Short Stuff: Shark Arm Murders

Summary

Stuff You Should Know: Short Stuff – Shark Arm Murders

Release Date: July 29, 2026
Hosts: Josh and Chuck
Theme: A bizarre and infamous 1935 true crime case from Sydney, Australia, involving a human arm found in the belly of a tiger shark – unraveling a tangled web of gangland intrigue, murder, and unsolved mysteries.

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Episode Overview

Josh and Chuck dive into the strange saga known as the "Shark Arm Murders" – a notorious Sydney crime of the 1930s. Their storytelling unpacks the odd discovery that set off a major murder investigation, the criminal underworld of Sydney at the time, and the myriad theories and unresolved questions that continue to swirl around the case today. The tone is classic SYSK: witty, good-natured, and rich in historical detail.

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Key Discussion Points and Timeline

1. Discovery of the Shark Arm (01:19–05:36)

• A fisherman catches a small shark off Coogee Beach, Sydney, only for it to be devoured by a 12ft tiger shark.
• The tiger shark is displayed alive at an aquarium, drawing crowds due to recent fatal shark attacks.
• On April 25 (Anzac Day), the tiger shark behaves erratically and vomits up a human arm, causing public panic.

"The shark goes... and pukes up a human arm. So everyone freaks out. They assumed initially, of course, like this is probably an arm of another bather that had bad timing and bad luck." (Chuck, 03:50)

• Medical examination reveals the arm was cut off cleanly—by a sharp instrument, not bitten or chewed.
• The arm is unusually well-preserved, featuring a distinctive tattoo of two boxers.
• Identity confirmed: Edwin Smith recognizes the tattoo as belonging to his missing brother, Jim Smith (via fingerprint verification).

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2. Into Sydney’s Gangland: Victims and Suspects (07:42–10:52)

• Jim Smith: bankrupt builder, boxer, bookmaker, smuggler—deeply enmeshed in the criminal underworld.
• 1930s Sydney: "Gangland" era, a time of open street warfare for criminal rackets.
• Last seen drinking with friend Patrick Brady at a local hotel.
• Cab driver testimony places Brady at the home of Reginald Lloyd Holmes, a prominent yet criminally connected boat builder and smuggler.

“He had a boat building business. But on the other side of the coin, he was also, like you said, a smuggler... drive around Sydney harbor and pick up discarded contraband.” (Chuck, 09:44)

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3. Theories and Intrigue: Motives and Possible Scenarios (10:52–14:51)

• Holmes’ boat business doubled as a front for smuggling (notably cocaine).
• Theory: Jim Smith and Holmes had a falling out over an insurance scam; Smith might have been blackmailing Holmes.
• Police deduce Brady was directed to kill Smith, possibly at Holmes’ request.
• The cleanly severed arm may have been used as proof of death or as leverage.
• The rest of Smith's body was never recovered.

“That was the idea. At least Holmes had an explanation. Was that Brady brought it to him as like he was gonna extort Holmes...” (Chuck, 12:20)

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4. The Investigation Unravels: Drama on the Harbor (13:18–14:51)

• Holmes denies knowing Brady, stalling the investigation.
• May 20: Holmes attempts suicide by shooting himself on his boat, but survives after falling into cold water and being revived. This leads to a four-hour police boat chase before Holmes surrenders.

“There is a four hour boat chase through Sydney harbor until finally Holmes is like, all right, like you got me, I'm done.” (Chuck, 14:07)

• Holmes offers to testify against Brady but is found murdered in his car (three gunshot wounds) before he can do so.
• With Holmes dead, the case against Brady collapses; only circumstantial evidence remains, leading to Brady’s acquittal.

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5. Theories, Underworld Justice, and Legacy (15:16–17:43)

• New theories emerge:
  • Jim Smith was a police informant (“fizzer” or “fizzgig”), and may have been killed for ratting on fellow criminals (possibly Eddie Wayman).
  • Holmes may have been killed by Brady or by another underworld connection to keep him silent.
  • Alternate theory from Atlas Obscura: Holmes arranged his own murder for insurance and to save his family scandal.

“But there's still one more theory... Holmes hired a hitman to kill him in a weird, like, suicide to... spare his family the scandal... and to get some clean insurance money that they could collect upon his death.” (Chuck, 16:43)

• To this day, Holmes’ killer and the details of Smith’s murder are unsolved.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “The shark was giving the people what they wanted to see. You know, like he would swim around along the window and just flip the people off. He had a real bad attitude.” (Josh, 03:06)
• “I think we have a murder on our hands.” (Chuck, 04:42)
• “This isn't like Chinatown, this is Sydney, 1930s. We need confessions. We can't convict people on circumstantial evidence.” (Josh, 12:41)
• “That cab ride was linked to, you know, the murder in Holmes at that point. So cops got on this theory that Brady had murdered Smith, cut his arm off, like he was directed to murder Smith because of the blackmail thing by Holmes.” (Chuck, 11:41)

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Fun Sidebars

• Shark Jaws Reference and Movie Chat (04:18, 17:22):
  Chuck works in a "Jaws" quote and mentions watching the movie with his daughter, Ruby. Later, Josh and Chuck banter about favorite Chevy Chase and Neil Simon movies.
• Aussie Pronunciations (08:34–09:13):
  Josh and Chuck joke about their uncertainty with Australian place names, inviting corrections from listeners.

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Conclusion

This episode masterfully blends true crime with quirky delivery and historical context, bringing alive a wild chapter from Australia’s criminal past. Despite the case remaining officially unsolved, Josh and Chuck highlight its tangled web of intrigue and memorable cast — both criminal and piscine.

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Important Timestamps

• 01:19 — Episode starts proper; Introduction of the Shark Arm Murders
• 03:50 — Discovery of the human arm inside the shark
• 04:42 — Autopsy reveals the arm was cleanly cut off; tattoo leads to identification
• 07:42 — Jim Smith's underworld background and connection to Reginald Holmes
• 10:52 — Exploration of Holmes’ and Brady’s roles in the events
• 13:18 — Holmes' dramatic failed suicide and police chase
• 14:51 — Holmes’ suspicious murder and the collapse of the case against Brady
• 15:16 — Theories about Smith's murder and underworld justice
• 16:43 — Alternate (insurance scam) theory proposed

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If you haven’t listened, this summary gives you the essentials—and enough twists—to follow the wild, still-unsolved “Shark Arm Murders” saga from start to finish.

Transcript

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[Chuck]

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[Josh]

Hey, and welcome to the Short Stuff. I'm Josh, and there's Chuck, and Jerry's here sitting in for days. So that's a short stuff. That's a bingo.

[Chuck]

That's right. And we're talking about the shark arm murder. And we need to thank the Dictionary of Sydney. The Sydney Crime Museum, Snopes and Atlas Obscura.

[Josh]

Wow, you really did that up, man.

[Chuck]

I love that Atlas Obscura site. That's a great, great website.

[Josh]

Yeah, same here. Same with Snopes, too. They're good too. Yeah.

[Chuck]

And hey, hats off to the Sydney Crime Museum while we're at it.

[Josh]

Yeah. And who could leave out the Dictionary of Sydney?

[Chuck]

Yes, we're talking about Sydney because that's where the shark arm murders took place. Infamous crime in Sydney, Australia's history in 1935. And this is how it starts. A fisherman was fishing off of Coogee beach and caught a little small shark. And then right after that, a larger tiger shark swallowed that smaller shark. And. And so all of a sudden, he has two sharks because this tiger shark was so big, he was like, hey, this thing. Maybe I should take this in to the aquarium bass there in Coogee because it'll be a nice attraction for people to come see it. Like it was still alive and people can come see this dreadful shark swimming around because sharks had been killing people around the area lately. So he thought it was a pretty good idea.

[Josh]

Yeah. Just over the course of a couple of weeks, three different men were killed by sharks on New South Wales beach. So that was a big deal to catch this shark. That may have been the one, or at least one of the ones. And he was right. Like there were a lot of people that showed up to see this giant shark. I mean, 12ft is pretty, pretty long, right?

[Chuck]

It's a big shark.

[Josh]

And those tiger sharks, they're bas too. At any rate, the shark was giving the people what they wanted to see. You know, like he would swim around along the window and just flip the people off. He had a real bad attitude. Exactly what they wanted to see. And he was acting pretty normally. And then on April 25, which was Anzac Day in Australia, which is I taking it as similar to our Memorial Day here in the United States, okay, the shark started acting really weird. Like he started getting lethargic and sluggish like a wet sponge. He seemed disoriented. And then all of a sudden everything came to a head essentially.

[Chuck]

Yeah. The shark goes, that's usually your part, and pukes up a human arm. So everyone freaks out. They assumed initially, of course, like this is probably an arm of another bather that had bad timing and bad luck. But when they did the medical examination, they were like, this was no tiger shark. No, sorry. I just watched Jaws with Ruby so I had to work a Jaws quote in there.

[Josh]

Sure. What did Ruby think of?

[Chuck]

She liked it. How could you not? I was delighted. She didn't love it, but she liked it. Like she hung in there through the whole thing.

[Josh]

Was that a happy birthday treat for her to watch Jaws?

[Chuck]

That's right. Happy birthday to both of you in real time.

[Josh]

Thank you. Happy birthday to Ruby.

[Chuck]

We did all our private birthday stuff and Ruby sent you a video and you sent her one, which is very sweet.

[Josh]

It was very sweet.

[Chuck]

I imagine we'll do that for the rest of our lives.

[Josh]

Yeah.

[Chuck]

So at any rate, back to the autopsy. Not some half assed shark autopsy, but an autopsy on this arm. They were like, this was not a shark biting this arm off. Like this thing was cut off with something sharp. It wasn't shark teeth and it was not surgery either. So I think we have a murder on our hands. And again with Jaws, they were like, whatever that shark ate is bound to still be in there. And this arm was in there fairly well preserved, like you could see a tattoo of a couple of boxers about to go at it. They put it out in the newspaper and a guy named Edwin Smith was like, I think that might be my brother's arm. He had this tattoo and he's been gone missing for a few weeks. And the cops were like all right. They were able to get fingerprints and they were like yep, bing bing. We have a winner. That is Jim Smith's arm.

[Josh]

Yeah. I say that we take a break here and come back and talk about Jim Smith a little bit.

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[Josh]

So Chuck, we're back and Jim Smith has just been confirmed to be the owner of the arm. But the rest of Jim Smith has not been found. So the cops are approaching this now as a murder. They start looking into Jim Smith's background. They find out that he was a builder but he was bankrupt. He also made some money on the side working basically in the underworld. He was a boxer, he was a bookmaker. He also turned out to be a smuggler as we'll see. And this was also at a time the 1930s in Sydney. It was like gangland apparently, there was open gang war in the street for control of Sydney's underworld. It was just that lucrative. Right. So I get the impression that if you were bankrupt, you could always turn to Sydney's world of crime and start making some money, too. And Jim Smith had done that?

[Chuck]

Yeah, sounds like it. So investigators found out that his last known whereabouts were he was drinking with his friend Patrick Brady at a hotel in, I want to say Cranula, but it might be Cronula. Like, I don't know, maybe an Aussie will tell us.

[Josh]

When you said Koji beach, it just dawned on me that, like, we hadn't looked at the pronunciations and, like, that cartoon sweat, like, jumped off of my forehead.

[Chuck]

I think it's a coogee because it's two O's, but that might not be right either. But it could be coogy. Aussies love us, so, yeah, it could be coogee. Actually, we'll hear. I can't wait. We'll talk about it later in a listener mail.

[Josh]

Okay.

[Chuck]

We're looking forward to all the Aussie pronunciations coming back to us.

[Josh]

I think it's Coogee because there's the Coogee Beach Sundae Outback Steakhouse.

[Chuck]

I don't want to believe you.

[Josh]

I could see it, though. I mean, that's definitely possible for sure.

[Chuck]

So Brady, his buddy that he was drinking with, he was also sort of a bad guy. He was an expert forger, and the cops knew about him. And there was a cab driver there that had some pretty key information, which was on the morning after Jim Smith had last been seen drinking with his friend. His friend Brady had hailed this cab that said, take me to North Sydney and pull up outside this house and wait for me. And that house turned out to be the house of a guy named Reginald Lloyd Holmes, who was, as far as everyone knew, generally a respectable boat builder. He had a boat building business. But on the other side of the coin, he was also, like you said, a smuggler. He apparently had a thing where he would build these speedboats and he would drive around Sydney harbor and pick up discarded contraband. I guess when the noose was tightening on real smugglers, they would dump, like, cocaine and cigarettes and other contraband, and he would drive around and. Or his guys would drive around and pick this stuff up. And I think Brady and Smith were some of these guys at times, or at least Smith was.

[Josh]

Yeah, Smith definitely was. And I think these were actually like. This was like. These were planned rendezvous. That's just how they transferred the cargo.

[Chuck]

Oh, I thought it was like they were in trouble so they would dump their load.

[Josh]

I don't know. I don't know. It hadn't occurred to me that they dumped their load.

[Chuck]

Yeah, just keep going.

[Josh]

So either way, that's how he made his money. And again, like he was picking up cocaine. In the 30s, that was a huge, huge business in Sydney. Everybody and their brother and their mother and their little sister was on cocaine constantly in Sydney. At any rate, it was shown that Jim Smith worked for Reginald Holmes. And now with this cab driver coming forward, they had the last man to be seen with Jim Smith while Jim Smith was alive. Taking a cab and acting very cagey, as the cab driver would, would later testify to Reginald Holmes house. And Reginald Holmes was connected to Jim Smith. So now Jim Smith's arm seems really, really connected to Reginald Holmes and Patrick Brady.

[Chuck]

That's right. So it turns out that Smith and Holmes had a falling out over an insurance scam. And there was the idea that Smith was blackmailing Holmes was like, hey, you're a respectable boat builder, so you don't want this to get out kind of thing. And that cab ride was linked to, you know, the murder in Holmes at that point. So cops got on this theory that Brady had murdered Smith, cut his arm off, like he was directed to murder Smith because of the blackmail thing by Holmes. Brought it to Holmes. It's like, hey, this guy's dead. You thought I'd bring a finger. This is Sidney. Here's his arm. So that was the idea. At least Holmes had an explanation. Was that Brady brought it to him as like he was gonna extort Holmes and was like, hey, I just like killed this guy and here's an arm, like, I really mean business, so you gotta pay up. The arm obviously was later just thrown back in the ocean and the shark ate it. The rest of the body, everyone presumes, was just like weighted and sunk probably.

[Josh]

Yeah. It didn't ever come back up. The arm came back up. Right, right. Thanks to our shark friend. The problem is, you could put all this stuff together. It painted a pretty convincing picture, I guess, of Brady and Holmes involvement in the disappearance and probable murder of Jim Smith. But it was all circumstantial. So as any cop from the 30s in Sydney could tell you, you need a confession. This isn't like Chinatown, this is Sydney, 1930s. We need confessions. We can't convict people on circumstantial evidence. So they started to turn up the heat on those two.

[Chuck]

That's right. They arrest Brady, take him to the police station, they bring Holmes in. He's like, I don't even know this Brady guy. And everything kind of stalled out basically because they, you know, nobody was confessing anything until May 20th. And this is when Holmes leaves in a speedboat out into the harbor and pulls out a gun to try and kill himself. And he fails at that. But when he falls into the water, his where he, he might have drowned at that point, but a rope catches his arm and stops him from drowning. Being plunged in that cold water, I guess like, you know, revived him and he gets back on board. Police are on the scene at this point and there is a four hour boat chase through Sydney harbor until finally Holmes is like, all right, like you got me, I'm done.

[Josh]

I'm bored with riding around on my boat.

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

So that's fairly suspicious behavior. And the cops took it that way too. When they arrested Holmes, he said, you know what, I'm just going to give in entirely here. I'm going to testify against Patrick Brady. He was the one who killed Jim Smith. I'm your guy. I'm going to be a great witness. How about you just let me go take a little drive in my car for a little while. I got to clear my head. And Holmes head was cleared for him. Actually his chest was. Because he was found shortly after that dead in his car with three gunshot wounds to the chest.

[Chuck]

That's right. So now that Holmes is dead, basically the whole case against Brady falls apart. Because that was, you know, the key link. This cab driver, like they had that testimony but that wasn't enough to, you know, to convict anybody. So it did, I think, go to trial, but it was a pretty quick trial. And the judge was basically like, you know, we can't do anything but acquit at this point. Cause all we have is circumstantial evidence.

[Josh]

Right.

[Chuck]

So you'd think it might be over at this point, but it's not. Because it turns out that Smith had been a police informant or what they called a fizzer or a fizzgig, I guess in Sydney at that time. And he had informed on a guy named Eddie Wayman. And it looks like Wayman turned out to be the trigger man because he had gotten ratted out basically by Smith.

[Josh]

That was a theory for sure. An author named Alex Cassels advanced that theory because Eddie Weyman was definitely the kind of person to do that. He was a very dangerous person in the Sydney underworld at a time when the Sydney underworld was basically nothing but dangerous people. That's possible. Because remember here, like, we have no idea still to this day who killed Holmes. It was possibly Brady, because he was certainly the one to gain the most from it, but we just don't know.

[Chuck]

David's in the cocaine business too, so there were probably all kinds of people that wanted him dead.

[Josh]

Right. And he had shown that he was willing to talk to cops. Right. And since Jim Smith had shown that he was willing to talk to cops by ratting out Eddie Wayman, another theory is that both of them were just rubbed out as, you know, part of the normal business of gangland Sydneys Sydney in the 1930s. Right. That they were just stool pigeons who were both murdered. And it just so happened that those murders were wrapped up into this shark arm murder caper.

[Chuck]

That's right. But there's still one more theory. And this came from Atlas Obscura. I don't know if they made it up or whatever, but it was on their website at least. But in their article they said they think they pulled a Fletch or Holmes. Did they think Holmes hired a hitman to kill him in a weird, like, suicide to. To get rid of him and spare his family the scandal of him being this big criminal and to get some clean insurance money that they could collect upon his death?

[Josh]

Yeah. Is that what Fletch does in Confess? Fletch?

[Chuck]

No, in the original Fletch, that's what Tim Matheson does. He hires Fletch to kill him.

[Josh]

I see. I see.

[Chuck]

I know that you hated Fletch, so you probably don't remember.

[Josh]

I need to go back if I can stomach it and watch some of the works of Chevy Chase and see if I still dislike him as much. I wonder if I will even more.

[Chuck]

Yeah, I'm curious.

[Josh]

All right, I'll let you know how it goes.

[Chuck]

There were some good ones. There were a handful of really good Chevy Chase movies, in my opinion.

[Josh]

The one I remember liking the most was Seems Like Old Times.

[Chuck]

Oh, yeah, well, that's Neil Simon, so.

[Josh]

Oh, okay.

[Chuck]

That's Chevy Chase. Even if you hate Chevy Chase, you got a Neil Simon script at the root of that one.

[Josh]

Speaking of Neil Simon, I watched for you asked me the other week or so ago which movie I've seen the most. And I watched rewatched Murder by Death again. I was like, this one is definitely up there. I've seen Murder by Death a lot and it still holds up every single time I watch it.

[Chuck]

All right, well, I still haven't seen it. I need to check it out.

[Josh]

Oh, really?

[Chuck]

Yeah.

[Josh]

Okay, well, let me know what you think.

[Chuck]

I will.

[Podcast Announcer]

All right.

[Josh]

Well, in the meantime, Short Stuff's out.

[Podcast Announcer]

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