Elizabeth Ratliff

Who is Elizabeth Ratliff?

Elizabeth McKee was born in 1942 and reared with two sisters on a farm on Rhode Island. A serious, artistic child, she played an acoustic guitar, sang and spoke French and German.

For 17 years Elizabeth, known as "Liz," taught elementary school at a school for the children of military families at the Rhein-Main Air Base in Frankfurt, Germany where she met Captain George Ratliff, an Air Force navigator. They married in 1981. Their daughter Margaret was born that same year, and two years later, their second daughter, Martha, was born.

Although the circumstances are unclear, George Ratliff died from a heart attack while taking part in a secret military operation during the Invasion of Grenada in 1983.

Liz Ratliff also died under mysterious circumstances on November 25, 1985 when she was found at the bottom of a staircase in her house in Weiterstadt-Graefenhausen. An autopsy at the time of her death concluded she had died from an intra-cerebral haemorrhage secondary to the blood coagulation disorder Von Willebrand's disease. The coroner determined that the haemorrhage resulted in immediate death followed by Ratliff falling down the stairs after collapsing. Margaret and Martha were then raised by close friends of the family, Michael and Patricia Peterson, but were never adopted by them.