The presumed murders are thought by South Australia Police and the media to be related to the disappearance of the Beaumont children in 1966.

[citation needed] Ratcliffe's parents and Gordon's grandmother, who were friends, allowed the two girls to go to the toilet together on two occasions that day.

After an unsuccessful first attempt, Kathleen Ratcliffe was finally able to get an announcement made on the oval's PA system shortly after the game ended around 5:00 pm.

In 1979, Ratcliffe's father told the Coroners Court of Queensland that his daughter had been to the oval dozens of times, that she would not have left voluntarily, and that she knew how to use a telephone to call an emergency number.

[17] He reportedly rarely missed a North Adelaide match,[17] and a decade after the abduction he was found to be a child abuser.

[18] In 2013, Suzie Wilkinson appealed to the authorities to look into the role that family friend "Frank" may have played in the disappearance of the girls.

Gordon's grandmother also took notice of Frank's behaviour during the search for the girls saying, "the other man stayed in his seat."

In 2023, convicted Queensland paedophile Errol George Radan (died 2022)[19] was revealed to have been officially investigated as a suspect before his death.

After Radan left his Broadview home, it was alleged that both a scrapbook containing clippings of Ratcliffe and Gordon and the clothes of young girls were found in the underground drainage system.