A Melbourne man has been charged with murdering his wife, who was found dead under a car 16 years ago in what was believed to be an accident.

Police last night charged Ronald William Crawford and another man with the murder of Anne Louise Crawford, who was found crushed under her bronze Ford Fairlane in the driveway of the family home in De Havilland Avenue in outer-suburban Strathmore in 1988.

At the time police believed the 35-year-old mother of two had been changing a tyre and trying to retrieve a wheel nut from under the car when it fell on her.

But in November this year police from the cold case unit announced they had received a tip-off that her death had not been accidental, and that they believed two men were involved.

Today they arrested Crawford, 54, of Essendon and Lindsay Allen Rountree, 53, of Victoria and charged them both with murder.

Police said Rountree was arrested at 8am (AEDT) and Crawford walked into the St Kilda Road Police Complex with his solicitor about 5pm (AEDT) and surrendered himself to police.

Both men have now been charged with Mrs Crawford's murder and remanded in custody.

Police said they would both appear in the Melbourne Magistrate's Court on Monday.


The Age

Well better late than never, but it should never have taken this long in the first place and is an obvious and major mistake by the police and justice system!

This sort of thing happens all the time. Go to Google and do a search in the news section on "old murder" (in quotes). I guarantee you'll find at least a half a dozen different cases in the last couple of weeks where police cold crime units have solved murders from years and even decades ago. In the US there's currently the Pulsifer murder, where a woman and her at-that-time boyfriend have been charged with murdering her three-year-old daughter in California in 1969. There's not much info on that right now, probably, because they've been arrested but aren't due to go to trial yet. In the UK there's the "Lady In The Lake Murder" currently in the headlines. A former teacher is on trial for murdering his wife and disposing of her body in a lake in 1976 0r 77. Her body wasn't found until, I *think*, the late nineties.

For some reason these stories fascinate me. In one respect it's like a window opening up, letting you look into the past. Then too, there are always these people who do something terrible, think they've gotten away with it, then years later when they least expect it, justice calls.

Loretta

damn i bet they thought they had got away with it....

ah well i guess everyone gets caught eventually....

Good.
hehe
I'd have lOVED to see their faces when the police arrested them-CLASSIC!!!