Elmer Crawford - Crawford Family Murder

[jimbler]

Has thing already been done? I can't believe I'd never heard of this case, and I can't believe they never caught the guy.

There hasn’t been a confirmed sighting of Elmer Crawford since 1970

I assume it would have been massive news in Victoria/Australia back in the day, and his photo would have been everywhere?

http://www.news.com.au/national/cri...s/news-story/93b1b24f7353c1ffa40b764aabf3c456

 

[Faithful Hawk]

Has thing already been done? I can't believe I'd never heard of this case, and I can't believe they never caught the guy.



I assume it would have been massive news in Victoria/Australia back in the day, and his photo would have been everywhere?

http://www.news.com.au/national/cri...s/news-story/93b1b24f7353c1ffa40b764aabf3c456

Listened to a Podcast on this sometime last year on "Casefile True Crime", think it was believed he fled back overseas (Italy or Ireland??).

 

[jimbler]

From that Websleuths site in 2010

As the author or the only book ever written on the case, Almost Perfect, I'd just like to make a few comments.

1. This case was completely forgotten by the Victoria Police, until in 1997 when I published the book, and received huge publicity. Even then their interest was mediocre.

2. The information held by the police is next to nothing. I had more. The police were always of the opinion that Crawford was a timid, shy man. I tracked down a woman in Melbourne who was one of the family's best friends and she painted a very different picture of Crawford. Again, there was little interest by the police.

3. Even though the man in Texas was not Crawford (as if that wasn't obvious), the initial two women contacted to supply the DNA were only known by me.
The police had no idea about these women, and even though they'd been contacted by Trisha Crawford some years earlier at my insistence, they'd obviously not taken her seriously or just simply lost/forgotten that they'd ever spoken to her. I initially gave the names of these two women to Neil Mitchell (3AW) and then to the Herald-Sun and the Vic Police. The other lady in Florida has also been known to me for many years.

3. Many of the Herald-Sun's "exclusive research" was actually pulled from my book. I know this because some of the words were unchanged, and some of the people referenced were known only to me. I had to write to the editor of the Herald-Sun to get at least some acknowledgement. The "investigative" reporter Keith Moore claimed to have never heard of the book - interesting, for an investigative reporter, the first things that came up when you searched on Crawford Murders was the book. Not much of an investigator?

4. The lady being given all the credit for opening up this case, only took an interest in it after reading my book. Sure she searched the john doe sites of the world, but she didn't put in thousands of hours of research and thousands and thousands of dollars in investigating this case.

5. There is a basic website about the book at http://members.optusnet.com.au/~gf61

6. The book is in the process of being republished, with updated information

7. The author (me) is happy to discuss any aspects of the case, I spent many years researching the case, lived in the street when the murders happened and am a former member of the Victoria Police.

http://www.websleuths.com/forums/sh...n-Melbourne-1-July-1970&p=5576290#post5576290

 

[jimbler]

Listened to a Podcast on this sometime last year on "Casefile True Crime", think it was believed he fled back overseas (Italy or Ireland??).

Probably Northern Ireland. He still had some relatives living there in 2010.

Police in Australia have identified a body in Texas as that of Elmer Crawford. Crawford has been on run since 1970 having slaughtered his entire family.

Crawford had been living in the United States under four aliases. Police now believe that DNA testing of Crawford’s only two known male blood relatives, from Northern Ireland, will bring closure to a long list of murder cases.

http://www.irishcentral.com/news/po...rs-dna-to-northern-ireland-98495329-237705001

It sounds like they were pretty confident that he was the man in Texas, but the DNA didn't match.

The DNA testing on the two men in Northern Ireland will take some time but FBI facial recognition experts in Quantico Virginia have carried out various tests on the dead man in Texas and they are convinced that it is Crawford.

 

[rdhopkins2]

What a twisted campaigner. Hopefully the police can apprehend him and he can face justice.

 

[Wheatbelt]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...to-40-year-old-Australian-murder-mystery.html

The woman whose DNA was tested was supposedly crawford's daughter, it wasn't a match so the man in Texas was ruled out as being Crawford. But was he in fact her father at all ?

 

[jimbler]

The woman whose DNA was tested was supposedly crawford's daughter, it wasn't a match so the man in Texas was ruled out as being Crawford. But was he in fact her father at all ?

Ms Crawford said that she had never met her father, but believed they had a physical resemblance.

She told Australian media that her mother had said that she was born out of wedlock and that her father's name was Elmer Crawford.

The dates also match, with Ms Crawford being born in March 1951 and Elmer Crawford said to have emigrated to Australia in June 1951.

I thought the same thing. You'd hope it was a little more concrete than this.

 

[SmartAlec]

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/wor...to-40-year-old-Australian-murder-mystery.html

The woman whose DNA was tested was supposedly crawford's daughter, it wasn't a match so the man in Texas was ruled out as being Crawford. But was he in fact her father at all ?

Heard he was in South West WA.

Probably studying DNA.

Campaigner.

 

[van peebles]

Go to the scene where his family was discovered regularly, not morbidly but its as great picnic spot that my family has used for years apart from a minor recess after the crime.
A couple of interesting things about the case were the still hard to decipher setup for his leaving the crime site.
The strong rumour that he was somehow involved in IRA trouble.

 

[SmartAlec]

Go to the scene where his family was discovered regularly, not morbidly but its as great picnic spot that my family has used for years apart from a minor recess after the crime.
A couple of interesting things about the case were the still hard to decipher setup for his leaving the crime site.
The strong rumour that he was somehow involved in IRA trouble.

“The strongest lead related to sightings in Western Australia in 1994 which police believe were genuine.

A woman who knew Crawford well saw a man in a Bunbury hotel and was so convinced it was him she approached him and asked who he was.”