Larrimah – Caroline Graham & Kylie Stevenson

Larrimah is a true crime book that is also a love letter to a (very) small town of eccentrics. The titular town is located 500km (310 miles) south of Darwin (for non-Australians, trust me when I tell you that’s the middle of absolutely nowhere), fewer than a dozen people live there (and half of them are banned for life from the local pub), and it’s the scene of one of the strangest and most captivating crimes in recent history.

To Caroline Graham and Kylie Stevenson’s credit, they’re very self-aware about their role as privileged outsiders, coming into a remote community that’s rightfully suspicious and skeptical of interlopers who ask too many questions. That’s refreshing to see in a true crime book. Still, it’s easy to see why they just couldn’t stay away from this story. It actually started as a podcast – Lost In Larrimah – for which the journalists won a Walkley Award.

Here’s the rundown: in December 2017, Larrimah resident Paddy Moriarty and his dog, Kellie, left the local pub and drove 800m home on a quad bike. That’s the last time either of them were seen, alive or otherwise. Everyone presumes that Paddy made it home, because his keys, wallet, and hat were found in his quarters, but he and his dog vanished from there without a trace.

It took a few days for anyone to raise the alarm. Paddy and Kellie could’ve been visiting friends, or simply avoiding everyone in Larrimah for reasons best known to themselves. But when no one could account for their whereabouts, near or far, and with summer temperatures surpassing scorching throughout the Territory, Paddy’s neighbours reported him as missing to the closest police station, 70km (43 miles) away.

Graham and Stevenson provide excellent context for the reader to understand what’s so interesting about this disappearance. A team of just three cops police an area the size of Switzerland – except, instead of skiing retreats and chocolate in the middle of Europe, it’s an empty arid desert with blistering temperatures most of the year and filled with the most terrifying wildlife you can imagine. Larrimah locals are close, despite the fact that most of them hate each other. When you live in a region so remote and so dangerous, you’ll inevitably form a kind of community with the only other living souls nearby. For Paddy and Kellie to simply disappear, with no one nearby hearing or seeing a thing, and for no trace of them to be found in the surrounding area… it’s just baffling.

It’s not like no one looked. There were extensive land and air searches for Paddy and Kellie around Larrimah, probably one of the biggest searches the Territory has ever seen, and a $250,000 reward was offered for information as to their whereabouts. After all of the more likely/benign reasons for their disappearance were ruled out (could Paddy have taken Kellie for a walk and had a medical episode? could they have become lost? could they have been attacked by animals? it would appear not), police narrowed their investigation to nefariousness. In 2022, a coroner’s inquest found that Moriarty and his dog were likely killed in December 2017, possibly “in the context of and likely due to an ongoing feud he had with his nearest neighbours”, but a cause of death and location of remains could not be determined.

So, someone in Larrimah killed Paddy and Kellie. Who, or why, or how, or where, all remains a mystery.

Graham and Stevenson – and now, their readers – are pulled into the small town politics of Larrimah, the (long, long) history of bad blood between its residents, and the question of what really happened to a man and his dog. It’s surprisingly gripping, despite the lack of concrete evidence and the healthy skepticism with which any normal person would approach a story that includes a blind crocodile named Ray Charles and a witness named Cookie who refuses to put on pants. I’ll tell you now, there’s no satisfying resolution, Graham and Stevenson don’t find Paddy or Kellie and no one confesses to their whereabouts – but Larrimah is still a fascinating read.

COVID lockdowns and border closures interrupted their investigation, and they address this very matter-of-factly (on air and in writing), explaining to the reader how they “made do” – despite the fact that many of the people they needed to speak to live in areas with no mobile reception and are usually reached by calling the local pub on a landline. When they do make it back to Larrimah, and have the opportunity to explore the Territory in person to look for clues you just can’t find on a Zoom call, they uncover more questions than answers.

Larrimah might not delight the true crime purists who need to see a bad guy locked up for life, but it will enthrall anyone with an interest in the outback, tall tales, and/or the search for answers.

Read Larrimah on audiobook via Libro.fm here.