True crime podcasts are booming. Now, I’ve joined the bandwagon

Who really killed Franz Ferdinand? Lincoln? Hitler? Gandhi? Pope John Paul I? JonBenet Ramsey? Join me, your host, as I discover new evidence and rewrite history.

My discoveries will demand the rewriting of history as well as one of Shakespeare’s finest plays. So be it. Picture: Patrick Riviere

True crime podcasting is all the go – especially for those with the surname Thomas. This masthead’s Hedley Thomas proved himself a master of the craft with The Teacher’s Pet, while my ABC colleague Helen Thomas is offering a fresh look at a very cold case, the Easey Street Murders in Melbourne in 1977. Dylan Thomas tackles Midsomer-style murders in his Milk Wood, too.

And three cheers for my own podcast series, Who Really Killed …? Who really killed Franz Ferdinand? Lincoln? Hitler? Gandhi? Pope John Paul I? JonBenet Ramsey? Martin Luther King? Malcolm X? Princess Di? Marilyn Monroe? Leon Trotsky in Mexico? Tsar Nicholas in St Petersburg?

Thanks for the millions of downloads. Topped by Who Really Killed JFK? Having killed off scores of silly conspiracy theories, I can confirm that the Warren Commission was a whitewash and that the person who ordered the hit was Lyndon Baines Johnson. Impatient at being a mere vice-president, he plotted to be POTUS. And given that he and RFK detested each other, LBJ was implicated in his killing too.

Which brings us to my latest and perhaps greatest: Who Really Killed Julius Caesar? But first, some context. ABC psephologist Antony Green doubles as our resident astrologer. This latter gift helps explain his uncanny ability to predict election outcomes. It was Antony who brought to my attention the fun fact that Julius Caesar and I share the same birthday, July 12. Mine was in 1939, his somewhat earlier. Antony showed me this astrological link on the Ides of March which, of course, passed recently.

There were oodles of eyewitnesses to Caesar’s slaying – but eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable, of course. In JC’s case everyone says the brute who committed the crime was Brutus. And that Caesar’s last words were “And you Brutus? Then I shall come a cropper.” Or words to that effect in Latin.

But I recently discovered Caesar’s bloodied garment in an evidence locker, and a DNA lab in Brisbane was able to establish that neither Brutus nor that lean and hungry Cassius did the crime. Shockingly, the evidence suggests the murder was carried out by JC’s alleged bestie, Mark Antony, so vividly portrayed by Marlon Brando in the 1953 Hollywood biopic.

Under Freedom of Information I also obtained fingerprint data from the FBI (the Forum Bureau of Investigation in Rome) with a 9-point match to Mark Antony. He had the chutzpah to stand over JC’s bleeding corpse and proclaim that he wasn’t there “to praise Caesar but to bury him’” – when in fact he’d committed his mentor’s murder! But how to explain all the eyewitness testimony? Identity theft. Antony disguised himself as Brutus.

My discoveries will demand the rewriting of history as well as one of Shakespeare’s finest plays. So be it. Let the cards fall where they may.

In my next true crime podcast I shall reveal the true identity of Jack the Ripper and, just as Jeffrey Epstein led us to Queen Elizabeth’s Prince Andrew, the Ripper evidence leads us to Queen Victoria’s Prince Albert. Long on the list of suspects, I prove him the guilty party Beyond Reasonable Doubt.

Which doubles as the title of my next true crime series.