Great true crime reads you can’t put down

Discover the world of true crime from every perspective — the daughter of a serial killer, the desperate parents digging for their son’s body, the victims and the police, and the journalists who witnessed some of our most shocking cases unfold.

The holidays are here and that means more time to relax and get stuck into a good book.

True crime fans are spoiled for choice, with the genre ever-growing in popularity and plenty of fascinating reads available, both old and new.

Here are some of our favourite extracts published on True Crime Australia.

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My Mother, A Serial Killer

In the eyes of her neighbours and friends Dulcie Bodsworth was caring and kind, a woman loved everywhere she went. But daughter Hazel saw the real Dulcie — a cold, calculating killer. Dulcie would be charged with killing three people — and it was a teenaged Hazel that dobbed her in. In this extract from My Mother, A Serial Killer, written with Janet Fife-Yeomans, she describes the day one of the victims, her own father, was found drowned.

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Deal with the Devil

The remarkable efforts that Mark and Faye Leveson went to to find the body of their son Matthew, who disappeared in 2007, aged 20, are detailed in our extract from Grace Tobin’s Deal with the Devil. The grieving parents launched their own search, digging in bushland for their son’s remains after Mark calculated a “body disposal timeline” to pinpoint likely burial spots — a gory mission tackled with both determination and distress at what they might find. They also agreed to talk to the suspect in Matt’s death wearing a hidden listening device provided by police despite being “paralysed with dread”. “Do it for Matt, they told themselves.”

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Stalked: The Human Target

Author Rachel Cassidy — herself a victim of stalking — gives voice to other Australians who have been targeted in a book that also provides information on the resources available to help. In one of our two extracts, “Helen” says she never feels safe after ongoing stalking by “Greg”, that has changed her life forever. “I’m not friendly to people any more,” she says. “I used to walk along the street and smile, but now I don’t acknowledge people I meet — even if they’re 80, I don’t feel I can smile at them because that’s letting them in.” For author Cassidy, the most challenging encounter for the book is with “James”, a stalker who, despite the experience of being jailed, cannot say what he would do if he came face-to-face with “Carly”, the woman he targeted, again. “I know I haven’t felt this way about anyone else in my life, or anyone I met before Carly,” he says.

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Bigwig

The authorities were left red-faced when notorious drug lord Tony Mokbel skipped bail during a cocaine smuggling trial, then evaded capture to hole-up in Bonnie Doon before eventually sailing to Greece. If that wasn’t bad enough his girlfriend was separately outwitting “Interplod” to join him in his Mediterranean hideaway for a life in the sun, bankrolled by Mokbel’s drug empire back home. In our extracts from Liam Houlihan’s Bigwig: The Remarkable Rise and Fall of Tony Mokbel , we learn of the remarkable escape and the breakthrough that eventually saw Mokbel tracked down, with the shocked fugitive telling police: “I don’t know how you did it, but you’ve done a brilliant job.”

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The Fatalist

Imagine discovering the charming drinking buddy you had known for years was a multiple murderer. That’s just what happened to Campbell McConachie, whose pal was the now infamous Lindsey Rose, guilty of five murders in the 1980s and 90s. McConachie realised the truth like most people, with reports of an arrest on the TV news, and couldn’t let it go. Compelled to learn more he studied court files and went on to interview Rose in jail more than 25 times for his book The Fatalist, which was short-listed in the Best True Crime category at the 2018 Ned Kelly Awards. Read our extract here.

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Loose Units

Writer Paul Verhoeven offers an entertaining take on policing in the 1980s through the eyes of his dad, a retired Sydney policeman. John Verhoeven remembers events both dramatic and dodgy, dealing with the crims on the streets and navigating the ethical grey areas at play in the force. In our extract, John and his partner are on their way to solving what they would later dub The Case of the Cardigan and the Jewellery Penis — but can they keep the glory for themselves?

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Last Woman Hanged

Caroline Overington’s book on the unprecedented case of Louisa Collins, hanged in 1889 after four trials, highlights both the potential injustice and barbaric nature of her death. Accused over the alleged arsenic poisoning of two husbands, Collins, a mother of 10, faced three juries that failed to convict, before a fourth found her guilty. When she finally faced the gallows, the hanging was badly botched, but her terrible death was far from unusual for the time. In our extract, Overington describes another brutal death at the hands of the authorities, that of Michael Magee in the first public hanging in South Australia.

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Russell Crowe, a crooked cop and “a hit”

An extract from Charles Miranda’s Deception on the downfall of one of Australia’s most senior crime fighters, Mark Standen, following the most sensitive and convert police operation in law enforcement history.

The true story of Australia’s biggest heist

In 1862, a gang of bushrangers pulled off an incredible and bloody heist at Eugowra, NSW, escaping with a pile of cash and a staggering 77kg of gold. James Phelps tells the full story of Australia’s biggest-ever robbery in Australian Heist.

Lady Chatterley case scandalises high society

Leading QC Bill Hosking looks back at some of the cases from his career as a criminal barrister in his book Justice Denied, with this extract on the 1970s’ case of “Lady Chatterley’s Lover”, highlighting a jury decision that “left me and my client stunned”.

Inside the police sting that snared Morcombe’s killer

It took an elaborate undercover police operation featuring a fake crime network to catch Brett Peter Cowan. In this extract from Kate Kyriacou’s The Sting, police investigating the Sunshine Coast abduction build their relationship with their suspect, who finally reveals to a bogus ‘Mr Big’ that he killed Daniel Morcombe.

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‘I would’ve torn Sydney’s underworld apart’

In an extract from his book Last King of the X, Sydney nightlife identity John Ibrahim reflects on the moment his little brother Fadi was shot five times by a would-be assassin, and how Fadi’s wife Shayda saved him from certain death despite being hit by one of the bullets herself.

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Originally published as Great true crime reads you can’t put down