A Cut Window Screen & A Missing Child: Eloise Worledge

Eloise Worledge was an eight-year-old girl living with her parents, Lindsay and Patricia, and her siblings in the suburb of Beaumaris, Victoria, Australia. The Worledge family led a quiet life, filled with the usual joys and routines of raising two young children. Patricia was working as a student teacher when she met Lindsay, a New Zealand born man three years her senior. He was building an academic career.

Eloise Worledge was the first child of Lindsay and Patricia Worledge, born on October 8, 1967. She was followed by her sister, Anna, two years later, and then her younger brother, Blake, in 1971. The young family lived in a modest four-bedroom weatherboard home on Scott Street in Beaumaris, Victoria, just a short 500-meter walk from Beaumaris Beach. Their home sat in a quiet, suburban neighborhood typical of Australia in the 1970s, offering the kind of tranquil surroundings ideal for raising a young family. The Worledges had settled into what many would consider an idyllic life—close to schools, parks, and local shops—providing the perfect environment for their children to grow.

But that all changed on the 13^th of January, 1976.

At around 7:30AM that morning, Lindsay and Patricia were awoken by their four-year-old son, Blake, who came into their bedroom and said that Eloise was missing. He had gone to wake his sister, only to find her bed empty. Panic surged through the house as Lindsay and Patricia rushed to Eloise’s room. They found that her bed had clearly been slept in but Eloise was nowhere to be found. The window of her bedroom had been tampered with – the wire fly-screen had been cut away and rolled upward, and the window was fully open.

Despite the proximity of their bedroom to Eloise’s, they hadn’t heard a single unusual noise during the night. The last time they had seen their daughter was the night before. Patricia recalled putting her to bed at around 10:30PM.“I went out for a short while. Then I kissed her again when I came home about 11PM,” she said.¹

That evening, Lindsay addressed the media, appealing for any information that could lead to his daughter’s safe return. “She would not even go to the shopping centre by herself,” he said. His greatest worry was that some “deranged” person had taken her, a theory that quickly became central to the investigation. One senior detective commented on the likely knowledge the abductor had of the family, saying, “It is very probable that the abductor would have known the family as he knew which window to go to.”

Eloise’s disappearance sent shockwaves through the tight-knit community of Beaumaris, and a national search effort was launched. Inspector Murray Burgess appealed to the public for information, stating: “Someone must know something about what has happened to this girl.”² The window was thoroughly examined, but it was reported that no fingerprints or footprints could be found. Moreover, detectives believed that the hole was too small for a man to have climbed through without disturbing anybody.³

It wasn’t long before a tip came in from neighbours of the family; multiple people reported there had been intruders on their properties in the nights leading up to Eloise’s disappearance. Some neighbours also reported two door-to-door book salesmen in the neighbourhood. Detectives tracked them down, and eliminated them as persons of interest.

The search pressed on, and a team of homicide detectives joined in on the search. Thee search extended to cliff-top scrubland and golf courses in the area, but nothing of interest could be found. Detectives also made sure to search all of the unoccupied homes in the area, working on the theory that Eloise had been taken and then left alive somewhere. But no trace of Eloise was found. Detective Chief Inspector Harry Norton said on the 16^th of January: “It is felt that the child is being cared for. We still can’t say there’s any alternative to her being removed by someone who knew her. There is no apparent criminal motive.”⁴

Toward the end of the month, Eloise’s parents’ received a $10,000 ransom demand. A man had called their home and snarled: “I have your baby. I have your baby. I want $10,000” and then he hung up. Detectives ruled it out as a hoax; they believed that if it was genuine, there would have been a follow up call. Moreover, a teenage boy named Eric Gimbert told detectives he believed he overheard a man making the call from the foyer at Mercy Hospital. .⁵

As the days turned into weeks after Eloise’s disappearance, the initial flurry of hope began to fade. Over 300 detectives and police officers had worked tirelessly on the case, but by early February, authorities announced that not a single substantial lead had been uncovered. With no breakthroughs, the search efforts were scaled back to just eight detectives tasked with processing any tips that came in from the public .⁶

That same week, however, a glimmer of hope emerged. Detectives began following a new lead after a neighbour reported seeing a green 1966 Holden station wagon parked near the Worledge home on the night Eloise disappeared . The lead was promising, and one of Australia’s top criminologists, David Biles, even stepped in to offer his expertise on the case. Yet, despite this renewed push, time continued to pass, and the months began to stretch on. The excitement around the new lead quickly waned, and the investigation hit another dead end. By September, the focus of the search shifted from rescuing a missing child to recovering a body. ⁷ That same week, one of Australia’s top criminologists, David Biles, stepped in to offer his assistance in the case.

Despite this grim shift, Patricia Worledge remained resolute in her hope. She refused to believe her daughter was dead. “I don’t believe Ella’s dead and will go on believing she’s alive until it’s proved otherwise,” Patricia stated, maintaining that Eloise could be far from home, perhaps even overseas, living a life they could not yet fathom. “She’s quite happy,” Patricia suggested, clinging to the possibility that her daughter was safe somewhere, just out of reach .

Detective Chief Inspector Albert Homburg, who led the renewed search efforts, confirmed that detectives were still attempting to trace the green Holden station wagon. It remained the only vehicle near the Worledge home on the night of Eloise’s disappearance that had not yet been accounted for. He also revealed that investigators were looking for a man who had been spotted around Beaumaris in the days before Eloise vanished. Described as a balding, elderly man with glasses, he had reportedly been seen in the company of young girls near the local shopping center.⁸

The renewed search for Eloise Worledge, tragically, turned up no new leads. Before the family knew it, three long years had passed since the eight-year-old’s disappearance. As the months turned into years, the case remained cold. By 1982, detectives reported that they still received about six calls a year related to Eloise’s case, but none ever led to a breakthrough.⁹

Years later, Eloise’s brother, Blake, shared a haunting recollection from that night. He said he had heard “robbers” taking his sister, but fear of being abducted himself kept him silent. Tragically, Blake’s life was cut short when he died in a car accident in August 1997 at just 26 years old.¹⁰

Over the years, numerous theories have emerged about Eloise’s disappearance. One theory suggests that a child predator or someone known to the family took her. The sighting of a green Holden station wagon outside the Worledge home that night has fuelled speculation that the driver may have abducted Eloise. One neighbour even reported hearing a child cry out and the sound of a car door slamming shut around 2 AM, but the lead never yielded any concrete evidence.¹¹

A more troubling theory implicated Eloise’s own father, Lindsay, in her disappearance. Rumours circulated that Eloise wasn’t his biological daughter, and detectives discovered that both Lindsay and Patricia had been involved in extramarital affairs around the time of her disappearance. Lindsay had also been struggling with depression, particularly over the impending separation from Patricia.¹²  

During a reinvestigation in 2002, Eloise Worledge’s mother, Patricia, shared a chilling belief with detectives: she suspected her estranged husband, Lindsay, of being involved in their daughter’s disappearance. She claimed that Lindsay’s involvement could have been a twisted attempt to prolong their failing marriage and to spite her. Lindsay, however, always denied having any role in Eloise’s abduction. Despite these suspicions, a polygraph test administered to Lindsay came back inconclusive.

The timing of Eloise’s disappearance only added to the suspicion. On the day Eloise was found missing, Lindsay had been scheduled to move out of the family home. The night before, he had been drinking, but, in a deviation from his usual behaviour, he told Patricia that he had checked on the children at 11:40PM before going to bed. According to Patricia, the passage light, which was always left on for the children until the last parent went to bed, remained on that night—an unusual oversight on Lindsay’s part. ¹³

Forensic evidence discovered later by detectives raised even more questions. Experts concluded that the wire screen on Eloise’s window had most likely been cut from the inside, not the outside as originally thought. The cut had been made at a height of 195 centimetres, and the dust and cobwebs around the window had remained undisturbed, making an outside break-in seem unlikely. Furthermore, traces of tan bark from the garden were found inside Eloise’s bedroom. These findings complicated the abduction theory, suggesting that someone inside the home may have been involved.

A coroner’s inquest in 2003 brought to light even more unsettling revelations. Detectives had uncovered links between Eloise’s family and two local child molesters—one worked at a shop frequented by the family, while the other had ties to a Beaumaris drama group that the Worledge family visited. Despite these suspicious connections, no concrete evidence tied either individual to Eloise’s disappearance.¹⁴

Ultimately, Coroner Frank Hender was unable to determine who was responsible for Eloise’s presumed death. He ruled that her disappearance and presumed death remained suspicious but could not conclusively implicate any specific person, including her parents or the local sex offenders. The mystery of Eloise’s fate, shrouded in uncertainty and unanswered questions, endures to this day.¹⁵

1. The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 January, 1976 – “Father Appeals for Help to Find Daughter”
2. Post Courier, 15 January, 1976 – “CIB Search for Missing Melb. Girl”
3. The Sydney Morning Herald, 15 January, 1976 – “Missing Girl is Alive, Police Think”
4. The Sydney Morning Herald, 16 January, 1976 – “Police Hope Kidnapper Will Relent and Release Girl, 8”
5. The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 January, 1976 – “Eloise Demand a Hoax”
6. The Age, 3 February, 1976 – “One Little Girl Won’t be There”
7. The Age, 9 February, 1976 – “Eloise Search”
8. The Age, 28 September, 1976 – “Mother is Sure Her Girl’s Alive”
9. The Age, 3 April, 1982 – “Hunt Continues”
10. The Age, 27 August, 1997 – “Tragedy Strikes Family Again”
11. The Age,8 July, 2003 – “Still a Mystery”
12. The Age, 3 July, 1997 – “Abduction Haunts a Generation with Fear”
13. The Age, 5 July, 2003 – “Who Stole Eloise?”
14. The Age, 5 July, 2003 – “What Happened to Eloise Worledge?”
15. Australian Associated Press, 7 July, 2003 – “Coroner Delivers Open Finding”