Cheating death

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Cheating death

Maureen Lewis was one of two Leongatha girls lucky enough to escape Sodeman”s clutches and live to a ripe old age.

By Matt Dunn

THEY say South Gippsland child serial killer Arnold Karl Sodeman had a list of those he intended to kill.
While Maureen Lewis (nee Keighery) doesn’t think she was on it, she counts herself lucky Sodeman’s wife, Bernice, did not allow him to buy her an ice cream on New Year’s Day 1935.
Maureen was with the Sodeman family on the same day Arnold brutally murdered 12-year-old Ethel Belshaw in Inverloch.
Ethel was last seen buying an ice cream from a Beach Road milk bar in the town.
Maureen had travelled with the Sodemans from Leongatha, for a fun day in the sun. She was friends with the Sodemans’ one and only child, Joan, a girl of similar age.
“On the day Ethel was murdered he wanted to take me for an ice cream. It could have been me that day,” she said.
“I went down there with them to Inverloch on that day with the Sodemans. They lived next door. He wanted to take me for an ice cream and Mrs Sodeman wouldn’t let him take me unless he took Joan, his daughter.”
Maureen wonders if Bernice Sodeman had an inkling of her husband’s penchant for murdering girls.
He certainly had some form in that area, having already strangled at least two in Melbourne.
“It makes you wonder what she knew and what she didn’t. He wanted to take me to get an ice cream but she wouldn’t let him,” Maureen said.
She remembers returning home, upset that she had missed out on an ice cream. It may well have been her last, if not for the intervention of Bernice.
Like many serial killers, Arnold helped with the ‘search’ for his victim, keeping up the pretence of being a concerned citizen.
The 81-year-old Maureen has lived a long and happy life, marrying the late Jack Lewis, and enjoying all the normal pleasures of country living.
But she knows well enough her life could just have easily ended way back in 1935 if the brutal serial killer had had his way.
Aside from the ice cream incident, she remembers many times when Sodeman would dink her on his bicycle. She was never totally happy to accept a ride, though, in her child’s way, she reasoned that it was easier than walking.
On December 1, 1935, he killed six-year-old June Rushmer in his home town of Leongatha. A man, later identified as Sodeman, was spotted riding away from the murder scene on his bicycle.
Before he was hanged the following year at Pentridge Prison, he would confess to murdering two other girls, 12-year-old Mena Griffiths on November 8, 1930 and 16-year-old Hazel Wilson on January 9, 1931. The crimes, both in the Melbourne suburb of Ormond, earned him the moniker of the ‘Schoolgirl Strangler’.
But Maureen, like many others in Leongatha, always suspected there was something not quite right about the man.
“We were always frightened of him. In those days you didn’t call anyone ‘Old Sodeman,’ because your dad would pull you up and insist you call him Mr Sodeman. But to us kids he was always Old Sodeman,” she said.
“He wore sandshoes and he was sort of creepy.”
Maureen was reputed to be on Sodeman’s kill list, but she does not believe it was true. She thinks, however, that a friend who made an equally lucky escape, may have been.
“They said he did have a list and at one stage they said I was on it. I wasn’t. I know Shirley Leitch was,” she said.
Shirley Leitch, who was Shirley Steele back then, has since passed on. Just as Maureen could easily have been the victim on the day Ethel Belshaw was killed at Inverloch, so it was with Shirley, when her best friend June Rushmer was strangled in Leongatha.
Shirley’s daughter, Toni Joyce, confirmed that her mother was reputed to be on the kill list. She believes Sodeman took June Rushmer, because he couldn’t get Shirley.
Fear of her mother kept Shirley from Sodeman’s clutches.
“Her mother, my grandmother, was an absolute tyrant and back in those days my grandfather was the caretaker of the rec (Leongatha Recreation Reserve) – they had a house there. Mum and June were hanging over the gates of the rec and mum knew she was never allowed to go out those gates, because she’d be flogged,” Toni said.
“Sodeman came up and offered them lollies. Mum said, ‘I’ll take your lollies, but I’m not going with you.’ June’s family was very poor and she did go off with him on his bike.
“Mum was stubborn and she knew if she said anything to the detectives, she knew that Nanna – in her mind – would have hit her. So she didn’t tell them what happened.”
The murder would haunt Shirley all her 73 years.
“It affected mum for the rest of her life. It was really sad actually,” Toni said.
“I think she felt guilty that she didn’t tell the police. She carried it with her to her grave.”
The Inverloch Historical Society will have a photographic exhibition on display at the Inverloch RSL Hall at Bolding Place on January 23, from 2pm to 4pm. The ‘Inverloch of Yesteryear’ exhibition will feature a display related to the 1935 murder, as well as other significant moments from the town’s rich history. Entry is by gold coin
donation.

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