Naked City

Mick Gatto is one of Australia’s most colourful identities. He's survived death plots and was acquitted of the murder of hitman Andrew Veniamin. In the first episode of Naked City, John Silvester returns to his candid 2009 interview with Gatto, who opens up about the Melbourne underworld, Veniamin, Carl Williams, jail and his trial.

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In 1993 elderly grandma Phyllis Hocking was bashed and murdered in her son’s home. The scene was left to look like it was a burglary gone wrong, but homicide investigator Charlie Bezzina wasn’t buying it. He believed the son, Philip Hocking, was most likely the suspect as he was the only beneficiary in the Will. In this episode of Naked City, Bezzina takes Silvester through the case using original audio tapes of the con...

In the 1980’s Hells Angels member Peter John Hill flew to America and was taught to cook speed. Eventually Sergeant Steele Waterman became a key member of the task force assigned to investigate the Angels amphetamine production. We hear from both Waterman and Hill how a jury was nobbled and learn of the US hitman sent to Australia to kill two detectives. As an aside the hitman, James Brandes learnt we do things a little diffe...

Christopher Dean Binse was a prodigious armed robber and expert escape artist. He led a cat and mouse chase with armed robbery squad detective Ken Ashworth. When Ashworth eventually caught him in 1992, Binse expected to be bashed but instead he was treated fairly. Shocked, Binse agreed to a taped off-the-record chat with Ashworth where he explains the high he gets from a stick-up. Listen to Binse&...

In 1984 NSW policeman Mick Drury was shot in his Sydney home. The gunman was hitman Christopher Dale Flannery, the hit was organised by corrupt NSW detective sergeant Roger Rogerson to stop Drury giving evidence against Melbourne drug dealer Alan Williams. Years later Williams confessed to Silvester exactly what happened. When Williams knew he had a terminal disease he planned to kill former Melbourne detective Brian Murphy, missin...

For more than a decade Russell Cox was Australia’s most wanted criminal. In 1977 he became the only man ever to escape from Sydney’s maximum security Katingal Prison. In 1988 Fox was arrested in a wild shootout at Doncaster Shoppingtown about to commit an armed robbery. Ken Ashworth was one of the arresting officers and he shot at a grazed Cox. Ken was a career detective who hunted armed robbers, he gives unique insight...

David Key was winched from the police helicopter 400 times on rescue missions. He tells Silvester what happened when he was lowered into 30 metre waves in the fatal 1998 Sydney to Hobart Yacht Race and how close the helicopter came to crashing through lack of fuel. In 2009 he was lowered into Black Saturday then released from the wire when the helicopter started to lose altitude. Believing he was going to die he and the people he w...

As a young cop of Greek heritage Nick Cecil was used to infiltrate ethnic gambling houses and became a key undercover in a task force assigned to smash illegal bookie syndicates in the 1950s. Much later he was sent to find The Great Train Robbery crook Ronald Biggs by putting his wife Charmian under surveillance when Biggs disappeared from his Blackburn home. Cecil tells an amazing story of becoming friends with the Biggs...

Keith Banks arrived at the Police Academy a clean cut teetotaller. Within a few years he was a dope smoking, binge drinking undercover cop. Fit, idealistic and eager to learn, he sucked in as much knowledge as he could before graduating into a police force rotting from the top. By the time he was 21 the clean-living country kid was a dope-smoking, binge-drinking undercover agent regularly risking his life to infiltrate drug syndica...

Part 1 of 2 Known armed robber Graeme Jensen was shot dead by police as he evaded arrest at Narre Warren. Jensen was part of a group called 'The Flemington Crew' who operated in the 80s and early 90s, when armed robberies were a weekly occurrence. Police wanted him for the murder of a security guard, but Jensen was innocent, and the arrenst went badly wrong. A split second decision left Jensen dead, and his criminal associates vowi...

Part 2 of 2 - We take you inside the investigation, the witness betrayal and the bloody aftermath of the killing of two young police officers on Walsh Street in South Yarra in 1988. It was a war fought in Melbourne streets that left three suspects dead, two patrol officers murdered and led a respected investigator to take his own life.

John Noonan, the joint head of the Ty-Eyre taskforce, recounts the brutal slaying as...

What happens once the criminals are locked up? In his years as an officer at Port Phillip Prison, Paul O'Sullivan has seen more than most will see in a lifetime. An accomplished boxer, he could hold his own and he had to, because jail is a violent place. He's witnessed murders, bashings, and even had his own throat cut. But he's also made friends, had a laugh and got a better understanding of human nature. 

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Peter Norris Dupas is the worst type of serial killer -  a man who stalked women for decades and, police suspect, randomly killed six strangers. Convicted of the murders of Nicole Patterson and Margaret Maher he was the prime suspect in the murder of Mersina Halvagis, stabbed to death in 1997 in the Fawkner Cemetery tending her grandmother’s grave.

It would take homicide investigators Jeff Maher and Paul Scarlett ...

He nearly died because his boss liked a cheap beer: Bertie Wrout was right hand to Melbourne crime lord Lewis Moran and saw the gangland wars up close. He was there as Moran family and associates came and went, witnessed the rise of the infamous drug lord Carl Williams and was with Lewis Moran when he was was shot dead at his favourite drinking hole, The Brunswick Club. 

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Hugo Rich and a crook known as The Ladderman are at opposite ends of the criminal food chain. Rich was a violent, calculating armed robber and murderer. Ladderman wouldn’t hurt a fly. In this episode you will hear audio tapes from both - Rich's outburst in the County Court where he threatened to kill the prosecutor and did everything in his power to sabotage his trial to a bizarre collection of police interviews wit...

Convicted of four murders, but suspected of many more, Alistair 'Sandy' MacRae could be one Australia's worst serial killers. He was a brothel boss, standover man, organised crime associate and small-time businessman.

He lured people to his property near Merbein in country Victoria with the promise of a drug deal, took their money, killed them and buried them on the property. In an interview with police, MacRae blames one of the ki...

She was a stunning former model and television hostess. He was a successful businessman. They owned two mansions and had three beautiful children. So why did Jacqui Ramchen vanish without a trace?

Her husband, Slavik "Vic" Ramchen, a no nonsense, hard drinking, hard-working civil engineer was the prime suspect.

Of all the cases veteran homicide detective Charlie Bezzina has investigated the case of Jaqui Ramchen is one of the most ...