Colin Ridgeway

Colin Ridgeway was a high jumper for Australia who competed at the 1956 Olympics and the 1958 Commonwealth Games, where he failed to get out of qualifying. He later attended Lamar Tech (now Lamar University) in Texas, where he punted for the football team. This was based on his early career in Australian Rules Football, where he played for Carlton, reaching the VFL reserves level. In 1965 Ridgeway was recruited by the Dallas Cowboys and became the first Australian to play in the NFL, playing three games as a punter for Dallas in 1965. He had 13 punts for an average of 39.2 yards that year.

Ridgeway settled in the United States, in Dallas, and later became a successful businessman (and apparently began spelling his name Ridgway). In 1993, he was gruesomely murdered in his home in University Park, Texas, after being shot seven times by a man waiting for him. Through 2011 no definitive arrests have been made but police long suspected Kenneth Bicking, III, of the murder, though they lacked evidence to bring him to trial, despite his estranged, ex-wife Katherine Bicking, later stating that he admitted to her that he had committed the murder. They also suspected Joan Ridgeway, Colin’s ex-wife, of paying Bicking to carry out the murder, so that she could collect insurance money. However, Joan Ridgeway, now Joan Jackson, was not indicted after a grand jury investigation, where she used her Fifth Amendment rights against self-incrimination, and she also passed a lie detector test.

Personal Best: HJ – 2.146 (1962).