adelaide oval abduction : how it started… cover art

adelaide oval abduction : how it started…

adelaide oval abduction : how it started…

Listen for free

View show details

About this listen

The Adelaide Oval Abduction - how it started...


On August 25, 1973, 11-year-old Joanne Ratcliffe and 4-year-old Kirste Gordon left their seats during a football match at Adelaide Oval… and never came back. Despite thousands of witnesses, multiple sightings, and decades of investigation, their disappearance remains one of South Australia’s darkest mysteries.


In this opening episode of sleepers, investigative journalist Bryan Littlely and producer Max Marten take you back to that spring afternoon — the bustling crowd, the frantic search, and the chilling last images of the girls seen with a strange man in a 1950s-style fedora.


We explore police theories, forgotten leads, the flawed identikit sketch that shaped the case, and the long shadow this crime cast over a community already haunted by the Beaumont children’s disappearance just seven years earlier.


This is where sleepers begins: with two little girls, a stadium full of people, and a predator who vanished into the noise of a football crowd.


Fifty years on, it’s time to rise and shine a light on the secrets buried with this case.


support 'Leave a Light On Inc.' here


view acknowledgements here

It's time to rise - #fightlikejo


Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

No reviews yet
In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.