Crime Investigation Australia Revisited

The torture, rape and murder of young backpacker tourists in the Belanglo forest, south west of Sydney, has entered Australian criminal folklore.

The chilling fantasy world of university student, Sef Gonzales, began to fall apart in 2001. Failing in his studies and dreaming of living a celebrity life, he devised a plan to get his hands on his family's money. In a bloody frenzy of hatred and greed, Sef slaughtered his mother, father and sister in their Sydney home.

The torture, mutilation and murder of six young men in South Australia led to speculation about a group of depraved killers dubbed 'The Family'. Only one man has ever been convicted in the case even though others were obviously involved.

Sydney was horrified and puzzled by the seemingly random and bloody murders of six elderly women in the suburbs of Sydney's affluent North Shore over a fourteen-month period in 1989 and 1990. At first, the detectives on the case seemed powerless to stop the attacks.

Seven young women were raped and murdered in South Australia in the 1970s in a shocking killing spree that went unsolved for many years. The dramatic police hunt for the killers came to a bizarre climax when one of them died in a car accident.

For many decades in Australia up to the 1990s, thousands of random bashings of gay men took place across Sydney. Known as 'poofter bashing', it was a blood sport for young hoodlums that sometimes resulted in the death of the victim.

The Lebanese-Australian crime kingpin, Michael Kanaan, had a volatile temper fed by deep insecurity. He had no compunction about killing anyone who upset him. In a wild crime spree in the 1990s Kanaan murdered three people and with his gang of drug dealers, conducted a war with police, even spraying a Sydney suburban police station with gunfire.

In 1981, the headless and fingerless body of teenager Kim Barry was found below a scenic lookout near Wollongong, in New South Wales. Her skull and fingers were later found nearby. A nationwide manhunt was launched for mine-worker Graham Potter.

The horrific rape and murder of Virginia Morse and the random killing of a farm hand in 1973, led to a dramatic police chase and shootout in the NSW Hunter Valley. So brutal was the crime that her killers were jailed for life, with the judge recommending they never be released.

Queensland's beautiful Sunshine Coast was the scene of two of the nation's most famous child murder investigations. In 2003, teenager Daniel Morcombe disappeared leading to a national outcry. After eight years, and a brilliant undercover police operation, the man who abducted and murdered Daniel was arrested and jailed for life.

The disappearance of anti-drugs campaigner Donald Mackay was always known to be the work of the Mafia, but now with the death of Griffith NSW mafia boss Antonio Sergi interviewed denying everything in the original episode the full story can be told.

This was an outrage that horrified and inflamed the passions of ordinary Australians everywhere. The abduction, rape, and murder of a woman described as a living angel, Sydney nurse and former beauty queen, Anita Cobby.

The shocking public murder of the pioneer heart surgeon, Dr Victor Chang AC. His killers were caught after a brilliant police investigation. Despite a community out-cry, the two murderers were eventually released on parole.

This episode tells the story of a clever investigation and luck that combined to identify the man responsible for the gruesome axe murder of Karen McKenzie and her three small children in a remote farmhouse in Western Australia.

The abduction, repeated rape and murder of teenage girls, Lauren Barry and Nichole Collins, is still seared into the memory of locals in the sleepy NSW south coast town of Bega. The girls were already dead by the time their family and friends began the hunt for them

In the 1990s, north of Adelaide, people disappeared mysteriously, one after another. At first there was nothing to indicate that the missing were being brutally executed by Australia's worst serial killers. Finally, small clues began to raise the suspicions of police.

In the Victorian Coastal town of Mornington, 37-year-old John Myles Sharpe made a televised appeal for information about his wife and infant daughter, who'd been missing for two months. The suspicious death of a wealthy gay nightclub entrepreneur, followed by the sudden murder of his last lover and heir, and an obviously forged Will left many unanswered questions.

The murders of Sallie-Anne Huckstepp and Juanita Nielsen remain officially unsolved, but the men widely suspected to have ordered and carried out the hits are now either dead or in jail for life.

The complete story of the heartless rape and murder of nurse, Janine Balding, by a gang of homeless youths.

The Australian outback was the scene of a mysterious murder of a young couple, their bodies found in a farmhouse near the town of Jerilderie, with their two small children left alive and starving.

A young Sydney woman dies a violent death on a remote Norfolk Island in the South Pacific. With a limited number of people on the island everyone expects police to quickly solve the case. But it'll take four years and involve new DNA technology before the killer is finally identified.

In Australia's only assassination of a serving politician, John Newman, is gunned down outside his Sydney home.

A psychotic killer, released on parole, abducts and rapes a young Sydney mother before killing her and two of her children. He even makes a cruel phone call to tell her husband she has run off with him.

A German tourist randomly shoots dead five people in a series of mysterious attacks across the Top End of the Northern Territory and the vast Kimberley region of Western Australia. Roadblocks are set up and a massive manhunt is launched.

Abducted by two Satan-worshippers, two Queensland schoolboys are bound, tortured slowly with knives, sexually assaulted and savagely beaten. One of the terrified victims has to watch while his best friend is buried alive, before he manages to talk himself out of also being murdered.