True Crime Conversations

The murders of Harvey and Jeannette Crewe in June 1970 were labelled the death of innocence in New Zealand, and would go on to become one of the country’s most infamous cold cases.  In the immediate aftermath, a man named Arthur Allan Thomas was found guilty of the crime. His fate sealed by a piece of evidence so compelling that a jury had no doubt he was the killer. A piece of evidence that years...

The phenomenon of stalking is as prolific as it is insidious. The breadth of quiet suffering perpetrators calculate and inflict on their subjects often leads to victims being completely unable to identify what’s happening to them, and to seek help. Journalist Nicole Madigan was stalked by a woman she barely knew for three years. Her experience led her to investigate the power, fixation and control...

Michelle Burgess is one of Australia’s most infamous ‘black widows’ - a term given to female psychopaths who either kill or organise other men to kill other men. In 2001, Michelle plotted two murders. The targets were her husband Darren, and a woman named Carolyn Matthews - a mother of three whose husband Kevin had become involved in an affair with Michelle. While Michelle & Kevin would only s...

In 2010, 52-year-old Des Campbell was found guilty of murdering his wife Janet Fisicaro. The pair had only been married six months when they embarked on a camping trip in the Royal National Park, south of Sydney. A trip that sadly only Des would survive.  Initially he would tell police that Janet had fallen from a 50-metre cliff, but investigators would soon come to realise that the 49-year-old ha...

In January 2016, 49-year-old Karen Chetcuti was viscously attacked on her property in Whorouly, a rural town in north-eastern Victoria. What happened to Karen at the hands of her neighbour, Michael Cardamone, was described as so unfeeling, so excessive and sadistically executed that those prosecuting him worked to make sure that Michael would never walk freely amongst the community again.  The Che...

In the early 1990s, 21-year-old Paul Denyer terrorised the Victorian suburb of Frankston. He preyed on the local women; stalking, abducting and eventually murdering three young victims. Their names were Elizabeth Stevens, Deborah Fream and Natalie Russell. But after three decades behind bars, a parole board in Victoria must now consider an application to free the man behind what became known as th...

In 1951, the discovery of a petrified female body in the raging floodwaters of the Murray River triggered an investigation that spanned multiple Australian states. And while evidence suggested foul play, the truth of her identity and what really happened to her would remain a mystery, with the death of a vital witness in the aftermath of the discovery leaving the case cold.  But seven decades on,...

In August 2021, Gabby Petito went missing while on holiday with her fiancé, Brian Laundrie. The pair were six weeks into a four month trip across the United States. They'd been living out of Gabby's specially decked out van, documenting and filming every adventure so she could share it on her growing social media platforms. But when the 22-year-old suddenly stopped posting, her family began...

In April 1990, a 21-year-old woman was found dead on the side of a highway in Oklahoma City.  The investigation into her death, which initially seemed like a straight forward hit-and-run, would lead police to uncover a violent trail of lies, abuse, false identities, kidnapping and murder, spanning multiple decades.  Journalist Matt Birkbeck, our guest today, spent two decades researching...

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, impoverished populations within urban areas were struggling to keep up with the rising number of abandoned children. And with little support or infrastructure in the way of social and government services, the responsibility to house these children fell largely on local parishes.    The image of these grand manors, large estates surrounded by manicu...

On the 23rd of September 2002, Dianne Brimble stepped aboard what should have been a ten-day cruise through New Caledonia and Vanuatu with her family. But within less than 24 hours, Dianne was found unconscious, in a strangers room. The cabin belonged to four men, travelling as part of a bigger group of eight. The Adelaide Eight, as they’d soon become known. A group of young men ready to indulge i...

William Kamm is the self-proclaimed Messiah behind Australia’s biggest doomsday cult.  After the inception of The Order of St Charbel in the late 1980s, Kamm spun of web of lies, peddling end of the world prophecies to coerce his trusted flock into subservience, with the promise of salvation.  But when a young girl’s diary surfaced, the true horrors of life inside the co...

In September 2007, after a night out on Sydney’s iconic Oxford Street, 20-year-old Matthew Leveson went missing.  Although police investigated his disappearance at the time, it would be a decade before they finally uncovered his body. His 43-year-old boyfriend, Michael Atkins, was the last person to see Matt alive. His aversion to telling the truth about that night would torment Mathew&...

Today’s episode is about one of Victoria’s most disturbing cases of familicide. The death of Anna Kemp & her daughter Gracie at the hands of John Sharpe, the husband and father who’s crimes would see him branded ‘The Mornington Monster’.  Our guest, Narelle Fraser, is a former Victorian Police officer, whose discoveries were instrumental in solving the case a...

In 1969 Derek Percy was arrested for the brutal killing of 12 year old Yvonne Tuohy.  While he was held responsible for that crime, a string of unsolved heinous child murders in the 60s bear chilling resemblance to that violent crime that put him behind bars.  But Derek Percy never confessed to, nor was he convicted of the crimes he’s strongly suspected of having committed. He died in custody in 2...

Sandrine Jourdan vanished from a Queensland property in July 2012. A coroner would eventually rule her death a probable suicide. But her body has never been found, and while most in her life have concluded Sandrine is probably dead, many suspect she may have met with foul play.  Among them is retired detective-turned-private investigator Graeme Crowley who's been investigating the case for the Bri...

Our host Gemma Bath is taking a short break, while she's on maternity leave a familiar voice will be stepping in to keep the mic warm... Become a Mamamia subscriber: https://www.mamamia.com.au/subscribe See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Daniella Mestyanek Young was born into the Children Of God religious cult. Her childhood was lived out behind the tall gates of a commune in Brazil, where the children were subjected to physical, emotional, and sexual abuse masked as religious discipline and divine love. At fifteen years old, she escaped. But the effects of what she experienced have had lasting impacts.  CREDITS Guest: Daniella Me...

After 34 years in the police and 25 years in homicide, it was former Detective Inspector Gary Jubelin’s job to catch killers. He worked on some of the biggest criminal cases in Australia, including the Lindt Cafe siege, the Bowraville murders, and the gruesome killing of drug dealer Terry Falconer. But it was the case of William Tyrrell that would cost Gary his career. In 2020, he was convicted fo...

Debbie Malone is used to sceptics. She’s been brushed aside, turned away, and sworn at by people who say she’s a liar. That she’s making things up.  You see, Debbie is a psychic. For the past 30 years, she’s been using her abilities to help police investigate murders and find missing people, working on everything from the Ivan Milat backpacker killings, the disappearance of Bob Chappell, and the m...

Lee Iordanidis has been cleaning crime scenes for over thirty years. Her job has her brushing up against things most of us couldn't even imagine in our worst nightmares, and on a rare occasion, it even had her coming face to face with the person responsible for the crime scene she was cleaning. It's a job not many of us would choose for ourselves, but if it weren't for Lee many families would be l...

Tim Watson Munro has sat across from the worst of the worst.  Rapists. Terrorists. Mass murderers.  Tim’s a psychologist, who started his career in the prison system as the resident psych at Parramatta jail, before turning to the private sector - where he mainly worked for defence lawyers defending alleged crooks. He’s assessed everyone from Julian Knight, the man responsible for the Hoddle Street...

Graham James Kay is known in the media as The North Shore Rapist. In the 1990s he terrorised the suburbs of Balgowlah, Artarmon, Epping, Eastwood, and Wollstonecraft with victims ranging in age from 16 to 39.  Today's guest, Craig Goozee, was one of the officers that brought Graham to justice in 1996. He joins us to discuss the operation that saw The North Shore Rapist put behind bars and the crim...

In April 2002, millionaire socialite Margaret Wales-King and her husband Paul King disappeared after a dinner at her son Matthew's house in Melbourne. Less than a month later their bodies were found in a shallow grave just outside the city and it didn't take long for police to piece together what had happened. On this week's episode we're joined by barrister Hilary Bonney & former detective Ch...

On June 30, 2005, Korean American cameraman Patrick McDermott went missing from an overnight fishing trip off the coast of Los Angeles.  Initial investigations proved difficult with no other passengers or crew members having noticed his disappearance, but when the media realised that the missing man was also the on-again off-again boyfriend of superstar Olivia Newton-John, a whirlwind of speculati...