True Crime Conversations

This month on True Crime Conversations we’re examining the life and crimes of Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine, and the violent razor wars that erupted between their two gangs with special guest host Emma Gillespie. Coming to your ears from January 6th.  Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It’s the 21st of February, 2021, a summer’s day on the south coast of New South Wales.  A small group of campers are walking along Bournda Beach, an incredible expanse of pristine sand, and clear, blue water, surrounded by national park. Along the shore, washed up, they spot a single, grey, Asics shoe. It is only when they look more closely that they realise inside it holds human...

It’s an unusual place to start a true crime story - at the National Gallery of Victoria in 1985.  The director of the gallery, a man named Patrick McCaughey, purchases a single painting for $1.6 million. Due to currency fluctuations, the cost increases to $2 million, the most expensive purchase ever made by an Australian gallery. The painting is by Pablo Picasso, titled The Weeping Woma...

A plane colliding with the South Tower at 9:59am, on September 11, 2001, would become the first terror attack watched in real-time by millions of people around the world. News anchors struggled to maintain composure. New York, and more broadly, the United States, was under attack.  The north tower continued to burn. Images and video footage were broadcast on every news channel. For a generati...

It’s a clear, still Tuesday morning in New York City. The autumn sky is bright blue and the two World Trade Centres mark the highest points of the Manhattan skyline.  At 8:30am the business district is bustling. Workers are making their way into elevators or stopping for a quick coffee. Their minds are on their morning meeting or the kids they just dropped off at school. Most don’...

It’s May 9, 2001, and the family of missing teenager, Natasha Ryan, are holding a memorial service in Bundaberg, Queensland. Today would have been her 17th birthday.  Natasha, with dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and fair, freckled skin, had disappeared on August 31, 1998. She was 14 years old. For almost three years, there has been no trace of her.  Her father, Robert Ryan, and mothe...

It was December 1982, when 21-year-old Shelly Barnett, described by Vanity Fair as a willowy beauty with strawberry blonde hair, married 22-year old David Miscavige in Los Angeles. She would become the First Lady of Scientology.  Those who knew her described her as shy, often appearing lonely and isolated. At the same time, some witnesses say she was prone to losing her temper, much like her...

Mackay is a city on the Coral Sea coast of Queensland, Australia, located about 970 kilometres north of Brisbane.  It’s known as the sugar capital of Australia, producing more than a third of the country’s cane sugar.  In South Mackay, sits a spacious pub called Harrup Park Country Club. In February 2013, this was one of the last places Shandee Blackburn was seen alive. ...

It’s 1983, and a 15-year-old boy named Richard Kelvin is in a laneway in North Adelaide. He is 50 metres from his beautiful family home.  He has spent that Sunday, June the 5th, playing footy, until the afternoon when his best friend Karl came over. They kicked the footy around. Richard called his girlfriend. And then he walked Karl to the bus stop.  It’s 6:15pm, and the sun...

 Rustler Park sits high in the Chiricahua Mountains in southern Arizona. Campsites belonging to the park are scattered along a number of roads, sectioned off from the meadows to avoid damaging plants and fragile soils. Paths from these campgrounds lead into the Chiricahua Wilderness, a national forest full of ponderosa pine and swarming with wildlife. Large animals, like black bears, are ofte...

Between the beaches of Bondi and Tamarama in Sydney’s picturesque Eastern suburbs, lies a steep cliff face. Parks and a walking track sit above, attracting tourists from all over the world. But below is rock and the white, foamy Pacific Ocean, the water appearing black at night time. In the 1980s, there was no railing separating the track from the steep cliff. And at night, sometimes screams...

It’s 1888, and a man who will become perhaps the most infamous serial killer in history is terrorising the streets of London. Fog rises from the damp streets of the Whitechapel district, a largely impoverished area, which has earned itself a reputation for being a cauldron of immorality. Poverty, racism, hundreds of lodging houses which function as brothels, and social unrest mean that the s...

It’s a bleak, cold morning, on July 4, 1975.  A 34-year-old man named Eddie Trigg waits inside the Carousel Cabaret nightclub, known to most as a seedy bar located in the heart of Sydney’s Kings Cross.  But that’s not why Eddie, with a beard and sharp hazel eyes, is there. After all, it’s just past 10:30am. He is there to meet someone.  Juanita Nielsen, the 3...

In 1983, in Manhattan Beach, California, one woman named Judy Johnson put forward an allegation.  Her two-and-a-half-year-old son was, at the time, attending McMartin preschool. Johnson claimed that her son had been sexually abused by a teacher at the school named Ray Buckley. Her claims were unlike anything police had heard before. Although there was no evidence of abuse taking place, police...

It’s October 24, 1997, and 25-year-old Anu Singh, a promising young law student, invites friends over for a dinner party.  She lives in a Canberra townhouse with her 26-year-old boyfriend Joe Cinque.  The pair met two years prior at a night out in Newcastle. He was said to be immediately taken by Singh, and they quickly became inseparable.  But something wasn’t right abo...

It’s Boxing Day, 1964, when a 26-year-old man named Ian Brady, and a 22-year-old woman named Myra Hindley, attend a fair in Ancoats, an area in Manchester, North West England.  The pair had met three years prior when Myra had developed an infatuation with Ian. Finally, Ian showed interest and asked her to the movies. They have been inseparable ever since, although their relationship is...

It was 6am on March 1, 2000, when John Price’s neighbour noticed his car was still in the driveway. It struck him as unusual.  John’s supervisor noticed his absence at work too. An off-handed comment he’d made the day before made his co-workers feel uneasy. At 8:10am, Officer Matthews and Officer Furlonger arrived at John’s home.  His front door was locked. The tw...

Aileen Wuornos stares down the barrel of the camera, her eyes looking almost black. Her mousy brown hair is pushed back off her face, revealing a pink face. But the most notable thing about the mug shot, taken in front of a bright blue backdrop, is the expression on her face. A snarl. Like she is a moment from breaking out into laughter.   She would go on to say, “I’m one who...

It’s a warm morning in August, 2009, when 26-year-old Dalia Dippolito decides to go to the gym. Dalia has long brown hair, tanned skin, and has only recently started working out. She leaves her house just before 6am, and drives the two kilometres from her house in Palm Beach, Florida, to the local gym. In the months prior, she’d started exercising with her husband, 38 year old Michael...

We’re popping into your feed to share with you our new episode of Extraordinary Stories: The Demonisation of Lindy Chamberlain. Episodes two and three of the season, and all past seasons of Extraordinary Stories are available to stream now, exclusively to MPlus subscribers. To subscribe to MPlus and find out more head to www.mamamia.com.au/podcasts/extraordinary-stories/ Demonised by the pre...

West Cork in Ireland sits on the edge of Europe.  It’s rugged and windy, cold in the winter, and beautiful in the summer.  Since the 1960s, the district has been developed by what the people call ‘blow-ins’. People from around the world who somehow end up in West Cork, hoping to start their lives again.  Often these people are artists or runaways, living in little...

It’s Father’s Day, 2005, and Robert Farquharson is driving his three sons, Jai, Tyler and Bayley, home to their mother’s house. They’d spent the day together, with their mum, Cindy Gambino, helping the boys put together a Father’s Day gift for Robert. It was a framed photo of his three sons, aged 10, seven, and two.  As a treat, Robert took the boys to Kmart wher...

On the eastern edge of the city of Ipswich in Queensland, lies a small suburb named Goodna.  About 20 kilometres from the Brisbane central business district, Goodna is peppered with Jacaranda, Hoop Pine, and Mango trees, and boasts numerous parks which are frequented by the public. It was the 26th of September - a spring day - at 1:42pm when two police were stopped in their tracks.  They...

It’s a quarter past seven in the evening on Friday, June 11, 1993.  18-year-old Elizabeth Stevens is freezing. She’s soaking wet from the rain, her short hair clinging to her neck.  She steps off the bus which she caught from Frankston to Cranbourne Road, Langwarrin, and hurries towards her aunt and uncle's house where she lives. She doesn’t know she’s being watch...

It’s just after midday on July 17, 2014, when 283 passengers, and 15 crew members board MH17 at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport.  Among the passengers are 12-year-old Mo, 10-year-old Evie, and eight-year-old Otis Maslin, along with their 68-year-old grandfather, Nick Norris. MH17 is bound for Kuala Lumpur International Airport, due to arrive at 6:10am local time. The family would the...