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Charlie Bezzina was one of Victoria's top homicide detectives. In his 17 years in the Homicide Squad, he investigated more than 300 suspicious deaths, including 150 murders - among them the crimes of serial killer Paul Denyer, the killing of Melbourne gangland figure Alphonse Gangitano, the baffling disappearances of Sarah McDiarmid and former gameshow model Jacquie Ramchen, and the death of former Test cricketer David Hookes. This is the never-before-told story of Bezzina's rise from a sheltered childhood in a Maltese family in Melbourne's western suburbs, to a widely respected senior detective who served Victoria Police with distinction and unquestioned integrity for 37 years, culminating in his acrimonious and highly controversial departure from the force. The Job is an explosive and intriguing account of what it takes to be a criminal investigator at the highest level.
Fred Cook began his football career with Footscray in the VFL. But he really made his name in the game after crossing to Port Melbourne in the VFA. His prodigious goalkicking in the 1970s earned him the nickname of 'Fabulous Fred' and fame at a pop-star level. He appeared on TV, on radio and wrote newspaper columns, and he mixed with Melbourne's sporting and entertainment elite. But he fell in with a criminal crowd, formed a drug habit, lost everything and did three spells in prison. Cook has led a remarkable life, going from hero to zero. He's always wanted to tell his story, which features football, crime and drugs, and the wider issue of sportspeople who struggle with normalcy once their careers have ended. Fred Cook's name still resonates, thirty years after his career ended. Last year he was nominated for the Australian Football Hall of Fame.
True crime account of the Australian serial killer Paul Denyer
Twenty-five years ago, serial killer Paul Denyer terrorised the bayside suburb of Frankston.Twenty-five years later, the trauma of his seven-week killing spree still haunts the community. The spate of murders in 1993 touched many more lives than just the three victims. All of Melbourne was gripped with fear, as Frankston and surrounding suburbs were flooded with police hunting the serial killer of three young women. It began on June 11 when Elizabeth Stevens was murdered on her way home from the library. On July 8, Debbie Fream who'd left her 12-day-old baby with a friend while she dashed out for milk, was abducted and killed. Three weeks later, Year 12 student, Natalie Russell, was brutally...
Jason Moran was in his blue Mitsubishi van when he was gunned down with his friend, Pasquale Bardora, in front of up to 250 people in the car park of the Cross Keys Hotel. At least five children, including Moran's twin girl and boy, aged six, and his brother's own fatherless children were in the van when the gunman fired. While murdering two men in front of hundreds of people might, at first, seem wreckless, to the killer, it made perfect sense...' From the authors that brought you Mark Bradon Read's Chopper, comes a true account of the most bloodcurdling gang violence you will ever read. For the last ten years a war has raged on once safe suburban streets that has stunned the world. The killings have been particularly callous and brutal: mothers gunned down with their babies sleeping beside them, fathers killed in front of their children and couples shot down in cold blood. This is true crime at its most bloody, surreal and terrifying.
'How did a kid from the country who dreamed of joining the Victoria Police, end up on the wrong side of the bars? There are a lot of reasons, and I hope this story will help clarify some of them, not only for you, the reader, but for me too, because a lot of the time I am left shaking my head, wondering how things went so wrong.' Paul Dale knows he is tainted. After almost fifteen years as a cop, working in Homicide and rising to the rank of Detective Sergeant in the Victorian Drug Squad, he saw the worst of what people can do. But when he was accused and jailed firstly for drug offences and then for murder, Dale realised the murky world he was navigating was going to take him under too. Dale dealt with crims like Carl Williams, Terry Hodson and Tommy Ivanovic on the Melbourne streets. But when a burglary ended in Hodson's arrest, Dale's life started to unravel. He turned to Nicola Gobbo, a lawyer and friend he thought could help: the lawyer who became known as Lawyer X. Eventually exonerated of any crimes, Paul Dale's story reveals the shocking deals done at the highest levels of the Victorian Police Force and the damage wrought by Victoria Police's use of Lawyer X.
Who really murdered Bob Chappell? Veteran ex-detective and author of JFK: The Smoking Gun, Colin McLaren, uncovers disturbing new evidence that an innocent woman is in jail. Daybreak, Sandy Bay, Hobart, 27 January 2009. A yacht, the Four Winds, is seen listing low to the waterline. When police board the sinking vessel there is no sign of the owners, Bob Chappell and Sue Neill-Fraser but, disturbingly, they find blood and a knife. Bob Chappell is never seen again. The blood spatter leads police to the conclusion that he has been murdered. Remarkably, Sue Neill-Fraser is arrested, found guilty and sentenced to 26 years' imprisonment. May, 2016. Bestselling true-crime author Colin McLaren probe...
An engaging account of an extraordinary, trailblazing woman - Australia's first female detective - LILLIAN ARMFIELD is also the vivid and gripping story of the origins of Sydney's organised crime underbelly. 'Special Constable' Lillian Armfield was policing Sydney's mean streets during some of the most dramatic years of crime in the city. By the late 1920s, eastern Sydney was the heartland of organised crime and the notorious turf battles known as the Razor Wars, where bloodied bodies were strewn across streets after late-night clashes between rival gangs. At first disapproved of by her male colleagues, and often working solo and undercover, Lillian investigated it all - from runaway girls, opium dens and back-street sly grog shops to drug trafficking, rape and murder. She dealt with the infamous crime figures of the day - Tilly Devine, Kate Leigh, 'Botany May' Smith and their associates - who eventually accorded Lillian a grudging respect. Lillian Armfield's life and achievements were extraordinary. She paved the way for the women of today's police force and her amazing story is also a compelling chapter in Australian true crime history.
As seen on Foxtel's Logie winning The Good Cop and Channel 7's Homicide with Ron Iddles 'A - Assume nothing. B - Believe nothing. C - Check everything.' Ron Iddles In an incredible twenty-five year career as a homicide detective, Ron Iddles' conviction rate was 99%. Yet that only partly explains why Iddles is known to cops and crims alike as 'The Great Man'. Tough, inventive and incorruptible, stoic in the face of senseless horror yet unafraid to shed tears for a victim, Ron has applied his country cunning and city savvy to over 320 homicide cases - some of them the most infamous, compelling and controversial crimes in the nation's history. To the victims of crime, Ron is both a shoulder to ...
It is 1993: a serial killer is loose on the streets of Frankston, Victoria. The community is paralysed by fear, and a state's police force and national media come to find a killer. Meanwhile, seventeen-year-old Paul Kennedy is searching for something else entirely. He is focused on finishing school, getting drafted into the AFL and falling in love. So much can change in a year. The rites of passage for many Australian teenage boys - blackout drinking, simmering violence and emotional suppression - take their toll, and the year that starts with so much promise ends with Kennedy expelled, arrested and undrafted. But one teacher sees Kennedy self-destructing, and becomes determined to set him on another path