Dark Stories: On This Day In True Crime History - Dark Stories True Crime Tours

1973: Two Girls Vanish from Adelaide Oval in One of South Australia's Most Infamous Cold Cases

On 25 August 1973, Joanne Ratcliffe, aged 11, and Kirste Gordon, aged 4, disappeared from the Adelaide Oval during an Australian rules football match between Norwood and North Adelaide. Witnesses saw the girls in the company of a man in an Akubra hat and grey checked sports jacket. One witness, a confectionery vendor, watched the man carry Kirste in one arm while Joanne kicked and screamed at him to let her go. He dropped his reading glasses in the struggle, grabbed Joanne by the arm, and dragged her toward the southern gates. Bystanders assumed he was simply a parent.

Police believe both girls were abducted, and their disappearance has never been solved. South Australia Police and media have long linked the case to the 1966 disappearance of the Beaumont children, also from South Australia. The case remains one of the most haunting unsolved crimes in the country’s history.

Football Game at the Adelaide Oval - the ground in 1973 still had the old stands and the 1911 scoreboard seen here.

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Adelaide Australia Cold Case Kidnapping Missing Persons Murder SA Unsolved

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1980: Five Infant Bodies Found Hidden in a Gallitzin Attic for Over 50 Years

When 76-year-old Stella Williamson died of natural causes in Gallitzin, Pennsylvania on August 25, 1980, a sealed letter was found among her belongings. Written in the early 1960s, it was a confession: ‘In the attic in an old trunk you will find babies I had… How I got away with it I don’t know but I did.’ Investigators followed the letter to the attic, where they found the mummified remains of five infants, all under one year old, wrapped in newspapers dating from 1925 to 1933.

Examination by forensic experts including Dr. Halbert Fillinger and Dr. Wilton Krogman determined that at least three of the infants had been strangled, ligature material still present on their necks. The cause of death for the other two, believed to be newborns, was never conclusively established. Williamson, remembered by neighbours as kind and churchgoing, had kept her secret for more than half a century. The case resurfaced decades later when two of the infant skulls were mysteriously discovered at a Philadelphia museum.

Dusty Attic Trunk

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Cold Case Murder Pennsylvania Unsolved USA

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1909: Long Bay Gaol Opens on the Shores of Botany Bay

Sydney‘s Long Bay Gaol opened in 1909 on the shores of Botany Bay, and over the following century it would become one of the most storied prisons in the country. Its walls held razor gang queens Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh, escape artist Darcy Dugan, and gangsters Chow Hayes and Neddy Smith.

Long Bay also housed some of the darkest figures in modern Australian criminal history, including corrupt former detective Roger Rogerson and serial killer Ivan Milat, who died there in 2019. Russell ‘Mad Dog’ Cox staged a daring breakout from the prison’s maximum-security unit, cementing the gaol’s reputation as a place where Australia’s most dangerous and notorious converged.

Historic prison buildings at Long Bay Gaol in Australia

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Australia Corruption Escape Gang Murder NSW Organised Crime Prison Serial Killer Sydney

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1840: The Coorong Executions after the Maria Massacre

In June 1840, the ship Maria wrecked on Margaret Brock Reef off Cape Jaffa, South Australia. All twenty-six aboard reached shore, but the survivors later split into groups as they attempted to make their way towards Adelaide. Those travelling along the coast entered the territory of the local clan, where they were killed in a series of attacks. The remaining survivors were also pursued and subsequently killed.

Major O’Halloran, acting under orders, rounded up members of the local clan and conducted a summary field trial on the Adelaide frontier. Two men were hanged on 25 August 1840, in what colonial authorities framed as justice for the massacre, but which many historians regard as an act of punitive colonial retribution.

Major OHallorans 1840 expedition scene with mounted party

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Adelaide Australia Cape Jaffa Colonial Crime Coorong Execution Historical Crime Massacre SA Trial

1973: Two Girls Vanish from Adelaide Oval in One of South Australia's Most Infamous Cold Cases

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1980: Five Infant Bodies Found Hidden in a Gallitzin Attic for Over 50 Years

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1909: Long Bay Gaol Opens on the Shores of Botany Bay

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1840: The Coorong Executions after the Maria Massacre

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