During an retiring mean solar day at Coogee Aquarium in Sydney on April 25 , 1935 , their latest attracter – a4.4 - meter(14.4 - foot ) tiger shark – throw up a human arm sporting a tattoo of two boxers sparring . Amidst the mix-up and shark vomit , detective cannonball along to the marine museum to be confront with a dubiousness that would haunt them for the rest of their career : “ how the underworld did a tattooed arm stop up in an aquarium shark tank ? ”
It perhaps sound like an urban fable or a badly written instalment of a 1980s cop show , but paper clippings from theSydney Truth newspaperin 1935explain that this story was considered just as unbelievable then as it appears today . In their words , the story was an “ astounding cataclysm – a catastrophe such as Edgar Allan Poe never dreamed of in his weirdest fable . ”
Thanks to the distinctive tattoo and fingerprints , the dupe ’s sidekick was able to discover the eubstance part as the remaining weapon of James " Jimmy " Smith , a 45 - year honest-to-goodness England - bear unpaid bagger who worked at a booze - soaked billiards saloon in downtown Sydney .
Itlater emergedthat Jimmy was a bit of a “ wily lad , ” as the locals say , and had numerous ties to the vicious underbelly of the city – most notably the businessman Reginald Holmes . Through Holmes , Jimmy became involved in the moneymaking business of using boats to coordinate drug drops off the coast of Sydney . However , their “ business partnership ” sour when the pair fell out over a scam involve the sinking of a pleasure cruiser list Pathfinder .
By the mid-1930s , Australia was start to really finger the soupcon from the Great Depression . Strapped for cash and on bad terms with his former business associate , Jimmy threaten Holmes with blackmail and tensions grew within the condemnable net .
Jimmy was last seen alive on April 7 , 1935 , at the Cecil Hotel in Cronulla where he was fleck drinking and play cards with a guy constitute Patrick Brady . When enough beer was flowing in the veins , they headed back to a small cottage rented by Brady on Tallombi Street . A cab driver later told constabulary he had drive Brady from Tallombi Street to the street where Holmes live . The driver also reported that Brady was visibly nervous and obliterate something under his jacket .
tight onwards to May 16 , 1935 , three week after the tiger shark had chucked up poor old Jimmy ’s arm . Brady had just been nab by police force under the suspicion of murder and he quickly pointed the blame at Holmes . Police interrogated Holmes , but he deny ever knowing Brady . On May 20 , intelligibly shaken by the recent events , Holmes got into his speedboat with a gun and head to Sydney Harbour . He seek to get very drunk and kill himself , but he survived and woke up in a dazed stupor . Holmes panicked , rev his speedboat , and lead police on a chase around the harbor , before calling it quits and turn over himself in .
Once he had recovered , Holmes tell apart police his side of the storey . He claimed Brady arrived at his house holding Smith ’s cut off branch and threatened to blackjack him if he did n’t pay him a significant sum of money . According to Holmes , Brady had killed Jimmy , discerp the torso , and put it into a trunk which was switch into Gunnamatta Bay , a move know to local crook in the 1930s as the “ Sydney direct - off . ”
Holmes told constabulary he would recount his story in front of a judge , but on the sunup of the court example , he was found dead in his car with three bullet holes in his chest . Without the central testimonial , the Margaret Court case fell through and Brady walked free . To this day , no one has been charged with the execution of James " Jimmy " Smith .
But the obvious question remain : how did Jimmy ’s tattooed arm terminate up in the aquarium ?
The leading theory suggests that Brady impart the cut off weapon system to Holmes ’ house in an attempt to intimidate and gouge him . panic , Holmes drove to a seaboard suburban area of Sydney and flung the branch into the ocean . It ’s speculated that a small shark had come across the limb and swallowed it whole , only to be eat by the big tiger shark within a issue of Clarence Shepard Day Jr. .
It was n’t just Jimmy who was shinny for money around this time . Bert Hobson , the proprietor of Coogee Aquarium , had also fallen on hard times and was heroic to bring people back to his commercial enterprise . In a wild move , Hobson and his son took a sauceboat to Coogee Beach , caught a wild tiger shark , and transported it back to the Coogee Aquarium in a bid to woo back customers . Against all odds , it was this tiger shark that had unknowingly swallow the weapon of Jimmy .
