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.
Memoir by detective who in 1971 released true crime statistics to the Sydney Morning Herald. For years the NSW Police had been lying about the real level of crime and the clear-up rate. Following the leak, Arantz was sent (briefly) to a psychiatric institution by outraged Police Commissioner Norman Allan,… Keep Reading
McNab says that from the late 1970s to the 1990s, 80 gay men died or disappeared in Sydney, most the victims of gay hate crimes. Thirty of those cases remain unsolved, often on account of the refusal of police to investigate properly at the time for reasons of prejudice. Despite… Keep Reading
Hickie’s book presents an interesting challenge for historians. Published in 1985, its claim that Premier Robert Askin was corrupt, coming after Hickie’s article to that effect in the David Marr-edited National Times in 1981, had an enormous impact and has been believed ever since. The evidence for this is circumstantial. All… Keep Reading
The partly burned body of the so-called “pyjama girl” was found in countryside near Albury in 1934. Eventually she would be identified as Florence Agostini, murdered by her husband Antonio. Evans says doubts remain on both counts. He brings to his sophisticated treatment of the subject appropriate insights into its cultural and… Keep Reading
In the early 1990s Clive Small led the investigation into the murders of seven backpackers that resulted in the arrest and conviction of Ivan Milat. It is one of the most notorious set of crimes in Australian history. Small says he was misrepresented in the TV drama series about the… Keep Reading
IN 1838 11 convicts killed 28 Aboriginal people at Myall Creek, in an event that was sadly not all that rare. What was rare was that some were prosecuted. What was almost unique is that some were even punished for their terrible crimes. NSW Senior Crown Prosecutor Mark Tedeschi has… Keep Reading
Very moving account of one of Australia’s worst murders by Daily Telegraph crime editor Mark Morri. Morri was a young reporter for the Daily Mirror when former beauty queen Cobby was abducted and killed in 1986, in one of those crimes that literally “shocked the nation” and has continued to do… Keep Reading
Published to coincide with the seminal exhibition of the same name held by the Justice & Police Museum in 2010, this is the best brief introduction to corruption in 20th century Sydney. The illustrations are sensational. Girling-Butcher produced an equally superb documentary to accompany the exhibition, which sadly cannot be seen… Keep Reading
Definitive account of the investigation into the so-called “backpacker murders” in the 1990s after seven victims were found in the Belanglo State Forest south of Sydney. The investigation was led by detective Clive Small and the serial killer was Ivan Milat. Like many serious criminals, Milat came from a family… Keep Reading
Drug Traffic, Al McCoy’s magisterial history of Australian organised crime from the beginning, concluded in 1980. Smack Express takes the story through to the end of the century and describes how organised crime became involved in the growing drug trade from the late 1970s. It covers major figures and developments… Keep Reading
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