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Louisa Ioannidis was just 24 years old, yet her untimely death in 2011 received little more than a brief mention in a local newspaper.
Found in a creek, police quickly dismissed any suspicion, despite her being a strong swimmer. This is the story behind Troubled Waters, the latest original podcast from Casefile Presents. Led by seasoned private investigator Julia Robson, the podcast uncovers a gripping narrative full of intrigue. From an international kidnapping and a daring escape, this is like no story you've ever heard before.
The entire Troubled Waters series is available now. Listen to all 10 episodes of Troubled Waters wherever you get your podcasts. Stay tuned to the end of today's episode to hear the trailer.
Our episodes deal with serious and often distressing incidents. If you feel at any time you need support, please contact your local crisis centre. For suggested phone numbers for confidential support and for a more detailed list of content warnings, please see the show notes for this episode on your app or on our website. Today's episode involves crimes against children and won't be suitable for all listeners.
In the early afternoon of Thursday July 2 1970, a family of tourists made their way along the Great Ocean Road in western Victoria. Known as one of the world's most scenic coastal drives, the 240-kilometre road winds around surf beaches, rainforests and looming cliffs, with seaside towns and attractions dotted in between.
One of the more iconic stops along the route is the natural limestone formation known as the Twelve Apostles, which lies off the coast of Port Campbell National Park. A three minutes drive west is the Lockard Gorge, named after a shipwreck in 1878 that claimed the lives of 54 of the 56 people aboard. The Lockard Gorge is home to an inlet of protected, sandy beach flanked by imposing limestone cliffs.
On calmer days, the sea is a glassy, turquoise blue. But during rough surf, waves thread through the gorge, making the beach inaccessible. Timber stairs lead up to a rest stop above that contains a car park, walking trails, and a scenic lookout with unimpeded views of the striking coastline. The family of tourists pulled into the car park of the Lockard Gorge and began walking up the slope towards the lookout.
As they neared the cliff face, they looked down and noticed there were fresh tire tracks in the gravel leading away from the car park and towards the cliffs. They followed the tracks and, to their horror, realized that they finished right at the cliff's edge. The tourists scanned the side of the cliff for any sign of a vehicle.
Roughly 25 meters below, a white car teetered on the edge of a rocky ledge with very little stopping it from toppling over into the crashing seas below. The tourists used their binoculars to get a better look at the car. They could see it was an older model FE Holden with a crushed bonnet. Debris was scattered around it and the driver's side door was open over the water below.
The tourists wondered if the old car could have been pushed off the cliff for a thrill. Perhaps it had been stolen and dumped. But then they noticed something unsettling. A thick black hose was running from the exhaust pipe over the car's roof and into the driver's side window. The tourists hurried back to their car. That's when they noticed a culvert near the car park had been filled with rocks.
The culvert was around 1 meter wide and 30 centimeters deep, and it formed a barrier to prevent cars from getting too close to the cliff. The rocks had been stacked to create a bridge about the same width as a car's wheels. It was clear that whoever had pushed the car over the cliff had gone to considerable effort to do so.
The tourists rushed to the nearby township of Port Campbell to report their discovery to a local police officer, who accompanied them back to the cliffs of the Lockard Gorge. Taking turns with the binoculars, they tried to see inside the car, but the windows were smeared with salt spray from the sea. With the driver's side door hanging open, the group discussed the possibility that the driver, if there was one, could have fallen into the sea.
If so, they would have been smashed against the rocks or drowned in the wild sea below, leaving no hope of survival. As far as the officer was concerned, there were only two explanations for the car being at the bottom of the cliff: either it had been pushed over with no one inside, or it had been intentionally driven over and might contain a body.
The hose connected to the exhaust, coupled with the rock bridge constructed over the culvert, indicated a level of deliberation beyond regular vandals and hinted at a possible suicide. If this was the case, it wouldn't be the first in the area. Members of the Port Campbell Rescue Squad arrived at the Lockard Gorge at 4pm. Being the middle of winter, they didn't have much time before the sun began to set.
With time being of the essence, the task of descending the cliff was assigned to a rescue worker named George who used ropes to carefully scale down the cliff face. When George reached the car, he was amazed that it hadn't toppled into the sea. So precarious was its balance, with a third of its width hanging over the rock ledge, that George thought a gentle push would have sent it over the edge.
The front of the car was smashed flat to the windscreen as though it had landed nose first then bounced back upright. The ground around the car was littered with smashed glass and metal from the crash. Amongst the debris were partially eaten apples, broken biscuits, a roll of electrical tape, a butter knife, a plastic slip-on shoe, and some .22 caliber bullets.
Up close, George could see that the hose over the exhaust pipe had been fitted snugly, then run diagonally across the car roof and down into the cabin through the driver's side window. The window had been wound up as far as it could go, jamming the hose securely against the door frame, with the remaining gap then stuffed with rags. The hose had also been tied to the roof rack in two places.
It was clear to George that whatever had happened, someone had planned this very carefully. George peered through the salt spray on the rear passenger side window, taking care not to upset the car's balance. On the dashboard, both the choke lever and light switches were in the off position, but the keyless ignition switch was on. A rope was tied to the steering wheel which seemed to be attached to the back of the car somehow.
The interior was filled with junk, through which George caught sight of a toolbox. He reported this over his walkie-talkie, and the police officer at the top of the cliff asked if he could retrieve it. George thought his best chance was to try the rear passenger door. When he pulled on the handle, the car rocked, but the door opened, giving George a better look inside.
The back bench seat had been removed and the space was filled with an assortment of strange items including tarpaulins, sheets, electrical tools, a car battery, and battery leads. Most concerning was the presence of several large containers of petrol, meaning the vehicle had been a potential explosive hazard when it tumbled down the cliff. One spark from the battery and the whole car could have been blown to smithereens.
And there was something else. A distinct odor. George had been in the rescue squad for long enough to be worried by that odor. He scanned the insides of the crumpled vehicle and saw what looked like blood on the seat. There was also a coat with blood on it. It was then he noticed a .22 caliber rifle. It was stuck, barreled down, against the clutch pedal. George reached through the smashed windscreen and retrieved the rifle.
He opened the breach and found one live round. By this point, dusk was setting in and George heard those at the top of the cliff calling him back up. He placed an assortment of items into a cardboard box and centered up the cliff by rope before he was hoisted back up himself. The police organized an overnight watch on the car. They would take steps to secure it in the morning, if it was still there.
Back at the Port Campbell police station, officers examined the items George had retrieved from the vehicle. Along with the rifle, toolbox, and blood-stained coat, there were some family photos, old bank books, and a packet of biscuits. There was also what appeared to be a handheld weapon called a kosh, which consisted of a lead pole encased in rubber. It was clearly homemade.
There was also a 10-meter long extension cord and five lengths of electrical cable. Each had a small alligator clip attached to one end and a normal household three-pin plug on the other. Police searched the vehicle's license plate number, HKU061, in their databases. Records showed that it was registered to 41-year-old Elmer Crawford.
His address was listed as Cardinal Road in the outer Melbourne suburb of Glenroy, 240 kilometres northeast of the Lockard Gorge. At 6:20pm, a Glenroy police officer arrived at Elmer Crawford's house. It was an average single-storey suburban brick house with a caravan parked on the front lawn. There were no lights on and it didn't look like anyone was home. The officer knocked on the front door, but there was no answer.
He peered through the windows and couldn't see anyone inside. Next to the front door was the electrical meter box. The officer opened it and found a loaf of bread and a small jar of coins inside. At the time, bakers delivered bread to customers' homes in the morning, with payment being left out for them. The fact that the bread was still there indicated it must have been sitting out all day, while the money in the jar was probably change left by the baker.
The disc inside the meter box was still. If anyone was at home using electrical appliances, it would have been spinning profusely. The officer went across the road and made inquiries with a couple of Elmer's neighbors. He learned that Elmer lived in a house with his 35-year-old wife Teresa and their three children, 12-year-old Catherine, 8-year-old James, and 6-year-old Karen.
Elmar worked as a telephone mechanic and typically tinkered in his garage and fixed things around the house in his spare time. He often gave the neighbourhood kids rides on his motor scooter around the front lawn and was always willing to help fix a billy card or bike tyre. Teresa, who was originally from Queensland, was a stay-at-home mum. The three Crawford kids attended school nearby.
None of the Crawfords' neighbours knew where the family could be, but one thought Elmer was currently on holidays from his job. The officer returned to the local police station to report that no one was home. Given the situation unfolding with the Crawford's smashed and bloodied car, finding the family was paramount. The officer was sent back to the Crawford home with a detective and strict instructions to gain entry via whatever means possible.
They were told to be on the lookout for anything that might help explain the car at the bottom of the cliff. With knocks on the door still going unanswered, the duo found an unlocked window and the officer climbed inside. He found himself standing in a children's bedroom with two single beds in it. Instead of stopping to look around, he went straight to the front door and let the detective in. The two went back into the bedroom and turned on the lights.
Both beds were unmade, and the blankets piled on one of them were heavily stained with blood. There was also a lot of blood near the head of the bed. The officers then made their way to the main bedroom. Both the double bed and the floor were splattered with blood. Unwashed dishes sat in the kitchen sink and a box of cereal was left out on a nearby table, alongside a dirty bowl and an opened bottle of milk.
This suggested that someone had eaten breakfast there as recently as that morning. A set of car keys also sat on the table. This was of particular interest to the police given that no keys had been found inside the smashed Holden. A note had been left on the table for the milkman which read: "No further deliveries until further notice."
Another note had the words "Next of Kin" written on it, followed by the name of one of Elmer Crawford's relatives and a town in Ireland, presumably where the relative lived. Between the table and the back door were faint smears of blood. An examination of the Crawford's backyard turned up a length of black rubber hosing similar to the one attached to the family's smashed-up car.
A large black patch on the grass indicated that a bonfire had recently been burned there. Leading from the back door to the garage was a trail of blood. Two metal rubbish bins sat near the wall of the garage and also had blood stains on the lids. Inside one of the bins was a small length of blood-stained rope. The police entered the garage. Leaning against the wall was the bench seat that had been removed from the Holden.
There was no sign of a break-in or struggle at the house, and nothing appeared to be missing. A wedding ring and engagement ring both sat untouched on the mantel. Based on the amount of blood in the bedrooms, investigators believed that the occupants of the home had been attacked while they were sleeping. The amount of blood indicated they were severely injured, or possibly dead.
By sunrise the following morning, investigators were relieved to see that the Crawfords Holden had managed to stay in place overnight. After some careful planning, at 9:30am, police and members of Port Campbell Rescue Squad gathered at the top of the Lockard Gorge armed with several tractors and heavy chains. They intended to attach the chains to the car and then use the tractors to drag it away from the edge,
This time, George scaled the 25-metre cliff face with another member of the rescue squad. After reaching the Holden, the two men carefully opened the back door. In the morning light, they could see blood on the dashboard, the front seat, and the internal roof lining. But they had no time for anything more than a cursory examination. They had to anchor the car to the cliff as a matter of urgency.
Once the car was secure, the men opened the back passenger side door again and lifted out the tarpaulin inside. It was then that they saw a human foot. They began carefully removing some of the blankets from the rear of the vehicle until they uncovered the body of Teresa Crawford. Entangled around her and wrapped in sheets were the bodies of her three children: Catherine, James and Karen.
There was no sign of Elmer. The bodies of Teresa, Catherine, James and Karen were sent up the cliff in stretchers and transported for post-mortem examination. Each of them were dressed in pyjamas, supporting the theory that they'd been attacked while they were in bed. Each of the children had catastrophic head injuries.
Eight-year-old James and six-year-old Karen had been felled by a single blow, while 12-year-old Catherine had suffered two. One to the side of her head and one to the middle of her forehead. Two hammers were found in the Crawfords' car. Either could have been the murder weapon. Teresa Crawford had also suffered a head injury, but hers was less obvious and severe than her children. It looked like it could have been caused by the rubber cosh found in the car wreck.
And unlike her children, this head wound hadn't killed Teresa, but likely only rendered her unconscious. The pathologist noted burn marks on Teresa's ear as well as the webbing between her thumb and index finger. One detective who was watching the procedure picked up the strange electrical lead that had been found in the Crawfords' car, which had an alligator clip at one end and a three-point plug at the other.
The alligator clip matched the burn marks on Teresa's ear and thumb, suggesting that she'd been electrocuted by what looked like a kind of homemade torture device. Katherine and James also had the same alligator clip marks, while Karen showed none. It was determined that the children had all been fatally wounded in their sleep, with the oldest two then electrocuted afterwards.
Teresa was likely rendered unconscious before being fatally electrocuted. Laid out in the morgue, Teresa's stomach was visibly extended. An examination revealed she was three months pregnant, her fetus an unexpected fifth victim of the deadly attack. Case file will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors.
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with 25% off at ritual.com slash prenatal. Thank you for listening to this episode's ads. By supporting our sponsors, you support Casefile to continue to deliver quality content. With no sign of Elmer Crawford and nothing at the family home to suggest that an intruder had entered, this presented only a few possibilities.
The first being that Elmer had attacked his family and then driven to the Lockard Gorge to end his own life. While DNA testing didn't exist in 1970, forensic examination of the Crawford family's smashed-up Holden confirmed that the blood found on the front seat, roof lining and dashboard was all Type O blood. Teresa and the children were all Type A. The only member of the family who was Type O was Elmer.
The hose attached to the exhaust pipes certainly hinted at suicide. Perhaps Alma's body had fallen out of the partially open driver's side door and into the wild sea below. The rescue squad tested all of the doors. Of the four, three could be opened with relative ease. The only door that couldn't be opened beyond 20-30cm was the driver's side door.
It took three men to prise it open just so the police photographer could take photos of the driver's seat, making it unlikely that an adult male had fallen out. The rope that had been tied to the steering wheel went all the way through the vehicle, with the other end jammed into the lid of the boot. Near the clutch pedal, where George had extracted the rifle from the day prior, there was a small engineer's hammer and a plastic slip-on shoe.
This raised the question of whether the hammer could have been stuck into the shoe and secured in place by the butt of the rifle in order to drive the car over the cliff with nobody behind the wheel. Given the scene was so meticulously staged, investigators were cautious not to jump to conclusions. They'd need to run some tests. A matching make and model of the Holden was taken to Port Campbell.
It had been altered to replicate the exact condition of the Crawfords vehicle as closely as possible. The back seat was removed, roof racks were attached, and many of the items retrieved from the Crawfords car were placed inside, including the petrol containers which were refilled with water. Four mannequins were stacked in the back seat, their hollow limbs filled with sand to approximate the weight of Teresa, Catherine, James, and Karen.
A fifth mannequin was also filled with sand to approximate Elmer Crawford's size and weight and fitted into the driver's seat. A rubber hose was attached to the exhaust pipe and positioned exactly as it had been on the original car, while a rope was attached to the steering wheel and secured by the lid of the boot. Before the car was pushed off the cliff, a cable was secured to the vehicle to ensure that it didn't fall into the ocean.
With police cameras rolling, the test vehicle was driven up the access road and across the culvert on the stone bridge. At the point where the uphill section from the road ceased and the downhill run to the cliff began, the car was brought to a stop. The tire impressions from the Crawford car were still visible, and the wheels of the test car were aligned with the tracks.
It didn't take a lot of effort to push the car towards the cliff. It began to roll under its own momentum, gathering speed as the decline increased. Just seconds before it left the cliff top, the wheels deviated slightly from the original tracks. Then the car sailed over the edge of the cliff. Seconds later, the car crashed down onto its front end, just like the Crawford car had.
But the test car didn't land flat. It rolled onto its roof after striking the ledge. Nonetheless, police were satisfied with the reenactment because the damage to the test vehicle matched that of the Crawford car. In both cases, the boot was breached and its contents moved forward into the passenger cabin. The toolbox flew forward and damaged the front seat in the same way.
The mannequins in the rear of the car remained in their location, and the rope tied to the steering wheel didn't break. The test crash suggested that if anyone had been ejected from the Crawford vehicle on impact, they would have landed on the cliff ledge, not in the ocean. But the test mannequin in the driver's seat wasn't thrown out of the vehicle at all.
Instead, it impacted with the dashboard, causing damage consistent with a human body striking a hard surface. No such damage was found in the Crawford car. Detectives were satisfied that there was never a fifth person in the vehicle when it left the clifftop. This lent itself to the second possible scenario. Elmer had pushed the car over the cliff.
The rope tied to the steering wheel and the rifle wedged near the pedals supported this. If someone had been in the driver's seat, these things wouldn't have been necessary. Elmer had likely injured his hands while filling the culvert near the cliff with rocks. He then touched the inside of the car while shifting it, leaving traces of his blood inside. While investigators were certain Elmer had not gone over the cliff, they wanted to make sure of it.
Police divers braced the treacherous waters below as other officers traced the route to Glenroy in case Elmer had tried to make the journey home on foot and perished along the way. A light plane conducted an aerial search of the area while Port Campbell's rugged bushland surroundings were scoured. One detective told the media, "We want to be absolutely certain that Crawford's body is not lying in the bush or has been washed up along the coastline.
"If Crawford's body has been washed up, we will find it." After several days of persevering through icy winds and rain, the search turned up nothing, further cementing the belief that Elmer had somehow gotten away. The police turned to the media for help and Elmer's picture was printed on the front pages of newspapers throughout Australia.
Anyone who might have picked up a male hitchhiker with an Irish accent on the night of Wednesday July 1 1970 or Thursday July 2 was asked to come forward. No one did. Elmer Crawford had been born in Quebec, Canada before moving to Northern Ireland with his mother when he was two months old. His mother then returned to Canada without him, leaving baby Elmer to be raised by his grandparents in Ireland.
He migrated to Australia at the age of 22, where he later met, married and started a family with Teresa. Elmer worked as a telephone mechanic for the Victoria Racing Club. Investigators visited the club to question Elmer's co-workers. They confirmed what one neighbour had initially told the police: that Elmer had been on holidays for the past two weeks.
It was discovered that one of the first things Elmer did upon taking time off was take his wife to a solicitor to make wills in each other's favor. Police found copies of the wills dated the previous month of June 1970. Then, with his three children out of the house at school each day, Elmer had a big clean-out.
Neighbours saw him burning several large loads of rubbish as well as taking several trips to the tip, sometimes multiple times each day. During each trip, he filled his entire car with the junk. Elmer told his neighbours that he planned on using his time off to raise his garage roof so it would fit the family's caravan, which they'd only recently purchased.
Some people saw him up on the roof and heard the banging of tools, but it was clear he didn't finish the job in time because the caravan remained parked on the front lawn. Elmer had been due to return to work on Wednesday July 1, the day before his car was found at the bottom of the cliffs. He failed to show and didn't contact his employer or co-workers to explain his absence.
That same morning, a cosmetic saleswoman named June visited the Crawford home to have a cup of tea with Teresa and leave her with the catalogue. June told the police that she'd visited Teresa at around 10:30am and was surprised to find that six-year-old Karen was home from school. Teresa explained that her daughter had a toothache. While chatting on the porch, June saw Elmer Crawford walking down the driveway from the back of the house.
The two had never met before. June said hello and Elman nodded, but made no effort to start a conversation. June then watched as he began cleaning the inside of the family's Holden. She could see that he'd removed the back seat which was leaning against the front of the car. Teresa didn't invite June in like she usually did, and when June offered her a catalogue, Teresa refused to take it, something she'd never done in the past.
That afternoon at around 4 o'clock, Elmer was witnessed loading his car with five-gallon drums of petrol. Meanwhile, sisters Catherine and Karen were sighted walking to the local shops. A Salvation Army hall was located next door to the Crawfords' house, and every Wednesday night members of the congregation gathered there for choir practice.
On the evening of Wednesday July 1, a congregation member called Malcolm arrived at the hall at 6:30. He noticed that the Crawford's car was parked in their driveway, near the front gate. This was unusual because the car was normally parked in the garage or further up the driveway. Malcolm had known Elmer Crawford for nearly eight years, and during that time they'd always had a good relationship. That had changed about eight months prior.
Malcolm told police that every Sunday during the Salvation Army church services, Elmer began working around his house, hammering loudly, using noisy power tools, and mowing the lawn. Wednesday nights were usually quiet because the Crawford children were typically in bed.
But at around 8:30 on the evening of Wednesday July 1, during a break in choir practice, Malcolm and other Salvation Army members heard odd noises coming from the Crawford house. At one point, it sounded like someone was hitting concrete with a pick or a shovel. Doors were slammed and loud footsteps came from the garage, followed by something heavy being dragged along the ground.
After some more footsteps and dragging sounds, there was a final dull hollow thud, like a car door or boot being slammed shut. By the time choir practice was over, the Crawfords' car was no longer parked at the end of the driveway. The drive from Glenroy to Port Campbell took approximately three hours. It was likely that Elmer had made it to the Lockard Gorge between midnight and 1am.
Police estimated that it would have taken at least an hour to build the rock bridge over the culvert and then maybe another half hour to guide the car over the cliff. This meant the earliest Elmer could have left Port Campbell was around 2 or 3 am. But how had he gotten back to Glenroy without a car? Police searched the Crawfords garage and found a motor scooter, which neighbors said Elmer rode to work each day.
It was therefore theorized that he could have fixed the scooter to the roof racks of the Holden for the trip to Port Campbell, then ridden it home after pushing the car over the cliff. A young girl named Brenda lived seven houses down from the Crawford family. Brenda was a friend of 12-year-old Catherine Crawford. Every weekday morning she walked past the Crawfords house on the way to school to collect Catherine so they could walk to school together.
Thursday, July 2 was no different. But when Brenda knocked on the door, Elmer Crawford answered and said that Catherine was ill and wouldn't be going to school that day. The Crawford house was usually full of noise in the morning, but on July 2 it was completely quiet as though nobody else was at home. Elmer didn't close the door right away,
Instead, he stood in the doorway, watching Brenda walk away in a way she described as creepy. This sighting placed Delmar at home in the hours after his car was dumped. Coupled with the evidence that he had fixed himself breakfast, it seemed he was in no rush to get away.
At around 6 o'clock that night, hours after the Crawford's car was spotted at Lockard Gorge, 16-year-old Allison, not her real name, had been driving down Cardinal Road in Glenroy with her brother. She paid particular attention to the house with the caravan in the front yard because a couple of weeks earlier she'd been passing by when she saw a massive fire in the backyard.
Allison had initially thought the house was ablaze until she realized whoever lived there must have been burning off rubbish. Passing by again on July 2, Allison saw a man walking down the driveway towards the street. Once he reached the footpath, he looked up and down the street before walking back towards the house.
When Allison saw a photo of Elmer Crawford in the newspaper, she immediately recognized him as the man she'd seen in front of the house on Cardinal Road. If her account was correct, it meant Elmer was still at home after the car was discovered, at around the same time the first police officer visited the home.
When police returned to the Crawford home at around 10:30pm and broke in, they noticed some small patches of the carpet in one of the bedrooms were still wet. On the coffee table in the lounge room was a clear bottle of upholstery cleaning fluid. The fluid inside was frothy on the surface, as though it had only been used within the past few hours. Its cap had an inbuilt brush and there were fibers caught in it that were similar to the carpet fibers.
It looked like someone had tried to clean up the bloodstains, but given up in the process. Given that the clean-up looked as though it had been abandoned relatively recently, it struck investigators that Elmer could have been cleaning up the crime scene when the first officer knocked at 6:20pm. Perhaps he had thought he'd gotten away with his crime only to catch a glimpse of the officer and realise it had all gone awry.
If this was the case, this meant that Elmer had vanished sometime between the police's first visit at 6:20 and their return to the house at 10:30. Elmer's motor scooter was still in the garage along with an adult bicycle. This raised the question of how he fled the house in Cardinal Road. There had been no confirmed sightings of Elmer since he left home for good.
Had he simply walked away? Or taken a bus? Or had someone picked him up? Case file will be back shortly. Thank you for supporting us by listening to this episode's sponsors. Have you ever stopped to think about how much you spend on subscriptions each month? The answer is likely more than you realise.
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Whatever the case, investigators were bewildered as to why Elmer made the drastic decision to wipe out his family in the first place. By all accounts, the Crawfords were a typical friendly family. No one recalled ever hearing arguments coming from their house, nor did Teresa ever complain about her husband. When the Crawfords socialised with neighbours, Elmer was said to be affectionate towards his wife and children, who were also described as being well-behaved.
Elmer earned nearly $5,000 a year, or $70,000 in today's money. A search of the Crawfords' bank accounts revealed they had a further $3,000 in savings and another $3,000 in government bonds. Their house was almost paid off, and they owned three blocks of land in Queensland as well as their caravan and car. For a single-income family, they were very well off, more so than the average.
Whatever motive Elmer Crawford might have had to kill his family, it didn't appear to be financial. A woman named Jennifer who lived up the street regarded Teresa Crawford as a good friend. She told the police that while she knew Teresa very well, she knew next to nothing about Elmer and had barely ever spoken to him. Jennifer described the Crawfords as a happy family. The last time she'd seen them all was on the night of Tuesday June 30,
Jennifer visited the Crawford home and was told that Elmer had spent the day taking rubbish to the tip. When Jennifer asked if Elmer had gone back to work yet, Teresa responded, "'No. Isn't it awful? He should have gone back a couple of days ago. I think he will be going back soon.'" While the two women spoke at the front door, Jennifer saw Elmer back the car out of the driveway and drive off.
The detectives asked Jennifer if she knew Teresa was expecting a baby. Jennifer said yes and recalled that Teresa seemed very pleased about it. When Jennifer had asked what Elmer thought, Teresa responded, "Oh, well, you know Elmer." During the search of the Crawford home, police had found a newspaper clipping on the kitchen table that had them questioning whether the news of the pregnancy was welcome.
Taken from The Age, the clipping was titled "A Mother's Agony" and featured an emotional letter to the editor in response to an article the previous week about abortion reform. The letter described one mother's experience as she had unsuccessfully tried to terminate her own pregnancy and called for greater medical support for women seeking abortions. In the lounge room, police also found a half-finished letter that Teresa had written to her sister in Queensland.
It read in part: "I have been so upset, but what's the use? I'm two and a half months now, so it looks like I've had it this time. We were going to come up home this Christmas but won't be able to now as I'll be due the end of January. So bub will have to be careful now." The letter also featured the question "Why did you go off the pill?" seemingly referring to the contraceptive pill.
It was unclear if the question was directed towards Teresa's sister or was a rhetorical question for herself. Either way, coupled with the article about abortion, it led police to suspect that Teresa might not have been as happy about her pregnancy as she'd led her neighbors to believe.
When questioned again, one of the Crawfords' neighbours said that Teresa had confided in her that she'd suffered from postnatal depression after the birth of her youngest daughter, for which she'd required medication. Police wondered whether Teresa's pregnancy could have something to do with the murders. Teresa was a dedicated Catholic. Perhaps Elmer had been pushing her to have an abortion, but she'd refused.
Speculation aside, Elmer Crawford's intent remained a mystery. The only thing for certain was that this had been a deliberate and carefully planned attack. Not only had Elmer taken the time to painstakingly organise his car, it also appeared that he'd personally made the alligator clip device that had been used to electrocute Teresa, Catherine and James. Household fuses are designed to blow during a surge of current.
An examination of the Crawford's fuse box showed that the regular fuses had been replaced with thick wire to prevent them from blowing during a surge. The available evidence indicated Elmer likely planned to stage his family's disappearance before going off to start a new life.
Perhaps he intended to tell people that Teresa and the children had moved to Queensland to be closer to her family for the arrival of the new baby while he stayed behind to put the house on the market. If the car had gone into the water as planned, Elmer could have quietly sold up everything, taken his money, and disappeared without question. The bonfires, letter to the milkman, and visits to the tip certainly suggested he was getting ready to leave the house for good.
Detectives also wondered if the hose leading from the exhaust pipe to the driver's window was a ploy in case the car was ever recovered from the bottom of the ocean. Perhaps Elmer's plan was to make it look like Teresa had killed the children in a murder-suicide. This could also explain why Teresa's head injury was less severe than the others. Maybe Elmer had hoped that her skeletal remains wouldn't show any skull fractures.
As the weeks passed after the bodies of Teresa Crawford and her children were found, not a single piece of evidence emerged to suggest where Elmer Crawford could be. Yet, evidence emerged to suggest that he was prepared for a life on the run. It was well known to the Crawford's neighbours that Elmer spent a lot of his spare time at the local auction rooms.
He liked to take items in such as tools, clothing and electrical gear, which he'd leave for potential buyers. He'd return later to collect any proceeds as well as any of his unsold items. He spent so much time on this hobby that when neighbours asked Teresa where Elmer was, she would typically roll her eyes and say, "He's at the auction houses again." Elmer had made two visits to an auction house during his time off work.
He'd left an assortment of items, including 25 yards of electrical leads, a coil of wire, a box of battery clips, a spade, a matic, two sledgehammers, and several gallons of motor oil. He returned at the end of June to collect the money from his sales - $26 in total, or roughly $350 in today's money. For the investigators, this explained how the Crawfords were so well off.
They discovered that some of the auctioneers had recently grown suspicious that Elmer was bringing in stolen goods and they'd stopped accepting his business. It also turned out that Elmer had been stealing copper wiring from work, which he then sold to scrap metal merchants.
In the Crawfords' garage and inside their roof, police found a small warehouse of goods that could be attributed back to the Victorian Racing Commission, including everything from electrical items to rolls of toilet paper. Although Elmer's bank accounts hadn't been touched since he disappeared, given his proclivity for selling stolen items, it was possible that he'd been hoarding cash and had taken a large amount with him.
Being an electrician also meant he could have picked up cash in hand work along his travels. By now, photos of Elmer had been widely circulated Australia-wide and there had been no reported sightings of him anywhere. Given Elmer's Irish connection and his family in Canada, inquiries were made with authorities overseas, but to no result.
By the one-year anniversary of the Crawford family murders, police were no closer to finding any answers. A coronial inquest was held in July 1971, during which the coroner asked the lead homicide detective if he thought Elmer Crawford was responsible for killing Teresa Crawford and the three children. The detective was non-committal, saying, "'I don't think that is my function, sir. It is the function of the court.'
The coroner rephrased the question, this time asking: "Have your inquiries revealed any other like person who could have killed these people?" The detective replied: "No sir, they haven't." The coroner found Elmer Crawford responsible for killing his wife and three children, but this didn't bring the investigation any closer to finding out what happened to Elmer himself.
In late January 1973, a year and a half after the inquest, itinerant worker Peter Carlson was standing in line at an employment office in the regional Victorian city of Shepparton when he struck up a conversation with a man named Harry. Harry told Peter he was currently going through a divorce from his wife. The two men heard there was some fruit picking work available on an orchard in Cobram, a riverland town approximately 70 kilometres away.
Along with two other men, they jumped into a cab and headed straight there to begin work, which included accommodation on the property. On the evening of Monday January 29, Peter, Harry and one of the other workers headed to the Cobram Hotel. They caught a cab back to the orchard, but along the journey they got into an argument with the driver. The police were called and the three fruit pickers were taken to the local police station.
Harry was released shortly after, while the other two were kept overnight. At 11:30pm, Harry's body was found on the side of Cobram South Road, having been killed in an apparent road accident. The police officer who attended the scene took one look at Harry and immediately recognized him from photographs he'd seen years prior. He looked just like Elmer Crawford. The man was carrying no form of identification or money,
But as the police soon learned, he'd been going by the name Harry Crawford. The deceased man's fingerprints and dental records were taken to see if a positive identification could be made, with a police spokesperson telling the media: "If it is Elmer Crawford, we will clear up one of the most baffling mysteries in the history of the Victoria Police Force." The results came back: it wasn't Elmer Crawford.
As the years went by, unsubstantiated sightings and stories about Elmer trickled in, including that he was in Ireland working as a hitman for the Irish Republican Army. Most of the sightings seemed to be either cases of mistaken identity or just rumours.
Then, in 1994, the wife of one of the scrap dealers who used to buy copper wire from Elmer Crawford was visiting the Western Australian city of Bunbury, some 3,300 kilometres west of Glenroy. She was at a local hotel when she saw a man she believed to be the accused family annihilator. The woman approached the man and asked if he was Elmer Crawford. He said no, he was just visiting from New Zealand.
By the time the woman reported this encounter to the police, two weeks had passed. Police found no trace of the Bumbery man, but they believed the sighting could be genuine. In the 1970s, Western Australia was sparsely populated and the more remote parts were renowned for being safe havens for people wanting to vanish. There was very limited use of electronics that could track a person's movements, and you didn't even need an ID to open a bank account.
Given Elmer's electrician skills, it was possible that he'd secured work in one of the remote mining sites and had managed to fly under the radar since. If the Bumbery sighting had been genuine, the woman's failure to report it sooner meant Elmer had plenty of time to disappear again. There were no other credible leads until the early 2000s when an unidentified male body appeared in a Texas morgue.
The deceased had gone to great lengths to hide his identity. His fingerprints were damaged and he had false identity documents with at least four different names. The man lay unidentified for five years until facial recognition software flagged him as bearing a strong resemblance to an older Elmer Crawford. A living blood relative of Elmer provided their DNA for comparison.
But just as Australian police were contemplating how the fugitive could have gotten himself to the US, DNA testing revealed that the unidentified man was not Elmer. By early 2008, 37 years had passed since the Crawford family murders, and if Elmer was still alive, he would have been 78 years old.
Victoria Police announced a $100,000 reward which they hoped might provide an incentive to encourage anybody who may know of Elmer Crawford's whereabouts to come forward. They also released an age-enhanced image of what Elmer might look like if he was still alive. Indemnity from prosecution was promised to anyone who provided information regarding his whereabouts. One detective said…
"There have been a number of sightings of Elmer over the years, which leads us to believe that he is still alive and living interstate to avoid detection. It is likely that he has changed his appearance in order to disguise his identity. He previously worked as an unqualified electrician, and even though would now be of retirement age, it is possible he still does a bit of this type of work on the side.
Teresa, Catherine, James and Karen deserve some answers, and we believe somebody out there has information that will bring those people responsible to justice. In 2017, a former truck driver who went by the name Nugget came forward to report a possible sighting of Elmer Crawford in the remote Pilbara region of Western Australia.
According to Nugget, he struck up a conversation with a man who said he'd moved to the area from Melbourne in 1970. Nugget asked the man where his wife was, to which he responded that she was long gone. Nugget then asked the man why he'd left Melbourne. The man responded: "I had to leave in a hurry. I did something terrible." Detectives had recently been to Western Australia following up on another reported sighting of Elmer Crawford.
It was then that Nugget had a light bulb moment. "You aren't that bloke the Victorian coppers were up here looking for a couple of weeks ago?" he asked. According to Nugget, the man's body language completely changed. It looked like he realised he'd said too much. True crime author Greg Fogarty grew up in Cardinal Road, Glenroy. He was nine years old at the time of the Crawford murders and fully aware of the tragedy that had befallen the family.
Growing up, Greg and his friends regarded the old Crawford house as haunted. He remained fascinated by the case into adulthood, likening its infamy to the 1966 disappearance of the three Beaumont children, as covered in episode 100 of Case File. Greg felt compelled to look into the Crawford case further and ultimately wrote a book about it titled Almost Perfect.
Over the three years it took to research and write the book, Greg put ads in the newspapers asking anyone who knew anything about the Crawfords to contact him. Several people came forward, including one former neighbour who had never given a statement to police. While all other neighbours had described Elmer as friendly and placid, this neighbour claimed they once saw Elmer fly into a fit of rage while trying to fix his car.
Frustrated that whatever he was doing wasn't working, Elmer smashed every panel of the car with a tyre iron. Over the years, Greg heard many stories about where Elmer Crawford could be. In 1970, Australians could travel to New Zealand without documentation. Elmer could have travelled to New Zealand before continuing onwards from there. He might have been harboured by family members or other supporters in Ireland.
While there are no records of Elmer travelling overseas, it doesn't rule out the possibility that he was travelling under a false name. A man named Alan also reached out to Greg saying he knew a man that worked as an electrician in Western Australia who looked just like Elmer Crawford. This man spoke with an Irish accent and was cagey when questioned about his past. Alan was so convinced that the man was Elmer that he sent Greg a photo.
Greg had the photo analysed, but when comparing it to pictures of Elmer, the years were not the same shape. If he is still alive, Elmer Crawford would now be 95 years old. The $100,000 reward still stands. Anyone with information is urged to contact Crimestoppers. Homicide detectives recently stated that they have not given up hope that the five-decade-long cold case might be solved one day.
With all the mystery surrounding the case and the focus put on Elmer, very little has been reported publicly about Teresa, Catherine, James and Karen. Memories of their lives before the tragedy are held close by those who knew them best, like Catherine's friend, Brenda. She was the last person to speak to Elmer prior to his disappearance.
Every day that Brenda walked to school following the murders, she pretended that Catherine was by her side. In 2005, Brenda gave her first ever interview to the Age newspaper, saying that she still thought of Catherine, her mother and siblings every time she drove past their old house on Cardinal Road. Brenda said, "'I often wonder what she'd be doing now, how her life would have been, had she lived.'"
In 2011, a tragedy unfolded along the banks of a quiet suburban creek in Melbourne, Australia.
- Emergency services. Hello, where do you need the police? - I think I've seen what looks like a dead body in... - Where? - In the creek was the body of a young adult female, clad in a pink dressing gown. - He assumed that she just threw her robe off and just threw her in the water. But little did he know that that was actually a lifeless body. - Police were quick to rule out any suspicious circumstances, while others weren't so sure. - Eliza was a very, very good swimmer.
We'd gone to the beach, we'd gone to the pools. You cannot just look at a body and say, oh, they drowned or no, they didn't drown. It's based on the circumstances. Her death is a case you've never heard of before, but her life is a story you'll never forget. I kept on telling my mum, listen, mum, be careful going there because one day, you know, he might decide to not want to come back. Awful living conditions and he would just give her food like she was a prisoner. That was terrible.
As a fresh investigation into her death begins, startling revelations come to light. I collected a female from the Melbourne airport. She was upset and crying. I'm looking at her lungs right now, and her lungs...
I'm Julia Robson and this is Troubled Waters, a Casefile Presents production.