True Crime Conversations

True Crime Conversations explores the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. This March we’re focusing on Australia’s most notorious crimes...from Anita Cobby to Snowtown.

Mamamia acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Land we have recorded this podcast on, the Gadigal people of the Eora Nation...

It’s a sunny Saturday afternoon in Spring, 1930. Mena Griffiths is 12 years old and living with her family in suburban Melbourne.

There’s a park she often visits with her friends and she asks her parents if she can go out and play. Her parents can’t know that there’s a man sitting at a local hotel bar.

He’s about 30 years old. He is known to the community as a family man, with a wife named Bernice and a baby named Joan...

The small town of Mylor, buried in the Adelaide Hills, has a population of just over one thousand people. Properties sit on sprawling bushland, between the mountainous terrain, and today people visit to camp or see the native animals. 

It was October 1966 when eight year old Wendy Jane Pfeiffer, petite with short hair and rosy cheeks, decided to walk the family dog on a quiet Sunday afternoon...

It’s the first day of Autumn, 1989, in an affluent Sydney suburb.

Mosman is on the lower north shore and known for being comfortable and safe, a short distance from Taronga Zoo and Balmoral Beach.

An 82 year old woman named Gwendoline Mitchell Hill is walking down military Rd towards her apartment in the late afternoon.

She doesn’t know a man has spotted her, concocting a plan of what to do next.

She won’t make it inside...

It’s August 16, 2002, when a man named Shane Chartres-Abbott meets a client at South Yarra’s Hotel Saville.

The 27-year-old is a male prostitute, who specialises in sadomasochistic sex. With him, he carries a black bag full of sex toys, including a whip, ropes, condoms and handcuffs.

The woman he is meeting, 30-year-old Penny, is not a stranger. She too works in the sex industry...

It’s February 5, 1907, and a short, dark haired man in his late thirties named Corporal O’Halloran is on the doorstep of a house on Edward Street in the city of Perth. He has been called there by the owner, a woman named Alice Mitchell. 

Alice Mitchell is known to care for babies. Specifically, babies belonging to single parents, who have no choice but to return to work and earn a living. She has cared for dozens over the last six or so years...

It’s May 30, 1985, in Burbank, California. Spring is turning to summer, and the wide streets in the San Fernando Valley are lined with their signature palm trees. A 42 year old woman named Carol Kyle is at home with her 11 year old son. She doesn’t know yet that there is a man in her neighbourhood, driving a stolen car. 

At some stage during the night, in the shadow of darkness, this man enters her home...

True Crime Conversations explores the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. This month we’re focusing in on Australia’s most notorious crimes...

It’s the morning of February 6, 1986. 

Australia as a nation, but more specifically New South Wales, is in a state of shock...

True Crime Conversations explores the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. This month we’re focusing in on Australia’s most notorious crimes...

It’s a Saturday night in the middle of July, 2001, when Peter Falconio and Joanne Lees travel down the Stuart Highway in their orange Kombi van. 

Peter is 28, and in the driver’s seat. His girlfriend, 27-year-old Joanne, is in the passenger seat...

True Crime Conversations explores the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. This month we’re focusing on Australia’s most notorious crimes...

It’s the 20th of May, 1999, an autumn day in South Australia. 

For 12 months, there has been an inquiry into the disappearance of a woman named Elizabeth Haydon, a 37-year-old mother of eight. But it isn’t just her...