Crime Investigation Australia

CI examines two notorious abduction cases. The first case is the Graeme Thorne ransom kidnapping at Bondi in 1960. Thorne, aged eight was the son of winners of the Sydney Opera House Lottery. The second case is the recent Daniel Morecombe Queensland case that still remains unsolved. Crime Investigation Australia has secured exclusive interviews that shed new light on both of these infamous cases that stunned the nation.

The backpacker murder case in the Belanglo State Forest, south west of Sydney, has entered Australian criminal folklore. The brutal murders of seven young people, most of them overseas tourists hitchhiking around Australia, attracted international media attention. The remains of their bodies were uncovered in 1992. The arrest and conviction of Ivan Milat would catapult him to Australias worst individual serial killer. It is believed that Milat was involved in several other killings and there is strong evidence that he didnt act alone.

We investigate the story of David and Catherine Birnie, Australias most sadistic husband and wife killing team who tortured, raped and murdered four women in 1986. We also look into the murder of Call Girl Roslyn Watson which had remained unsolved for more than 15 years and would have stayed that way if it wasnt for the tenacious efforts of a bright young Western Australian Police Detective.

In February 1986, nurse Anita Cobby, a former entrant in the Miss Australia quest, is walking home from Blacktown station in Sydneys outer-western suburbs. A Holden sedan pulls up and Anita is dragged into the vehicle. She is taken to a lonely spot where five young men take turns to bash and rape her. Finally her throat is cut, almost severing her head, and her body is left in a paddock. The five men are later caught and convicted of these despicable crimes and sent to jail for life, their papers are marked "never to be released". But something positive will come out of this appalling and deeply disturbing story, as Anitas grieving parents begin a support group for the families of murder victims, offering comfort and mutual help for more than 1000 loved ones of homicide victims.

For the first time the complete story of one of Australias most horrific serial murderers is finally revealed. Almost twenty years ago in June 1987 a crazed gunman begins a journey which will take him thousands of kilometres across the vast Australian outback. The killers journey will result in the murders of five innocent tourists, spark one of the biggest manhunts in Australian history and end in a bloody last stand shootout with police at a remote outpost deep in the rugged Kimberly ranges of Australias north. Before it is over, thousands of residents living in communities scattered across the countrys Top End will be terrorised.

The small hamlet of Greenough, near Geraldton, in Western Australia, some 400 kilometres north of Perth, will forever be associated with one the most horrific murders in Australian criminal history. In 1993, Karen MacKenzie and her three small children were violently murdered at their isolated house. The brutal and random nature of the attack was eerily similar to "In Cold Blood", Truman Capotes world-famous study of a family murder in an isolated house in America.When the Greenough killer was finally tracked down, charged and convicted, much of the evidence was too horrific to be made public.

Hosted by Steve Liebmann, The Body In The Sports Bag explores the disappearance and brutal murder of Sydney teenager, Lyndsay Van Blanken. This chilling episode features detailed re-enactments, interviews with key homicide detectives and heartbreaking accounts from Lyndsays family and friends. The gripping special also features an exclusive emotional interview with Brandon Leonard, Lyndsays American fiancé.

This episode revisits Adelaide’s notorious Adelaide Family Murders case, where six young Adelaide men were murdered during the 1970’s and 80’s. The victims were found in random locations throughout the state, their bodies neatly cut into pieces. Although each attack and mutilation appeared different, police investigators soon began to link the horrific murders to one another. Media frenzy ripped through Australia when the similarities to each killing became public knowledge. Media speculated that the murders involved a group of high profile Adelaide men including politicians, religious leaders and judges who allegedly paid young men for sex and then drugged and used them for pleasure. The media dubbed the group The Family and from then on the case was referred to as the Adelaide Family Murders.

The horrific story of killers Allan Baker and Kevin Crump who began their murderous spree in rural NSW by killing a complete stranger for $20, a packet of cigarettes and a couple of litres of petrol. They then kidnapping Virginia Morse, a young mother of three, raped and tortured her as they drove to Queensland. Virginias torture ended there when she was tied to a tree and shot. In the wake of their 1973 trial, the Australian public was left to ponder whether the two men were insane, or, even more chilling, whether their deeds were the result of rational minds gone astray. Shortcomings in Australian Criminal law were exposed because as Virginia Morse was killed in Queensland, New South Wales authorities could not charge the pair with her murder. Not wanting to extradite the two men, New South Wales police chose to charge them with conspiracy to murder Virginia Morse. Fortunately the New South Wales prosecutors didnt have to rely only on the Morse allegations. Their list of crimes also included the murder of Ian Lamb, the stranger, as well as wounding a policeman, as well as car theft.

In 1981, the headless and fingerless body of 19-year-old Kim Narelle Barry was found dumped in the bush at a mountain lookout near Wollongong, south of Sydney. Kim’s head and fingers were later found in bushland some distance from the lookout and damage to the skull showed she had been bludgeoned to death. Then, by chance, detectives discovered that on the night she died Kim had been in the company of a local miner, 24-year-old Graham Potter, who had suddenly disappeared. A national manhunt led to his eventual surrender. Potter was convicted of Kim Barry’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. No motive was ever established for the killing and Potter, who was released in 1996 after serving 15 years, still declares he is innocent.

On a September night in 1986, two police officers climbed through a barbed-wire fence beside the F4 freeway at Minchinbury in Sydney’s west. They were accompanied by two teenage boys who guided them to the edge of a shallow dam where the beams from torches outlined the body of a young woman lying in the mud. She was later identified as nineteen-year-old Sydney bank clerk, Janine Balding. She had been abducted, raped, beaten and drowned. The shock was compounded when police arrested the gang responsible and found their youngest member was just 14 years old. The others present were a boy and girl both aged 15, a 16-year-old boy, and their leader, 21-year old Stephen “Shorty” Jamieson, who despite his physical maturity had the mental age of 10. It appears the gang was seeking to impress each other with their toughness when they set out to rape a woman. They selected Janine at random.

A chilling investigation of John Ernest Cribb, who on August 11th 1978, broke into the home of the Connells. On a winter’s afternoon, Valda Connell and her four-year-old son Damien arrived home after having collected ten-year-old Sally from school. What was as an average day for the family turned to horror when Valda and the children were confronted by a man brandishing a knife and ordering them back into the car. The man, John Ernest Cribb, had just a couple of months earlier been released on parole after serving about six years for armed robbery. As Cribb drove north towards Taree, on the NSW Mid North Coast, Valda pleaded to let her and her children go. Later, under the dark of night, Cribb raped the 39-year-old mother, while her two children remained in the car terrified, cold, and hungry. In the early hours of the next morning near the small town of Wingham, Cribb left the family gagged and bound in bushland next to a deserted road and then drove back south towards Newcastle. But his thoughts got the better of him as he began telling himself that Valda knew too much, and decided he must instead go back and silence her. He returns and with his knife, viciously slays the family, one by one…

The bloodied, semi-naked body of 30-year-old Donna Wheeler is discovered by her estranged husband Keith Bond and 12-year-old son. Donna had been brutally beaten and stabbed and when police investigate they discover that Donna’s estranged husband is a suspect but evidence also points to Keith’s brother Colin. Which brother really killed Donna Wheeler?

In the late 1980s and early 1990’s a series of violent murders took place near Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach. Three innocent men were attacked and thrown to their deaths from a cliff top. The murders were part of a much wider wave of violent hate crimes as gangs of youths roamed Sydney’s inner suburbs randomly bashing and killing gay men for sport. Among the victims at Bondi was Wollongong television newsreader, Ross Warren, a gay man who disappeared while visiting friends in Sydney in 1989. Ross Warren’s case was dismissed by police as a “probable accident”. But his mother conducted a long campaign to have her son’s disappearance finalised. Then, some ten years after he was first reported missing, Ross’s police file finally came to the desk of one courageous investigator who started to dig a little deeper. Detective Sergeant Stephen Page quickly realised that there was more to the Ross Warren case than was uncovered in the original investigation. The file contained a great many unanswered questions. As he read the file Detective Page began to uncover similarities with other murders and slowly the shocking pattern of violence and death began to emerge. Another murder victim was Bondi resident John Russell, a gay man who had inherited some money and was about to leave for the country to start a new life when his body was found at the foot of the Bondi cliffs.

Crime Investigation Australia explores the murders of two teenage girls near the NSW town of Bega in 1997. 14-year-old Lauren Barry and 16-year-old Nichole Collins disappeared while walking towards home along the Snowy Mountains Highway. A huge manhunt by police and the girls’ families and friends failed to find any trace of them. The girls had been abducted by Leslie Camilleri and Lindsay Beckett who had a combined record of more than 200 convictions. The girls were driven several hundred kilometres across the border into Victoria during which they were repeatedly assaulted and raped, then tied-up and gagged before being murdered. This episode of CIA features detailed re-enactments and interviews with key figures, including the main investigating police from New South Wales and Victoria, and an exclusive interview with Nathan Barry, the brother of one of the murdered girls.

Rodney Francis Cameron was dubbed ‘The Lonely Hearts Killer’ after he used a radio match-making program in 1990 to lure an unsuspecting woman to her death. Incredibly, he had only just been released from prison for two other killings in 1974. Cameron’s psychopathic tendencies appeared early in his life. At the age of ten he tried to strangle a young girl. He then attempted to strangle two other women, and moved into a life of alcohol and drug abuse, including experimenting with hallucinogenic chemicals. He also dabbled in Satanism. At the age of 19, while working at a nursing home in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, he raped and strangled nurse Florence Jackson. The victim was left with a towel stuffed down her throat in what was to become his signature “mark of death”. A week later, heading south to Melbourne, he hitched a lift with a 19-year-old bank clerk, Francesco Ciliberto, whom he strangled with a football sock. A short time later, he was caught in Queensland after abducting a mother and daughter. He told arresting police he “had to kill three.” He was sentenced to prison for life and served 16 years. While incarcerated he married a lifelong friend named Anne. Soon after his release in 1990, he rang a late-night match-maker talkback program on radio 3AW Melbourne. He described himself as a non-smoker and non-drinker, Gemini marine biologist who was searching for a partner “willing to share his happiness”. Forty-four-year-old Maria Goellner was one of six women who responded to his call. A few weeks later Maria was found lying dead on a motel room floor in the Blue Mountains, the same area where Cameron had committed this first murder 16 years earlier. She had a handkerchief stuffed down her throat. The killer was jailed again for life, this time his file was marked “never to be released.” While in jail he allegedly made admissions to an informant indicating he had killed five additional victims, including two other women after his release from prison in 1990. Police believe he was almost certainly responsible for the 1974 murder of elderly Sydney woman Sarah McKenzie, but there was not enough information to take that case to trial or to identify any of the other alleged victims.

The highest ranking police officer in Australia to be murdered, Assistant Federal Police Commissioner Colin Winchester was shot twice in the head at point blank range as he was getting out of his car outside his Deakin home on January 10, 1989. At the time of his death Winchester was the Chief of Police in ACT region. He had served in the law enforcement of 27 years, firstly with the Australian Capital Territory Police Force and then in the Australian Federal Police after its formation in 1979. The shock of his death and the long investigation which followed left a lasting imprint on his fellow officers as they struggled to bring the killer to justice.

The quick mind of a country telephone exchange supervisor led to a horrific discovery at a NSW country homestead in 1978. The supervisor had been checking complaints that the phone line to “Summerfield” station, near the southern town of Jerilderie, was out of order. Living at the old homestead was a celebrated “gun” shearer Mick Lewis, his wife Sue and their two small children. After trying the line off and on for several hours it was finally answered by a tiny girl who said her mother and father were sleeping. When asked to wake her mother the child replied in a faltering voice: “I don’t like Mummy anymore ‘cause Mummy’s turning black”.

Painter and docker, Les Kane was described by his widow, Judi, as "the most violent man in Australia". Les came to prominence when he declared war on the armed robber Ray Chuck, the mastermind of what is known as the Great Bookie Robbery in 1976. But Chuck struck first. Les was machine-gunned by Chuck, within a few feet of his horrified wife and children in their Wantirna home and his body removed and never found. Les’s older brother, Brian Kane, was once Melbournes top standover man, before he was gunned down in the Quarry Hotel in Brunswick in November, 1982. Mourners at his funeral included the entire Moran clan. Kanes niece Trish later married Jason Moran, who was shot dead with Pasquale Barbaro in 2004. Judi Kane today speaks of how she fell for a man whose cocky self-assurance hid a psychopathic streak. By the time she realised they would never live happily ever after, she was in too deep. Billy Longley is a veteran of the waterside crime war that gripped Melbourne and Sydney finally ended in the early 1980s, it was a war that led to at least 40 people being murdered. Longley, one of the most feared men on the docks, was known as "The Texan" because he wore a Stetson and carried a Colt .45. He was a Painters and Dockers Union presidential candidate and the leader of a union faction at war with his rival, Pat Shannon. In 1970, Longley was convicted in connection with Australias biggest armed robbery to that time, the Mayne Nicholas heist in the Sydney suburb of Guildford, which netted $587,870. He disappeared in 1973 and a few months later Pat Shannon was gunned down in a South Melbournes Hotel. Longley, Kevin James Taylor, Gary Leslie Harding were convicted of Shannons manslaughter. . Now aged 83 Longley lives quietly in suburban Melbourne, he goes ballroom dancing and counsels school children against getting involved in violence.