Crime Scenes with Coffee Beans

August 19th, 1986 started like any other day for mother Tess Knight and her daughter, Samantha. But by the time the sun went down taht day, Tess would be living every parents worst nightmare - her precious daughter Samantha had come home from school and simply vanished. What happened next would bring about one of the biggest missing persons searches Australia had ever seen, and would expose a mostly unheard of and unexposed predato...

This episode takes us to the beautiful suburb of Perth, Western Australia, and between 1958 and 1963, locals and police were at the mercy of a brazen thief, who bounced from grand theft auto to breaking and entering. But all that changed on the morning of Australia Day, January, 1963, a gunshot rang out in the dead of night, that marked the start of a massacre, where no-one, no matter where they were, was safe.

But it didn't en...

Most of us like to unwind by enjoying a cold drink or two with our loved ones. Whether that is while we are on vacation, or just relaxing after a hard day, or week, at work, the bar/pub is a place where we can relax, take a breath and catch up with friends. But what happens when a man, who is doing the exact same thing, gets kicked out of the bar you are at for disorderly conduct, and rather than going home and sleeping it off he d...

August 1992, and the idyllic rural town of Bargo in New South Wales, is rocked by the senseless and cold blooded murder of nine year old schoolgirl, Ebony Simpson. 

Ebony's killer, a father himself, wasn't too hard to catch, however, with sightings of a strange man in a car hanging by the area's schools and the bus stop where Ebony walked home from everyday. He even joined the large scale search party lookin...

Sydney, NSW, 1961 and the body of a man is found stabbed to death in a public bath, his genitals cut clean off and thrown into Sydney Harbour.

What followed after this grim discovery was only the beginning for the serial killer the media quickly dubbed 'The Mutilator' and left 3 more men dead, genitals removed on all but one, and police at a loss as to who the killer was, until the killer was identified....but no...

In October 1986, pretty university student Mary Neilson goes missing without a trace. Then another girl goes missing, and another, and unbeknownst to police, there is a serial killer couple making the rounds in the working class West Australian suburb of Willagee and surrounds, looking for the next pretty girl to satisfy the sadistic couples lust for abduction, rape and murder, with the woman signalling she had found their next vic...

It's a freezing cold winter night in June 1993, Frankson VIC, and 18 year old Elizabeth Stevens is due home from school. When she didn't come home, her worried relatives search for her, but to no avail and report her missing to the police. When her severely bashed and beaten body is discovered the next day, police or locals have no idea the hell the next few weeks would unleash on them and the women in the area. A psychot...

On a summer's day in February 1921, in a small country town called North Motton, located in Tasmania, Australia, 13 year old Chrissie Venn set off to run errands for her mother, as chore she had done many times before. Only on this day, she didn't come home. She was found, days later, brutally murdered, sexually assaulted and stuffed in a tree stump.

What followed the discovery of Chrissie's body would leave a presuma...

Love hurts, love scars..... yes, we all know the song, but what happens when those lyrics ring true and not only does love hurt, but it becomes homicidal?

Crime Scenes with Coffee Beans has hit double digits - yes, we are at episode 10!! - and for this episode Belinda is travelling to Aberdeen, NSW, where in 2000, well liked local, John Price, was stabbed to death, skinned and decapitated by his ex girlfriend, Katherine Knight. This...

Most of us dream of winning the lottery, right? We fantasise about the things we'd buy, the jobs we'd quit, and the places we'd see and for Bazil and Freda Thorne, this dream became a reality when the couple $100,000 pounds in the Sydney Opera House Lottery. However, that dream come true quickly turned into a living nightmare when their 8 year old son, Graeme, was kidnapped and held for ransom. What happened next sho...

When most of us travel, we make sure we have all we need, and if we forgot something we'll grab it when we get to our destination. Which is exactly what German tourist Joseph Schwab did when he arrived in Queensland, Australia in 1987. Except instead of stopping to buy a forgotten item like toothpaste, he stocked up on guns and ammunition. What happened next left five innocent campers dead and police shooting for their lives.

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It's the day after Fathers Day, 1971 and Hope Forrest, a small town in South Australia, will wake up to the news that a horrific shooting has taken place in their beautiful country town, leaving 10 people from the same family dead, and earning the town the unenviable title of being the home of the worst familicide in Australia. 

Join your host Belinda Brady over a cuppa or cocktail as she takes a deep dive into the horrific nig...

It's May 1942, and Melbourne, Australia, just like the rest of the world, is in the grips of WW2. As a result, Melbourne is in 'brownout' a term used to describe the low lighting the city used to avoid enemy detection (think minimal streetlights, shops lights etc).A killer takes advantage of this low lighting and three women are found strangled, all within days of each other. As a new fear grips the area, particularl...

It's early morning NYE 1921, in a quiet, yet seedy laneway known as Gun Alley in the heart of Melbourne, Victoria, and a keen bottle collector is up early to collect empty bottles from the night before, eager to beat the crowds and summer heat.What he finds instead is so horrific it sends him running for the police. There, in Gun Alley, was the body of 12 year old Alma Tirtscke, the very girl that had been reported missing the...

It's an early September morning, 1934, in Aulbury NSW, and Tom Griffith is taking his prized bull for a walk. Whilst walking he smells kerosine and upon investigating he discovers the body of a pyjama cald young woman, very dead and very burned and this discovery will spark a murder mystery that wont be resolved for years.Who is Pyjama girl? Who killed her? And how did this murder result in a dead body being put on public disp...

It's New Years Eve, 1901, in the small German farming town of Towitta, South Australia and the Schippan children are settled in for the night. That is, until their 14 year old sister, Bertha, is brutally murdered by a 'bearded man' in a seemingly unprovoked attack. With no suspects to go on, police quickly arrest Mary, Bertha's older sister who was sharing a bed with Bertha that night. But did Mary really do it?...

Join your host Belinda over a beverage or two as she discusses baby farmers John and Sarah Makin and yes, it is as bad as it sounds. In 1893, married couple John and Sarah Makin were trusted and paid for to care for infants by desperate, often destitute, parents, a practice known as baby farming, which was not uncommon in those times, but horrifically, they did anything but, with a blocked pipe in a backyard bringing their heinous ...

Join Belinda as she discusses the life and many crimes of one of Australia's first recorded serial killers, Frederick Deeming. From theft to bigamy to murder, nothing was off limits for this egotistical career conman turned serial killer, and horrifically, this included his own children.Frederick's trail of deception and destruction took place in both Australia and England between 1890 - 1891 and only ended when he was fi...