Naked City

For our final episode of season seven, John Silvester answers your questions about crooks, cops and crime. In this episode, Sly talks about his relationship with Chopper Read, for whom he and fellow journalist Andrew Rule ghost-wrote a series of books based on Read's prison letters. Sly talks about Melbourne's gangland war and its related characters, such as feared prisoner – and as we disco...

We're coming to the end of season seven of this humble podcast, and as a thank-you (or alternatively, as a punishment), we wanted to open the floor to you. So if there's a question you've always wanted to ask John Silvester about a case, a crime, a cop, a crook, or his career, now is your chance. Send your question directly to us by emailing podcasts@fairfaxmedia.com.au and Sly will select a few f...

One of the underworld's old guard passed away quietly this year. Charlie Wootton didn’t need to be well known to be well respected in shadows occupied by hard men, controlling Melbourne’s illegal gaming industry long before the glittering behemoth of Crown casino. Though he posted death notices paying tribute to notorious crooks killed in the gangland war, Wootton was determined to kee...

On April 21, 1976, six bandits raided the Victoria Club where Melbourne’s biggest bookies were settling their accounts with cash. No one knows the exact figure, but the take was supposed to be in the vicinity of $15 million. Just after the armed robbery, and a few kilometres away at a pub in the suburb of Windsor, Greg Carroll was meeting his brother, Ian Revell Carroll. Greg remembers the s...

A couple of months ago we held a night for subscribers to The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, a conversation with John Silvester, hosted by crime and justice reporter Erin Pearson. We recorded the whole thing and so for today’s episode, we bring you this special episode with Sly. In the conversation, Sly shared how he became a journalist and then all the highlights from his long career &ndash...

Brian Coghlan is laid back, an asset he was able to use in his workplace. As a prison officer, he quickly learnt that being seen as a good guy around bad people was the key to life behind bars. For 26 years at Port Phillip Prison, he dealt with the worst society had to offer – sex offenders, serial killers and manipulative mass murderers who knew they were destined to die in jail. He spent m...

Barry Michael was a professional boxer who made his name in the ring as a smart and brave fighter with a kit of wicked body punches. Alphonse John Gangitano, a mobster who preferred a king hit to a fair fight, was in the corner of the talented Lester Ellis when Michael took Ellis’ world title. The trouble was, Gangitano wanted the title back. In today’s episode of Naked City with John...

Michael Aston loved being a cop, or more specifically, a road policing officer. He said it was the best job in the world, until it wasn't. Aston is no longer a cop, with his career and mental health disappearing into the quicksand of the legal system where no one is accountable. It was 2020, and the start of the dark days of COVID, when Aston was policing then-premier Daniel Andrews' lockdown laws...

Former deputy commissioner and counter-terrorism boss Ross Guenther had a unique life before policing, playing in big bands with music greats Jerry Lewis and Barry White. He was no slouch in his policing career either, heading up the counter-terrorism squad for Victoria Police. In this episode of Naked City, he talks to John Silvester about a foiled terrorism plot, and how his music career helped...

Anne Hooker worked as a prison officer for 13 years for Corrections Victoria, and Port Phillip Prison for a further 23 years. She also set up and ran a unit in jail called Penhyn, which housed young men aged 18 to 25. The unit became so highly sought after within the prison system that there was a waiting list to enter it, and as Hooker explained to Naked City host John Silvester, the environment...

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Sol Solomon has investigated some of the country's worst, most high-profile and just plain bizarre homicides. In part two of his interview with Naked City 's John Silvester, the former detective talks about some of the most difficult cases - such as investigating the murders of police officers Gary Silk and Rodney Miller. And the best, like hearing a killer confess to a cold case murder of a singl...

For former homicide detective Sol Solomon, there was only one Carl. Underworld heavy and gangland killer Carl Williams who was to be the star witness into the 2004 murders of police informer Terence Hodson and his wife, Christine. But with his murder, the case against former detective Paul Dale and hitman Rod Collins collapsed. Solomon’s career is littered with high points; catching contract...

For more than 30 years, Joy and Roger Membrey – before he died in 2023 – have been hunting for answers over the murder of their 22-year-old daughter, Elisabeth. Elisabeth, a politics graduate who had been offered a trainee journalist position with Channel Ten, went missing from her sharehouse in 1994. Police believe she was killed in the hallway and taken from the scene, though her bod...

Melbourne's gangland war in the early 2000s captured the country's imagination. People like Carl and Roberta Williams became household names. Eventually, Eddie McGuire – the then Channel Nine CEO – demanded his team commissioned a television series. It became Underbelly , based on a book written by Andrew Rule and John Silvester. The show created controversy from the get-go. A Supreme...

The gangland war has become like folklore in the tale of crime in Australia. From 1995, dozens of murders occurred in Melbourne in a wrestle over drugs and egos involving notorious underworld figures such as Carl Williams, Tony Mokbel, and the Morans. At the centre of it all was Stuart Bateson, a detective with the Purana taskforce. Today, John Silvester - who wrote the definitive account of the g...

John Taylor is one of the longest-serving and smallest (in stature) Special Operations Group members, and its longest-serving bomb disposal expert. Taylor was part of a crack team of officers who had to respond when "troubled genius" and self-taught bomb expert Glenn Saunders sparked a police stand-off, and then, a massive explosion in country Victoria. In this episode of Naked City with John Silv...

Tim Peck was an experienced homicide detective who worked on some of the country’s most notorious murder investigations, including the Maria Korp ‘body in the boot’ case. But the things that made him a crack detective, would also be the things that slowly brought him undone. In this special episode of Naked City , Peck shares his rise and fall, and rise again, with John...

John Wayne Gacy, the Zodiac Killer, the Green River Killer (aka Gary Leon Ridgway) – name a serial killer, criminal profiler and psychotherapist John Kelly has profiled them all. Now he’s turned his attention Down Under, to notorious child snatcher Mr Cruel, and his insights are compelling. You can read Sly's story here:  https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/a-new-profile-o...

When a third girl was kidnapped in just a few years, police suspected one offender: Mr Cruel. Before Karmein Chan, 13, in 1991, there was 10-year-old Sharon Wills in 1988 and 13-year-old Nicola Lynas in 1990. In this special two-part episode on the notorious child snatcher who terrorised Melbourne streets, John Silvester speaks to the first police officer who was on the scene at the Chan abduction...

During the span of one week in July 2020, designer goods, cash and jewellery were stolen from eight homes in Melbourne’s affluent Toorak. It took a year for police to identify the pattern and the extent of the burglaries – some reaching as far as Queensland and totalling millions of dollars. The chief burglar’s planning was impeccable, until one slip-up. In this episode of ...

In 1982, single mother Marion Wishart, looking to make ends meet, invited a lodger to stay in her home in the suburb of Northcote in Melbourne. She could not have predicted what would happen next. What followed was one of the city’s most notorious child murders, that of her daughter, six-year-old Bonnie Clarke. In the first episode of a new season of  Naked City , crime reporter John Si...

Join John Silvester, Australia’s longest-serving crime reporter, as he talks to the cops and the crims in the seventh season of crime podcast Naked City. The new season will premiere on Wednesday, January 14, and new episodes will drop each Wednesday.  For the latest news and views from John Silvester (aka Sly of the Underworld), subscribe to The Age https://subscribe.theage.com.au or t...

Join John Silvester, Australia’s longest-serving crime reporter, as he talks to the cops and the crims in the seventh season of crime podcast Naked City. The new season will premiere on Wednesday, January 14, and new episodes will drop each Wednesday.  For the latest news and views from John Silvester (aka Sly of the Underworld), subscribe to The Age  https://subscribe.theage.com.a...

For decades, families in Australia and overseas, have been accused of one of the worst crimes imaginable. Diagnosing Murder is an investigative podcast about parents who've had their children taken away, sat in the dock and even done time in prison. All for something they insist they didn't do – shake their baby. Can we trust the science behind shaken baby syndrome? Or are innocent people be...