ONE of the south-west's great murder mysteries could finally be resolved, with Victoria Police believing a deceased elderly man found in Texas is a fugitive wanted 40 years after his family was killed.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
or signup to continue reading
Police believe the man who died five years ago in a US hospital is Elmer Crawford, a fugitive who murdered his pregnant wife and three children.
Mr Crawford has been on the run since the discovery of the bodies of his wife Therese, 35, and their children Kathryn, 13, James, 8, and Karen, 6, in the family car in the Loch Ard Gorge near Port Campbell in July 1970.
A 1971 inquest found Crawford had bashed and electrocuted his family in their home in Glenroy, in Melbourne's north, on July 1, 1970, then pushed his car with the four bodies inside of the cliff at the gorge, where it was later found by police.
News reports today revealed that Victorian police now believe Mr Crawford fled to the United States and died in a US hospital on March 31, 2005.
Facial recognition experts from Victoria and the FBI have viewed old photos of Crawford and say the dead man is almost certainly the fugitive.
The fingerprints on the dead man's body were damaged deliberately and the man was carrying identification in four different names, all believed to have been false.
The body of James may be exhumed as a last resort so his DNA can be compared with that of the dead man but police are appealing for any relative of Crawford's to come forward to avoid that move.
