Almost Perfect: The True Story of the Crawford Family Murders

By Greg Fogarty

On July 2, 1970, tourists in Australia spotted a smashed car, teetering precariously on a cliff edge, overlooking the raging ocean below. It seemed the car would fall into the water at any moment, but the car lingered as did a mystery, revealed when police traced the license plate to the Crawford household. Here, the police discovered the shocking truth: a mother and her three children had been murdered, with the husband and fathernow missingthe main suspect.

The quadruple homicide sent a wave of panic through Australia. Where was the husband? And what would make a father kill his own children? There was much speculation but few answers, as the Crawford patriarch remained missing. Forty years passedforty years of Australias Most Wanted, police dead ends, and silence until an unidentified body appears in a Texas morgue.

Almost Perfect is the firsthand look at a terrible crime from the perspective of Greg Fogartya neighbor to the Crawford family and later a member of the Victoria Police Force, Australia. Using his skills of observation and investigation, Fogarty has put together a tragic and detailed crime narrative with a shocking conclusion. Could a morgue in San Angelo, Texas, hold the body of Australias most sought-after murderer or will the Crawford homicide remain unsolved forever?

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Feb 25, 2011
• ISBN: 9781450285186

Greg Fogarty

Greg Fogartywas raised in Melbourne Australia. At the age of nine, a family was brutally murdered in the street where he lived. Almost Perfect is the culmination of years of research into what is still today, Australia's greatest unsolved murder mystery. A former police officer, Greg now resides in Denver Colorado, where he volunteers for Every Creature Counts and works as a software engineer.

Book preview

Copyright © 1997, 2011 by Greg Fogarty

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

iUniverse

1663 Liberty Drive

Bloomington, IN 47403

www.iuniverse.com

1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any Web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

ISBN: 978-1-4502-8516-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-8517-9 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4502-8518-6 (ebook)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011900246

Printed in the United States of America

iUniverse rev. date: 2/17/2011

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

Almost Perfect

Cardinal Sin

Disposing of the Evidence

Melbourne

Loch Ard Gorge

The Clipper Loch Ard

Katherine is Sick

Discovery of the Wreck

A Stench of Death

That’s the House

A Home in Darkness

Homicide Calling

Crime Scene

Early Findings

Bodies of Evidence

Elmer Crawford Spotted

Driven or Pushed?

Autopsy

Theresa McManus

Love and Marriage

Elmer Kyle Crawford

Suburban Bliss

Isn’t it Awful?

Avon Calling

Elmer’s Vacation is Over

Speculation and Theory

Coroner’s Inquisition

Slab 229

Afterword

Inside the House

Four Decades Later

San Angelo, Texas

Epilogue

Acknowledgments

Researching Almost Perfect: The True Story of the Crawford Family Murders was a difficult and drawn-out exercise. First published in 1998, it attracted world-wide attention and was nominated for Australia’s coveted Ned Kelly Award. (Ned Kelly was an infamous bushranger during Australia’s colonial era). The crime I’ve written about took place in Melbourne, Australia’s second-largest city and the capital of the state of Victoria. By far, the largest task was locating relatives, friends, and, neighbors who had been caught up in the tragedy that happened more than forty years ago. Most were long gone from their original addresses, although, surprisingly, some lived minutes away from my home at the time, nearly one thousand miles from Melbourne.

Many were surprised to hear from me and suspicious of my intentions, particularly the family of Theresa Crawford, one of the victims. Despite my offer to give them final say over the book’s content, members of the Crawford family refused to speak to me. In addition, despite earlier signs of cooperation, the Victoria Police also became reluctant to assist my research. As a former member of the Victoria Police Force, I had assumed that connection would increase my access to documents and information. But I still had to go through all the correct channels; finally, after waiting nearly a year, I was granted access to the police files on the Crawford case, subject to certain conditions, to which I agreed. After several phone calls to the Homicide Squad, in which I was assured the files were available for my perusal, I flew to Melbourne where I was promptly and inexplicably denied access. As it turns out, the information I had found through years of research eclipsed the information held by the police. I had spoken to numerous people who had intimate knowledge of Elmer Crawford but had never been interviewed by the police. Their recollections of Elmer contrasted starkly with the descriptions of his personality perpetuated by the police and in the media. On hearing of my project, a number of people contacted me because they were frustrated by what they considered a lackluster police investigation into such a major crime.

To the best of my knowledge, the information presented in this book is accurate. It is largely gleaned from my own recollections of the crime, coupled with research from every printed article I could find, the coroner’s report, and information from many people who were kind enough to give me their time. I drew on my own experience as a policeman to track down and interview people connected to the case. The book is based on what I believed happened, it is not conclusive or a definitive account, as the only person who knows what really happened is the killer. I also must make mention of Vikki Petraitis, who I met through a mutual friend. Vikki shares my interest in crime and is a bestselling author with numerous books to her credit. Without her enthusiasm, encouragement, and guidance, this book would not have been possible.

Two people deserving special mention are Trisha Crawford from Cambridge in the United Kingdom and Betty Anstis from Florida. Both women contacted me after reading an earlier publication of this book, claiming to be biologically related to Crawford. Trisha claims to be his daughter and Betty his half-sister. At the time, they added a fascinating and new twist to an already twisted tale. Who could have guessed what this knowledge would lead to a few years later. I am indebted to both ladies for their willingness to share what information they had about Crawford with me, although it opened up some very deep personal wounds in both of them.

I wrote Almost Perfect to highlight a terrible crime, one that shocked Australia. Surprisingly, no book on the topic had ever been written and, apart from a segment on Australian television in the 1970s called Wanted and a more recent episode of Sensing Murder, this crime has received very little publicity in the past forty years. While the jury is out on whether Elmer Kyle Crawford is still alive, that possibility, while fleeting, does exist. He has relatives in Northern Ireland, who are fiercely loyal to their family, and that loyalty could have provided him with shelter and the cover he needed to escape capture. He also may have had connections in his birthplace of Canada, whose proximity to the United States means that Crawford’s options for escape and anonymity were far reaching; he could have gone anywhere in the world.

In 1970 communications were not what they are today. There was no Internet or electronic banking; security cameras were not on every corner. One didn’t need a photo ID to open a bank account or get a driver’s license. Australian citizens could even travel to New Zealand without a passport. Crawford had an opportunity that doesn’t exist today: to commit the most horrific of crimes and then to literally vanish.

Should Crawford still be alive, he should have no peace. He should know that police forces all over the world are looking for him and the case is still open. If this book contributes, no matter how minutely, to bring him to justice, then I will have reached my objective.

This book is dedicated to the memory of Theresa Crawford and her children, Katherine, James, Karen, and her unborn child, whose lives were stolen so inexplicably.

Introduction

Shortly after noon on July 2, 1970, tourists spotted a smashed motor car on a rocky ledge, approximately two hundred feet below the coastal cliff tops of Loch Ard Gorge in a rural area of the Australian state of Victoria. Perched just a few feet above the ocean, the car was precariously balanced; only a few inches of crumbling limestone preventing it from tumbling off the ledge and into the water. Resting in a bizarre mosaic of its own shattered debris, the car appeared to have been deliberately driven or pushed off the cliff. The tourists believed that this was much more than a car that had been stolen and dumped, their suspicions aroused by the black rubber hose running from the car’s exhaust pipe into the driver’s side window.

Police officers and rescue workers from the township of Port Campbell, four miles west of Loch Ard, went to the cliff face to examine the car for themselves. Their first priority was to ascertain if there were any injured people in the car.

Later that afternoon, a member of the rescue squad descended the cliff and conducted an initial visual inspection of the vehicle. Daylight was fading, and he didn’t have much time to do a thorough examination. He recovered several items from the front seat and the area surrounding the car, including a loaded rifle. As the risk of upsetting the car’s balance and sending it into the ocean was so great, he decided to suspend the search for the time being, especially since he saw no immediate signs that there was anybody in the car, alive or dead. The car would be stabilized the following day, and the recovery effort resumed.

In the meantime, the police set about finding the owner of the wreck. The car’s registration number was traced to a modest, triple-fronted brick house in the northern Melbourne suburb of Glenroy, the home of the Crawford family.

Even though no crime involving the vehicle had been reported, the circumstances surrounding the discovery were highly suspicious. The car was in Loch Ard Gorge, hundreds of miles from Glenroy, where it was registered. In addition, there was a hose running from the exhaust to the passenger cabin. Endeavoring to get some answers, Glenroy police sent a junior constable to the house to speak to the car’s owner. The authorities hoped it would turn out to be nothing more than a routine case of vehicle theft and illegal dumping or perhaps just somebody with a warped sense of humor, intent on wasting police time.

The constable went to the house early in the evening of July 2, finding it in darkness and seemingly unoccupied. He knocked on the door and attempted to see inside, but after a few futile attempts, he left. When senior police officials heard the house was unoccupied, their concern intensified and officers were sent back to the house a second time. If it were still unoccupied, the officers were instructed to break in.

Two officers were sent to the Cardinal Road address later the same evening and again, despite repeated knocking, no one answered the door. The men found a partially opened window, and one of them climbed awkwardly through the small opening. In the darkness, only vague shapes of furniture were discernible, and he felt his way to the front door to let his partner in. It took one flick of the light switch to stop both men in their tracks; the sudden brightness illuminated their superiors’ worst fears. They had stumbled into a blood-spattered nightmare.

What police discovered that day in the house, then the following day in the car, would send shockwaves through a nation unfamiliar with such