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There is no need to watch where you step at this particular grave site, as there is no body six feet below. Neilsen's body was never found!
Her disappearance, and presumed death, was a cause-celebre in Sydney. Beautiful heiress, publishing a community-based newspaper, disappears in the middle of redevelopment argy-bargy, and labour union 'green bans'. She was last seen alive on 4th July 1975, and the coroner's verdict in 1983 determined her to have been kidnapped and murdered. Her handbag and some personal effects were found strewn along a motor-way in the west of Sydney a few days after her disappearance. But no progress was ever made in bringing her assailants to justice. Police corruption is widely suspected.
This simple white marker is within the Foy Family plot in South Head General Cemetery, Sydney.
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Juanita Joan Nielsen (22nd April 1937 – 4th July 1975) aged 38
She was born Juanita Joan Smith in New Lambton, NSW, a suburb of Newcastle. Her parents separated soon after her birth and she was raised by her mother in Killara, a wealthy suburb of Sydney.
Her father, Neil Donovan Smith was an heir to the Mark Foys retail fortune via his parents, James Smith (1862-1921) and his wife, Kathleen Sophie Foy (1870-1919), who was a sister of Mark & Francis Foy.
Juanita was educated at Ravenswood School for Girls, on the upper north shore of Sydney. She worked at Mark Foy's (the family retail empire) from 1953 until she travelled overseas in 1959. In 1962, she married a Dutch seaman named Jorgen Fritz Nielsen in Kobe, Japan, the marriage lasting only a few years. Juanita returned to Sydney in 1965, working at Mark Foys' for another 5 years. In the early 1970s, Nielsen was the publisher of NOW, an alternative newspaper in the Sydney suburb of Kings Cross, which we all presume was her undoing.
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This post is my contribution to the Taphophile Tragics community. |