True Crime Conversations

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...

On October 19, 1997, Sally Leydon called her brother Owen to ask if their mum, Marion Barter—who was on a year-long trip overseas—had phoned for his birthday. When Owen said no, Sally felt uneasy. Marion never missed birthdays.

She’d last heard from her mum in August, calling from the UK. But it was the '90s—no constant contact, no photo t...

In October 2003, newlyweds Gabe and Tina Watson travelled from Alabama to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef for their dream honeymoon. Just 11 days after their wedding, the couple prepared to dive the SS Yongala shipwreck, one of the world’s most famous dive sites. But within minutes of entering the water, Tina was pulled to the surface unconscious. Despite desperate attempts to save her, ...

What began as a typical game day celebration for University of Idaho students would end in unimaginable horror on Saturday, November 12, 2022. 

Xana Kernodle, a marketing junior, spent the day with friends, including her boyfriend Ethan Chapin and housemates Dylan, Bethany, Kaylee and Maddie at their shared home on 1122 King Road. After parties and celebrations, the group returned home in the early hours of Sunday morning.

At ...

In May 1999, two detectives followed a trail of suspicious missing persons cases to an old, red-brick bank in Snowtown, South Australia. 

As they head inside, they head straight for the bank’s vault where they find six large plastic barrels containing human remains. They also find handcuffs, knives, a saw, boxes of disposable gloves and bottles of hydrochloric acid. 

They’d come to realise they'd found the dum...

On a scorching summer day in Adelaide, January 26, 1966, the Beaumont children—Jane, Arnna and Grant—left for Glenelg Beach and never came home.

In a crowd of hundreds, they vanished without a trace, no evidence at all. Nearly 60 years on, the mystery still grips Australia, it's the cold case that can't go cold. 

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