The Confession That Couldn't Have Been True - Episode 63

The Butterfly Pillowcase No One Can Explain: The Bowraville Murders of Colleen Craig, Evelyn Stadhams, and Clinton Durow

A single pink shoe on a front lawn. A pillowcase with a butterfly pattern stuffed inside a dead teenager's shorts. Three Aboriginal Australian children from the same tight-knit community vanished within five months — and police told each family there was nothing to worry about. How do three cases from the same street, involving the same suspect, end in two acquittals and one body never found?

In this episode, we explore the distinctive pillowcase that matched sheets on a specific caravan bed and was found tucked inside the victim's clothing, a delivery truck driver who claims he saw an unconscious young man in the road with a large white man standing over him — and never gave formal testimony at trial, and the forensic evidence including a blood speck on a headboard that was destroyed during testing before it could be fully analyzed. Were three separate investigations the reason justice failed, or was it something deeper — a systemic decision about whose children were worth finding?

Case Details

Victim: Colleen Craig, 16, student; Evelyn Stadhams, 4, child; Clinton Durow, 16, student.

Date: September 13, 1990 – February 1, 1991.

Location: Bowraville, New South Wales, Australia.

Case Status: Officially unsolved. Two acquittals were entered — Clinton's murder in 1994 and Evelyn's murder in 2006. A retrial application under New South Wales's revised double jeopardy law was dismissed in September 2018. No charges have ever been filed in Colleen's case. Colleen's body has never been found.

Episode Key Points

- A pillowcase with a distinctive pink-and-brown butterfly pattern was found stuffed inside Clinton's shorts at the body recovery site — it matched the bedding on the suspect's caravan mattress.

- When officers first searched the caravan, all sheets had been removed from the bed; when a second detective visited shortly after, the sheets were back in place.

- A blood speck found on the caravan headboard was confirmed human but was destroyed during the typing process before a match could be established.

- A delivery driver reported stopping his truck on February 1, 1991, for an unconscious shoeless young Aboriginal man in the road, with a large white man nearby and a car parked with its trunk open — he was never called to testify at trial.

Colleen Craig, Evelyn Stadhams, Clinton Durow, Bowraville murders, New South Wales homicide, Aboriginal Australia cold case, 1990 1991, true crime, homicide, forensic science, investigation, unsolved mysteries, criminal minds, true crime English.