I get there, and I go through all the levels of security, and I get into the prison and it says death row above this doorway. And I go in and the door clanks shut behind me, and then I'm just standing there and no one's telling me what to do.
Hi. I'm Holly Wainwright and today I'm stepping in for Kate Langbrook on No Filter. You're about to meet a woman who has climbed into a cage with a serial killer, who's traveled on callouts with homicide police and nine to eleven survivors, who sat down with the devastated spouses of
murder victims. Someone who grew up in the chaos of financial instability and emotional turmoil in Sydney's western suburbs, and who climbed out of there to become one of Australia's most successful authors, a crime writer who's collaborated with the world's most read author, who's sold books to Hollywood, and who's seen her stories on screen. And you're going to love her. Candace Fox is a vibe. You might know her from one of her best selling crime novels, including
Crimson Lake and The Chase. But if you don't, and you love crime fiction and great stories of all kinds. You're going to thank me for this interview because I'm giving you the gift of a truly original Australian writer with a back catalog you can just jump into with both feet, as long as your feet aren't squeamish. Candace Fox's latest novel is called Red Belly Crossing, and in writing it, she hopes she might solve two cold case murders from Sydney's past. Actually she's hoping we will. I'm
Holly Wainwright and welcome to No Filter, Candicce Fox. Candace Fox, Welcome to No Filter.
Thank you so much for having me.
I need to start with something I learned about you only this morning. You've written twenty one books. That's not what I learned. I knew that twenty one books. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you type with two fingers.
I do.
It's so embarrassing.
I'm so embarrassed about it that I thought there's no way that I can get over it, the embarrassment, except by telling I just told the world. I just said.
This is me. I'm sitting in a cafe. People bandy around the words best selling author a lot, right, Yeah, they do, especially in Australia, we sell a couple of thousand books and.
We're like, hi, right.
But you're the real deal. There is no question about that.
Thank you.
Twenty one books, crime novels, standalones, series, collaborations with the best selling author in the universe, James Patterson, and you've done them all with two fingers. Why your index fingers broken? This is my first, very important question.
I feel like I feel like they must be tough, Like when I point at people, they must go whoa, put those things away.
So you're learning, you're learning, learning to.
Touch type and it's so awkward. But the problem is that with the two finger typing, my indix fingers are okay, but the rest of my fingers are like inflexed. They're up like that and they're getting tired.
Yeah, no, it's I worry. I worry for your posture. I worry for you whatever you call it. Gremlin yet No, that's good, Okay, it's not attractive into the more serious stuff. Right, you're a crime writer, obviously you write about grizzly things. Our audience might know you from Crimson Lake, they might know from Hades, they might know from all kinds of things. Women often say oh, I can't do crime like it keeps me up at night. But we also know that
women are massive consumers of crime content. Are your is your audience mostly female? And are they all twisted individuals? Some of them are pretty sick.
I have the one the moment that I think of is when I was auctioning off a character place in one of my novels and somebody said, if I win it, can I give that character to someone else? I said, yeah, sure. She said could that person be murdered? And I'm thinking, oh, you're going to put your X in there or something brutally murdered. I said, yeah, sure. They're worries. She said, can I give it to my eight year old son?
What? She wanted to give it to her son to be brutally murdered.
It was just like that, that's a special kind of fan.
They are mostly women. Yeah.
When I look out across an audience when I'm doing a talk, it's all women and there are a few men. And the men will come up and get their books signed, and they'll always say, oh, my wife dragged me here, or my wife made me read your first book, you know. And it's only recently that I'm getting men on their own, and then young men. Young men come in and they sit right at the back, and then they have nothing to do with They're scooted out, and I go, you
can come over here, and they're lurkers. Oh yeah, they look, they look. Yeah.
You write a book every nine months, you just told me, which is an astonishing output.
Oh thank you. I try. I've got a kid now, so I'm slower than I used to be. It used to be about five to six months.
And you also research really heavily. Because I know that you have met serial killers on death Row, hung out with a lot of cops in America as well as Australian firefighters. What's the scariest thing you've ever done in the name of research of your books?
It's probably meeting the serial killer. I did not realize that that was going to be a physical meeting. I
paint a picture of I'll paint your picture. I was living in la and I saw a documentary on Lawrence Bittaker, who was one half of a partnership called the Toolbox Killers, who were I know, they were very inventive, a pair of men who had nothing better to do than drive around the streets of LA, picking up young women and girls and driving them into the mountains behind LA and doing terrible things to them with the contents of a toolbox,
and then throwing them off the overpasses there, throwing this so person you decided you needed to meet, Well, I had questions, and I thought, you know, by that time, I had written twelve novels and I'd never met a killer. And all I could really do was sit there and seorize about what kind of mind would do that? And I thought, I'm going to stop theorizing. I'm going to stop reading books about it. I'm going to just go and say to the guy, what kind of mind would
do that? Why would you do that? And that's what I did. I wrote to him. I wrote a letter, and I imagined, you know, at the outset the moral questions are starting. I'm saying to myself, you know, do I write dear Lawrence, you know, direct Lawrence? You know? And if he asked, if he says.
How polite and deferential to be sort of, yeah, well I wasn't very polite.
In the content of the letter. I said, you appear to be one of the most horrendous individuals I've ever heard of in my life. You're a monster. What you did is vile and disgusting, and I want to hear about what caused you to do that. And I had
all these parameters. I was sort of saying, please, if I come there and speak to like, I'd like to hear about it, if you're willing to, you know, tell me if I go there, please do not try to tell me that you didn't do it or that it was anyone's fault except yours, because I know that he's just psycho passed. Accountability is not their strong suit. And also, I said this, no romantic interest here.
Because we know that lots of women do write to serial kills with romantic interest.
And it's a whole other thing.
It's a whole other thing.
And I would find out later that he was trying to recruit me as girlfriend number five because he already had four. And so he said, yeah, come, and so I went, and I received a visitors handbook, which was a single a four sheet of paper with a whole bunch of information about you know, what you're supposed to wear and where you're supposed to park, and what you can bring in and that kind of thing. No information at all about the physical practicality of the actual meeting.
So I just assumed that it was going to be like a piece of glass on the movie. Yeah, you see on the movies with the phone, you know, because this.
Is a violent serial killer.
And I get there, and I go through all the levels of security and I get into the prison and it says death throw, you know, above this doorway. And I go in and the door clanks shut behind me, and then I'm just standing there and no one's telling me what to do. And I wandered over to this guard and I said, I don't know where I'm supposed to be. Sorry, I don't know which window is mine, because they had all the windows with the phones. I said,
I'm here to see Lawrence Bittaker, the serial killer. And he said, oh, no, you're going to be in that cage over there. And he pointed to this cage, which was a flawed to ceiling, you know, whire mesh all around like a shark cage with buletproof glass on the inside. And I'm thinking, oh, okay, I go in there to protect me from him. And I said, well, where is he going to be? And the guard said no. The guard said, he'll be in there, and I said, but I'll be.
In there, so getting in the cage with the show.
Yeah, And he's like, I said, at the same wait, at the same time, and he said, yes, at the same time. You and hear me in there. And I looked and there were two plastic chairs, and I'm going, oh my god, and so and and I just sort of something came over me, and I just went with it,
you know, because I didn't want to be rude. And later I thought to myself, how many women have gotten themselves into an uncomfortable situation with this very man, not knowing what he was, but who went with it because they didn't want to be rude?
Rude?
Yeah, And then I and so I got in the cage with.
Him, and.
He was he was cuffed because the guards there they don't expose themselves to the inmates for any at any reason, you know, like while they're uncuffed. They're like, we don't, we don't be around them while they're uncuffed. If you want to do that, you go right ahead. So they put him in the cage, and they put me in the cage, and they shut the door and they pad locked it. So we're locked in and then he puts his wrists through and they uncuff him. Oh my god,
I know. And then they and then and then the guards went up the corridor and they walked away and they were out of sight, and I was like, well, here we are here, we are there.
I have many questions about that. How did you feel like were you? And also was he I've heard you say before that you do believe that some people are bad, like just a bad inside. Yeah, did you feel from him?
Like?
What did you feel from him? Obviously you knew what he'd done, But did he give off serial killer?
No, there's two questions there. How did I feel my whole My whole body went hot and tense, and I thought I might have to fight a man here.
So I my first my brain.
Was flooded with you know, if he comes at you, just and the thing that I could see in my brain the.
Instruction was scratch his eyes out, like I was.
Just seeing myself going ah, And I thought, that's not what.
You should do.
And I've had self defense training. I know how to punch and that kind of thing. Don't scratch him anyway? Yeah, and no, he did not give off serial killer vibes.
He was not yo Hannibal Lecter. He was very polite and nice and rational, and you know, he could cry on command, but then the crying would just stop right, you know, and there was nothing there, and there was nothing there, and I had to look very carefully for those moments where the mask dropped and I'd see it and it would just go down for a second and
I'd go there. It is like I was asking about him about his victims, and I was saying, what was your plan exactly, you know, and he said, oh, by the time we got to number five, what was her name? And I said oh, and I said her name and he said, oh whatever he name was like with the hand flicked like that and he flicked this person away. You've only you've been in prison for thirty eight years
for the murder of five women. There were clearly more than that, but he was only convicted of the five women. Could you take ten minutes to memorize their names? But the name didn't get in there, It didn't lodge in there.
And that made me go, whoa.
Like, this person does not see other people as people. They don't even have names to him.
You know, that's so interesting. And what I get from you. And we'll talk later about your latest book and the inspiration for that, the deep empathy you have for the victims of those crimes. But the victims do live and breathe in your books. Thank you, even though that your books are grizzly like that and dark. Do you sometimes think that we were talking about how women do love true crime and grim things and writing to serial killers.
Do you ever worry ethically that our obsession with true crime is making us kind of focus on the wrong thing, like focus on these charismatic, crazy guys and not on what's lost.
I think the reason we're so focused on the perpetrator is because we're trying to protect ourselves from that. And these women are often incredibly relatable. You know, they're gentle and they're lovely, and they're presented in true crime documentary documentaries as being lovely, you know, the cliche they say, Oh, she lit up a room. So I think we feel like we understand those women, So the curiosity isn't there.
What we're trying to figure out is how do I spot that predator when he's sleeping in the bed beside you know? How do I and how can I protect not only myself, but my children and the women around me. And we're looking, we're becoming experts in the red flags, you know, so we can warn each other. And I think it's just your brain being protective. It's a survival instinct type thing.
Do you spending a lot of time in these dark places? Does it make I always think this about crime writers and true crime journalists too. Does it make you more or less afraid out in the world because you know all the awful things? Yeah?
Yeah, yeah, in certain circumstances, it does make me more afraid. It makes me more afraid for my daughter. She's so small, she's six, she's six years old, and the world is so big, and it's my job protect her and to teach her how to protect herself. And I've gotten myself into sticky situations. And I see you get into cateresself.
Yes, willingly did.
But you know what I mean, Like you're on a date with something someone and they're walking you to your car and you think, oh, if this goes wrong, and then luckily it didn't, but you know, and it has, you know, And I've gotten myself into abusive relationships, and I've gotten myself into this predicament and that predicament, and I think there's no scenario in which Violet will not
get herself into some kind of situation. Statistically, if she goes out in the world as a woman and lives a normal life, will I have taught her what she needs to do to survive And will that be enough? Because sometimes it's not enough. You know. We're going to talk about later about the women that inspired the true crime, you know, and one of them just fought for her life. She threw her whole body at it, and it wasn't enough, you know. And so yeah, it is terrifying.
But what I do is I.
Balance it with extremely light things like the animal rescue.
Yeah, I was going to say, so we're going to in a second, I'm going to get a bit into what led you to be a crime writer. But your life now, I'd love you to paint a little picture, because, as we discussed, you are an incredibly successful author, writing a lot of books, living in Sydney, and your hobby which I encourage everybody listening to this to go and follow Candice on Instagram because she documents this is rescuing animals,
but specifically birds, Yes, and at any time. You've just got all these random birds and you go and pull them out of drains and rescue them from like how why? And birds are not even the most sympathetic of the animal They're not like fluffy and not well.
I started, I was volunteering for an organization and it was all native animals.
Is that wires? Yeah, yes, well.
Yeah, but they're bite and scratchy and terrified. And I every now and then was encountering someone's pet chicken and someone's pet duck and they're not you know, bite or scratchy, and so Violet really.
Lit up to your daughter. Yeah.
So we've been on over six hundred animal rescues together, her and I. It's probably something like six fifty.
Now this is the plot for a yeah, bird rescuing.
I really premise I've I've really used it as a way to build her self esteem as well. Like I, you know, the two of us are crouching trying to catch this animal, and I'm like, what do you think? What should we do? You know, Oh, you've got an idea, haven't you. You know? And I turn up to places and I said, I say, I hope you don't mind. I've brought my supervisor and then she comes up. She's a little thing. You know, we've been doing it since she was two, Yeah, but she just lit up about
chickens and ducks. So I started specializing in chickens and ducks. And we had something happened to us recently that everyone calls on Instagram, started calling the ducking, which was when somebody Sometimes the things come through a rescue line and sometimes people just approach me. Someone just approached me on social media and he said, I see you rescue ducks. I am in a situation where I have acquired thirty four thirty seven eggs that I did not know had ducks in them among us.
Haven't acquiet thirty seven mistake.
It was a really dodgy story, but I didn't push because it sounded so dodgy. I thought, if I push them too hard, I'm not going to be able to help these. And he sent me this picture of these ducklings, newly hatched ducklings at the bottom of this cardboard box, and they're all wet and limp and cold and dying. And I was like, I said to him, when can you bring those to me? Because I can't get to you right now. I've got Violet and dinner and bed and bas and he said, oh, I can bring them
in two hours. I said, they'll be dead by then. I'm sending an uber. So I sent an uber.
Yeah, I sent to the uber driver. It's going to be a big box full.
Of eggs and jack dying, hashing Jesus. So I brought them wall to my house and then and then it was just chaos, and Violet was just we were running.
We're running around because they.
Were hatching and they were getting dry and they were needing to get fed, and some of them needed medical treatment and stuff. And it was chaos. And I was filmed it all for social media and people like, what's going on? Is the duck apocalypse and it's all happening, and there's one woman's garage, you know, and it's been it's been loads of fun.
How many how many ducks made it through the duckning thirty two but some of.
Them the eggs were duds. Yeah, And and they were just a mass then, like a big yellow mass that was that I put food down. They all come in like piranhas and they go no, no, no no no, and then they go again and they're washing up against the walls of the tub.
And this sounds like every six year old dream to have an entire ocean of fluffy yellow dungeons in their house. Just swirl it around, you know.
But through the animal rescue, she's got to do amazing stuff like chuck her on a boat and we go out and we rescue a sea eagle, or we've got some cops. The cops have shut down the road for us to get, you know, a possum that's up under a highway overpass, and like all these she's she's walked into mansions on Sydney Harbor and we're right on the water in Sydney Harbor and someone's got a private dock and there's this heroin that has like fishing line around it and all sorts.
Of and it balances out some of the greenness of the of the murders. Yeah, the murders.
One day, I'll get her into the murders as well, and we'll be visiting body dumping sites.
After this short break, Candice reveals the chaotic childhood that shaped the story she tells today, Okay, we need to discuss how you got to the murders. So yeah, your background. Your own childhood was chaotic in a very different way to the to the duckning. You perhaps don't come from what people might typically assume would be the path for a professional author. Well that might be, but your house was full of stories. Tell me a bit about your growing up.
So I was two certifiable lunatics my mother. My mother had four kids, and then she adopted two, and then she fostered one hundred and fifty five kids. And I say, my mother did that, because I don't think that was his idea. My dad they got divorced when I was nine, I think, you know, he had three kids and then with her and then he said no more thanks. And then she got pregnant with me and he said, really, no more thanks. And then she started fostering. And then
she came across to my younger sisters adopt. They both adopted their twins and they were two months old and they were removed from their parents. He was in jail and she was living a certain lifestyle and so and she said, I'm going to adopt them. And so that
really wasn't his idea, you know. And so he my dad worked in Sydney prisons, so he was coming home with his prison stories, and she was filling the house with crime stories as well, because these kids were all coming from different essentially criminal situations, whether it's neglect or the parents have been arrested for drugs or armed robbery or stolen goods or whatever it is that you know, three kids found wandering around the car park of Star
City Casino in their pajamas. Someone's had them in the car and then gone into the casino and they've gotten out of the car and they've started wandering around.
So you're exposed early, but through both your parents to a side of life. I guess that a lot of middle class suburban families can just pretend doesn't exist.
Right, Yeah, yeah, I mean it was the criminal The criminal element was in my life in other ways because we lived in a really kind of lows I'm thinking of a nice word for it, low socioeconomic area. I could remember going around my friend's houses and you know, their mom's like, oh, come on, kids, can't leave you on your own. We've got to go up the street. And then going up the street and she gets her drugs and then we come back. We're go into the laundry.
There's a big hydroponics set up, you know, stuff like that. So there was crime around and I always just knew that it was, and.
My mum was obsessed with it.
At one time, she was getting into my dad's career, supporting his career or being invested in his career. And she was writing to prison inmates, and she was writing to twenty At the one time, she built all the way up to twenty and then she said, I can't keep up with this. I don't know who anyone is, you know. And that was scary because she was writing to all different types. And she was writing to a pedophile.
I suppose she wanted to. She said that they didn't tell you when you sign up for this pen power program what the guy did, but to tell you after a while. And so she's writing to this pedophile and his name was Nol and he sent her a present a clock that he had made and it was I remember it was a mirror and it was a clock and he'd put artwork all around and at the bottom it said Nola L. I said, what's it was? That mean? What's Noel?
She said, that's his.
Name, and I said, this is a weird name, Nol, you know, I'm like nine or ten or something. Anyway, we were doing toastmasters, my sister and I public speaking for kids, and we were there and there were all these adults around and they're all wearing name tags. And in the break I went out to Mum, who was sitting outside, and I said, guess what, there's a guy in there who has the name Noel. And she's like what.
And she's gone to the door and I remember her looking through the door and just going, oh my god, it was he.
It was him.
Yeah, he's gotten released from prison and he's joined this organization that teaches kids. Yeah, and she was like, it's the guy, you know, And like, I don't know if he tracked down who she was and he was there because.
He knew that we were there.
I have no idea, or was it just a small world. But anyway, she told the organization and they were like, oh god, you know.
Yeah, So there was that.
She was also a prolific animal rescuer the way that I am. So there were duckenings and things happening all the time. She wasn't a hoarder at that time, but she's bringing stuff into the house. We had this huge collection of clocks that she'd gotten off the cleanup, all different sized ones. One was shaped like a truck and on the hour it would make truck noises, and they none of them kept the time, so they were all
going off. The clock wall would just be going off all the time with different clocks.
So this chaotic, noisy house. I assume if there are new kids coming through all the time, there's probably not loads of attention for you. No school kid, No And when did you discover that writing and books were your thing? I think i've heard you say that your first you've been writing since you're about twelve, and your first laptop was from picked up from the council tip. It was how did you Was it your escape? Was it your haven? Oh? Yeah, for sure.
I didn't get a lot of attention because I didn't need it or you know, my role in a family was the smart capable one. And she would say to me, you're the smart capable one. You're you know, and I performed and got attention, you know. She would say to me, Candice, do you think you could do this? Do you think you could put a shelf there? And I'd build a shelf, you know, I'd do this I've tint the windows ill, you know, pull up the carpet, whatever it is. I'm capable.
Can you write this letter to the principal for your sister. I write the letter to the principle. It's a lot of responsibility at an early age. But also I come to her and I'm like, oh, you know, people are bullying me at school. And she'd say, well, this kid's uncle's been sexually abusing him for the last year, so you know, you think you've got problems, he's got problems,
you know. And she's not subtle at all about anyone's back history, and she'd be saying, you know, and it's hard as a kid to make your argument when you've got this kid's come in and they're covered in cigarette burns. Oh, this kid's black and blue. This kid's crying for his mum, who's just you know, And I'm kind of like, well, I guess I guess they don't have any problems. And then and you just squash it down, you squash it down,
and I started, yeah, right, that was disassociation. I think I would just completely go into a different place where I could see. It was very visual. I could see other places and other people, I could see what they looked like, I could make them talk. It was fantasy, and it was a fantasy that and to this day, it's like a door. I open the door and I go in there, and I'm swimming around in there. And physically I'm sitting here and I might even be, you know, pretending to listen, oh yeah.
Or reading a book to Violet.
And I'm reading the book and I'm doing all the voices, but my brain have opened the door, and I'm in there, and I'm swimming around in there, and sometimes I have to come all the way back and go, sorry, what did you just say.
It's really interesting, not that I'm an expert of any kind about anything, but that in a way that you didn't escape to calmer, more peaceful, beautiful places. You escaped because you've always wanted to write crime. That's right, isn't it. You escaped to frightening places in a way, but maybe places that you could control.
Yes, there was that. It was definitely the control. When when I was younger, it was vampires and werewolves, right, And I think that that's that fantasy. It's almost the Harry Potter fantasy where someone comes in and plucks you out of your ordinary life and makes you something magical.
And you know, with vampires, it's always an ordinary person a vampire turns them into a vampire, and then suddenly they have all this power and and and and that's what I was fantasizing about, is suddenly having all the power and leaving my life and going to Paris and New York and mansions and it's all very opulent in the in the vampire genre. And it was always Paris in New York and and so it was that that's that's what I was escaping to. But so it was kind of dark, but not so.
You were writing books from when you're about twelve. Yeah, and I might be wrong about this, but when you finally do leave home, you actually go and join the navy. So you're like, I mean, I guess, yeah, writing you did you always want to be a writer? Did you tell your mom I'm going to be a famous writer? But then I guess you need something practical, and so you were like, okay, maybe I'm going to be a sailor. How did that come about?
Fascinated? I would love to go back to that time and see what people said to me, because I do remember having to come and see you. At eighteen, I remember having the conversation with her and saying, I'm going to be a famous author, and her saying that's not a real job, and that doesn't you don't make any money from that, and you'll struggle your entire life. And she wasn't saying you'll never make it, but she was sort of saying people don't make it, you know, in
being an artist of any type. And so she said, if you want to, if you want to be a writer, you can be a you know, you could be a high school teacher or something something to do with the words yeah. And then I stood up and said I want to be in the navy, and everyone went, OK, like, why didn't anyone go that is incredibly ill suited to you. I think I saw what I would have seen is a recruitment video where everyone you know, it's set to music,
it's adventure. There's a boat on the sea. So immediately I'm like, oh, I'll be away, I'll be gone, Yes, i won't be here anymore.
I'll be far.
Away from here. And everyone's wearing the same uniform, so it's like a family, and I'll fit right in because there had not been any fitting in as a teenager. Like in that household, I've got mum bringing all these kids in all the time, and she had six and then she was allowed to have six more at a time. So everyone's going to different schools, everybody's bringing diseases and things into the house. We had hair lice that was
so bad. It was seven years straight of hair lice with no We got rid of it for months at one point. And they were so prolific that I would be talking to a friend of mine at school and I'd feel one walk out of my hairline and across my face and into my eyebrow, and I remember them dripping out of my hair and onto the school books
and going pap as they hit the school books. As a people, you will notice that stuff not for holding back, no, And I was wearing all of my sisters hand me down school uniforms and you know, clothes from the cleaner. I never had brand new clothes until I left home and bought them myself. It was all clean up stuff or my older sister's stuff. And they, you know, they know that. And people would come over to my house for asleep over and go back to school and then
rumors would start about what it was like. You know, so in the navy, I was like off it. I didn't know one will know.
A clean, clear discipline organization. Yes, maybe all that was appealing to Yeah, you, but you hated it.
Structures, I hear, oh, I get violently see sick felt site to be on a ship's I didn't realize that until I got in, and then I went, oh my god. And then also I cry whenever someone yells at me.
It's not useful. A lot of ailing in the navy.
And then I at that time I still am. But at that time I was incredibly friendly, and I have that face that says tell me everything. And my husband says to me these days, he says you because my husband has a really like get away from me face down the street, he says, your your face says, come and tell me your life story. And and so that as an officer I joined as an officer is not useful. I had my XO executive officer call me in and you know, they call you over the over the thing
like the school principal. They go, you know, midshipman Fox to exo's office and everyone goes woo and you get called in and he said, I want to speak to you about having seen you up on the on the deck this morning. It was you and six sailors and you're all talking and you're all laughing, and you're just eating up what it is that they're saying. And I said, yeah,
we were all they were telling stories. They're telling stories about you know, and they were they were clearly they were flirting with me, and they're trying to one up each other with their stories. And as a storyteller, I'm.
Just sties fill my pockets with them. Yeah, and I'm just rapped.
I'm wrapped by the stories and laughing at the jokes or whatever. And he said, incredibly unbecoming as an officer to be doing that. And I'm like, okay, I guess I won't talk to people. You know hard when you go and see for like three weeks at a time and there's all these So that wasn't going to work out, No, no, one all.
We could obviously talk about this for a year because it's so interesting. But you kept writing, kept writing, as I understand it, sending stories, sending manuscripts, getting knocked back, getting knocked back. But you're the thing that you told your mum I want to be a famous author. When did your break come?
I was twenty five. I was really down and out. My first marriage had collapsed spectacularly.
This is post navy. Yeah, this is post navy.
I was with him for six and a half years and then he came home from work one day and essentially just said, does someone else she's pregnant?
Oh? Great, get out? And so I did. And I had no job.
I had to leave where I was living. I you know, everything, everything collapsed. I was living with mum and in the chaos house. In the Chaos house, and she has like beside the TV, she has a mannequin dressed as a full bride and there with the veil and the and everything stuff hanging from the ceiling, and my stepdad's there and we're all, you know, we're all watching Swamp Peoples
is her favorite show. We're drinking aldi wine and I'm on a desk chair because there's there two recliners and I've gotten a desk chair and squeezed it in from somewhere.
I shouldn't be I shouldn't laugh, but I'm not laughing. But it's it's just if this was a movie of your life. This is the this is the bit where you're like, I was smart, I was capable. Yeah, I was going to be the one who made it the moment for me.
I set that scene, Huges. Then we're all sitting there whatever. And I was dating everything that moved in Sydney because that's the way I was going to get over I was going to date. I was going on three dates a day. I was going to find the next one, get over it and all this and they were all horrendous dates, horrendous. And I said to Mom, as she paused swamp People, I said, can I ask you something? She paused swamp people and I said, Mom, do you
think I'm a loser? And she said, Candice, if I thought that you were a loser, I would never tell you. And I went, okay, all right, thanks.
I kept watching swamp People.
So and so from there, from that rock bottom, you know, I started climbing back up. I got a job, I cut my hair, I joined a gym, I bought new clothes. And I said to someone, and you know, I'd written this novel and it had already done all the rounds. But what had happened is it had gone into the slush pile, so nobody had really seen it because publishers don't really look at the slush pile. They don't need
to because agents, you know, the agents. Yeah, And so I was starting to say, you know, maybe I need one of these agents. Does anyone know an agent? And my boss at work said, yeah, I went to university with someone who ended up being an agent. But she won't do you any favors just from knowing me, you know. And I went, all right, maybe I'll give it a whirl.
And then and then I found my agent.
She said, come and have come and have coffee with me and Bronti. And I was like, oh my god, what do I wear to Bronte Bronti's not a place to no And I'm thinking I am going to have to do my very best normal person impression here, like, and so I dressed in the nines and I got my hair done and I went there and I managed to be normal for about three point five seconds because she said to me, so, ha's he week been? And
I just went blur. And the first thing I told her was about this date that I'd just gone on, because it was forefront of my mind I'd just gone on our date with the guy and we got to the date and like, there was no indication of this whatsoever in the dating app or whatever. But he had no teeth, man, no denches, nothing at all.
And for an hour and.
A half, I was just stunned by the fact that he had no like, and I didn't know how to say, there's no teeth.
In there, like what happened?
And I didn't know how to say it, and so and I was still trying to work out how that happened, and so Gabby said to me, so has he weep been? And I was like, well, I actually just want to go a date with a guy and no teeth, And then it just all it all came out, and it was like the Magician with the hankies. And as soon as she was like, but why are you doing so
much dating? And then why did that happen? And at the end of the meeting, she just looked shell shocked, and I just walked away, going, well, I.
Screwed that up. Had she read the manuscript by this point or was she meeting me first?
No? She had, she she had, yeah, she was yeah wow. And then it's lucky because later actually ten years later, I learned at the you know, the Candice Fox You've been here for ten years party.
She said, I knew.
By the end of the first page.
And I'm like, you knew. That's so not I'm glad.
You knew, saying, God, you didn't meet me first, you know, she said, I go into that meeting, that first meeting, trying to find out whether the client is going to be hard work. And I was like, oh, wow, well that would have been a big tick in hard work box. But luckily I had other ticks unbelievable.
And so from there, you obviously have an intense work ethic. You're also brave, as we've already discovered, because I do also need you to just tell me the story of how you ended up collaborating with Is James Patterson like the most the best selling author in the world or something. He's huge.
I think he has Guinness World Records.
And you have a series of books. You have books that you've written with him in a collaboration, which isn't something I'm even that like familiar that the authors do. But you met him at a party, is that right? And you were like, I want to work with him? So I'm going to what well.
I had had dreams because the first thing I got, the first indication of anything, was this invitation that got in the mail. I'd written three novels for my publisher and get this card, a beautiful card in the mail, and it said, James Purtison is coming to Sydney and you were invited to the cocktail party. And I was like, oh,
I'm invited. Wow. And so I was just thinking about the fact that I, you know, I've been reading James Patterson since I was a little kid, Like I read all my mom's true crime and my dad's law enforcement magazines with all of the horrific stuff in them. And I went to school and I said a bunch of things to my school friends that scared them and made them cry. And then my mom said because they were like, oh, I'm reading the Chronicles of Narnia, and I'm like, oh,
I guess what I'm reading. And I told them and they cried, and my mom said, you can't read any true crime anymore. And that left the James Pattersons. So I was reading all the James Pattersons when I was a kids, the girls and yeah, yeah, And I had a meeting with my agent and a meeting with my publisher that week, and I just sneakily was like, so, how does a person get to do that? And they were kind of like, well, you know, there'd be a queue of people ahead of you for that because you've
only been here five minutes. But then at the party, Yeah, at the party, I just marched over there, which which was not the dune thing. I'm told.
I was told that's the advantage of yours that you're like, I don't really know what the dumb thing is. I'm just going in.
Yeah, sometimes I do, but I go whatever, I don't care, so I just yeah, I just marched over there. But people at the time were like, one does not simply talk to James Patterson. And you know he had handlers. It was handling happening, and I've just gone scares Meg, scares me, E scares me.
And then yeah, we just had a really good chit chat.
And then I and my publisher saw that she saw that happening, and she's gone, ah, you know, they get on and that's half the battle. Really, I would have made him laugh or something. He he said to me. I said, oh, oh my god, I love your books. I read Kiss the Girls when I was twelve and it just changed my life. And he said, wow, that's really inappropriate.
What are you doing reading.
Kiss the Girls at twelve years old? That's really wow, that's whacked. And I was like, yeah, I have Well, don't worry about it.
I'm fine, I'm fine. Oh yeah, I'm fine.
Yeah, I'm fine, And so that happened. So yeah, so I was offered it and it was a real throwing you into the deep end sort of thing because I hadn't read any James Patterson years, so I had to catch up by reading like fifty novels because he puts out so many. And then I was writing my own novel at the time, and I was too scared to ask for a deadline extension. So both novels would you at the same time, So I would write and you.
Write with him on email. Is that how it works?
Yeah, essentially, Yeah, we just it's like five thousand words at a time, send it, he sees it, you know, and then and it's I haven't written with Jim in a couple of year. Is But I remember it as being so completely different to my own because of the time difference, because of his schedule. I would send something and on day one I'm like, oh, he's gonna love that. That was a good piece of writing. And then I don't hear anything on day two and I'm like, ah,
he he should like that. I mean that was pretty good, and like by day four, I'm.
Like, oh no it, why did I write that?
Yeah? So stressful times, a high pressure, you know, boiler room environment. But we had nine, all nine of them when New York Times best sellers, you know, and a few of them were number one.
After this break, Candice shares the real live cold case. She can't let go off. So we have to get to red Bley Crossing. But I have to have one more question. I have to ask you about this level of success that you've achieved. So, your mum, this is a classic story. Your mum's like, writers don't make it right. This is not a job, this is not a career. Now those were That's fair enough, right, because it's true. The average author in Australia famously makes four thousand dollars
a year or something. It's a very tough profession. But you, as discussed, unquestionably have made it. You are a famous author who do live on the proceeds of your artistic output. What's that like with your family now? Like do they go like, oh we were wrong handish your amazing or do they like how does it work? And the other thing? I want my second part to that question, and then I promise we'll move on. Is you have a family now,
you have your own life in your own family. Is it this peaceful, lovely environment that is a reaction to that?
Well? So I remember in the beginning, no one could really believe it with the book coming out, the first one, you know, and then TV rights being sold, and then there's going to be a second book, and I go into the publisher and I'm at the library giving a talk. I remember my mum saying to me, it's like a movie. That what I'm saying. It doesn't feel real. It's like a movie. And it was a little bit like a
movie for me. I walked into the publishing house for the first time, and I was like, it's real, you know, a person, A person can go into a publishing house and be an author and it's real. So but I think they're all used to it now.
But it's the weird. The weird part.
Recently is that my niece has gotten old enough to read the books. And I remember thinking to myself, I wrote that book when you were in the womb, and now you're old enough to read it, Like that's weird, you know. And she's enjoying those and that kind of thing. And Violet, it's just violent, just yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And she always wants a copy of the books, you know, and she writes her own books to staples them and that kind of thing.
Yeah, okay, we're getting to read Belly Crossing. One of the reasons why so this is your most recent novels. It's wonderful, but I want to hear about the true crime story that inspired this because back to your mum, it comes from a conversation you had with her.
Yeah. Yeah, So, my husband's Tim and I were in the land room. Violet was one and a half years old. She's puddling around the house in she was just wearing a nappy and she had a pink top hat on, and she's carrying a toy briefcase and she's running around and I was watching her and I said to Tim, she looks like a little daughter door salesman. And as I said it, I had this sensation like it felt like a draw pop open in my brain and there was stuff in there, and I went, oh, I think
I'm having a memory. I'm having a memory of my mom telling us as we were kids about this daughter door salesman coming to her door when she was a kid and he ended up being a killer. And Tim, who knows my family, was completely unsurprised by this. He was sort of like, yeah, that'd be right. You know, he didn't he didn't even say that. He was like, eh, you know, I was like and.
I was thinking about it.
It was on my mind over this memory of her saying when I was I remember I was about ten years old and I was being left at home. This is your first time you're going to be home alone, which was a big deal for me because I was nearver home alone my older brothers or someone was there. And Mom said to me, if someone comes to the door I knocks, don't answer it, because one time I was home alone as a teenager, a man came and knocked on the door and he said that he was
the same heman, but he was actually a murderer. And I was like okay, and as a kid, you just you know, my grandmother. I thought it was I thought it was a cautionary tale, Like my grandmother has had had this cautionary tale. She'd say, there was a little girl once and she was driving along in a car and she had her hand her arm out the window, and a car went by and she heard a bang, and she looked down and her severed arm was in her own lap. And as a kid, you go, oh, yeah,
I believe that. I really believe that a car could knock someone's arm off completely and it would be lying across their lap, the whole arm.
But as an adult, you go, that's not now.
And so I had this memory of being like, that's got to be a cautionary tale.
So I pursued it.
I called mum, I started texting her and I said, I'm having this weird memory. Are you telling me that that a killer came to the door and said he was a daughter do or salesman?
And she said, no, no, that really happened. That's a real story.
I was home alone. I was seventeen. The guy I was studying for my HC. My father had just died, so everyone was up at the funeral home and I was home alone. I didn't want to go to the funeral home. A guy came to the door and he said, I'm going door to door selling encyclopedias. Can I come in and talk to you about them. She'd opened the wooden door, but not the screen door, and she's talking to them through the door. They're having a nice, old
friendly chit chat. And she said, I just got this feeling like the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, because I'm thinking, why isn't it carrying anything. There's no briefcase, there's no encyclopedias, there's no pamphlets, there's no nothing. And he also wasn't dressed like a salesman. He's just dressed like a guy, you know. And so she said, I pretended my dad was home, said, oh, I'm not supposed to let anyone in without approval. Just check with my dad, Hey dad. And as she's called
turned and called out, hey dad. She said he didn't say anything, He just turned around quickly and walked. Is gone. But in her neighborhood, only a week or two earlier, two blocks down, a girl who was a student teacher at my mum's school was murdered, and a year before another woman was murdered and at the time police were theorizing that this guy was knocking on doors and giving
a ruse and being let in. So I at this point, Mum's telling me this, and I'm going, what, like, number one, these crimes are unsolved, So no one ever those two murders that had.
Now been solved.
No, So I said, what were the names of the women?
I looked him up.
I said, there's a million dollar reward on both of these cases. They're forty seven year old cold cases.
You could be the.
Missing you could be the missing link. This woman knows about crime, she knows that crimes like that are solved by this kind of stuff.
Yes, because at the time there wasn't the DNA evidence.
There wasn't. Yes, yeah, And so I said, what did you ever tell the police? And no, I didn't tell the police and tell anyone. And I said, well, there's also the fact, quite selfishly that for the last you know, eight years or something. At that time, I'm trying to
be the number one crime writer in the country. Could you possibly have mentioned at any point that you had a real life encounter with a serial killer like that might have been useful, you know, information for me but I said, okay, well, I'm going to have to ask you. I'm going to have to get this information because this happens to me a lot. Actually, people give me murder ticks.
I bet they do. But yeah, given way the area you write in, they must often say I've got a story for you.
Yeah, And it often comes from podcasts or the radio, and they invariably say, oh, heard you on the radio. You sound real or genuine. I think they're trying not to say you look you sound like a western Sydney bogan like, and you sound really friendly and like you're not going to judge me or whatever.
So people will write.
To me and they say, oh, the police reckon, I chop my girlfriend up with a chainsaw in nineteen eighty three, and can I tell you what really happened? And I go, no, thank you, you know, and so you know, probably I would say three times a year I get murder tips and I get them and I go, oh my god, what am I going to do with this? So my mom essentially has just given me one, and I was like, we've got to get it to the police.
So I gave it to the police.
And they're like, yep, that sounds that sounds like him, but I mean without like a you know, a number of plates or a name or does she have any something like that. And I said no, and they're like, oh, well, there you go. And so for a couple of years I'm like, no, no, no, that's not the end of the story. That's not how a story like this ends. I know about stories or not a nice big bow. And so I was like, Okay, here we go. I'm going to solve this crime myself. I'm going to be
the citizen sleuth. And so I was like, Google, how do you solve a true crime case?
Here I go, And.
With extreme arrogance, I was.
Like, a person can just be a detective? Here we go?
And you know, and no, being a homicide detective is a profession that takes decades of skills and experience.
So I looked into it.
So what it was essentially is there's two women in nineteen seventy three and nineteen seventy four. They were murdered. So Lynette White was home with her eleven week old baby. Someone her husband and does that work. Someone's come and knocked on the door. They believe that he's come in and he's held her at knife point. He's made her fold her parts neatly and put them in a pile.
They believe.
The police believes something maybe interrupted that, and she's bolted and he's panicked and he's stabbed her to death in the doorway of the room where her eleven week old baby is, and her husband Paul has come home that night and found her. A year or ten months later, Maria Smith, she'd only been married a few weeks. She's their home alone now. Maria was the student teacher at my mother's school, the bridget.
And College because this is in Rundwick and in Kuji Cuji.
So she was her husband Stephen left for work at seven thirty in the morning. She was expected at the Bridge Deane at eight thirty. She didn't make it there. So that's what's happened. Someone's come in, raped and strangled her with her own pantyhose. He's come home that night and found her. So what do I do with this information? I tried to investigate it myself. Didn't work. Tried to, you know, become the next Headly Thomas creator podcast, didn't work.
I'm trying to get all of my true crime writing friends involved in it because I don't know how to write true crime either. I'm not disciplined and journalistic.
You're a crime writing and create world. You tell stories. Yes, so I've written a lot of homicide detectives. But you're yeah, that doesn't make you want no.
Apparently, so I said to my agent, I'm having this brain wave. I said to her. She because I said, I'm talking about the Lynette and Maria And she said, oh, you can't leave us alone, can you? And I said, no, I can't. I'm having a brain wave. My skills are in writing fiction and talking to people. What if I reimagine some aspects of the case and write a fiction and I do like an afterward, and in the afterward, I'll say, guess what reader of lured you here to this spot? And I want to ask you do you
know anything about these cases? And I said to her, I'll meet with the husbands you know of Lynette and Maria. And she was like, whoa, whoa, Okay, No, she was saying, these guys are going to want to write this book with you, and they'll stand over you while you're writing it and it will become a huge mess. Or if you write it and they don't like what you've written,
they'll sue you. And then you know what about people who are implicated and the real cases who show up in the novel, or versions of them show up in the novel, They're going to sue you, you know, and and all oh was going on, and she said, just think about it, just really really think about it. So the next day I wrote to Paul and I'm like, I thought about it every night. I'm like, dear Paul, can I please speak to you about your wife's murder.
That's it, That's all I said. And so he calls me, and I had not thought about it the way that my agent told me to. And I immediately just got on the phone with him and he said, it's Paul White. You wanted to talk to me about my wife's murder. And I was like, oh, okay, and I just it's the same thing the word vomit. I said, listen, I'm a crime writer. I only write crime fiction, you know,
That's where my talent is. And I tried to get a podcast up, tried to get a true crime about the you know, the case written.
It didn't work.
What I want to do is this and this and this. I said, but it's not going to be like Dexter, you know, and Joan NAI's burstyle, like I'm the kill going in and all that kind of thing. I said, I'm not trying to do this because I'm inspired by what happens to you will. No, I'm trying to do it because I'm horrified and I want to do something and I don't know what I can do. And maybe it's arrogant or naive to think that I could do anything to help. It's been fifty one years. What am
I going to do to help? And there's been dozens upon dozens of police officers, trained and experienced police officers have thrown everything that they get at this. What am I going to do to help? But also I can't stop thinking about it? Yeah? Right, you know? And he said maybe we should have coffee, and I'm like, okay.
So you met with him, and you also met with Maria's husband, Maria's husband, Steven. Yeah, and I can't imagine. I mean, I know, as we've already discussed, you've met serial killers, You've you've met you know, cops fro all over the world. You've done all kinds of things. These men. It's fifty years since these crimes, But at the same time,
this has diverted the course of their whole life. The most traumatic thing you can imagine, you know, as you write beautifully and you're afterward, their families were robbed of these women, the mothers like that, you know, mother to a little baby, their wives, the children they were going
to have. Yeah, when you sat down with them and you spoke to them about their very real grief and trauma and how they felt about the case being called for so long, did it make you more determined to do this or did you think I don't want to mess with these guys' pain.
I felt that, and I thought that. And like when I was writing to Lawrence and I essentially said you sound like you're a monster, I thought, I'm just gonna be honest, and I was saying those sorts of things to them.
I was saying.
What I do is I take horrible things that have happened to people, and I write fictional stories about them, and I bank money from that. I turn crime and the most horrific things that have happened to people into entertainment. And that is what I'm going to do here. And I'm going to create a story which in certain ways pays tribute to or tries to to the pain and what you've experienced, but in other ways is going to
taylor your experience to the genre. So we're going to get a nice, big bow at the end, which says exactly who's the killer is.
Yeah, and it says.
That who the killer is, and he's going to get his just desserts, and it's all going to be nice and neat. And then also, you know, once they had read the book, I would have I didn't have to. That didn't make me. But I sat there justifying choices that I had made. For example, both of these men found their wives murdered, but in the novel I didn't want the husband character. I had to roll both of these individual Yeah.
You've got to fine tune the storyline. Did not have too many confusing characters.
And I said I needed to give the husband an alibi, So I had it that he was off. He was off on an oil rig and someone else found her. So the most terrific thing that has ever happened to you in your life, gentlemen, I had to delete it.
Sorry, you know.
And and I'm also confronting the idea that as a crime writer, I have done this before. I have taken horrible things that have happened to people like I wrote a novel called Gone by Midnight, which is inspired by the Madeline McCann case. It's a whole bunch of parents and they all go there at a hotel. The kids are up in the hotel room, they're over here, and one of them goes missing. And I didn't go to the McCanns and say, hey, I found what happened to
you so interesting that I turned it into fiction. But this is what writers are doing.
But do you think so that with the book, which it's not the story that you just explained of Lynette and Maria. It's it's taken to another town. It's it's different, but it's very moving to me the way that you express in the afterward what you've just said about how you wanted to pay tribute to these men's pain. You want to try and help in any way you can close this case. But also this wrestling with the ethics or whatever it is the questions of of doing what
you do. It just shows me what a deeply decent human you are. And presumably that's also what they saw when they had coffee with you, and they were like, all right, you can have bits of our story. Yeah, we will part you know, we will let you help us try and help us.
I said to them, you're going to have to help me understand whether I'm hurting you or not. And I said, at the point that it becomes hurtful in any way, or you feel exploited or whatever, put your hand up. And I said to them, even if that is the eleventh hour, and if you say to me, CANDUs, I can't do this. I will never speak your wife's name again, and I'll rip it all out of the book and all of that stuff. And I said, you have to
be the barometer. And I you know, And I kept that on through the whole relationship, saying I'm not trying to hurt you if I deep into your pain in any way, you know. And Stephen, after a while he said, I think you're worrying too much about how we feel. Like over the fifty years, everything you can imagine has happened, and people have said, you know, all the types of things,
you know. So I was just essentially saying, this is the only tool that I have to try and help and if it genuinely did help, because there might be someone like my mom out there who's just nice to hold this story, or their kid, you know, says oh I had a memory, I popped someone else's memory out. There's a possibility of that. That would be such a Yes, a dream, what a dream? So I have actually helped.
So we have to finish our conversation, which is a shame because we could talk all day.
Yeah.
Sure, the book, as I say, is not exactly that story, but it's an astonishing book. And I also love the fact that you have been so honest in all the things that you're saying about writing what you do. Can you just close this amazing conversation we've had today with the sort of plea in a way that's in your book with anybody who might have one of those memories hiding away? Do you want your book to do that?
Great? Sure? Yeah?
Yeah, I want to ask.
You, do you know anything about the murders of Lynette White or Maria Smith? Did you or someone you know live at fourteen to twenty Saint Mark's Road, Randwick or twenty six Beach Street, Kuji in and around the period of nineteen seventy one to nineteen seventy five. Did you or someone you know own a mustard colored Ford Capri during this time? Do you have any knowledge that might be useful to the investigations of these crimes, no matter
how small or insignificant seeming. If Lynette and Maria's killer or killers are still out there, I hope you've lived in unrelenting dread and terror all these years, waiting for justice to arrive at your front door. I hope someday soon you'll hear it knocking.
Thank you, Candesce Fox. I think you're astonishing in many ways, and I really hope this book does what you want it to do. Thank you.
Thanks for having me so much.
I told you she was good, didn't I? As you heard, Candace is hoping that Red Belly Crossing might just solve the murders of Lynette White and Maria Smith that happened in Ramwick and Cudgee in Sydney's East back in nineteen seventy four. If you or anyone you know has any information that might help, you can find a link in our show notes What a Woman Though. Hey, please if you want to see some of those incredible duck rescues, in action and hear a lot more from her. Follow
Candyce Fox on Instagram. Red Belly Crossing is out now wherever you buy books, and I've been Hollywayne Might keeping the seat warm for Kate Langbrook. The executive producer of No Filter is pre Player, The assistant producer is Coco Levine. Audio production is by Jacob Brown, and video production is by Josh Green. Kate will be back next Monday with another fascinating conversation. Thank you for listening to No Filter.