Australian True Crime

The crime of sextortion has reached epidemic proportions, fuelled by both sex offenders and organised scammers targeting our most vulnerable online. Children are some of the internet's most prolific and most naive users, and increasing numbers are finding themselves caught in an evil web of networked manipulators. Saving Our Kids highlights the dangers lurking in every child's smartphone, web browser and computer game.

Am 20. Mai 1999 wurde die südaustralische Polizei gerufen, um eine stillgelegte Bank in der bescheidenen Stadt Snowtown im Zusammenhang mit dem Verschwinden mehrerer vermisster Personen zu untersuchen. Die Beamten waren nicht auf die schreckliche Szene vorbereitet, die sie erwartete.

In this definitive expose, Walkley-award winning journalist Debi Marshall turns her investigative blowtorch to the shocking Adelaide Family murders and to secrets long hidden in the City of Corpses. This chilling account begins with the liberalisation of South Australia under the premiership of Don Dunstan and demands answers to decades-old questions. Who were the Family killers? Why are suppression orders still protecting suspects four decades later? Why do some of these serial killings remain unsolved? Only one suspect, Bevan Spencer Von Einem, has been charged and convicted.

Criminality, some say, is part of Australia's national identity, and in Great Australian Rascals, Rogues and Ratbags Jim Haynes profiles 15 larger-than-life Aussie rogues. These stories uncover the truth and expose the myths about characters ranging from the most despicable examples of humanity, to those whose courage has to be admired and whose so-called 'crimes' were unjustly punished. Told with Haynes's inimitable combination of history and humour, Great Australian Rascals, Rogues and Ratbags is packed with murders, mystery and miscreants.

The small town of Neapolis is being torn apart by a devastating rape trial. The town's golden boy, a swimmer destined for Olympic greatness, has been accused of raping a high school student, the beloved granddaughter of the police chief. Under pressure to make Season Three of her true-crime podcast a success, Rachel throws herself into interviewing and investigating - but the mysterious letters keep showing up in unexpected places. Someone is following her, and she won't stop until Rachel finds out what happened to her sister 25 years ago.

An unprecedented spate of murders in the 1990s earned Goulburn Jail the ominous name 'The Killing Fields'. Inmates sentenced or transferred to the 130-year-old towering menace declared they had been given death sentences. Serial killer Ivan Milat, the 'Terror Five' militants who plotted attacks across Sydney in 2005, Brothers 4 Life founder Bassam Hamzy and gang rapist Bilal Skaf are just a few of the inmates inside Australia's most murderous prison. Meet them all here in Phelps' best-selling audiobook.

For over a century, the Ned Kelly legend has grown and grown. He's become Australia's Robin Hood, and leader of a colonial Irish resistance. How much of the legend is true? This is the real story of the hunt for the Kelly Gang over two long years. As gripping as any police procedural, it is an account of poorly trained officers unfamiliar with the terrain, in pursuit of the most dangerous men in the state. By recounting the story from the perspective of the law, David Dufty gets to the heart of the story and finds answers to many unresolved questions.

Australia has always been a land of mysteries. Some are ancient, some are historical and many continue to perplex us today—and will probably continue to do so tomorrow. More often than most of us would like to think, things simply vanish and people disappear without explanation, leaving a trail of heartbreak across generations. Australia also has its fair share of buried loot and fabulous riches gone missing—somewhere. Master storyteller Graham Seal has gathered mysteries from around Australia.

Society couple Michael O'Neill and Stuart Rattle had it all - their lavish country property, their interior design business - until Michael bludgeoned Stuart to death with a cooking pan. Akon Guode intentionally drove into a lake, leaving three of her children trapped in the car to drown. Geoff Hunt, pillar of the local community, shot dead his wife and their three children before killing himself. From feuds on the farm to the infamous Lindt Café Siege in Sydney, Mind Behind the Crime profiles Australia's most horrific, and often most unlikely, killers.

Boasting the biggest beats in the world – some as large as France – Australia's outback police have seen it all: natural disasters, incredible acts of selflessness, unspeakable crimes and daring rescues, just to name a few. And they've met some unforgettable characters along the way – from the murderer who stuffed his victims' bodies down wombat holes; to the policeman who arrested his own wife; to the prisoner who risked his life to rescue his own captor from certain death.

Australia's most prolific serial sexual killers met in prison. They were a complete contrast: Christopher Worrell, the charismatic psychopathic youngster; and James Miller, the older and socially awkward loner. For Miller, it was love at first sight. They developed an ominous sexual bond–proving that opposites can attract–and then kill. Once free, the inseparable tag team slayed as many people as notorious Australian serial killer Ivan Milat. Whereas Milat took a year to murder seven victims, the duo achieved the same in seven short weeks … the last four killed in only six days.

This is the truly remarkable life story of the notorious Ethel Livesey, a serial fraudster and confidence trickster who became a media sensation after she ran out on her society wedding in 1945 and later was arrested for obtaining goods by false pretences. With a prologue by Ethel Livesey's granddaughter, this extraordinary tale of Australia's greatest fraudster is told for the first time in rich and fascinating detail.

On Friday, September 12, 2014, William Tyrrell—a playful three-year-old boy dressed in a fire-engine red Spider-Man suit—disappears from a quiet street in broad daylight. It's assumed he's lost in the nearby bushland, but despite an intensive search, he's not found, and police start to suspect he's been abducted. No trace of William—not a shoe, not a hair—has ever been found, but now is not the time to surrender. How can a little boy just vanish? We have to find him.

Over thirty million people have read The Diary of a Young Girl, the journal teen-aged Anne Frank kept while living in an attic with her family and four other people in Amsterdam during World War II, until the Nazis arrested them and sent them to a concentration camp. But despite the many works-journalism, books, plays and novels-devoted to Anne's story, none has ever conclusively explained how these eight people managed to live in hiding undetected for over two years-and who or what finally brought the Nazis to their door.

El 29 de febrero del año 2000, John Price pidió una orden de alejamiento contra su novia, Katherine Knight. Más tarde, ese mismo día, dijo a sus compañeros de trabajo que ella le había apuñalado y que si alguna vez desaparecía, era porque Knight le había matado. Come hombres, es el relato dramático y apasionante de la primera mujer en Australia condenada a cadena perpetua sin libertad condicional, con la adición especial de "nunca ser liberada". La fascinante narración de Ryan Green introduce al oyente en el horror real experimentado por la víctima.

Easter Sunday, 1902, deep in the Carnarvon Ranges a police constable and station manager are slain then later incinerated, their remains stuffed into saddlebags. Accused of the ghoulish crime are two members of the bushranging Kenniff gang, fast gaining notoriety as Queensland's equivalent of the Kelly gang. Yet the murders are a bold escalation from the petty fraud, horse stealing and cattle duffing the gang is known for. Starving and exhausted after three long months on the run, the brothers are finally captured, and so the wheels of justice start to turn.

'If you think it's hard being a white woman in Australia, try being a black woman.' These were the words that set a team of journalists at the Adelaide Advertiser on an investigation into the mysterious deaths of six young Aboriginal women. Each year dozens of Indigenous women or girls die by murder or suicide. Rose Hunter-Hebberman was one of them. Based on the podcast Dying Rose, this is a compelling look at what it means to be an Aboriginal woman in a world where family love, cultural connection and hope for a better future can be eroded by prejudice, mistrust and danger.

'If you think it's hard being a white woman in Australia, try being a black woman.' These were the words that set a team of journalists at the Adelaide Advertiser on an investigation into the mysterious deaths of six young Aboriginal women. Each year dozens of Indigenous women or girls die by murder or suicide. Rose Hunter-Hebberman was one of them. Based on the podcast Dying Rose, this is a compelling look at young Indigenous women's vulnerability to danger, and how, when their lives are cut short, their families are left to cope with a grief seemingly compounded by indifference.

From the bucolic majesty, privilege, and snobbery of the Western District’s prized pastoral lands and dynasties to the bleak, loveless underworld of orphanages, rodeo stables, and homeless shelters, The Devil’s Grip is a courageous and thought-provoking meditation on the fragility of reputation, the folly of deception, and the power of shame.

John Silvester has been reporting on crime from the cop stations, courthouses, back alleys and gangster mansions of Melbourne for forty years. His contact book is a who's who of both sides of criminal justice and the shadowy worlds between. He is the trusted confidant of cops, criminals, lawyers and judges. He knows where the cash is stashed and where the bodies are buried. Naked City is a collection of Silvester's best stories, from sophisticated heists to mindless acts of violence and deeds of pure evil - impeccably sourced, wry, wise and witty.