True Crime Conversations

In 2023, Malka Leifer was sentenced to 15 years in prison for 18 counts of sexual abuse against Dassi Erlich and her little sister. Leifer was the sisters' former high school principal, and when whispers of their allegations came to light in 2008, she fled from her home in Melbourne to Israel before any formal complaint could be made.  It took 70 extradition hearings and 13 years to bring her back...

Eve Wiley is one of the featured voices in the Netflix series  The Man with 1000 Kids, but the story of how she came to be a fierce advocate for victims of fertility fraud is a deeply personal one…and one you have to hear to believe. In this episode of No Filter, Eve Wiley tells Mia Freedman how she finally found out that she is the child of fertility fraud and how she discovered who her biologica...

In 2018, while taking a picture of her son at a gathering, Nicole Madigan had a brief encounter with a stranger who asked her if she was photographing a man named Adam. The exchange felt bizarre, but Nicole thought little of it. That is, until later that night when she received a text from the woman. What started as one odd message soon spiralled into years of harassment, ultimately leading to the...

In November 2019, police conducted a welfare check on seven-year-old JJ Vallow. He hadn't been seen since September, and police will come to realise that neither had his teenage sister Tylee. They've stumbled onto a web of lies that are about to unravel. Affairs, mysterious deaths, a doomsday cult, and at the centre of it all two missing children. And a mother who isn’t trying to find them. THE EN...

Tia Levings was raised within the same strict Christian fundamentalist ideology as the infamous Duggar family from  19 Kids And Counting . By the time she was 19 years old, Tia found herself in an abusive marriage where the violence was sanctioned by the church. In this must-listen episode of No Filter, Tia tells Mia Freedman about the ways she was groomed to be a Trad Wife, and the moment she kne...

The Geelong Revival Centre, one of Australia’s longest-running cults, has been hiding in plain sight for years. Led by Pastor Noel Hollins until his death in 2024, the ultra-conservative church controls every aspect of its followers' lives. For the past two years, investigative journalist Richard Baker has collected disturbing audio recordings from Hollins and testimonies from survivors. The...

In the winter of 1999 in Detroit, Michigan, sex worker Monica Johnson entered a Jeep Wrangler with the licence plate 'Baby Doll' with a client. That client, John Eric Armstrong, brutally murdered her and placed her body face down on the sidewalk, before returning home to his wife and young son. Monica was one of several women he killed between 1992 to 1999 before the police finally closed in. Jour...

It's the case that has shocked France and led to protests outside of an Avignon court house. For 50 years, Dominique and Gisèle Pélicot were married, but for a decade of their marriage, Gisèle was  being raped  without her knowledge —  drugged and sexually assaulted by dozens and dozens of men.  If this case were to unfold in Australia, what kind of laws would there be to protect victim survivors...

During the Lindt Café siege,  True Crime Conversations  host Gemma Bath was reporting the news live with a police negotiator by her side. She later learned that her voice was one of the sources of information the gunman Man Haron Monis was using, as he held his hostages captive. In this bonus episode, Gemma looks back on that intense experience and talks about...

On a sunny December morning in 2014, just 10 days before Christmas, breakfast was in full swing at the busy Lindt Café in Sydney’s Martin Place. Around 8:30am, a customer noticed a man talking to the café’s manager, who seemed tense. Just over an hour later, at 9:44am, Man Haron Monis told everyone in the café that he had a bomb in his backpack and they were being...

In 2020, journalist Carl Miller found himself staring at a murder-for-hire website on the dark web, introduced to him by a hacker friend who had stumbled upon it. What he discovered was chilling: a woman named Amy Allwine had already been killed after an anonymous user paid $13,000 in Bitcoin to have her murdered. But Amy’s name was just one of many on the kill list. After his discovery, Carl spen...

Warning: This episode speaks of violence and suicide. Please take care when listening.  A year on from her death, Lilie James' parents have spoken publicly - remembering their beautiful, hardworking daughter. Today we revisit the murder of Lilie James.  If you or anyone you know needs to speak with an expert, please contact 1800 RESPECT on 1800 737 732 Watch the 60 Minutes episode here THE END BIT...

In March 2015, Fiona Lu showed up at her son Mike Zhao-Beckenridge's school to pick him up, only to find he was missing. Panicked, she called the police, convinced that her ex-husband John Beckenridge, whom Mike adored, had taken him. By the time the authorities stepped in, John and Mike were already on the run. Days later, John’s car was discovered at the bottom of a cliff, but there was no sign...

In December 2010, the body of 24-year-old Phoebe Handsjuk was discovered at the bottom of a garbage chute in her Melbourne apartment building. She had fallen 12 stories into a wheelie bin, where she ultimately succumbed to the injuries she sustained alone in the darkness of the rubbish room. In 2013, a coroner ruled Phoebe’s death as accidental, a finding her family doesn't accept. Investigative j...

There's a serial killer on the loose in Byron Bay...  allegedly. People are starting to connect the dots between multiple cases of women going missing or being murdered in the Byron and New South Wales coastal areas, including women with their own first-hand encounters. So how likely is it all these cases and run ins are linked? And what's the underlying lesson we can all take away from these expe...

In 2001, Marcellus Williams was sentenced to death for the 1998 murder of reporter Felecia Gayle. After over two decades on Missouri’s death row, he was executed by lethal injection on September 24, 2024. As time passed, doubts about his guilt grew. Marcellus’s defence team, the victim’s family, and even some jurors questioned his conviction. Despite this, the governor denied clemency, and the Sup...

James Foley’s death was unimaginable. He was a journalist held hostage by ISIS for two years in Syria and killed in 2014 as a threat to America. Footage of him wearing an orange jumpsuit, and forcibly reading a message before being beheaded was posted to Twitter. The media coverage of the event had the second most recognition in recent American history after 9/11. That was 10 years ago now.  His m...

In 1984, the body of six-year-old Kylie Maybury was found in a gutter in the early hours of the morning following Melbourne Cup Day. So why did it take 32 years after her death for police to finally find her killer — a man with previous convictions for sexual assault and violence, who lived just around the corner? Former  Herald Sun  journalist and true crime author Keith Moor has covered the case...

It’s August 1989, and a 911 call comes through from a Beverly Hills mansion on Elm Drive just before midnight. The call is from a hysterical Lyle Menendez, and you can hear his brother Erik crying in the background. The brother's parents, Jose and Kitty, are dead, shot a combined 16 times at close range while in their TV room. The crime scene is horrific. At first, police suspect a Mafia or mob hi...

True crime documentaries have always been a cornerstone of the pop culture world and with recent releases such as The Menendez Brothers documentary dropping on Netflix our appetite for these stories is at an all-time high. So, we’ve brought in an expert whose job is hooked on watching every true crime documentary ever released and we’ve rounded up the best offerings out there, with true stories th...

It's October 2013, and two police officers in Dublin spot a distressed young girl outside the General Post Office. She’s crying and unable to speak, using her fingers to show she’s 14 years old. They take her to a nearby children’s hospital while trying to figure out who she is. Local media starts speculating about possible sex trafficking as interest in her case grows. As a month goes by, police...

At around 5pm on a hot August afternoon in 2015, a 911 call comes in about a fire at a service station in Columbus, Ohio. A man has poured two jerry cans of fuel over his partner, 31-year-old Judy Malinowski, and is watching as flames engulf her. Judy is rushed to the hospital with 90 per cent of her body burned. Doctors warn her family that her chances of survival are slim, but against all odds,...

In the early hours of May 1, 2010, Shannan Gilbert called 911 from a Long Island house after working as an escort with a client she met on Craigslist. After seeking help from neighbours, she disappeared from the street before the police arrived. Months later, extensive searches turned up no trace of the 23-year-old, but authorities discovered the bodies of four other young women, later known as “T...

On an ordinary Melbourne afternoon in 1997, suburban mum of three Jane Thurgood-Dove pulled into her driveway with her kids in the back seat. As Jane got out of her car, a stolen Commodore pulled in behind her. A man with a gun chased her around the car and then shot Jane as her kids looked on in horror. For years, police were convinced she was killed by a man with an obsession, but they were wron...

When Rachel Barber failed to return home from dance practice one evening in 1999, her family reported her missing and launched a desperate search. They plastered Melbourne with over 2,000 posters, hoping for any news of her whereabouts. After days of searching, their hopes shattered on day 12 when they learned Rachel had been murdered. Her killer was a 19-year-old former babysitter and family frie...