Devil Hidden In The Detail
Newcastle Herald
Tuesday February 22, 2005
By DAN PROUDMAN Chief Police Reporter
IT was a gruesome scene: the body of Elizabeth Dixon slumped across the front seats of her 1977 Mazda with 27 stab wounds, including five to the heart.
But the frenzied nature of the attack on the Irish expat was in stark contrast with one piece of evidence at the crime scene.
A black shoelace was tied in a neat bow holding her hands behind her back.
Many detectives suspected the bow, tied perfectly, pointed towards a woman being responsible for the 1982 attack.
The theory went that men would not have worried about neat bows, a "granny knot" would have done the same job.
Then again, maybe the killer had wanted to set investigators on a false path.
Despite a major investigation, the detectives' hunches were never tested.
Ms Dixon's murderer remains unknown, almost 23 years since she was driven to her death just outside Maitland.
Detectives have always suspected the killer was known to the victim and was driving Ms Dixon into bush near Ashtonfield when the attack took place.
Evidence points towards the killer swinging a long, thin-bladed knife at Ms Dixon, 31, while driving along the bush track.
But as Ms Dixon fell towards her attacker, the driver may have lost control of the Mazda and careered into trees and a stump.
A frenzied attack followed.
Ms Dixon suffered 27 knife wounds and at least three blows to the head with something similar to a piece of wood.
A jogger found Ms Dixon's body three days later and a team of up to 50 police began searching the scrub for clues.
The car keys were found 19 metres from the vehicle but the murder weapon was never recovered.
Thirty people were questioned in the first day of the investigation and 100 more called in within a week.
The rumour mill worked overtime with the disclosure of another "suspect" being interviewed by police only fuelling the community's fear.
The murder did nothing to quell fears of women across the Hunter.
A month earlier, barmaid Debbie Rae Pritchard had disappeared after leaving the Palais nightspot.
Though the cases were quite different, detectives from both investigations shared information in an effort to rule out any links.
Two decades later it emerged that Miss Pritchard was abducted by serial rapist Maurice Marsland and murdered.
Her body was buried at Fullerton Cove.
THIS is the second in a Herald series on unsolved Hunter murders from the past 35 years.
Tomorrow's Cold Case looks at the disappearance and suspected murder of Lake Macquarie's Susan Isenhood, whose remains were discovered in the Kiwarrak State Forest in 1987 but identified only last year.
© 2005 Newcastle
Cold case reopened with bizarre twists
ALAN HARDIE
11 Dec, 2009 07:52 AM
Chilling details of a man in a blood-spattered shirt borrowing a friend’s car and disappearing – shortly before the body of Elizabeth “Betty” Dixon was found in Ashtonfield 27 years ago – were made known to the Maitland Mercury this week by two women who used to live here. Both women said they had given this information to police at least twice since the murder on April 6, 1982.
They believe the Kiwi who borrowed the car – which was later found abandoned in Queensland – was interviewed by police but never charged on any matter.
The women contacted the Mercury in a bid to find out what happened to the information they gave to police.
With the killer still at large, both women are still nervous about revealing their identities.
So while their names and phone numbers were given to police with the women’s consent, the identities of everyone concerned have been changed.
The man who could hold the key to the mystery – we will call him Desmond – is still believed to be living in the Maitland area, but the Mercury was unable to contact him.
Des had loaned his car to the Kiwi – and told his brother “Morris” how startled he was to see the Kiwi’s shirt spattered in blood.
Morris clearly remembered being told of the incident.
“My brother told me the Kiwi had come to borrow his car ‘in a hurry’,” Morris told the Mercury this week.
“I remember the incident well, because all my cassettes were in my brother’s car and I lost the lot.
“None of them were ever recovered.
“But I remember my brother saying that when he came for the car, the Kiwi had blood on his shirt - particularly on his one arm and elbow. It was all very strange.
“I think police also recovered his car at a later stage.
“But as far as I know, the Kiwi was never arrested.”
