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You are now listening to True Murder, The most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer.
The Night Stalker BTK.
Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zupansky.
Good Evening. Some crimes are so shocking that they change a nation forever. In revealing the lives and crimes of Australia's worst murderers, rapists and kidnappers, in all their horror, innocence, Lost answers the question we ask when we hear about lives taken so ruthlessly why Season crime writer Amanda Howard has spent eighteen years studying and interviewing killers and criminals
across the globe to get answers to this question. In interviewing many of these criminals face to face in prison, she has given a rare insight into these faces of evil. The stories of serial killers such as Ivan Malott and Martin Byron are detailed, as well as double murderer Mark Valera, child murderer, Kathleen Folbig and Anita Cobby's Killers. The mysterious disappearances of Daniel Moorecombe and the Beaumont children are explored and we are given an intriguing insight into family killers
Kathleen Knight, Matthew de Griccy and Seph Gonzalez. The book they were featuring this evening is Innocence Lost, The Times that Changed Australia with my special guest journalist and author Amanda Howard. Welcome back to the program and thank you very much for agreeing to this interview all the way from Australia, Amanda Howard, thank you very much.
For this time, my Dan, thank you for having us again. And it's great to be back. It's good, I'm good.
It's always a pleasure. It's always a pleasure. These books are incredible. Let's talk about a little bit about how you put Innocent's Loss together? What made the cut, what did you want to sort of put with us, What is really contained in Innocen's Loss?
Well, this book was written as a where were you kind of books, So where were you and Daniel Morcolm disappeared? Where were you when you heard about the need to copycase where were you when Port Arthur happened? So it's those questions that Australia, it sends chills down our color ap spine, that it's cases that create fear. It's those cases that we all remember. It's cases that makes us
hug our children just a bit tighter at night. So it was it was about looking at all of the sorts of cases because there is a lot more and there is a volume two and three coming, so there is a lot more cases that I will explore, but for this one that these are the cases that I felt a personal connection to, those cases that if I had to run off a list, these are those murders.
You have the book in sections, so tell us some of the sections that you have this.
Yep. Well, I started off with a section called the Victim, so that was actually looking at a lot of sex crimes that occurred, our worst of our worst. Then I went on to the children, and that includes a chapter on the Graham Thorne case, which I actually have a personal connection to. I went on then to the missing children because we have a lot of cold cases in this country of children, especially in Adelaide. But there's a lot of cases that raise more questions than they answer.
I go on to predators, which is obviously our child sex killers. We have had some horrific cases here in this country. Then onto the family killers like Catherine Knight and Matthew Dugrucci and Seth Gonzales, so those cases where we examine how someone inside a family could take out those that they apparently love partners in crime was next, So that's looking at tandem killers. So it's a fascinating topic that I actually do a lot of work on.
So looking at how two people can come together and go on a killing spree and how they build more trust than most of us would even ever try to comprehend. Obviously, then we have our serial killers. We do have a few here like Ivan Malatt and Paul Daniere. I went into a bit of historical cases because not only do we have bush rangers here, but we had several cases of baby farming that was happening here as well. That
is renowned throw out the world, particularly in England. Baby killers, so we've had a fair few of those over the years. Then the rampages, which is the Port Arthur case and our Strathfield case that a man went into a shopping
center and shot the place up. Our unusual cases. Now, I come from a town called Campbelltown in Sydney and we every November have a massive celebration called Fish's Ghost Festival, and that's actually based on a murder case that happened here in the nineteenth century and apparently the ghost pointed the police to his own corpse. So it's something it's an odd thing to celebrate. It's probably why I do
true crime. But I had to include a local case, and then we just have some unsolved cases and cases that people don't know about that should so I sort of spread it out. There's a lot of murder, a lot of death, but it's those cases that changed laws, created a lot of dialogue, wondered why we no longer have the death penalty and things like that. So it was all those cases that I thought I can split them up and just examine how these people do what they.
Do, and to start innocents last, you really do start with an incredibly disturbing case. As we mentioned in the beginning opening, Anita Cabby. So tell us a little bit about Anita Cabby before we talk about John Travers and the Murphy Boys.
So Anita Cobby was a nurse who worked in Sydney. She had recently separated from her husband, though they were still together, but she had gone out for an evening. It was it was summertime here in February. It's nineteen eighty six, and she decided to catch the train home from a dinner out with a couple of her nursing friends. She arrived at Blacktown Station, which is out in Sydney's
out of West. Went to ring her father to pick her up from the station, but the telephone, the public telephone, was broken, so she decided to just walk the kilometer home and from there she was grabbed and what she endured over the next five to six hours is animalistic, horrifying torture.
Talk about John Raymond Travers, he lived in Blacktown as well. Tell us about his background as you write in this book.
So, John Travis was a kid that was in and out of prison. He had a lot of charges of sexual misconduct. He was a calf thief. He'd done a bit of time. He was one of those bad kids who was able to create a crowd around him of other children who grew up in these lower socio economic areas to create a gang and though some of the boys that he would have in this gang were older than him, they were thirty five, he was able to
create a pack mentality that whatever he said goes. And so when Travis decided that he wanted to grab a girl and they went for a drive around black Town, the others never even questioned what he wanted to do because they knew what was coming.
Right now, tell us a little bit about this group of people that John Travers has around him and that are convinced to do most anything for a laugh and for a thrill.
Yeah, well, there's the three Murphy brothers and also Michael Murdock. Now Michael Murdoch at the time of Anita's death was actually on parole for another violent crime. So it was it was one of these moments that he was able to egg John Travis on. I don't know if that's the term that you guys use, but he was able to encourage Travis to say, yeah, let's get him, let let's get her. Sorry. So these boys had, you know, long long lists of truanty car theft as well, they'd
beaten up some of the local kids. They were boys and men that the police knew very very well, which is why it didn't take them very long to get them afterwards, because they were keen to tell people that they grabbed Ashilas as they said, and and had raped and killed her.
About also that the background of Travers is again before these boys know anything about this, the Travers has a background, and an you rate about a an earlier attack where that woman goes to police and says something regarding each av status. Tell us a little bit about that.
Yes, he'd actually raped a couple of guys in Perth when he was over there, which is in Western Australia. So and one of them had actually told Travers that he had HIV. So it was something that Travis would would use when he would sexually assault people. He would say, you know, well, I've probably just given you AIDS. So to this day he's still alive. So we're not sure if he ended up with HIV, but the suggestion is that he does, but he hasn't got full blown AIDS.
Let's get back to to Anita's abduction and what happens her parents, Gary and Grace Lynch assume you rate to assume that she stayed at her friend's place after dinner and that's why she getn't called from the Blacktown station. These guys had looked for a place ideal like this, isolated and be able to abduct a woman. What happens to her? And meanwhile, what do the parents? What is their response?
Well, Gary and Grace Lynch, they ended up actually founding a lot of victim family support groups in this country. So this is how this case changed a lot of things here. But as you said, they assumed that she'd stayed in Sydney because she was going to a restaurant afterwards. She had an early shift the next day, so Gary had been up a couple of times. He actually said that he had almost a nightmare of vision, that he saw this evilness and he would remember it for the
rest of his life. Believe it was John Travis's face. But whilst they were sort of pacing a bit and wondering if she was coming home or not coming home. Of course that this is the days before cell phones, Travis and the other men grabbed Anita, dragged her into the car and she was naked pretty much straight away. They actually punched her and beat her quite quickly because she was menstruating, so they were a bit pissed off that there was blood around when they sort of hadn't
done that to her. So once she was in the car, they stole her purse, held her down in the back seat, and went and got petrol first so they would have plenty of time using her cash from her purse. They then drove around Blacktown for several hours, each of them taking turns getting into the back seat with her and penetrating all of her orifices, and often two and three
at once, so this is a pretty brutal attack. Finally, they turned off onto Green Road, which is a street which is right beside a highway, but if you stood where she was killed is so isolated even though there is a thousand cars driving pass. It's quite horrific in that it's isolated but very public. They dragged her through a barbed wire fence and absolutely grazed and brutalized her
skin with that. They then took turns again in the field until they decided that she'd had enough, and this was five hours later, and then Travis head back to the car, decided no, no, I think she has to go, went back, stood on her back, pulled back her head
and slid her throat. Now, it took him three goes to do that, and though she had very little fight left in her, she still put up her hands and he sapped her fingers as well, so we can see that she kept fighting till that very end, and they just left her in that field and she was found the next day when the farmer who lived there realized that his cows were acting strange and he went to
investigate and found her very bloody, beaten, defiled corpse. And it's just a horrific case that the whole country instantly had an outrage that these animals, for want of a better word, needed to be found quickly, and you know, people were going to lynch them if they found themselves. There was screams for the death penalty to be reintroduced as we found out more and more of the brutality
that she had suffered. It took them about eleven days to find the boys, and one of them, Les Murphy, did the youngest of the brothers, actually wet himself, and that ended up being front page news here that they took a photo of him in handcuffs with a great big wet patch on the front of his jeans, just to prove that he was scared but when he got arrested, because he knew that it wasn't going to be fun, and he actually suffered quite a lot in prison, actually
most of them did. There's a hose and why I think that a lot of people would probably know about that. I won't go into where people were brutalized for what they've done to others. So that is something that had happened to Les, purely for what he'd done to Anita.
You right, though, this again a very movieue scene about John McCaughey. Maybe the pronunciation's wrong about people that saw the woman out saw her dragged into the vehicle. And then he went home and told his brother and they decided to drive around if they were able to spot the car. And then they saw a car, but tell us about that.
It was the wrong make, and being a car person, he should have known the car better. But when you're in a situation like that, you do often missing. So so he had had seen her being dragged in, he had chased the car thro a bit it got away from him. So yes, he went and go got his brother and they drove around and they actually spotted the right car near Green road, but they didn't think it was the right car because he said it was this sort of car, and it was actually a similar but
different sort of car. So there was sly I've got chills now. There was an opportunity that she could have been saved, but they just missed it. So it's heartbreaking for them, and they had a lot of guilt, and they had to go to trial and explain what they'd seen, and they helped put together some of the timeline. But you know, there's always heroes out there, and it could have been a very different outcome.
One of the unlikely heroes. And I'm losing the using the word loosely, but we still get to the same goal of justice. Travers talks about. You'd write about Travers and requesting a police Uh, well, his phone call to his aunt to bring him some cigarettes, and earlier in the book you write about some of the conversations he has with his aunt previous to this. So tell us about the rule that his aunt has in Travers's downfall.
Well, she she was the person that they that he trusted. The bost now is she is his uncle's girlfriend, so they weren't even married, and she was just someone that he felt that he could confide in. So what happened was that the police knew this, and so they asked her to slowly sort of peel away the layers to see what he would tell her, and slowly, slowly, slowly, he started to explain the story. Sorry, there's a dog
in the background. And it got to a point that he said to her, yes, we killed her, and they had that recorded. So those recordings actually went into trial. So when the trial occurred, he actually had to have a separate trial because he then pled guilty knowing that they had him on the case. Right, So, sorry about that. I can't help the dog.
What is the media response? Though, you write about the media response, you talk about the outreach, but tell us more about what is a response from the public. What's the response from the media with this?
Well, this was the case did this? This is the case that we use for every other yardstick that all other cases are compared to because of the brutalization that happened to Anita. So so what happened was that the media decided that this was the one that they would get for the reintroduction of the death penalty. People actually turned up with nooses at the trial, people turned up trying to get these these men. They you know, it was almost like a lynching. They went into the police station,
the courthouse. They actually had to do a closed court purely because so many people wanted to get have these boys and destroy them.
What happens in the trial in terms of sentencing and the recommendation, it's interesting compared to Canadian law, we have no provision like this, and American laves different. Tell us what the judge recommends in this case and the term we'll hear more in this book. With all of these many of these kill it.
So because we don't have the death penalty and life can mean fifteen to twenty years, we actually have a sentence here could never to be released. So that means that there is no possibility of parole basically when you leave prisoners because you're in a box. And these are some of the first killers that had this sentence set. There's people from a lot that have had it since, but these were the boys that sort of made this a policy. I mean, we'll get into Crump and Baker too,
and they had a similar sentence. We used to say you should never be released, and so then some of these killers were able to have a sentence determined. I'm saying that it was too vague, but now the judges are able to say you are sentenced to never be released, and that is just means that, yes, you will not get out on the shore. Inner Pine box.
Well, you include two cases. And what's interesting, right after reading this first incredible case, that you have a case of Janine Boulding and right after that Sandra Wahre. And in many many ways, both of these cases after that are almost copybat copycat killings. Any comment on that before we talk about a case that you had mentioned. It's close to you, Graham Thorne.
The Jenine Bolding case is one that not a lot of people know about, but when they do know about it, they instantly juxtapose it with you need a copycase. So Janine was also taken from a train station. She just left work, she was heading home. She got grabbed by a group of children. In fact, well, one of her killers was fourteen years old, and he has been sentenced
to never be released from prison. And he's one of the few child killers in this country, not that we have a lot anyway, but he's one of the few that has actually been named in the press and it's quite shocking, but purely because he will never get out of prison. He's been in prison since fourteen. Now he's around my age, so he's around forty five, and he has the rest of his life and he will never see the outside of a prison.
Wow. Let's talk about the case of Graham foreign And as you mentioned, why is this a particular personal interest to you or your connection to it?
I should say, Well, Graham Thorne, he was kidnapped by a man who wanted to extort his parents. Now this case changed laws too because Graham's parents had actually won a lottery, one of the biggest in the country, and so they end up being front page news. People knew where they lived, their phone number, and so one man, Stephen Bradley, decided, well, I want a piece of that, and so he thought he would abduct that their son, who would often get picked up and taken to school
in Sydney, and decided that he would ransom him. However, the boy died. Now there is suggestions that he might have died because he was bundled into the car and hid his head, though most believed that he was actually killed. So Stephen Bradley still tried to extort the family with
no luck and ended up dumping Graham's body. But the car that Stephen Bradley had he sold almost the very next day once once everything went wrong, he decided to sell and move back to his home country of Colombo, and so whilst he was selling the car, he had dumped the body. But there was a lot of evidence
and the car was actually sold to my grandparents. So that's my link to this, and it's one of those cases that I grew up hearing about purely because my greatgrand parents bought this aqua I'm going to call it a skyline but I'm probably wrong, and had to sort of hand it back to your police for quite some
time because it had to be forensically tested. And it's how the case broke is because this car had dog hair, it had a blanket fibers, and it had evidence that proved that Graham had been in the boot of this car so or the trunk of the car. So there's probably another hint as to why I do this, because my grandparents had to be involved in the court case.
You talk about his reasoning for the death being the police officers and their conduct when they were waiting a potential ransom call. Tell us about what the police did, what they may not have done.
Oh, I don't know what you're leading to here. He had had rung the family a couple of times and he had gotten all flustered during these calls, so the police hadn't recorded a few of them, and then did record a few. But I don't know what else you want, Dan.
Well, basically what it was is you said what you I wanted you to get to was being spooked by the call. He wanted to talk to the father and instead a police officer, and he's got the police.
Yep, yeah, I mean that that's propretty standard operating procedure. It Bradley had not thought this out. It was almost a off chance thinged to do. He had a bit of issues, he had his family. They all didn't feel comfort bull in Sydney. It was a second country to him. He just didn't want to be here. And I think
that cash was more about the escape. So he sold up, car, sold everything, put the family on a boat the day before the abduction, and then he thought this was going to happen, that they would pay up to give to get their son. And he was still going to give them a dead body anyway. But everything went wrong. Every single part of this went wrong. And yes he knew that he was talking to a police officer. He wanted to talk to Graham's mother more so because he'd actually
spoken to her. He'd actually turned up at their house just to make sure that he had the right house and the right boy. So, as I said, it was a very quick turnover of what he did, but he had done a little bit of reconnaissance to make sure he was going to take the right boy.
It's interesting too for an eighteen sixty you talk about that they really were trying to solve this case and were able to with the aid of forensics. You talk about dog hairs and a couple other things that were important in this search.
Yeah, it's it's for its time. It's absolutely incredible. Now with this case, Stephen Bradley had a Pecanese dog, and the hairs from this dog, I'm so sorry that this is the dog next door. The Pecanese had left long hairs everywhere, including on the blanket that Graham was found
wrapped in. So so they had these long hairs and they knew they weren't human and they realized that they were dog's hairs, so they had this blanket, they had dog hairs, and they also found some conifer leaves, pine cone things on the on on this blanket as well, so they knew they had these three things. Then on top of that, they found pink mortar which was in Graham's hair, so they knew that he had been left and stored for some time in a place with pink cement.
So with the conifer, the dog, and the blanket and the cement, police actually drove around North Sydney trying to find a house that matched all of these sorts of things. So they found a house that had conifers and pink cement, and then they found that the owners who used to live there once they sort of asked us the people next door had a Pecanese dog. And then whilst they were digging in the garden, they found some film roles that they developed, and on those film roles was actually
the blanket that Graham was found wrapped in. So it was one of those you know, putting all of these pieces together purely by driving around trying to find the house that matched these things, I mean surely that there was others as well, but to then add the Pekanese dog and at this specific mohair blanket. It was. It was just a perfect example of great police work getting the person who was responsible.
And he was well on his way to freedom and the police intercepted them.
I actually my parents were on a cruise recently and went to Colombo and I made them go and take photos of their porch there because Stephen Bradley, as he stepped off the boat in Colombo was arrested by Australian police and instantly brought back to Sydney. So they had telephoned a head to the police over there and they had to sort of wait and make sure that if he got off the boat before that they arrived, that they would arrest him as well. So it was international,
huge case for us in this country. Most of the world doesn't know about it, but it changed privacy laws. We were able to use early forensics for here, we were able to use the international police. There was all these interception going on. It was one of our very few ransom cases that we've had. So it was probably exciting prepper it's time and it's certainly changed the country.
Certainly, it really did let's use this as an opportunity for a second Amanda to talk about our sponsor, which is Ring. Ring's mission is to make neighborhoods safer. You might already know about their smart video doorbells and cameras that protect millions of people everywhere. Ring helps you stay connected to your home anywhere in the world, so if there's a package delivery or a surprise visitor, you'll get an alert and be able to see here and speak to them all from your phone, d video and two
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he died in prison. Let's talk about just briefly before we get to a couple of cases that you had mentioned. But you do write about Michael George Lawrence in this Can you talk a little bit about the story that's featured featuring Michael Lawrence.
Now, Michael Lawrence was a convicted pedophile who lived out west in a New South Wales. This is one of those cases that as a child, because I was around the same age as these boys, it sort of spooked to me a bit. Now, Lawrence had picked up two boys and had decided that he would play games with them in his house. He took them home and he sexually abused both of the boys and then he drowned them in the bathtub. Now, at the time, no one
knew much about this case. It was two young kids that had been in a bit of trouble that they'd been at a fair and people assumed that the boys had just read run away, so not much was done. And one of the boys was Aboriginal as well, so there was just sort of that stigma about the first two kids. But then he took a third boy, John Pertwee, who was at a local soccer game and AFL game, and he was in the toilets when Lawrence abducted him.
And this was massive news that this boy had been abducted from the sports field, that a lot of parents didn't feel safe about their children, that you think that you can send them to the toilets to get changed and come back out. It had happened so quickly, his face was all over the news, and then people were linking the other two to the case, and so instantly there was this big publicity that three boys had disappeared
and their bodies were later found. It's the most thing I can still see them, like as if it was yesterday from the files. And Lawrence had raped and killed John as well. And so here is a guy and he'd actually collected a whole lot of crime new newspaper cuttings. He had done a lot on like Anita Cobby and cases like that as well. So he was he was one of these weird guys who tried to get himself involved in the case as as he could to see
what the police were doing. He would turn up to help search and finally Hay was captured for the case. Now he was also sentenced to never to be released, but he didn't spend too much time in.
Prison, So a lot how that happens you talk about a redetermination, How does that happen, How does that law get enacted? Tell us a little bit about that legislation.
Well, with some people because the never to be released law was just sort of a knee jerker reaction. You know, this is going to make the public happy that these people are going to go to prison and we're just going to close it down. But legally that that can't happen. Now, what it's now called is truth in sentencing laws. So if you're sentenced to never to be released, it means that.
But way back when, in the eighties and before the copycase, what would happen is that you would be sentenced to never be released, but then you would be able to apply for a sentencing. So they would say, well, you can't be released for twenty years, you can't apply for
parole until twenty five years and thing like that. So these sorts of redeterminings what would actually happen with a lot of cases, and Crump and Baker is one that to this day they're still trying to fight because they had been sentenced before them never to be released truth
and sentencing laws that happened. So they're still trying to fight to this day, even though they killed Virginia Mors in the seventies to actually have a sentence set and though they're quite elderly now, it's possible that they could still get out of prison.
Yes, it's incredible. And you also say too that from his once he did start talking, he confessed and molesting hundreds of boys, and he said it gave me a thrill watching them die. I got an erection watching them drown in the bathtub. And you say, you raise the public call for this man's blood.
M hm.
I mean we see it across the world that when these sorts of cases happen, there's an outcry that demands their death penalty. You know, people say, put me in a room with this guy, you know, for five seconds, that's all I'm going to need. And Lawrence was just so cool and calm. He he ended up actually taking his own life. But he was almost like Dharma in that nothing upset him during the trial. He would just sit there calmly as if they were talking for what
they're going to eat for lunch. But he handed it all over. He had diaries here, he had these, He had these scrap books of all of these crimes and he would draw pictures on it and take inspiration from a lot of other cases, trying to make his own crimes better and more exciting. So he would, you know, continue to get erections that he would continue to to be able to enjoy what he was doing. Right.
Incredible. You include the case we mentioned Daniel Morcolna disappearance and also the Beaumont Children. How bigger stories were these and reaction from the public, and tell us briefly about cases and their effect.
Yeah, the Beaumont Children is literally the one, the case that is called the case that changed to nation. Three children went to the beach. The oldest was about ten, the youngest was three. They caught a bust to the beach back in a time when Australia's innocence was still good. They caught the bust to the beach. They were seen at the beach playing with people, including a male who's never been identified, and they did disappeared, never to be
seen again to this day now. That was sixty three and to this day we have never found the children. Even last year police actually dug up a factory flaw because they had evidence to suggest that they might be there. They found a cow, but they didn't find the children and so it was big news. And even today there is some court cases going on with people suggesting that parents and friends of parents who were convicted pedophiles have
actually no more than they've ever let on. So there's still people being questioned about the Beaumont case and Daniel Morecambe until very recently with the William Terrell case. To Daniel Morecambe's disappearance was one of the biggest cases ever in Australian history and it took actually eight years for them to find his killer. I've actually done an update on the case now. But the way they caught his killer because he refused to confess, they kind of knew
it was him, but it wasn't. They weren't sure. They ended up the police ended up creating a fake crime gang and said to Brett Cowen, Daniel's killer. Look, we've heard rumors that you're involved in this case. If you are, it could be too hot. We need to know because what we need to know if we need to clean anything up before you can join our crime gang. And they got it on tape. Brett Cowen just said, Yeah, I did it. This is what happened, this is where I took him, this is what I did to him,
and they got it all on tape. And this police officer acting as a crime boss acts so calmly and so chilled, and you can just imagine his heart was in his throat as he goes, yeah, I killed Daniel Morcombe. And it's a moment. I'm actually doing it on the podcast this week because it's the fifteenth anniversary of Daniel's death this week. And it was able to break that down and see how that the police sting. It took them eight years to get him to confess, and it
was a lot of work. And then in the end, all Brett wanted to do was impress his crime boss so he can be part of their gang. And that's all it took. And the end, which you know, it's not all it took. It was a lot of work.
But the way the police officer just sort of like talks over him and tells him, you know, hang on a second, I have to do this, and you know, while he is trying to make fit for this confession, it makes it sound like that the crime boss didn't care, but in fact he was just trying to play it down. So then it looked like, oh, we're not going to wait for this one second failure to say this and
then arrest you. It kept going for quite some time after he had said it, just having chats and Okay, well we'll go and clean up that and I'll call my guys in they can go and find his body. In all of this and it's very well done.
Incredible, incredible sting operation. It's so very much like the mister Big operations that were done and conducted in Canada and now have been outlawed in Canada.
Oh really, Okay, did they consider it entrapment?
Yes? Yeah, despite successful they've successful of operations with utilizing it. So that's the.
State of it.
Yes, you include a case of and it's almost like you this book, it goes from worse to much worse in terms of the criminals in this book. It's fascinating the level of depravity and these criminals, these killers in Australia, it is really shocking. I have to say. You talk about Lindsay Beckett and Leslie Camillary, when you talk about the partners in crime, tell us a little bit about this crime and this couple.
So these two guys are actually cousins and they had attacked several girls, so very similar to the needed copy case and the Ginine boarding case. They were driving through a Bega, which is a country town here in Australia, and they spotted two girls who were actually at a school camp but decided to go for a walk away
from the camp and the cousins grabbed the girls. And now these are fifteen year old girls, so very young, and they took them to a dam where they repeatedly sexually assaulted them and then made the girls actually go into the water and clean themselves. Believing that they could prevent any sort of DNA evidence being found, they had to dump a TV on the side of the road to fit the girls in to the car, which was evidence that they were able to prove linked the two
killers too to the girls. They ended up strangling one and drowning the other and Lauren and Nicole were there was a photo of them that they had done at school. That becomes sort of an image of our innocence being lost in the fact that these two girls just thought they'd go for a walk at a camp and got picked up by two guys who pretended faked being polite and nice to them and then took to them in
several hours of horror before they were killed. It actually took a while to find the girl's bodies, and since that time, Cavalry's actually been charged with a third murder, and then he also killed his cousin in jail, so he ended up going for four killing, so he will never get out of prison.
It's interesting when you write too that part of the reason they were arrested is that someone's suspicion and they had a car that they had gotten from this aj Smarter, stolen from their friend, this Andrew Smart. And then when it went and cashed his forty four dollars check and insignificant check, that pub manager he said, you know that this is something suspicious about these guys, and he took down their license number and the description of the other man in the front seat.
So yeah, just as good that people to do this. Yeah, and that's where where the TV come into it too, because it was Andrew's TV or someone that he knew, and they had the serial number for it, so that they could prove that that sort of chain of evidence that was happening that they were leaving behind them.
What you talk about the reaction of the public with this innocence lost you till you write extensively about how the girl one one of the girl was going to just walk alone. I think it was Nicole worrying about her boyfriend, so very very teen issues for these very typical and then Lauren thought, well, I should join her. So Nicole and Lauren were together for this, whereas one would have just been probably because they would have come upon the one person, but instead it was two and yeah.
So it's sort of like doubled the pain. There was so many many people that were outraged, and again this was one of those cases that the public descended on the courthouse, that the public was there making sure that that these these two men, we're going to jail forever for doing this to two young girls. I mean not to say it's worse than an adult nurse being taken
because it certainly isn't. But the fact that these were two young teenage girls who were just going for a warp because one was having dramas with a boyfriend and all of that sort of stuff, it shouldn't have created
like a worse frenzy, but it somehow did. And it's it's just quite surprising that we go to our basic level of hatred and we want to be able to create place where things where where our children are safe, and we think that the death penalty will will fix this, and it's it's still surprising every time one of these cases comes up, the instantly they go, oh my god, we have to have the death penalty. We have to hang these people. And it's just it's it's just, I
don't know. I find it's a rising that we do that, and that we don't want to just lock these people up and hope they go away. People literally want to lynch them.
One especially exceptionally horrific story in this book is about Barry Watts and Valmy Beck and with the killing of c and KINGI yeh talk about this. You have got so much access to this information because of Vealma Beck eventually confessing tell us about this incredibly sordid tale.
So Seana Kingy. She was a teenage schoolgirl in Queensland, and val May and Barry Watts, who have actually spent the last couple of years talking to, decided to up their sexual exploration that they would go and abduct a schoolgirl because that was the fantasy of Barry's and they ended up seeing Seannee she she was actually riding her bike through a park. They did the usual tact of you know, can you help help me find my dog?
They May took her back to the car, they abducted her and in the back of the car Barry had his way with her for quite some time before they ended up killing her and dumping her. Barry to this day denies it, but val May actually admitted to it or claiming that she needed to absolve herself, that she had only done it to help with Watts's fantasies, and that she was kind of a pawn in all of this. But we know that once she was in prison she
was a pretty mean, horrible person as well. I mean, she obviously was beforehand as well, but she was able to sort of swing people to think of her as a victim, whereas in fact, she was very much the perpetrator and was very much part of this. She could have stopped this at any time. She could have have said no, I'm not going to help help you, doctor girl. But yeah, she was able to confess to everything suggested. There was other victims which has never been proven. Yes
or no, so we don't know. And what's what won't talk? Now he's actually up for parole and he claims in letters that the only reason he's not out yet is because he has to find a halfway house that he can go to and no one will will take him in because of the high profile case. But I really don't think he's ever going to get out of prison. It's one of Queensland's biggest cases.
You talk about again in this book. I haven't read about this technique of vengeance, but something about the barbed wire and then sodomy obviously, and this guy has a clastomy bag is that true? Now?
Yeah, so this is the hose and barbed wire thing, so I thought it was worldwide, but obviously not to go into some gruesome details. They put a hose up the rectum and then they put the barbed wire up and then they take the hose out, then they take the barbed wire out, so as you can imagine, it leaves some pretty gruesome injuries. That it also happened to Les Murphy who was one of the needed copy killers. He actually had to stand up in court. He couldn't
sit down because of the injuries. But it seems to be a bit of prison justice that does happen. There is other things they do, but yes, the hose and barbed wire is one of those revenge attacks that that happens. Brett Cowen, Daniel's killer was also severely burnt. That that seems to be the more recent way that we attack our child killers in prison is that they scold them. So obviously they can't get the bubb wired these days, so they scold them instead. Wow wow yep.
You mentioned Kevin Crump and Alan Baker. And also that this file has never been for it's forever sealed to prevent public from ever finding out the true abuse that Virginia endured in Virginia Morse so tell us about this.
So the boys that actually worked for the Morse family on their farm, and so one day they decided to go back to had a farm. They were going to rob it only if Virginia was home, so that Crump and Baker decided to take Virginia. Now this was in Queensland, and they drove across so Melbourne, and they drove across state lines, which made this an international case. In the state case because we then have to extradite and everything.
That's a difficult part of this case. Her files have been sealed because of what they did to her, but we know that towards the end they basically said that she had stopped crying because she had just endured so much that there was nothing left in her, and they ended up staking her down under a tree and shot her dead. It is oh my god, that dog. I'm so sorry. It's one of those cases that we know
a bit about what they did. They had actually shot someone else on the road, they had a gun battle with the police, and we know that they had repeatedly raped Virginia. We know that they had beaten her and sodomized her. But to the true extent, well, we'll never
actually know what they did. And considering that we know exactly what happened over the hours that need a copy was brutalized, it makes the mind going to some very dark places to think what worse could have actually happened to her to have this case sealed, and a couple of us have tried to have it unsealed, but they will not release the case now because these boys had
gone across state lines. They're actually in jail for the abduction and the rapes and the shooting of the other guy, but they actually haven't faced murder charges yet, so because they had taken her across cross state line, So though there've been sentenced never to be released, they actually don't fall under the truth and sentencing laws, So they're actually still trying to apply for a sentence to be set,
and it looks like it's kind of coming up. But we also know that as soon as if well if they are released, they will both then face their charges of killing. So they've only been sentenced never to be released for conspiracy to murder, but not actually to the capital charges.
Yet you write it this is another case that's included in this book about these guys being sexual partners and then being placed in the same prison and even being cell mets. Is that part of the oltread from the public as well?
Yeah, so, I mean it's it's happened a few times, like like the biggest schoolgirl killers will also put in prison together, the the Murphy brothers that they killed and needed copies who killed and needed in prison together, or there was there's another recent case too where the killers will put in prison together. We have enough prisons to split these people up. Granted, where we don't have the
high maximum supermax everywhere, we only have one supermax. But these killers have been putting together, even the Snowtown killers that there was three or four guys there that like to me, there's a suggestion that they can still collude and and they can continue to live off these fantasies
of what they've done. So there is our outrage when people find out that these people are in prisons together and they did have a sexual relationship together, so they they're able to continue that fantasy and keep these ideas going saying, oh do you when we did this, and how we enjoyed doing that, And it's quite surprising that we don't split them up and send them all over the country. Yes, there's state laws and things like that, but the fact that we put them in cells together, it's outrageous.
Yes, certainly, certainly we have time for one more story from this incredible collection. You discuss a story that while all these cases were big in Australia, and in fact that, like you say, change the country forever, we'll talk about the Trual murders April seventeens.
So this is yes, So this is six girls. I think I'd never get my numbers right in South Australia. Now, these killers, Christopher Worrell and James Mmella, they had actually met in prison. Now James was a lot older, James was in his forties as Chris was in his early twenties, and they met in prison, and there is some suggestions that there was a sexual relationship, but it was more that Chris allowed James to have sex with him because it meant that James was under his control. But Chris
claimed that he was also heterosexual. So the two of them would go out fine girls around Adelaide, which is Adelaide's a small city. It's very much like England, but it's very much like London, but it's almost like a
three block top kind of town. I love Adelaide. But they would go and pick up these girls at nightclubs and just on the streets, and they were taken out to Trurou, which is way out of Adelaide, into the bush where James claimed that he would sit in the car or go for a walk and Chris would rape and kill these girls. Now, James was the only one to face trial, and he wasn't he was in charged with with the first killing because the police believed that
he didn't know this is what Christopher's plans were. But the whole reason that this case came together is because Christopher had died in a car accident and James had been talking to Christopher's girlfriend and said, you know all of those girls that have disappeared, well, we were killing them. And so that's how the case actually came tick together is because the girlfriend went to the police and told them what James had told her, and he was then able to take them out to where all of these
girls were, very partially around Truro. And so Christopher has never obviously been charged because he had died. So we only have one side of the story. It could be very that the actual story could be very, very different, but we will never know because we only have his side, and he sort of confessed as soon as Christoph had died.
You talked about in this about David and Catherine Bernie, and you said you knew You're right, that you knew David Bernie for a number of years before he committed suicide, and it was hard to believe that he was one of Australia's worst murderers. Tell us about this correspondence with David Bernie.
Well, I've been talking to David Bernie for about fifteen years, and until the very night that he actually talked to his own life. And people always assume assume these killers to be bigger than life, that you know that they're big, hulking people that have all this strength and everything. In David Bernie are like, I'm five foot four and he is shorter than I am, and he was this tiny,
little meek man. And it's sort of changed my whole whole perception of who these killers are, because we know that a lot of them these massive personalities, but it's often to outweigh their physical attributes, which are quite insignificant and and and I think they sort of do this this bigger personality to try and and and compensate. But I've been talking to David for a long time, and he's very different to a lot of the killers I speak to purely because he he is one of those
that that confess straight up. As soon as his last victim was going to be his fifth victim was found because she escaped, they him and his common law wife Catherine actually said to the police, yes, you've got us. This is where they are, this is what we did, here's the whole case. They pled guilty at the first opportunity and they were sentenced to never to be released too. However, up until this week, actually Western Australia didn't have the
Church truth and Sentencing laws, but they do now. So Catherine Berney, who is still in prison though she was applying for parole, has this week been told that the laws now state if you have been marched never to be released, you were never getting out of prison. So it took actually their last victim, Kate Moore, to actually fight that to have trick truth and sentencing laws in Perth as well. But these were two killers who had come together multiple times throughout their life. They were a
case that almost star crossed. You know that they had met as children, they had met as teenagers, and then that they'd both gone their separate ways. They both had children with other people Catherine married, you know, her employee's son had lots of children with him. And then they come together for this final time and there was this instant murderous attraction that led to a very sexually explicit
relationship that escalated very very quickly. And so they were together for a while, but not a great deal of time like Fred and Rose Western England or anything like that. But they were together for long enough to escalate to abducting young girls. And there is suggestions that though they confessed to four cases, there is suggestions so that there could be more, at least two more from what sort
of David had alluded to several times. But together they had taken these girls back to their house and had repeatedly raped them and tortured them for days before Catherine would say, yeah, that that's it. I don't want you to get an attraction to this girl. She has to go. And this is how they would end up killing them.
And they weren't very successful at killing, like several of them fought back and one of them almost escaped, and one of them was actually buried they think alive, because they were sorting her lungs purely because they had made a mess of it. So, yeah, it's a brutal case. But I had spent so much time talking to David, and though I talked to a lot of killers and lots of them profess their innocence or talk about their appeals, he was one who goes, yeah, I did it. This
is what happens. I'm laying it out there. So it was a very different sort of correspondence.
It's incredible to the details in this one where Denise is has a wits about her to keep some cigarettes under the bed and her purse so that she could prove in case she got away. And then later when they're trying to kill her, they had you write it so movie as she comes up from the grave, she's trying to bury her and she sets up in the grave, and that's of course this genuinely just in genuinely. Ah. The woman says that, well, that's was the last straw.
Catherine says, that was the last straw for me. There was there, Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, I think it changed her. I think she had been enjoying it to a point. But then when when Denise had fought back so so hard, even you know, gasping at the end, who riffic what happened to her. I think Catherine sort of had like an internal conflict. You know, we we think that these people don't care and don't feel like we do. But she was sickened by that, and and she was repulsed by what had happened that you know, she kind of said, hey, what
the hell are we doing? And it's it's it's rare to get that insight, but it's definitely what had happened here is that, you know, it was so brutal and they had to kill her several times that you know, Catherine's like, yeah, I don't get while we're doing this, this isn't enjoyable.
The other thing that adds even more horror to it, the niece knew these people. They were friends of sorts.
Yep, Yeah, so yeah, vaguely friends, but yeah, and I mean even their first victim. She had actually met David Bernie several times, and she'd only come to the house because he said, I'll do you a deal on some tires and some car parts. So you know, they were like that. They were very trusting and people. You know, if you met David Bernie didn't know that he was a serial killer. You know, people think, oh yeah, look
at their eyes and look at these and looks. He looked like a very normal person, and that's how they get a lot lot of their victims. If they were scary and if they were sort of in your face, people would back off, but they they're charming, and he was always very charming, you know, would tell jokes, and we'll talk about lots of different topics, and you have to always think about hang on a second, he's, you know, spider,
try to fly. He's trying to rail you in the whole time, trying to make you like him, because that's what they do that they get you with honey. So's it's an interesting part of all of my studies.
Absolutely absolutely, very very charming. That's why they can do things that seemingly other people can't achieve. I mean, when that's your goal to deceive and be deceptive, they achieve that and people and they do it very really yeah, and people really can't plan on safeguarding themselves of this kind of sudden attack after knowing these people in a different context, So very very again, horrifying. I want to thank you very much for coming on and talking about innocence.
Last the crimes have changed Australia. Amanda, do you have a Facebook page or a website that people might take a look at the twelve or more books that you have and thet I've got more than that now how many? Now?
Yeah, well I'm up to twenty six?
Oh my god.
So I've got twenty six from probably the back of that book. So I've written a few since then. So they can find me on Facebook just Amanda Howard author and I'm on Twitter at Amanda Howard's seventy three So and also Monsters who Murder dot com is my website.
Tell us just about the podcast again and the how they might find.
That, so you can find us on Facebook as well. MWM Confession so it's Monsters Who Murder cans serial Killer Confessions and Monsters who Murder serial Killer Confessions. Each week we do a case study. This week we're doing Daniel Morcombe's Appearance and Murder and we use a lot of police files, we use recorded confessions, and we use my research and words from the killers themselves. So we've been going with the podcast since May and it's doing really well.
It's a fascinating podcast. Fantastic books that you have Innocence Last is just one of them. Thank you very much Amanda Howard for coming on and talking about Innocence Last the crimes that changed Australia. You have a great evening. Thank you very much for this interview.
Thanks Dan, good night. Thank you