Latest News > 14 July 10 - Historic Australian murderer may be dead in Texas

 

It is believed one of Australia's most wanted killers has been found – but he will never face justice.


Elmer Crawford went on the run from Melbourne 40 years ago; the prime suspect in the murder of his wife and children.


Texas police now think they have found his body – but the fugitive is keeping them guessing.


To Texans he was known as Harold Frysinger, the grey-haired elderly man with big glasses – or sometimes Gerald Brown, Roger Smith or Peter Turner.


But Australian Police believe he is Elmer Crawford; a fugitive wanted for the brutal murder of his pregnant wife and three children more than 40 years ago in Victoria.


Crawford had been on the run since the discovery of the bodies of his wife Theresa and their children in the family car in July 1970.


They had been bashed and electrocuted in the family home. His motive isn't known but the two most popular theories are a fight with his wife over her pregnancy, or that she caught him stealing money.


Police say Crawford first tried to push his car off a cliff with the four bodies of his family in it; then disappeared.


The break through was a sketch of what he would look like now; that led to an unidentified caller saying he looked like a man on a US unidentified person's list.


That man died of a heart attack five years ago in circumstances so suspicious, that his body remains kept in a Texas hospital.


That man used four different names in that state and his fingerprints were deliberately damaged, police believe, to avoid being identified.


Now the body of one of Crawford's children may be exhumed as a last resort in order to compare their DNA with that of the dead man.


 

 

 

 

 

 

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