Denver Marchant, a retired law enforcement officer, stood within the confines of a Darwin post office nearly six decades and three years ago, investigating the perplexing case of an infant, lifeless and tender, dispatched through the mail.
The enigma surrounding the incident was never fully unraveled, but it persisted as an indelible memory etched into the recesses of Mr. Marchant's consciousness.
Now, at the age of seventy-three, residing in Queensland, Mr. Marchant returned to Darwin last Friday for a gathering commemorating his rugby league days. His companion, Marilyn, secured accommodations for him in a hotel along Knuckey Street, nestled in the heart of the city.
Upon his arrival, he was taken aback by an unexpected revelation. This very establishment had been erected upon the grounds of one of Darwin's most notorious cold cases, right at the precise location of the former post office.
The ominous episode transpired on the third of May, in the year 1965, when a diligent postal employee named John Polishuk detected an offensive odor emanating from a package originating from 'JF Barnes' in Mentone, Victoria.
Gathering his courage, he unsealed the unclaimed package, initially addressed to 'J Anderson,' only to be met with a harrowing sight - a lifeless infant boy, still connected to this world by a slender fragment of his umbilical cord.
Returning to this place, decades apart from that fateful day, had rekindled Mr. Marchant's long-suppressed exasperation. He shared with the Daily Mail Australia, "In my years, I've witnessed innumerable post-mortems, but for some inexplicable reason, that particular one remained etched in my memory. I suppose its sheer peculiarity took us all by surprise, and such an occurrence, I believe, was unparalleled in the annals of Australian history."
Now, after more than half a century of silence, Mr. Marchant has chosen to speak out, aiming to unveil a new revelation about the case, in the fervent hope that it might impel someone to come forth with information that could ultimately resolve this enigmatic conundrum.
With deep consternation, he disclosed that the infant boy was discovered with a stocking wound firmly around his delicate neck, eliminating any speculation that he may have been stillborn. "The binding was as tight as humanly possible, and it required an arduous effort to remove it," Mr. Marchant emphasized. "For that innocent child to have met such a tragic fate, he must have drawn breath. There exists no conceivable justification for the placement of that stocking around the infant's neck if he had not taken a breath of life. This, I am certain of."
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