Frances Knorr, like many other women in depression-hit 1800s Melbourne, ran an early form of childcare. But instead of visiting a loving home, the infants she was trusted with met a much darker fate.
It was “the most dangerous life” for a person, and at the British Empire’s first juvenile jail in Australia, it ended in murder.
It may have been the worst mass killing in Victoria’s history — the Gunditjmara Aboriginal people and a group of whalers fighting over a beached whale. But exactly how much blood was spilt on the Portland beach could be lost in the mists of time.
Thousands of child convicts, some as young as eight, were sent to a children’s version of the notorious Port Arthur for minor offences. But were two boys really guilty of a more shocking crime? LISTEN NOW
Fate delivered a young woman to the epicentre of one of the most important and historic moments in Queensland police history.
An Australian-first investigation into Sydney’s “dark chapter” of gay hate crimes is pursuing new tactics to expose the full truth behind multiple murders and attacks and may eventually see witnesses compelled to give evidence.
The case of Russia’s ‘granny ripper’ — accused of murder and cannibalism — holds chilling resemblance to one of Australia’s most notorious crimes.
Extortion, gambling halls, sex clubs, child prostitution, brothels, animal fighting, murder, arson and rampant looting. This is how an Aussie gang held an American city captive for four years.
Christopher Skase begged his family and friends for money to fund his legal case from the toilet of his prison cell on a smuggled mobile phone, as his son-in-law has revealed the desperate measures the disgraced businessman took to try to get back on his feet.
Klaus Andres killed his wife of five years and to cover up the crime he used acid to dissolve her body in a bin and then washed her down a drain outside his Cairns home.
In an age when people with disabilities were pitied, a gang of men on crutches struck fear into the people of Melbourne. Members required a missing limb and a taste for grog and violence.
It was a bizarre and frightening crime spree the likes of which police had never encountered before — sleeping women and girls repeatedly cut in their own beds before their stealthy attacker fled into the night.
Original URL: https://www.couriermail.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/ourcriminalhistory/page/13