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Vikki Petraitis

Forensic evidence is known as the 'silent witness'. Crime scene examiners make the silent witness speak.

Sergeant Trevor Evans has been a crime scene examiner for 17 years, and worked the notorious case of murdered baby Jaidyn Leskie in Moe. He also examined the scene of the intriguing, still-unsolved murder of Jane Thurgood-Dove, a mother gunned down in the driveway of her home in Niddrie.

Evans also used his wealth of experience when he was called to join the international team shifting through the debris after the Bali bombings, in order to identify those who lost their lives.

Welcome to Crime Shots - short, sharp, true crime stories from Australia's past and present.

Clan Destine Press

Crime Shots

The Crime Scene Examiner

In the early 1950s, Rod Braybon's father died, leaving his mother with eight children she couldn't care for.

As a ward of the state, Rod ended up at the notorious Bayswater Boys' Home, run by the Salvation Army, near Melbourne.

Rod endured years of ill-treatment at the hands of the Salvation Army, then spent a life-time repressing the memories that haunted him.

Finally, after seeing an article in a newspaper, Rod decided to speak out.

His story created a nation-wide sensation and won a prestigious award for the journalist who broke it.

That Rod was willing to speak out to try and ease the suffering of others like him, is incredible.

That he survived at all, is nothing short of a miracle.

This short story is expanded in Vikki's full-length book Salvation.

Welcome to Crime Shots - short, sharp, true crime stories from Australia's past and present.

Remembering Things Past

Fin J. Ross

The brutal bashings of a five-year-old Cody Hutchings by his step-father promoted a major change in state legislation in Australia.
 
After Stuart John McMaster was found guilty manslaughter, the Victorian State Government introduced the new offence of child homicide.
 
Welcome to Crime Shots - short, sharp, true crime stories from Australia's past and present.

Cody's Law

John Allin

More than 35 years after one of Australia's most baffling and brazen child abductions, journalist John Allin returned to Adelaide to talk with Greg and Christine Gordon.

In this compelling and deeply personal story, Allin tells how a simple but precious gift kept their daughter Kirste's disappearance high in his mind for so many years.

Welcome to Crime Shots - short, sharp, true crime stories from Australia's past and present.

Kirste's Wine

In 1996 a neighbour spies three Asian men running out of a court in Glen Waverley. It looks like two chasing one. But when they head towards a nearby car with an open boot, and suddenly the boot closes and there are only two men standing there, the chase takes on a more sinister aspect.

Young Steve Tragardh joined the police force when he was 18 and a half; he'd tried uni for a while, but it wasn't for him. He had come through the private school system and while his parents might have harboured secret hopes of a career in medicine, or law like his twin brother, they offered their full support when their son chose policing. The kidnapping of this young Asian boy would go onto be a defining moment in his career.

Welcome to Crime Shots - short, sharp, true crime stories from Australia's past and present.

Pandora's Box

Ruth Wykes

Have you ever wondered what it would be like to spend time with a convicted serial killer?

Or how you would feel when they told you what it was like to take a life?

Don't Ever Call Me Helpless is a powerful, chilling true crime story that offers a rare glimpse into the mind of convicted murderer Catherine Birnie.

In the late 1980s, Catherine and her defacto partner David Birnie went on a killing spree that shocked and numbed the Western Australian community. In just six weeks they abducted, tortured, raped and murdered four Perth women, and were only caught when a fifth victim escaped and led police to the killers.

During the 1990s author Ruth Wykes was a frequent visitor to Perth's Bandyup Women's Prison. She spent many hours with Catherine Birnie, and her account of the woman, mother, and remorseless killer is a must-read for anyone who is interested in true crime.

Welcome to Crime Shots - short, sharp, true crime stories from Australia's past and present.

Don't Ever Call Me Helpless: Australia's Worst Female Serial Killer

Lindy Cameron

I Got the Shit Car: On Father's Day in Australia in 2005, Robert Farquharson drove his car and three sons in a dam in country Victoria. The estranged husband and loving father was the only one to survive.

Welcome to Crime Shots - short, sharp, true crime stories from Australia's past and present.

I Got the Shit Car

In 1986 a bomb went off outside the main police headquarters in Russell Street Melbourne.

The Russell Street Bombing looks at the consequences of this shocking act of violence from the point of view of an entire city, the police force that was targeted, and in particular one 19-year-old victim.

Welcome to Crime Shots - short, sharp, true crime stories from Australia's past and present.

The Russell Street Bombing

A country GP found himself in the wrong place at the wrong time when an angry patient went looking for someone with whom he could share his pain.

Dr Andrew Taylor was working an ordinary Saturday morning shift when he was shot repeatedly by an armed and deluded man who simply needed to show any doctor he could find, just how upset he was with the world at large.

Random shootings like this are unusual in Australia and the bizarre unfairness of what happened to Dr Taylor did not end on the day he was shot.

Welcome to crime shots - short, sharp, true crime stories from Australia's past and present.

Meaner Than Fiction

Robin Bowles

It took an extraordinary effort by police task forces in Australia and America to take down an international child pornography ring.

But Rescuing Tara is so much more than bringing some truly reprehensible men - one of whom was "Tara's" own father - to justice.

Rescuing Tara is the story of how dedicated police officers on opposite sides of the world used the paedophile ring's own playroom - cyberspace itself - along with good old-fashioned investigative work in their search for a young girl whose real name they didn't know; whose location was a mystery; and whose fate was unknown.

Welcome to Crime Shots - short, sharp, true crime stories from Australia's past and present.

Crime Shots - The book series

Crime Shots - The book series

Crime Shots books in order

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