Murder ended NFL pioneer’s American dream
Australia’s first NFL recruit Colin Ridgway had a fair share of good luck during his life, but it ran out in tragic circumstances when he was shot dead in his Texas home in a murder that remains unsolved almost three decades later.
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Australia’s first NFL recruit Colin Ridgway had a fair share of good luck during his life, but it ran out in tragic circumstances when he was shot dead in his Texas home in a murder that remains unsolved almost three decades later.
Melbourne-born Ridgway was gunned down in May 1993 in the up-market Dallas suburb of University Park after returning from dinner with his wife Joan Jackson. He was 56.
The brutal killing brought an end to a life full of stories that often seem ripped from the pages of a fictional thriller.
Before his stint with the Dallas Cowboys in 1965, an achievement that paved the way for other Australians — such as punter Mitch Wishnowsky, who will likely make an appearance for the San Francisco 49ers at this weekend’s Super Bowl in Miami — Ridgway had already tried his hand at two other sports.
His sporting career began at the Carlton Blues where he was in the losing side of the under-19s grand final in 1954 before being bumped up to reserve grade. But he couldn’t crack the senior team and decided to focus his attention on athletics instead.
Ridgway competed at the 1956 Melbourne Olympic Games. At 19 he was the youngest high jumper in the field, eventually finishing seventh,
and followed that with a Commonwealth Games appearance in Cardiff two years later.
But when he didn’t qualify for the 1960 Olympics in Rome, he decided to take up an offer to study at Lamar Tech, taking an athletics scholarship at the Texas university.
While competing and studying at Lamar, Ridgway caught the eye of Cowboys coach Tom Landry who was impressed by his abilities and at the time predicted he would develop into a major force in the NFL. But despite having a hand in the Cowboys’ first ever win over the Green Bay Packers in a pre-season match, his career stalled quickly and he was moved after just three games.
Ridgway was settled in Texas where he was already establishing himself as an astute businessman, starting travel company Club America to sell discount holidays to members. When he sold it in the 1970s, it boasted more than 70,000 members.
Ridgway became a well-known and well-liked member of his local business community who was known to spin a good tale about his past. He especially liked recounting the time he was shot by Mexican bandits while driving from his home in Texas to a Mexican resort.
As the story goes, which he detailed in an interview with News Corp in the 1980s, Ridgway was driving alone along an isolated highway when the trouble began.
“A car came alongside me and even that was a surprise in that isolated landscape,” he told The Herald Sun. “It didn’t pass. It kept pace and what looked like broom handles were sticking out the windows.”
Those “broom handles” were gun barrels and the five men in the car forced him off the road and dragged him out onto the ground. His possessions were taken and he soon found himself with a bag over his head and a building dread that these would be his final moments alive.
Bundled into the back of the car he knew he was being driven to his death and made a decision to fight to escape. When the car stopped and he was taken out, he made his move.
“They had a struggle to get me out of the car and they started carrying me off the road. I knew I had to do something then or die like some poor bloody beast,” he said.
“After they carried me for about 20 yards, I kicked my legs free and dragged off the hood and punched and kicked and ran for it.”
He kept running as the five men fired at him, the former athlete only realising later he had been shot, the bullet breaking his ribs and lodging in his lung, never to be removed.
Ridgway kept moving for hours, eventually flagging down a truck and being dropped in the resort town where his wife Joan Jackson was waiting for him. In a desperate bid to save his life, she took to the streets to find blood, offering money for anyone who turned out to be a positive match for her husband.
Years later it would be Jackson,
who had done everything she could to save him, who would be accused of masterminding the murder of her husband on that fateful May night in 1993.
Suspicions were first raised when Jackson called police and told them Ridgway had suffered a heart attack. This was despite the fact he had been shot at least seven times, including in the back of the head.
Jackson told police that after spending a night out together, the pair had driven home in separate cars and she had stopped first to water the plants.
Police suspected Ridgway was murdered by a third party, hired and paid for by Jackson. But a judge refused to indict her a year after the slaying.
Several years after Ridgway’s death, Kenneth Bicking III, who was known to Jackson, was accused of being the hitman, but important evidence was not allowed to be presented and Bicking was released.
DNA evidence in 2014 helped convict Bicking of a 1992 sexual assault that saw him handed two life sentences.
But 30 years after his life was cut short in his adopted country, Colin Ridgway’s killer remains at large.
Originally published as Murder ended NFL pioneer’s American dream