Click on the image above to see a map of Sydney showing famous crime locations. Then click on any blue marker to find out more.
Fifty years ago, in the early morning of 28 May 1967, Lennie McPherson was enjoying a drink in the Latin Quarter nightclub at 250 Pitt Street Sydney. The Quarter was a posh joint, and served beer on ice in champagne buckets. Lennie was there with colleagues “Rattie Jack” Clarke and Anthony… Keep Reading
This Sunday, 11.15am, World Bar Kings Cross, the suburb’s biographer Louis Nowra hosts a conversation with Elizabeth Burton, stripper extraordinaire, and others, about the area’s lively past. Part of the Vivid Ideas program, for details and booking see: From the Horse’s Mouth. Burton was a bopping waitress at the Whisky a… Keep Reading
“Duffy and Hordern give the city the kicking it’s been asking for, and the city gives up all the secrets and all the bodies …” John Birmingham, author Leviathan: the unauthorized biography of Sydney See also Nick Hordern’s article in the Australian Financial Review. Keep Reading
Announcing the publication of the first ever true crime book devoted to the era of Lennie McPherson, Abe Saffron and George Freeman. It was the Wild West period of the Sydney underworld, turbo-charged by the prohibition of off-course gambling that meant most of the population was either breaking the law… Keep Reading
Sydney Crime Museum is honoured to announce a new exhibit, Dr Paul Loughnan’s thesis about the Askin government, in which he questions the received wisdom that Askin himself was not only deeply corrupt, but helped run the underworld for some eight years. This amazing allegation has been widely accepted since it… Keep Reading
The most powerful gangster ever killed in Sydney was casino boss Richard Reilly, gunned down by John Warren in June 1967. But the lead-up to that began on 22 April. Woollahra moneylender Charles Rennerson was an old man who’d run out of patience with two men who owed him a lot… Keep Reading
One of the most intriguing – and successful – of the younger crime novelists, Fox reportedly has been an avid reader of crime books since her early teens. Her first outing, Hades, showed the thriller-like treatment of the police procedural that is popular in America but which we haven’t seen… Keep Reading
In this riveting new book, Getting Away with Murder, Duncan McNab describes how from the late 1970s to the 1990s, 80 gay men died or disappeared in New South Wales, most the victims of gay hate crimes. Thirty of those cases remain unsolved, often on account of the refusal of police… Keep Reading
A new exhibition has just opened at Sydney Crime Museum containing the full report of the ground-breaking 1974 Moffitt Royal Commission, our first public inquiry into organised crime. Media reports by Bob Bottom, Tony Reeves and others had claimed the mafia had penetrated some of NSW’s many registered clubs. A reluctant… Keep Reading
A new exhibition has been opened in our temporary exhibition space. ‘Bushrangers’ looks at one of the most unusual and notorious groups of criminals ever to have plagued Australia. It debunks some myths – especially the idea any of them were Antipodean Robin Hoods – and investigates why most flourished… Keep Reading
