‘I have no suspects whatsoever.’
SHE would be an adult now. Maybe, like her younger sister, she would have married and had children of her own. Creative and talented like her mother, she might have grown up to build a career in the art world. Almost certainly, she would have outgrown her childhood asthma and schoolgirl shyness. But she was to be cheated of the chance.
Eloise Worledge was just eight when she was taken from the safety of her bedroom in a seemingly secure bayside family suburban home. She was never to be seen again.
It was the case that made families in Melbourne shut their doors and wonder about strangers in the street.
Despite the biggest missing-person’s search in Victoria’s history and a $10,000 reward posted in 1976 that remains unclaimed, no trace of Eloise has ever been found. The photograph of the smiling little blonde girl remains an image of its time that scarred a generation. When homicide ‘cold-case’ detectives began reinvestigating the case in 2001, they were surprised to discover the picture of Eloise was instantly recognised by many people more than 25 years after her disappearance.
It was January, 1976. Milk was still delivered at home, pubs shut at 10pm and poker machines could be played only over the border. Tertiary education was free and Gough Whitlam had been voted from office just weeks earlier.
Patsy and Lindsay Worledge had been married just over ten years. With three healthy and happy children, they appeared the perfect family unit.
Patricia Ann Watmuff had been a student teacher when she met New Zealand-born Lindsay Worledge, who was three years older and starting an academic career.
They met in 1963 and married two years later. Eloise was born on October 8, 1967. Anna followed two years later, then Blake in 1971.
By the time Eloise was born they had settled into a four-bedroom weatherboard home in Scott Street on the corner of Gibbs Street, near Beaumaris beach, in Melbourne’s southern bayside suburbs.
There was little through traffic in Scott Street. It was the Australian dream – an affordable home by the sea, with an outdoor lifestyle close to shops, schools and work. Above all else, it was safe.
The area was filled with young, middle-class families with similar aspirations. Couples made friends in the surrounding streets. Their kids played together and families grew close.
Eloise went to the nearby Beaumaris Primary School, just two streets away, and was due to start grade four in weeks. She was shy but intelligent and – like her mother – had an artistic flair. Everyone liked Patsy. She was energetic and enthusiastic with a strong interest in art. Lindsay was introverted, bookish and clever. And, according to associates, he didn’t mind letting people know it. ‘He was often described as thinking of himself as intellectually superior,’ a police review of the case was to note.
And there was something else. After a decade of marriage, the Worledges found they were drifting apart.
Patsy immersed herself in her children, local friends and her passions for art and craft. Lindsay spent more time at the Caulfield Institute of Technology, where he was a lecturer. He was also completing his master’s degree in business administration at Monash University.
The marital tensions became obvious. Friends noticed Lindsay’s sarcastic comments to his wife becoming increasingly heavy-handed. Some became uncomfortable in his presence and felt he was damaging Patsy’s self-esteem.
She thought they should try counselling, a move her husband refused. But Patsy went ahead and, while it did not improve their marriage, it helped her accept the crumbling relationship.
She pursued her own interests, which, according to police, ‘only increased Lindsay Worledge’s resentment towards her’.
By 1975, their relationship was in free fall and they began to build independent lives. As their marriage was dying, both found comfort with others. Their personal troubles would have remained private if their tragedy had not been so public.
In September, 1975, four months before Eloise’s abduction, Patsy started talking of a separation. Lindsay agreed in principle, but in practice tried to delay the inevitable.
The timing, he said, would have to be on his terms and the split would have to wait until he completed his academic studies that November.
It appeared that it would be a civilised arrangement. She would stay in the marital home with the children and he would have unfettered access to them. Neither parent wanted the split to hurt the children. They agreed to stay together over Christmas for the sake of the children and then he would move out. They set a date. Lindsay would leave by his wife’s 33rd birthday on January 10.
As the day approached, Patsy broke the news to the children. According to Patsy, Eloise had already realised the coldness between the parents. Patsy observed that Eloise had grown distant from her father because of the obvious tension in the house. Nonetheless, her daughter ‘took the news in her stride’.
THE plan for an amicable separation collapsed when Patsy’s birthday arrived and Lindsay had not left. What his wife did not know was that he had secretly begun to prepare to move. He inspected a rental property in Carnegie that day, telling the agents he needed two days before making a final decision.
According to police: ‘There was little communication between them and it appeared they were leading separate lives although living under the one roof.’
Jane Mirvis, Patsy’s friend from across the road, offered to host a birthday dinner for her on the Saturday.
About 10 people were invited, but Patsy went without Lindsay. It was a public statement of independence. Some feared it was also a private declaration of war. The friends knew enough about the Worledge’s domestic problems to be concerned the snubbed husband might react badly. ‘A general feeling that this was a humiliating act and that a serious confrontation could result pervaded the group,’ police found. ‘During the course of the evening, some of the members of the group felt that someone was spying on them through the windows.’
Twenty-five years later, Lindsay was to deny this allegation, although he did admit he walked the street, inspecting the vehicles of the guests who attended the birthday celebration. ‘He indicated he was only curious and denied being motivated by jealousy or suspicion that Patricia Worledge may have been with someone at the party.’
It was 2am before Patsy walked across the street to her home. Lindsay was awake and ‘a heated and spiteful argument between them ensued,’ according to police records. It went for nearly two hours, with the screaming and yelling reaching a point where neighbours considered calling the police ‘out of concern’.
No-one did. They didn’t want to intrude on the Worledges’ business. But within days that business would be front-page news.
Lindsay liked to appear in control but, he would later admit, he was bitter about the planned separation and had become severely depressed.
When he woke on Sunday, January 11, his mood hadn’t lifted. Patsy wanted to know when he would finally leave and he promised to make arrangements by Monday.
He took the children to the beach and returned that afternoon to contact the estate agents, committing to rent the Carnegie property. He said he would sign the contract the following day.
On Monday morning, he went to Honeywell Securities, where he was a guest speaker. He had lunch with an executive, returning to the institute about 2.15pm. The summer break meant that work was still quiet at the college so he joined members of the faculty for drinks at a local hotel. He had shared a carafe of wine at lunch and a jug of beer at the pub.
About 4pm, he rang the real-estate agent to cancel his meeting, rescheduling for the following day. He left the hotel about 4.45pm and went home for dinner. Patsy did some sewing while Lindsay played Monopoly with the children. Around 8.30pm, she went to her regular jazz ballet class.
Eloise left her bedroom around 9.15pm for a glass of milk. She then went into the television room and sat on her father’s lap while he quietly explained his side of the marital break-up. He later told a friend he was relieved he had cleared the air with his daughter.
Eloise went to bed around 10pm, wearing a two-piece, yellow, baby-doll pyjama set with ‘Rock ‘n’ Roll’ on the front and a musical clef emblem on the back.
Lindsay had continued drinking at home. He had two scotches and a bottle of wine with dinner. He drank port while watching television and eventually fell asleep.
Patsy walked home from jazz ballet and stopped at Jane Mirvis’s house across the road.
She then went home to get a dress she was sewing to show Jane. Lindsay was in the lounge room in darkness with the television on. Patsy told him she was going back to Jane’s.
She returned home at 10.30pm. She would later tell police the outside porch light was off, and the front flywire door was closed but not snibbed.
According to police, ‘The front door was unlocked and wide open. It was not an overly hot night.’ (The temperature dropped to about 12 degrees celsius).
Her husband was still in the lounge room. She thought to shut the front door but forgot. It was around 11pm. She took some ironing to Anna’s and Blake’s rooms. Then she went in to Eloise, straightened her covers, kissed, her good night and went to bed.
She would never see her daughter again.
Around 11.40pm, Lindsay said later, he turned off the television and went to bed. He said he checked on the children, but Patsy would later tell police that this was unusual for him.
He did not shut the front door because he did not know it had been left open.
According to Patsy, the passage light was left on for the children and then switched off by the last parent to bed. But this night, police say, ‘Lindsay Worledge did not turn off the passageway light.’
At 4.45am, Patsy got up to go to the toilet. She then noticed the passage light was off. Almost certainly, Eloise Worledge had already been taken from her bed.
PEOPLE under extreme stress can have different recollections of the same events. Statements taken from armed robbery victims or witnesses to car accidents can and do vary wildly for innocent reasons.
It is not necessarily remarkable, therefore, that Lindsay and Patsy Worledge would give confusing and, at times, conflicting versions of what happened the morning their daughter disappeared.
In his original statement, Lindsay said he woke at 6.30am and, as he went to the kitchen for a drink of water and orange juice, he noticed his daughter’s door was shut. On it was a sign – ‘Eloise’s Room’.
He went outside to collect the milk and paper, returning to bed to read the day’s news.
According to Lindsay, Anna and Blake came into their parents’ room and began playing. Blake said Eloise was not in her room, but neither parent took any notice of the chattering of their four-year-old. At 7.30am, Patsy got up. She began to get worried when she could not find Eloise.
Lindsay then rose and met Patsy at the doorway of their daughter’s room. He looked in and immediately saw the curtain was pulled to one side, the flywire screen had been cut and the window was open. Ten days later, during a re-enactment, he said he woke to find Blake was already in his parents’ bed about 7am. Anna arrived about 10 minutes later. Lindsay asked his children to get the paper, but when they ignored him he went to get it himself.
He said that when he got the paper, the front door was closed. He noticed the clock in the kitchen. It was 7.15am.
In her statement, Patsy said she was woken at 7.30am when Lindsay came back to bed. She said this was unusual because it was his habit to send the children to collect the paper.
She said Blake hopped into the bed at the same time and said that Eloise was not in her room. Patsy said she left her bedroom about 7.55am and went into the hallway where Anna ran up and said Eloise was missing. In her statement, 10 days later, she said she had a shower and then Anna alerted her.
In Patsy’s version of events, she was checking the front part of the house when Lindsay said he had found something in Eloise’s room.
She followed him to the bedroom where he pointed out that the curtains were pulled to one side; the flywire was cut and the window open. At this point, she realised her daughter had been taken.
She rang her sister, Margaret Thomas, and, ‘panic-stricken’, ran across the road to Jane Mirvis’s home. Lindsay chose to ring the local police rather than the emergency D24 number. At 8.27, Margaret Thomas, who had arrived at the Worledge home, rang D24 and gave the phone to Lindsay.
‘On doing so, Lindsay Worledge indicated in an unemotional and almost off-hand tone that there had been a break-in at his house and that the only thing missing was his eight-year-old daughter,’ according to police.
He told police his wife was the last person to see Eloise. He did not mention he had checked her after Patsy had gone to bed.
Eight minutes after the call to D24, Sergeant Cyril Wilson from the Beaumaris police station arrived. He knew that children sometimes slipped away from their families for hours but, once he saw the cut flywire screen, his instinct was that this was no runaway. He called for back-up. Within 30 minutes, local detectives were there.
Blake became an important witness. He said he heard someone in Eloise’s room during the night and heard crackling noises that police say were consistent with steps on the seagrass floor-coverings in the bedroom.
Police formed a 15-strong taskforce, controlled by Detective Superintendent Fred Warnock, who said he was confident Eloise would be found.
More than 250 police, including search and rescue, mounted branch, the dog squad and the independent patrol group, searched for nearly three weeks – the biggest operation of its type in Melbourne.
They checked parks, the foreshore, golf courses and local streets. Inquiries spread overseas, with reports Eloise had been abducted but was still alive. Police chased leads and rumours; they even consulted clairvoyants. They found nothing.
A diviner turned up at the Worledge home saying he could help. He was given a sandal belonging to the missing girl and then drove around the neighbourhood with Lindsay. He stopped and pointed at a vacant house, saying the girl had been there. Police broke into the house and found nothing. By coincidence, perhaps, Eloise had been visiting the family next door to the empty house a few days before she disappeared.
Police scientific experts checked the scene and concluded the flywire screen was probably cut from the inside. The wind-out window had been opened to its maximum 38 centimetres.
It was a narrow opening, difficult for an adult to climb through, especially carrying an eight-year-old.
The flywire was cut from a height of 195 centimetres. Dust and cobwebs around the window were undisturbed. Tan bark from the garden was found in the room.
The abductor would have had to wind open the window from the outside, lean in, cut the fly wire and roll the wire on the inside – a difficult but not impossible task.
Investigators concluded: ‘On balance, based on all the information on hand, it appeared more likely that the person or persons responsible for Eloise Worledge’s disappearance had affected their entry and exit through a point other than her bedroom window.’
In other words, someone tried to make it look as if Eloise was grabbed through the open window.
Random child-kidnapping cases shake the confidence of the community. Like the disappearance of the Beaumont children in Adelaide a decade earlier, or Karmein Chan from Templestowe 15 years later, the Worledge case appalled and fascinated. The factual void was filled with rumours, half-truths and gossip.
Police briefed the press every day. ‘Such was the magnitude of the media coverage that her image continues to be recognisable to the public at large, some 26 years later. The story generated immense public interest and led to thousands of separate pieces of information being reported to police by the public,’ police found.
The original investigators began by saying they were confident Eloise would be found alive. But they also asked the Worledges to delay their separation, wanting to keep public concern at its highest.
It was a sham. The parents gave separate interviews to the media. Patsy spent most of her time across the road at the Mirvis house. The Worledges became even more distant and, like the Chans and the Beaumonts, eventually separated. Lindsay moved out to a rented flat. Both later remarried.
From January 21 to 23, police canvassed 6000 homes in the area with a prepared list of questions. They were able to log 200 suspicious incidents that occurred on the night she was abducted.
At 10pm on January 12, Wayne Cheeseman of Scott Street heard a prowler outside his house. At 7.15 the following morning, he discovered the tool shed in the backyard had been broken into. Three chisels, an oil can and a pair of garden shears had been left on his nature strip. Police later decided the shears had not been used to cut the flyscreen.
At 10.30pm on January 12, a neighbour at 57 Scott Street saw a car travel down the road with the headlights off. At 11.40pm, Patricia Cunningham of 26 Scott Street saw a green Holden station wagon parked near the Worledge home.
Around midnight, Ann Same of 64 Scott Street saw a young man walking along the Worledge fence line. She felt so uneasy she crossed the road to avoid him.
Around the same time, Molly Salts, at Number 9, saw a young man run in front of her car as she drove along Scott Street near the Gibbs Street intersection. She saw him jump the fence into the Worledge property.
Just after midnight, at 12.16, Andrew Jones of 41 Scott Street heard noises outside his house that he thought were made by a prowler.
At 2am, Daphne Owen-Smith, at Number 66, heard a child’s cry and the sound of a car door slamming. Anne Same also heard a car door slam at that time.
Months later, Catherine Marling told police that she had seen a green 1966 model Holden in the street on January 6, 1976 – a week before the abduction. Police found a car fitting the description had been stolen from Carlton December, 1975, but it was never recovered.
IN child abduction cases, police believe there is nearly always a link between the victim and the offender. In the Worledge investigation, there were two theories: she was the victim of a random attack; or taken by a friend or associate of the family.
Patsy hoped her husband may have been involved because he wanted to create a reason to stay in the house. As a result, police say, ‘she was confident that no harm would come to Eloise Worledge’.
Because it was unlikely that Eloise was taken through her bedroom window, both parents were initially treated as suspects, although police soon began to concentrate on the father.
According to police: ‘His unemotional and seemingly cold demeanour in dealing with the situation only added to the investigators’ concerns. A case in point: when they learned Lindsay Worledge contacted the real estate office only a few hours after the disappearance … to cancel his 4pm appointment, suggesting to staff in an off-handed manner they should read the newspapers to find out why.’
But Lindsay Worledge’s perceived flippancy might have been a simple self-defence mechanism – a shield for a frightened and grieving father.
Detective Superintendent Warnock believed he was unfairly judged. ‘Mr Worledge, I think, has been seen in a bad light. A lot of people think he has acted callously. He’s not the kind of person who wears his heart on his sleeve. Deep down, he cares about his children and he is very distressed about this whole business,’ he said nine months after the abduction.
Lindsay believed a stranger took his daughter. At the time, he said, ‘I can’t buy the theory that it was someone she knew. She would not have gone willingly with anyone in the middle of the night. Eloise has a timidity. She is not adventuresome. She would not go out on the street without her brother or sister. She is a shy, sensitive child who suffers asthmatic bouts.’
On the day the abduction was discovered, Lindsay asked police to give him a lie-detector test. They refused the offer but on day four, he was taken to the Russell Street police station and interviewed – this time as a suspect.
He had studied psychology at university and, when he was left alone in the interview room, he felt it was a ‘subtle psychological trick’.
He described the interview process as ‘a fairly terrifying experience.’
Both parents were hypnotised about a month after the abduction in the hope that new information could be found.
Less than a week after his daughter disappeared, Lindsay felt he had to deny unsubstantiated stories that he was involved in the abduction. ‘These rumours will be answered when the truth finally emerges,’ he said. But it never has.
The police review of the case found: ‘At the conclusion of investigations into Lindsay Worledge, no evidence in regards to his involvement has been uncovered.’
POLICE looked at ten general types of suspects: known sex offenders in Melbourne’s south-east, any sex offenders within Australia involved in child abductions or who broke into houses, known prowlers in the area, local service providers, babysitters, tradesmen, door-to-door salesmen, staff and parents at the Beaumaris Primary School and government agencies with any contact with the family.
They also interviewed more than 100 family and extended family members in Australia and overseas, more than 200 friends and associates of the family, neighbours, work colleagues and students of Lindsay Worledge.
On February 20, 1976, the Worledge taskforce was disbanded. The file was sent to the local detectives at Moorabbin and any new tips were investigated and added to the thousands already gathered.
In the early 1980s, the Moorabbin CIB closed down and the Worledge file went to the Hampton CIB. Years later, the file was sent to the homicide squad and archived as a missing persons case.
Despite it being one of the highest-profile mysteries in Australia’s history, when police began to reinvestigate the Worledge case, they found key evidence and vital files were missing.
But the reinvestigation did unearth two new suspects. The Worledges had once been connected with a Beaumaris amateur theatre. In 1975, another man drifted into the group. Police now know he was a convicted child molester.
Detectives also know that a man convicted of child sex offences worked at a nearby milk bar. But police have found nothing to link either man to the abduction.
They also investigated any possible links with double murderer and serial sex offender Raymond ‘Mr Stinky’ Edmunds. They could find no connections.
On February 6, 2002, homicide squad detectives formally interviewed Lindsay. He told them he did not know what happened to his daughter.
The day Eloise disappeared Lindsay offered to take a lie-detector test; 26 years later, police finally agreed. On February 14, 2002, he was connected to a polygraph machine and asked questions about the abduction. Like so many elements of the case, the results were not conclusive.
Detective Senior Sergeant Jan Lierse worked on the Worledge case for almost two years and has lived with it ever since.
’We are no further advanced now than when the balloon went up when she was first reported missing about 7.30 in the morning,’ she said 27 years later.
‘I have no suspects whatsoever.’
The open window and the cut flywire remain a mystery. But she says: ‘I believe she was taken out the front door, which had been left unlocked.’
THREE decades after his daughter disappeared, Lindsay Worledge is ‘constantly’ reminded of his loss. When he is introduced to strangers, they still often ask if he is related to Eloise.
‘I am amazed at the reaction, even now,’ he says.
Lindsay knows he was treated as a suspect by police not because of evidence pointing to him but because of the lack of evidence pointing elsewhere. He simply filled the void. ‘It was all circumstantial.’
Forensic evidence suggesting she was not taken through the open bedroom window meant Eloise’s parents had to be investigated. ‘We were tangible. There was little else.’
He agreed to take a lie-detector test in the hope he would finally have the concrete proof that he was a father who lost a child, not a man who abducted one.
‘The results were inconclusive. It did not produce a result which would satisfy police curiosity.’
He says that after the test he researched polygraph testing to find that 10 per cent of tests are neutral. ‘If I had known that then, I would not have had the polygraph. It is a very weak science and that is why the tests are not admitted in Victorian courts.’
Lindsay answers questions in a polite and measured manner. He has been asked them all many times before. There are no surprises, no new twists, no new evidence and no new hope.
He says he is a ‘double victim’ because of the constant speculation that he was, in some way, involved in the abduction, but he knows that he is powerless to alter perceptions.
‘It (the speculation) was hardly pleasant. It was not of my making.’
Police say there is no evidence linking him to his daughter’s disappearance. Some who worked on the case have their own theories, but they don’t believe they really know what happened that night.
Happily remarried since 1980, Lindsay left tertiary teaching to establish a successful management consultancy, retiring in January, 2003.
He says he was able to rebuild his life because ‘there is a powerful stimulus to go on trying – to go forward’.
Like his former wife, he did not believe the new investigation or the coroner’s inquest would provide any fresh insight into the case. He was right. ‘I was dubious. It is essentially the recycling of memories, which are over 25 years old.’
He says he has his own thoughts on what happened that night, but they ‘are an interpretation of nothing. They are just theories’.
PATSY Worledge still lives near the sea but no longer in Scott Street, Beaumaris. She is not angry and does not see herself as a victim even though she has twice been touched by tragedy.
The Worledges’ youngest child, Blake – the little boy who was first to realise Eloise was missing – grew to be a well-liked young man who worked as an information technology and quality manager for a forklift-truck distributor.
He died when struck by a car while crossing Whitehorse Road in Nunawading on a wet night in August, 1997.
His mother says: ‘You don’t get over it, you just have to go through it.’
She spends much of her time with her art work, paintings and textile pictures, and caring for her daughter Anna’s three children.
In the weeks after Eloise’s disappearance, friends and family encouraged her to keep hoping, but a counsellor gently told her she might have to come to terms with never seeing her daughter again.
For about 12 years, she did keep hoping and wanting to know what had happened. But, as years passed, she accepted that Eloise was gone and she would probably never know what happened that night. ‘It was time to move on. People still see me as a victim but I don’t live like one.’
She knows that the case has fascinated many and resulted in her being the subject of bizarre rumours, including that she was related to Lindy Chamberlain, whose baby Azaria was taken by a dingo in 1980.
The media, she says, have tried to pigeon-hole her as a victim, turning up to seek interviews on the anniversaries of the abduction, when Eloise would have turned 21, or for routine quotes to pad out stories about mystery disappearances.
‘Nothing has changed since January, 1976. I don’t have any guilt. I didn’t leave my children somewhere or send them down the street. She was safely tucked in her bed. It is a jigsaw with a piece missing. And it is still missing.
‘The inquest has stirred up a lot of emotion that we didn’t need – personally or as a community.
‘I long ago realised that I didn’t need to know what happened on that night.’
On July 7, 2003, Coroner Frank Hender held the inquest. Despite the fact that the Eloise Worldege case had been fuelled by decades of speculation, his written finding was less than three pages.
‘Widespread media coverage caused public awareness to the extent that thousands of pieces of information were reported to police and investigated,’ he said.
‘Exhaustive inquires in respect to prowlers, known sex offenders, neighbourhood inquires and vehicle checks have not advanced this inquiry.
‘Eloise was a shy girl who would not have voluntarily left her home with a stranger.
‘It is not possible on the evidence to find who were the person or persons responsible or when and how Eloise met her demise but her disappearance and presumed death remains suspicious. I therefore return an open finding.’