Loading...
Crime Investigation Australia is an Australian true-crime series that first premiered on Foxtel's Crime & Investigation Network in August 2005. The series is also rebroadcast on the Nine Network, and made its debut there on 14 August 2007. The host of the series is Steve Liebmann.
2005
CI delves into the twisted mind of one of Australia's most prolific serial murderers. John Wayne Glover, The Granny Killer, was truly an evil man. Glover's terrifying random attacks, targeting defenceless elderly women on Sydney's lower North Shore, would leave an indelible stain on the city. Hear the compelling story surrounding the hunt for the Granny Killer and his eventual arrest and trial.
CI examines two notorious abduction cases. The first case is the Graeme Thorne ransom kidnapping at Bondi in 1960. Thorne, aged eight was the son of winners of the Sydney Opera House Lottery. The second case is the recent Daniel Morecombe Queensland case that still remains unsolved. Crime Investigation Australia has secured exclusive interviews that shed new light on both of these infamous cases that stunned the nation.
Crime Investigation Australia examines the Dr. Victor Chang extortion murder as well as the horrific Jane Doe Case where a girl is found lying on the side of the road of an inner Sydney suburb wrapped in two plastic garbage bags.
The backpacker murder case in the Belanglo State Forest, south west of Sydney, has entered Australian criminal folklore. The brutal murders of seven young people, most of them overseas tourists hitchhiking around Australia, attracted international media attention. The remains of their bodies were uncovered in 1992. The arrest and conviction of Ivan Milat would catapult him to Australia's worst individual serial killer. It is believed that Milat was involved in several other killings and there is strong evidence that he didn't act alone.
Crime Investigation Australia has conducted a major investigation which reveals the inside story of the Megan Kalajzich murder and the extraordinary Police investigation which will rock the Harbour City's elite to the core. We also detail the true horror of one of Australia's most ghastly crimes, the heartbreak and anguish faced by investigators and interviews with several of the last people to ever see Anna Kemp and her daughter Gracie alive.
We investigate the story of David and Catherine Birnie, Australia's most sadistic husband and wife killing team who tortured, raped and murdered four women in 1986. We also look into the murder of Call Girl Roslyn Watson which had remained unsolved for more than 15 years and would have stayed that way if it wasn't for the tenacious efforts of a bright young Western Australian Police Detective.
Sometime on the evening of October 19, 1990, the flamboyantly gay Sydney socialite Ludwig Gertsch was strangled with an elastic strap in the bedroom of his lover, Mr Vincent Esposito. His body was found, wrapped in a doona, in Blue Mountains scrub on November 11, 1990. In September 1994 a Sydney Coroner found that Ludwig Gertsch was strangled "by a person or persons unknown". But that's where the murder trail ends - his killer has never been brought to justice. The murder of Allen Hall at Warnervale, where he lived with Christine Hicks, the estranged wife of boxing mentor and horse trainer Cec Waters, presented a curious public with a cruel and twisted story. Water’s eldest son, Dean, eventually was charged with Hall’s murder. However, it would be revealed later that Dean had succumbed to his father’s demands. Cec Waters was depicted as a bullying, obsessive father, who was determined to make his three sons become boxing champions but slaves to his evil will.
In February 1986, nurse Anita Cobby, a former entrant in the Miss Australia quest, is walking home from Blacktown station in Sydney's outer-western suburbs. A Holden sedan pulls up and Anita is dragged into the vehicle. She is taken to a lonely spot where five young men take turns to bash and rape her. Finally her throat is cut, almost severing her head, and her body is left in a paddock. The five men are later caught and convicted of these despicable crimes and sent to jail for life, their papers are marked "never to be released". But something positive will come out of this appalling and deeply disturbing story, as Anita's grieving parents begin a support group for the families of murder victims, offering comfort and mutual help for more than 1000 loved ones of homicide victims.
In 1999, eight bodies are found in six barrels filled with acid in a former bank vault in rural Snowtown, 50 kilometres north of Adelaide. Their investigation was to lead police to discover another four victims, in and around Adelaide. Four men were charged with murder and other offences. Eventually it was proven that 11 were murdered and another woman severely dismembered. The horrific murders that occurred over a 7-year period involve torture, dismemberment, even cannibalism.
For the first time the complete story of one of Australia's most horrific serial murderers is finally revealed. Almost twenty years ago in June 1987 a crazed gunman begins a journey which will take him thousands of kilometres across the vast Australian outback. The killer's journey will result in the murders of five innocent tourists, spark one of the biggest manhunts in Australian history and end in a bloody last stand shootout with police at a remote outpost deep in the rugged Kimberly ranges of Australia's north. Before it is over, thousands of residents living in communities scattered across the country's Top End will be terrorised.
CI investigates into two of the most infamous unsolved mysteries in Australian criminal history are examined in The Wanda Beach Murders and The Beaumont Children Mystery.In 1965, when Australian teenage culture was centred on sun, sand, and surf, the nation was shocked by the brutal bashing, rape and murder of two 15-year-old girls in the sand hills at Sydney's Wanda Beach. A massive police hunt failed to find the killer but now, more than 40 years later, there is growing evidence that he could be a known psychotic murderer. A year later, on an Australia Day outing to a beach in Adelaide, three small children, Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont, disappeared suddenly and without a trace. Were they abducted by the man seen playing with them at the beach, or were they buried in an accident, as claimed by a world-famous clairvoyant who was flown to Adelaide from Europe by the media and concerned local citizens? Are they still alive?
The small hamlet of Greenough, near Geraldton, in Western Australia, some 400 kilometres north of Perth, will forever be associated with one the most horrific murders in Australian criminal history. In 1993, Karen MacKenzie and her three small children were violently murdered at their isolated house. The brutal and random nature of the attack was eerily similar to "In Cold Blood", Truman Capote's world-famous study of a family murder in an isolated house in America.When the Greenough killer was finally tracked down, charged and convicted, much of the evidence was too horrific to be made public.
A small group of local criminals, with mafia connections, were making vast fortunes in the famous NSW Riverina irrigation district from marijuana plantations. Corrupt police and a vast bribery network had kept the drug barons immune from prosecution until Donald Mackay's campaign finally led to raids by the State drug squad and several local marijuana growers were arrested and fined. During their trial the police informant was named publicly as Donald Mackay. Infuriated by the loss of more than $40 million, the leaders of the Griffith mafia, including the notorious Robert Aussie Bob Trimbole, put out a contract for Mackay's murder. Trimbole was shot in the car park of a Griffith hotel on a Friday night in July, 1977. The murder scene was awash with his blood and evidence showed he was shot a number of times from behind and his body then dumped into a car boot and driven away. Intensive investigations by police and even a Royal Commission have failed to locate it.
Hosted by Steve Liebmann, The Body In The Sports Bag explores the disappearance and brutal murder of Sydney teenager, Lyndsay Van Blanken. This chilling episode features detailed re-enactments, interviews with key homicide detectives and heartbreaking accounts from Lyndsay's family and friends. The gripping special also features an exclusive emotional interview with Brandon Leonard, Lyndsay's American fiancé.
John Paul Newman was a member of the New South Wales state parliament and Member of the seat of Cabramatta. He was the first politician to be assassinated in Australia. For many years Newman had been waging a campaign to break up the Asian crime gangs and corruption that had plagued the area. He had been the target of numerous death threats from such gangs but did not seek police protection. During the night of September 5, 1994 while outside his Woods Avenue home, he was shot and killed. His fiancée, Lucy Wang, was with him at the time but saw little of what happened because of the swiftness of the murder. A local nightclub owner, Phuong Ngo, who had previously attempted to secure Labor Party pre-selection for the seat, was convicted of the killing in 2001. Two of Ngo's associates escaped convictions. In 2003, an appeal by Ngo against the conviction failed.
This episode revisits Adelaide’s notorious Adelaide Family Murders case, where six young Adelaide men were murdered during the 1970’s and 80’s. The victims were found in random locations throughout the state, their bodies neatly cut into pieces. Although each attack and mutilation appeared different, police investigators soon began to link the horrific murders to one another. Media frenzy ripped through Australia when the similarities to each killing became public knowledge. Media speculated that the murders involved a group of high profile Adelaide men including politicians, religious leaders and judges who allegedly paid young men for sex and then drugged and used them for pleasure. The media dubbed the group The Family and from then on the case was referred to as the Adelaide Family Murders.
2009
Sallie-Anne Huckstepp and Juanita Nielsen were iconic figures in the shadowy King’s Cross scene of the 1970s and 1980s. They lived dangerous lives – challenging the status quo of the period and met with mysterious and violent deaths. Neither murder has been solved officially, but many decades later, the intrigue of both cases still scratches at the heart and psyche of the Harbour City. Can a credible witness with new information, may finally help solve one of Australia’s most enduring mysteries.
2008
For the 2008 launch of Crime Investigation Australia CI presents the complete and compelling story of "The Killing Fields of Truro", one of the most infamous crimes in Australia and yet another set in Adelaide. Seven young women disappeared in the 51 days between December 23, 1976 and February 12, 1977. James William Miller confessed that during this time he helped the man he loved, Christopher Robin Worrell, dispose of the bodies of the young women who Worrell had sexually assaulted and then murdered while Miller was waiting nearby. The skeletal remains of four of the victims were discovered in bush graves over a 12 month period in 1978-79 in the Truro district, 80 kilometres north-east of Adelaide.
In the late 1980s and early 1990’s a series of violent murders took place near Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach. Three innocent men were attacked and thrown to their deaths from a cliff top. The murders were part of a much wider wave of violent hate crimes as gangs of youths roamed Sydney’s inner suburbs randomly bashing and killing gay men for sport. Among the victims at Bondi was Wollongong television newsreader, Ross Warren, a gay man who disappeared while visiting friends in Sydney in 1989. Ross Warren’s case was dismissed by police as a “probable accident”. But his mother conducted a long campaign to have her son’s disappearance finalised. Then, some ten years after he was first reported missing, Ross’s police file finally came to the desk of one courageous investigator who started to dig a little deeper. Detective Sergeant Stephen Page quickly realised that there was more to the Ross Warren case than was uncovered in the original investigation. The file contained a great many unanswered questions. As he read the file Detective Page began to uncover similarities with other murders and slowly the shocking pattern of violence and death began to emerge. Another murder victim was Bondi resident John Russell, a gay man who had inherited some money and was about to leave for the country to start a new life when his body was found at the foot of the Bondi cliffs.
Hosted by Steve Liebmann, this episode of Crime Investigation Australia features detailed re-enactments and interviews with key figures, including the head of the police investigation, local Norfolk Island residents as well as intimate interviews with Janelle Patton’s mother and father. 29-year-old Patton had been stabbed to death in a frenzied attack that had left more than 60 wounds from her head to her feet. She had multiple bruises and broken bones and it was clear she had bravely fought back against a sustained attack. What followed were years of difficult investigations plagued by numerous false leads based mainly on gossip and innuendo. By the time the coroner’s inquiry opened two years later no less than 16 persons of interest had been investigated by the man in charge of the case, Detective Sergeant Bob Peters. The naming of the 16 caused a furore of resentment and distress among the islanders. Eventually a 28-year-old chef named Glenn McNeill who had left the island a few months after the murder to return to his native New Zealand was arrested. But forensic investigators said Janelle’s injuries did not match McNeill’s story. He was later convicted and sentenced to 24 years in prison. The crime was also touted as the subject of a potential telemovie.
Crime Investigation Australia explores the murders of two teenage girls near the NSW town of Bega in 1997. 14-year-old Lauren Barry and 16-year-old Nichole Collins disappeared while walking towards home along the Snowy Mountains Highway. A huge manhunt by police and the girls’ families and friends failed to find any trace of them. The girls had been abducted by Leslie Camilleri and Lindsay Beckett who had a combined record of more than 200 convictions. The girls were driven several hundred kilometres across the border into Victoria during which they were repeatedly assaulted and raped, then tied-up and gagged before being murdered. This episode of CIA features detailed re-enactments and interviews with key figures, including the main investigating police from New South Wales and Victoria, and an exclusive interview with Nathan Barry, the brother of one of the murdered girls.
On 27 November, 1987, 12-year-old Noosa school girl, Sian Kingi was grabbed off her push bike by Valmae Fay Beck and Barrie John Watts as she rode home from school. Beck and Watts gagged the innocent, terrified child. Watts then raped and bashed her. He then callously, and without remorse, cut her throat while his cowardly wife and mother of six watched on. Six days later, a fruit picker discovered Sian's mutilated body, still dressed in her Year Seven Sunshine Beach School uniform, in a creek bed. The hunt for the killers and their arrest was led by Bob Atkinson, now Queensland's police commissioner. As a result of thorough and dedicated police work by Queensland detectives, and in concert with New South Wales police, Beck and Watts were located hiding in a motel at Long Jetty on the NSW Central Coast a few weeks later. Police believe Beck and Watts are linked to the murders of Sharron Phillips, 20, in Brisbane's outer west, Stella Mary Farrugia, 19, and Louise Bell, 10, in Adelaide. In 1995, Watts was convicted of the manslaughter of 31-year-old student, Helen Mary Feeney in late 1987. Beck gave evidence against Watts, though Ms Feeney’s body has never been found. In 2008 Beck was hospitalised and underwent heart surgery, but later died in hospital.
Rodney Francis Cameron was dubbed ‘The Lonely Hearts Killer’ after he used a radio match-making program in 1990 to lure an unsuspecting woman to her death. Incredibly, he had only just been released from prison for two other killings in 1974. Cameron’s psychopathic tendencies appeared early in his life. At the age of ten he tried to strangle a young girl. He then attempted to strangle two other women, and moved into a life of alcohol and drug abuse, including experimenting with hallucinogenic chemicals. He also dabbled in Satanism. At the age of 19, while working at a nursing home in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, he raped and strangled nurse Florence Jackson. The victim was left with a towel stuffed down her throat in what was to become his signature “mark of death”. A week later, heading south to Melbourne, he hitched a lift with a 19-year-old bank clerk, Francesco Ciliberto, whom he strangled with a football sock. A short time later, he was caught in Queensland after abducting a mother and daughter. He told arresting police he “had to kill three.” He was sentenced to prison for life and served 16 years. While incarcerated he married a lifelong friend named Anne. Soon after his release in 1990, he rang a late-night match-maker talkback program on radio 3AW Melbourne. He described himself as a non-smoker and non-drinker, Gemini marine biologist who was searching for a partner “willing to share his happiness”. Forty-four-year-old Maria Goellner was one of six women who responded to his call. A few weeks later Maria was found lying dead on a motel room floor in the Blue Mountains, the same area where Cameron had committed this first murder 16 years earlier. She had a handkerchief stuffed down her throat. The killer was jailed again for life, this time his file was marked “never to be released.” While in jail he allegedly made admissions to an informant indicating he had killed five additional victims, including two other women after his release from prison in 1990. Police believe he was almost certainly responsible for the 1974 murder of elderly Sydney woman Sarah McKenzie, but there was not enough information to take that case to trial or to identify any of the other alleged victims.
Michael Kanaan was an angry young man in a hurry to make a name for himself in Sydney’s underworld. But his volatile temper and penchant for violence soon led him to kill three men before he was finally captured in a wild shootout with Sydney police. Born in Australia in 1975 to Lebanese parents he grew up following American crime gang culture in films and music. As a teenager he moved into petty theft and assault before his first arrest, for drug possession, in his early twenties. Despite being given a suspended sentence and a two-year good behaviour bond, he was soon in trouble again, this time for common assault, for which he escaped with a fine. He quickly returned to drug dealing and his gang - known as ‘DK’s boys’ - made huge profits distributing cocaine in Sydney’s Kings Cross. His reputation grew and by 1998, at age 23, he had become a lieutenant to organised crime figure Danny Karam. Although outwardly courteous and well spoken, Michael Kanaan had an uncontrollable temper and did not hesitate to use violence to settle disputes. In July 1998, he made a passing comment to some people involved in a fight outside the Five Dock Hotel in Sydney’s inner west. When one of them approached him, Kanaan suddenly drew a pistol and shot two men dead. His attempt to shoot a third failed as he had run out of bullets. A few months later, Kanaan led his gang in a drive-by shooting attack on the police station at Lakemba in Sydney in which the building was sprayed with bullets. Soon afterwards he organised the brutal execution of his underworld boss, Danny Karam in December 1998. He was finally cornered by police and arrested after a shoot-out in inner city Rushcutters Bay in which Constable Chris Patrech was wounded.
The highest ranking police officer in Australia to be murdered, Assistant Federal Police Commissioner Colin Winchester was shot twice in the head at point blank range as he was getting out of his car outside his Deakin home on January 10, 1989. At the time of his death Winchester was the Chief of Police in ACT region. He had served in the law enforcement of 27 years, firstly with the Australian Capital Territory Police Force and then in the Australian Federal Police after its formation in 1979. The shock of his death and the long investigation which followed left a lasting imprint on his fellow officers as they struggled to bring the killer to justice.
On the night of May 4, 1982, 13-year-old Terry Ryan rushed into his family home in Marsden, a suburb of Brisbane, and told his mother an astonishing story. Terry said that he had been forced by two men to participate in the sexual assault and prolonged torture and murder of his best friend, 13 year old Peter Aston. He said he had buried Aston in a shallow grave in scrubland about 60 kilometres south, over the New South Wales border, near the seaside hamlet of Kingscliff. Belita Ryan immediately rang the police. Terry retold his story to Detectives of the Queensland Criminal Investigation Branch. At approximately 4:45 on the morning of May 5th, the detectives drove Terry and his mother over the border into New South Wales. Terry led his mother and the detectives along the sandy track into the scrub. After about 200 meters, the track opened onto a roughly cleared area and the tire tracks disappeared into bush land on the other side of it. "There ... in there," Terry Ryan said as he pointed into the foliage. "It's in there.". The detectives led the way, and as they entered the track, they came across a grave-sized mound of earth off to the north-east. It was covered with small tree branches and twigs obviously broken from the nearby trees. Terry stepped back into his mother's arms and began to cry as the police officers approached the ominous mound and examined the freshly turned earth. In the dawn light, they saw spots of blood in the sand and a large, wet, blood-soaked section in the centre of the raised soil. Lying in the sand at the head of the bush grave was a dark sock and a knife in a sheaf. What the police officers found beneath the mound almost defied their comprehension.
The quick mind of a country telephone exchange supervisor led to a horrific discovery at a NSW country homestead in 1978. The supervisor had been checking complaints that the phone line to “Summerfield” station, near the southern town of Jerilderie, was out of order. Living at the old homestead was a celebrated “gun” shearer Mick Lewis, his wife Sue and their two small children. After trying the line off and on for several hours it was finally answered by a tiny girl who said her mother and father were sleeping. When asked to wake her mother the child replied in a faltering voice: “I don’t like Mummy anymore ‘cause Mummy’s turning black”.
The horrific story of killers Allan Baker and Kevin Crump who began their murderous spree in rural NSW by killing a complete stranger for $20, a packet of cigarettes and a couple of litres of petrol. They then kidnapping Virginia Morse, a young mother of three, raped and tortured her as they drove to Queensland. Virginia's torture ended there when she was tied to a tree and shot. In the wake of their 1973 trial, the Australian public was left to ponder whether the two men were insane, or, even more chilling, whether their deeds were the result of rational minds gone astray. Shortcomings in Australian Criminal law were exposed because as Virginia Morse was killed in Queensland, New South Wales authorities could not charge the pair with her murder. Not wanting to extradite the two men, New South Wales police chose to charge them with conspiracy to murder Virginia Morse. Fortunately the New South Wales prosecutors didn't have to rely only on the Morse allegations. Their list of crimes also included the murder of Ian Lamb, the stranger, as well as wounding a policeman, as well as car theft.
In 1959 the carefree culture of Perth changed forever when a plague of crime hit the city. By early 1963 the crime wave had escalated to serial murder. A couple were shot at as they sat in their car. In separate incidents two men were shot and killed at point blank range as they slept. Another was shot between the eyes as he opened his front door. A young woman was strangled to death and raped. An 18-year-old babysitter was executed as she studied and listened to music in front of the fire. All this was the work of one man: Eric Edgar Cooke.
In 1981, the headless and fingerless body of 19-year-old Kim Narelle Barry was found dumped in the bush at a mountain lookout near Wollongong, south of Sydney. Kim’s head and fingers were later found in bushland some distance from the lookout and damage to the skull showed she had been bludgeoned to death. Then, by chance, detectives discovered that on the night she died Kim had been in the company of a local miner, 24-year-old Graham Potter, who had suddenly disappeared. A national manhunt led to his eventual surrender. Potter was convicted of Kim Barry’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. No motive was ever established for the killing and Potter, who was released in 1996 after serving 15 years, still declares he is innocent.
On July 10 2001 Sef Gonzales murdered his sister Clodine 18; mother Mary Loiva Josephine 43, and his father Teddy 46, in their North Ryde home. He claimed that he had discovered the bodies when he arrived home, and that racist graffiti was sprayed on the wall. However as more evidence was unearthed, police started to see Sef as a very likely suspect. It was revealed that Sef attempted to cover up his academic failure by falsifying results, and when his parents found out they threatened to withdraw certain privileges such as the use of his car. At the same time, he had argued with his mother over a girlfriend she had disapproved of. These along with the desire to inherit the family's fortune were established as strong motives for Gonzales killing his parents and sister.
On a September night in 1986, two police officers climbed through a barbed-wire fence beside the F4 freeway at Minchinbury in Sydney’s west. They were accompanied by two teenage boys who guided them to the edge of a shallow dam where the beams from torches outlined the body of a young woman lying in the mud. She was later identified as nineteen-year-old Sydney bank clerk, Janine Balding. She had been abducted, raped, beaten and drowned. The shock was compounded when police arrested the gang responsible and found their youngest member was just 14 years old. The others present were a boy and girl both aged 15, a 16-year-old boy, and their leader, 21-year old Stephen “Shorty” Jamieson, who despite his physical maturity had the mental age of 10. It appears the gang was seeking to impress each other with their toughness when they set out to rape a woman. They selected Janine at random.
This chilling CIA episode details the long and difficult investigation which began with the disappearance of 18-year-old secretary Sarah Spiers from a night club in the up-market Perth suburb of Claremont on Australia Day, 1996. The new information has been kept secret by police until now for fear its release could jeopardise the investigation. Now, for the first time, it's being shown to the public and viewers will be asked to look closely and to call Crimestoppers if they believe they can help.
A chilling investigation of John Ernest Cribb, who on August 11th 1978, broke into the home of the Connell's. On a winter’s afternoon, Valda Connell and her four-year-old son Damien arrived home after having collected ten-year-old Sally from school. What was as an average day for the family turned to horror when Valda and the children were confronted by a man brandishing a knife and ordering them back into the car. The man, John Ernest Cribb, had just a couple of months earlier been released on parole after serving about six years for armed robbery. As Cribb drove north towards Taree, on the NSW Mid North Coast, Valda pleaded to let her and her children go. Later, under the dark of night, Cribb raped the 39-year-old mother, while her two children remained in the car terrified, cold, and hungry. In the early hours of the next morning near the small town of Wingham, Cribb left the family gagged and bound in bushland next to a deserted road and then drove back south towards Newcastle. But his thoughts got the better of him as he began telling himself that Valda knew too much, and decided he must instead go back and silence her. He returns and with his knife, viciously slays the family, one by one…
Serial killer Leonard Fraser was suspected of killing at least five women over a 17 year period but took the complete truth about his life of crime to his grave. Fraser was convicted of the murders of three people, including a 9 year old girl and the manslaughter of another woman.
The bloodied, semi-naked body of 30-year-old Donna Wheeler is discovered by her estranged husband Keith Bond and 12-year-old son. Donna had been brutally beaten and stabbed and when police investigate they discover that Donna’s estranged husband is a suspect but evidence also points to Keith’s brother Colin. Which brother really killed Donna Wheeler?
2010
The notorious baby-faced underworld figure who police believe killed 10 people pleaded guilty to the murders of Mark Malia (August 2003), Jason Moran (June 2003) and Lewis Moran (March 2004). He was killed in April 19, 2010 with extreme violence by a prison inmate whilst serving 35 years in a maximum security prison for these murders. He had previously been found guilty of the murder of Michael Marshall, who was shot dead outside his Toorak home in October 2003. The murders occurred at the height of Melbourne's notorious gangland war that raged between 1998 and 2006, leaving 27 dead. Williams mother, Barbara, publicly defended her son after his jailing and berated the trial judge. The Moran family had dominated Melbourne's criminal world for more than a decade when Williams vowed to wipe them out. In November 2007, Carl’s father, George, was jailed for a minimum of 20 months for a massive drug trafficking operation which he carried out with his son. Over two and half years Carl made about $500,000 selling methamphetamine. George, now 63, lives in suburban Broadmeadows, Melbourne, and suffers from chronic heart disease, diabetes, anxiety and depression. Barbara committed suicide at her Essendon home in December 2008, and their other son Shane died of a heroin overdose aged 31.
Painter and docker, Les Kane was described by his widow, Judi, as "the most violent man in Australia". Les came to prominence when he declared war on the armed robber Ray Chuck, the mastermind of what is known as the Great Bookie Robbery in 1976. But Chuck struck first. Les was machine-gunned by Chuck, within a few feet of his horrified wife and children in their Wantirna home and his body removed and never found. Les’s older brother, Brian Kane, was once Melbourne's top standover man, before he was gunned down in the Quarry Hotel in Brunswick in November, 1982. Mourners at his funeral included the entire Moran clan. Kane's niece Trish later married Jason Moran, who was shot dead with Pasquale Barbaro in 2004. Judi Kane today speaks of how she fell for a man whose cocky self-assurance hid a psychopathic streak. By the time she realised they would never live happily ever after, she was in too deep. Billy Longley is a veteran of the waterside crime war that gripped Melbourne and Sydney finally ended in the early 1980s, it was a war that led to at least 40 people being murdered. Longley, one of the most feared men on the docks, was known as "The Texan" because he wore a Stetson and carried a Colt .45. He was a Painters and Dockers Union presidential candidate and the leader of a union faction at war with his rival, Pat Shannon. In 1970, Longley was convicted in connection with Australia's biggest armed robbery to that time, the Mayne Nicholas heist in the Sydney suburb of Guildford, which netted $587,870. He disappeared in 1973 and a few months later Pat Shannon was gunned down in a South Melbourne's Hotel. Longley, Kevin James Taylor, Gary Leslie Harding were convicted of Shannon's manslaughter. . Now aged 83 Longley lives quietly in suburban Melbourne, he goes ballroom dancing and counsels school children against getting involved in violence.
One eyed crime matriarch Kath Pettingill mothered a brood of 10 children, many of whom variously went to early graves, prison or witness protection. She has a string of convictions and wrote an autobiography titled “The Matriarch” She is reported to have offered $20,000 for the testicles of an undercover detective who infiltrated her crime family. Her family included: DENNIS ALLEN, SON: one of the most feared drug dealers in Melbourne. Nicknamed ‘Mr. Death’ or ‘Mr. D’, he was believed to have been involved in up to 13 underworld murders including members of his own family. He’s been blamed for the dismembering of a Hells Angels biker with a chainsaw. He died in 1987, aged 35. VICTOR GEORGE PEIRCE, SON - A member notorious armed robber who was one of four men charged and acquitted of the ambush murders of two young police constables in Walsh Street, South Yarra, on October 12, 1988. At age 42, Peirce would meet his end, becoming a victim of the Gangland killings, shot dead in 2002. Pierce’s defacto, Wendy Peirce, told a newspaper in 2007 that her husband had organised the Walsh Street killings as payback for the death of his friend Graeme Jensen, who was shot dead in Narre Warren by police the day before. TREVOR PETTINGILL, SON - Born February 16, 1965, Trevor's experience of institutions began when he was six years old. He was put under state supervision because he was seen to be in moral danger. Trevor became a hardened career criminal. In 1987, with mother Kath, he pleaded guilty to heroin possession. Trevor was also charged with the murders of the two policemen in Walsh St in 1988. PETER JOHN ALLEN, SON - has multiple convictions for rape, armed robbery, drug trafficking and other offences, and spent 28 years behind bars. JASON RYAN, NEPHEW - Jason moved in with his uncle Dennis Allen during the height of his heroin empire and was apparently used as a carrier of drugs and guns. Jason became a witness for the prosecution in the trial of his uncle for the Walsh St murders.
The torrid details of the notorious Milat family are explored in this episode. Members of the family continue to support Ivan Milat, the nation's worst serial killer. Clearly, this is a family with “ issues”. According to one report, Ivan's brother Boris’s wife Marilyn was having an affair with Ivan and Boris believed that Marilyn fell pregnant to Ivan. When he sought advice from his father, he was encouraged to kill Ivan. Boris says Ivan lacks a soul and a conscience. He says his brother has been a psychopath from his earliest school days and always had a fascination with guns. Boris's comments have sparked a feud within his family, some of whom have reportedly made death threats against him. Carolyn Milat, says her brother Ivan does not have a secret side to him and was always genuine, but another brother, Bill Milat, has said that if Ivan is guilty, then he should be executed. When the trial judge suggested more than one person took part in the killings, Ivan’s younger brother, Richard Milat, publicly denied he had assisted Ivan.
Les, Michael and Gary Murphy, brothers from an Irish family of nine children, were three of the five men convicted of the savage rape and murder of Sydney nurse and beauty queen, Anita Cobby, which sparked calls for the reintroduction of the death penalty. The others were John Travers and Michael Murdoch. Michael Murphy, 33 at the time of the murder, was the eldest of the nine Murphy children. He had been sent to live with his grandmother when he was 12. His brother Gary Murphy was five years younger. Hearing impairment affected Gary Murphy's schooling and he left early to seek work. His strong interest in cars led to him facing several automotive theft related charges in the years before the murder. He was also known to have a very violent temper. Leslie Joseph Murphy was the youngest of the Murphy children, but was known as having the worst temperament. He had faced Children's Court on many occasions for a number of theft-related offences and was 24 at the time of the Cobby murder. Travers was a depraved 18-year-old who had grown up in a dysfunctional family in the outer suburbs of Sydney. He shared his blood with best mate Michael Murdoch in a ceremony that made them so-called blood brothers. The five are serving life sentences for the murder.
David & Catherine Birnie were a Perth couple who embarked on a depraved killing spree in Perth in 1988. Together they would cruise the city’s streets picking up unsuspecting young women who were then kidnapped raped and murdered. It was only after their final victim staged a courageous escape and exposed the House of Horrors that the killer couple were arrested and jailed for life. David later committed suicide in jail. Catherine makes regular appeals to be released on parole. This episode looks into the family backgrounds of both killers and includes an exclusive interview with David Birnie’s first wife, and others who knew the couple when they were children.
Lennie McPherson controlled most of Sydney's organised crime activity for several decades, with his associate George Freeman. Lenny was born in the inner-Sydney suburb of Balmain in 1921, the tenth child of metalworker William McPherson and his wife Nellie. He had some schooling at Birchgrove Primary School and his first brush with the law came at the age of 11 when he was convicted of stealing. Eighteen months later he was convicted on two charges of stealing and sent to a detention centre where he was bashed and raped. He went on to a life of serious crime and was universally feared by his adversaries and often referred to as Sydney's ‘Mr Big’ of organised crime, protected by police who relied on his information to control the Sydney underworld. McPherson had been estranged from his mother for many years, but on her 70th birthday, he unexpectedly turned up at her flat, carrying a live rabbit. He demanded to know why he had not been invited to her birthday party, and when she admitted that it was because of his criminal activities, the furious McPherson tore the rabbit's head off, threw the still-twitching body at her feet and stormed off. He died of a heart attack in Cessnock Gaol in 1996, aged 75. George Freeman was king of Sydney’s SP bookies, and was involved with McPherson in massive money laundering operations on Sydney race tracks and the corruption of Sydney chief magistrate Murray Farquar. During the 1970s George Freeman, was shot with a .22 pistol. but survived, and less than six weeks later the man suspected of the shooting was himself shot dead in the driveway of his Coogee home. Freeman, who was holidaying in Noosa at the time, refused to answer questions on the matter.
Dubbed ‘Mr. Sin’, and ‘the Boss of the Cross’, Abe Saffron ruled his family with an iron fist. A tireless womaniser, he even had his son, Alan, committed to the infamous Chelmsford Psychiatric Hospital, and denied him access to his own children. Saffron’s alleged criminal activities included illegal alcohol sales, dealing in stolen goods, illegal gambling, prostitution, drug dealing, bribery, extortion and murder. Most charges laid against him involved minor firearms or liquor licensing offences but late in his life he finally served seventeen months in jail for tax evasion. He died in 2006, aged 86.
Volume 1: The Backpacker Murders - Ivan Milat (75mins approx) (M) The Kimberley Killer - Joseph Schwab (45 mins) (M)
Dateline
1992
Braqueurs
2016
No One Saw a Thing
2019
Unsolved Mysteries
1988
The Chameleon Killer
2021
This Is a Robbery: The World's Biggest Art Heist
2021
Keeper of the Ashes: The Oklahoma Girl Scout Murders
2022
Love Con Revenge
2025
The Artful Dodger
2023
Matildas: The World at Our Feet
2023
