Crime Investigation Australia

Sallie-Anne Huckstepp and Juanita Nielsen were iconic figures in the shadowy King's Cross scene of the 1970s and 1980s. They lived dangerous lives - challenging the status quo of the period and met with mysterious and violent deaths. Neither murder has been solved officially, but many decades later, the intrigue of both cases still scratches at the heart and psyche of the Harbour City.

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.

29-year-old Patton had been stabbed to death in a frenzied attack that had left more than 60 wounds from her head to her feet. She had multiple bruises and broken bones and it was clear she had bravely fought back against a sustained attack. What followed were years of difficult investigations plagued by numerous false leads based mainly on gossip.

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.

On 27 November 1987, 12-year-old Noosa school girl, Sian Kingi was grabbed off her push bike by Valmae Fay Beck and Barrie John Watts as she rode home from school. Beck and Watts gagged the innocent, terrified child. Watts then raped and bashed her. He then callously, and without remorse, cut her throat while his cowardly wife and mother of six watched on.

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.

Michael Kanaan was an angry young man in a hurry to make a name for himself in Sydney's underworld. But his volatile temper and penchant for violence soon led him to kill three men before he was finally captured in a wild shootout with Sydney police. Born in Australia in 1975 to Lebanese parents, he grew up following American crime gang culture in films and music.

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 the ACT region. He had served in the law enforcement for 27 years.

In 1982, 13-year-old Terry Ryan rushed into his family home in Marsden, a suburb of Brisbane, and told his mother an astonishing story. Terry said that he had been forced by two men to participate in a sexual assault and prolonged torture and murder of his best friend, 13-year-old Peter Aston. Aston was buried in a shallow grave in scrubland about 60 kilometers south of the New South Wales border.

The quick mind of a country telephone exchange supervisor led to a horrific discovery at an 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.