Elsie Frost Cold Case
Without Prejudice
I was thinking of her just yesterday. Elsie Frost. An unsolved cold case from the sixties.
She was 14, stabbed to death in Wakefield, my Mothers Birthplace when I was a schoolgirl.
Perhaps it was the shocking news that a cold case of an extremely violent nature was at last solved after a space of 24 years. Here in Australia. A sleepy peaceful seaside village shattered by the murder of two women in a hair dressing salon. No one saw, no one knew. Except for one person, the murderer.
The women had been savagely beaten and stabbed repeatedly in what could only been called a frenzied attack. You would have had to think that someone had to have known something. But nothing until a few days ago. Then there was shock and revulsion at the alleged killers identity. The husband at the time of one of the women. One can only gape at the news in a slack jawed way, stunned.
He's 83 now. Frail, hobbling with a stick. Pure diligence on the part of the police and detectives who reopened the Cold Case. Determined to solve it. They say if you don't solve a murder in the first 48 hours, the scene goes cold. It becomes harder and harder to solve. I hope if he has done it he goes to jail, no matter what his age. Two lives taken. Two humans that mattered. "Evil exists" an old man told me once when talking about the missing young boy, Daniel Morecombe.
I agreed. Evil exists and walks amongst us.
Elsie Frost was murdered on my Dads birthday, the 9th of October 1965. I had just turned 13 on the 17th September of that year. I was at a new school, a new city and a new country. My parents never did anything by halves, so we had traveled led half way around the world from Australia to the U.K. We were always on the move.
I was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and at 2 years old and three months, the baby of five kids, had emigrated with my Scottish Father and English Mother, to Australia. We spent two years in a Hostel and then moved to Port Augusta. My older brother James and his best friend Wayne were killed in a tragic sand cave in not long after we had moved. I was 5. My parents did not return to the U.K. then, as they might have.
They just lost the plot and started moving a lot. We were nomads for a long time. Moving towns, cities, states and then when I was 12, countries. My Mother wasn't well so we returned to her birthplace, back to her family which was supposed to calm her. And from the week they landed my parents were saving up to go back to Australia.
I loved England. Hated the cold but loved having family around me. Grand Parents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins. Relations I had no recollection of. Loved my Mothers old school. Thornes House Grammar. Set in the middle of an enormous park and very, very posh. The Masters wore gowns and mortar boards.
We had a rival school close to us, Cathedral. Elsie Frost was a student there.
We heard there had been a murder of a young girl. Murder was unheard of in Wakefield. They say Wakefield lost its innocence the day Elsie was murdered.
She was pretty, 14, confident, the Middle child of three siblings.
She had been to the lagoons that day and was walking home alone on the tow path. She entered a tunnel and that's when the killer struck. She was stabbed twice in the back and twice in the head. Someone said she had been stabbed through the hands. Defensive wounds they said. I kept seeing that picture in my head of Elsie trying to defend herself. She crawled to the bottom of the ABC steps, and people tried to help her but she died there.
They have never found her killer.
But I mentioned her name in a story and two old school friends contacted me via the Internet.
It seems the brother and sister were on the Beeb, just last Saturday. Still not able to rest even after fifty years, still wondering what happened to their Sister. Their voices gentle and sad but impassioned. Who killed Elsie. The records are sealed. Not to be released until years to come. Why ? A man was interviewed. Released.
They door knocked on every door in Wakefield in the weeks and months after her death. The Police were determined to find this sadistic killer but to no avail. Someone has to know something. We need to get this case re opened for her Family.
I keep seeing her hands thrust out in supplication, defence. She was my age, just a schoolgirl having fun that day before evil stalked her. No one has the right to take a precious life. She was a daughter, a sister and she mattered. Time something was done. She knocks at my brain and heart with a gentle urging. I think of her and within hours I receive emails from my old school friends, Colin and Malcolm, mentioning the radio show from just last Saturday night. Funny how that happens.
I was thinking of her just yesterday. Elsie Frost. An unsolved cold case from the sixties.
She was 14, stabbed to death in Wakefield, my Mothers Birthplace when I was a schoolgirl.
Perhaps it was the shocking news that a cold case of an extremely violent nature was at last solved after a space of 24 years. Here in Australia. A sleepy peaceful seaside village shattered by the murder of two women in a hair dressing salon. No one saw, no one knew. Except for one person, the murderer.
The women had been savagely beaten and stabbed repeatedly in what could only been called a frenzied attack. You would have had to think that someone had to have known something. But nothing until a few days ago. Then there was shock and revulsion at the alleged killers identity. The husband at the time of one of the women. One can only gape at the news in a slack jawed way, stunned.
He's 83 now. Frail, hobbling with a stick. Pure diligence on the part of the police and detectives who reopened the Cold Case. Determined to solve it. They say if you don't solve a murder in the first 48 hours, the scene goes cold. It becomes harder and harder to solve. I hope if he has done it he goes to jail, no matter what his age. Two lives taken. Two humans that mattered. "Evil exists" an old man told me once when talking about the missing young boy, Daniel Morecombe.
I agreed. Evil exists and walks amongst us.
Elsie Frost was murdered on my Dads birthday, the 9th of October 1965. I had just turned 13 on the 17th September of that year. I was at a new school, a new city and a new country. My parents never did anything by halves, so we had traveled led half way around the world from Australia to the U.K. We were always on the move.
I was born in Edinburgh, Scotland and at 2 years old and three months, the baby of five kids, had emigrated with my Scottish Father and English Mother, to Australia. We spent two years in a Hostel and then moved to Port Augusta. My older brother James and his best friend Wayne were killed in a tragic sand cave in not long after we had moved. I was 5. My parents did not return to the U.K. then, as they might have.
They just lost the plot and started moving a lot. We were nomads for a long time. Moving towns, cities, states and then when I was 12, countries. My Mother wasn't well so we returned to her birthplace, back to her family which was supposed to calm her. And from the week they landed my parents were saving up to go back to Australia.
I loved England. Hated the cold but loved having family around me. Grand Parents, Aunts, Uncles, Cousins. Relations I had no recollection of. Loved my Mothers old school. Thornes House Grammar. Set in the middle of an enormous park and very, very posh. The Masters wore gowns and mortar boards.
We had a rival school close to us, Cathedral. Elsie Frost was a student there.
We heard there had been a murder of a young girl. Murder was unheard of in Wakefield. They say Wakefield lost its innocence the day Elsie was murdered.
She was pretty, 14, confident, the Middle child of three siblings.
She had been to the lagoons that day and was walking home alone on the tow path. She entered a tunnel and that's when the killer struck. She was stabbed twice in the back and twice in the head. Someone said she had been stabbed through the hands. Defensive wounds they said. I kept seeing that picture in my head of Elsie trying to defend herself. She crawled to the bottom of the ABC steps, and people tried to help her but she died there.
They have never found her killer.
But I mentioned her name in a story and two old school friends contacted me via the Internet.
It seems the brother and sister were on the Beeb, just last Saturday. Still not able to rest even after fifty years, still wondering what happened to their Sister. Their voices gentle and sad but impassioned. Who killed Elsie. The records are sealed. Not to be released until years to come. Why ? A man was interviewed. Released.
They door knocked on every door in Wakefield in the weeks and months after her death. The Police were determined to find this sadistic killer but to no avail. Someone has to know something. We need to get this case re opened for her Family.
I keep seeing her hands thrust out in supplication, defence. She was my age, just a schoolgirl having fun that day before evil stalked her. No one has the right to take a precious life. She was a daughter, a sister and she mattered. Time something was done. She knocks at my brain and heart with a gentle urging. I think of her and within hours I receive emails from my old school friends, Colin and Malcolm, mentioning the radio show from just last Saturday night. Funny how that happens.
