New South Wales Australia1987 Cold Case Solved – Arrest Shocks Community

A mother accused of brutally murdering her own 2-year-old daughter in a cult west of Sydney 35 years ago has been extradited from New Zealand to stand trial on murder charges.    On the morning of Tuesday, July 7, 1987, a 2- year-old girl was given a broom.  Her task was to sweep the path between the cottages of a religious community in the hills west of Sydney.

  Her mother decided she wasn’t doing it well enough. She took a piece of black plastic irrigation pipe and beat her daughter with it until she stopped breathing.  No one called an ambulance.  No one called the police.  And there is no grave for Tilly Craig. For 32 years, every adult who knew about what happened kept it a secret.

  And all these years, her father, Gerard Stanhope, had been searching for the little girl he thought was alive.  Subscribe now, because how this silence was finally broken and who it exposed will surprise you.  From Sydney, the road climbs west through the Blue Mountains to the town of Oberon, then turns south into countryside and bushland.

    After about 3 hours of travel from the city, she reaches a place called Porter’s Retreat.  In the mid-1980s, a man called Master and Dad by his followers founded a small religious community there.  Police describe him as a cult leader.  In court records, he appears as Alexander Villon. He was also known as Alfio Nicolosi. New Zealand media reports that he recruited mainly young women and single mothers.

The group had several names: “Service of God” , “Community of Eden” or simply “Family”. Most of what we know about life at Porter’s Retreat comes from a statement of agreed facts filed with the Supreme Court of New South Wales in 2024.  This is a description of Villon based on the allegations.  He was never convicted for any of these episodes.

According to that document, adults and children lived in a group of cottages, and Villon directed every aspect of their lives.  He isolated his followers from the outside world.  He controlled their money and even when they were allowed to eat.  Four times a day they were to meditate in a room called “Dad’s room,” where he would transmit messages from a spiritual guide he called Monet.

    It describes a cruel system of punishments.  Members who violated his rules were beaten with fists or pieces of plastic irrigation pipe. Parents were supposed to physically punish their children, and Villon allegedly singled out one child in particular.  Her name was Tilly.  Tilly Craig was a blonde girl who bore her mother’s last name .

Very few memories remain of her.  A handful of family photos and what other people later said about her in court.  In one photo, she is smiling in a blue- gray jumpsuit and a yellow turtleneck. In another, she is sitting on her father’s lap.  Her parents, Ellen Craig and Gerald Stanhope, separated when she was still an infant.

Ellen was a New Zealander, in her twenties.    A childhood friend, who met her on a bus when they were both 16, brought her to the group and remembers her as kind and caring.  In 1986, Ellen met Willon and joined his community.  Tilly went with her. Remember her father’s name: Gerald Stanhope.  This story keeps coming back to him.

  He fought in the courts for custody of his daughter, and a few months after Ellen arrived at Porter’s Retreat, her friend was kicked out of the group after she raised concerns about Tilly’s treatment. She was not silent.  She went to the Supreme Court and signed an affidavit.  In them , she described how Villon dragged the little girl into the bathroom almost every day and beat her with a wooden brush.

  Once, she said, he hit the child in the face so hard that she had a black eye.  Another member of the group also testified.  She said that Willon ordered others to punish Tilly in the same way , and that they all participated in it. Decades later, the agreed-upon facts described a similar routine.  No charges were filed.

  What happened on the morning of July 7th is taken from those agreed facts. Children at Porter’s Retreat were given chores to do, regardless of age.  That morning Tilly was sweeping the paths between the cottages.  Ellen was unhappy with the way she was doing it.  She started yelling at her .  Then she began to beat her with a piece of black plastic irrigation pipe on her arms, legs, and body .

  Another woman in the group saw part of it. She saw Tilly lying face down on the ground while Ellen continued to beat her on the back and legs. After a while, Ellen went inside and told the woman that the girl had stopped breathing. As the two of them lifted the child, a sound came from its lungs. “Oh, no.  “No, she left.” Ellen said.  They tried to resuscitate her.

  They carried her to the bathroom and laid her in the tub.  And then, instead of calling for help, both women went to Dad’s room and began to pray.  They waited for Villon to return.  According to the document, they were in that room for between half an hour and two hours. Whether any of the women believed they could act freely, no paper will say.

  The papers only say what they expected.  This expectation would later matter in court, when the judge had to decide what belonged to the group that morning and what belonged to Ellen.  When Wheeldon returned, the agreed-upon facts indicated that Tilly’s body had been placed in a 44- gallon barrel.  He allegedly set it on fire and threw wood, old clothes, and motor oil into the fire for several hours.

  The rules he wrote for the group , a manifesto called “The Community of Eden,” condemned funerals and mourning, favoring cremation. Another member of the group later said that he spoke of God’s laws, not man’s, as the only ones that applied to the family, and of protecting Ellen as a child of God. The next day, when the ashes had cooled, he supposedly sifted them through a sieve to make sure nothing was left unburned.

  He scattered the ashes, and with the help of his assistant, threw the barrel into the river on the estate. Then, the document says, he gave the group his orders.    No one was supposed to talk about what happened. If anyone asked about Tilly, they were supposed to say she was given up for adoption.  Someone should have asked soon enough.

  On August 1, Jared Stanhope arrived at Porter’s Retreat in search of his daughter. He had last seen her a few months before .  The document states that Wheeldon told him that Tilly was not here and to never come back.  Ellen, as mentioned, was hiding under the bed at this time. His daughter died on this earth 25 days ago.

  Three months later, on November 3, Wheeldon kicked Ellen out of the group and she flew back to New Zealand.  She changed her name to Joel Tenzing Smith, the first of many. Gerard did everything a father could do. He went to court .  He obtained injunctions to prevent Ellen from taking Tilly out of New South Wales, and later custody.

  Every step was legal, patient, and correct.  And every step was aimed at the child who was no longer among the living.  In 1988, he contacted newspapers and the ABC television company , which filmed a report about the group.  Wheeldon spoke to the reporter.  He said he raised Tilly but denied ever leaving her with bruises or abrasions.

  He said that Ellen wanted nothing to do with Gerard and that he didn’t think Gerard would ever find her. Tilly had been dead for several months by then.  Ellen, meanwhile, told Gerard various stories about his daughter’s whereabouts.  Sometimes she would just say that Tilly was safe and he shouldn’t worry.  In 1990, she told one of Gerard’s acquaintances that Tilly had been given away to a South African couple.

  The woman who signed the written statement also kept asking. She later told reporters that for years she had called Ellen’s mother about every 6 months to check on Tilly. The answer was never the same. Years passed, and he didn’t know where to look: whether she was with her mother in another country, or still somewhere in Australia.

In the early 2000s, Gerard posted a message for Tilly on an Australian missing persons website.    It had been 16 years since he last saw her.  He wrote that he spent years searching for her.  It almost consumed me. In the end, he had to move on. He hoped that one day their paths would cross.  He wrote that he would always regret the years he was unable to spend with her.

  She never answered.  By then, she had been dead for almost all of those 16 years.    This is what distinguishes this case from many others where the body is never found. Usually no one knows what happened. Immediately, a handful of adults knew exactly what had happened, where, and who was responsible.  The same people who could have stopped everything in a week didn’t say a word.

  The information was not lost.  She was hidden.  Gerard says police have records of his attempts to find her between 1986 and 1990. What they didn’t have was the truth.  They say they first received reports of Tilly’s death in October 2019. For 32 years, no one informed them.  Then, in October 2019, someone did it. Subscribe to be with us as we find out exactly what she said and to whom.

    A former member of the group contacted the police.  She attended a seminar for survivors and decided to speak out afterward.  According to reports at the time, she stated that she witnessed Tilly’s death. Detective Superintendent Danny Doherty, then commander of the homicide unit, called it a very dark secret that had been kept for too long and said she had done the right thing.

  It was a decision that anyone who knew about what happened could have made in 1988, 1995, or 2007.  For 32 years this was possible .  Detectives from the unsolved homicide unit have launched an investigation. Task Force Bertrand was formed to investigate a death that no one ever reported.  According to Gerald himself, it was only around 2020 that he learned that all his years of searching had been in vain.

  What the detectives didn’t have was a body or a crime scene that would survive to this day.  What they could do was find the people who were there.  They tracked down former members of the group who had scattered across the country and interrogated them.  Some of them had started normal lives far away, and they needed to find Helen Craig.

Working with New Zealand police, they tracked her down to Palmerston North across the Tasman Sea, where she had lived under various names for decades.  She lived in a government house at the end of a quiet cul-de-sac.  For a time, she worked at a women’s shelter, helping victims of domestic violence under the name Irene Craig.

Neighbors later described the woman as staying aloof. People who knew her told reporters that they had no idea .    A close friend from the group said she found it hard to believe Ellen could do this and that she had never seen her be aggressive.  Two years after that initial tip, in November 2021, detectives searched Porter’s Retreat pursuant to a crime scene warrant.

Police photos show officers combing the area and divers at the edge of the creek. Detectives later reported that divers had found part of the barrel, but no remains.  It matched the evidence they had received, but it wasn’t a body, and no one was expecting it.    On November 16, 2021, police from the two countries made arrests on the same day.

In New South Wales, detectives arrested Alexander Willon at Porters Retreat. He was 70 and still lived on the same land.  In Palmerston North, New Zealand police arrested 59-year-old Ellen Craig at her home.  Villon was charged with being an accessory to murder after the fact and obstructing the burial of a body. He was not charged with Tilly’s murder.

  Ellen Craig was charged with murder.  Speaking after the arrests, Detective Superintendent Doherty described the abuse of a two-year- old child as abhorrent and recalled a father who had lived without his daughter for more than three decades , not knowing what had happened to her.  In September 2022, additional charges were filed against Villon.

Police said that between 1987 and 2000, he physically and sexually abused four people: a teenage boy, a teenage girl and two women.  He was never convicted of this, and these charges were never tested in court. And the man the detectives arrested didn’t spend his life out of sight.  According to later reports, after the group’s breakup, he became a justice of the peace and a security consultant, providing firearms and other training to a number of government agencies.

  If you’ve been following similar cases with us, you know that the person at the center of events often remained in the shadows. He did the opposite. All this time, no one demanded that he answer for everything he had done .  Ellen Craig, meanwhile, fought to stay where she was.  Her lawyer told the Palmerston North District Court that she was too ill to travel.

The lawyer representing Australia asked why fleeing the country, changing her name and not returning should give her an advantage in avoiding trial for murder.  In March 2022, Judge Ian Carter ordered her extradition and gave her 15 days to appeal. That same month, Gerard told a New Zealand reporter who his anger was directed at .

  It was aimed at Willon, he said, for the way he manipulated people. He didn’t feel it towards Ellen.  He said he trusted that the police had done their job and that justice would be served.  Ellen did not appeal.  On May 12, 2022, detectives escorted her to Sydney.  After her arrest, Ellen was questioned by police, and a transcript records what she said.

  She told them that she was naive, that something had happened to her at the retreat , that she was out of her mind.  When asked about Tilly, the transcript shows her starting to answer, stopping, and starting again.  She said she couldn’t tell them what happened.  In May 2023, Ellen Craig appeared via video link at Bathurst Magistrates’ Court and pleaded not guilty to murder.

  This recognition remained in effect for over a year.  The trial in the murder case was scheduled for the end of July 2024. Instead, on June 14, she pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter. The prosecution admitted that the beating was excessive punishment, unlawful and dangerous, and that she did not intend to cause serious bodily harm or death.

  There will be no trial in the murder case .  The court will learn about what happened that morning mainly from a document agreed upon between the prosecution and Ellen Craig.  That same month, a judge found Alexandre Villon unfit to stand trial. He suffered a severe stroke.  He had brain damage, lung disease, amnesia, and was terminally ill. A finding of insanity is not a finding of guilt.

  This only means that the person cannot participate in the legal process. Sentencing was scheduled for August 21.  The judge had to answer the question he left open that morning in 1987 .  On August 21, 2024, 62- year-old Ellen Craig appeared via video link from the Dilvinia Correctional Centre before Judge Natalie Adams in the Supreme Court of New South Wales.

  Gerard Stanhope told the court that for 30 years he believed his daughter was alive.  He described how he woke up every day with hope, and ended each day in despair. He said he had barely slept last night, and that his thoughts kept returning to Tilly’s final moments .  He asked the judge to consider them and imagine that this child was her own.

  He said his daughter’s death was senseless, and that it happened at the hands of her own mother. Losing her, he says, is a wound that will never heal. Ellen Craig also wrote to the court. She wrote that she often thought about the day Tilly died and the horror of that day for her.  That her actions were terrible.

  That year Tilly would have turned 40 .  However, in her memory, she was still a baby, still a 2-year-old child.  She wrote that she regretted that Gerard continued to search with such hope when it was in her power to put an end to it, which she never did.  She wrote that she would never forgive herself. Judge Adams then announced her decision.

  This is the part where it’s easiest to make a mistake, so listen carefully.    It would be easy to tell this as a story about a cult, a manipulative person, an isolated property , a woman who did what she was told.  This is a convenient version because if the group is responsible for everything, no one person in particular should be responsible for one thing.

  Judge Adams did not accept this. She determined that Ellen had beaten Tilly as a form of punishment in a group where hitting children was the norm, rather than out of sheer cruelty.  She acknowledged that group influence could partly explain Ellen’s action, but said that brainwashing alone cannot justify it.  She noted that Willon often beat the children there, but what Ellen did to Tilly was far worse than anything he had ever done to her.

She named the environment.  She weighed this and held the woman in front of her accountable for going further than the environment demanded.  To call the circumstances of Tilly’s death tragic, the judge said, would be a gross understatement. Tilly, she said, was killed by the very person who was supposed to protect her.

Ellen subsequently did not seek any medical attention and hid what had happened for decades.  Judge Adams found Ellen’s remorse to be sincere.  She also said it was a shame it happened so late. Ellen Craig was sentenced to 9 years in prison with a minimum sentence of six years.  Her prison term began in November 2021.

She will be eligible for release in 2027, after which she will likely be deported to New Zealand.  It was a verdict of manslaughter, not murder, as the court found that she had no intention of killing her daughter.  9 years in a life that only lasted two.  There was another court hearing ahead.  Alexandre Villon was scheduled to appear in court in Sydney in October 2024.

  He didn’t show up.  The court was informed that he had died.  Each of the 26 charges against him was marked the same: proceedings discontinued, the accused deceased. Charges of aiding and abetting, charges regarding the handling of Tilly’s body.  None of the assault charges—he was never found guilty of anything .

  The story of the fire, the sieve, and the silence is based on facts agreed upon between the prosecution and Ellen Craig.  He was never able to answer that in the courtroom.  Now he will never be able to do that.  Gerard Stanhope spent months after Tilly’s death in the courts, seeking orders that could no longer protect her.

  He spent the decade after that, wondering if she had been given to another family and searching for her.    A two-year-old child was given a broom on a winter morning, and she didn’t sweep the path well enough.  What was left of her was scattered throughout Porter’s Retreat.  There is no grave, no tombstone, no place where her father could stand.

  Almost nothing of Tilly Craig survived.  Her name survived because 32 years later, a person went to the police and said it out loud. If you want more stories like this, where the silence that lasted for decades is finally broken, subscribe and we’ll tell you the next one. If Tilly’s story moved you, let us know what you think in the comments .

  More Australian unsolved cases await you in the playlist below.