BEN HARVEY: How a forgotten serial killer still haunts an Australian town reeling from mushroom murders

Snowtown.

It still sends a chill down the spine when you see or hear the name, right?

The little railway town, a couple of hours drive north of Adelaide, should inspire thoughts of the best of rural Australiana.

It’s a place that for years rode on a sheep’s back. A land of wheat crops and bone-dry summer heat, where a few dozen farming families enjoy good seasons, and bad ones, together.

The kind of town that Alf from Home and Away might enjoy visiting, because it’s just that bloody Australian.

Instead, Snowtown conjures thoughts of dismembered bodies in vats full of acid.

The discovery in May 1999 of eight corpses in barrels in a disused bank vault was so gruesome it could have served as a plot line in the Saw film franchise.

Many towns around the world have, in the blink of an eye, had their previously good names hijacked by criminal lunacy.

Columbine was a pleasantly nondescript suburb in Denver, Colorado, right up until Year 12s Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 13 students and a teacher at the local high school.

Sitting three hours drive south of Perth, the hamlet of Osmington was for decades known for its vineyard-laden hills but that reputation changed on May 11, 2018, when farmer Peter Miles shot dead his wife, daughter, four grandchildren, and finally himself, in what was Australia’s worst familicide.

The Norwegian island of Utoya was best known for its stunning forest until Anders Behring Breivik arrived on July 22, 2011, and began shooting the first of his 69 victims.

On April 28, 1996, Martin Bryant changed the world’s perception of a historically important penal settlement in Tasmania.

Merseyside’s shine as the birthplace of The Beatles was forever tarnished on February 12, 1993, when 10-year-olds Robert Thompson and Jon Venables led little James Bulger away from a shopping centre.

The latest town to watch helplessly as its name became synonymous with evil is nestled in the foothills of the Strzelecki Ranges, south-east of Melbourne.

The dairy province of Leongatha used to be famous for its milk and cheese but on July 29, 2023, Erin Patterson ensured it would subsequently be known for a different food.

The beef wellington she served that day pushed Leongatha into the public lexicon in the worst way.

Residents of the little town that’s billed as a gateway to Gippsland will likely think they will never shake the reputation as the home of death cap mushrooms.

History suggests they will. Believe it or not, Leongatha has been through a reputational crisis far worse.

A century ago, the town was home to someone even more deranged than Patterson.

Arnold Karl Sodeman became known as “the schoolgirl strangler” after a murderous crime spree in the early 1930s.

Born in 1899, his reign of terror started in November 1930 when he kidnapped 12-year-old Mena Griffiths. The girl’s body, gagged and bound, was found two days later in an abandoned building.

Two months later Sodeman abducted Hazel Wilson, choking the 16-year-old to death.

On New Year’s Day of 1935, Sodeman again succumbed to his urges when he spied 12-year-old Ethel Belshaw. Ethel was intending to buy an ice-cream in the coastal town of Inverloch when Sodeman struck.

The maniac’s fourth victim, June Rushmer, was snatched from a park. She was six. Like the other victims, June was choked to death and her body was bound and gagged.

Who knows how many other kids would have died had Sodeman not lost the plot during a tea break with fellow road workers, his rage-filled rant triggering a call to police and a lot of questions being asked.

In February 1936 a jury found him guilty and he was hanged in Pentridge Prison four months later.

Leongatha journalist Matt Dunn has picked his hometown’s scab in a new podcast called Sodeman: the Schoolgirl Strangler.

Dunn paints a dark picture of Depression-era Leongatha by talking to author Katherine Kovacic, who literally wrote the book on Sodeman’s depravity, and former detective Narelle Fraser, who brings some gritty, real-world experience to the historical crime.

“I often ask people when discussing Erin Patterson ‘did you know an even more prodigious killer lived here in the 1930s?’ Sodeman’s reign of terror was the biggest story of its time,” Dunn says.

“The parallels between Sodeman and Patterson are unsettling. Both were seemingly ordinary figures whose acts upended lives and shocked the public.”

If you’re into true crime, or Australian history, Sodeman: the Schoolgirl Strangler is worth checking out. But anyone working for the Leongatha tourism bureau should probably give it a miss.