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By Clare Alice Wright. 2013
The Eureka Stockade. The story is one of Australia’s foundation legends, but until now it has been told as though…
only half the participants were there. What if the hot-tempered, free-wheeling gold miners we learnt about in school were actually husbands and fathers, brothers and sons? And what if there were women and children inside the Eureka Stockade, defending their rights while defending themselves against a barrage of bullets? As Clare Wright reveals, there were thousands of women on the goldfields and many of them were active in pivotal roles. The stories of how they arrived there, why they came and how they sustained themselves make for fascinating reading in their own right. But it is in the rebellion itself that the unbiddable women of Ballarat come into their own.By Tim Watson-Munro. 2017
The extraordinary memoir of a man who has spent his working life looking into the eyes of modern evil. As…
Australia’s most distinguished criminal psychologist, ‘Doc’ Tim Watson-Munro has assessed over 30,000 ‘persons of interest’ in some of the nation’s most notorious court cases, including Hoddle Street gunman Julian Knight, corporate fraudster Alan Bond, Melbourne gangster Alphonse Gangitano and, in recent years, Australia’s first terrorist convicts. But the frontline of psychology is no place for the faint-hearted. Tim’s pioneering methods and proximity to evil made him front page news but also led him to a devastating personal crossroads - first wife gravely ill, second wife pregnant, best mate betraying him to the cops, $2,000-a-week drug habit spiralling out of control, brilliant career and hard-won reputation in crisis. Tim’s descent into the maelstrom is candid, funny, frightening odyssey, offering unique insight into not only the nature of addiction, but also the lives and mind of the psychopaths we share our world with. After all, when you’re dancing with demons, it takes one to know one.By Kay Saunders. 2013
Do women kill? Yes they do, but often for very different reasons from men ... Meet the women who have…
murdered - they've killed children, husbands, lovers, relatives and friends. They include the desperate, the poor, the abused, the sexually betrayed, and the downright callous. In some cases they were motivated by fear of society's disapproval, in others they acted to save themselves from violence. Among their number were early backyard abortionists like Madame Olga and Madame Harper; poisoners like Caroline Grills and Yvonne Fletcher; women who committed infanticide like Keli Lane; women who formed lovers' pacts to murder their husbands; and women whose troubled lives on the margins, like transgendered Eugenia Falleni/Harry Crawford, led them almost inevitably to crime. In her first book, Notorious Australian Women, author Kay Saunders profiled some of the country's most scandalous women. Here she turns her eye to those who have broken one of society's most cherished taboos and become both notorious and deadly.The Coves - San Francisco's first organised-crime gang - were Australians- men and women with criminal careers in Australia who…
had come to the US, mostly illegally, during the gold rush. The Coves had come not to dig for gold but to unleash a crime wave the likes of which America had never seen. Robbery, murder, arson and extortion were the Coves' stock-in-trade, and it was said that the leader of the gang, Jim Stuart, had killed more men than any man in California. The gang's base, in the waterfront district, came to be known as Sydney Town. The area was a no-go zone for police - many of whom were in Stuart's pocket anyway - so, just as Capone would one day rule Chicago, the Coves ruled San Francisco. And more than once, just to make sure there was no doubt that Frisco was their town, they burnt it down. The Coves were hated and feared by the respectable citizens of San Francisco - who derisively called them 'Sydney Ducks' but never to their faces - and, realising that the forces of the law could not, or would not, take them on, decided lynch law was the only solution, and formed a vigilante group. The streets of San Francisco became a battlefield as the Coves and the vigilantes fought for control of the city, with gunfights and lynchings almost daily spectacles as the police stood idly by. Jim Stewart was arrested in Sacramento for killing a sheriff, but escaped to be involved in one the most celebrated cases of mistaken identity in the annals of American crime. When the smoke cleared, the Coves' reign of terror was over. Some were strung up from storefronts in the street, some fell in a deadly gunfight with Jonathan R. Davis, one of the fastest guns in the west, others escaped capture and returned to Australia. The story of the Sydney Coves is little-known, fascinating and well worth telling.One night in March 1999, fifteen-year-old dance student Rachel Elizabeth Barber vanished. No one could have guessed that she had…
become another girl's 'perfect' victim. Happy. Beautiful. Talented. She had everything her killer could want.Perceived by crime experts everywhere as one of the most bizarre homicides they had encountered, Perfect Victim recounts two stories: Rachel's mother Elizabeth Southall tells of her family's heart-rendering experience - how they lived through unimaginable tragedy, going to extraordinary lengths to prove their daughter wasn't a runaway. Criminal court reporter Megan Norris provides another side of the picture; the analysis, the astonishment of professionals when faced with the killer's weird and unsettling letters, and the police proceedings that led, eventually, to the Rachel Barber case being solved. Confronting and compelling, this is an incredible story about a callous and calculated crime.By Julia Sheppard. 1991
This is the story of the short, good life and brutal death of Anita Cobby and of her loving parents…
who conducted themselves with unfailing bravery and dignity throughout their terrible ordeal. Contains descriptions of violence, explicit descriptions of sex and coarse language.By Andrew Rule, John Silvester. 2006
This revised, expanded collection of true crime by Australia's foremost crime writers digs beneath the polite exterior of modern Australian…
life to expose its chilling core. It details the exploits of criminal families and examines the gene of pure evil that drives maniacs to randomly kill. It explores the effect of crime on innocent victims caught in the wrong place at the wrong time, the contribution made by police who put their lives on the line every day, and salutes the private individuals who stand up and fight back. Stories include: John Silvester on Donald MacKay and the Australian Mafia; Andrew Rule on the Queen Street Massacre; Malcolm Brown on Ivan Milat; Vikki Petraitis on serial killer Paul Denyer; Jennifer Cooke on the Anita Cobby murder; Murray Mottram on the senseless killing of a taxi driver by teenagers; Greg Fogarty on the Crawford murders and Greg Linnell on the life of an undercover cop.By Damian Marrett. 2007
At the age of 23, Damian Marrett was recruited to work as an undercover operative for the Victorian police force.…
For over six years, he brushed shoulders and knocked heads with the lowest of Australia's low. In Wired, his third volume of undercover memoirs, Marrett befriends and betrays a volatile cocaine dealer, out-cons a conman with an extortion plan, and has his cover blown after tangling with a well-connected Melbourne underworld identity. On a stage where one careless word can cost a life, Marrett comes out the other end with his humour and dignity intact. And only a little bit wired...By Caroline Overington. 2016
One woman. Two husbands. Four trials. One bloody execution. The last woman hanged in New South Wales. In January 1889,…
Louisa Collins, a 41-year-old mother of ten children, became the first woman hanged at Darlinghurst Gaol and the last woman hanged in New South Wales. Both of Louisa's husbands died suddenly. The Crown was convinced that Louisa poisoned them with arsenic and, to the horror of many in the legal community, put her on trial an extraordinary four times in order to get a conviction. Louisa protested her innocence until the end. This book delves into the archives to re-examine the original, forensic reports, court documents, judges notebooks, witness statements and police and gaol records, in an effort to discover the truth. Much of the evidence against Louisa was circumstantial. Some of the most important testimony was given by her only daughter, May, who was just 10-years-old when asked to take the stand. The historical context is also important: Louisa Collins was hanged at a time when women were in no sense equal under the law - except when it came to the gallows. Women could not vote or stand for parliament - or sit on juries. There were no female politicians and no women judges. Against this background, a small group of women rose up to try to save Louisa's life, arguing that a legal system comprised only of men - male judges, all-male jury, male prosecutor, governor and Premier - could not with any integrity hang a woman. The tenacity of these women would not save Louisa but it would ultimately carry women from their homes all the way to Parliament House. Less than 15 years after Louisa was hanged, Australian women would become some of the first in the world to get the vote. They would take seats in State parliament, and in Canberra. They would become doctors, lawyers, judges, premiers - even the Prime Minister.Eggshell Skull: A well-established legal doctrine that a defendant must 'take their victim as they find them'. If a single…
punch kills someone because of their thin skull, that victim's weakness cannot mitigate the seriousness of the crime. But what if it also works the other way? What if a defendant on trial for sexual crimes has to accept his 'victim' as she comes: a strong, determined accuser who knows the legal system, who will not back down until justice is done? Bri Lee began her first day of work at the Queensland District Court as a bright-eyed judge's associate. Two years later she was back as the complainant in her own case. This is the story of Bri's journey through the Australian legal system; first as the daughter of a policeman, then as a law student, and finally as a judge's associate in both metropolitan and regional Queensland-where justice can look very different, especially for women. The injustice Bri witnessed, mourned and raged over every day finally forced her to confront her own personal history, one she'd vowed never to tell. And this is how, after years of struggle, she found herself on the other side of the courtroom, telling her story.By Paul Kennedy, Chrissie Foster. 2010
An Australian mother's love. The power of the Catholic Church. A fight for justice over child sexual abuse. Chrissie and…
Anthony Foster were like any other young family, raising their three daughters in suburban Melbourne with what they hoped were the right values. Chrissie could not have known that the stranger-danger she feared actually lurked in the presbytery attached to the girls' Catholic primary school. Father Kevin O'Donnell, a long-term paedophile, lived and worked there. Two of their young daughters became victims of O'Donnell. And once the truth was revealed, the Fosters began a battle to find out how this could have happened. The Church offered silence, lies, denials and threats. Meanwhile, their daughters tried to piece together their fractured lives.This is the chilling true story that made national and international headlines. Chrissie Foster's heartbreaking account of her family's suffering, and their determination to stand up for themselves against the might of the Catholic Church, is testament to the strength of a mother's love, and the resilience of the human spirit.In October 1892, a one-month-old baby boy was found buried in the backyard of Sarah and John Makin, two wretchedly…
poor baby farmers in inner Sydney. In the weeks that followed, 12 more babies were found buried in the backyards of other houses in which the Makins had lived. This resulted in the most infamous trial in Australian legal history, and exposed a shocking underworld of desperate mothers, drugged and starving babies, and a black market in the sale and murder of children. Annie Cossins pieces together a dramatic and tragic tale with larger-than-life characters: theatrical Sarah Makin, her smooth-talking husband John, her disloyal daughter, Clarice, diligent Constable James Joyce with curious domestic arrangements of his own, and a network of baby farmers stretching across the city. It's a glimpse into a society that preferred to turn a blind eye to the fate of its most vulnerable members, only a century ago.By Robin Bowles. 2016
On 2 December 2010, the body of a 24-year-old woman was found at the bottom of the rubbish chute in…
the luxury Balencea tower apartments in St Kilda Road, Melbourne, twelve floors below the apartment she had shared with her boyfriend, Antony Hampel. Within minutes, the sound of sirens filled the hall as police cars from the nearby police station filled the front forecourt in response to the day manager's call. So began the so-called investigation into the sudden death of a young woman called Phoebe Handsjuk. From then, the case became weirder and weirder. Phoebe, it turned out, was a beautiful but damaged young woman who'd been in a fraught relationship with a well-connected and wealthy lover almost twice her age, who was related to the elite of Melbourne's judiciary. The police botched their investigation, so Phoebe's grandfather, a former detective, decided to run one of his own. And in December 2014, after a 14-day inquest, the Coroner delivered a finding that excluded both suicide and foul play, a ruling that shocked her family and many others who had been following the case. How did Phoebe Handsjuk die? In this book, Robin Bowles uses her formidable array of investigative and forensic skills to tell a tale that is stranger than fiction.By Kate Holden. 2006
"I watched the glaze of headlights, the windscreens of oncoming cars: a series of trapezoids with the silhouette of a…
single male driver. One pulled up in front of me; I reached over and opened the door, slid in. The smell of an unfamiliar car. A middle-aged man looking at me. 'Hi', I said. 'How are you?"...There was no single moment when someone looked at Kate Holden and said, 'Why don't you have some?' No one made her try heroin. There was only the sense, with her friends setting out on this forbidden adventure, that she would lose something if she didn't. Just once: to know. So this book is the story of a journey. From a loving family home to the streets of St Kilda; from a shy, bookish life to the ambivalent glamour of an inner-city brothel, Kate Holden describes with breathtaking lyricism and poignancy her travels in an unknown world. Contains explicit sexual scenes.By Amy Willesee, Mark Whittaker, Roseanne Catt. 2005
Falsely accused with attempting to murder her husband, this is the horrifying true story of how an innocent woman came…
to be one of the longest-serving female prisoners in New South Wales and her fight for justice. It is a story of corruption and brutality - both inside and outside of jail that will appal and outrage and a story of Roseanne's extraordinary courage.By Omid Tofighian, Behrouz Boochani. 2018
"Where have I come from? From the land of rivers, the land of waterfalls, the land of ancient chants, the…
land of mountains." In 2013, Kurdish journalist Behrouz Boochani was illegally detained on Manus Island. He has been there ever since. People would run to the mountains to escape the warplanes and found asylum within their chestnut forests. This book is the result. Laboriously tapped out on a mobile phone and translated from the Farsi. It is a voice of witness, an act of survival. A lyric first-hand account. A cry of resistance. A vivid portrait through five years of incarceration and exile. Do Kurds have any friends other than the mountains?By Michael Green, Angelica Neville, Andrea Dao, Dana Affleck, Sienna Merope. 2017
For more than two decades, Australia has locked up people who arrive here fleeing persecution - sometimes briefly, sometimes for…
years. In They Cannot Take the Sky those people tell their stories, in their own words. Speaking from inside immigration detention on Manus Island and Nauru, or from within the Australian community after their release, the narrators reveal not only their extraordinary journeys and their daily struggles but also their meditations on love, death, hope and injustice. Their candid testimonies are at times shocking and hilarious, surprising and devastating. They are witnesses from the edge of human experience.The first-person narratives in They Cannot Take the Sky range from epic life stories to heartbreaking vignettes. The narrators who have shared their stories have done so despite the culture of silence surrounding immigration detention, and the real risks faced by those who speak out. Once you have heard their voices, you will never forget them.By Hugh Geddes. 2005
A crowd gathers at dawn on a Sydney beach, clustering around the body of a beautiful young woman. The only…
clue to her identity is the strand of yellow fabric on her naked body. As the murder investigation continues, the girl's wanton, wild life is revealed...This tale takes its lead from one of Australia's most famous and enduring true-life murder mysteries - the Pyjama Girl case took police ten years to solve.By Andy Muir. 2017
It’s not every day a bloke stumbles on a dismembered torso on Nobby’s Beach. Lachie Munro is starting to feel…
like he’s is a magnet for trouble. The day before he fished a giant haul of heroin out of his favourite abalone poaching spot near Newcastle.There’s a better than even chance that the two are connected and he should leave well enough alone. But the opportunity to clear his gambling debt and get ahead of the game is too good to pass up. But how do you sell several kilos of heroin? It’s not like drug dealers are listed in the Yellow Pages. And what happens when the owners come looking for their missing package? Is the torso a warning to anyone thinking of crossing them? Now a person of interest to the police, Lachie needs to stay one step ahead of them, a local bikie he’s managed to insult, play off a big time dealer from Sydney, placate the neighbour’s labrador, Horace, and win the heart of the gorgeous new Fisheries Officer he’s fallen for. Or will he discover that getting into the gun sights of the crooked, the dodgy and the downright shady characters of Newcastle and beyond is more than a man can handle. But, if Lachie can pull it all off, he might just get Something for Nothing.Dr Munjed Al Muderis grew up in Iraq during Saddam Hussein's reign. He went to school with Saddam's sons, then…
started his medical training at Basra University just as the Iran. Iraq War began. One day, as he was working as a trainee surgeon at the Saddam Hussein Medical Centre, he and his colleagues were ordered to remove the tops of the ears of army deserters. He could not bring himself to act in defiance of the medical code of conduct and cause intentional harm, so he had no choice but to flee Baghdad that same day. In Kuala Lumpur he paid people smugglers to get him to Australia, where he was incarcerated in a detention centre and known only as '982'. After nine months of being repeatedly brutalised for standing up for himself and other detainees, Munjed was finally freed. But he had to start his medical training again, from scratch. Now, 15 years later, Munjed is at the forefront of orthopaedic medicine as he pioneers a new form of prosthesis that, ironically, transforms the lives of soldiers mutilated in the Iraq War. 'Walking Free' is the extraordinary story of a clever young man, born into one of Iraq's ruling families, who was forced to flee the country of his birth and forge a new and extraordinary life in Australia.