A 50-year mystery surrounding the chilling disappearance of two little girls at a footy game is one step closer to finally being solved.
Four-year-old Kirste Gordon and Joanna Ratcliffe, 11, vanished during an Australian rules football game at Adelaide Oval on August 25, 1973.
They haven’t been seen since, but detectives have reportedly searched backyards across Adelaide in recent days after zeroing on a child sex offender as their prime suspect.
Four-year-old Kirste Gordon (left) and Joanna Ratcliffe (left), 11, vanished during an Australian rules football game at Adelaide Oval on August 25, 1973
Officers visited convicted paedophile Errol Radan in a Brisbane prison to speak to him about the girls’ disappearance, leading them to dig up a backyard in Adelaide’s west, 7News reported.
Radan, who had convictions in South Australia and was in jail for indecently assaulting a girl under the age of 14 in 1984, has since died.
A victim of Radan said that cops told her they had visited her attacker in prison and that they believed he was their prime suspect – however he refused to speak to detectives before his death.
There were 13,000 people inside Adelaide Oval at the time of the abductions, which took place during an SANFL match between Norwood and North Adelaide.
Joanne was taking Kirste to the toilet when they disappeared.
Witness Tony Kilmartin, who was 13 at the time, was selling ice cream and lollies at the oval when he claims he saw the girls being led away.
Mr Kilmartin, now 63, told 9 News that he saw a man picking up Kirste as Joanne tried to stop him.
‘(I saw) one go under the arm … and the other one just pulling on him, screaming the words ‘no’ and ‘let her go’,’ he said.
‘I just watched them go towards the gate … and that was the last I’d seen.’
Mr Kilmartin says he didn’t try to stop the man as he thought he was the girls’ father.
He described the man to police in the following days, leading to a sketch to be released showing what the kidnapper looked like.
A sketch of the man seen taking the two girls from the oval
Kirste’s parents Greg and Christine are still desperate for answers, but want to know where her body is, rather than what happened to her
Kirste’s parents Greg and Christine are still desperate for answers, but want to know where her body is, rather than what happened to her.
‘It might sound callous, but I would like to know where she is, I don’t want to know what happened … that is soul destroying, that is giving the perpetrator time they do not deserve,’ Christine told The Advertiser.
‘But in one way, what do you do with her remains? What I am trying to say is that it is not really that important at this stage. She is here, she is here with us.’
She added that while they were still heartbroken by their little girl’s disappearance and death – they have had to move on.
‘We have always come from the point, the idea that we have to get on with our lives,’ Christine said. ‘Right from the start we were determined to be survivors.’
Source: | This article originally belongs to Dailymail.co.uk
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