Police have found underwear belonging to a missing five-year-old girl close to where she was seen being led away from an aboriginal camp near Alice Springs by a recently released criminal with a long history of violence.
Sharon Granites was reported missing from her home in Old Timers Camp at about 1.30am on Sunday, and on Monday police named Jefferson Lewis, 47, who was released from jail six days earlier, as suspect in her disappearance.
Northern Territory Police Acting Assistant Commissioner Peter Malley said on Wednesday investigators are now looking into whether Sharon was sexually assaulted, and suspect members of the local indigenous community know where Lewis is.
“We believe there are members of the community that absolutely know where Jefferson Lewis is, what I want to say to you is tell us,” he said.
“Tell us what you know, tell us where he is and tell us how to contact him, if you’re withholding information because you are frightened please have the confidence we will treat that information sensitively.
“We still think she’s alive and our number one mission is to find her safe and well.”
Malley also revealed police had found underwear, a distinctive yellow shirt Lewis had been wearing, and a doona at a site behind the camp. The items are now undergoing forensic analysis.
Lewis has no phone, car, or bank account, which Malley said was making the search difficult, although he had been wearing an ankle monitor in the days leading up to the suspected abduction.
“It’s like going back to 1930s policing without that digital footprint … so some of the usual practices we do in 2026 aren’t applicable,” Malley said.
Sharon was last seen wearing a dark blue short-sleeve T-shirt with a white ring stripe around the neck and a white ring stripe around the end of the sleeves, and a pair of black boxer style underwear.
Police also released images of Mr Lewis wearing army camouflage pants and a yellow shirt that were recorded on bodycam when officers attended the town camp in response to an unrelated incident on Saturday night
Mr Lewis has links to remote aboriginal communities across the NT and Western Australia, and was recently released from prison, but not for child-related crimes.
He was jailed for 18 months in October 2024 for aggravated assault and domestic violence order and bail breaches, and then sentenced to a further three months’ imprisonment while locked up for resisting police and another domestic violence order contravention.
In 2022 he served eight months of an 11-month sentence for aggravated assault charges, in 2018 he was sentenced to 19 months for aggravated assault, in 2016 was jailed for 12 months, also for aggravated assault.
Header image: Left, Jefferson Lewis. Right, Sharon Granites (NT Police).
