Australia, 1960: Shocking Kidnapping-Murder Leads To Law Keeping Lottery Winners Anonymous

By | September 5, 2019

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Source: nfsa.gov.au

In 1960 Graeme Thorne, an eight-year-old Australian boy was abducted and murdered after his parents, Bazil and Freda Thorne, won the Sydney Opera House lottery. The crime shook the country and completely reformed its lottery system, and it played a significant role in the widespread use of forensics in Australia.

This awful crime gripped the nation and made everyone a little more paranoid than they were before. This is an awful crime, but it completely changed the country for the better. The murder of Graeme Thorne is one of the great forgotten, and most upsetting true crime stories of the 20th century,

Bazil Thorne Won The First Sydney Opera Lottery 

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source: herald sun

The Sydney Opera House is one of the most recognizable landmarks in the world. Its white curves have jutted themselves into the imaginations of travelers and performers since its construction, but in 1960 the city was having trouble finishing the structure. A plan was hatched by the New South Wales government to host a lottery to make some extra money to pay for the construction.

On June 1, 1960, Bazil Thorne and his wife Freda walked away with a cool A£100,000 prize (that’s somewhere around $3 million today), and while this should have been a boon for the Thorne family it turned out to be a curse.