Shortcut: Strange Investigations with Charlie Bezzina

Summary

Australian True Crime – Shortcut: Strange Investigations with Charlie Bezzina

Podcast: Australian True Crime
Host: Meshel Laurie
Guest: Charlie Bezzina (retired Victoria Police detective)
Date: February 15, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this gripping shortcut episode, host Meshel Laurie sits down with legendary former detective Charlie Bezzina to explore some of the most bizarre and perplexing cases of his decades-long career with Victoria Police. Together, they pull back the curtain on investigations where the truth defied expectation—cases that at first glance screamed murder, only to reveal far more complex, and sometimes tragic, realities beneath the surface. Listeners are reminded that Australia’s quietest suburbs can harbor the strangest mysteries, further proving that ‘you never know what goes on next door.’

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Case of the Eccentric Elderly Woman

[00:58–08:39]

• Scene Description:

  • Discovery of a deceased elderly woman in her yard—legs splayed, no underwear, face covered with a towel, and severely decomposed; signs pointing to a possible sexual homicide.
  • Clues: Blood trail up the driveway, a single shoe, symmetrical facial fractures, no forced entry, and her known eccentric behaviors.

• Investigation Details:

  • Entomologist consulted for time of death; neighbors confirm she lived alone, had peculiar habits (nightly “climbing” escapades, collecting items from yards).
  • Forensics struggle due to advanced decomposition; the pathologist indecisive, suggesting accident or murder.

• Key Analysis:

  • Charlie Bezzina:
    • “Here we have symmetrical fractures on the face. Like you got a fry pan, something flat and hit this woman. So the pathologist said, Charlie, it's an accident or it's a murder.” [04:32]
    • He pieces together her routine—tying gates with towels, climbing fences, sometimes losing shoes.

• Resolution:

  • Accidentally fell, face-first, onto concrete after climbing a fence; attempted to return to the house, dropping keys on the “blind side” as she often did; succumbed to injuries outdoors.
  • Evidence (house keys buried in lawn, towel from gates used to staunch bleeding, her history of eccentric behaviors) supports this accidental scenario.

• Memorable Moment:

  • Meshel Laurie: “But again, a classic example of thinking, who would do that? I don't know. She did.” [05:51]
  • Bezzina: “I was more than happy the circumstances. I found where the evidence took me.” [07:26]

• Conclusion:

  • Ruled “misadventure/accident,” not homicide.
  • Memorable Quote:
    • Bezzina: “Always expect the unexpected.” [00:58]

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2. The Young Woman, the Loose Phone Cord, and an Overdose

[09:38–12:42]

• Scene Description:

  • Country town: Young woman found bound (loosely) by phone cord, naked, with apparent bruising, in a disordered house.

• Investigation Details:

  • Evidence of drinking and drug use (empty Jim Beam cans, Serepax medication).
  • Interview with partner uncovered arguments but no evidence of sexual assault or forced entry.
  • Pathology confirms bruises likely from substance-related accidents, not violence.

• Key Analysis:

  • Meshel Laurie: “I think the Serepax and the Jim Beam are accounting for that. Bumping into things.” [12:33]
  • Charlie Bezzina: Points out how the phone cord entanglement was accidental, not a binding meant to restrain or harm.

• Resolution:

  • Death ruled as drug overdose—no homicide.
  • Importance of considering context and forensics together when scene suggests foul play.

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3. The Locked Cupboard and Ingenious Suicide

[12:42–17:58]

• Scene Description:

  • Missing elderly man reported; found dead in a locked wooden cupboard in the backyard, in pajamas, with hands and feet tied, a plastic bag over his head, and a small LPG gas bottle inside the bag.
  • Padlocked cupboard, one slide bolt locked from inside via string.

• Investigation Details:

  • The setup at first suggested potential homicide: elaborate restraints, locked compartment, gas inhalation.
  • Further inspection uncovered a suicide note explaining inability to live without his recently deceased wife.
  • Ingenious methods used to irrevocably lock himself in.

• Key Analysis:

  • Bezzina: “Would an offender go through all this process of doing that?... He wants to make sure. He doesn't want to change his mind.” [17:22]
  • Forensic findings showed no injury beyond gas inhalation, and all evidence pointed to a highly premeditated suicide.

• Resolution:

  • Officially determined to be suicide; example of the extraordinary lengths individuals may go to close off escape in suicide attempts.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Never, always expect the unexpected... because my name's on it. I've got to stand by it.”
  – Charlie Bezzina [00:58]

• “Who would do that? I don't know. She did.”
  – Meshel Laurie [05:51]

• “A lot of times you can't explain a lot of things.”
  – Charlie Bezzina [04:50]

• “I was more than happy the circumstances. I found where the evidence took me.”
  – Charlie Bezzina [07:26]

• “They’re the traitors. Say an offender wouldn’t be smart enough to set up this intricately.”
  – Charlie Bezzina [17:50]

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:58 – 08:39: Case of the eccentric elderly woman (misadventure vs. murder)
• 09:38 – 12:42: Young woman’s overdose and investigation into suspicious scene
• 12:42 – 17:58: Ingeniously executed suicide in the locked cupboard

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Episode Tone and Takeaways

Throughout the episode, Meshel Laurie and Charlie Bezzina maintain a thoughtful, respectful tone while remaining open-minded and skeptical of assumptions. Bezzina’s experience shines in his insistence that truth in investigation rarely matches expectations—and that apparent crime scenes often mask much sadder, stranger personal realities.

Major Takeaway:
Even veteran investigators must “expect the unexpected.” Careful attention to forensic detail, context, and human behavior is paramount in true crime, and the most baffling cases are often solved by digging beyond surface assumptions.

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Transcript

[A]

This is Australian True Crime with Michelle Laurie. And as promised, we are back today with the legendary Charlie Bazina. But this time you can watch the interview in full living colour if you want by checking out the Australian True Crime YouTube channel. There is of course a link in the show notes. Charlie is here to talk about some of the stranger and more unpredictable investigations he was part of the during his decades as a detective with Victoria Police. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung People of the Kulin Nation and a warning. This episode of the podcast contains graphic descriptions of violence. I'm always sus when people go, oh, you wouldn't do that. You just wouldn't do that. Who would do that? Nobody would do that. And I think I. People do some really unexpected things under pressure. Exactly.

[B]

And never, always expect the unexpected. And I've got to be satisfied, you know, what with different ones and. Cause my name's on it. I've got to stand by it.

[A]

This first case that you wanted to talk about is a fascinating one because on the face of it, and I shouldn't use the word on the face of it, because this elderly lady's face was severely injured.

[B]

Fractured. Yeah, yeah.

[A]

So, but it turned. There was a twist. Tell us about him.

[B]

Well, it was February, height of summer. We get a call. There's a deceased elderly female on the blind side of her house, lying on her back. She's wearing a skirt, her legs are splayed open, there's a towel, a face washer on the face and it's pretty well decomposed. It was maggot infested. I only say that not for shock value, but that becomes part and process of the investigation. So, yeah, very sinister. And we've got a blood trail up the driveway and a shoe, a female shoe on the driveway. We arrive at the scene, we have a look at the crime scene. We look at. There's a blood trail up the driveway, there's a shoe. There's two wrought iron gates at the end of the driveway. One wrought iron gates open. We go around to the blind side of the house. Sure enough, as described, there's a female.

[A]

Was she found by neighbors? How was this?

[B]

Yeah, yeah, right, yeah. And the other twist to it, she didn't have any underwear on. So from experience you do know that as an investigator, that one trait is when a female has been assaulted, let's say a rape, or that then leads to a death or they Want to rape a person post mortem that they don't want to look at the face, they'll put a covering over the face. Here we've got a covering over the face, legs sprayed open, no underwear. Well, you think of the sinister. We then start your investigation. You want to learn as much as you can about the deceased person. Ultimately, woman lived on her own. So we processed the crime scene and part and parcel of processing that crime scene and as you see in the movies, time of death becomes an issue critical for us. Here we have a body that's infested with maggots. Then you know as an investigator that we may be able to get a time span on the, these maggots being, or the eggs being laid by the blowfly. So we bring an entomologist in and she collected the maggots from the body. We then start our investigation. We then talk to neighbors, et cetera. She had no relatives, lived on her own. There's no forced entry into the house because of the severe decomposition. He can't look at any bruising or issues, nothing significant. We got gaping wounds or anything like that. So we don't, we can't remove clothing at the scene, leave it in situ. We process the crime scene. We then learn that she lived on her own. Bit eccentric, this lady. And we learned that she was a prolific climber. She'd been found on outside garages, in backyards. She would have a shopping trolley, she'd go to house to house at nighttime pinching pavers, gnomes, shoes, whatever might be in the front yard. So we start building this picture up. So we get the body back to the coroner's court and the pathologist does the post mortem pathologist comes back and like any expert, a lot of them have an each way bet. So we come back, he's unable to tell us where she's been sexually assaulted because of the decomposition. He tells us her there's symmetrical fractures to the face. Now it would have to need a flat surface to get symmetrical fractures. If you suspect someone on the side of the face, you're going to get a fractured right cheekbone or whatever. But here we have symmetrical fractures on the face. Like you got a fry pan, something flat and hit this woman. So the pathologist said, charlie, it's an accident or it's a murder. So doing the investigation, look at the broader crime scene. We then learn that she used to tie up her wrought iron gates with these toweling similar to what's on her face. A lot of times you can't explain A lot of things. So looking at the crime scene, at the back of the. Behind the gate, along the fence, you got the cross piece of timber. And I looked at it and it looked like it was all worn down. Next door was a block of flats with a concrete car park. So we then surmise that it's possible that we'd learned that she's a climber, that she's climbed over the back fence, ties up why she tied the gate up behind the gate, not in front of the gate, and then climbed the fence. So we surmise that she's climbed the fence, she's fallen and her face is smashed onto the concrete.

[A]

Like flat. Like that.

[B]

Flat on that. And that accounts for. Exactly. So she's got that flat, which gave her symmetrical fractures. So symmetrical fractures are unusual.

[A]

But again, a classic example of thinking. Who would do that? I don't know. She did.

[B]

Correct.

[A]

We don't know why.

[B]

Correct, yeah. So I then surmised that she's fallen off the top of the fence. She's then made her way down the driveway of the other side, stepped over the small fence in the driveway, loses a shoe. Cause the other shoe's on her foot. She's bleeding from the nose or the mouth or whatever and she's making her way back up through the wrought iron gate, undoes her wrought iron gate. My biggest concern was that it had the traits of a killer. Because why is she on the blind side of the house? Scenario may well be the killer has put her on the blind side of the house so the body's not discovered. As luck had it, and a lot of times you do get luck in an investigation or fate. The pathologist had to go back there and get a temperature reading. She's in the process of burying her thermometer, so she gets her reading. What does she find? She finds house keys that are buried. So, yep, house keys fit the house. Why would an offender bury house keys? The skirt's got no pockets. Her skirt's got no pockets. She was eccentric enough, as we believe, and again build a scenario that she would go out on her nightly troop with the. She would then tie up the gate, climb over the fence, get a trolley and away she'd go. She would have then buried her house keys on the blind side of the house. She had lawn at the back. You find like hiding your own key at home.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Where you're thinking about, where are you going to hide the key? That the crook won't find it. But in her mind, I'll bury it there so that Ticked off. Once that was done, I said, you know what? I was more than happy the circumstances. I found where the evidence took me. I could account for her being on the blind side of the house. I could account for the symmetrical fractures. There was no other injuries or broken bones or anything at all. Just on the face. The flannelette that she's either got that off the royal iron gates as she's bleeding, as you would holding the flannelet to her face. It'll stop the nose bleeding or whatever.

[A]

Even you know, you've lost a shoe. You think, oh, come back and get that.

[B]

I just later get inside. But I think then she succumbed to injury. She lay there and being eccentric, okay.

[A]

So she went around there to get the keys.

[B]

Yeah, get the keys. And then succumb to injuries. And in fact, okay, she didn't wear underwear. Well, that's not highly unusual.

[A]

It's not illegal.

[B]

Exactly. So I had to make the decision that it was an accident. The coroner side with me and said, yep, I'll put it down as a misadventure accident. And based on everything else, so that's where that worked out there.

[C]

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[D]

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[B]

The next one I'll do is we get a call. This was a country town. We've got a naked female in her early 20s, and she's bound by electrical wire. So off we went. And sure enough, we go to the crime scene. There's a house. She's in the bedroom next to the bed in that bedroom. The window's broken in the bedroom. House is A bit of a topsy turvy. We find there's chimpan cans in the lounge room, medication there. But then what does the crime scene tell me? She's got bruising below her knees, she's lying on her back and being bound by electrical wire was in fact the phone cord, but it was quite loose. It wasn't restraining her at all. So I'm reading that your door knock. We find a couple of young teenagers, they come and say, well, look, we went there Saturday, so we know she's alive in a particular. Forget what day we got there might be the Monday or Sunday. I forget what it was. And they said, oh, yeah, we tried knocking on the door. Whatever reason, we heard the woman inside. Okay, then more you do, she's in a family, violence involved becomes more sinister. Broken window, place is turned up. Where's the de facto? Oh, he's nowhere to be found. Okay, let's start looking for him. We got a family violence stuff. Boyfriend, girlfriend. And the only injury she exhibited was below the knee, so on her legs. So we get the body back, we take the body back to Melbourne, do the post mortem down there. We had the pathologist come up, which was good. It's always good for the pathologist to see the body in situ because if there's a particular injury to a body, you can say, oh, that happened from that. They can piece it together rather than you try and explain it. That's why it's so important.

[A]

I would think they would have to go there every time because you can have an injury in a certain shape and if you go to the scene you can realise, oh, that's the corner of the bedside table or whatever.

[B]

Exactly, exactly. So we did that, take the body back. We then find the de facto or the partner and he comes in and says, well, yeah, I've got no issues. I gave her an ultimatum, get out of the house. And yeah, look, that window was broken from another altercation we had, but it wasn't physical. The fact is we got throwing things around the place so we could account for the damage in the window. No forced entry, she wasn't sexually assaulted at all. And we then find out that she was a heavy user of drugs. And the cerepaks we had and the Jim Bean cans, we know she was in the lounge room when the boys knocked on the door. She's alive then no other injuries. How we account for the injuries? Be, it's like an alcoholic that they bruise quite easily. She was walking around. Why she was naked. I don't know, not sexually assaulted and bumping into the coffee table and that type of stuff which account for that. No other injuries whatsoever.

[A]

I think the Sarah Pax and the gym beam are accounting for that. Bumping into things.

[B]

Yeah. And then ultimately it was a drug overdose really based on all of that.

[A]

So what was the phone cable was that.

[B]

Well she was thrashing around either being on the floor and because it's a really long extension phone cable and she's either in pain or she's thrashing around and she's able to entangle herself in that phone cord. But it served no purpose so it didn't make sense that an offender would do that. So all the things fitted in place then. This other one's a very interesting one. Now we spoke earlier about what people would do and et cetera, et cetera. So this particular call is down to a seaside property, it's a unit and the male occupant's gone missing, been missing for over a week. Elderly gentlemen. So in that case when it becomes a suspicious disappearance, in those days we didn't have the missing person squad we have of today. Missing persons were done by us as a homicide squad and same as cold case. We didn't have a cold case unit. We did it all. It's left at that stage missing persons left with local detectives to investigate. So eventually this particular detective, good hard nosed detective which was good, they'd done the search of the place. Then at the very back of the in the backyard little unit there was a wooden cupboard probably about 3 meters long by about a meter and a half wide with two doors on it. One door had a slide bolt with a padlock. The other one had a slide bolt in place. In front of the cupboard as bamboo ways overlooked was a big sheet of plasterboard. So the plasterboard was facing over this cupboard. So in desperation this particular detective said well there's one place I haven't looked at because he can't account for him disappearing. He moved the plasterboard, moves the slide bolt out because the other one had a padlock on. It opens a slide bolt, opens the door. There's the deceased lying on his back in there. So the deceased in his pyjamas, he's been tied from ankle around his neck and around his hands. He's got a plastic bag over his head which is tied on. And I look at it from an offender's perspective. Here we have a elderly gentleman and a lot of stuff I said earlier we may not be able to explain. Here he is lying on his Back he's lying on a hessian mattress, if you will. Quite comfortable just lying there. We take the plastic bag off his head and there's a small LPG gas bottle inside the plastic bag. And a lot of suicides, people with suicide, they want to be in a position that they don't want to change their mind and they're very tentative about it. That's one trait which is going through your mind because you've done different crime scenes, but quite significant that he's tied up from his feet to his hands around there. So again, a lot of stuff we can't prove and how things happened. So I then look at it and say, would an offender go through all this process of doing that? So we remove the body as best we can. And what about the slide bolt being in place now? The padlocked, Very sinister. But it didn't make sense to me to say, well, an offender wouldn't have put a deceased person in, then tied him up, or even as a tied person, he's on a comfortable little cushion mattress. Why the LPG gas bottle in there? Did he murder, look like a suicide, et cetera. So these things are going through your mind all the time, keeping that open mind. Get the body back to the coroner's court. No sign of any injury whatsoever. And it's in. Inhalation of the LPG gas is the cause of death. Has it been set up by this particular an offender? It turned out to be suicide. We eventually found a note in the house saying his wife had not long died. He cannot live without his wife. So he took his own life. But went to such an extent to do all of that. How he tied himself up, I can't explain. How did he get the slide bolts in place from the outside? What we then find is it was a piece of string tied to the slide bolt. And this guy was a very highly intelligent individual. So he's got himself in there, pulled a string, pulled the slide bolt, but he's obviously holding the plasterboard at an angle that opens the door. So he's got in with the plaster boards, made the slide bolt put in place, been able to tie himself up while he's in this confined area.

[A]

But even once the timing's pulled the slide, by the time he's pulled that across, he's locked in.

[B]

He's locked in, he can't escape. Exactly. But then he can't undo it. He wants to make sure. He doesn't want to change his mind. He's put the gas and the gas bottle is only turned on minutely. Now, would an offender do it minutely? The offender would turn it on full blast if he was going to. So they're the traitors. Say an offender wouldn't be smart enough to set up this intricately. No other third, second person involved. And we're more than happy to say it was a suicide. But this is the whole purpose of having a specialist unit, having those skills, because we are exposed to all these weird and wonderful deaths that occur.

[A]

Thanks for joining us on Australian True Crime. If you would like any more information about anything you've heard on the show today, or support numbers, just check out the show notes.

[E]

The producers of this podcast recognise the traditional owners of the land on which it's recorded. They pay respect to the Aboriginal elders, past, present and those emerging.