Published 1:14p.m. 7th May 2008

Updated 7:07p.m. 7th May 2008

Queensland police want to speak to notorious child killer Valmae Beck, who is critically ill in a north Queensland hospital, in the hope she can shed light on unsolved cases.

Beck, 64, who has changed her name to Fay Cramb, was admitted to Townsville Hospital on Monday suffering from a shortness of breath.

She had been taken there from Townsville Correctional Centre, where she is serving a life sentence for the 1987 murder of 12-year-old Sunshine Coast schoolgirl Sian Kingi.

Beck, above, was jailed after she and husband Barrie Watts lured Sian to their car by pretending to look for a lost dog.

They then took her to the Tewantin State Forest, where Sian was raped, stabbed and strangled.

Beck underwent minor heart surgery yesterday, before her condition deteriorated and she was placed in a coma last night.

Queensland Police Minister Judy Spence said today investigators were hoping to speak to Beck.

“I know there are police who have dealt with her and Barrie Watts over the years who believe that she may still have information on some unsolved crimes,” Ms Spence told ABC Radio.

“They would like to interview her at this point of time, when she faces her own mortality, and see if she’s got something else to say.”

The couple, who were living in Ipswich at the time of the murder, were described as vile predators by prosecutors when they later faced trial. They had lured Sian, who was on her way home after school, to their car in Noosa Junction.

Her body was found about a week later.

Police released a description of a vehicle seen in the area about the time of the attack. Beck and Watts were arrested in Gosford after a caravan park operator recognised the car.

The couple gave evidence against each other during their trials.

Deputy Queensland Nationals leader Fiona Simpson, who was a reporter at the Sunshine Coast Daily at the time of the murder, said the killing had rocked the community.

“This is a community that had been safe, no one could ever have dreamt that this sort of a horror could have happened to one of the local children,” she told ABC Radio.

Meanwhile, a leading criminologist has shed some light as to why women child-killers commit murders. to please their partners, a leading criminologist says.

Prof Paul Wilson, who holds the chair of criminology at Bond University on the Gold Coast, said the motivation for women to kill children varied enormously, but was often carried out to please their male partners.

“In the case of a female child-killer, it is often to please their male companion and sometimes it is a combination of power and sexual excitement,” Prof Wilson told AAP today.

“Sometimes it is purely sadism.”

Beck had told a stunned court at her trial that Sian “never cried, never shed a tear (she was) a brave little girl, she never uttered a peep and just did everything he (Watts) told her”.

Prof Wilson said women child murderers could also show great remorse when their actions failed to please their male partners in the way they expected.

“There is a feeling of betrayal with them physically or emotionally that they had gone through all this for him,” he said.

Angry emails to media outlets have called for Beck, who is reportedly morbidly obese at 150kg, to be refused medical treatment.

But Prof Wilson said Beck should be entitled to the same medical treatment as any other person.

“She committed an appalling crime and she should serve out her life in prison, but I think that if we don’t deal with that in a humane way, then we are lowering ourselves and they are winning, not us,” he said.

“She must be offered medical services, as every prisoner should.”

- AAP

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