True Crime Conversations

This episode of True Crime Conversations is part of our 2019/2020 Holiday series. We've handpicked episodes from throughout the year that we though deserved another listen.

In 2014 Simon Gittany was found guilty of throwing his 30 year old fiancé Lisa Harnum from the balcony of their shared 15th floor apartment.

Simon maintained his innocence, saying that Lisa climbed over the railing of the balcony and fell to her death...

Claremont was a buzzing, wealthy suburb, about 20 minutes from Perth, Western Australia. With pubs and bars along wide, safe streets.  It was known for its nightlife, with patrons often spilling out onto the footpath in the early hours of the morning.  But that all changed in 1996 when the disappearance of three young women made national headlines...

It was 6am on March 1, 2000, when John Price’s neighbour noticed his car was still in the driveway. It struck him as unusual. 

John’s supervisor noticed his absence at work too. An off-handed comment he’d made the day before made his co-workers feel uneasy.

At 8:10am, Officer Matthews and Officer Furlonger arrived at John’s home. 

His front door was locked...

Rebecca Zahau was in the bathroom when she heard a bang.  It was July 11, 2011, and the 32-year-old was caring for six-year-old Max Shacknai, the son of her 54-year-old boyfriend, Jonah Shacknai.  Jonah was a millionaire and the CEO of a successful pharmaceutical group and Rebecca had been dating him for two years...

In December 1932, a woman named Iris Marriott prepared dinner in a small flat in Sydney’s East.  It was the peak of the Great Depression and the Australian economy had collapsed. The unemployment rate had hit an unbearable 32 per cent. 

While she cooked a lamb shank and vegetables, her partner sat at the kitchen table, looking through job ads.  It was Iris who financially supported them both...

Erie, Pennsylvania is a city on the south shore of Lake Erie, halfway between New York and Ohio. It was August the 28th, 2003, when a man named Brian Welles arrived at a local pizzeria where he worked as a pizza delivery driver. For 10 years he had been one of their most loyal employees, only ever missing one day of work, following the death of his beloved cat...

It was February 2016, dry and uncomfortably warm, when 23-year-old Brazilian backpacker Beatriz meets a German backpacker of the same age named Lena.

The two travellers strike up a friendship and decide to head to Melbourne from Adelaide via the Great Ocean Road.  They put an ad on Gumtree asking for a lift and 59-year-old Roman Heinze replied.

Little did the women know they had just accepted a lift with a man who was planning a vile and terrifying attack...

The Van Breda family appeared to be the perfect picture of success. So how did three of the five family members end up murdered in their family home on the De Zalze estate in South Africa? 

Martin Van Breda was an entrepreneurial, hardworking and kind man. His wife Teresa was a loving mother, heavily invested in the lives of her three children; Marli, Henri and Rudi.  

In 2014, the family sold their home in Buderim, on the Australian Sunshine Coast, for 2...

Qandeel Baloch was dubbed Pakistan’s answer to Kim Kardashian but her story is very different. Her older brother murdered her for bringing dishonour to her family.

Journalist and author Sanam Maher pieced together Qandeel’s life from her birth in rural Pakistan to her incarnation as a social media sensation; and she documents the public response to Qandeel’s shocking death, for her book, A Woman Like Her...

When a shark vomited up a tattooed arm in the Coogee Aquarium in 1935, onlookers were horrified. This arm would be the catalyst for exposing the seedy underbelly of Sydney’s grimy and cut throat crime scene.

Phillip Roope and Kevin Meagher sit down with Jessie Stephens to explore the shark arm case...