Man charged over 1982 murder of NI woman in Australia

A man has appeared in court in New South Wales, Australia charged in connection with the murder of a Northern Ireland woman who was stabbed and beaten to death in 1982.

The body of Elizabeth Dixon, known as Betty, was found in a car at Ashtonfield, a suburb of Maitland, on April 6th, 33 years ago, by a passing jogger.

An autopsy found the 31-year-old had been stabbed 27 times.

On Wednesday, acting on new information provided in August about the killing, New South Wales police arrested and charged Rodney Lawrence (64) with her murder.

Mr Lawrence has been remanded in custody and will appear before Newcastle Local Court by video link next Wednesday, November 4th.

His arrest marks the first significant development in the investigation into the murder of Ms Dixon in over 30 years.

Elizabeth Dixon moved from Holywood, Co Down to Australia in 1979, planning to stay for a year. Aged 28 at the time, she loved her new life and decided to stay.

She settled in Metford, a suburb of the city of Maitland, 166km north of Sydney. Known as Betty to her friends, she bought a car, worked as a secretary for a mining company in the nearby town of Kurri Kurri and played in squash tournaments.

But three years after arriving in Australia she was dead, stabbed in a frenzied attack.

Ms Dixon was last seen leaving the Hit-N-Dip squash centre, where she sometimes worked, three days before her body was found in her Mazda at Ashtonfield, another suburb of Maitland, on April 6th 1982.

A man out for a run found Ms Dixon’s body. He told police he had seen the car the previous day but had a closer look the following evening when he saw it again.

No murder weapon was found.

Though the case drew a lot of public interest at the time, no arrests were made. Eventually the investigation was handed over to the cold case unit of the New South Wales police.

Two years ago a reward for information relating to Ms Dixon’s death was increased from AU$50,000 (€32,280) to AU$150,000 (€99,000).

The police said the killer probably “knew Ms Dixon, either through a direct association or by living close to her around the time of the murder”.

They said she “enjoyed a good circle of friends and family” and there was nothing which pointed to her becoming a victim of such a crime.

“Some victims may have some sort of association with a criminal element, but not Miss Dixon,” the police said.

In a renewed push for public assistance in 2013 one of her nieces, Simone Hawkins, told the Newcastle Herald newspaper of their decades of despair.

Ms Hawkins said: “The immediate family have only ever had one question lingering for the last 31 years - why?”

“What did Betty do so horrible for her to be taken in this way? Once the answer to that question is revealed then, and only then, will we all finally have closure and peace.”

But there was no new information until August this year when the cold case unit got a breakthrough after 30 years. A tip-off that led them to look again at evidence gathered in 1982.

Maitland's deputy mayor Bob Geoghegan knew Ms Dixon. "She was very friendly to everybody and extremely popular," he said.

“That’s why I think everybody was so shocked when she was murdered like that. They found it very hard to believe.”