True crime

I am obliged to my friend Elaine Sheehan, the daughter of Charlie Thompson (who, coincidentally, once lived next-door to my mother), for access to many of the documents relied on for this article. One day in June 1932 Newcastle Sun journalist Charlie Thompson, then living in Denison Street Mayfield, received a surprising letter from a neighbour in nearby Dora Street. The author was a retired Victorian detective, Alfred Stephen Burvett, who had a tempting proposition for the 28-year-old journalist and budding author. “My daughter,” wrote Burvett, “has just read out to me an article of yours…