Loch Ard Gorge - Identifinders International, LLC

DNA Rule-Out for Cold Case, Australia, 1970 – Part II

By Austin Bethell|2010-09-01T23:51:35-07:00September 1st, 2010|

Through a casual exchange of emails a few weeks ago, Deb Cashion alerted me to a recent article "Police chase DNA of Elmer Crawford relatives in Northern Ireland" that appeared in the Herald Sun. It described the Victoria police search for a DNA family reference for Crawford. Since I was traveling in Ireland at the time, I offered to help locate the required reference. Deb put me in touch with Keith Moor, the Insight Editor of the Herald Sun, an award-winning journalist and the author of the article. Keith forwarded me two new articles that appeared in the Sun on July 14 "Mystery man was a drifter" and July 15 "Police chase tip to retrieve DNA" that provided more information [...]

DNA Rule-Out for Cold Case, Australia, 1970 – Part I

By Austin Bethell|2010-08-29T20:43:15-07:00August 29th, 2010|

A crime that could not escape media attention in Australia, any more than the Manson family murders could have evaded the public eye here in the States-Elmer Crawford brutally murdered his pregnant wife Theresa (35) and his three children Kathryn (13), James (8), and Karen (6) in 1970. He then disappeared. He electrocuted them while they slept using an electrical cable he had fashioned from an extension cord and alligator clips he attached to various places on their bodies, then bashed them with a hammer. He then drove nearly four hundred miles with their bodies in the back of his car, and rolled it over the side of the Loch Ard Gorge in Port Campbell National Park, Victoria. He was probably hoping the car would vanish [...]

September 2010

DNA Rule-Out for Cold Case, Australia, 1970 – Part II

August 2010

DNA Rule-Out for Cold Case, Australia, 1970 – Part I