True Crime Conversations

It’s 4:45am on the 5th of November 1991 and English media mogul Robert Maxwell is aboard his $35 million dollar yacht, the Lady Ghislaine, cruising through water off the Canary Islands in Spain. He’s on the phone with a crew member.

"The temperature is now too cold. Turn the air-conditioning off," he says gruffly down the line from his luxurious master suite...

The name Ghislaine Maxwell is synonymous with one of the most notorious child trafficking crimes the world has ever known. 

From 1994 to 2004, Ghislaine Maxwell conspired with her late partner Jeffrey Epstein to recruit, groom and sexually assault underage girls...

Lee Iordanidis gets a phone call.

“Hi Darlin, how are you? How you feeling?”

She asks the person on the other end of the line.

It’s compassion first, always, and then she gets down to business.

She’s been flown to New Zealand, Germany, England. Not to mention right across Australia. There’s only four individuals with her expertise in this country and she’s in hot demand...

Want to hear more about the Family Court Bomber? Find our extra True Crime Conversations episode here. 

From 1980 to 1985 Sydney was ravaged by a domestic terror crime spree that became known across Australia as The Family Court Murders.

All of the attacks - including four murders, two shootings, and five bombings - were carried out by a man who was motivated by a drawn-out custody battle with his ex-wife...

From the late 1950s through to the late 80s, the streets of Queensland were dominated by a trio of crooked cops known as The Rat Pack. They ran a complex system of bribery and extortion as they pocketed the profits of local sex workers for decades.

In this episode, Gemma Bath is joined by investigative journalist Matt Condon to discuss their operation and the women who had the courage to bring them down...

In November 2019, police conducted a welfare check on seven-year-old JJ Vallow. He hadn't been seen since September, and police will come to realise that neither had his teenage sister Tylee.

They've stumbled onto a web of lies that are about to unravel. Affairs, mysterious deaths, a doomsday cult, and at the centre of it all two missing children. And a mother who isn’t trying to find them...

News has come through overnight that Ghislaine Maxwell has been sentenced to 20 years in prison for sex trafficking.

From 1994 to 2004, Ghislaine Maxwell conspired with her late partner Jeffrey Epstein to recruit, groom, and sexually assault underage girls. 

In this episode, Gemma Bath takes you through the early years of Ghislaine Maxwell, the power that the men in her life held, and the trial that would convict her as a criminal...

On July 7, 1960, eight-year-old Graeme Thorne went missing from the corner store near his family's Bondi home.  It was five weeks after his parents, Bazil and Freda, had won a massive $100,000 in an Opera House lottery. 

His disappearance was the country's first well-known kidnap for ransom, and would lead to the biggest manhunt in Australia’s history...

In 1986, 20-year-old Sharron Phillips disappeared from the side of the road in Wacol, Brisbane. She used a payphone to make two calls to a friend after running out of petrol, but by the time he arrived she was nowhere to be found.

Those calls were the last time anyone ever heard from Sharron. And her disappearance remained a mystery for 30 years until a deathbed confession changed everything...

In 1942, the streets of Melbourne were dim and eery. To assist with World War II efforts, the city was complying with a 'brownout' order, similar to a blackout but less severe.

This low lighting was the backdrop for a series of murders committed by Edward Joseph Leonski, a 'smiling psychopath' who became known as The Brownout Strangler...