|
Weekdays at 11pm
Wanda Beach Murders/Beaumont Children Mystery - Episode 11
In 1965, when Australian teenage culture was centred on sun, sand, and surf, the nation was shocked by the brutal beating, rape and murder of two 15-year-old girls in the sand hills at Sydney's Wanda Beach.
A massive police hunt failed to find the killer but now, more than 40 years later, there is growing evidence that he could be a known psychotic murderer.
A year later, on an Australia Day outing to a beach in Adelaide, three small children, Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont, disappeared suddenly and without a trace.
Were they abducted by the man seen playing with them at the beach, or were they buried in an accident, as claimed by a world-famous clairvoyant who was flown to Adelaide from Europe by the media and concerned local citizens?
Are they still alive?
The Greenough Family Massacre - Episode 12
The small hamlet of Greenough, near Geraldton, in Western Australia, some 400 kilometres north of Perth, will forever be associated with one the most horrific murders in Australian criminal history.
In 1993, Karen MacKenzie and her three small children were violently murdered at their isolated house.
The brutal and random nature of the attack was eerily similar to "In Cold Blood", Truman Capote's world-famous study of a family murder in an isolated house in America.
When the Greenough killer was finally tracked down, charged and convicted, much of the evidence was too horrific to be made public.
The Disappearance of Donald Mackay - Episode 13
A small group of local criminals, with mafia connections, were making vast fortunes in the famous NSW Riverina irrigation district from marijuana plantations.
Corrupt police and a vast bribery network had kept the drug barons immune from prosecution until Donald Mackay's campaign finally led to raids by the State drug squad and several local marijuana growers were arrested and fined.
During their trial the police informant was named publicly as Donald Mackay.
Infuriated by the loss of more than AUD 40 million, the leaders of the Griffith mafia, including the notorious Robert Aussie Bob Trimbole, put out a contract for Mackay's murder.
He was shot in the car park of a Griffith hotel on a Friday night in July, 1977.
The Body In The Sports Bag - Episode 14
A young Sydney man was found guilty of strangling his ex-girlfriend and stuffing the teenager's body in a cricket bag.
In 2005 William Harold Matheson, 23, was tried in the NSW Supreme Court over the murder of his former sweetheart, 18-year-old Lyndsay van Blanken.
The Disney animation trainee went missing on the evening of November 24, 2003.
Her badly decomposed body was found in a cricket bag hidden in the storeroom of a unit block in the inner-east Sydney suburb of Queens Park seven weeks later.
Assassination of John Newman - Episode 15
John Paul Newman was a member of the New South Wales state parliament and member of the seat of Cabramatta.
He was the first politician to be assassinated in Australia.
For many years Newman had been waging a campaign to break up the Asian crime gangs and corruption that had plagued the area.
He had been the target of numerous death threats from such gangs but did not seek police protection.
During the night of September 5, 1994, while outside his Woods Avenue home, he was shot and killed.
His fiancée, Lucy Wang, was with him at the time but saw little of what happened because of the swiftness of the murder.
A local nightclub owner, Phuong Ngo, who had previously attempted to secure Australian Labor Party pre-selection for the seat, was convicted of the killing in 2001.
Two of Ngo's associates escaped convictions.
In 2003, an appeal by Ngo against the conviction failed.
Related links:
- To discover more about crime, criminals, and how they're caught, visit the Discovery Guide to Crime and Forensics.
- To find out if you have the eye to be a detective, play On The Run.
< Previous episodes
Images © DCL
|
You are not logged in
