Disappearance of Eloise Worledge
Eloise Anne Worledge (8 October 1967 – disappeared 12 January 1976) is a missing person, who as an eight-year-old girl was abducted from her home in Beaumaris, Victoria, Australia.
Abduction[edit]
Her brother raised the alarm about her disappearance when he noticed she was not in her room at 7.30am. He later told police he heard "robbers" who kidnapped his sister, but was too scared to say anything at the time because he thought they would take him too. There was no sign of a struggle. Police believed that Eloise was lured from her bed by someone whom she knew and trusted and simply left the house via the front door, which had been left unlocked. Another possibility not discounted was that Worledge may have been abducted by a prowler known to be in the area at the time.
A dark green car speeding down Scott Street at 2am was reported by a neighbour. Bark from a tree outside her window was found on her bedroom floor. A small hole had been cut in the flyscreen in her window, but forensic tests revealed it had been cut from the inside. Police believed it was too small to have been used by the abductor, and scientific evidence found it unlikely that Eloise was taken through her open bedroom window. Both parents were initially treated as suspects.[1]
Investigation[edit]
Despite one of the biggest searches in Victoria's history and a $10,000 reward posted in 1976 that remains unclaimed, no trace of her has ever been found. Homicide cold case detectives also reinvestigated the case in 2001, to no avail.[2]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disappearance_of_Eloise_Worledge
Who stole Eloise?
July 5 2003
She was the little girl from Beaumaris who was taken from what should have been the safety of her bed in the middle of the night.......................A torn flywire screen and an open window were the main clues in a crime..............Eloise was their first child, born on October 8, 1967. She was followed by Anna two years later and Blake in 1971................By the time Eloise was born, the couple had settled into a four-bedroom weatherboard home in Scott Street on the corner of Gibbs Street, about 500 metres from popular Beaumaris beach.
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/04/1057179154768.html
**Snip
The father of Eloise Worledge, the eight-year-old girl abducted from her Beaumaris home 27 years ago, has taken a police lie detector test to dispel rumours that he was involved in her disappearance.
Lindsay Worledge took the test after police reopened the case, but the polygraph findings were inconclusive. "It did not produce a result which would satisfy police curiosity," Mr Worldege, a retired business consultant, told The Age.
A Melbourne coroner, Frank Hender, will be told on Monday that vital crime scene evidence and police records into the case have been lost and that this has hampered detectives' new investigation.
Among the missing documents were the original police interviews with Mr Worledge.
Eloise Worledge was found missing from her bed in Scott Street on January 13, 1976. Her parents were in the process of separating and Mr Worledge had agreed to move out of the family home. He was due to sign a rental lease on a residential property in Carnegie on the day Eloise disappeared.
The wind-out window in her bedroom was found open, the flywire screen cut, and tanbark from the garden was found on the floor of her room. But police believe she was probably taken through the unlocked front door and that the screen may have been cut to mislead police.
Despite a search by 250 police, a reward offer, a taskforce investigation and repeated pleas to the public, no trace of her has been found.
The coroner will be told that years after the abduction police found that two child molesters may have had links to Eloise. One worked at a local shop used by the Worledges while the second was connected to a Beaumaris drama group frequented by the family.
Two years ago police launched a fresh investigation into the case. Detectives have concluded that she is dead, but have been unable to identify her abductor.
One of the original investigators, former detective senior sergeant Jan Lierse, said police were never able to establish what happened to Eloise. "We are no further advanced now than... when she was first reported missing about 7.30 in the morning. I have no suspects whatsoever."
http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/07/04/1057179159271.html
