True Crime Conversations

It’s a Wednesday morning in March 1996, and the bell sounds at Dunblane Primary School near Stirling in Scotland. 

Students scramble to their classrooms, their minds are caught up in homework and friendships, and the game they were just playing in the yard. 

A class of twenty-eight Primary 1 pupils, aged between four and six, congregate in the gymnasium, preparing for their morning PE lesson...

On today’s episode Jessie is speaking with award-winning investigative journalist Connie Walker, whose podcast ‘Stolen’ & ‘Missing & Murdered’ uncovers an overlooked epidemic of violence against Indigenous women and girls in North America. 

Her ‘Finding Cleo’ series tells the story of the young Cree girl who was taken from her family by child welfare workers in Saskatchewan in the 1970s, and unearths what truly happened to her.....

On today’s episode host Jessie Stephens is speaking with award-winning investigative journalists Ruby Jones and Neil Mercer, co-authors of the book Barrenjoey Road.

For 43 years, the case of Trudie Jeanette Adams has intrigued people on Sydney's Northern Beaches. Trudie decided to hitch-hike home, but she was never seen again.

Ruby Jones first investigated the case for ABC’s Unravel podcast...

Hanging from a mango tree, on the edge of their village in Uttar Pradesh, are the bodies of two girls.

It’s May 27, 2014, and the sun is just beginning to rise in India’s north. It’s already blisteringly hot, the air thick and overbearing. A man, a member of the village, is the first to see them. The two girls who went missing last night. 

Lalli is 14, her lifeless body beside her 16-year-old cousin Padma...

Seven gunshots ring out through Victoria’s green and vast Barrabool Hills. 

On the western outskirts of Geelong, the Barrabool Hills is sparsely populated, best known for grazing sheep and lamb. 

It’s the early hours of Wednesday, March 18, 1992, and the sun has not yet risen. Everyone should be asleep. 

But those seven gunshots will have killed three people. 

For the youngest casualty, 23-year-old Guy, a gunshot shatters his watch...

It’s an hour and a half before sunset on a Sunday afternoon in June, 1838.

A group of Indigenous Australians, the Wirrayaraay people, are cooking their evening meal. As the day nears its end, things are quiet. Calm. 

They’re at Myall Creek Station, in north western NSW, between the towns of Bingara and Delungra...

It was October 18, 1975, when a farmer found the body of a young woman floating face down in the Gulf of Thailand. 

Teresa Knowlton was wearing a floral bikini - a detail that journalists would use to eventually brand her murderer 'The Bikini Killer'.

The 21-year-old had traveled to Bangkok, from Seattle in the US, and was following the “Hippie Trail” that would eventually lead her to study Tibetan Buddhism at Kopan Monastery in Kathmandu...

It was late 2011 when 54-year-old Kellie Martin had her accident.

Along with her husband Don Martin, Kellie was retrieving Christmas decorations from their attic in Garland, Texas, when she missed a step on a ladder. 

The fall resulted in a herniated disk in her back, an incredibly painful injury that she treated with physical therapy, muscle relaxers and pain relief. Eventually, her doctor recommended surgery...

It’s just after midday on July 17, 2014, when 283 passengers, and 15 crew members board MH17 at Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport. 

Among the passengers are 12-year-old Mo, 10-year-old Evie, and eight-year-old Otis Maslin, along with their 68-year-old grandfather, Nick Norris. MH17 is bound for Kuala Lumpur International Airport, due to arrive at 6:10am local time. The family would then go on to Perth, Australia, where they live...

It’s a quarter past seven in the evening on Friday, June 11, 1993. 

18-year-old Elizabeth Stevens is freezing. She’s soaking wet from the rain, her short hair clinging to her neck. 

She steps off the bus which she caught from Frankston to Cranbourne Road, Langwarrin, and hurries towards her aunt and uncle's house where she lives. She doesn’t know she’s being watched...