THE BOY IN THE BLUE CAP
On a sunny morning in Rockingham, Perth, on October 14, 1997, an 11-year-old boy named Gerard Ross set off to the shops with his older brother Malcolm.
Gerard wore his favourite blue New York Yankees baseball cap and was carrying $5 cash in his back pocket.
He was going to buy a comic book to read while on a family holiday.
As Malcolm forged ahead on his rollerblades, Gerard continued on foot.
“See you at the shops,” Malcolm said as he zoomed past. “Yep,” Gerard replied.
But Gerard never made it to the shops.
After saying goodbye to his big brother, the schoolboy vanished.
Malcolm returned home without Gerard, and their parents Stewart and Cyrese immediately knew something was very, very wrong.
The seaside town sprang into action and a huge search was underway by that afternoon.
Tragically, Gerard’s body was found two weeks later on October 28, dumped in the Karnup pine plantation, 20 kilometres away. His killer has never been found.
The West Australian’s new web series The Boy in the
Blue Cap: The Gerard Ross Story investigates the 22-yearold mystery.
Journalist Kristin Shorten spent six months conducting interviews and chasing leads in the hope Gerard’s horrific murder will finally be solved.
The series includes neverbefore-seen interviews with key eye-witnesses, police investigators and still-grieving family members.
The most heart-wrenching accounts come from Gerard’s parents Stewart and Cyrese, his brother Malcolm and younger sister Beth.
“‘For me, it was the worst nightmare I couldn’t get out of. Not knowing where he was … was so difficult. Just thinking about what could be happening to him. It was unbearable. It was just awful,” Cyrese told Kristin through tears.
“I felt very powerless. There was nothing I could do. As a parent you want to protect your children, and I was sitting there so annoyed at myself that I couldn’t do anything,” Stewart added.
Cyrese was heavily pregnant with twins the day her youngest son Gerard went missing.
The family were visiting the sleepy seaside port of
Rockingham from their home in Newman, WA, after Cyrese’s mother and sister flew to Australia from Scotland for a holiday.
After 14 days, Gerard’s body was found lying face-down in the pine plantation by a horse trainer named Mick Miller.
He was fully clothed, with the money still tucked into his back pocket.
Police have described the murder as “brutal”, but no cause of death has ever been made public.
“There are certain things you never ever tell anybody apart from the person that you eventually end up with as a suspect,” former assistant police commissioner Bob Kucera said.
Cyrese recalled: “I just wanted to have him and to be told that we couldn’t see him was so difficult.
“They said it would be really bad for us to see his body because he’d been laying in the forest for a couple of weeks and it would be detrimental to our memory of him.
“In a way we were grateful that his body had been found. If someone had him, that was torture, so to know he wasn’t going through any suffering or fear was a relief.”
In January 1998, Cyrese gave birth to twin baby daughters Rebecca and Rachel.
“They helped us very quickly. They brought us back together,” Cyrese said of her girls.
After a few years, the Ross family returned to their homeland of Scotland.
The investigation was turning cold – and all police knew was that Gerard’s death was likely a “thrill kill”.
They believed his abduction and subsequent murder was a crime of opportunity and he may have been taken by a paedophile living in the Rockingham area.
Within a year, more than 300 persons of interest had been identified. And on the 12-month anniversary of Gerard’s murder,
“IT WAS THE WORST NIGHTMARE I COULDN’T GET OUT OF, NOT KNOWING WHERE HE WAS”
a $100,000 reward was posted.
By 1998, there was the first major breakthrough: Gerard
– or his killer – had been in contact with a dog.
But Gerard’s blue cap has never been located, and police are confident his hat could be the final piece of the puzzle.
So far, more than 1300 people have been nominated as having possible links with Gerard’s murder.
But more than two decades have passed with no arrest or conviction.
It’s been 22 painful years, but Bob Kucera says he is hopeful the perpetrator will be caught one day soon.
“It never goes away. The coppers are always there, they’re always looking,” he said. “Particularly anything involving kids – you never close the door on that.”
And Kristin Shorten, along with The West Australian, is helping to keep that door wide open.
• If you have any information about the abduction or murder of Gerard Ross, please contact Crime Stoppers on 1800 333 000.