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
Some women dream of launching a career before 25. Some dream of owning their first home. Jemma Lilley had a different goal: she wanted to kill someone before her 25th birthday, but she knew she couldn't do it alone.
Obsessed with serial killers and violent fantasy, Lilley set her sights on turning desire into reality. She found an accomplice in Trudi Lenon, an impressionable single mother whom she gradually drew into her worl...
In June 2016, Karen Ristevski vanished from her home. Her husband, Borce, told their daughter she had gone for a walk and never returned. For months, police and family searched in vain.
Then, in February 2017, hikers stumbled upon her skeletal remains in a quiet nature reserve. Police pieced together CCTV footage and phone records, leading to Borce’s arrest. He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in 2019, after prosecutors were un...
Darryl Gardiner grew up in a home ruled by unimaginable violence... and it almost destroyed him.
Witnessing and experiencing abuse from a terrifyingly young age, he followed the same path, becoming a violent man himself. But Darryl broke the cycle.
Now a father, clinician, and founder of programs helping men and women escape abuse, Darryl shares a raw, unflinching story of accountability, redemption, and what it truly takes to stop...
In October 1976, 16-year-old Trenny Gibson boarded a school bus in Knoxville, Tennessee, expecting a routine day. Instead, her horticulture class was taken on a rainy hike into the Great Smoky Mountains National Park without warning.
Unprepared and uneasy, Trenny borrowed a jacket from a fellow student. By mid-afternoon, she was gone. One moment she was on the trail, the next she had vanished. Nearly 50 years later, her disappearan...
In May 2019, 25-year-old Courtney Herron was murdered after a night out in Melbourne’s CBD. What happened next would ignite national outrage and raise disturbing questions about justice in Australia.
In this episode, Courtney’s father, John Herron, speaks about the daughter he loved deeply, her generosity, humour, and instinctive kindness, and the nig...
The case of Jodi Arias, the woman who murdered her former lover, Travis Alexander, in 2008, captivated audiences around the world. When the trial began in 2013, media coverage intensified, driven by a disturbing question: what could compel a young, attractive woman to kill so violently? To shoot, stab, and nearly decapitate a man she claimed to have loved?
These are just some of the questions journalist Briana Whitney set out to ex...
Two 15-year-olds vanish after heading to a disco in Wollongong.
An 18-year-old Belgian backpacker disappears after a night out in Byron Bay.
A 20-year-old Navy recruit vanishes from a casino lobby in a matter of minutes.
These are just a few of Australia’s missing persons cases you may ne...
Who would try to hire a hitman to kill an innocent young girl?
In early 2021, Riley ended a relationship with a man she had been in a year-long online relationship with after she alleges he assaulted her. Despite the breakup, he continued to message her relentlessly.
Instead of backing down, Scott escalated his feelings...
On September 7, 1971, at a remote farmhouse 40 kilometres south of Adelaide, Clifford Bartholomew killed 10 people. His wife, his seven children, his sister-in-law and her 19-month-old son. He shot them all dead.
He was sentenced to death, but because of changes to the law, he wasn’t killed. Instead, he was re-sentenced to life in prison and managed to serve just eight years before being released on parole.
He changed his nam...
On a summer evening in January 1983, 10-year-old Louise Bell went missing from her bedroom in Adelaide's Hackham West.
It was a case that horrified Australia, as every parent's worst nightmare became reality for the Bell family. How could a young girl tucked up in her bed in a safe, suburban neighbourhood just go missing in the middle of the night?
It would take 30 years, and advances in DNA technology, to find out who ...
In 1992, career criminal Peter Gibb met prison guard Heather Parker while serving a 12-year sentence at the Melbourne Remand Centre. Heather claimed she didn’t notice Peter at first, but she quickly became smitten, and their relationship developed from flirtatious to physical.
When their affair was exposed, Heather was immediately transferred, with communication between the two forbidden. But they couldn’t be stopped, a...
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.
Listen to the full story, with writer Megan Norris, at the link here.
THE END BITS
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 ...
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