Anthony Munro has been questioned over the 1966 disappearance of the Beaumont children = Australia's biggest child mystery. Photo / Channel 7
Anthony Munro has been questioned over the 1966 disappearance of the Beaumont children = Australia's biggest child mystery. Photo / Channel 7
Millionaire bar owner and convicted paedophile Anthony Munro is a person of interest in the 50-year-old mystery of the missing Beaumont children, news.com.au can reveal.
Munro, 71, has pleaded guilty to child sex offences in South Australia going back to 1962 - four years before the Beaumonts vanished from Adelaide's Glenelg Beach.
Police interviewed Munro in June this year about the Beaumont case, Australia's greatest child mystery, in which siblings Jane, 9, Arnna, 7, and four-year-old Grant Beaumont disappeared on January 26, 1966.
Antony Munro, right, had been living with his Cambodian partner Keo in a lavish apartment in Siem Reap City. Photo / Channel 7
Police believe Munro was in Adelaide around the time when the Beaumont children vanished, but there is no evidence linking him to their disappearance.
Munro returned to Adelaide for questioning from Cambodia where he operates a lady boy bar and lives in a lavish apartment with his Cambodian lover.
The former Adelaide scout leader and resident of the beachside suburb of Glenelg is also wanted in Cambodia for questioning over alleged child sex offences.
Cambodian officials are investigating offences relating to orphanages Munro funded in Siem Reap City, the tourist capital for the World Heritage listed Angkor Wat temple complex.
Munro pleaded guilty to 10 child sex offences including buggery and indecent assault against several victims in South Australia's Kangaroo Island, Rapid Bay and the Glenelg between 1962 and 1983.
In 1992, Mr Munro was convicted over a 1990 indecent assault an 11-year-old boy and sentenced to seven months in prison.
He moved to Cambodia more than seven years ago and became involved in charities for orphaned Cambodians.
In a 2009 blog by one of the charities, Munro is described as running a fish and egg farm and helping out along with members of Rotary.
In 2011, Munro told the Phnom Penh Post he was recruiting cross-dressers to his troupe of stage performers at the Station bar in Siem Reap.
The Beaumont children before they vanished from Glenelg Beach, Adelaide on Australia Day, 1966. Photo / Channel 7
He said his aim was to make the bar a gay-friendly and comfortable environment for men like him, who had recently declared they were homosexual.
"I wanted to make it different to all the other places around town. Up until a couple of years ago I had been a closet case all my life so I thought: 'Oh well, this is one way of having a place for people like me.'
"We don't advertise as a gay bar, but it's a gay-friendly bar.
"It's a place that if people see the gay flag and if they were like I used to be, they know it's somewhere where they can come in and feel comfortable."
The resulting stage show has been described on Trip Advisor as "superb", and "great out-of-the-way bar to see a really professional Ladyboy show for the price of a drink".
The Phnom Penh Post quoted young men who said they welcomed the opportunity to freely express their cross gender orientation, which was publicly discouraged in Cambodia.
"I do this to make money but it's also who I am. I love men and I dress as a girl on the street," Koa Veasna said.
The Cambodia Daily reported that in Siem Reap, Munro is under investigation by police and child protection group Action Pour Les Enfants (APLE) for allegedly abusing two boys.
APLE's country director, Samleang Seila, said Munro also volunteered at multiple orphanages in the Siem Reap province.
Tony Munro arrives with his lawyer at Adelaide Magistrates Court earlier this year, before he was to plead guilty to historical child sex offences. Photo / Channel 7
But since his return to Australia, the investigation has slowed.
At the Station Bar in Siem Reap, the acting manager Keo Piseth told the Cambodia Daily that Munro had returned to face trial in Australia "because he realised he had made mistakes".
"He told me on a few occasions ... that he didn't want to feel regret again and again," he said. "That's why he tried to clean himself to make himself better. He made mistakes 30 to 40 years ago."
