In the late 1980s and early 1990’s a series of violent murders took place near Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach. Three innocent men were attacked and thrown to their deaths from a cliff top. The murders were part of a much wider wave of violent hate crimes as gangs of youths roamed Sydney’s inner suburbs randomly bashing and killing gay men for sport. Among the victims at Bondi was Wollongong television newsreader, Ross Warren, a gay man who disappeared while visiting friends in Sydney in 1989. Ross Warren’s case was dismissed by police as a “probable accident”. But his mother conducted a long campaign to have her son’s disappearance finalised. Then, some ten years after he was first reported missing, Ross’s police file finally came to the desk of one courageous investigator who started to dig a little deeper. Detective Sergeant Stephen Page quickly realised that there was more to the Ross Warren case than was uncovered in the original investigation. The file contained a great many unanswered questions. As he read the file Detective Page began to uncover similarities with other murders and slowly the shocking pattern of violence and death began to emerge. Another murder victim was Bondi resident John Russell, a gay man who had inherited some money and was about to leave for the country to start a new life when his body was found at the foot of the Bondi cliffs.

A chilling investigation of John Ernest Cribb, who on August 11th 1978, broke into the home of the Connell's. On a winter’s afternoon, Valda Connell and her four-year-old son Damien arrived home after having collected ten-year-old Sally from school. What was as an average day for the family turned to horror when Valda and the children were confronted by a man brandishing a knife and ordering them back into the car. The man, John Ernest Cribb, had just a couple of months earlier been released on parole after serving about six years for armed robbery. As Cribb drove north towards Taree, on the NSW Mid North Coast, Valda pleaded to let her and her children go. Later, under the dark of night, Cribb raped the 39-year-old mother, while her two children remained in the car terrified, cold, and hungry. In the early hours of the next morning near the small town of Wingham, Cribb left the family gagged and bound in bushland next to a deserted road and then drove back south towards Newcastle. But his thoughts got the better of him as he began telling himself that Valda knew too much, and decided he must instead go back and silence her. He returns and with his knife, viciously slays the family, one by one…

Sallie-Anne Huckstepp and Juanita Nielsen were iconic figures in the shadowy King’s Cross scene of the 1970s and 1980s. They lived dangerous lives – challenging the status quo of the period and met with mysterious and violent deaths. Neither murder has been solved officially, but many decades later, the intrigue of both cases still scratches at the heart and psyche of the Harbour City. Can a credible witness with new information, may finally help solve one of Australia’s most enduring mysteries.

On July 10 2001 Sef Gonzales murdered his sister Clodine 18; mother Mary Loiva Josephine 43, and his father Teddy 46, in their North Ryde home. He claimed that he had discovered the bodies when he arrived home, and that racist graffiti was sprayed on the wall. However as more evidence was unearthed, police started to see Sef as a very likely suspect. It was revealed that Sef attempted to cover up his academic failure by falsifying results, and when his parents found out they threatened to withdraw certain privileges such as the use of his car. At the same time, he had argued with his mother over a girlfriend she had disapproved of. These along with the desire to inherit the family's fortune were established as strong motives for Gonzales killing his parents and sister.

For the 2008 launch of Crime Investigation Australia CI presents the complete and compelling story of "The Killing Fields of Truro", one of the most infamous crimes in Australia and yet another set in Adelaide. Seven young women disappeared in the 51 days between December 23, 1976 and February 12, 1977. James William Miller confessed that during this time he helped the man he loved, Christopher Robin Worrell, dispose of the bodies of the young women who Worrell had sexually assaulted and then murdered while Miller was waiting nearby. The skeletal remains of four of the victims were discovered in bush graves over a 12 month period in 1978-79 in the Truro district, 80 kilometres north-east of Adelaide.

On the night of May 4, 1982, 13-year-old Terry Ryan rushed into his family home in Marsden, a suburb of Brisbane, and told his mother an astonishing story. Terry said that he had been forced by two men to participate in the sexual assault and prolonged torture and murder of his best friend, 13 year old Peter Aston. He said he had buried Aston in a shallow grave in scrubland about 60 kilometres south, over the New South Wales border, near the seaside hamlet of Kingscliff. Belita Ryan immediately rang the police. Terry retold his story to Detectives of the Queensland Criminal Investigation Branch. At approximately 4:45 on the morning of May 5th, the detectives drove Terry and his mother over the border into New South Wales. Terry led his mother and the detectives along the sandy track into the scrub. After about 200 meters, the track opened onto a roughly cleared area and the tire tracks disappeared into bush land on the other side of it. "There ... in there," Terry Ryan said as he pointed into the foliage. "It's in there.". The detectives led the way, and as they entered the track, they came across a grave-sized mound of earth off to the north-east. It was covered with small tree branches and twigs obviously broken from the nearby trees. Terry stepped back into his mother's arms and began to cry as the police officers approached the ominous mound and examined the freshly turned earth. In the dawn light, they saw spots of blood in the sand and a large, wet, blood-soaked section in the centre of the raised soil. Lying in the sand at the head of the bush grave was a dark sock and a knife in a sheaf. What the police officers found beneath the mound almost defied their comprehension.

Crime Investigation Australia explores the murders of two teenage girls near the NSW town of Bega in 1997. 14-year-old Lauren Barry and 16-year-old Nichole Collins disappeared while walking towards home along the Snowy Mountains Highway. A huge manhunt by police and the girls’ families and friends failed to find any trace of them. The girls had been abducted by Leslie Camilleri and Lindsay Beckett who had a combined record of more than 200 convictions. The girls were driven several hundred kilometres across the border into Victoria during which they were repeatedly assaulted and raped, then tied-up and gagged before being murdered. This episode of CIA features detailed re-enactments and interviews with key figures, including the main investigating police from New South Wales and Victoria, and an exclusive interview with Nathan Barry, the brother of one of the murdered girls.

Rodney Francis Cameron was dubbed ‘The Lonely Hearts Killer’ after he used a radio match-making program in 1990 to lure an unsuspecting woman to her death. Incredibly, he had only just been released from prison for two other killings in 1974. Cameron’s psychopathic tendencies appeared early in his life. At the age of ten he tried to strangle a young girl. He then attempted to strangle two other women, and moved into a life of alcohol and drug abuse, including experimenting with hallucinogenic chemicals. He also dabbled in Satanism. At the age of 19, while working at a nursing home in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, he raped and strangled nurse Florence Jackson. The victim was left with a towel stuffed down her throat in what was to become his signature “mark of death”. A week later, heading south to Melbourne, he hitched a lift with a 19-year-old bank clerk, Francesco Ciliberto, whom he strangled with a football sock. A short time later, he was caught in Queensland after abducting a mother and daughter. He told arresting police he “had to kill three.” He was sentenced to prison for life and served 16 years. While incarcerated he married a lifelong friend named Anne. Soon after his release in 1990, he rang a late-night match-maker talkback program on radio 3AW Melbourne. He described himself as a non-smoker and non-drinker, Gemini marine biologist who was searching for a partner “willing to share his happiness”. Forty-four-year-old Maria Goellner was one of six women who responded to his call. A few weeks later Maria was found lying dead on a motel room floor in the Blue Mountains, the same area where Cameron had committed this first murder 16 years earlier. She had a handkerchief stuffed down her throat. The killer was jailed again for life, this time his file was marked “never to be released.” While in jail he allegedly made admissions to an informant indicating he had killed five additional victims, including two other women after his release from prison in 1990. Police believe he was almost certainly responsible for the 1974 murder of elderly Sydney woman Sarah McKenzie, but there was not enough information to take that case to trial or to identify any of the other alleged victims.

The quick mind of a country telephone exchange supervisor led to a horrific discovery at a NSW country homestead in 1978. The supervisor had been checking complaints that the phone line to “Summerfield” station, near the southern town of Jerilderie, was out of order. Living at the old homestead was a celebrated “gun” shearer Mick Lewis, his wife Sue and their two small children. After trying the line off and on for several hours it was finally answered by a tiny girl who said her mother and father were sleeping. When asked to wake her mother the child replied in a faltering voice: “I don’t like Mummy anymore ‘cause Mummy’s turning black”.

CI delves into the twisted mind of one of Australia's most prolific serial murderers. John Wayne Glover, The Granny Killer, was truly an evil man. Glover's terrifying random attacks, targeting defenceless elderly women on Sydney's lower North Shore, would leave an indelible stain on the city. Hear the compelling story surrounding the hunt for the Granny Killer and his eventual arrest and trial.

CI examines two notorious abduction cases. The first case is the Graeme Thorne ransom kidnapping at Bondi in 1960. Thorne, aged eight was the son of winners of the Sydney Opera House Lottery. The second case is the recent Daniel Morecombe Queensland case that still remains unsolved. Crime Investigation Australia has secured exclusive interviews that shed new light on both of these infamous cases that stunned the nation.

Crime Investigation Australia examines the Dr. Victor Chang extortion murder as well as the horrific Jane Doe Case where a girl is found lying on the side of the road of an inner Sydney suburb wrapped in two plastic garbage bags.

The backpacker murder case in the Belanglo State Forest, south west of Sydney, has entered Australian criminal folklore. The brutal murders of seven young people, most of them overseas tourists hitchhiking around Australia, attracted international media attention. The remains of their bodies were uncovered in 1992. The arrest and conviction of Ivan Milat would catapult him to Australia's worst individual serial killer. It is believed that Milat was involved in several other killings and there is strong evidence that he didn't act alone.

Crime Investigation Australia has conducted a major investigation which reveals the inside story of the Megan Kalajzich murder and the extraordinary Police investigation which will rock the Harbour City's elite to the core. We also detail the true horror of one of Australia's most ghastly crimes, the heartbreak and anguish faced by investigators and interviews with several of the last people to ever see Anna Kemp and her daughter Gracie alive.

We investigate the story of David and Catherine Birnie, Australia's most sadistic husband and wife killing team who tortured, raped and murdered four women in 1986. We also look into the murder of Call Girl Roslyn Watson which had remained unsolved for more than 15 years and would have stayed that way if it wasn't for the tenacious efforts of a bright young Western Australian Police Detective.

Sometime on the evening of October 19, 1990, the flamboyantly gay Sydney socialite Ludwig Gertsch was strangled with an elastic strap in the bedroom of his lover, Mr Vincent Esposito. His body was found, wrapped in a doona, in Blue Mountains scrub on November 11, 1990. In September 1994 a Sydney Coroner found that Ludwig Gertsch was strangled "by a person or persons unknown". But that's where the murder trail ends - his killer has never been brought to justice. The murder of Allen Hall at Warnervale, where he lived with Christine Hicks, the estranged wife of boxing mentor and horse trainer Cec Waters, presented a curious public with a cruel and twisted story. Water’s eldest son, Dean, eventually was charged with Hall’s murder. However, it would be revealed later that Dean had succumbed to his father’s demands. Cec Waters was depicted as a bullying, obsessive father, who was determined to make his three sons become boxing champions but slaves to his evil will.

In February 1986, nurse Anita Cobby, a former entrant in the Miss Australia quest, is walking home from Blacktown station in Sydney's outer-western suburbs. A Holden sedan pulls up and Anita is dragged into the vehicle. She is taken to a lonely spot where five young men take turns to bash and rape her. Finally her throat is cut, almost severing her head, and her body is left in a paddock. The five men are later caught and convicted of these despicable crimes and sent to jail for life, their papers are marked "never to be released". But something positive will come out of this appalling and deeply disturbing story, as Anita's grieving parents begin a support group for the families of murder victims, offering comfort and mutual help for more than 1000 loved ones of homicide victims.

In 1999, eight bodies are found in six barrels filled with acid in a former bank vault in rural Snowtown, 50 kilometres north of Adelaide. Their investigation was to lead police to discover another four victims, in and around Adelaide. Four men were charged with murder and other offences. Eventually it was proven that 11 were murdered and another woman severely dismembered. The horrific murders that occurred over a 7-year period involve torture, dismemberment, even cannibalism.

For the first time the complete story of one of Australia's most horrific serial murderers is finally revealed. Almost twenty years ago in June 1987 a crazed gunman begins a journey which will take him thousands of kilometres across the vast Australian outback. The killer's journey will result in the murders of five innocent tourists, spark one of the biggest manhunts in Australian history and end in a bloody last stand shootout with police at a remote outpost deep in the rugged Kimberly ranges of Australia's north. Before it is over, thousands of residents living in communities scattered across the country's Top End will be terrorised.

CI investigates into two of the most infamous unsolved mysteries in Australian criminal history are examined in The Wanda Beach Murders and The Beaumont Children Mystery.In 1965, when Australian teenage culture was centred on sun, sand, and surf, the nation was shocked by the brutal bashing, rape and murder of two 15-year-old girls in the sand hills at Sydney's Wanda Beach. A massive police hunt failed to find the killer but now, more than 40 years later, there is growing evidence that he could be a known psychotic murderer. A year later, on an Australia Day outing to a beach in Adelaide, three small children, Jane, Arnna, and Grant Beaumont, disappeared suddenly and without a trace. Were they abducted by the man seen playing with them at the beach, or were they buried in an accident, as claimed by a world-famous clairvoyant who was flown to Adelaide from Europe by the media and concerned local citizens? Are they still alive?

The small hamlet of Greenough, near Geraldton, in Western Australia, some 400 kilometres north of Perth, will forever be associated with one the most horrific murders in Australian criminal history. In 1993, Karen MacKenzie and her three small children were violently murdered at their isolated house. The brutal and random nature of the attack was eerily similar to "In Cold Blood", Truman Capote's world-famous study of a family murder in an isolated house in America.When the Greenough killer was finally tracked down, charged and convicted, much of the evidence was too horrific to be made public.

A small group of local criminals, with mafia connections, were making vast fortunes in the famous NSW Riverina irrigation district from marijuana plantations. Corrupt police and a vast bribery network had kept the drug barons immune from prosecution until Donald Mackay's campaign finally led to raids by the State drug squad and several local marijuana growers were arrested and fined. During their trial the police informant was named publicly as Donald Mackay. Infuriated by the loss of more than $40 million, the leaders of the Griffith mafia, including the notorious Robert Aussie Bob Trimbole, put out a contract for Mackay's murder. Trimbole was shot in the car park of a Griffith hotel on a Friday night in July, 1977. The murder scene was awash with his blood and evidence showed he was shot a number of times from behind and his body then dumped into a car boot and driven away. Intensive investigations by police and even a Royal Commission have failed to locate it.

Hosted by Steve Liebmann, The Body In The Sports Bag explores the disappearance and brutal murder of Sydney teenager, Lyndsay Van Blanken. This chilling episode features detailed re-enactments, interviews with key homicide detectives and heartbreaking accounts from Lyndsay's family and friends. The gripping special also features an exclusive emotional interview with Brandon Leonard, Lyndsay's American fiancé.

John Paul Newman was a member of the New South Wales state parliament and Member of the seat of Cabramatta. He was the first politician to be assassinated in Australia. For many years Newman had been waging a campaign to break up the Asian crime gangs and corruption that had plagued the area. He had been the target of numerous death threats from such gangs but did not seek police protection. During the night of September 5, 1994 while outside his Woods Avenue home, he was shot and killed. His fiancée, Lucy Wang, was with him at the time but saw little of what happened because of the swiftness of the murder. A local nightclub owner, Phuong Ngo, who had previously attempted to secure Labor Party pre-selection for the seat, was convicted of the killing in 2001. Two of Ngo's associates escaped convictions. In 2003, an appeal by Ngo against the conviction failed.

This episode revisits Adelaide’s notorious Adelaide Family Murders case, where six young Adelaide men were murdered during the 1970’s and 80’s. The victims were found in random locations throughout the state, their bodies neatly cut into pieces. Although each attack and mutilation appeared different, police investigators soon began to link the horrific murders to one another. Media frenzy ripped through Australia when the similarities to each killing became public knowledge. Media speculated that the murders involved a group of high profile Adelaide men including politicians, religious leaders and judges who allegedly paid young men for sex and then drugged and used them for pleasure. The media dubbed the group The Family and from then on the case was referred to as the Adelaide Family Murders.