We had planned for this episode to focus on what is known about our prime suspect, Stan Hart. But two days after Sleepers Episode 1 dropped, everything changed. Out of nowhere came an extraordinary interview with Anthony Kilmartin, the then 13-year-old boy who stood just metres away from the man who abducted Joanne Ratcliffe and Kirste Gordon from Adelaide Oval in 1973.

Anthony isn’t just a witness. He’s the witness. The only person to see the abductor’s face up close and give the description that built the first identikit image in the case. For decades, his voice was largely absent from public view, until now.

In this raw, unfiltered conversation recorded just days ago, Anthony shares the details still burned into his memory half a century later, the sounds, the faces, and the moment that changed everything.

This is why sleepers is different. We’re not just telling you a story; we’re in the middle of a journalistic investigation, speaking directly to the people who lived it, and putting you in the room with us where, just maybe, the truth may emerge.

Click HERE for Episode Acknowledgements.

And remember…

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On August 25, 1973, 11-year-old Joanne Ratcliffe and 4-year-old Kirste Gordon left their seats during a football match at Adelaide Oval… and never came back. Despite thousands of witnesses, multiple sightings, and decades of investigation, their disappearance remains one of South Australia’s darkest mysteries.

In this opening episode of sleepers, investigative journalist Bryan Littlely and producer Max Marten take you back to that spring afternoon — the bustling crowd, the frantic search, and the chilling last images of the girls seen with a strange man in a 1950s-style fedora.

We explore police theories, forgotten leads, the flawed identikit sketch that shaped the case, and the long shadow this crime cast over a community already haunted by the Beaumont children’s disappearance just seven years earlier.

This is where sleepers begins: with two little girls, a stadium full of people, and a predator who vanished into the noise of a football crowd.

Fifty years on, it’s time to rise and shine a light on the secrets buried with this case.

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view acknowledgements here

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.