Ron Crawford hired a hitman to kill his wife – and got away with it

The Sydney Morning Herald John Silvester

18 Sept 2026 11:40 AEST Summary

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From the report

For 18 years, Ben Crawford believed his mother died changing a tyre. Then he unpicked his father’s fatal lie.

**Not from this story.** A library photograph of australia city skyline, used to illustrate it. Melbourne, Australia by night Linh_rOm / flickr, CC BY

**Not from this story.** A library photograph of australia city skyline, used to illustrate it. Melbourne, Australia by night Linh_rOm / flickr, CC BY

This is a summary. The indicators are not. The scores were measured over this summary alone, which is less of the article than we would like and makes them less certain.

Indicators

Niral Score 19.5 mundaneloaded

Highlighted in the text. Words that carry a fact and quoted words are not counted.

No word appears twice.

Sentiment -0.4 hostilefavourable Sourcing 28 unattributednamed sources Mood 24.1 sorrowjoyful

5 read zero: political diction, generational, gender, jingoistic, religious

Political diction 0 left-codedright-coded Generational 0 harder on the oldharder on the young Gender 0 no gendered framingframing throughout Jingoistic 0 reports to a readerwrites from a camp Religious 0 not invokedovert

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Measured on The Sydney Morning Herald’s report as filed, which is all we may publish of this one.

How this outlet filed it, and how we rewrote it

No other newsroom we read has filed on this event, so there is nothing to compare it with yet.

Also covered by The Age, Brisbane Times. We hold only their summary of it, not the report, so there is nothing of theirs to measure here.

Outlet	Niral Score
The Sydney Morning Heraldas they published this story	19.5

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The same event elsewhere

2 other outlets filed this story. The scoreboard above is what they did differently.

The Age Ron Crawford hired a hitman to kill his wife – and got away with it Niral 19.5 political 0 Brisbane Times Ron Crawford hired a hitman to kill his wife – and got away with it Niral 19.5 political 0