Death in the Sand

Teenage boys, James Annetts and Simon Amos, disappeared from their cattle stations in the east Kimberley region of Australia in 1986. The Western Australian police mounted a half-hearted search, discouraged local volunteers from helping, then after three days returned to their station to concentrate on paperwork.

The boys' abandoned vehicle was located four months later by desert surveyors Andy Brett and Greg Owens. Wild dogs and camels had pulled apart the kids bodies and sucked their bones dry. Johnny Brown helped retrieve the scattered remains. He was intrigued. How had Simon been reduced to bleached bones while the flesh on James' face remained relatively intact, along with the shock of hair on his skull, bleached red by the desert sun? Weren't the boys supposed to have died at the same time? And what about the vehicle an Aboriginal tribal man heard follow the two teenagers into this deadly corner of the Great Sandy Desert?