Kriste Gordon and Joanne Ratcliffe

Two families are seated next to one another among the commotion of the match and the 50,000 spectators seated all around them. For several months, if not years, both families have been regular attendees and season ticket holders. They are acquainted, and one would even argue that they have grown close.

Two little girls are present: Kirste Gordon, 4, who is hardly old enough to understand the game itself but attended this event with her grandmother, and Joanne Ratcliffe, 11, who attended the weekend matches with her parents.

Joanne told her parents she had to go to the bathroom while the match was still going on. Her parents gave her permission to use the restroom, but Kirste’s grandmother requested permission to bring the four-year-old granddaughter along. Minutes later, the two appeared to be unharmed and everything appeared to be in order. The game went on, and the roar of the crowd surrounding the two families drowned out any worries that strangers might be watching.

Kirste informed her grandmother that she wanted to use the restroom once more about thirty minutes later. At around 3:45 PM, Joanne, who is still young and maternal-inclined, offered to take Kirste. The two then strolled off in the direction of the restroom.

Without any hint that the girls were going back to their families, minutes started to pass. As the match continued, Joanne’s parents started to head to the facilities in an effort to locate the two girls and their worry gradually grew to panic. In case they came back, Kirste’s grandmother waited at the seats.

About 20 minutes after the two girls left, Joanne’s mother made her way to the secretary’s office and inquired about whether After the two girls had left for around twenty minutes, Joanne’s mother made her way to the secretary’s office and inquired about using the PA system. Sadly, her request was turned down, and she was informed that the noise of the crowd prevented any notification of this kind from being heard. Later, Mrs. Ratcliffe would say that she thought the staff there simply didn’t want the match disrupted.

The Ratcliffe parents would spend the following hour trying to look in every crevice of the Adelaide Oval in search of their four-year-old Kirste and eleven-year-old daughter Joanne. Their search turned up nothing, but about an hour later, Mr. Ratcliffe made contact with the South Australia Cricket Association secretary, and a request for a stadium announcement was approved.

The girls were reported missing to the neighborhood police at 5:12 PM, and they immediately started searching the area. Their efforts yielded results comparable to those of the Ratcliffes.

Disturbing information was obtained by the police in the hours following the disappearances of Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon. And that was actually rather disturbing.
A man was observed by numerous witnesses with the two girls, but what’s frightening is the setting. Overall, the man’s description matched that of the person who had been spotted with the Beaumont children at Glenelg Beach seven years earlier. He was tall and had a lean appearance, and their sketches, which are available online, resemble one another.
. In spite of the elder girls’ protests, three of the witnesses who saw the girls after they vanished claim to have seen a guy carrying the smaller of the duo. This gave police reason to believe that the potential kidnapper had taken advantage of the situation to take Kirste, but Joanne wasn’t having any of it and followed the man while yelling and kicking at him.

Joanne kept nipping at the man’s heels and pleaded with him to let them go back to their homes while the man holding Kirste once turned to her and instructed her to “take off.”

The two females were reported at least four times, with one of them being seen as far away from Adelaide Oval as three kilometers. The last sighting occurred about 90 minutes after they vanished, which is consistent with the time the police had just begun looking for the two.

Sadly, Kirste Gordon and Joanne Ratcliffe were never found alive again. The two girls would vanish from the face of the earth, much like the Beaumont kids, leaving their family with more questions than answers.

Years would go by with no news of a resolution to the Adelaide Oval kidnapping or the Beaumont investigation. As far as we are aware, neither inquiry would advance throughout the following ten or so years due to the lack of reliable witnesses or significant evidence.

Grant Beaumont, Arnna Beaumont, and the others would now be of legal age to become teens and adults. They would have undoubtedly gone back home or at least contacted their parents, who were still gravely concerned about them if they were still alive and still had any recollection of their prior existence as children.

For fear that if their kids were still alive, Jim and Nancy Beaumont would have to leave their house on Harding Street, they continued to live there. For fear that their children, if they were still alive, would move back into the house where they had all once lived contentedly, Jim and Nancy Beaumont continued to reside in their home on Harding Street. In fact, Nancy remembered that there was a muddy palm print left on a sliding glass door that she would hold onto for years afterward because it was one of the last memories she had of her son. She wouldn’t let it simply get washed away.

After divorcing, Jim and Nancy Beaumont permanently disappeared from the public eye and their home on Harding Street.

The Gordons and the Ratcliffes also had to get used to living without their daughters. The possibility that their children would be returned safely started to diminish as the months stretched into years.

Over the following ten years, or at least until 1979, both instances would remain static. At that point, tragedy started to build atop tragedy. Adelaide’s suffering wasn’t over yet; it was only now beginning to surface.

A 17-year-old boy’s body would be discovered in the South Para Reservoir in Northeast Adelaide in 1979. This would signal the start of a turbulent era in Adelaide history known to many as the Family Murders, a tale as sinister and enigmatic as any and worthy of its own episode.

It would be unfair to the victims to attempt to explain the story of the Family Murders, but I will make an effort: starting in 1979 and apparently ending in 1983, at least five victims, all teenage boys, and young men, would be discovered. Before their deaths, it would be determined that each of them had been sexually abused severely and endured horrendous torture and mutilation. A 17-year-old boy’s body would be discovered in the South Para Reservoir in Northeast Adelaide in 1979. This would mark the start of a turbulent chapter in Adelaide’s history known as the Family Murders, a tale as sinister and enigmatic as any. As I previously stated, the Family Murders are unquestionably a tale worthy of its own episode. However, the deaths of these five young men left many with the impression that there was a deliberate plan to abduct, torture, mutilate, and murder them.

It would be unfair to the victims to attempt to describe the story of the Family Murders, but I’ll do my best: There would be at least five victims, all teenage boys, and young men, discovered between 1979 and what was meant to be 1983. All of them would be found to have undergone horrendous torture and mutilation, as well as severe sexual abuse, before their deaths.
As I previously stated, The Family Murders is unquestionably a tale deserving of its own episode. However, the deaths of these five young men left many with the impression that there was a deliberate plan to abduct, torture, mutilate, and murder them. I’ll try to avoid going into great depth about this episode. As I previously stated, The Family Murders is unquestionably a tale deserving of its own episode. However, the deaths of these five young men left many with the impression that there was a deliberate plan to abduct, torture, mutilate, and murder them. On this episode of the podcast, I’ll try to avoid going into too much detail, but let’s just say that reading about the crimes committed against these poor men made me, a true crime enthusiast, feel utterly queasy and sick to my stomach. However, a case started to develop once the bodies started to accumulate and the public became aware of the victims. The fifth victim was killed and his body was located in 1983, and when drugs were found in his circulation, the case had a suspect: a man only known as Bevan Spencer von Einem.

It would be unfair to the word “evil” to label Bevan Spencer von Einem evil.

He was a roughly forty-year-old accountant accused of kidnapping, torturing, assaulting a girl, and killing fifteen-year-old Richard Kelvin. Von Einem’s account had evolved throughout the interrogation, becoming less credible with each iteration. He claimed to have been sick with the flu at home, alone, on the night Kelvin vanished, but he had no further explanation. However, when pieces of his clothing and hair that were eventually identified as being his were discovered on Kelvin’s body, he initially claimed that Kelvin had been there on the night of his disappearance for completely innocent reasons. Naturally, von Einem was found guilty of the charges leveled against him, with the weight of the evidence clearly in the prosecutor’s favor. He received a life sentence with a 24-year no-parole period that was eventually extended to 36 years, an Australian record at the time. The other four abduction murders that occurred in the months and years prior lacked any proof linking von Einem to them, but he was incarcerated for life and refused to admit guilt. Despite a mountain of evidence, he has yet to do so.

The Family Murders, as they would subsequently come to be known, would fade from public consciousness. After von Einem’s conviction, the police started to suspect that the alleged organization behind the crimes—of which he was merely a member—had been behind many more disappearances in the Adelaide region but had gone underground.
Many people have started to believe that von Einem committed the kidnapping and disappearance of the three Beaumont children in the years since his sentence. This was made possible by a witness who went by the name “Mr. B,” who was a previous acquaintance of von Einem and an active member of Adelaide’s gay scene. Von Einem, he would assert, had admitted to This was made possible by a witness who went by the name “Mr. B,” who was a previous acquaintance of von Einem and an active member of Adelaide’s gay scene. He would assert that von Einem had confessed to killing the Beaumonts and the two girls at the Adelaide Oval years earlier, which caused a rift in their friendship at the same time that von Einem started to associate with what would later be referred to as “the Family” and caused a break in their friendship.

Von Einem had allegedly asserted that he could, in Mr. B’s words, “link” the three kids. Many people associate this with the horrific mental image associated with the newly released film “The Human Centipede.” According to this evidence, one of the kids had passed away during the procedure and all three had been disposed of in some manner. I feel strange informing you about this because there is absolutely no evidence to support it and it should only be regarded superficially. Mr. B, as he was known to the public, was a drug user with a history of lying and other illegal behavior. It’s possible that he was just attempting to cop out.

The public has come to know Mr. B as a drug user with a history of lying and criminal behavior. It’s possible that by providing these spectacular details, he was just trying to get a plea deal. So please, if at all, take this notion with a grain of salt.
The possibility of a connection between von Einem and the Beaumont kids is at best tenuous. While von Einem would have been only twenty at the time, the suspect who had been observed with the kids on the day of their disappearance was in his mid-thirties. Von Einem appeared older than he was in photographs taken at the time, although he had darkish brown hair that stood up straight. Photos from the time indicate that von Einem appeared older than he actually was, but his dark-ish brown hair was in sharp contrast to the witnesses’ claims that he had blonde hair.

Bevan Spencer von Einem is currently incarcerated on a life sentence, and it is unlikely that he will ever be released. South Australia’s Premier Mike Rann swore to enact new laws in 2007 to guarantee that von Einem would never escape from prison alive.

Due to his involvement in the heinous Family Murders, he is one of the most despised individuals in all of Australia, but his illicit activities continued after his sentence. He admitted guilt in 2009 to fabricating child pornography while incarcerated, and numerous further accusations have been brought against him ever then. Undoubtedly, he will remain behind bars till the day of his death, but our story doesn’t end there.

A episode about the 1970 murder of two young children in Townsville, an Australian town on the northeastern coast, featured on “Crimestoppers” in 1998. On the morning of Wednesday, August 26, 1970, the two girls—Judith MacKay, age seven, and Susan, age five—were waiting at their school bus stop.
Their bodies were discovered in a dry creek bed two days after the girls vanished, and next to them were their school bags with their uniforms neatly folded inside. They had both been sexually assaulted, stabbed, and strangled.
They were murdered in northeastern Australia, a whole continent away from the Beaumont and Adelaide Oval disappearances, and their crimes went unresolved for nearly thirty years. The MacKay sisters’ family suffered for many years before the broadcast, at the very least. At least until the airing of the “Crimestoppers” episode in 1998, the family of the MacKay sisters was left in agony.

Following the viewing of that show, a telephone tip was made to the “Crimestoppers” hotline by a caller claiming to be distantly related to a suspect. The person on the other end of the phone had seen the suspect’s description at the time and realized it matched the description of her cousin’s husband; she had also previously been the victim of this man’s molestation and was familiar with his illicit and illegal acts.

At the age of 86, Arthur Stanley Brown had spent most of his life in Townsville. Detectives started looking into him as a suspect and discovered a graveyard in addition to a closet full of skeletons.

Australian authorities piled up over 45 allegations against Brown over the following few months, including pedophilia, sexual assault, molestation, and, of course, the killings of the MacKay girls. Many members of Brown’s family, including his wife’s family, who included numerous women who had been molested or sexually assaulted by Brown when they were younger and some of whom had been taken to the same creek bed where the MacKay girls had been found, provided eyewitness and victim testimony that was helpful to their case.

Detectives learned that Brown, who was about sixty years old at the time of the MacKay killings, had previously worked as a carpenter at the girls’ school. He appeared to have changed in the days and months after the slaying. He made many strange decisions in the days and weeks that followed the girl’s murder, the strangest of which was removing the off-colored door from his car, a very recognizable mark, and burying it in his yard. It appears that he had become personally obsessed with the girl’s murder during this time.

You did hear me correctly. He dug a hole and buried a car door. At the time, he gave the following rationale for it: he didn’t want to face any harassment as a result of the fact that passersby had noticed that his automobile was the exact same type as the one used to kidnap the girls. In essence, he would eventually dig up the car door and take it to a junkyard, but at the time, his actions were strange in other ways. Even further, he invited two young female cousins of his wife to the crime scene so they could observe it.

Additionally, the strange conduct didn’t just occur around the time of the murder. Allegedly, Brown had scores of victims, from his early years as a man until his latter years. Brown allegedly had dozens of victims, ranging from when he was a younger man until his elderly years. Also, there is a question with his first wife, Hester, who died suspiciously a few years later, in 1978. Her family doctor signed her death certificate without even looking at the body, which was then promptly burned. When Brown’s wife Hester passed away, her younger sister Charlotte and her five kids moved in with him. Just a few months later, Brown and Charlotte will wed, as if a tragic death never happened. Another of Hester’s younger sisters came out in 1982 with allegations that Brown had raped her, which prompted many more members of her family to do the same. Despite this, legal counsel was provided that essentially said: “It’s best not to take him to court since it could be upsetting for the victims.” The entire incident was ignored and kept a family secret, at least until that “Crimestoppers” episode from 1998. Arthur Stanley Brown’s secrets were revealed, After Hester, Brown’s wife died, Charlotte, her five children, and moved in with him. Brown and Charlotte will get married only a few months after the awful death as if nothing ever occurred. When one of Hester’s younger sisters came forward in 1982, accusing Brown of sexually assaulting her, several other members of her family followed suit. Although this was the case, legal advice was given that effectively stated: “It’s best not to take him to court since it could be upsetting for the victims.” At least until the “Crimestoppers” program from 1998, the entire affair was disregarded and kept a family secret. The secrets of Arthur Stanley Brown were made public.

After keeping his adventures hidden for years, Arthur Stanley Brown was prosecuted in 1999. He had spent the majority of his life evading justice and was now in his 80s and appeared ready to do it one last time.

Arthur Stanley Brown was able to elude justice thanks to his own mental health, despite the fact that the odds were stacked against him, including the testimony of two people to whom he was alleged to have confessed years earlier.

The trial was forced to yield in 2000 due to the unsuitability of circumstantial evidence, which caused a delay. Surprisingly, however, publications then reported that the trial was halted “for legal reasons which cannot be revealed.” A year later, it would be discovered that this was caused by Brown’s deteriorating dementia and battle with Alzheimer’s, which rendered him ineligible to face trial or even enter a plea in the case.
Brown may have discovered a different form of justice, contrary to what one may assume. After the death of his wife Charlotte in April 2002, Brown’s whole family abandoned him and shunned him. Only one stepdaughter received notification of his funeral, which was kept private and unpublicized. Only one stepdaughter received notification of his passing, and his funeral was kept private and unpublicized.

One of his stepsons would say, “I can’t believe such a little little arsehole had such a profound impact on so many people’s lives,” weeks after he had been buried.

I’m not sure what else to say about Brown’s influence on the world if that isn’t a rousing endorsement.

The MacKay family’s surviving relatives have accepted the fact that Brown was responsible for Judith and Susan’s rape and death. In fact, authorities would totally close the investigation file after his death since they thought he was the only suspect.

Many people now wonder if Brown was behind the Beaumonts’ disappearances and the kidnapping at Adelaide Oval in the years since his death. Although he did reside and work for the Department of Public Works on a different continent from Adelaide in Queensland, when investigators dug for evidence of his vacations and holidays, they came up empty-handed. It is unknown whether or not Brown, who had free access to government buildings due of his job with Public Works, threw these records away after the 1974 Brisbane Flood or before.

Anything is possible because he did previously attempt to conceal proof of his wrongdoing, as seen by the hidden car door. Anything is possible because he did previously attempt to conceal proof of his wrongdoing, as seen by the hidden car door. One of the prosecution witnesses would later admit that Brown had mentioned visiting the Adelaide Festival Centre while it was being built, placing him in Adelaide after June of 1973. Just a few months later, in August, and just before the building project was completed, Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon were kidnapped.

The most unsettling aspect of the account is his physical description, which is another issue. Both of the sketches that were given to police in the wake of the Adelaide Oval kidnapping and the Beaumont disappearance strongly resemble Brown. Bevan Spencer von Einem was too young to suit the suspect’s description, but Arthur Stanley Brown would have been older for both abductions—over fifty years old—and hence unlikely to have the appearance of a healthy, thirty-five-year-old man.

One of the witnesses to the Adelaide Oval kidnapping mentioned that the man who kidnapped Kirste Gordon, 4, was wearing horn-rimmed spectacles, which fell off during his departure. This is an additional noteworthy fact. When Arthur Stanley Brown wore those kinds of In fact, Arthur Stanley Brown wore those particular spectacles so frequently that they remained in his closet throughout his youth. There would be no way to definitively determine whether Arthur Stanley Brown was to blame for the disappearance of the Beaumont children.

His death in 2002 meant that the remaining secrets in his deteriorating, failing mind would undoubtedly pass away with him. More potential suspects have continued to be added to the list throughout the coming years. Although their ties to the case are often relatively shaky, well-known felons like James Ryan O’Neill and Derek Earnest Percy have been connected in some manner to the Beaumont case. After a hidden basement was found on property he once owned, a deceased man named Arthur Stanley Hart, who died in 1999, has recently been accused of being involved in the Adelaide Oval kidnapping by members of his own family. He was a key suspect in that investigation, according to the police, but no connections to the Beaumont family have been found.

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