The horrific story of killers Allan Baker and Kevin Crump who began their murderous spree in rural NSW by killing a complete stranger for $20, a packet of cigarettes and a couple of litres of petrol. They then kidnapping Virginia Morse, a young mother of three, raped and tortured her as they drove to Queensland. Virginia's torture ended there when she was tied to a tree and shot. In the wake of their 1973 trial, the Australian public was left to ponder whether the two men were insane, or, even more chilling, whether their deeds were the result of rational minds gone astray. Shortcomings in Australian Criminal law were exposed because as Virginia Morse was killed in Queensland, New South Wales authorities could not charge the pair with her murder. Not wanting to extradite the two men, New South Wales police chose to charge them with conspiracy to murder Virginia Morse. Fortunately the New South Wales prosecutors didn't have to rely only on the Morse allegations. Their list of crimes also included the murder of Ian Lamb, the stranger, as well as wounding a policeman, as well as car theft.

In 1959 the carefree culture of Perth changed forever when a plague of crime hit the city. By early 1963 the crime wave had escalated to serial murder. A couple were shot at as they sat in their car. In separate incidents two men were shot and killed at point blank range as they slept. Another was shot between the eyes as he opened his front door. A young woman was strangled to death and raped. An 18-year-old babysitter was executed as she studied and listened to music in front of the fire. All this was the work of one man: Eric Edgar Cooke.

In 1981, the headless and fingerless body of 19-year-old Kim Narelle Barry was found dumped in the bush at a mountain lookout near Wollongong, south of Sydney. Kim’s head and fingers were later found in bushland some distance from the lookout and damage to the skull showed she had been bludgeoned to death. Then, by chance, detectives discovered that on the night she died Kim had been in the company of a local miner, 24-year-old Graham Potter, who had suddenly disappeared. A national manhunt led to his eventual surrender. Potter was convicted of Kim Barry’s murder and sentenced to life imprisonment. No motive was ever established for the killing and Potter, who was released in 1996 after serving 15 years, still declares he is innocent.

On a September night in 1986, two police officers climbed through a barbed-wire fence beside the F4 freeway at Minchinbury in Sydney’s west. They were accompanied by two teenage boys who guided them to the edge of a shallow dam where the beams from torches outlined the body of a young woman lying in the mud. She was later identified as nineteen-year-old Sydney bank clerk, Janine Balding. She had been abducted, raped, beaten and drowned. The shock was compounded when police arrested the gang responsible and found their youngest member was just 14 years old. The others present were a boy and girl both aged 15, a 16-year-old boy, and their leader, 21-year old Stephen “Shorty” Jamieson, who despite his physical maturity had the mental age of 10. It appears the gang was seeking to impress each other with their toughness when they set out to rape a woman. They selected Janine at random.

This chilling CIA episode details the long and difficult investigation which began with the disappearance of 18-year-old secretary Sarah Spiers from a night club in the up-market Perth suburb of Claremont on Australia Day, 1996. The new information has been kept secret by police until now for fear its release could jeopardise the investigation. Now, for the first time, it's being shown to the public and viewers will be asked to look closely and to call Crimestoppers if they believe they can help.

Serial killer Leonard Fraser was suspected of killing at least five women over a 17 year period but took the complete truth about his life of crime to his grave. Fraser was convicted of the murders of three people, including a 9 year old girl and the manslaughter of another woman.

The bloodied, semi-naked body of 30-year-old Donna Wheeler is discovered by her estranged husband Keith Bond and 12-year-old son. Donna had been brutally beaten and stabbed and when police investigate they discover that Donna’s estranged husband is a suspect but evidence also points to Keith’s brother Colin. Which brother really killed Donna Wheeler?

Hosted by Steve Liebmann, this episode of Crime Investigation Australia features detailed re-enactments and interviews with key figures, including the head of the police investigation, local Norfolk Island residents as well as intimate interviews with Janelle Patton’s mother and father. 29-year-old Patton had been stabbed to death in a frenzied attack that had left more than 60 wounds from her head to her feet. She had multiple bruises and broken bones and it was clear she had bravely fought back against a sustained attack. What followed were years of difficult investigations plagued by numerous false leads based mainly on gossip and innuendo. By the time the coroner’s inquiry opened two years later no less than 16 persons of interest had been investigated by the man in charge of the case, Detective Sergeant Bob Peters. The naming of the 16 caused a furore of resentment and distress among the islanders. Eventually a 28-year-old chef named Glenn McNeill who had left the island a few months after the murder to return to his native New Zealand was arrested. But forensic investigators said Janelle’s injuries did not match McNeill’s story. He was later convicted and sentenced to 24 years in prison. The crime was also touted as the subject of a potential telemovie.

On 27 November, 1987, 12-year-old Noosa school girl, Sian Kingi was grabbed off her push bike by Valmae Fay Beck and Barrie John Watts as she rode home from school. Beck and Watts gagged the innocent, terrified child. Watts then raped and bashed her. He then callously, and without remorse, cut her throat while his cowardly wife and mother of six watched on. Six days later, a fruit picker discovered Sian's mutilated body, still dressed in her Year Seven Sunshine Beach School uniform, in a creek bed. The hunt for the killers and their arrest was led by Bob Atkinson, now Queensland's police commissioner. As a result of thorough and dedicated police work by Queensland detectives, and in concert with New South Wales police, Beck and Watts were located hiding in a motel at Long Jetty on the NSW Central Coast a few weeks later. Police believe Beck and Watts are linked to the murders of Sharron Phillips, 20, in Brisbane's outer west, Stella Mary Farrugia, 19, and Louise Bell, 10, in Adelaide. In 1995, Watts was convicted of the manslaughter of 31-year-old student, Helen Mary Feeney in late 1987. Beck gave evidence against Watts, though Ms Feeney’s body has never been found. In 2008 Beck was hospitalised and underwent heart surgery, but later died in hospital.

Michael Kanaan was an angry young man in a hurry to make a name for himself in Sydney’s underworld. But his volatile temper and penchant for violence soon led him to kill three men before he was finally captured in a wild shootout with Sydney police. Born in Australia in 1975 to Lebanese parents he grew up following American crime gang culture in films and music. As a teenager he moved into petty theft and assault before his first arrest, for drug possession, in his early twenties. Despite being given a suspended sentence and a two-year good behaviour bond, he was soon in trouble again, this time for common assault, for which he escaped with a fine. He quickly returned to drug dealing and his gang - known as ‘DK’s boys’ - made huge profits distributing cocaine in Sydney’s Kings Cross. His reputation grew and by 1998, at age 23, he had become a lieutenant to organised crime figure Danny Karam. Although outwardly courteous and well spoken, Michael Kanaan had an uncontrollable temper and did not hesitate to use violence to settle disputes. In July 1998, he made a passing comment to some people involved in a fight outside the Five Dock Hotel in Sydney’s inner west. When one of them approached him, Kanaan suddenly drew a pistol and shot two men dead. His attempt to shoot a third failed as he had run out of bullets. A few months later, Kanaan led his gang in a drive-by shooting attack on the police station at Lakemba in Sydney in which the building was sprayed with bullets. Soon afterwards he organised the brutal execution of his underworld boss, Danny Karam in December 1998. He was finally cornered by police and arrested after a shoot-out in inner city Rushcutters Bay in which Constable Chris Patrech was wounded.

The highest ranking police officer in Australia to be murdered, Assistant Federal Police Commissioner Colin Winchester was shot twice in the head at point blank range as he was getting out of his car outside his Deakin home on January 10, 1989. At the time of his death Winchester was the Chief of Police in ACT region. He had served in the law enforcement of 27 years, firstly with the Australian Capital Territory Police Force and then in the Australian Federal Police after its formation in 1979. The shock of his death and the long investigation which followed left a lasting imprint on his fellow officers as they struggled to bring the killer to justice.

The notorious baby-faced underworld figure who police believe killed 10 people pleaded guilty to the murders of Mark Malia (August 2003), Jason Moran (June 2003) and Lewis Moran (March 2004). He was killed in April 19, 2010 with extreme violence by a prison inmate whilst serving 35 years in a maximum security prison for these murders. He had previously been found guilty of the murder of Michael Marshall, who was shot dead outside his Toorak home in October 2003. The murders occurred at the height of Melbourne's notorious gangland war that raged between 1998 and 2006, leaving 27 dead. Williams mother, Barbara, publicly defended her son after his jailing and berated the trial judge. The Moran family had dominated Melbourne's criminal world for more than a decade when Williams vowed to wipe them out. In November 2007, Carl’s father, George, was jailed for a minimum of 20 months for a massive drug trafficking operation which he carried out with his son. Over two and half years Carl made about $500,000 selling methamphetamine. George, now 63, lives in suburban Broadmeadows, Melbourne, and suffers from chronic heart disease, diabetes, anxiety and depression. Barbara committed suicide at her Essendon home in December 2008, and their other son Shane died of a heroin overdose aged 31.

Painter and docker, Les Kane was described by his widow, Judi, as "the most violent man in Australia". Les came to prominence when he declared war on the armed robber Ray Chuck, the mastermind of what is known as the Great Bookie Robbery in 1976. But Chuck struck first. Les was machine-gunned by Chuck, within a few feet of his horrified wife and children in their Wantirna home and his body removed and never found. Les’s older brother, Brian Kane, was once Melbourne's top standover man, before he was gunned down in the Quarry Hotel in Brunswick in November, 1982. Mourners at his funeral included the entire Moran clan. Kane's niece Trish later married Jason Moran, who was shot dead with Pasquale Barbaro in 2004. Judi Kane today speaks of how she fell for a man whose cocky self-assurance hid a psychopathic streak. By the time she realised they would never live happily ever after, she was in too deep. Billy Longley is a veteran of the waterside crime war that gripped Melbourne and Sydney finally ended in the early 1980s, it was a war that led to at least 40 people being murdered. Longley, one of the most feared men on the docks, was known as "The Texan" because he wore a Stetson and carried a Colt .45. He was a Painters and Dockers Union presidential candidate and the leader of a union faction at war with his rival, Pat Shannon. In 1970, Longley was convicted in connection with Australia's biggest armed robbery to that time, the Mayne Nicholas heist in the Sydney suburb of Guildford, which netted $587,870. He disappeared in 1973 and a few months later Pat Shannon was gunned down in a South Melbourne's Hotel. Longley, Kevin James Taylor, Gary Leslie Harding were convicted of Shannon's manslaughter. . Now aged 83 Longley lives quietly in suburban Melbourne, he goes ballroom dancing and counsels school children against getting involved in violence.

One eyed crime matriarch Kath Pettingill mothered a brood of 10 children, many of whom variously went to early graves, prison or witness protection. She has a string of convictions and wrote an autobiography titled “The Matriarch” She is reported to have offered $20,000 for the testicles of an undercover detective who infiltrated her crime family. Her family included: DENNIS ALLEN, SON: one of the most feared drug dealers in Melbourne. Nicknamed ‘Mr. Death’ or ‘Mr. D’, he was believed to have been involved in up to 13 underworld murders including members of his own family. He’s been blamed for the dismembering of a Hells Angels biker with a chainsaw. He died in 1987, aged 35. VICTOR GEORGE PEIRCE, SON - A member notorious armed robber who was one of four men charged and acquitted of the ambush murders of two young police constables in Walsh Street, South Yarra, on October 12, 1988. At age 42, Peirce would meet his end, becoming a victim of the Gangland killings, shot dead in 2002. Pierce’s defacto, Wendy Peirce, told a newspaper in 2007 that her husband had organised the Walsh Street killings as payback for the death of his friend Graeme Jensen, who was shot dead in Narre Warren by police the day before. TREVOR PETTINGILL, SON - Born February 16, 1965, Trevor's experience of institutions began when he was six years old. He was put under state supervision because he was seen to be in moral danger. Trevor became a hardened career criminal. In 1987, with mother Kath, he pleaded guilty to heroin possession. Trevor was also charged with the murders of the two policemen in Walsh St in 1988. PETER JOHN ALLEN, SON - has multiple convictions for rape, armed robbery, drug trafficking and other offences, and spent 28 years behind bars. JASON RYAN, NEPHEW - Jason moved in with his uncle Dennis Allen during the height of his heroin empire and was apparently used as a carrier of drugs and guns. Jason became a witness for the prosecution in the trial of his uncle for the Walsh St murders.

The torrid details of the notorious Milat family are explored in this episode. Members of the family continue to support Ivan Milat, the nation's worst serial killer. Clearly, this is a family with “ issues”. According to one report, Ivan's brother Boris’s wife Marilyn was having an affair with Ivan and Boris believed that Marilyn fell pregnant to Ivan. When he sought advice from his father, he was encouraged to kill Ivan. Boris says Ivan lacks a soul and a conscience. He says his brother has been a psychopath from his earliest school days and always had a fascination with guns. Boris's comments have sparked a feud within his family, some of whom have reportedly made death threats against him. Carolyn Milat, says her brother Ivan does not have a secret side to him and was always genuine, but another brother, Bill Milat, has said that if Ivan is guilty, then he should be executed. When the trial judge suggested more than one person took part in the killings, Ivan’s younger brother, Richard Milat, publicly denied he had assisted Ivan.

Les, Michael and Gary Murphy, brothers from an Irish family of nine children, were three of the five men convicted of the savage rape and murder of Sydney nurse and beauty queen, Anita Cobby, which sparked calls for the reintroduction of the death penalty. The others were John Travers and Michael Murdoch. Michael Murphy, 33 at the time of the murder, was the eldest of the nine Murphy children. He had been sent to live with his grandmother when he was 12. His brother Gary Murphy was five years younger. Hearing impairment affected Gary Murphy's schooling and he left early to seek work. His strong interest in cars led to him facing several automotive theft related charges in the years before the murder. He was also known to have a very violent temper. Leslie Joseph Murphy was the youngest of the Murphy children, but was known as having the worst temperament. He had faced Children's Court on many occasions for a number of theft-related offences and was 24 at the time of the Cobby murder. Travers was a depraved 18-year-old who had grown up in a dysfunctional family in the outer suburbs of Sydney. He shared his blood with best mate Michael Murdoch in a ceremony that made them so-called blood brothers. The five are serving life sentences for the murder.

David & Catherine Birnie were a Perth couple who embarked on a depraved killing spree in Perth in 1988. Together they would cruise the city’s streets picking up unsuspecting young women who were then kidnapped raped and murdered. It was only after their final victim staged a courageous escape and exposed the House of Horrors that the killer couple were arrested and jailed for life. David later committed suicide in jail. Catherine makes regular appeals to be released on parole. This episode looks into the family backgrounds of both killers and includes an exclusive interview with David Birnie’s first wife, and others who knew the couple when they were children.

Lennie McPherson controlled most of Sydney's organised crime activity for several decades, with his associate George Freeman. Lenny was born in the inner-Sydney suburb of Balmain in 1921, the tenth child of metalworker William McPherson and his wife Nellie. He had some schooling at Birchgrove Primary School and his first brush with the law came at the age of 11 when he was convicted of stealing. Eighteen months later he was convicted on two charges of stealing and sent to a detention centre where he was bashed and raped. He went on to a life of serious crime and was universally feared by his adversaries and often referred to as Sydney's ‘Mr Big’ of organised crime, protected by police who relied on his information to control the Sydney underworld. McPherson had been estranged from his mother for many years, but on her 70th birthday, he unexpectedly turned up at her flat, carrying a live rabbit. He demanded to know why he had not been invited to her birthday party, and when she admitted that it was because of his criminal activities, the furious McPherson tore the rabbit's head off, threw the still-twitching body at her feet and stormed off. He died of a heart attack in Cessnock Gaol in 1996, aged 75. George Freeman was king of Sydney’s SP bookies, and was involved with McPherson in massive money laundering operations on Sydney race tracks and the corruption of Sydney chief magistrate Murray Farquar. During the 1970s George Freeman, was shot with a .22 pistol. but survived, and less than six weeks later the man suspected of the shooting was himself shot dead in the driveway of his Coogee home. Freeman, who was holidaying in Noosa at the time, refused to answer questions on the matter.

Dubbed ‘Mr. Sin’, and ‘the Boss of the Cross’, Abe Saffron ruled his family with an iron fist. A tireless womaniser, he even had his son, Alan, committed to the infamous Chelmsford Psychiatric Hospital, and denied him access to his own children. Saffron’s alleged criminal activities included illegal alcohol sales, dealing in stolen goods, illegal gambling, prostitution, drug dealing, bribery, extortion and murder. Most charges laid against him involved minor firearms or liquor licensing offences but late in his life he finally served seventeen months in jail for tax evasion. He died in 2006, aged 86.

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”.

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.

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?

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.

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.