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A
Warning. 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.
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We don't know precisely.
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It's a voice that will send shivers down your spine.
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Standoff with police wanted fugitive step 19 times.
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The suspect lured the victim into the war. Biggest legal dramas in Hollywood today is a major to show what the system can do.
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This is true Crime tonight.
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B
Hello, everyone. It's 6:00, on Sunday night, which means this is true Crime tonight across the network. I am your host, Michelle Laurie. I'm here with my producers, Matthew Tankett and Ruby Bartces. We're here every Sunday night from 6 till 7 with true crime stuff.
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D
Yes, indeed, yes.
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Book recommendations, documentary recommendations. We've got something new tonight, Ruby.
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E
Yes, we do. We have Michael Adams coming on to talk about this month's crime from history. History. Yeah, history. So that's the one I'm looking for
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B
this month in Crime, let's call it. Cause he does an historical podcast called Forgotten Australia and it's so fascinating. He tells us about crimes that happened 100 years ago, 200 years ago, 50 years ago. It's all good stuff. Cause you just gotta keep saying to yourself how without mobile phones. Yeah, that's what the whole show really
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just makes you think, doesn't it? Cause he's been a godsend for us. He's done so many episodes for.
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B
We do love him.
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D
But it is so funny when you hear about detectives from back then, it's just like they're just operating on a hunch.
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Yeah.
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No cctv, no mobile phones, no towers. How did they solve anything? Well, he will tell us all about it coming up later in the show. Also coming up, we're going to talk about the Idaho four case. This is a case that I've been fascinated with since it happened. And that was the murder of four college students in a town called Moscow, Idaho. There's a man called Brian Kohberger who is now going to spend the rest of his life in jail. He's been convicted of these crimes. In fact, he confessed to these crimes, but there are still many questions about them. And we have one of the victim's mothers on the show, Christy Goncalves. She's joined by a lady called Tracy Brocco, and they have started a foundation. We will tell you all about it later in the show. But next up, we're talking A book recommendation. This is an Australian book written by an Australian lady about missing people, missing persons. That's coming up next on True Crime Tonight around Australia. You're listening to True Crime Tonight, True Crime Book Club. Guys, I've got another book. This is not a new book exactly, but it's, it's a brilliant book. There's two of them, actually, two books called Simply Missing by an Australian lady called Nicole Morris, who Incredible, we love.
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D
She's one of the few people who have actually like, cared about something and have. Has moved the needle on so many people's lives.
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You're so right. Because missing persons cases are frustrating by their very nature. And they oftentimes drag on and on and on by the time someone's listed as long term missing. We should go through the stats, cause they're really interesting. About 30,000 Australians go missing every single year. Most of those, about 98% of them turn up one way or another within a week, let's say a week or two. So I think in order to be called long term missing, it has to be two or three months. So it's still a significant number of people every year who simply vanish. And their family, nobody knows where they are. And it can go on for decades, if not indefinitely. Although with DNA improvements, I think those stats are getting better. But they're the stats. And yes, kids do run away. Yes, people do forget to call home because when they change their plans, all these things do happen. But we also know that sometimes it can be hard to get police interested in. Even if you're saying to them, I'm telling you, I know this kid, she has not run away. Something terrible has happened. There are plenty of families who will tell you that all those narratives actually get in the way of investigations. But this book, Missing, as I say books, two books called Missing by Nicole Morris are so good because she talks to the families, she knows the families, because she runs Facebook groups and all that. So she knows these families very, very well.
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D
She created the Missing Persons Register, right? That's right, yeah.
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Australian. Yeah.
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Australian Missing Persons Register.
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Yeah. Because up until recently, states didn't even share information. So it was one of those silly situations.
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E
Ridiculous.
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Yeah. Where Victoria could have a missing bloke and Western Australia could have unidentified remains. And they never connected, the two. Yeah, they never looked to see if it could possibly be the same guy who happened to drive to Perth for some reason. So, yeah, as I say, it's getting better. But this book has some interesting stories. I have to admit. I am always interested in Missing Persons for the mystery of it. I mean, you know, you hear these stories and you're like, how is that possible? There's conflicting information. Someone thinks they saw the person, but someone else thinks that's impossible for various reasons. In these books, we've got Stephen Lockey, an Adelaide father who disappeared in 2004. Now, his case is interesting because there are several alleged links to unsolved murders and serial killer investigations in South Australia. So if that's information that police are making public, so who knows why they're doing that? I always think there's a lot that police say to the media, hoping that just one person will read it. Rigby Fielding, a Western Australian man who disappeared after becoming involved in online dating. Increasingly volatile space, if I may say so. So, yeah, these books Missing are very good. You know, the information's accurate because, as I say, the families are involved. Nicole Morris is passionate about trying to reunite people with their missing people. Do you remember there was an unreal show on Channel 9, Missing Persons, Years ago?
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Yeah, I think so, yeah.
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And they. Oh, what was that lovely man who hosted it? One of those guys from. No, Darl. One of those guys from Channel Nine. One of the kind of 60 Minutes Y guys, fabulous ones. And so they were working with the missing persons units in the police, you know, and they'd show the investigation and oftentimes they would find the person. Well, years later, I loved that show and I couldn't believe they took it off the air. Years later. I ran into a lady who was a producer on that show. She said, I'll tell you why we had to stop making that show, because so many of the people we found didn't want to be found.
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Well, this is it, right? It's not a crime to disappear.
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That is the other thing police say in these matters. Look, it's not a crime to disappear. And I always thought, who would do that? Surely that's a tiny fraction of people. But she said, we. I'm telling you, the number of people that we would find, even sometimes go through the whole process of the reunion only for them to ring us back and go, I don't want that on your show. I don't want to see my family. There's a reason I disappeared. And they disappear again.
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See, I feel like when you hear missing persons, you just think the worst, Right? Something bad's happened. I didn't even think of it in that perspective, but, yeah, such a good outlook because, yeah, well, if you just want to run away and want to start a new life, then who's stopping you?
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Good point, Ruby. In a way it's optimistic and optimistic outcome, isn't it? Yeah, I certainly never thought of it.
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But you know, there's so the flip side of that though, of there's, there's like an era of I think the 70s to maybe the early 90s of the northern Beaches in New South Wales where so many women were, you know, declared missing for basically what the police saying there, they're going, they just wanted to start a new life, they wanted to cut and run, they didn't want to have kids. But so many of them now that they've been reinvestigated just like, no, they were clearly missing under suspicious circumstances.
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This is why people who work in the missing person space, if you really think about it now, they are putting out the message. If this is you, just contact someone and let us know. We're not gonna drag you home, we're not gonna make you get in touch with your family and spend Christmas with these people. If you can't stand them, just let us know you're alive. Just to try and sift through that, the case files, you know, we love
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the work that Nicole Morris does and the name of her book is Missing. And you can also get involved with her work with the missing persons register on Facebook. Coming up, we're speaking with Michael Adams from the For Australia podcast to talk about this month in crime that's on True Crime tonight
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around Australia. You're listening to True Crime tonight and one of my favourite podcasts is Forgotten Australia with Michael Adams. He's given me a real fascination for historical crime and now he joins us on True Crime Tonight for a look back at this month in crime history. Over to you, Michael.
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Thanks, Michelle. This month in true crime history we we've got Australia's first serial slasher, Australia's first skyjacker and Australia's first eco terrorists. So to our first first. On 14 July 1956 in Kingsgrove in southern Sydney, a 21 year old woman woke up screaming as she was slashed across the breasts and punched in the face. Six days later, just streets away, this creep committed another nighttime home invasion attack. At the end of the month, another one, this time on a 15 year old girl. All up. There'd be 11 attacks in 1956 alone. Sydney was being terrorized by the man the tabloids called the Kingsgrove Slasher. On several occasions, cops gave chase to a suspect but he got away after going quiet for a time. The Slasher committed more attacks in 1958 and early 1959. But this time, Sydney CIB's Detective Sergeant Brian Doyle did extraordinary work with geographic profiling. He and his men spent months on gruelling dusk till dawn stakeouts. And on 30 April 1959, it paid off when they caught their suspect fleeing an attempted attack. He immediately confessed to Brian Doyle, saying, I am your man. I am the Kingsgrove Slasher. He was David Joseph Scanlon, 29, married, living in the area, working as a clerk, liked and respected. So he was absolutely ordinary, on the outside at least. And this foreshadowed so many serial offenders who'd become infamous. Scanlon told the cops that he loved being chased. A psychiatrist who examined him said he was a Peeping Tom who'd escalated himself and saw himself now as a criminal mastermind. Scanlon pleaded guilty to 18 charges committed against 16 victims. He was sentenced to a maximum of 18 years. While he was in jail, Detective Sergeant Doyle kept tabs on him. What he found was that the Slasher was fully rehabilitated. So after 11 years he was able to be released and he disappeared into obscurity, never to offend again. Not that you'd necessarily sleep soundly knowing he lived next door. From the Suburbs to the skies on 19 July 1960, a young bloke named Alex Hildebrand boarded TAA Night Flight 30, 408 from Sydney to Brisbane. This plane had a handful of crew and 42 passengers. At 20,000ft over northern New South Wales, Alex Hildebrand pulled out a gelignite bomb and a fully loaded sawn off 22 rifle and demanded the plane be flown to Singapore so he could then escape capitalism by going to Red China or Russia. This was Australia's first skyjacking and in 1960 they were really rare worldwide. While a flight officer explained to Alex Hildebrand that the plane didn't have enough fuel to go further than northern Queensland, an off duty pilot in the forward cabin grabbed an axe from the cockpit. When the skyjacker was momentarily distracted, they attacked him. The flight officer punched him in the face and yanked the wires out of the bomb. But Alex Hildebrand pulled the trigger. The bullet narrowly missed the flight officer's head. The off duty pilot then whacked the skyjacker across the noggin with the rubber handle of the axe. After this, a passenger and two flight attendants helped to restrain him all up. Alex Hildebrand would serve 10 years for Australia's first skyjacking. Sixteen years later, to the very day, 19 July 1970, six saw another Australian true crime first. So to set the scene, a controversial wood chip exporting facility had just been opened in Bunbury in Western Australia. The growing number of environmentalists were not happy about this, and activist groups were campaigning to raise awareness about the damage done by logging old growth forests. These activists were mounting legal action also, so they were trying to win hearts and minds and court cases. In other words, they were pursuing activism without violence. But two blokes who weren't members of these groups decided to take matters into their own hands. John Robert Chester and Michael David Habjorn, both in their 20s, cut their way into the Bunbury plant and set three big bombs they had made with stolen gelignite. They also kidnapped a night watchman at gunpoint and left him by a roadside with the warning there'd be explosions at 5:30. Police were in the process of closing off the Bunbury port Access road at 5:25 when. Boom. One bomb had seriously damaged the stacker tower, but the other two had failed to go off. If they had, the plant would have been wrecked for years. While the bombers had left warning signs, there was also the potential for people to be killed or injured, including the detective who had to defuse the two remaining bombs. The bombers pled guilty and got seven years apiece, though they'd only serve half that. The irony was they'd done the most damage to the environmental movement, which through no fault of its own, suffered a backlash. They kept at it, though, and in 2024, the Western Australian government finally ceased logging old growth forests.
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Thanks, Michael. And what have you got coming up on your fabulous podcast, Forgotten Australia.
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Thanks, Michelle. If you want more true crime, I've just released a four forgotten Australia podcast miniseries called A Murder of Note. It looks at the haunting story behind the woman on our $50 note. Turns out that Australia's pioneering female politician, Edith Cowan was partly motivated in her career because her father was a murderer. So that was 150 years ago this year, and it's a truly freaky story. There's plenty more where that came from, so catch you next month.
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This is True Crime Tonight with Michelle Laurie around Australia.
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This is True Crime Tonight. One of the biggest crime stories in recent memory is the 2022 murder of four college students in the small town of Moscow, Idaho. Ethan Chapin was 20. Zana Kernodle was also 20. Kaylee Goncalves, 21, and Madison Mogan, also 21. They became known as the Idaho Four. In December of 2022, six weeks after the murders, criminology student Brian Kohberger was arrested and charged last year. He pled guilty to all four murders. But to this day, no one knows how he chose the victims, whether or not he'd ever met any of them, which one was his actual target, or how he seemed to know the layout of the house. Kaylee Gonsalves family have always been very vocal. Recently, they channeled their anguish into setting up a foundation in Kaylee's honor called Murder has a Name. Kayleigh's mother, Christy Goncalves, and foundation board member Tracey Brocco, joined me recently on what would have been Caylee's 25th birthday to talk about the case and the foundation.
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You know, it's her fourth birthday, that she has not been here. And, you know, as her mother, it's very hard for me not to think about those last moments, you know, what she was thinking, what she endured, you know, that the fact that she was probably very confused, probably extremely scared, terrified. And I hate that it's terrifying that someone can actually do this to another human being.
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The offender was apparently obsessed with serial killers, was studying criminology, was doing a specific course about serial killers. I guess the other thing about there being no trial is there are so many questions. Are these questions important to you, Christy, or just to me as a busybody true crime person? The questions about how did he choose the girls? How did he. Why, why, why, why, why?
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Every single question drives me crazy.
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Yeah.
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Every single question. And, you know, like, I talked to some of the other families, you know, and they're like, I don't care. It doesn't matter. None of it's going to bring. So there are different aspects, you know, because there are different. There's four different families.
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Yeah.
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We all cope differently.
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I mean, I want to know everything that happened to Kaylee. I do want to know that. Almost every single day, we talk about what? About this. What do you think it was?
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This.
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You think it was that? No, I was. You know, like, we. You know, we've talked to the investigators, and we are left without answers that, personally, for myself, will torment me for the rest of my life. Or until maybe one time he does a jailhouse interview. Who knows? I mean, I. I have hopes that maybe, probably not anytime soon, but eventually, you know, he might get to a place where he says, okay, you know, I'll talk, and it will make sense, and we will, you know, say, you know, what? That makes sense and not make sense. There's nothing to make sense of why he murdered them. Yeah. But his thought process, like, somewhat makes sense. Like, you know, you know why he went in there, when he started following, you know, when, when was the beginning of the end, you know, was it, you know, I saw Kaylee one day in early June. She was walking the dog. I wound up just kind of following her home and, and that's. It was born. My idea was born. Like what? And I know I shouldn't. I know I shouldn't let it. And sometimes it's better, but it's not, it's never far. It's always, it's always right here, you know, just sitting right on my shoulder. Just.
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I wish his parents would encourage him to do it.
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Yeah, I do too.
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You know, why, why are his parents not encouraging him to listen? You have done this. You have pled guilty to it. At least give them this. At least give them this.
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Lets talk about the foundation. Murder has a name. It is. What's great about it is it's got a very clear mission statement and it's about helping people in very specific ways. Can you talk us through it, Tracey?
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G
Murder has a dame was born, obviously from this. We definitely want to carry on Kaylee's legacy and we want her to be able to help people. And we figured the best way to help people was to help give victims like Christy and Steve were at a time with no answers, to help give answers to people that need them. So it will be where police can come, law enforcement can come and fill out an application, which we haven't gotten that on there yet. We've been focusing on fundraising because these are expensive tests and law enforcement can come and fill out applications. And with DNA companies that we work with, once they get a quote from that DNA company, we will agree to pay for these tests that there are no funding for, which is extremely important. I mean, you have rape kits that sit on shelves for too long, means the offender's just out there reoffending. You know, police, they're very busy and they have a ton of cases. It's not just one case per detective, it's several cases. So it gets backlogged.
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This is exactly what Kaylee would have wanted, you know, for us to get these answers. So is what happens is like our local law enforcement, they're, most of them are extremely underfunded. So, you know, they have what is called codis and there's certain levels of codis, and they run it through codis, which is, you know, previous offenders, violent crimes that are in there, they get no match.
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So they so it. So they take DNA from every violent criminal. Everyone who's convicted of a violent crime has to give a DNA sample. Right. And that goes on this database called codis.
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Yes, but we have actually found out that a lot of times the police don't even have time to put to upload that to codis.
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Oh, no.
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So they don't find this person in. And codis, you know, it kind of draws pretty slow for them. They're kind of like. And some do have some local labs that they could go to. Most don't. So then you're looking at a private lab. And for the most part they don't pay for the private lab. And that's what we work with, is the private labs.
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Tracy. So tell us, can you just summarize what, what would you like us to do? What do we need to do? I know a lot of our listeners are going to want to support you guys in. In your project. We've talked about uploading our DNA. Donate. We can donate on the website Murder has a name.
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Yes, just. That's donate. Upload your DNA and just talk about us. Spread the word. Just know that we're share us. We're doing it for every victim out there, past, present and future. We are trying to help all three of those categories and the more help we can get, the more we would appreciate it.
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Thank you to our guests Tracey and Christy. If you would like to listen to the full interview with them and learn more about the Murder Has a Name foundation, you can check out the conversation in full on our podcast, Australian True Crime. It's available on the iHeart app or wherever you get your podcasts. Thank you for listening to True Crime tonight across Australia. We'll be back next Sunday from 6 till 7. See you then.
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Bye.