He said the mysterious death of his two wives was just bad luck, but “evil husband” Tom Keir was finally brought to justice after 15 years, thanks to a tireless police officer and devoted mum. Here, they tell their story to Jordan Baker.
She was marrying the man she loved, the man who had been devoted to her since they met, four years earlier, the father of her unborn baby. Yet Jean Strachan was strangely jittery on her wedding day, remembers her mother, Christine.
Jean sobbed as she showered, shaking so badly that her freshly shaved legs were covered in cuts. “It was like, deep inside, she was scared,” her mum says.
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Christine will never know whether these were the normal nerves of a bride-to-be, or whether instinct was telling her daughter to run far, far away from her husband-to-be, Thomas Andrew Keir.
Jean went ahead with the wedding and had a son, but three years later, she disappeared. Tom said his wife had run off with another man and her mother wanted to believe him.
Christine introduced her grieving son-in-law to her cousin’s daughter, Rosalie, hoping that if Tom moved on with someone else, Jean would return.
Tom and Rosalie married, but there was still no sign of Jean. Eighteen months later, Rosalie was found dead in a house fire with a cord around her neck.
As Detective Peter Seymour arrived at the charred house that would haunt him for decades, the significance of the situation dawned on him.
“We have a dead second wife and a missing first wife — we’ve got a huge problem here,” he said.
Tom Keir lived down the road from Clifford and Christine Strachan in Sydney’s western suburbs and employed Christine at the furniture factory he managed.
One morning, he popped into their house with some cushions for repair and was greeted at the door by the Strachans’ 15-year-old daughter Jean, who went to find her mother.
“Mum, there’s a man at the door and he’s the ugliest man I’ve ever seen,” she said. “He looks like Frankenstein. He has one big long eyebrow.”
For Tom, however, it was love — or at least obsession — at first sight. His attentions were subtle at first; he would chat to Jean when she waited for her mother at the factory, give her chocolates and pay her generously to make buttons after school.
He could be charming and, slowly, his charm worked on Jean. He was eight years her senior, but at first, her mother didn’t worry about their friendship; the Strachans were simple, trusting folk.
“He seemed a good fellow,” Christine remembers. “Girls didn’t like him. I felt sorry for him. Even at work, they would laugh at him.”
When Tom asked Jean to the movies, her father insisted he also take her two sisters, brother and mother, which he did happily for years. “As long as he had Jeannie with him, that’s all that mattered,” says Christine.
On Jean’s 16th birthday, Tom arrived on the Strachans’ doorstep with 16 red roses, a bottle of champagne for Christine and a case of beer for Cliff.
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Weakened by Tom’s persistence, Cliff told him that if he was to court Jean, he expected a case of long necks each week. For the next three years, a case arrived every Saturday.
On Jean’s 17th birthday, Tom delivered 17 red roses and on her 18th, he gave her an engagement ring. Her parents did not object to the marriage — by then, Jean was pregnant.
Seven Bones, by Peter Seymour and Jason K. Foster, is published by Big Sky Publishing on October 1, $24.99.
Read more of this story in the October issue of The Australian Women’s Weekly.
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