Geelong’s most heinous unsolved murders
Geelong’s past is full of stories of high-profile suspicious deaths. Here’s some of the most infamous mysteries that remain unsolved to this day.
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These are the stories that still haunt Geelong long after they left the news pages.
The city has had its fair share of high-profile suspicious deaths, including some mysteries that remain unsolved to this day.
PINBALL PARLOUR STABBING
Bert Driscoll is still talked about, more than 30 years after he died in the arms of police after being stabbed in the chest at his inner-Geelong pinball parlour in 1973.
Driscoll’s bloody murder at the Funarama amusement parlour, in Union Street, remains unsolved to this day.
A smashed glass panel in the office door showed Driscoll tried to fight off his attackers.
The injuries he sustained in the fight were deadly — one to the chest, another near the throat, one of which severed an artery.
Driscoll was stabbed with a sharp instrument, police said.
Homicide and Geelong CIB detectives interviewed teenagers who were in the Funarama amusement parlour between 10 and 11pm that night, but no killer — or killers — have ever been brought to justice.
SCHOOLGIRL WASHED UP ON BEACH
Norlane teenager Clare Morrison’s semi-naked body was washed up on Bells Beach on December 19, 1992 with police labelling the case as a homicide.
Clare suffered head and neck injuries before her death.
A shark mauling meant the cause of death could not be identified.
She was last seen walking down Little Malop Street mall towards Moorabool St, where she was planning to meet a friend at what was then a McDonald’s fast food outlet.
Witnesses at the time said the 13-year-old girl appeared to be drunk.
BODY FOUND IN PT LONSDALE ROCKS
John Stuart Chapman ’s body was found wedged between rocks on the beach at Point Lonsdale in June 1996 after he died of blunt trauma to the head.
His wife was regarded a prime suspect but was released without charge.
BIKE TIP-OFF FINDS GEELONG MAN 700KM AWAY
Spirit of Tasmania security guard Earl Mooring, 54, disappeared from his Whittington home on Tuesday October 10, 2000.
Four years later, his body was discovered in Towrang in New South Wales following a tip-off from a Bandidos bikie.
Mr Mooring had reportedly been keeping a $120,000 retirement nest egg in his home, and his death was a suspected burglary attempt.
It is understood Mr Mooring was bashed with a hammer, tied up in a tarpaulin then driven from the scene in his own car, a 1996 red Nissan Micra Coupe with registration NTD-626 — which police have never located.
Reports following the murder suggested Mr Mooring’s ATM card was used seven times on the east coast of Australia in the days following his disappearance.
WHAT HAPPENED TO CRAWFORD MURDERER?
A 1971 coronial inquest found that Elmer Kyle Crawford was responsible for the 1970 murder of his pregnant wife Therese and three children Karen, 6, James, 8, and Kathryn 13.
The bodies of the 35-year-old mother and her children were discovered in the family car on July 2, 1970. The car was pushed over a cliff face at Loch Ard Gorge in Port Campbell.
A search of the family’s Glenroy home suggested the family had been murdered there, with each appearing to have died as a result of electrocution and or blunt-force trauma to the head.
Mr Crawford was seen at the family home on the day the bodies were discovered, but despite extensive searches police have never been able to locate him.
DEAL GONE WRONG BLAMED FOR DEATH
Illegal tobacco seller Raim Dalipi was shot and killed at his Bell Park home.
Mr Dalipi, 58, died in the loungeroom of his house after he was shot in the abdomen on September 8, 2005.
Police pursued the possibility that his death was the result of a deal gone wrong.
$1M REWARD OFFERED TO FIND KILLER
Police say the person who killed Salvatore Rotiroti inside the gates of his Manifold Heights home on September 5, 1988, wanted “to take control of his family”.
They say his killer was so feared by relatives that they swore an oath not to reveal him — an oath that appears to remain strong today despite a $1 million reward for information on the unsolved cold case.
They originally arrested a 21-year-old man in relation to the murder of the father of five less than a month after the killing.
Those charges were dropped after witnesses withdrew their statements, and the man once believed responsible has since changed his name and moved interstate.
Police say he remains a person of interest.
BLUNT INSTRUMENT USED IN MURDER
In April 2013 police offered a reward of up to $100,000 for help to solve the mysterious 1998 murder of Wido Budzynski.
The Winchelsea man was found dead at his home in Buckley School Rd by a neighbour on December 9.
He was found to have suffered extensive head injuries, which authorities believed had been caused by a blunt instrument.
HOMELESS PENSIONER FOUND AT POINT HENRY
The last time it is known homeless pensioner Christian ‘Filippa’ Brouwer was seen alive was as he walked out of the Sir Charles Darling Hotel in July 2003.
His body was found at Point Henry four months later.
MAN’S ‘BATHURST WEEKEND’ DISAPPEARANCE
Trevor Tascas, 27, was last seen in October 2005.
Former housemate Lawrence Alexander Butler, then 41, was charged with the man’s murder, found guilty and jailed for 23 years. But he was later acquitted on appeal and found not guilty in a retrial on the lesser charge of manslaughter after key witness Jodi Harris said she could not recall her earlier testimony.
Harris pleaded guilty to accessory after the fact to manslaughter and two counts of obtaining property by deception.
In a February 2020 inquest Coroner John Olle found Mr Tascas died at his Whittington home on the ‘Bathurst weekend’ in October 2005.
The death is still being treated as suspicious.
BOMBING CLAIMS LIFE OF DETECTIVE’S WIFE
Few crimes have shaken the Geelong community more than the bombing of the Milne family home in 1936.
Senior Constable Fred Milne lived in Manning St with his wife Aimee and two youngest children — daughter Chloris and son Norman. The family had called Geelong home since Milne had transferred from Melbourne CIB nearly four years earlier.
On July 12, Milne and his wife were in bed by 11pm. It had been an uneventful Sunday with nothing to warn of the horrific events that would unfold before daybreak.
About 3.20am the couple were woken by the sound of breaking glass and the thud of something heavy landing on the floor. A bomb had been flung into their bedroom.
The Milne’s weatherboard villa was half-demolished in the initial blast, the explosion so strong it was heard as far as North Geelong and East Geelong and shook houses along Manning St.
Miraculously, Milne survived after being shielded from the direct force of the blast. His children, who slept on the opposite side of the house, escaped the explosion unharmed. His wife, however, wasn’t as fortunate and died at the scene.
To this day, no one has ever been charged with Mrs Milne’s murder.
Last year, she became the first civilian awarded the prestigious Victoria Police Star.
Originally published as Geelong’s most heinous unsolved murders
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