Australian True Crime

He was a murderer, swindler, bigamist and suspect in the Jack the Ripper killings. Frederick Deeming was also the most hated man in the world. Claiming to be haunted by the ghost of his dead mother, Deeming had spent years roaming the planet under various aliases, preying on the innocent, the gullible and the desperate. But the discovery by Australian police in 1892 of the body of one of his wives in a shallow concrete grave triggered one of the greatest manhunts in history and exposed a further series of grisly murders that stunned the Victorian era.

And Then the Darkness is a gripping account of the disappearance in the Australian Outback of English tourist Peter Falconio. His girlfriend, Joanne Lees, was found cut, bleeding and wandering the highway, her hands bound. Joanne's account of her ordeal sparked a frenzy of media interest and the biggest manhunt ever mounted in Australia. Questions arose about the police operation and about Joanne herself.

Jay Malkoun isn't the type of man who lets a little thing like being blown up slow him down. In March 2019, a car bomb outside a gym in Athens detonated the Mercedes Jay's his children had been riding in less than an hour earlier. It was an explosion heard around the world, as global media, law enforcement agencies, and underworld cartels speculated on who had moved to assassinate the former gangster and retired leader of one of the world's most feared and powerful underworld organisations. There were a hundred possible suspects. Jay has some ideas about it too.

The Sting takes you on a journey behind Australia's most sensational undercover bust, revealing extraordinary new details. It is a shocking insight into one of the country's most evil killers, and the operation that brought him down. The disappearance of Queensland schoolboy Daniel Morcombe was one of the most heartbreaking and confounding child abduction and murder cases of the century, spanning almost a decade prior to the eventual arrest of known paedophile Brett Peter Cowan, one of the original persons of interest.

The Afterlife Confessional follows Bill's journey for answers as he looks through the dizzying kaleidoscope of his clients' lives - the widower who escaped an aged-care trap to take her husband's ashes on the road trip of a lifetime; the man who spent his life paying it forward to try to make up for one shameful act; the closet dominatrix who quietly confronts her husband's infidelity by comforting those truly in need; the devoted couple who insist on going hand-in-hand into the afterlife.

In the autumn of 1992, two young women students at Melbourne University went to the police claiming that they had been indecently assaulted at a party. The man they accused was the head of their co-ed residential college. The controversial book that Helen Garner wrote about the resulting Ormond College sexual harassment case caused a social media storm. Prominent feminists were outraged at Garner's perceived support for the man involved, but many saw her approach a necessary and much welcome nuance towards the power dynamic between men and women.

Zak Grieve grew up in an outback town, at the crossroads between right and wrong, white and black, punishment and forgiving. Convicted of a brutal killing despite even the judge saying he wasn't there when it happened, he spent years writing letters describing his hopes and dreams, his role in what happened, and how when the real world came down on him with a ton of punishment, he wasn't ready. This is a book about growing up, about dying and about writing. In the end, it is only Zak's imagination, given life in the novels he also writes inside prison, that hold the key to his survival.

Cold Case Investigations covers mostly murders or suspected murders - such as Ashley Coulston, Mr Cruel and Ivan Milat - with the victims as the focus. Not only because, criminologically speaking, the more you can learn about your victim the more you can extrapolate about the person who killed or abducted them, but also because they deserve their stories to be told. They deserve for people to know their names. They shouldn't just be someone's victim.

Plunged into a nightmarish world of extreme violence, solitary confinement, gang allegiances, drugs, vindictive wardens, and regular stabbings, Paul Wood spent the next 11 years confined in some of New Zealand's toughest jails. Based on an account of his experiences he wrote while still inside, How to Escape from Prison chronicles Paul's road to redemption and a new life as a doctor of psychology, helping others strive to fulfill their potential and develop the resilience to flourish, even in adversity.

Australia has a unique place in the history of outlaw motorcycle gangs. From the clubs' beginnings in the swinging '60s, their entry into the amphetamine market in the 1970s, through to the 1984 Milperra Massacre that made world headlines, to the Sydney airport brawl between the Hell's Angels and Comancheros and the brutal murder of Anthony Zervas, Outlaw Bikers in Australia tells how these 'one per cent deviants' grew to dominate the recreational drug market and became major players in the international outlaw biker scene.

The Arsonist takes listeners inside the hunt for a fire-lighter. After Black Saturday, a February 2009 day marked by 47 degree heat and firestorms, arson squad detectives arrived at a plantation on the edge of a 26,000-hectare burn site. Eleven people had just been killed and hundreds made homeless. Here, in the Latrobe Valley, where Victoria's electricity is generated, and the rates of unemployment, crime and domestic abuse are the highest in the state, more than 30 people were known to police as firebugs. But the detectives soon found themselves on the trail of a man they didn't know.

Australian Ghost Stories is a spine-tingling collection of true crime tales that will leave you feeling haunted long after you've heard the last word. From the ghostly apparitions that haunt historic landmarks to diabolical presences in everyday suburban houses, these are stories of ordinary Australians and their encounters with the unexplainable.

All farmer Mathew Dunbar ever wanted was to find love and have a family of his own. That’s why, just months after meeting Natasha Darcy, the much-loved grazier didn’t hesitate to sign over his multi-million-dollar estate to her. When Mathew died in an apparent suicide soon afterwards, in a stranger-than-fiction twist, Natasha's estranged husband – who she was once charged with trying to kill – was the first paramedic on the scene.

The gripping finale to Three Crooked Kings and Jacks and Jokers brings to a close Matthew Condon's best-selling true-crime trilogy. In 1983, the soon-to-be-knighted Police Commissioner Terry Lewis continues to turn a blind eye to the operation of The Joke, a highly organised system of graft payments from illegal gambling, prostitution and illicit drugs. As the tentacles of this fraudulent vice network spread, the fabric holding together the police, judiciary and political system starts to unravel.

What does a young footballer do to cut loose? At night, some play what they think of as pranks or games: night games with women. Sometimes these involve consensual sex, sometimes not, and often the lines are blurred. In Night Games, Anna Krien follows the rape trial of an Australian Rules footballer. She also takes a balanced and fearless look at the dark side of footy culture - the world of Sam Newman, Ricky Nixon, Matty Johns and the Croa Sharks.

Paul Verhoeven's ex-cop dad, John, spent years embroiled in some of the seediest, scariest intrigue and escapades imaginable. What unfolded in Loose Units was a goldmine of true-crime stories, showcasing John's dramatic experience of policing in Sydney in the 1980s and brilliantly twisted sense of humour. But what happened next in John's career was twice as weird. Electric Blue spans the final years of John's stint in the New South Wales police force, when he took up an offer to move into the grimy, analytical world of forensics.

The ultimate collection of Australia's craziest cons and mad schemes from a master storyteller. Australia is the birthplace and setting of some of the wildest, craziest and least-likely-to-succeed cons and rorts in history. From the cleverest double-crosses to the most unlikely and maddest schemes, master storyteller Jim Haynes reminds us that we've never been shy of pulling a trick or two.

In October 1997 a clever young law student at ANU made a bizarre plan to murder her devoted boyfriend after a dinner party at their house. Some of the dinner guests - most of them university students - had heard rumours of the plan. Nobody warned Joe Cinque. He died one Sunday, in his own bed, of a massive dose of rohypnol and heroin. His girlfriend and her best friend were charged with murder. Helen Garner followed the trials in the ACT Supreme Court. Compassionate but unflinching, this is a book about how and why Joe Cinque died.

As a cop, I used to sit on one side of the interview room table facing murderers, child abductors and rapists. Now I'm sitting on the other side: disgraced, forced out of the police and judged to be a criminal. I want to show you what the world looks like from here.

In today's ruthless world of organised crime, the best criminals aren't foolish enough to steal money out of banks. They wear tailored suits, carry briefcases, and discreetly slip money into banks. Bigwigs, oligarchs and crime syndicates running drugs, trafficking guns and people, arming terrorists and subverting government controls are desperate to put a legitimate face on their wealth. Washing dirty money, moving it around the globe, making it look legitimate is where the action is for both criminals and the authorities chasing them.