IT made casebook history on the other side of the world.

For the first time, an Australian court conducted a murder trial without a body, following an investigation instigated by a Hampshire woman’s fears over the whereabouts of her mother.

And as a prime witness, she was to give evidence against the alleged killer – her father.

In 1971, Major Edwin Perkins, 65, was charged over the disappearance of his wife, Ann.

She had gone missing a few weeks after she moved Down Under in 1967 to join her husband who had emigrated 12 years previously following his retirement from the Army.

Despite an extensive investigation, which included enquiries made in several countries, Mrs Perkins could not be traced.

Australian detectives flew to Heathrow and spent several weeks in the south of England, moving discreetly about the area in a quest for information about the major’s background and interviewing their daughter, Jane Lee, who lived in Stubbington, near Fareham.

It was after their return that Perkins was charged with murder.

Mrs Lee flew from England to give evidence, her fare and subsistence having been financed by the New South Wales Police Department.

As she waited to give evidence, jurors heard from prosecutor Police Sergeant R McCracken how she had received a letter from her father that her 58-year-old mother had “died in her sleep”.

She later received a second letter from him claiming that she had been cremated.

The prosecution conceded the case against the former Army officer was primarily circumstantial – no body had been found and he had not confessed to the crime.

In reality, said PS McCracken, Mrs Perkins had simply disappeared and he had fabricated a series of stories about her.

“On these facts we say his conduct, the manner of her disappearance, the failure to locate her since can only lead to the conclusion that she is dead, was killed, and was killed by the defendant.”

Giving testimony, Mrs Lee told the court how she had received two letters from her mother and then heard nothing until her father wrote to tell her that she had died.

It was only after she wrote back to her father that he informed her that her mother had been cremated.

The court heard that Major Perkins had remarried in 1970 and when he and his new wife came to England, she told Mrs Lee that her mother had died in Buenos Aires.

However, her father told her that had been a mistake. “I think she said that because I told her you were born there.”

Mrs Lee said that she became so increasingly dissatisfied with the circumstances surrounding her mother’s death that she wrote to Australian officials in Sydney and London and was eventually contacted by Australian detectives.

Perkins denied murder.

In a statement from the dock, he asserted that the last time he had seen his wife was at the Central Railway Station in Sydney when she was carrying suitcases. He understood she was leaving him for good.

But during the two week trial, several of the 48 witnesses were neighbours who told the hearing how they had overheard quarrels and raised voices on the day she had disappeared.

Perkins was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment.