suspected of murder, but no one saw or heard anything unusual. The first suspicion fell on the beating bartender of the Pink Panther; he was the last to see Paddy alive. The second main suspect was the gardener, with whom Paddy had a fight a few days before his disappearance, but he also swore that he did not kill Paddy.
And when the detectives questioned the visitors of the local roadside diner, one of them unsuccessfully joked about the fact that poor Paddy may have long been a filling for meat pies.
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But in none of the 11 residents of Larrima, the detectives did not find even the slightest clue and a real reason for the murder of Paddy and no evidence of what they had done. No blood stains, no remnants of Paddy's clothes. Each of the residents vehemently denied their sacrament and immediately hinted at a neighbor. It would seem that an ordinary everyday murder in the outback quickly turned into a real detective riddle.
Photo: Adam Ferguson / The New York Times
Larrima is a tiny village the size of a small residential area surrounded by thorny bushes. All roads here are made of red dusty soil, and on one of them 17 years ago a British tourist also disappeared without a trace. The latter circumstance also brings its share of mysticism into the new history.
On the way, cars with tourists regularly pass by Larrima, who cross Australia from north to south and stop in Larrima to rest, eat and replenish gasoline.
However, the Australian aborigines do not like this area very much. Since ancient times, they refused to settle here, according to them it is not a good place, because here they “cannot find peace”.
Photo: Adam Ferguson / The New York Times
Locals mostly gather at The Pink Panther or Fran's Devonshire diner. Barry Sharpe, a 76-year-old bartender, says Paddy has been at his establishment almost every day and he misses him a lot.
Sharpe also runs a small animal shelter where he has ossums, exotic birds and a crocodile named Sam. About the latter, there are rumors that it was he who was fed the murdered Moriarty. But the police examined everything around for several days and did not find anywhere a trace of Paddy and his dog. They even conducted a search from the air, but also to no avail.
Photo: Adam Ferguson / The New York Times
Former bartender Richard Simpson was the first to come under suspicion, but he vehemently denied it and hinted that the police should check out Fran's Devonshire, owned by Fran Hodgetts.
Fran is very proud of her pies, including those with meat, but now she says that she no longer has them. Of course, she heard the joke about "filling for pies", but when the journalists visited her cafe and drank tea with pies (sweet, not meat), she did not tell them anything about it.
Photo: Adam Ferguson / The New York Times
However, 75-year-old Fran Hodgetts and Mr. Moriarty were neighbors and often quarreled over domestic issues. Fran didn't like that Paddy parked his car in her yard. In addition, Paddy often teased Fran, saying that even his dog wouldn't eat "your stale pies."
In addition, Fran often received personal insults from Paddy, he called her a pig and in other words, and even sued him once in court, but her claim was not satisfied there.
"I think it was still baked into a pie," says Robert Duignan, a tourist from Victoria, either jokingly or seriously. "They ground it in a meat grinder and baked it."
According to Fran herself, the last time she saw Paddy was 4 days before his disappearance, and then she found the corpse of a kangaroo on her porch. This was undoubtedly the handiwork of Paddy, she said. But the police searched all of Fran's house and yard and found nothing.
“They even checked my septic tank to see if I threw it in the shit. And the house itself was searched four times. And no one found even the slightest suspicious thing,”Fran says to reporters.
Also under suspicion of investigators fell ex-husband Fran Hodgetts and 19-year-old Bobby Roth, who worked as a dishwasher in a diner. When Bobby began to be questioned, she burst into tears, and then said that she once heard Fran, in a rage, threatened to "kill Paddy." But since Fran and Paddy often swore loudly, it could just be an empty threat spoken in the heat of an argument.
During her formal interrogation, Fran blamed the 71-year-old gardener Owen Laurie, who works for Fran. She said that 3 days before Paddy went missing, Laurie yelled at Paddy because of his dog.
Photo: Adam Ferguson / The New York Times
He didn't like her barking loudly outside the diner. “Close your dog, or I'll close you myself,” Laurie shouted. And then he got into a fight with Paddy and allegedly wanted to throw his dog over the fence.
Laurie admitted that the conflict took place, but according to him he just has such a character and that he is quick-tempered, but this has nothing to do with the disappearance of Paddy.
In the end, after all the interviews and inquiries, the investigation really reached a dead end. The disappearance of Paddy Moriarty in a tiny village with a dozen buildings in the middle of a desolate wasteland remains unsolved.
Locals still gather at the Pink Panther bar at the back wall, where they hold a kind of general prayer every morning, and then continue to discuss the mysterious disappearance of Paddy Moriarty.
The remains of his linen, which he hung to dry shortly before disappearing, still hang on a hanger near Paddy's house.
Photo: Adam Ferguson / The New York Times