A really good question…. The Child’s mother died in 1991, and suffered with alcohol addition prior…… See article below …
FA‘s wife was deceased in 1991…
Also note that FA’s sister in law was a “Jones”…..
From an archived Library Article
MAN FOR TRIAL OVER GIRL'S KILLING IN 1968
November 27, 1991 | Sydney Morning Herald, The (Australia)
Author/Byline: COL ALLISON | Page: 10 | Section: News and Features
697 Words
Frank Abbott, the man charged with the murder of a teenage Windsor girl in 1968, allegedly laughed after forcibly driving his alcoholic wife and her friend to bushland at East Kurrajong and showing them where he killed the girl, Westmead Local Court heard yesterday.
Abbott, 50, of Taree, was yesterday committed for trial in the Supreme Court at a date to be fixed.
The magistrate, Mr John Hiatt, said the strength of the prosecution case was such that a jury could find beyond reasonable doubt that Abbott had taken his 17-year old victim, Helen Mary Harrison, into the bush on March 16, 1968, and strangled her.
He accepted the evidence of the Director of Public Prosecutions's key witness, a prison informer known only as "Mr X", that Abbott had tried to implicate him in the murder by forcing him at gunpoint to dispose of a Holden utility Abbott said he used to abduct the girl before raping and killing her.
Mr X made contact with police in May last year, 22 years since Abbott allegedly confessed to him.
This resulted in the reopening of the case.
Mr X told the court he had been terrified of Abbott all this time, following death threats.
Mrs Sheryl Anne Spencer, 36, a friend of Abbott's late wife Katrina, who died two weeks ago from a burst ulcer, said the defendant took her and Katrina- whom he kept bashing during the ride - to the bush site.
There he had bragged about the killing, "talking as if it was a big joke, saying how he had scruffed the girl, you know raped her, saying he had satisfied his needs with her".
Mrs Spencer said Abbott told them he had tried to date Helen Harrison at the produce shop in which she worked at Pitt Town but she had refused.
He said he picked her up during a wild storm as she rode her bicycle towards home after work one day and started talking to her "but she was frigid".
Abbott allegedly boasted to his wife and her friend how the girl had not stopped screaming while being driven away from her home into the bush, where he grabbed her by the throat and strangled her.
Mrs Spencer told the court Abbott said he had sex with the girl before killing her and again when she was dead.
"I thought he must be sick in the head," she said.
A few days later Frank Abbott told her Penrith police tried to charge him with the murder, "but they couldn't make it stick and he just started laughing about it".
Abbott's sister-in-law, Christine Mary Jones, said Abbott had lured her into his car in 1972.
When she refused his amorous advances near an aunt's home and started crying and pleading to be let go, Abbott pulled out a knife and told her to shut up, saying: "You're like that other stupid , I took her out to the bush and I soon shut her up."
Terrified and hysterical after having been badly beaten that day by her de facto husband, she pleaded to be allowed to go home to attend to her young baby.
But Abbott took her into the bush and at knife-point during a night-long ordeal, savagely raped her four times against further protests that she was having her period.
Mrs Jones told the court she had not reported the rape for fear of reprisal from Abbott who had threatened to run her down in his car if she talked to anyone.
Abbott's counsel, Mr Michael Kidd, of the Aboriginal Legal Service, in his summation, dismissed the evidence of the two women as "axe grinders".
He queried the credibility of the secret police witness, Mr X, a man who had admitted to living a life of dishonesty.
He said Mr X's evidence was a total fabrication aimed at gaining prison remission.
Mr Kidd concluded by saying: "Even if someone goes around bragging of murder that doesn't mean he actually did it.
"Abbott is no more than a victim of the prison system ... one who stands over people to get his way, but that doesn't make him a murderer."
Caption: Illus: The parents of Helen Harrison, Claude and Mary Harrison, outside the Westmead Local Court yesterday.
IMO
