The Strange Incident of the Coogee Aquarium Shark

Dark Histories

Ben Cutmore

History

4.8 • 2.2K Ratings

🗓️ 2 June 2025

⏱️ 74 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the 1920’s and 30s, shark attacks off the coast of New South Wales, Australia were not an especially uncommon event. In 1935, however, Sydney’s peaceful coastal charm was shattered by a grotesque discovery at the Coogee Aquarium that was anything but normal. A captured tiger shark, put on public display, vomited up a human arm—severed, tattooed, and unmistakably out of place. What began as a curiosity quickly spiraled into a chilling murder mystery involving gangsters, betrayal, and a body that was never found. SOURCES Roope, Phillip & Meagher, Kevin (2020) Shark Arm. Allen & Urwin, Crow’s Nest, Australia. Brown, Anthony M. (2020) The Shark Arm Mystery: The Million to One Murder. New Era of Communications, London, UK. Castles, Alex (1995) The Shark Arm Murders. Wakefield Press, MA, USA. The Sydney Morning Herald (1932) Meal For Shark At The Coogee Aquarium. The Sydney Morning Herald, Mon 11 April 1932, p12. Sydney, Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald (1935) Shark Eats Shark. The Sydney Morning Herald Sat 20 April 1935, p11. Sydney, Australia. The Sydney Morning Herald (1935) Arm In Shark pool. The Sydney Morning Herald, Sat 27 April 1935, p20. Sydney, Australia. Truth (1935) Vital Clue. Truth, Sun 28 April 1935, p20. Sydney, Australia. Truth (1935) What Sick Shark Revealed. Truth, Sun 04 May 1935, p1. Sydney, Australia. ------ For almost anything, head over to the podcasts hub at darkhistories.com Support the show by using our link when you sign up to Audible: http://audibletrial.com/darkhistories or visit our Patreon for bonus episodes and Early Access: https://www.patreon.com/darkhistories The Dark Histories books are available to buy here: http://author.to/darkhistories Dark Histories merch is available here: https://bit.ly/3GChjk9 Connect with us on Facebook: http://facebook.com/darkhistoriespodcast Or find us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/darkhistories & Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dark_histories/ Or you can contact us directly via email at [email protected] or join our Discord community: https://discord.gg/cmGcBFf The Dark Histories Butterfly was drawn by Courtney, who you can find on Instagram @bewildereye Music was recorded by me © Ben Cutmore 2017 Other Outro music was Paul Whiteman & his orchestra with Mildred Bailey - All of me (1931). It's out of copyright now, but if you're interested, that was that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	In the 1920s and 30s, shark attacks off the coast of New South Wales, Australia, were not an especially uncommon event.
0:08.9	In 1935, however, Sydney's peaceful coastal charm was shattered by a grotesque discovery at the Kudji Aquarium that was anything but normal.
0:19.1	A captured tiger shark put on public display
0:21.4	vomited up a human arm,
0:24.1	severed, tattooed and unmistakably out of place.
0:28.2	What began as a curiosity
0:29.6	quickly spiraled into a chilling murder mystery
0:32.6	involving gangsters, betrayal
0:34.6	and a body that was never found.
0:37.9	This is Dark Histories, where the facts are worse than fiction.
0:45.3	Hello and welcome to Dark History's Season 9, Episode 9.
0:50.1	I'm the host Ben.
0:51.3	As always, today we've got an absolute, well, labyrinth of a story.
0:57.8	Labrantine, I guess it is, you could say, of a story. It's, yeah, quite something.
1:04.4	Apologies for it being about a week late. I was ill last week, and it threw out my schedule.
1:10.4	But I was on my feet again after about three or four days and I thought, you know, I'll try and sort of crack on and get an episode done anyway.
1:18.4	And I did finish an episode, but it was just not, it was too short and it didn't have the detail that I liked.
1:26.9	I just wasn't really happy with it.
1:28.2	So I ended up deciding, like, making the decision to just trip the episode back a week
1:33.3	and release this one, which was the plan anyway, instead of releasing that one.
1:37.2	So it does mean that I've got that episode sort of done now.
1:41.1	And I'll probably work it on the future because that was a good story as well.
	...

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