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Ruby Bartzis
Warning.
Michelle Laurie
This is a true crime segment and not suitable for children. It contains references to sexual violence and suicide, which some listeners may find distressing. If you need support, you are not alone. Contact Lifeline on 13, 11, 14 or visit lifeline.org au for 24 hour support. We don't know precisely. It's a voice that will send shivers down your spine.
Matthew Tankard
Standoff with police wanted fugitive step 19 times.
Michelle Laurie
The suspect lured the victim into the wood. Biggest legal dramas in Hollywood today is amazing. To show what the system can do.
Matthew Tankard
This is True Crime Tonight.
Michelle Laurie
Hello, everybody. This is True Crime Tonight. I'm your host, Michelle Laurie, and I'm here with my producers, Matthew Tangard.
Matthew Tankard
Hello.
Michelle Laurie
And Ruby Bartzes.
Ruby Bartzis
Hello.
Michelle Laurie
Hello. If you're just joining us, if you've just jumped in the car on a Sunday night and gone, what the hell? Well, have we got something for you. It's True Crime Tonight. For the next hour, we're talking true crime, we're talking documentaries, books, and we've got an interview coming up later in the show with a lady called Cece Moore. And if you are into true crime documentaries, I promise you've seen her because she is in all of them these days. She is a DNA detective. So hang in there for that. Don't let the kids hang in there, though, because this is a true crime show. It is not appropriate for them. Totes inappropes, but for you. I'm feeling like I'm talking to the kids in your car right now, but for you, it's awesome. Up next, we're actually going to hear from a listener, which is my favourite bit of the show. And we've decided to call this the True Crime Hotline.
Matthew Tankard
What an incredible name.
Michelle Laurie
Thanks, you. I've been in radio for a long time. I like snapping snappy titles for things. How do we receive them? How do people send us a message?
Matthew Tankard
Matthew, it's basically sending like a voicemail and you can find it in the show notes of any Australian true crime podcast episode or you can find us on social media at Australian True Crime Podcast.
Michelle Laurie
There you go.
Matthew Tankard
Hey, Michelle. Absolutely loving True Crime Tonight.
Michelle Laurie
I think I'm your number one fan. Just wondering, when you're doing a live show, when am I gonna get to see you live? Aw, that's so sweet. And also, I love that it comes from a man because we used to say that Australian true crime shows, we should sell tickets to men for meeting single women, because that was like, I'd look out and there were just like hundreds and hundreds of great women and no Men. There'd be like maybe literally two or three men who'd been dragged along by their girlfriends, but more men now. And this is.
Cece Moore
That's good.
Ruby Bartzis
Yes.
Michelle Laurie
So we definitely will be doing iHeart Live events.
Ruby Bartzis
Oh, my God, that's so exciting.
Michelle Laurie
Isn't that fun? Yeah, it's like on Bruno Mars or something. Doing an iHeartLive event. That's how I feel.
Ruby Bartzis
Right.
Michelle Laurie
And yeah, so that'll be definitely coming up. I love to have in every different city a local person. So I like to talk. A local crime in Brisbane, a local crime in Adelaide. Haven't been to Perth yet. I know Perthlings are upset about that, but no, I have not been there yet.
Cece Moore
We'll get there.
Ruby Bartzis
Let's change that.
Michelle Laurie
Yeah, we haven't been to Tassie yet either. So we'll definitely. Now that we've got the I Heart juggernaut behind us, heaven knows where we'll end up. But that will be the plan. I will definitely be grabbing. So if you know anyone, if you are someone in those cities around Australia who would love to jump on stage with me, talk me through a case and take some questions and answers from the audience, please contact me. Cause we will be putting that together very soon. Oh, and let's not forget that it was through one of these messages on our true crime hotline that we were sent away to watch Don't F with Cats Again. There was a listener said, hey, what do you think about that documentary? And we realized, gosh, it's so long since we've watched it, we went back and watched it again, which was hard work, to be honest. I didn't want to watch it. I found myself putting it. Now, normally, I'm more than happy to watch a good true crime documentary a couple of times. There are some that I watch annually, but this one, I kept thinking, no, not today. It's the cat cruelty. And even though a human being died in this as well, this guy, Luke
Matthew Tankard
Manotta, well, he's the killer.
Michelle Laurie
He's the killer. He murdered a human as well. But what I like about it is there's a lot of conversation about why is it that we true crime people are sort of dissociated from that. We get humans hurting humans, but as soon as you bring cats in, they're like, we're like, seriously, don't f with cats, mate. You can't do that.
Ruby Bartzis
Well, yeah, so I went and watched it for the first time and I didn't even skip out the bits. You told me not to.
Michelle Laurie
You didn't well, this is it. Last time when we got this sort of challenge, I said to everyone, listen, if you Google which are the worst bits for animal cruelty, it tells you you can find out and you can skip them. Like, I never saw those.
Ruby Bartzis
I did.
Michelle Laurie
Oh, no, mate, I can't even see it. Listen, I've got a little bit of the trailer here for you to listen to. And just to either remind you or in case you've never seen it before, I cut the sound of cats out of this. Cause it was so triggering for me. It was just kittens, you know, doing their beautiful little thing. And also. Cause I foster kittens, so it's like, oh, God, I spend the entire summer trying to keep kittens alive and hearing their beautiful little voices in this trailer. I was like, nah, I can't. So I cut it out. But here it is. Just to promote your memory.
Ruby Bartzis
I was on Facebook one day and
Michelle Laurie
I found this video. I pressed Play. It was the worst video I've ever seen. People went nuts. So we started looking.
Ruby Bartzis
He could have been anywhere on the planet.
Michelle Laurie
All of a sudden, another video appear. My mind doesn't want to believe it's true. Don't f. With cats.
Ruby Bartzis
It comes back to your question, Michelle. Like hurting innocent animals that it's the innocence. They can't defend themselves. They can't tell anyone is so much bigger than them.
Michelle Laurie
Yeah. Matthew, you're a cat guy.
Matthew Tankard
Yes, I am. And I will, you know, I'll cover Jonny's ears for this. But I did watch it with all the bits.
Michelle Laurie
Joni's his cat, not his girlfriend.
Matthew Tankard
Yes, that's well said. It really is just, you know, there's no reason to kill a human, but there's definitely no reason to kill a cat. So it's very much like this person's a sadistic, evil person. You know, there's no, like, money involved, there's no romance, there's no passion, nothing. It's like you're doing it just for, like, hate's sake.
Ruby Bartzis
Hate, you know?
Michelle Laurie
This documentary is also a great one for watching people use the Internet, use their skills online for something amazing, which is catching this guy. Highly recommend. But skip the worst bits. Coming up next, we're going to be talking to Cece Moore. Is that next?
Ruby Bartzis
That's next.
Michelle Laurie
Oh, my gosh. She is. I love her so much. She pops up on all the documentaries now. She is the DNA detective. She just traces people's family trees. She'll get like a DNA sample and then she tracks these family trees up and down and sideways and everywhere. And she. She identifies people.
Cece Moore
Yeah.
Matthew Tankard
I can't wait to hear from Cece more. But Ruby was telling me before we recorded that she just cannot wait to tell us about this true crime documentary that she needs to tell us about.
Michelle Laurie
Okay, so let's do that. Okay.
Matthew Tankard
And then we'll get Cece in.
Michelle Laurie
Okay, fair enough.
Matthew Tankard
You're listening to True Crime Tonight. We'll be right back.
Michelle Laurie
This break is brought to you by Adobe Creative cloud. With over 20 apps, there's always new ways to explore your creativity. Design it, illustrate it, animate it, bring any idea to life with the ultimate creative toolkit, Creative cloud
Matthew Tankard
around Australia. This is True Crime Tonight with Michelle, Laurie, Ruby, Bart, Sis, and me, Matthew Tankard.
Michelle Laurie
Ruby, I believe you want to talk to us about Maternal Instincts, the new documentary on Netflix. And my Internet is blowing up about this.
Ruby Bartzis
Oh, my God. I finished it last night. I haven't stopped to thinking about it. I've actually, like, re. Watched the ending like 10 times.
Matthew Tankard
Wow.
Michelle Laurie
Really?
Ruby Bartzis
It blew my mind. It's effed up.
Michelle Laurie
Yep.
Ruby Bartzis
It's.
Michelle Laurie
Well, it's just wild nightmare you can think of, really. Tell us about it. Who is it about? Who's our leading lady?
Ruby Bartzis
So the murderer.
Michelle Laurie
Yes.
Ruby Bartzis
Was Taylor Parker. She was. I mean, she gave not mental case in a lot of ways.
Michelle Laurie
Yeah.
Ruby Bartzis
But a lot of people were onto her. She was a massive liar and she essentially killed one of her closest friends at the time and cut out her baby. So she was 36 weeks pregnant? I'm pretty sure, yeah.
Michelle Laurie
Up until that point, she. She faked a pregnancy. Right. She fell in love with this guy. It was so crook because. Well, for many reasons, but not least, I think the fact that he was never in love with her, never pretended to be in love with her. They'd only been together a couple of months. She's obsessive, I guess.
Ruby Bartzis
Yeah.
Michelle Laurie
She faked a pregnancy and then got to a point where she was like, okay, how am I getting out of this? And her solution was to go and take someone else's baby.
Matthew Tankard
But wait, how did she fake it up until that bit? Was she looking pregnant? How was she?
Ruby Bartzis
She had like a fake belly. But I was like, halfway through, I'm like, this can't be real because how. How are you not doing the deed?
Michelle Laurie
How is your boyfriend not seeing your real body?
Ruby Bartzis
You're living together.
Michelle Laurie
He can only be that drunk so many times and not actually notice your body when he's with you. But she was.
Ruby Bartzis
She was that covering it up.
Michelle Laurie
It made me think of all the celebrity. The conspiracies around celebrity pregnancies, from Beyonce to Meghan Markle. There's corners of the Internet that will swear that they were fake pregnancies and they actually had surrogate mothers for their babies. So seeing the actual apparatus that you can buy online, this rubber, pink rubber belly.
Matthew Tankard
Yeah. And how can it expand? Can it get bigger?
Michelle Laurie
No, you have to keep buying bigger ones. But get this. She didn't. So her family would go. She didn't seem to get bigger. In fact, sometimes she looked quite thin.
Ruby Bartzis
Yeah. And then some days I don't think she even wore it because there's actually photos. Like her neighbor took photos of her. She didn't even look like she had a belly.
Michelle Laurie
She's in the front nine months. Supposedly eight or nine months pregnant, and she doesn't look like she has a belly at all. So that's why everyone started to get sus. But we've got a little bit for you here. This is from Maternal Instincts on Netflix, available now. And as I say, my Internet's blowing up about this. Here she is, she's in hospital after the police have put her over for driving erratically. She's holding a baby in her lap, a newborn baby. She's saying, I just had this baby. They catching on pretty quick that maybe she didn't. So they. They're asking her about it in hospital, and then they call in a gynecologist to. To check her over. Here it is. You gave birth to this child.
Matthew Tankard
Yes.
Michelle Laurie
So it surely doesn't look like a
Matthew Tankard
baby came out of there.
Michelle Laurie
Look like she had a baby.
Ruby Bartzis
It doesn't.
Matthew Tankard
No.
Michelle Laurie
Okay. Does not look like she had a baby. It does not look like she had a baby.
Ruby Bartzis
I mean, how. How did she think she was getting away with this at all? Like, you have to go to the hospital.
Michelle Laurie
And even at that point, she's still saying, yeah, I did. Yeah.
Ruby Bartzis
She's still convincing.
Michelle Laurie
Yeah, I sure did.
Ruby Bartzis
This baby, it's a little girl.
Cece Moore
Yeah.
Ruby Bartzis
And they're all onto the fact. So the police had found the body of this woman. Her family found her murdered in her own home. So, I mean, put two and two together. There was literally no doubt in these people's mind that this lady did it.
Matthew Tankard
Was this a close friend of hers as well, or is this.
Michelle Laurie
It was a lady who really championed her. A lady who met, you know, when Taylor took photos for her at her wedding, and then they became friends. And this lady thought Taylor was struggling a bit. So Regan is her name. So she really tried to befriend her and encourage her. And she was very young herself. She was, like, 21. This was her second baby. And look, we have just touched the surface of this. There is so much more going on here. There is the fact that many people watching this unfold on Facebook, watching the gender reveal and everything about this pregnancy, many people knew that Taylor had had a hysterectomy.
Matthew Tankard
Yes.
Ruby Bartzis
Like, oh, my God.
Michelle Laurie
And her pregnancy was impossible. So she's got old friends and people and her old doctors looking at this,
Ruby Bartzis
going, she has no uterus.
Michelle Laurie
What is going on here?
Matthew Tankard
Yes. And I saw that bit. I found that so interesting about how the doctors who know that she's had a hysterectomy, they're seeing all this online, but they know they can't tell anyone because they've got the. They did the Hippocratic oath.
Michelle Laurie
Right.
Matthew Tankard
Where they can't disclose that sort of information.
Michelle Laurie
Yeah.
Matthew Tankard
It's private.
Michelle Laurie
It's private information. So when they heard.
Matthew Tankard
But where's the limit for that story?
Michelle Laurie
I agree. And I think they must be asking themselves the same question, because when they must be devastated, they knew something bad was gonna happen. And they said so. They were like, we were just watching this, going, how is she gonna get out of this? When they heard that a woman had been murdered and the baby was missing, they immediately thought, it's her. It's Taylor. They knew exactly who it was. So, look, you've gotta watch this. It's definitely one of the best, one of the best I've seen in ages. Isn't it on Netflix?
Ruby Bartzis
Yeah. And it's only like an hour and a half, and I could not get my eyes off it.
Michelle Laurie
I would have liked six hour and a half episodes.
Ruby Bartzis
Yeah, right. There's so much information that I'm like, tell us more.
Michelle Laurie
Yes, do go and watch that. And also, I tell you, the one person who's not in it, which is weird, but I suppose there's no one missing because whenever there's someone missing in a documentary these days, whether it be an offender or a victim, they get one lady on the documentary to talk about it. Her name is Cece Moore. She's a DNA detective and she's on our show next.
Matthew Tankard
This is True Crime Tonight with Michelle Lorre.
Michelle Laurie
This is True Crime Tonight. I'm your host, Michelle Laurie, and I'm here with my producers, Matthew Tankett and Ruby Bartzis.
Cece Moore
Hello.
Michelle Laurie
Cece Moore is one of the world's leading genetic genealogists, using DNA and family tree analysis to solve cases that once seemed Impossible.
Cece Moore
What we're doing is reverse engineering an unknown person from their DNA. So whether that DNA is left behind at a crime scene, a violent crime, we work with homicides and rapes, or if it's a person who dies without their identification, a Jane or John Doe or unidentified human remains is the more formal term. And so it doesn't really matter which it is because it's the exact same process. It is taking that DNA, creating what we call the SNP profile that has hundreds of thousands of genetic markers across the genome and then that is uploaded to the genetic genealogy databases that we're allowed to use on these types of cases and we get a list of people who share significant amounts of DNA with that unknown person. So there are over 54 million people who have taken direct to consumer DNA tests. Now the biggest database is ancestry DNA and then 23andMe and then MyHeritage is a very close third.
Michelle Laurie
Now there's a lot of people who criticize the idea of uploading our genetic footprint, fingerprint, whatever it's called, our code. Why is that? Because I'm one of those people. I think about it very simply and I think, well, I'm not going to murder anyone. And so I don't care if my code is uploaded. And also if someone I'm related to did murder someone, then I'd be happy to help find them.
Cece Moore
And I think the majority of people agree with you. I hear a lot of naysayers and a lot of very loud negative voices, but I was involved in a long term study with Baylor university here over five years and we found that 91% of people across the board were supportive of using genetic genealogy to find both violent criminals and even a little higher percent for Jane and John Doe cases.
Michelle Laurie
It feels like it's more likely to exonerate people, which is why it's so important.
Cece Moore
I'm so glad you bring it up because we're usually focused on putting someone behind bars, finding the guilty, but for every one of those, we have exonerated billions of people. And that might sound silly, but it's actually really important because we can help cut down the number of wrongful incarcerations and we can eliminate the vast majority of people from ever being wrongly suspected of a violent crime. So if we had been able to use genetic genealogy back 20, 30 years years ago when some of these cases were being investigated, we could have kept those wrong turns by law enforcement from ever happening. And I've been contacted by a lot of people who were just informally suspected, never charged, with the crime. But they carried that burden for years or decades where their community or their family suspected them. And so we're exonerating, both formally and informally, many, many people with each of these cases that we hope to find the case, you know, truly responsible person.
Michelle Laurie
I was watching one story about you where you were hunting a serial killer and you were going back through the family trees and then you were researching the people in the family trees and this guy had faked, seems like had faked his own death at some point.
Cece Moore
He had, like I was just going
Michelle Laurie
to mention two or three obituaries.
Cece Moore
Read my mind. Yes, I thought of him immediately when you were saying that because he was perpetrating violent crimes in different jurisdictions. And it used to be so much easier to get away with crimes if you did that. So, yes, hit Robert Brashears, who was recently tied to a very high profile unsolved case, the yogurt shop murders. I had identified him back in 2018 as a serial killer on other cases, the Sharers and also Genevieve Zatricky. And the yogurt shop murders was a case I had actually been brought into to advise on. And I had talked to the family, but they did not have enough DNA to perform investigative genetic genealogy. And they really started breaking it open by a ballistics match. The new detective decided to start from scratch and go through everything. And he resubmitted the ballistics to the national database and got a match. And that is what then finally started cracking the case open. And it came back around to matching the DNA profile that I had identified back in 2018. And that was someone that I was absolutely convinced had more unsolved cases out there. And I was screaming from the rooftops saying, pay attention to this guy. I know he has more victims out there, but nobody was really listening to me much. But now they are.
Michelle Laurie
He was so difficult to track in using traditional ideas and traditional techniques because he had different MOs. There was a strangulation murder of one woman. There was a woman and her 12 year old daughter murdered, shot, I believe. And then. And as you say in different jurisdictions. And then the yoghurt shop murder is four teenagers murdered after work in the yogurt shop and then the shop set on fire. So my small team and I have
Cece Moore
helped law enforcement with over 375 cases now where we've been able to help them identify the DNA. And that means hundreds of violent criminals. And I'm usually able to set it aside and go to the next case because I have to, right? I have to be able to compartmentalize, but I've never been able to shake him. He has stayed with me since 2018, since I first found him, and I just knew there was more to his story. And so having the orchid shot murders end up being tied to him, that he's responsible for it did not surprise me at all. It only surprised me that it was a case I was already kind of peripherally involved in.
Michelle Laurie
Thank you to our guest tonight, CeCe Moore, the DNA detective. And if you'd like to hear more from her, you can check out a longer interview on the podcast Australian True Crime, which is available on the Iheart Apple or wherever you get your podcasts. Thanks for listening to True Crime tonight. Thank you, guys. Any lessons, any takeaways for you tonight?
Ruby Bartzis
Not gonna be watching animal abuse documentaries from now on.
Michelle Laurie
Well, I think there's a reason why there aren't many.
Ruby Bartzis
Yeah.
Michelle Laurie
Yeah, Isn't it?
Matthew Tankard
This might be the only one. I could be totally wrong with that, but I'm willing to go out on a limb and say that I think
Michelle Laurie
that was part of it. Don't f With Cats. That it was. So that was the title. So it was like, oh, God, this is going to be about animal. It was a very brave move on the part of Netflix to put this out, I think. So either watch it or don't, but be aware that it's out there and it is really great. And we're out there and we're pretty great as well. And we're here every Sunday from 6 till 7. We'll see you next week.
Ruby Bartzis
Bye.
Episode Date: June 21, 2026
Host: Michelle Laurie
Producers: Matthew Tankard, Ruby Bartzis
Guest: CeCe Moore (Genetic Genealogy Expert)
This episode of True Crime Tonight explores the hidden shadows of crime in Australia and beyond, combining chilling documentary discussion with a deep dive into the world of DNA-driven investigations. Host Michelle Laurie, alongside producers Matthew Tankard and Ruby Bartzis, takes listeners through shocking true crime cases—from notorious internet-fueled manhunts (“Don’t F**k With Cats”) to the harrowing story of a murder motivated by maternal obsession (“Maternal Instincts”). Special expert guest CeCe Moore—renowned DNA detective—shares fascinating insights into how genetic genealogy is transforming the hunt for both criminals and missing persons.
Timestamps:
Timestamps:
Timestamps:
Timestamps:
Timestamps:
"We can help cut down the number of wrongful incarcerations and eliminate the vast majority of people from ever being wrongly suspected of violent crime."
— CeCe Moore (15:41)
"It's just the wildest nightmare you can think of really."
— Michelle Laurie on Maternal Instincts (07:52)
"We were just watching this, going, how is she gonna get out of this? When they heard that a woman had been murdered and the baby was missing, they immediately thought, it's her. It's Taylor."
— Michelle Laurie (12:22)
The episode blends fan engagement, detailed documentary critique, and enlightening expert testimony, tying together contemporary challenges and breakthroughs in crime detection. For those fascinated by criminal psychology, investigative twists, or forensic innovation, this episode provides a rich array of insights, warnings, and, above all, a sense that “nothing ever happens in your town” may be the biggest myth of all.