25th February 2018
“You killed Paddy, and hit him on the head. Smacked him on the fucken nostrils, smacked him on the fucken nostrils … with me claw hammer,” Owen Laurie, a resident of Larrimah, is heard singing to himself on a listening device.
The authorities had bugged his place days after Paddy Moriarty’s disappearance. But despite this seemingly outright confession, the case remains unsolved to this day. No charges have been filed, no one has been prosecuted.
Paddy Moriarty and his dog disappeared without a trace. And it all went down in a town that seems like the most cliché setting for a quintessential murder mystery.
Larrimah was a small Australian town with only 12 people, the kind where everyone knew everyone. And it had some memorable small-town establishments that seemed straight out of a novel.
Picture a hotel with a giant pink panther, a zoo with 700 birds and a crocodile, a small tea house run by a local, with no cell reception. It’s clearly the wrong place to pick a feud with your neighbours.
But Paddy did so anyway, and unfortunately, it spiralled out of control.
An Immigrant With Mysterious Beginnings
The case is set in the Australian Outback, but the story began on a whole different continent 14,000 kilometres away. Patrick Joseph Moriarty (AKA Paddy) was born in Limerick, Ireland, to Mary Teresa Moriarty.
Paddy’s birth certificate has no mention of a father. After the case became popular, a woman named Mae Screeney came forward claiming to be Mary’s cousin.
She believed that Paddy was either born out of wedlock or adopted. “She [Mary] obviously called him Patrick Joseph because that was the family name,” Screeney told ABC News.
“Nobody knew of this Paddy Moriarty,” she confessed, “none of our family knows anything about him”. Little is known about the man’s origins apart from what he himself told residents in Larrimah.
According to his own account, he arrived in Australia on the passenger ship Fairstar in 1966. But his name wasn’t on any of the ship’s past passenger lists. Details about his life were confirmed only after his arrival.
During his early days in the Land Down Under, Paddy worked on cattle stations as a ringer, grader driver and station hand. He is also described as a keen participant in the rodeo circuit, even winning a belt buckle in 1996.
Apart from work, he also had a romantic life. Dorothy Rankine, who also worked on cattle stations, had been his long-term partner until they separated after her retirement.
Paddy did have another relationship after, between 2000 and 2003, but none since then. In the years after that last relationship, age had begun to catch up with him. He wasn’t the fit young rodeo participant anymore.
By the time he turned 59, he had a history of ischaemic heart disease and had stents inserted. And 2 years later, he would move to the town he disappeared from.
A Small Town, Big Feuds and the Poisoning of Ferns
In 2008, Paddy moved to Larrimah. A few years later, he had purchased a disused service station for $30,000 and was living in it with his black-and-white Border Collie named Rover.
He worked at the Larrimah Hotel, known for its giant pink panther installation. Paddy handled cleaning, laundry, and tending to the gardens in the mornings. After lunch, he’d be found sipping beer and welcoming visitors.
It seemed like the beginning of a quiet life, but the truth was far from it. The town’s residents weren’t on the best of terms, according to an article in The Guardian.
Some neighbours had ignored one another for years; others occasionally yelled abuse at each other; many were even banned from the pub. Accusations of theft, arson, murdered pets, and mail theft popped up over the years.
Paddy was also embroiled in a few such long-lasting clashes. The most notable of them was with Frances Hodgetts, the owner of Fran’s Tea House. His feud with her lasted almost a decade, right up to his last days before disappearing.
‘Top Of The Town’, the disused service station where Paddy lived, is right across the highway from Fran’s Tea House. They were on good terms initially, but their interactions soured after she separated from her husband.
Reports say he sided with her husband, which led to his ban from the Tea House. In retaliation, Paddy resorted to pranks to disrupt her life and business.
The pranks involved poisoning of plants, cutting of CCTV cables, pitching dead animals onto her property, and flipping her ‘open’ sign to ‘closed’, claims Hodgetts. She had complained multiple times to the authorities about the same.
“He started abusing my customers, threatening tourists and scaring them away from [my] business,” she said. The veracity of Hodgetts’ complaints was never established, but the feud continued nonetheless.
In the week prior to Paddy’s disappearance, another person entered the feud. It was someone who would become the other person of interest in the case. His name was Owen Laurie.
Sometime in August 2017, Hodgetts had advertised in a local newspaper requesting a gardener and caretaker for her property. Laurie made contact with Hodgetts and commenced working for her on 4th September 2017.
Hodgetts had told all about Paddy’s alleged wrongdoings when he joined the job. Laurie himself had never spoken to him, except three days before the disappearance – on 13th December 2017.
It had almost been a year since Paddy’s old dog (Rover) had died. In the meantime, he had adopted an old red kelpie named Kellie. On that day, Kellie crossed the highway.
As per Laurie’s own statement, the dog hadn’t walked onto Hodgetts’ property and wasn’t barking. The gardener said he warned him, “Keep your fucking dog at home.” Paddy responded, “Shut up,” and Laurie retorted, “Come over here.”
But in a later recollection to Richard (the barman from the hotel), the words differed. Paddy claimed Laurie had threatened him, “You need to shut that fucking dog up or I’ll shut it for you.”
If Paddy’s version of events was true, it would have given Laurie motive to harm the dog. And in a later conversation with Hodgetts, he said something that may have implicated him further in the case.
When she heard about what had happened, she spoke to Laurie about it. She urged him to be careful and not do anything rash. He went on to express his ability to handle a possible confrontation.
“If anyone touches my plants, it will be the first murder in Larrimah,” he had said, jokingly, according to him. Three days later, both Paddy and his dog, Kellie, were seen alive for the last time.
The Day Paddy Moriarty Was Last Seen Alive
16th December 2017. The day began like any other. Paddy rode his red Honda quad bike to the Larrimah Hotel where he worked. He cleaned the toilets and showers as usual.
At 2.29 pm, he went to the bar area, bought 8 cans of beer, and put them in the hotel staff refrigerator. Later that afternoon, he told the hotel owner, Barry Sharpe, that he wouldn’t be coming to work the next day.
The last to see Paddy were a couple and their young daughter, as per the findings of the Coroner’s Court in Katherine. The family was travelling from Katherine and dropped by the hotel. They took pictures of their daughter with the giant pink panther.
And the girl even patted Kellie on the head. Around sunset, Paddy got onto his quad bike and told Kellie to get on the back. The mother of the girl offered Paddy some leftover barbecue chicken, which he graciously accepted.
That night, the town was struck by an ominous spell of rain… which is a mystery in itself. Court findings say Larrimah saw ‘a significant amount of rain’ that night. But weather station records show zero rain on the 16th.
After the unexplained weather subsided, clouds of another mystery hung over the town of Larrimah and its residents. Everyone only had one single question.
What Happened to Paddy Moriarty
Barry Sharpe, the hotel owner, describes Paddy as a ‘happy-go-lucky man’ and says they were both ‘very good mates’. He was the first one to be concerned when Paddy didn’t show up on Monday.
When they went knocking at his residence, there was no answer. The back door was unlocked, the house was tidy, and Paddy and Kellie were nowhere to be seen. He figured they were on a walk.
Sharpe drove along nearby looking for them, but to no avail. That was when word got to Mark Rayner, the owner of Larrimah Workshops. He describes Paddy as the only one he would have gone out of his way to help.
Rayner was repairing Paddy’s lawnmower when he heard the man was missing. The next morning, when he and his wife went to look for him, some things didn’t add up.
The rain gauge hadn’t been emptied, like Paddy usually did. His quad bike was at the property, showing that he had indeed reached the place. But the keys to his four-wheel drive vehicle were missing.
It seemed as if he’d been getting ready for a meal when something unexplained happened. There was food on the table, the dog bowl had food in it, the barbecue chicken was in the microwave, and the kitchen fan was still on.
Paddy would never leave home without his hat, on account of insecurities about his baldness. And yet, his hat was at home with no sign of him. Mr and Mrs Rayner presumed he had gone for a walk with Kellie and then had a medical episode.
After three hours of searching, neither Paddy nor his dog was found. This wasn’t the first time someone disappeared with their dog. About two decades ago, a 20-year-old Michael Madden also disappeared with his dog.
The only difference is, his dog came back after a few days, but Kellie didn’t. Both the man and his dog were lost forever. Despite never finding them, the police did stumble upon some very shocking evidence.
Five Binders, 110 Statements
The search for Paddy involved police officers, the local Fire Emergency Response Group and an undisclosed number of volunteers. After searching for four days on foot and by air, they failed to find him, and the search was called off.
On 25th December, Northern Territory Police, Fire and Emergency Services put out a media release urging anyone with dash-cam footage of the area from 16th December 2017 to come forward.
A few more evidence searches were conducted, but apart from the items at Paddy’s house, no other evidence was found. The police came to believe that someone among the town’s 13 residents would know something.
This is where Detective Sergeant Matt Allen took over. The investigation he conducted contains five full binder folders, spanning 110 statements. And there are some shocking findings in it.
Listening devices installed in Laurie’s residence recorded him singing highly incriminating, made-up songs. “I killerated old paddy with that fuck’n kilerated him. I struck on the fuck’n head and killerated him.”
“I kill you myself, I kill, I kill pup dog, I kill pup dogs” is also something Laurie sang in one of the recordings, further fueling the possibility that he might have harmed Kellie as well.
A statement by another resident put the spotlight of suspicion also on Hodgetts. “She said she needed to get rid of him [Paddy], and she would pay $10,000,” Wayne Ledwidge told the police.
In 2022, both Laurie and Hodgetts were recalled and questioned about the evidence, but both denied any involvement in Paddy’s disappearance.
Laurie insisted the voice in the recordings wasn’t his and exercised his right to remain silent. And Hodgetts denied offering money to get rid of Paddy. No other evidence was found linking them to the disappearance.
In the absence of bodies, it was hard to confirm anyone’s involvement. When asked about the difficulties in the case, Detective Sergeant Allen explained why finding leads was so tough.
“This particular case is challenging because Paddy lives on his own; there’s nobody present to corroborate his movements,” he said.
“Larrimah itself doesn’t have significant infrastructure, so CCTV [and] a lot of other things like that where police are able to track people’s movements. It’s a very challenging place.” There were a few other leads that the police were pursuing, but nothing materialised.
This ABC News documentary includes further interviews with Detective Sergeant Allen and other residents, as well as previously recorded footage of Paddy Moriarty before his disappearance.
The documentary also elaborates on the feud between residents, which, in coroner Greg Cavanaugh’s opinion, was why Paddy was killed. The exact cause of death is still unknown to date.
In 2024, the Director of Public Prosecutions announced that they wouldn’t be charging anyone due to insufficient evidence. The search for answers still on. The case is still open and unresolved, with a $250,000 reward for any information leading to an arrest.
Larrimah After the Disappearance
The town was never the same. During the initial days of the investigation, there was an atmosphere of suspicion and rumours. “10 people live in this town; to my way of thinking, one of them’s a murderer,” Sharpe said in an interview.
Within five years of the disappearance, a significant number of the original residents had left the town or died. Hodgetts did return to Larrimah after her cancer treatment but was subjected to verbal abuse and threats.
Over time, the town recovered. New residents moved in, and the town’s atmosphere warmed up. The feuds and the silence disappeared, replaced with camaraderie between the new population.
The Lost in Larrimah podcast, a book, and a few documentaries catapulted the town into true-crime attraction status. Tourists from all over the world visit the town, often stopping by Paddy’s house.
One of the visitor messages in the new hotel sums up the question everyone’s still asking: “Where the hell is Paddy?” Just like him, many more people have vanished from remote places.
Like Ryan Shtuka, who vanished from a mountain resort on a 300-metre walk home. There’s also the case of Tom and Eileen Lonergan, who vanished from the Great Barrier Reef in Australia after a diving excursion.
