True Crime Conversations

John Wayne Gacy is one of the worst serial killers in American history, murdering at least 33 teenage boys and men in the late 1970s.

He was executed by lethal injection in 1994, but many are confident he killed even more victims than the ones he admitted to, and took plenty more secrets to the grave.

THE END BITS

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To the outside world, Dorothea Puente presented herself as a kind grandmotherly figure who cared for the disabled and vulnerable residents of her boarding house in downtown Sacramento. But behind closed doors, nothing was as it seemed…

Not only was she stealing the money of her tenant, but she was also a serial killer. Allegedly murdering up to nine people...

On September 12, 1996, Keli Lane gave birth to a baby girl at Auburn Hospital in western Sydney. Two days later that baby seemingly disappeared. 

After years of investigation, Keli was convicted of her daughter's murder in 2010 and sentenced to 18 years behind bars. But did they get it wrong?

Keli Lane’s story has been compared to the wrongful conviction of Lindy Chamberlain. It’s been pulled apart and analysed for years...

In May 2016, police arrived at a farmhouse in Hillier, north of Adelaide. The scene that awaited them was horrifying beyond words. 

Stephen Graham Peet had just murdered three people. The bodies of his girlfriend, Adeline Yvette Rigney-Wilson, and her two young children were inside. 

But as his crimes unravelled in court, something became clear. Those two little kids shouldn’t have died. Their deaths, at least, were preventable...

In May 1999, two detectives followed a trail of suspicious missing persons cases to an old, red-brick bank in Snowtown, South Australia. 

As they head inside, they head straight for the bank’s vault where they find six large plastic barrels containing human remains. They also find handcuffs, knives, a saw, boxes of disposable gloves and bottles of hydrochloric acid...

This month, we’re doing things differently. Over the next few weeks well be revisiting stories from our archives to highlight crimes involving male violence against women in Australia because right now the rate at which we are losing women is alarming and terrifying. 

But first, we wanted to talk to someone who lives and breathes violence against women every single day. 

Sherele Moody is a journalist and the founder of The Red Heart Campaign and the Australian Femicide Watch...

In 2014, 11-year-old Luke Batty was murdered by his father at Tyabb cricket ground on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula. 

The following year a coroner ruled that no one could have predicted that Luke would be killed by his father, but the inquest did point out several gaps in the family violence system in the lead-up to his death. 

Ten years on, Luke's mother Rosie remains on the frontline campaigning for change...

Tara Costigan was murdered in 2015, one day after taking out a DVO on her ex-partner Marcus Rappel. The day he laid a finger on her was the day he murdered her. Before that the abuse had been verbal. Emotional. 

Tara did everything ‘right’. She followed advice and took steps in the system designed to protect her, even though she was nervous about how he might react. 

And then she died, in the most horrendous of ways, while cradling her one-week-old daughter...