Frank Arkell

Francis Neville (Frank) Arkell (13 September 1935 – 26 June 1998) was an Australian politician. Arkell was a long-serving Lord Mayor of Wollongong and an independent member of the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, representing Wollongong. In 1998 Arkell was violently murdered in his home, aged 62 years by Mark Valera. At the time of his death, he was under police investigation for child sex offences. Continued investigation largely cleared Arkell of wrongdoing, with police concluding that a tape that supposedly recorded Arkell making sexual advances to a teenager had in fact been faked by former Wollongong mayor and pedophile Tony Bevan as blackmail. Arkell was a Knight of the Order of the Star of Italy, according to his biography on the Parliament of NSW site.