True Crime Conversations

Kananook railway station is located on the Frankston line in Victoria, about 50 minutes from Melbourne’s CBD. 

At approximately 10:20pm, on the 11th of July, 1990, a 23-year-old woman named Sarah MacDiarmid can be seen alighting from the train and walking in the direction of the poorly lit car park, where she parked her red Honda Civic that morning. 

She is no doubt in a hurry to get home...

It’s 1987 and a coastal town named Noosa Heads in Queensland is about as idyllic as it gets. On the Sunshine Coast, Noosa Heads isn't yet the popular and developed tourist destination that it is today. It is surrounded by rivers, lookouts, bays, national park and of course expansive coastline. Families feel proud to bring their kids up in such a beautiful and safe coastal town, where they often play outside until the sun goes down...

It was a Tuesday in April 2003, when an emergency phone call was made from a visitor at 20 Grass Tree Close, Bridgeman Downs in Brisbane's north. 

The phone call was made by a 33-year-old man named Massimo Sica, known to most as Max. The purpose for his visit, according to his testimony, was to see his on and off again girlfriend, 24-year-old flight attendant Neelma Singh...

Daniel Morcombe, a 13-year-old boy with bright blue eyes and dark brown hair, stands at a bus stop beneath an overpass. Today, he is wearing a bright red t-shirt. 

It’s Sunday, the 7th of December 2003, at 2:10pm. He’s waiting for a bus to take him to the Sunshine Plaza Shopping Centre so he can get a haircut and buy some Christmas presents. At home, are his parents, Denise and Bruce Morcombe, his identical twin brother Bradley, and his older brother, Dean...

It’s the 7th May, 1929. Nearly two years since gangster Norman Bruhn was gunned down in the inner-city Sydney suburb of Surry Hills. The man who’d tried to interfere with the stronghold Tilly Devine and Kate Leigh had on East Sydney had failed, and paid with his life in the process. But two years on from his death, the streets are still dripping with the blood of razor victims. With or without Norman Bruhn, chaos still reigns on the streets of Darlinghurst...

It’s 1926, and Sydney’s underworld is held tightly in the hands of Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine. But down in Melbourne? They’ve got a fella called Joseph Theodore Leslie Taylor running the show, or ‘Squizzy’ as he was better known. Squizzy Taylor is a bonafide gangster in every sense, backed up by a handful of savage henchmen and crooks, known as The Fitzroy Gang.

Norman Bruhn is one of Squizzy’s closest confidants. Well, he was...

 It’s the 4th of February 1964. Once dubbed ‘The Worst Woman in Sydney,’ Kate Leigh lies unresponsive in a hospital bed at St Vincent's in Darlinghurst. She suffered a severe stroke just a few days earlier, and she’s about to take her final breath. But the twilight years of Kate Leigh’s life have not been marked by the debauchery and violence of her heyday. There’s no more sly grog, no diamonds and fur, no more cocaine, and no more razor gangs...

The year is 1927.  Sydney is in a post-war party that’s been raging on for almost a decade. The suburb of Darlinghurst is the beating heart of it all, and the surrounding areas of Kings Cross, Potts Point, Woolloomoloo and Surry Hills are slums of debauchery, crime and vices. It’s an underworld run by two rival crime queens. Kate Leigh and Tilly Divine...

This month on True Crime Conversations we’re examining the life and crimes of Kate Leigh and Tilly Devine, and the violent razor wars that erupted between their two gangs with special guest host Emma Gillespie. Coming to your ears from January 6th. 

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It’s the 21st of February, 2021, a summer’s day on the south coast of New South Wales. 

A small group of campers are walking along Bournda Beach, an incredible expanse of pristine sand, and clear, blue water, surrounded by national park. Along the shore, washed up, they spot a single, grey, Asics shoe. It is only when they look more closely that they realise inside it holds human remains. The group, visiting for a surfing trip, are alarmed...