When picked up on Monday, Stuart was working for the Australian Wheat Board at Thevenard, 3 kilometres east of Ceduna. During interrogation, Stuart admitted being drunk and travelling from Ceduna to Thevenard on Saturday afternoon but denied the murder. Police took him outside and made him walk barefoot across sand, after which the two trackers confirmed that Stuart's tracks matched those on the beach. Stuart later confessed and, although he could not read or write, signed his typed confession with the only English he knew, his name, written in the block letters that had been taught him by his sister, misspelling his first name as "ROPERT".