Kirste Gordon and Joanna Ratcliffe: Breakthrough after Adelaide Oval disappearance as police dig up backyard and identify suspect

A 50-year-old mystery surrounding the chilling disappearance of two little girls at a soccer game is one step closer to solving it.

Four-year-old Kirste Gordon and Joanna Ratcliffe, 11, disappeared on 25 August 1973 during an Australian rules football game at Adelaide Oval.

They have not been seen since, but detectives have reportedly been searching backyards in Adelaide for the past few days after identifying a child molester as the prime suspect.

Officers visited convicted pedophile Errol Radan at a Brisbane prison to talk to him about the girls’ disappearance. 7News reported.

Radan, who was convicted in South Australia and jailed for indecently assaulting a girl under the age of 14 in 1984, has since passed away.

A victim of Radan said police told her they had visited her attacker in jail and that they thought he was their prime suspect – but he refused to talk to detectives before his death.

There were 13,000 people in Adelaide Oval at the time of the kidnappings, which occurred during a SANFL match between Norwood and North Adelaide.

Joanne was taking Kirste to the bathroom when they disappeared.

Witness Tony Kilmartin, who was 13 at the time, was selling ice cream and lollipops at the oval when he claimed he saw the girls being led away.

Mr Kilmartin, now 63, told 9 News that he saw a man pick up Kirste when Joanne tried to stop him.

“(I saw) one go under the arm… and the other one just pulled on him, yelling the words ‘no’ and ‘let her go,'” he said.

“I just saw them go to the gate… and that was the last thing I saw.”

Mr Kilmartin says he didn’t try to stop the man because he thought he was the girls’ father.

He described the man to the police in the following days, leading to a sketch to be released showing what the kidnapper looked like.

A sketch of the man who took the two girls out of the oval

Kirste’s parents Greg and Christine are still desperate for answers, but want to know where her body is, rather than what happened to her

Kirste’s parents Greg and Christine are still desperate for answers, but want to know where her body is, rather than what happened to her.

“It may sound heartless, but I’d like to know where she is, I don’t want to know what happened…that’s soul-destroying, that’s giving the perpetrator time they don’t deserve,” Christine said. The advertiser.

“But in one sense, what do you do with her remains? What I’m trying to say is that it’s not that important at this stage. She’s here, she’s here with us.’

She added that while they were still heartbroken by the disappearance and death of their little girl, they had to move on.

“We’ve always started from the point, the idea that we have to move on with our lives,” Christine said. “From the start, we were determined to survive.”

A candlelight vigil will be held at Adelaide Oval on Friday to mark the 50th anniversary of the girls’ disappearance.