The Adelaide Oval Abductions: Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon

Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon were young, innocent children when they vanished from an Adelaide football stadium in 1973. We delve into the events of that fateful day, looking at the missteps and missed opportunities that could have possibly changed the course of this case.

In the second half of the episode, we turn our focus to Arthur Stanley Brown and Stanley Arthur Hart, known pedophiles who were persons of interest in these unsolved abductions. 

Buckle up for a deep dive into the darkest corners of human nature, and join us in this relentless pursuit for justice.

If you or anyone you know, know anything at all, please contact Policelink on 131 444 or call Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.

For a full list or sources including music & sound effects please click here

Transcript

Carla: 1:43

On the 25th of August 1973, Les and Kathleen Ratcliffe were with their children, Joanne and Joanne's brother and a family friend known as Frank. Frank isn't his real name. They were watching their favourite team, Norwood, play Aussie rules on the Adelaide Oval in South Australia. Joanne Ratcliffe was in grade six at the time. She wanted to work with animals when she grew up and she really enjoyed sport. The Ratcliffe's would sit in the same area of the stands every time they went to this stadium, so Joanne knew her way around. Sat next to them on this day was four-year-old Kirste Gordon, who was at the game with her grandmother. Kirste's parents, Greg and Christine, were out of town visiting friends, and they had Kirste's younger sister with them. In an interview with Channel 9 News on the eve of Missing Persons Week in 2017, they spoke about Kirste. Greg described her as a very charming little girl who was always full of smiles, and Christine said Kirste had a lot to do, that she had a lot of potential, but that it just wasn't meant to be.

Carla: 2:56

Les and Kathleen Ratcliffe had one very important rule while at the football. It was this none of the children were allowed to go to the toilet at quarter or half time. These are the breaks in the game. This is when the toilets would be the most busy and likely have the longest lines. Nor were they allowed to go at any time in the final quarter, maybe also because it was too rowdy by then or also too busy. So when little Kirste needed to go to the toilet in the second quarter of the game, Joanne, being a responsible and caring 11-year-old, offered to take her. They walked together the 300 metres from the oval to the women's toilets and returned soon after. They then went to the toilet again in the third quarter around 3.45pm, and when they didn't return within 15 minutes, the Ratcliffe's and Kirste's grandmother started frantically searching. Kathleen, Joanne's mum begged the game's organisers to make an announcement over the PA system, but they flat out refused and told her to call the police if the girls hadn't turned up by the end of the game. So it wasn't until after 5pm, after the game had ended, when some people had already left, that she was finally able to persuade them to announce that there were two missing girls. You can imagine the rush of 13,000 people all trying to escape a stadium at the same time, and you can imagine the sheer frustration of Joanne's parents and Kirsty's grandmother just watching thousands of people leave and that helplessness that they must have felt in that moment of not knowing where they were. The girls were reported missing to police at 5. 12 pm, by which time they'd been gone for one and a half hours.

Carla: 4:51

This is one of those cases that I find infuriating, and I feel so much for the parents and families because, let's remember here they aren't the ones at fault. They did nothing wrong. They had rules in place to keep their children safe. The children were together, they were 11 and 4, they were in a familiar place and, as I said before, joanne knew her way around the stadium. It was also a different time. In 1973, australia was considered relatively safe and despite this, the family still had clear rules in place. They raised the alarm within 15 minutes, or tried to, and Joanne and Kirsty were literally abducted in plain sight.

Carla: 5:34

I was a child growing up in the 70s in Australia. My parents weren't lax in any way, but we used to ride 3.5 kilometres alone to primary school and back, and then after school. Most of the kids in our street were out riding their bikes and playing. For most families, the rule was just be home when the street lights came on. It's just how it was. So, instead of laying blame on the victims or the victims' parents, let's blame the person or people responsible, the perpetrators, they're the ones at fault.

Carla: 6:05

It absolutely made my blood boil when I discovered that the two key persons of interest in this case were known pedophiles who spent years being widely known as child abusers, free just to live their lives. Pray upon children without repercussion. There's also a good chance. We wouldn't still be looking for the girls if the authorities had made an announcement earlier that day. Why didn't the game officials take Joanne's mother seriously? Did they not want to interrupt the game? Did they think she was overreacting, or both? Whatever it was, she was dismissed by officials When she clearly knew it was out of character for Joanne to not return with Kirste and she knew something was terribly wrong.

Carla: 7:08

So what happened when the girls left the stadium to go to the toilets? Well, there were eyewitness reports and all confirmed they saw a middle-aged man who was thin and tall, wearing a wide-brimmed hat and a checked jacket. He was seen carrying a younger child with an older child following along, trying to grab at him and looking visibly upset. One key witness, 13-year-old Anthony Kilmartin, had noticed the girls in the stands earlier as he was selling sweets. He then noticed them again later with the man. His description of the man helped the police with the identikit photo created. He told police he saw Joanne yelling and attacking the man as he was carrying Kirsty. It was actually Joanne's attack on the man that drew his attention and likely that of the other witnesses to them. Joanne did not go quietly. She did all she could to save Kirste from being taken and in doing so she helped the witnesses be able to later understand what they were seeing and provide a description of the man.

Carla: 8:21

The last sighting of the girls was by a 14-year-old called Sue Laurie. Sue was coming out from Adelaide Zoo. She could see the oval and she said she watched for roughly a minute. What she saw was a man walking quickly carrying a young child, and running behind was a girl who was punching him as hard as she could in the back and yelling. She noticed the hat the man was wearing as being unusual for men at that time. Sue said quote "The parents of Joanne should take heart. That little girl did everything she could to protect her little friend.

Carla: 8:59

Had these witnesses known at the time that there were two missing children, they might have been able to stop what happened or at the very least alert the authorities. Instead we learned that the sightings of the girls were passed off as a father or grandfather dealing with his unruly children. There was a massive search undertaken at the Oval once police were notified And a few days later, when the story reached the media, the witness reports came in and the investigation began with a $5,000 reward for information. But despite the reward, the case went cold pretty quickly. There was a 1979 coronial inquiry and the findings were that the girls had been abducted and that investigations were to continue. It was around this time as well that Sue Laurie, the 14-year-old witness, who was now in her 20s, put two and two together and figured out what it was she saw that day. She read an article about the girls' abduction and that article helped her put it all together in her mind, and that's when she went to police to make a full statement. Her description of the man matched up with the other descriptions given that day of an older man wearing a hat and a checked jacket, despite it being years since it had happened, and this makes Sue a really credible witness.

Carla: 10:23

Fast forward to 1998, sue Laurie sees a picture of a man called Arthur Stanley Brown. Brown's picture was in the media because he had just been arrested and charged in Townsville, which is in Queensland, for the 1970 abduction and murder of two young sisters, Judith (seven) and Susan (five), which occurred just three years before Joanne and Kirste went missing. Sue was looking at this picture and she thought that this guy, brown, looked like the guy from the Oval all those years ago. She not only thought it looked like him, she thought it was him. She was 100% certain this is the same man and she is still, 50 years later, 100% certain that Brown was the guy she saw that day. So even though Sue and quite a few other sources believe that Brown is a key suspect for the abduction, police do not.

Carla: 11:25

Brown was charged with murdering the McKay sisters who were on their way to school when they were abducted from a bus stop. But it wasn't until 1998, when a crime program featured the 1970 murders, that he was finally arrested. His first wife, Hester, died in suspicious circumstances in their home and then Brown married her younger sister, and when Hester's cousin saw the crime program about the 1970 McKay sister murders, it prompted her to go to police and report that Brown had molested her when she was a child and multiple other family members, and she told police she had always suspected him of the murders of the McKay sisters. Two men in Townsville also claimed Brown had confessed to the murders to them, and Brown was also positively identified by a motorist and a petrol station attendant who claimed they saw him with the two sisters in his car that day. Despite him being charged for the murders of the McKay sisters up in Queensland, the trial resulted in a hung jury and before his second trial started he was declared unfit. He was also get this granted bail on 45 other charges involving alleged offences against six girls aged three to ten between 1970 and 1977. These charges included rape, sodomy, deprivation of liberty and administering drugs. This piece of shit abuser died in 2002, a free man, so how good a suspect is he for the abduction of Joanne and Kirste? Well, despite Sue Laurie saying Brown is the guy she saw that day, and despite him being charged with the murders of two young girls and a string of sexual assaults in Queensland, there was no solid evidence of him being at the oval that day in South Australia, although it's worth pointing out that he does look very close to the identikit image that was released, and I'll put a picture of Brown and the identikit photo up on socials so you can compare them if you want.

Carla: 13:45

The second key person of interest in the case is a man called Stanley Arthur Hart, not to be confused by Arthur Stanley Brown. I mean, what are the chances that these two pedophiles yes, Hart is also a pedophile share the same two names back to front. Anyway, for clarity, I'll only be referring to them now as Brown and Hart. So Hart has always been on the police radar for the abduction of Joanne and Kirste. In fact, he was interviewed just three days after they went missing. Why was he on their radar? He was another known pedophile and child abuser who owned several properties in and around the area near where the girls went missing in South Australia. To which I say why do we have two men and I'm sure there were plenty more who are, in verted commas, known pedophiles? How is this allowed to happen?

Carla: 14:43

Despite being questioned, nothing came of it until 2009. By this time, Hart was already dead. He died in 1999. So 10 years later, Hart's grandson, who actually is currently a convicted pedophile here in Australia, so they finally got something right. His grandson sent a written confession to the police, saying he was at the Adelaide Oval that day with his grandfather Hart and that his grandfather was responsible for the abduction of the girls. He says they were taken to the country and murdered, and he was five years old at the time. But police say this so-called confession was questionable. They say it was full of a pedophile's rambling fantasy and they dismissed its validity. Or did they? Because in 2014, police acted upon some information provided from crime stoppers and actually conducted a search and excavation at one of the properties where Hart lived in the mid-north of the state of South Australia.

Carla: 16:06

I'm going to read a section from the press conference with Detective Inspector Greg Hutchins of the South Australian Police. This is not his voice, obviously, but these are his words. "This week, we've attended several sites at properties at Yatna, which is in the mid-north of the state. We've spent three days excavating a well and examining a second well. This is in furtherance of a number of visits to that location over the past 12 months and three previous occasions where one of the wells has been excavated.

Carla: 16:44

We will continue to do anything we can to try and find the girls, find who was responsible for their abductions and to date, our searches at Yatina have not revealed any evidence in relation to the girls' abduction. But we will continue to do whatever we need to do to try to find the girls, particularly for their families, I can't rule out that we won't re-attend at that site because obviously the person in question is one of many people who have been a person of interest. His name has come up many times over the years And we obviously need to follow every line of inquiry and try to put it to bed. Can we rule out that he's involved? No, we can't. Can we rule out that he wasn't involved? No, we can't, but we will do what we need to do to try and identify who was responsible for the girls' abduction". So the search revealed nothing to push the investigation forward and no evidence of human remains was found. So while Hart was a key suspect, he was never formally charged and, as I said before, he's also now dead.

Carla: 18:02

The Australian Channel 9 TV series Under Investigation covered the girls' disappearance in an episode called Girls Gone, which aired just last year, in October 2022. And Bill Hayes, a private investigator on the show, said he believed there were enough facts in the confession given by Hart's grandson for it to be both compelling and believable. So he says yes, it was full of rambling fantasy, but underneath that and inside that document there were facts that he believes to be true. So Bill Hayes believes Hart was part of a pedophile ring and, as he was living close to Kirsty's grandmother's house at the time of the abduction, he may have seen them walking to the game that day. Bill Hayes believes that the two key suspects, brown and Hart, might actually have had a connection and may have acted together Brown abducting the girls, with Hart the accomplice. The question still remains today Was it Hart or Brown, or both?

Carla: 19:13

Backing up a bit to 2013, Joanne's sister, Suzie, who was born after Joanne disappeared, asked the authorities to keep on the case, and in 2014, a $1 million reward was offered by the South Australian Government for information leading to an arrest or conviction or recovery of a body in the murders of 18 children dating back to 1966, of which Joanne and Kirste were two. Suzie also appealed to the authorities to look into Frank, the family friend who was with the Ratcliffes at the game that day. As far as she was aware, he had never been ruled in or out and we don't know if he was ever formally questioned by police, but Joanne's mother said he left his seat for about 30 minutes before the girls disappeared and then later stayed in his seat while everyone else went looking for them. This person, Frank, wasn't mentioned by Suzie in the 2022 Under Investigation episode, so whether that was for legal reasons or whether she's satisfied now that Frank is no longer under suspicion, it's not really clear. I approached Suzie to see if she would agree to be interviewed for the podcast, but I hadn't received a reply by the time this episode went out. If Suzie does reach out to me in the future, I'll be sure to include our chat or interview as a bonus episode on the feed.

Carla: 20:44

Joanne's mum and dad have passed not knowing what has happened to their daughter and sister. Suzie, Joanne's sister, says we're over wanting to know who did it, how they did it and why they did it. We want to be able to lay Joanne to rest And Suzie, inspired by her mum's idea to leave a light on the porch for Joanne, created an organisation in 2015 called Leave a Light On. This is from their Facebook page. "Leave a Light On aims to raise awareness of missing persons' cold cases in Australia. By working alongside other missing persons' organisations, we can promote long-term cases and raise awareness of the need for ongoing support for families and friends dealing with the ambiguous loss of a missing person And on the 21st of October every year, leave a Light On asks all of us, no matter where we live, to leave a light on in memory of the many missing persons across Australia and to brighten their way home. I'll leave a link in the show notes for this amazing organisation so you can check out the advocacy work Susie does for families of missing people.

Carla: 21:58

Kirste's parents, Greg and Christine, were also hopeful that the increased reward would have had the desired effect and bring some long-awaited answers for their family. When they spoke to the media in 2017, they said they were trying to keep the story out there in the hopes that one day someone will say I've got to do something about this and act on it. These families want and deserve answers to bring their children home. Joanne would be 61 now and Kirste 54. If you or anyone you know know anything at all, please contact Police Link on 131-444 or call Crime Stoppers on 1800-333-000. Thanks for listening to BOLO. If this episode has brought up feelings for you and you need support, please reach out to Lifeline on 13-11-14 or RESPECT on 1800-RESPECT. You can connect with me on Insta @Bolo. pod or email me Bolo. pod@ icloud. com or, if you have a case you'd like me to cover, I have a form you can fill in on my Insta profile.