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Stolen time: the inspiring story of an innocent woman condemned to death
By Sunny Jacobs. 2008
Sunny spent five years on death row in solitary confinement. In a cell the width of her arm-span, her only…
lifeline was the stream of letters between herself and Jesse, offering love and strength, each echoing the other's conviction that the truth would soon be revealed. She refused to lose hope, even though the state had allowed falsified testimonies to condemn her and Jesse, disregarding hidden evidence and the true murderer's confession.The tall man: death and life on Palm Island
By Chloe Hooper. 2009
In 2004 on Palm Island, an Aboriginal settlement in Far North Queensland, a thirty-six-year-old man named Cameron Doomadgee was arrested…
for swearing at a white police officer. Forty minutes later he was dead in the jailhouse. The police claimed he'd tripped on a step, but his liver was ruptured. The main suspect was Senior Sergeant Christopher Hurley a charismatic cop with long experience in Aboriginal communities and decorations for his work. Chloe Hooper was asked to write about the case by the pro bono lawyer who represented Cameron Doomadgee's family. He told her it would take a couple of weeks. She spent three years following Hurley's trial to some of the wildest and most remote parts of Australia, exploring Aboriginal myths and history and the roots of brutal chaos in the Palm Island community. Her stunning account goes to the heart of a struggle for power, revenge, and justice.The worst woman in Sydney: the life and crimes of Kate Leigh
By Leigh Straw. 2016
Matriarch of the criminal underworld ...or the Robin Hood of inner Sydney? The legend of Kate Leigh, Sydney's famed brothel…
madam, sly grog seller and drug dealer, has loomed large in TV's Underbelly and every other account of Sydney's criminal history from the 1920s to the 1960s. But she has never had a biography of her own. Despite having more than 100 criminal convictions to her name, Kate Leigh is also remembered as a local hero, giving money to needy families and supporting her local community through the hard times of Depression and war. Here, novelist and historian Leigh Straw teases out the full story of how this wayward Reformatory girl from Dubbo made a fortune in eastern Sydney and defied the gender stereotyping of the time to become a leading underworld figure.The Skull: informers, hit men and Australia's toughest cop
By Adam Shand. 2009
There has never been a more feared or respected policeman in Australia than Brian "Skull" Murphy. This is the story…
of the last of the super cops, collaring big-time crims and small-time thugs, rubbing shoulders with corrupt officials and flashy assassins, and using a combination of old-school persuasion and self-styled 'slychology' to recruit his network of informers. In the '70s and '80s, The Skull enters the shady world depicted in Underbelly: A Tale of Two Cities, and we see many of its key villains - Christopher Dale Flannery, the Kane brothers and Ray Chuck - from Murphy's perspective as he plays them off against each other and fights to stay on top.The time of their lives!
By Keith Smith. 1993
Depraved and disorderly: female convicts, sexuality and gender in colonial Australia
By Joy Damousi. 1997
This innovative book tells the powerful stories of convict women, while drawing out broader themes of gender and sexual disorder…
and race and class dynamics. It looks at the cultural meanings of aspects of life in the colony: on ships, in the factories and in orphanages. Damousi considers such topics as headshaving as punishment in the prisons, as well as analysing the language of pollution, purity and abandonment. The book shows how understanding about sexual and racial difference became a focus for cultural anxiety in colonial society.Australian crime: chilling tales of our time
By Malcolm Brown. 1993
A detailed case-by-case look at some of the most chilling events and colourful characters of Australian crime: Thunderbolt, Squizzy Taylor,…
Domenico Italiano, Australian "Godfather", the Croatian bombings and the Granny Killer are included. Contains violence and descriptions of sex.Tampering with asylum: a universal humanitarian problem
By Frank Brennan. 2003
By denying the Tampa and its cargo of asylum seekers permission to dock at the nearest landfall of Christmas Island,…
Australia signalled that it was dramatically closing its national borders. Trading on fear, and using mandatory detention in the Pacific, John Howard and Philip Ruddock effectively excluded asylum seekers from the Australian courts. Frank Brennan argues that the Australian government’s response was a massive overreaction, possible only because Australia is a remote country with few asylum seekers and no land borders. Governments around the world are understandably anxious to maintain orderly migration programs in the face of unscrupulous people-smuggling operations. Brennan compares Australia’s response with that of the United States and Europe and provides a practical blueprint for countries wanting to humanely protect asylum seekers.Dancing with demons: true life misadventures of a criminal psychologist
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.Deadly Australian women: Stories Of The Women Who Broke Society's Greatest Taboo
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.Someone else's daughter: the life and death of Anita Cobby
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.Outside the law: Australian true crime stories
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.Wired: Undercover In The Underworld
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...Last woman hanged: the terrible, true story of Louisa Collins
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.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.In praise of ageing
By Patricia Edgar. 2013
Meet Jim Brierley, who was still jumping out of planes aged eighty-eight. And Muriel Crabtree, whose exhibition of pastels was…
opened by the governor-general shortly after Crabtree died aged 102. Australians are staying healthy and living longer than ever before. Yet rather than focusing on the productive, rich, varied lives older people lead we dwell on the burden of ageing. In Praise of Ageing tells the stories of eight people who have lived well into their nineties and beyond. These people will inspire you, entertain you and motivate you to be connected, interested, risk-taking and inventive. They will challenge your preconceptions. And they will convince you that fifty is now the start of the second half of life and not the beginning of the end.Ten years: an incredible true story of corruption, injustice and the triumph of the human spirit
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.Let evening come: reflections on aging
By Mary C Morrison. 1998
In this daring yet gently written reflection on aging, eighty-seven-year-old Mary C. Morrison considers the sources of strength and dignity…
that truly allow people to grow old gracefully, and to retain a joy for life. Morrison writes about the process of aging with humour and sensitivity. She does not ignore the difficulties that old age brings, but instead emphasizes the benefits of peace, balance, and perspective that come with it. She shows how the gradual movement away from the center of work, family, and community can be a blessing in disguise and how one can feel renewed, instead of made powerless, by old age. The diminishments of age and its real afflictions are treated openly and courageously.