True Crime Conversations

By Mamamia Podcasts

What's True Crime Conversations about?

True Crime Conversations explores the stories and the people behind some of the world’s most notorious crimes.

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True Crime Conversations episodes:

05.15.2024
The Shocking Murder Of Tara Costigan
Tara Costigan was murdered in 2015, one day after taking out a DVO on her ex-partner Marcus Rappel. The day he laid a finger on her was the day he murdered her. Before that the abuse had been verbal. Emotional. Tara...
05.08.2024
It’s Been 10 Years Since The Murder Of Luke Batty
In 2014, 11-year-old Luke Batty was murdered by his father at Tyabb cricket ground on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. The following year a coroner ruled that no one could have predicted that Luke would be killed by his father, but the inquest...
05.01.2024
The Woman Counting Australia’s Murdered Women
This month, we’re doing things differently. Over the next few weeks well be revisiting stories from our archives to highlight crimes involving male violence against women in Australia because right now the rate at which we are losing women is...
04.24.2024
The News Snowtown Victims Families Have Been Dreading
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...
04.17.2024
A Triple Murder And A Broken System
In May 2016, police arrived at a farmhouse in Hillier, north of Adelaide. The scene that awaited them was horrifying beyond words. Stephen Graham Peet had just murdered three people. The bodies of his girlfriend, Adeline Yvette Rigney-Wilson, and her two...
04.10.2024
According To A Criminologist, Keli Lane Shouldn’t Be In Prison.
On September 12, 1996, Keli Lane gave birth to a baby girl at Auburn Hospital in western Sydney. Two days later that baby seemingly disappeared. After years of investigation, Keli was convicted of her daughter's murder in 2010 and sentenced to...
04.03.2024
Dorothea Puente: The Serial Killer Granny
To the outside world, Dorothea Puente presented herself as a kind grandmotherly figure who cared for the disabled and vulnerable residents of her boarding house in downtown Sacramento. But behind closed doors, nothing was as it seemed… Not only was she...
03.27.2024
Secrets On Death Row: America’s ‘Killer Clown’
John Wayne Gacy is one of the worst serial killers in American history, murdering at least 33 teenage boys and men in the late 1970s. He was executed by lethal injection in 1994, but many are confident he killed even more...
03.20.2024
Inside The Rise & Fall Of Ruby Franke
Ruby Franke and her husband Kevin started posting their family online in 2015 under the pseudonym 8 Passengers. Things like birthday parties, grocery hauls, tips on getting toddlers to sleep through the night, and Sunday baking. It was an all-access...
03.13.2024
How A Perth Girl Ended Up In A Thai Prison
Holly Deane-Johns grew up in a wealthy area of Perth. When her family’s real estate business went bust, her mother started a successful escort agency to keep their lavish lifestyle intact. But her parent’s relationship was abusive, and when they...
03.06.2024
Scotland’s ‘Lynette Dawson’ Case
In April, 1998, Arlene Fraser disappeared from her home in Elgin, north-east Scotland. On a seemingly normal Tuesday morning, the 33-year-old waved her two children off to school and was never seen again. Arlene’s disappearance sparked the biggest missing person search in...
02.28.2024
‘Sit Down & Shut Up. The Man In The Coffin Has Something To Say’
Bill Edgar is the world's only Coffin Confessor. He attends people’s funerals, sits quietly amongst the mourners, and then at a time pre-determined by the deceased, he stands up and confesses. Sometimes, it’s a shocking secret. Sometimes, it's their last wish. What started...
02.21.2024
How Australia’s ‘Bug Whisperer’ Solves Crimes
Insects never lie. And in Paola Magni’s job, she's the person who helps translate what these tiny little witnesses have to say to give justice to victims of crime. Known as Australia’s ‘bug whisperer’, Paola is the global face of the...
02.14.2024
Escaping One Of Australia's Most Secretive Cults
Laura McConnell grew up in a fundamentalist sect with no name. Along with no official title, the group also claims to have no registration around the world, no formal hierarchy, and no official places of worship. According to Laura, it's this secrecy...
02.07.2024
Meet The Man Who Does 200 Autopsies A Year
Johan Duflou has seen a lot of dead bodies. In his four decades as a forensic pathologist, he estimates he’s done about 200 autopsies a year. Sometimes the people on his table have been the victim of a crime. Sometimes they’ve...
02.05.2024
Come With Us Behind The Scenes Of Crime...
Mamamia’s True Crime Conversations is back for 2024, exploring the world’s most notorious crimes, by speaking to the people who know the most about them. And over the next month we're taking you behind the scenes of crime, interviewing a forensic...
01.31.2024
With Her Abuser Behind Bars, Dassi Erlich Is Ready To Talk.
In 2023, Malka Leifer was sentenced to 15 years in prison for 18 counts of sexual abuse against Dassi Erlich and her little sister. Leifer was the sisters' former high school principal, and when whispers of their allegations came to light...
01.24.2024
The Complicated Crimes Of Gypsy Rose Blanchard
In 2016, Gypsy Rose Blanchard pled guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She admitted to planning and orchestrating the stabbing death of her mother Dee Dee at the hands of her boyfriend Nick Godejohn, who...
01.17.2024
Inside The Life Of An Australian Prison Guard
Stevie Munro is a Senior Correctional Officer with Moree Court Escort services, in charge of things like processing offenders who’ve just been arrested, and escorting them to and from court. She deals with prisoners from all over Australia, and has seen...
01.10.2024
Mamamia Investigates The Disappearance Of Peng Shuai: But Will She Ever Be Free?
This episode was originally published as part of Mamamia’s Extraordinary Stories podcast. In the lead-up to the Beijing Winter Olympics, the world began to wonder how and if Peng Shuai would be used in the games, and whether the IOC was...
01.07.2024
Mamamia Investigates The Disappearance Of Peng Shuai: Proof Of Life
This episode was originally published as part of Mamamia’s Extraordinary Stories podcast. For three long weeks in November 2021, the tennis community, news organisations and human rights advocates the world over had one question; Where Is Peng Shuai? In the aftermath...
01.03.2024
Mamamia Investigates The Disappearance Of Peng Shuai: The Tennis Star Who Vanished
This episode was originally published as part of Mamamia’s Extraordinary Stories podcast. It was after 10 pm, on November 2nd, 2021 when 35-year-old Peng Shuai - China’s beloved global tennis star - sat down and began typing. Truncated sentences of an...
12.31.2023
Mamamia Investigates Belle Gibson: Reckoning & Reinvention
This episode was originally published as part of Mamamia’s Extraordinary Stories podcast. Belle Gibson spent years lying about her health. From those early skater chatroom claims that she had died on the operating table during heart surgery, to a terminal brain...
12.27.2023
Mamamia Investigates Belle Gibson: The Email No One Wanted To Believe
This episode was originally published as part of Mamamia’s Extraordinary Stories podcast. Belle Gibson was travelling to Queensland for a funeral when she was first contacted by Melbourne newspaper, The Age. Reporters were seeking clarification. They wanted to know exactly how...
12.24.2023
Mamamia Investigates Belle Gibson: From Teen Mum To Internet Infamy
This episode was originally published as part of Mamamia’s Extraordinary Stories podcast. Belle Gibson spent years lying about her health. From those early skater chatroom claims that she had died on the operating table during heart surgery, to a terminal brain...
12.20.2023
The Adelaide Schoolgirl Taken From Her Bed
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...
12.13.2023
The Murdaugh Murders
The Murdaughs were one of South Carolina's most prominent legal families for nearly a century. They were so influential in the area, that locals nicknamed the county they practised in ‘Murdaugh country.’ But in 2019 a fatal boating accident put the...
12.06.2023
Inside The Mind Of The Hoddle Street Killer
On a Sunday night in August 1987, 18-year-old Julian Knight unleashed terror on the streets of Melbourne. It was just after 9:30pm when the recently discharged army cadet opened fire on innocent civilians, murdering seven people and seriously injuring 19 more. After...
11.29.2023
The Baby In The Mailbag
In May 1965 a horrific discovery was made at a Darwin post office. A package carrying the remains of a newborn baby boy had been sent there from the Russell Street post office in Melbourne. The sender and the intended recipient...
11.22.2023
Shanelle Dawson: Coming To Terms With The Teacher's Pet
The murder of Lynette Dawson was a crime that unravelled in real-time via a podcast called The Teacher’s Pet in 2018. It was a groundbreaking investigation. One that forced police to re-investigate things they’d filed away as unimportant decades prior. Shanelle...
11.15.2023
The Forgotten Victims Of Malcolm Naden
Malcolm Naden was once Australia's most wanted man. The prime suspect for the murder of his neighbour, as well as in the disappearance and suspected murder of his cousin, Naden was on the run from 2005 until 2012. Today’s guest, Dimity Clancey,...
11.08.2023
The Most Famous Poisoning Murder You’ve Never Heard Of
On New Year’s Eve, 1927, Ethel Griggs and her baby daughter Alwyn returned home to Victoria after six months away in Tasmania. After eating supper with her husband Ethel quickly became ill, and just over 48 hours later she was pronounced...
11.01.2023
Inside Australia's Most Infamous Prison
For more than a century, Australia's infamous Pentridge Prison was an ominous presence just 30 minutes away from Melbourne’s CBD. A place of murder and mayhem, it was home to Victoria’s worst criminals. Everyone from Ned Kelly and Chopper Read, to...
10.25.2023
Six Deaths. One Uncomfortable Truth.
Over the last two years, Indigenous Affairs Reporter Douglas Smith and his team have been looking into the deaths of six Indigenous women, from three different states across Australia. Each case occurred in different jurisdictions, involving different individuals, but the investigation...
10.18.2023
Hunting The Kimberley Killer
In June 1987, Australia's top end lost it's innocence. The murders of five tourists across the Northern Territory and Western Australia marred the reputation of this idyllic tourist region, sparking fear in locals and visitors alike. These horrific events sparked one of...
10.11.2023
From Journalist To Witness: Inside The Teacher's Pet Podcast
In 2018, Hedley Thomas’ podcast The Teacher's Pet captivated millions of listeners around the world as he unravelled the disappearance of Lynette Simms in real time, week by week. Throughout his meticulous investigation more evidence and information came to light, leading...
10.04.2023
The Wrongful Conviction of Evaristo Salas
Evaristo Salas Junior was just 16 when he was sent to an adult men’s prison convicted of the murder of Jose Arreola in 1995. But in the nearly three decades since his conviction, the evidence has been re-examined in great detail....
09.27.2023
The Disappearance Of Rhianna Barreau
In October 1992, 12-year-old Rhianna Barreau disappeared. On the day she went missing it was school holidays, and Rhianna had spent the morning wandering to the local shops to buy her American pen pal a Christmas card. When her mother got...
09.20.2023
Australia’s Biggest Terror Campaign You’ve Never Heard About
In September 1988 a campaign of terror was unleashed upon Perth’s Chinese community through a series of targeted firebombings that decimated a number of restaurants around the city. The motive behind the attacks was impossible to ignore, but it would take...
09.13.2023
Australia's Dark History Of Forced Adoptions
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...
09.06.2023
The Murder Squad
In Australia in the 1920s a 'murder wave' gripped the country, as the desperation of The Great Depression rippled through society. Cases like The Human Glove, The Hammer Horror, The Park Demon, The Bungendore Bones, and most famously The Pyjama Girl,...
08.30.2023
Inside The Trial Of Lucy Letby
Last week, 33-year-old nurse Lucy Letby was found guilty of murdering seven newborns, and attempting to kill six others who were under her care in 2015 and 2016. During her time in the neonatal unit at the Countess of Chester Hospital...
08.23.2023
Karen Bell Escaped Her Husband, But She Couldn’t Save Her Children
Karen Bell met Gary Poxon in 1993. She was 17, he was 29. By 2008, the pair were living in an isolated farmhouse in Pericoe with their three children - Maddie, Jack and Bon. Their 15 year long relationship was filled...
08.16.2023
‘Look What You Made Me Do’: The Murder Of Mimi Acar
What little kid doesn’t want their Dad to take them to the shop and get them a kinder surprise? That’s what Ramazan Acar told his ex partner Rachelle D’Argent in November 2010, when he turned up at her Melbourne home, breaking...
08.09.2023
Murder On The West Gate Bridge: The Story Of Darcey Freeman
In January 2009, Darcey Freeman’s father, Arthur Freeman, was driving her to her first day of school when he acted out of revenge. He threw his four-year-old daughter off Melbourne’s 58-metre-high West Gate Bridge. Darcey’s mother, Peta Barnes never got...
08.02.2023
Fathers Who Kill: The Revenge Murder Of Kelly East
You can listen to our first-hand interview with Michelle Steck here. In 1993, Michelle Steck lost her daughter Kelly at the hands of her former partner Kevin East. It was an horrific act classified as retaliatory filicide, when domestic violence perpetrators...
07.26.2023
The Cold Case Still Haunting Australia’s Cape York
When Bevin and Brad Simmons went missing off the coast of the Cape York Peninsula in 2003, a massive air, land and sea search was launched to find the pair. The operation covered a huge area but in the days and...
07.19.2023
The McCulkin Murders
The notorious Whisky Au Go Go nightclub fire in Brisbane in 1973 left behind questions that remain unanswered to this day. Who was really behind it, who was there that night, why did 15 people have to die and did it...
07.12.2023
Murders In The Nightclub: Inside Queensland's Worst Firebombing Incident
The Whisky Au Go Go Fire is just as much a mystery today as it was in the hours after the tragedy that took the lives of 15 people in Fortitude Valley on March 8th 1973. Police would start a major...
07.05.2023
The Prison Guard Who Fell In Love With An Inmate
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...

What's True Crime Conversations about?

Download our free app to listen on your phone

True Crime Conversations episodes:

The Shocking Murder Of Tara Costigan

It’s Been 10 Years Since The Murder Of Luke Batty

The Woman Counting Australia’s Murdered Women

The News Snowtown Victims Families Have Been Dreading

A Triple Murder And A Broken System

According To A Criminologist, Keli Lane Shouldn’t Be In Prison.

Dorothea Puente: The Serial Killer Granny

Secrets On Death Row: America’s ‘Killer Clown’

Inside The Rise & Fall Of Ruby Franke

How A Perth Girl Ended Up In A Thai Prison

Scotland’s ‘Lynette Dawson’ Case

‘Sit Down & Shut Up. The Man In The Coffin Has Something To Say’

How Australia’s ‘Bug Whisperer’ Solves Crimes

Escaping One Of Australia's Most Secretive Cults

Meet The Man Who Does 200 Autopsies A Year

Come With Us Behind The Scenes Of Crime...

With Her Abuser Behind Bars, Dassi Erlich Is Ready To Talk.

The Complicated Crimes Of Gypsy Rose Blanchard

Inside The Life Of An Australian Prison Guard

Mamamia Investigates The Disappearance Of Peng Shuai: But Will She Ever Be Free?

Mamamia Investigates The Disappearance Of Peng Shuai: Proof Of Life

Mamamia Investigates The Disappearance Of Peng Shuai: The Tennis Star Who Vanished

Mamamia Investigates Belle Gibson: Reckoning & Reinvention

Mamamia Investigates Belle Gibson: The Email No One Wanted To Believe

Mamamia Investigates Belle Gibson: From Teen Mum To Internet Infamy

The Adelaide Schoolgirl Taken From Her Bed

The Murdaugh Murders

Inside The Mind Of The Hoddle Street Killer

The Baby In The Mailbag

Shanelle Dawson: Coming To Terms With The Teacher's Pet

The Forgotten Victims Of Malcolm Naden

The Most Famous Poisoning Murder You’ve Never Heard Of

Inside Australia's Most Infamous Prison

Six Deaths. One Uncomfortable Truth.

Hunting The Kimberley Killer

From Journalist To Witness: Inside The Teacher's Pet Podcast

The Wrongful Conviction of Evaristo Salas

The Disappearance Of Rhianna Barreau

Australia’s Biggest Terror Campaign You’ve Never Heard About

Australia's Dark History Of Forced Adoptions

The Murder Squad

Inside The Trial Of Lucy Letby

Karen Bell Escaped Her Husband, But She Couldn’t Save Her Children

‘Look What You Made Me Do’: The Murder Of Mimi Acar

Murder On The West Gate Bridge: The Story Of Darcey Freeman

Fathers Who Kill: The Revenge Murder Of Kelly East

The Cold Case Still Haunting Australia’s Cape York

The McCulkin Murders

Murders In The Nightclub: Inside Queensland's Worst Firebombing Incident

The Prison Guard Who Fell In Love With An Inmate

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