True Crime Conversations
True Crime Conversations explores the world’s most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. Follow us on TikTok @truecrimeconversations Want us to cover a case on the podcast? Email us at truecrime@mamamia.com.au
Episodes
Brenden Abbott, known as The Postcard Bandit, is one of Australia’s most notorious bank robbers and prison escapees. He's the guy who developed the “drop-in heist,” hiding in a bank’s ceiling overnight and dropping down as staff opened the vault.
Abbott continued a crime spree across Western Australia, South Australia, and Queensland, robbing banks and avoiding police. Reports claimed he sent post...
On New Year’s Day 1993, Perth woman Michelle Steck, 24, packed her bags and left her abusive four-year relationship with her violent partner’s words ringing in her ears. “You’re going to pay for your actions for a very long time,” spat Kevin East, 34.
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For nearly half a century, Australia was engaged in a shameful and shocking practice that would tear babies from the arms of their mothers, sometimes before they ever even laid eyes on their precious little faces.
Today, Amelia Oberhart shares with us the journey of her discoveries about her mother’s life before she was born in her podcast, Secrets We Keep, Shame, Lies and Family…and in the process of unveiling h...
John Killick is one of Australia's most infamous criminals. Why? Because in 1999, he escaped from Sydney’s Silverwater Correctional Complex on a helicopter.
Killick was on remand for armed robbery, and his girlfriend at the time, Lucy Dudko, hijacked a helicopter, landed it in the prison, and flew him out.
In this episode, we speak with John Killick himself about his life of crimes, his days of reform now and that...
On March 17, 2015, 17-year-old Masa Vukotic left her Doncaster home for an evening walk through her local park, a routine she had followed countless times.
That night, her boyfriend, Timothy Draper, did not receive a goodnight text from Masa. By morning, police were at his door with devastating news: Masa had been brutally stabbed 49 times in Koonung Creek Linear ...
“Iron Mike” Malloy survived not one, not two, but more than nine attempts on his life before he finally met his end. Malloy became the target of a group of acquaintances later dubbed the “Murder Trust,” who conspired to kill him for insurance money. What followed remains one of the most astonishing strings of failed murder attempts in history.
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On July 15, 1976, a school bus carrying 26 children and their beloved driver, Ed Ray, left Chowchilla, California, after a hot day at summer school and never made it home.
Blocked by a mysterious white van, the bus was hijacked by armed, masked men and driven into a hidden slough, where the victims were transferred into dark, soundproofed vans. Over the next 16 hours...
If two teenage girls went missing today, would police just assume they’d run away from home? That assumption is why two Australian teenagers, Elaine Johnson and Kerry Anne Joel, have never been found.
Elaine was 16, Kerry was 17, living a carefree 80s life in The Shire, south of Sydney. The girls were seen hitchhiking on the Princes Highway, but by the weekend, they were gone. No calls. No sightings. Years later, the families...
Sixteen-year-old Timothy “Jack” McCoy spent Christmas 1971 with his relatives in Michigan, leaving on January 2, 1972, to return home to Nebraska. After arriving in Chicago for a bus connection, he met a man who offered him food and a tour of the city. Timothy accepted, but he would never be seen alive again. Fourteen years later, his family learned he had been the first known victim of ...
On the morning of August 3rd, 1998, Melbourne businessman John Furlan followed his usual routine: coffee, newspaper, and off to work at his Coburg auto salvage yard. But at 8:45 AM, his white Subaru Liberty exploded on Lorenson Street, a blast so powerful it was felt five kilometres away. Windows shattered, cars burned, yet Furlan was the only fatality.
Police soo...
She was once called "Australia’s worst female serial killer." Kathleen Folbigg spent 20 years imprisoned for the deaths of her four children, convicted by a flawed system. In 2023, science proved she was innocent, leading to an immediate pardon and release.
In this deeply personal interview, Kathleen speaks about the trauma of her long ordeal and the bittersweet reality of her freedom. She reveals what it was like to be sudde...
On September 8, 1960, Psycho shocked cinema audiences with a level of psychological horror never seen before. But Psycho wasn’t pure fiction. It was inspired by the gruesome true story of Ed Gein, the real-life Butcher of Plainfield.
When police raided Gein’s Wisconsin farmhouse i...
On January 15, 1974, 15-year-old Charlie Otero and his siblings came home in Wichita, Kansas, to find their family murdered - the first known victims of the BTK killer: Bind, Torture, Kill.
Dennis Rader, a father, church leader, and city worker, hid in plain sight while terrorising a community for decades. After years of taunting the police, he was finally caught i...
Part criminal, part storyteller, and part myth. Mark “Chopper” Read is one of Australia’s most polarising figures.
Today, we dive into the life and legacy of the man behind the legend. From a violent childhood and years in Pentridge Prison to bestselling books, stage shows, and the iconic film portrayal by Eric Bana, Chopper’s s...
On a summer night in Italy in 2007, the brutal murder of Meredith Kercher shocked the world. Her American flatmate Amanda Knox, and her new boyfriend Raffaele, were instantly thrust into an international legal saga that spanned years.
For the first time ever, True Crime Conversations host Claire Murphy joins The Spill's Laura Brodnik for a can't-miss crossover that dissects the new Disney+ series, The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox. W...
In October 2022, Samantha Stites was kidnapped and assaulted by a man who had stalked her for over a decade. After breaking into her Michigan home, he restrained her and took her to a soundproof bunker he had built inside a storage unit, where she was held captive for nearly 15 hours.
Despite a previous protection order, the man’s harassment had only e...
What drives a teenager to become a killer?
In 2001, three-year-old Courtney Morley-Clarke was put to bed on a hot summer night on the NSW Central Coast. By morning, her bed was empty, the screen door wide open, and her nightie lay on the ground.
Police soon discovered Courtney hadn’t wandered off, she was abducted and murdered...
On a February morning in 2013, guests at the infamous Cecil Hotel in Los Angeles complained of brown, foul-tasting water. What the maintenance team discovered on the rooftop would spark a global internet frenzy - the body of 21-year-old Elisa Lam inside the hotel's water tank.
In the days leading up to her disappearance, Elisa was captured on the hotel’s elevator CCTV behaving erratically. The now-viral footage has since fuel...
When police raided the home of 48-year-old Garry Francis Newman in March 2007, they found him sitting in his lounge room, chatting online with a 14-year-old girl. She thought she was speaking to “Brandon,” a teenage American boy. In reality, Brandon was a carefully crafted fake identity Newman had used to lure girls online. Police would later uncover nearly 200 such identities.
You don’t expect to find two billionaires posed like mannequins by their own pool.
But on December 15, 2017, realtor Elise Stern did just that when she entered Barry and Honey Sherman’s Toronto mansion. Honey was traveling, and Barry was at work, so Elise knew the couple wouldn’t be home.
As she showed potent...
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