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 1990s 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 clifftop. 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.

On Easter Sunday, 2002, on sleepy Norfolk Island in the south-west Pacific, the body of 29-year-old Janelle Patton was found lying in an open field. She 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 fought back against a sustained attack.

On the 6th October 1997, 14-year old Lauren Barry and 16-year-old Nicole Collins disappeared while walking along a road near their home town of Bega, on the New South Wales south coast. A huge manhunt by police and the girls' families and friends failed to find any trace of them.

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 ACT region.

On the night of May 4, 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 the sexual assault and prolonged torture and murder of his best friend, 13 year old Peter Aston.

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.