Disappearance of Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon

Joanne Ratcliffe (born 1962)[2] and Kirste Jane Gordon (born 1968)[3] were two Australian girls who went missing while attending an Australian rules football match at the Adelaide Oval on 25 August 1973. Their disappearance and presumed abduction and murder[1] became one of South Australia's best-known crimes. The presumed murders are thought by South Australia Police and the media to be related to the disappearance of the Beaumont children in 1966.[4] The case is sometimes referred to in the media as The Adelaide Oval Abductions.

Disappearance of Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon
The Sunday Mail's front page on the day after Ratcliffe and Gordon disappeared
Date25 August 1973
Time3:50pm[1]
DurationMissing for 47 years, 4 months and 4 days
VenueAdelaide Oval
LocationAdelaide, South Australia
TypeAbduction
Missing
  • Joanne Ratcliffe (11)
  • Kirste Gordon (4)

Disappearance

Joanne Ratcliffe went to the football game, between Norwood and North Adelaide, with her parents Les and Kathleen Ratcliffe, her brother, and a family friend, "Frank".[5] Kirste Gordon was at the game in the care of her maternal grandmother while her parents, Greg and Christine Gordon, were visiting friends in the Riverland.[6] The two families, who had not met previously, were seated next to each other in the Sir Edwin Smith Stand.

Ratcliffe's parents and Gordon's grandmother allowed the two girls to go to the toilet together on two occasions that day.[7] The Ratcliffe family rule was that children were not allowed to go to the toilet during the breaks in the game, or during the last quarter.[5] After the girls left at around 3:45 pm, the Ratcliffes began searching the area from around 4:00. After an unsuccessful first attempt, Kathleen Ratcliffe was finally able to get an announcement made on the PA system shortly after the game ended around 5:00 pm.[7] The girls were reported missing to the police at 5:12 pm.

Investigation

Ratcliffe and Gordon were seen several times in the 90 minutes after leaving their families, apparently distressed and in the company of an unknown man who was carrying Gordon. Witnesses, unaware of the kidnapping, assumed the suspect was simply a parent with his children. They disappeared after the last reported sighting on a bridge near the nearby Adelaide Zoo.[1] Another witness, however, later reported seeing them between North Adelaide railway station and Port Road, Thebarton.[8]

Ratcliffe's father told the Coroner's Court in 1979 that his daughter had been to the oval dozens of times, that she would not have left voluntarily, and that she knew how to use a telephone to call an emergency number. He said she had not met Gordon before that day, and he did not know her parents.

Despite the media attention and widespread public interest, the kidnapping quickly became a cold case. In 2014, a $1 million reward was offered by the South Australian government.[9][10]

Suspects

Many of the suspects in the Beaumont children disappearance are also suspects in this case. Witness reports led police to believe that they were abducted by a middle-aged man.[11][12] Further, the police sketch of the man last seen with the two girls resembles that of the man last seen with the Beaumonts.[13]

One possible suspect is Stanley Arthur Hart (25 January 1917 – July 1999). Properties previously owned by Hart (one in Prospect, one at Yatina in the Mid North) were investigated in 2009 and again in 2015.[14] He reportedly rarely missed a North Adelaide match and was likely at the game, and a decade after the abduction, he was found to be a child abuser.

A 2013 article in The Advertiser detailed Ratcliffe's sister, Suzie Wilkinson, appeal to the authorities to look into the role that "Frank" may have played in the disappearance of the girls. Frank had accompanied the families to the Oval on the day of the girls' abduction, but may not have been formally questioned by police. Frank is alleged to have had intimate knowledge about the girls' routine behaviours during football match outings. Kathleen Ratcliffe said that Frank left his seat for approximately 30 minutes before the girl's disappearance, but later remained seated and did not participate when others formed search parties to look for them. Gordon's grandmother also took notice of Frank's behaviour during the search for the girls saying, "the other man stayed in his seat." Wilkinson expressed her desire that authorities continue to actively work on her sister's case:

"The case has never been officially closed but I would like further investigations into it,'' said Wilkinson, who was born 14 months after her sister vanished. "I want investigations into more recent developments. I certainly want a little bit more logic put behind why police have dismissed evidence which has been put before them and why things haven't been followed up. We seem to be left in the dark. It might be 40 years to them and just another case, but to us it is 40 years of us not getting to watch Jo grow up. That's 40 years of not having a daughter, a sister, an aunty."[15]

See also

References
  1. "Inquest on Adelaide Oval girls". The Age. 10 July 1979. p. 6. Retrieved 12 August 2009.
  2. "RATCLIFFE Joanne". National Missing Persons Coordination Centre. 16 May 2016. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  3. "GORDON Kirste". National Missing Persons Coordination Centre. 16 May 2016. Retrieved 21 March 2017.
  4. The Age, 27 August 1973
  5. Littleley, Bryan (24 August 2013). "On the 40th anniversary of the disappearance of Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon, family reveal new connections to murderer Bevan Spencer von Einem". Sunday Mail (SA). Retrieved 24 January 2018.
  6. Gage, Nicola (30 July 2017). "Missing Persons Week: Kirste Gordon's parents recall day she disappeared from Adelaide Oval". ABC News. Retrieved 24 January 2018.
  7. Episode 1 - Little Girls Lost, retrieved 11 August 2020
  8. Polychronis, Gabriel (25 August 2019). "SA Police highlight notorious cold case". The Murray Valley Standard. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  9. Episode 2 - Little Girls Lost (Part 2), retrieved 11 August 2020
  10. "The mysterious disappearance of Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon". crimestopperssa.com.au. Retrieved 11 August 2020.
  11. "Boy 'saw man forcing girls'". The Canberra Times. 31 August 1973. p. 3. Retrieved 17 July 2015 – via National Library of Australia.
  12. "Police go to oval". The Canberra Times. 3 September 1973. p. 1. Retrieved 18 July 2015 – via National Library of Australia.
  13. Grace, Lynton (14 January 2014). "South Australia's most notorious unsolved crimes and mysteries: The Beaumont children - 1966". The Advertiser. Retrieved 26 January 2016.
  14. Littlely, Bryan (11 March 2015). "Cold case: Fresh leads in 1973 Adelaide Oval abduction links key suspect to abandoned Prospect home with an underground bunker". Adelaide Advertiser. Retrieved 27 January 2018.
  15. "New von Einem link in abduction case". www.adelaidenow.com.au. 24 August 2013. Retrieved 4 June 2020.

Further reading
  • Stephen Orr (2011). The Cruel City: Is Adelaide the Murder Capital of Australia?. Allen & Unwin. pp. 102–122. ISBN 9781742692944.
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