William "The Mutilator" Macdonald

The Case of the Walking Corpse

Unaware that he was supposedly dead and buried, MacDonald stayed a short time in Brisbane before going to New Zealand, still in the belief that the police would be looking for him. But the urge to kill was still with him and it was getting stronger everyday. He had to kill again and for reasons known only to himself he had to return to Sydney to do so.

Map showing MacDonald's trek from Brisbane to New Zealand

Mr Cox's suspicions of a sloppy police investigation became a reality about six months after the 'death' of Alan Brennan when one of MacDonald's old workmates, John McCarthy, bumped head-on into the 'dead' Brennan as he was walking down crowded George Street in the heart of Sydney.

McCarthy nearly died of shock. As he had no idea that the murdered Hackett had been buried as the missing Brennan, MacDonald was surprised when his old work friend was so stunned to see him.

"You're supposed to be dead" McCarthy told MacDonald.

"What do you mean?", the puzzled MacDonald asked.

"They found your body underneath your shop at Burwood. We went to your funeral service," McCarthy replied. "But if you're alive, who was the body under your shop? And why did you run away?"

As it dawned on MacDonald what had happened, he ran away down the street.

That night he was on a train to Melbourne. John McCarthy went to the police but they didn't believe him when he told them that he had just had a drink with a dead man. The desk sergeant told him to go home and sleep it off.

And the desk sergeant didn't believe him the following day when he went back and told them the same story. They said he was crazy and in desperation John McCarthy rang the Daily Mirror and spoke to renowned crime reporter Joe Morris.

"I listened to the story before interviewing him. He didn't sound crazy to me," recalled Morris. The Mirror ran the story and the legendary headline CASE OF THE WALKING CORPSE came about.

As a direct result of John McCarthy's sighting of the dead man and the intense media interest in the bizarre case, police were forced to re-open the investigation. Closer scrutiny of the clothes found beside the dead man revealed that the number 1262 written in indelible ink on the inside of the coat sleeve was that of a garment supplied to a Patrick Joseph Hackett on his release from Long Bay Jail on October 27, 1962 after serving a ten day term for indecent language.

An embarrassed police commissioner was forced to exhume the corpse and closer examination revealed the stab wounds and the mutilation to Hackett's penis and testicles. From a much closer examination of what was left of the fingerprints, they discovered that the body was that of the petty thief Hackett and not the mild mannered shopkeeper Allan Brennan.

After the 'Walking Corpse' headline appeared in papers across the nation other witnesses came forward which included a man whose business was next door to Brennan's shop who said that he was certain that he had seen Brennan and another man in the shop on the evening before Brennan disappeared.

Police felt sure that at last, if not belatedly, they were onto the Mutilator.

The identikit picture of the Mutilator

John McCarthy supplied an extremely lifelike identikit of the missing Brennan and it was circulated on the front page of every paper across the nation. Meanwhile William MacDonald had taken a job on the railways in Melbourne and even though he had dyed his hair and had a light moustache there was no mistaking that he was the missing Brennan.

Brennan's new work-mates were onto him in a flash and as he asked the stationmaster for his pay for the three days that he had worked, the police swooped on the meek and mild-mannered little man who had brought Australia's biggest city to its knees and took him to Russell Street for questioning.