Isn't it funny how people with deviant tendencies of any sort, stealing, whatever it is, they repeat themselves to their thieves, their frauds, they embezzel, they murder, they cheat on their wives, et cetera, et cetera, their crooked in every way.
Yeah, it's like maybe they can't exist unless they're doing something shady or like just.
The nature of the beast.
It was actually about money, because what it was most crimes about love, sex, money, jealousy.
Welcome to Life and Crimes with Andrew Ruhl. Last week we spoke to Emily Web about her new book, Murdering the Suburbs, and this week she's back again with some more stories from that book. I think about some poisoning cases.
Hello Emily, Hello Andrew.
Now talking about poisoning cases. I can think of a case that you haven't done here, but we've done it before, and that's of Lorraine Moss of Bendigo, who wasn't her husband because she was having an affair with one of these workmates. You've got a story. I think that they're with chocolates, which may also involve poisonings. What's the background of that one?
Well, I find poisonings really fascinating and I have listened to your episodes on Yeah, Lorraine Mossat was a really interesting case. Now, this this chapter came about because there was a case in the early nineteen eighties that was pretty widely reported. It was a case of a box of poisoned strych nine laced chocolates being sent from Sydney to Germany with the intent to be sent to this woman, like a six year old woman who lived in a little town near Cologne.
But what was that about.
Well, these chocolates got sent from Sydney and they were sent not directly to this woman, Mary Anne sir. This was in nineteen eighty three, I believe nineteen eighty four, because it took a while to sort of uncover what was happening. And they were sent from a family in Sydney or a man in Sydney by proxy, though he got someone he knew they were born in what was known as the Czech Republic back then, got a friend to send them to someone in Cologne who was a jeweler,
actually a checkborn jeweler. But there was a note inside to say, hey, could you send these on to this person? Marianne sure, he's fifty bucks for your trouble. But they didn't read the note and they got stuck into the chocolates in the jewelry shop. But very quickly they realized, oh, there's a discussing.
One.
The jeweler who opened them was incredibly sick, like he could have almost died, and stricken will do that, Like it's a horrible way to die, Like it's almost like invola, like an exorsust type thing, like an involuntary body movements and yeah, and so they were sick, and it's like, well, what the hell's going on here? And the police were called. They're like, well, why would someone want to send this to a little old lady in a you know, cologne
back story? Backstory? So they're tracking it back. So who does she know Insyney? Which it's nineteen eighty four actually, so that was when it was sent.
Would it be some post war treachery, you know, where somebody or other sold out somebody else to the Nazis or any of that?
I wonder, Well it was actually about money, because what it was most crimes about love, sex, money, jealousy. So Marianne sure her niece lived in Sydney and her niece was married to a man called Milan Nakuda, and Marianne had been out on a trip the year before to
Australia visiting family. And what they worked out is it was sent because they were hoping that the woman who was the niece of marian Sr Would possibly be named in the will like the like you know, had a stake in the will because this woman she didn't have her own children, she had nieces. She had discussed probably some of the stuff when she was in Sydney. One
of her nieces. She had left a lot of money too, but had this niece had been in the Church of Scientology and she was like, I don't want my money going to a church. So there was some assumption that Haiki Hiker I don't know how to pronounce, that who was the niece would be a beneficiary of the will. But Milan, her husband, who was born in the Czech Republic and had migrated to Australia from South Africa in the late nineteen seventies, he actually was the one who
initiated this. There's no suggestion that Hiker knew anything about this, so it basically involved so police in Cologne. There was a police like inspector and then he had to get in contact with police in Sydney.
New South Wales an International.
It was really fascinating and you know, it turns out that so they're like, okay, Milan Nakuda, what the hell's going on here? He claims he was forced to send them some men like had threatened him and he's you know, his wife and daughter young daughter at the time, and he was forced to send them. But it turns out that Milan had a pretty shady past, like pretty dirty past. He actually had been jail for murder in South Africa. He murdered his wife's lover when he found them in bed.
He killed the man and burnt his body and he did a bit of jail time. So I'd moved to South Africa from Czechoslovakia, which was still under communist rule back then. And yeah, like he had done his jail time, but then the Australia he got to Australia, I don't think he was very truthful, but he was actually also wanted when he left South Africa on fraud charges because he was taking money in under the guise of travel agentsport Well, yeah, I don't know, did they check that back then, I don't.
Well, just pre computer, it just falls into the old paper world where stuff could be forged.
And yeah, I guess you could.
You wouldn't be flagged immediately.
No, And he actually was. He fled under. He was wanted for like defrauding people out of money for a cruise that never existed. So he came to Australian who's working as a computer analyst. And he'd been married I think a few times.
Isn't it funny how people with deviant tendencies of any sort, stealing, whatever it is, they repeat themselves. Their thieves, their frauds, they embezzel, they murder, Yeah, they cheat on their wives, et cetera, et cetera. They're crooked in every way.
Yeah, it's like maybe they can't exist unless they're doing something.
Shady or like just the nature of the beast.
I find it fascinating.
And so they're parking disabled spot, do a.
Fraudulent like disability badge or different things like that. But the German police, the Cologne police and the New South Wales police, they were working together. There was some you know issues, I guess probably, yeah, fax machines like pre computer.
True fact, machines and so the upshot.
Well, this Milan Nicuda got arrested. They took over the investigation yet.
From sort of police arrested in though, is it two detectives But it's not a homicide job.
No, because she wasn't She wasn't murdered. And the charged he was charged with was something that had been enacted in like nineteen hundred, but.
Never sending something, sending something.
Maliciously delivering a noxious substance through the mail. It was the first time that charge was used since it was introduced in nineteen hundred. So yeah, Milan Nicuda is.
Probably still on the statute. Some of the people who send letters to me, she'll be charged under that substances.
Do you get the strange letters, like handwritten.
That are with capitals underline, Yeah, and sometimes different colored pins. I guess they're like sometimes very neat is a serial killer or a mass killer? Right to me? Regularly? Oh, it's very neat. It's got good penmanship, just neat, neat, interesting, not so much neat and tidy, but a little bit young looking.
Okay, I think I know the person.
You probably don't.
I have an idea.
Yeah, been in jail a long time, yes.
And we'll probably never get out right. Possibly back to the story, Milan Nakuda went to court the witnesses in Germany literally at the airport waiting to fly out to give evidence, but last minute he pled guilty to the charge and he actually got eighteen years imprisonment with a
twelve year non parole period and was granted parole. I checked nineteen ninety five, so we did nineteen eighty eight to ninety five, So did a fair whack and then was look, I was trying to find out exactly, but it required some files and I would have I do like he was most likely deported afterwards, because they do. I've done cases before where you know, there's been the perpetrator, they've done their time and they're like deported back to Scotland or something. But it's sometimes a bit hard to
get that information. Yeah, but it was definitely, And there's a few other cases. I could have actually written I reckon a whole book on poison chocolates. There was a lot of case. There's just a lot of cases when you're losing at the archives.
Yeah, so you've got more than that case.
Yeah, there's a few others. There's one from a church going lady in Florida who sent poison laced fudge to her church congregation because she was just, you know, feeling a bit slighted by them the Bible class. They're all sick.
That could happen.
And another one in nineteen forties in Melbourne where a woman sent it to her cousin, but she used really old rat poison and it wasn't going to work. So yeah, but there's a lot of poisonings like a big, a big thing as we know of recent time. Yeah, because that Lorraine Moss case was really fascinating and there was Emily Perry. I think back in the sixties.
It's always every generation seems to have had, you know, a couple. It's a thing, the Mushroom case. The book I think, the Finnish book which the plot is sort of rests, is called The Man Who Died. It's translated from the Finnish into English, and if anybody out there wants to read the book, that probably inspired the Mushroom murders. That's the one boy that led to a series and some sort of Netflix or whatever candy type drama series. So I think our Aaron might have been a big
fan of that sort of stuff. Listeners. Obviously we're talking about this before the verdict in the Patterson case, the Mushroom case.
Yeah, I just I would be interested to know what sentence Aaron gets. I think it'll be pretty hefty.
It will be. And yet again it's funny. What else has happened in the past. I think John Sharp who killed his wife and child with a speak a most terrible crime and cut them up and put them in the tip. I think he got thirty three years. But another fellow called Mark Smith burnt this is and it's
cold blooded. He's not mad, he's just cold blooded. He took up with another woman, and he planned it methodically that he would stage the burning of his house in Hoppers Crossing and Bernie's wife and ten weeks old child, and he'd set up a candle to make it look as if the candle had fallen over. He got an anesthetic like ether and knocked his wife out and set fire. Now the idea was the fire was going to kill her and the baby, so they weren't dead, they were
going to burn to death. And he left, went to work, you know, pretended nothing had happened. And then he gets to call, oh, your house on fire. Well, it's terrible, and he rushes back, expecting to find them both dead. Well, the baby was dead, burnt to death, and his wife had woken up somehow and escaped. She lost Anne and was terribly badly burnt, but she survived. Wow, that bloke who has murdered his own child tried to murder his wife in cold blood? What do you think? He got
twenty two? But that's all I mean, he didn't get He didn't get twenty nine or thirty two or thirty five, Like when was it was this, like only fifteen years ago?
Yeah, maybe maybe thirty I would have, Yeah, twenty, Yet twenty.
I can't see why he's worth only two thirds of sharp. Yeah, I don't understand some of the sentence.
I've learned a lot actually from listening to, you know, the different coverage of the trials. I really love the fact that podcasts are covering trials. I started listening to the Lucy let Be trial a few years back that the Daily Mail did, and I think it's really important. But I think the interest is so much obviously the mushroom case that Aaron Patterson cases sparked so much interest.
But I think it's actually really good for people to understand the criminal justice system, you know, Like so it's got a bit of an education focus as well.
How long did it take you to do your most excellent book, Murder in the Suburbs.
Well, I'm I'm a pretty slow rider, unless I've got the looming threat of a deadline flaming of my backside. Look, it probably I took a bit longer because I had a bit going on last year and I had a child in BC at doing year twelve. Look, probably ten months. I mean I could have done it quicker, maybe eleven months. I Yeah, I've done it because you know, like I wor bills. Yeah, it's like you know, night times and
early mornings. Like, look, some of the chapters in there are ones that I've written years ago, and like you know, you go back and improve it, you like, update it. Some of some of the cases the ones that people you know have heard about, but at the time I was writing about them, I just was really interested in them. Like the Matthew de Gruci he is now out in jail.
That's the opening story.
Yeah, who murdered his mother and siblings. And it's like, well, I always say why, why would you do that? Like battered them to death? Like brutally. I was like, what possesses someone? I'm not saying that myself. I could be capable of something put under enough pressure. I think we are. But you know, just it's like what the hell? Like I want to know the why, But sometimes you don't find out the why.
Do you know? Sometimes there is no obvious reason, and other times I suspect there's something deep and it's just not to make excuses for people, but often there's something bad happened to them when they're young themselves. Yeah, probably three out of four that's the case, I think.
Particularly, I know a lot of the cases I have listened to you talk about, and you've written about the men who came up through the boys institutions. I mean, the damage done there. You can't deny that.
Yeah, the stone killers, absolute cold blood of killers nearly always have suffered in those sort of places. Yeah, probably those places or at schools, yep, and it just whoops them when they stay whooped. Yeah.
Well, I work in my day job is to do communications and advocacy for an organization that provides mental health services and really good you know, NDAs stuff, and you know a lot of forensic disability. They do work with a lot of forensic disability stuff, and you know, there's a lot to be said about you know, when a child is in their first three years of life, if attachment is disrupted, it completely changes the brain and also then how that person sees the world and in track.
So sometimes you think, well, no, wonder you know there's stuff like that happening.
Or you know, dysfunctional, disjointed.
Yeah, yeah, just just not able to formulate relationships well or making choices that you know aren't great.
Yeah, they're different from everybody else. Yeah, that's true. Now, Lucky. Last, if you were talking to friends about what you've just done, what's one of the others that you would pick out here? What's the overseas when you've done? Apart from the chocolate I actually.
Wrote about, there was the murdering near Christmas in twenty ten in Brighton of a young woman called Joanna Yates. And look, there's sadly there are always murders, right, but there seemed to be like a number of these kind of murders in the UK that happened. And Joanna was you know, like lived in a like a converted It was an old house that's converted into apartments, you know, those kind of old like Victorian homes, and you know with her lived with their boyfriend and you know, she
was a landscape gardener. Like just life was good. You know her her boyfriend was away visiting family, and yeah, she just disappeared. He didn't hear from her. He was coming home, came home, she wasn't there, and you know, there was a big search on, like a you know, a young woman goes missing, We know that there's always a lot of attention. You know, sometimes you know, other crimes don't get as much attention, but yeah, young women
goes missing. Where is she? And they had like massive, massive, you know investigation for the police force in that area. And yeah, that next door neighbor who she didn't even know, this guy who you know had a porn addiction, you know, a bit shady, but did you know he was a like, had a very respectable job, was Dutch born, he had a girlfriend himself. Yeah, he killed her.
Dutch porn addict do it everything?
Well, Yeah, when they searched through, I mean, you know, there was a lot of stuff that wasn't great, but yes, they found poor Joanna dog Walkers founder actually and it was near Christmas. But it took a while to arrest this guy, Vincent Tabac. And but what happened in between is the person who owned the building that Joanna and her boyfriend rented the apartment and also her killer. He was, you know, a bit of a like quirky bird, you know,
like English eccentric kind of thing. Christopher Jeffries. Now, what happened in the space between you know, finding Joanna, you know, and charging someone's the British tabloids in the way they do kind of well, like this guy's a perf, this guy's dodgy.
Yeah, he was on like he was. The jury of public opinion hounded the wrong led.
They actually made a TV show about it, just what happened.
In Perth with the Claremont killings. They blamed, the police blamed and made it clear they were blaming that man who lives with his parents in and he was surrounded by cameras and attention and finger pointing for a long time. And then, of course, by chance, the real killer walked into the net. Yeah, and they blamed the wrong bloke for a long time. The Perth police are got a terrible record for that sort of stuff. They hang the wrong guy over there once.
I don't know. I mean obviously, like as we're recording this, you know, there's been that terrible murders of the two police officers in Northeast Victoria, and I always think, God, what a bloody hard job.
Oh terrible.
But sometimes when you're researching, you and there's there's just like I was rewatching Line of Duty, you know, the the UK series.
I love that.
My husband actually was a police officer and isn't really that into crime, but we've been watching it and I just thought, you know, corrupt police. It's really bad because it's such a breach of trust. It's a bleach of like it's really shocking, like when you just fit someone up for very bad you know, cold blooded and it's yeah, that's about yeah, and it's just so it's such a letdown to the community. Back to the story, This man Chris Jeffreys, and look, he was a bit eccentric, had
wild white hair, you know, very smart. He was questioned obviously because he's a landlord, you've got a question him. But he was arrested, questioned, released without charge on police bail for a bit. But when news broke about that, the tabloids just zeroed in, you know, calling him a creepy loaner, peeping Tom in newspapers. He ended up actually getting some compensation for that, you know, and TV series
was made about it, about his ideas. You know, once it started going, it was like, and you know, they you are physically under a lot of threat if people think you're responsible for something.
Of course you know you can't. But yeah, but that was a really down hotels and things. Oh god, Yeah, you didn't see outside of sign where a doctor who looked after children sign saying that he was practicing pediatrician and the plebs all thought it is a pedophile. They carried signs and through rotten exacting or something. That's the great unwashed.
I know, I did see something online it made me laugh.
You know.
They're painting the George Cross on roundabouts in the UK at the moment. In England, some of them had accidentally painted the Danish flag, just got the colors reversed. I'm like, stay in school, kids, like that's what you need. But you know, the upshot of this was that you know, a family like Vincent to back was convicted. He's got a very very long stretch. I probably won't get out. I mean, I think in the UK they do tend
to do pretty long sentences. The Constable, the Chief Constable of Avon and Somerset Police gave an official apology to Christopher Jeffries. He you know, won apologies and substantial damages from eight newspapers, so it was across the board.
It wasn't just one news leaking stories to the papers some of.
The Yeah, but what's really nice, I guess a nice way to end a very tragic story is Joanna was a She was a landscape architect and she had spent her time during school working at a you know, a gardens and they actually made a really beautiful butterfly garden for her in memory because yeah, her parents you know, approved the design and they just feel the days where she was happiest.
So that's lovely. So that's your UK story is one of as you said, probably eighteen or so, roughly creepy.
Yeah, some are longer than you know when you're writing. Some longer than others. But I do like to dig and I always say I'll never write another book.
But you know what, I probably will you probably will. It's crazy how many have you done?
Done well? Currently? I've got like three out. I did one on healthcare, serial killers, that's my special subtopic. But you know, i'd written books before that went out of print and then yeah, republished. So all in all, I've written about six, but you know they're not all in print. But over I don't know a long time, but I've definitely feel like I'm I like to try and get better each time I do it. I reread stuff sometimes I'm.
Like, well that's only way to improve.
Yeah, although your books are pretty great as they are always. I reread The Evil You a while ago.
Yeah I did.
I've got a copy of that.
Ye creepy story. Yeah, Robert Arthur Selby low no good at all. No. All right, Emily Web, you've come in and we've seen you, and I think we'll probably see you again when you do your next book, if we're all still around.
I know, well, I hope so. And I love your podcast. Keep going. I've got so many favorite episodes that I sometimes too, So let's keep it going forever.
You got too much spare time.
To do it? Well, I'm walking the dogs or doing the dishes.
You know.
That's why podcasts are good.
That's good. Give dogs plural.
I've got two greyhounds, risky greyhounds.
Got there? How about that? They eat much?
They do, actually, but they don't. They don't need a lot of walking like I do walk them every day. But they just love being around you and just laysing around.
Yeah. Lovely, Well that's lovely, Emily Web, crime writer. Where do you get your new book Murdering the Suburbs.
Well, it's in all good bookstores. So if you go to a local shopping center and go to your local bookstore there it's there. You can ask your independent bookstore to order it in and it's also available online to order from the usual places.
Thank you, Emily Web. We're going to knock off now and probably have a couple of coffee or tea.
Thank you, Thanks Andrew.
Thanks for listening. Life and Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun production for True Crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, features and more, go to Heroldsun dot com dot au, forward slash Andrew rule one word. For advertising inquiries, go to News Podcasts sold at News dot com dot Au. That is all one word news podcast's sold. And if you want further information about this episode, links are in the description. Can I Go