The Veil

On 2 December 2010, 24 year old Phoebe Handsjuk was found dying in the ground floor refuse room of her St Kilda Road apartment building, after coming down the rubbish chute from the twelfth floor. Police first treated it as suicide. Her grandfather, a retired detective, did not believe she could have climbed in. In 2014 Coroner Peter White found she entered the chute herself in a sleepwalking-like state brought on by Stilnox and alcohol, and that no one else was involved. The family has never accepted it, and the questions about the chute, the lost CCTV and the missing notes remain. Suggested by listener Angela. IN MEMORY Phoebe Handsjuk, 9 May 1986 to 2 December 2010. Baillee Schneider, 19 February 1993 to 23 June 2018. A NOTE ON SOURCING This episode is built on two published coronial findings: Coroner Peter White's finding into Phoebe's death (COR 2010 4605, 10 December 2014, amended February 2015) and Deputy State Coroner Caitlin English's finding into Baillee's death (COR 2018 3002, 23 April 2020).…

On a Thursday night in November 1994, sixteen year old Gordana Kotevski left Charlestown Square to walk about 500 metres to her aunt's house on Powell Street. A passing driver saw two young men at a white Toyota Hilux, then a girl walking with a shopping bag. Minutes later her aunt heard screams and men's voices. Gordana's torn bag and her purse were left near the house. A 2003 inquest found she was deceased, most likely as a result of foul play. In 2026 police searched properties at Edgeworth and West Wallsend, excavated an Edgeworth backyard, and appealed for two anonymous callers from 1994 and 1996. Nobody has ever been charged. Suggested by listener Rene. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING A NSW Government reward of $1,000,000 is offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any person or persons responsible for Gordana's disappearance. Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000 or nsw.crimestoppers.com.au (confidential). Strike Force Bambil, Belmont Detectives: 02 4922 8774, SFBambil@police.nsw.gov.au (per NSW…

At about 7.30pm on Sunday 10 July 2005, 22-year-old Katrina Jefferies left the Mt Roskill home she shared with her mother, her younger brother and her 20-month-old son. On the morning of Tuesday 12 July she was found partly undressed on a bank beside Waikowhai Road, wrapped in a red tarpaulin, a yellow raincoat and black rubbish bags, about a kilometre from home. She had been killed somewhere else. The police have never said how she died. They have traced everything found with her to one Mt Roskill address, and believe more than one person knows what happened. As of October 2026, nobody has been charged. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING Police want to hear from anyone who saw Katrina between the evening of Sunday 10 July and Tuesday 12 July 2005, or who knows where she went and who she was with. They also want to hear from anyone who was in Waikowhai Reserve or around Hillsborough Road in the early hours of Tuesday 12 July 2005. And they are asking about the red tarpaulin, the yellow Stormwear raincoat, the black…

Before dawn on 28 April 1998, Claire "Lisa" Hills, a 30-year-old McDonald's shift manager, left her Herne Bay flat for a 3.30am start at Auckland Airport and never arrived. About three hours later a woman walking on Māngere Mountain watched a man set a car alight beside the sports clubrooms, then came face to face with him as he ran. Lisa was in the back seat, alive but probably unconscious. A DNA profile believed to be her killer's has excluded the police's original prime suspect and around 300 other men, and it has never matched anyone on the New Zealand or Australian databanks. Police say all they need is a name. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING Call Operation Hills on 0800 OP HILLS (0800 674 4557) or Police on 105. To stay anonymous, call Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111. Police have asked about: anyone who saw a black Mazda Familia hatchback in South Auckland between 3am and 6am on 28 April 1998; the steering wheel lock missing from her car; where the killer got the petrol, which police believe he brought in a…

On the night of 29 January 1976, thirteen-year-old Tracey Ann Patient left a friend's house in Henderson, West Auckland, and ran for home along Great North Road, late for her 9.30 curfew. She was last seen about five minutes from her front door. The next morning a man walking his dog found her body in bush beside a layby on Scenic Drive in the Waitākere Ranges, strangled with pantyhose tightened with a piece of wood. Nearly two years later an anonymous caller led police to her missing ring, wrapped in tissue in an Avondale rubbish bin, and gave them a six-digit number, 126040. The caller promised to ring back and never did. Nobody has ever been charged. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING Information can be given anonymously through Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111 (crimestoppers-nz.org), or to Police on 105, quoting reference 990810/0373. Over the years police have asked about the meaning of the number 126040, about the identity of the person who rang Henderson police on 22 November 1977, about the driver of a cream or…

On the night of 1 October 1928, seventeen-year-old Elsie Walker vanished from her aunt and uncle's farm at Pāpāmoa, near Te Puke, in her apron and sand shoes. The family car vanished with her. By morning it was parked in a Papatoetoe street, with fuel for about 275 kilometres burned and a wheel changed on the road. Four days later a boy found Elsie's body under scrub in a scoria pit at Panmure. Police said she had driven herself. The coroner said she couldn't drive, that a man was at the wheel, and that he could not say who. Two inquiries, a 15,000-signature petition and a change to the law later, the case has never been solved. A NOTE ON SOURCING Elsie's cousin, William Alfred Bayly, was publicly suspected at the time but was never charged with any offence connected to her death. At the 1929 inquest he swore he was in Auckland on 1 October 1928, and the police told the inquest they had found no evidence placing him anywhere near Pāpāmoa. The later claims that he was seen on a train that day came from…

She was removed from her parents at two and placed under the parental responsibility of the Minister. Between two and fifteen she went through thirteen different carers and care facilities, and in her last two years she was reported missing thirty three times. Just after midnight on 26 October 2012, police found the fifteen year old inside a Strathfield boarding house, did a risk assessment and left her there. One of the adults present had given them a false name. A sergeant filed a Child at Risk report at two in the morning. Nobody followed it up, and she was not reported missing for another eight days. In 2020 a coroner found she is dead, and that she died in suspicious circumstances. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING A $500,000 NSW Government reward stands for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for Katrina's disappearance or death, and for information leading to her recovery. The investigation is Strike Force Delange, run by detectives at Auburn. Following the coroner's…

For about three weeks in December 2013, a homeless woman caught the same bus out of Liverpool at eight each night, sat in the same seat, fell asleep, and was woken at her stop by the driver. Each time there were more bandages around her head. She begged in shopping centres, walked into a hospital lobby and declined a doctor. On 4 January 2014 police found Monika Chetty in bushland at West Hoxton with full thickness acid burns to eighty per cent of her body, injuries a surgeon later put at three to four weeks old. She died four weeks after that. In 2024 a coroner found she was killed. Nobody has ever been charged. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING A $500,000 NSW Government reward stands for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for Ms Chetty's death. The investigation is Strike Force Lanlo, and following the coroner's recommendation it was referred in June 2024 to the NSW Police Force's Unsolved Homicide Team for further review and evaluation. Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000, or…

She published a local newspaper out of her own front room and used it to fight a developer who wanted to put three forty-five storey towers on her street. On a Friday morning she walked into the Carousel Cabaret in Kings Cross for a meeting about advertising, rang her business partner at half past ten to say she was running late, and was never seen again. Two men were later convicted of conspiring to abduct her four days earlier. Nobody has ever been charged over her disappearance. In 1983 a coroner's jury found police inquiries had been inhibited by an atmosphere of corruption. Eleven years later a federal parliamentary committee found something else. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING A $1 million reward, announced on 21 June 2021, stands for information about the 1975 disappearance and suspected murder of Juanita Nielsen, or for the location of her remains. The case is held by the Unsolved Homicide Team as Strike Force Euclid. Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000, or nsw.crimestoppers.com.au. Information is treated in strict…

Just after midnight, an eighteen year old left a dance at the Newport Surf Life Saving Club and walked out to Barrenjoey Road to hitchhike home to Avalon. Her boyfriend watched her get into a light coloured Holden panel van. Nobody has seen Trudie Adams since. In the weeks that followed, around fifteen young women came forward to say they had been abducted at gunpoint on the same road by two men in disguise, driven into the bush and raped. Detectives had a name within months. Nobody has ever been charged, and the coroner who finally heard the case in 2011 found that the person responsible never came to police attention. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING A $250,000 reward offered by the NSW Government stands for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for Trudie's suspected death. The case is held by the Unsolved Homicide Team as Strike Force Keldie, and police say they are still working strong lines of inquiry, with inquiries run in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and…

Eleven days after her wedding, 26-year-old Tina Watson died on a honeymoon dive 48 nautical miles off Townsville. She was found on the sea bed in 30 metres of water with her regulator in her mouth and most of her air still in her tank. Her husband, Gabe Watson, was committed for trial for her murder by a Queensland coroner, pleaded guilty instead to manslaughter by criminal negligence, served 18 months, was deported, and was then tried for capital murder in Alabama. That trial collapsed before the defence called a witness. Two countries, eight years, one conviction, one acquittal, and no jury verdict of any kind about how she died. A NOTE ON SOURCING David Gabriel "Gabe" Watson was convicted in Queensland on his own plea of manslaughter on the basis of criminal negligence, for failing in the duty he undertook as his wife's dive buddy. He was sentenced on 5 June 2009 to four and a half years imprisonment suspended after 12 months, increased on the Attorney-General's appeal to suspension after 18 months. He…

Before dawn on 3 October 1955, the MV Joyita left Apia on one engine, bound for Tokelau with 25 people aboard, among them a doctor on his way to operate, Tokelau's District Officer, and two children aged 3 and 11. She never arrived. Five weeks later she was found drifting north of Fiji, flooded and listing, with nobody aboard. Her life rafts, logbook, navigation gear and the captain's guns were gone. On deck was a doctor's bag holding a scalpel and blood-stained bandages. A 1956 Commission of Inquiry explained the flooding, but found the fate of the 25 "inexplicable on the evidence." So was it an accident at sea, or a crime? IN MEMORY Thomas Henry Miller, Charles R. Simpson, Tekokaa Teeweka, Aberaam Tanini, Henry McCarthy Jr, Penaia Kolio Pedro, Ihaia Kitiona Faraimo, Tagifano Latafoti Lepaio, Haipele Fihaga Himona, Ioakimi Iapeha Apete, Himeti Falaniko Mohe, Tuhaga Hila Elekana, Leota Telepu Kolo, Mohe Maota Peleti, James William Wallwork, George Kendall Williams, Takama Lapana, Tekai Lapana, Liua Noama…

On a Monday morning in November 1959, Truman Capote found a three hundred word wire story deep inside the New York Times. A wheat farmer, his wife and two of their children had been found bound and shot in their farmhouse in western Kansas. Nothing had been stolen. Capote went to Kansas with Harper Lee, stayed six years, and wrote the book that made true crime respectable. This episode tells both stories at once: what happened to Herb, Bonnie, Nancy and Kenyon Clutter, and what happened to the facts on their way into In Cold Blood. It ends with the two daughters who survived, and the letter they sent to everyone who asked. IN MEMORY The Clutters are buried at Valley View Cemetery, Garden City. A shelter at the Kansas State 4-H camp at Rock Springs Ranch, a stained glass window at the First United Methodist Church in Garden City, and the Garden City Co-op building are dedicated to the family. The 1959 murders of Cliff, Christine, Jimmie and Debbie Walker at Osprey, Florida, remain an open investigation with…

In January 1976, eight year old Eloise Worledge went to bed in her family's home on Scott Street, Beaumaris. Her father looked in on her at 11:40pm. At 7:30am her younger brother and sister woke their parents to say Ella was not in her room. The flyscreen on her window had been cut and rolled back, but forensic examination found the cut was made from the inside, the dust and cobwebs undisturbed, and the scene staged. Fifty years on, Eloise has never been found, nobody has been charged, and a coroner's open finding is the only formal answer anyone has. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING On 13 January 2026, the fiftieth anniversary, Victoria Police announced a reward of up to $1 million. It is offered at the discretion of the Chief Commissioner of Police for information leading to the discovery of Eloise's remains, or the apprehension and subsequent conviction of the person or persons responsible. Police say it is currently the only reward of its kind in Victoria because it pays for the recovery of remains, not only for a…

A companion to Episode 57 — the death of Jason Rigby On the evening of 14 December 2024, Jess Rigby and her husband Chris had put their youngest to bed and started a movie when the calls began. Chris's brother Jason, forty years old and second-in-charge of a resort in Nadi, had died in his staff apartment that morning — ten hours earlier, on the other side of the Pacific, with a stab wound to the chest. By the time the family were told, the scene had already been cleared and released. In this conversation Jess describes what the twenty months since have been like: three trips to Fiji, a private investigator, a missing phone, a knife nobody can account for, a toxicology form with a word crossed out - and the single document her family has been given about how Jason died. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING Jason's family want to hear from anyone who worked at, or stayed at, the Crowne Plaza Fiji Nadi Bay Resort & Spa on 14 December 2024. There were hundreds of guests and hundreds of staff on the property that day, and…

On the morning of 14 December 2024, Jason Rigby put on a suit, went to a meeting, and told colleagues in the lobby of the Fijian resort he had helped build that he would see them in half an hour. He was forty, the resort's executive assistant manager, living in staff quarters a hundred metres away. Within that half hour he was stabbed in the chest. His scene was cleared by four o'clock that afternoon — before his family in Australia had been told he was dead. Twenty months later they have obtained exactly one document about how he died, and somebody had already crossed a word out of it. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING Jason's family want to hear from anyone who worked at, or stayed at, the Crowne Plaza Fiji Nadi Bay Resort & Spa on 14 December 2024. There were hundreds of guests and hundreds of staff on the property that day, and almost none has ever been asked what they saw. No detail is too small. LINKS Justice for Jason Rigby — on Instagram and Facebook Or message anonymously via theguiltpodcast.com and it will be…

Elly Rose Warren was twenty years old, three days from flying home, when she was found dead beside a toilet block at Tofo Beach in Mozambique on 9 November 2016. The Mozambican autopsy recorded a violent death — a homicide — with sand obstructing her airways. The Australian autopsy left the cause undetermined. Nearly ten years later nobody has been charged, and almost everything now known about how Elly died was found by her father. In this conversation Paul Warren describes what he found: a crime scene he believes was altered before investigators arrived, a photograph that existed for two years before his family was shown it, clothing that never came home, and an Australian agency he says did not go to Mozambique officially until seven years after his daughter died. ELLY WARREN — THE TRUE FACTS Paul has published his entire ten-year investigation, including scanned primary documents, at ellywarren.net. If you take one thing from this episode, take that. THE ELLY WARREN PROTOCOL Paul's proposed reform for…

Warriena Tagpuno Wright was 26, a New Zealander, and had flown to Queensland for a friend's wedding. In the early hours of 8 August 2014 she fell 14 floors from a balcony at the Avalon apartments in Surfers Paradise. Almost the entire night had been recorded on the phone of the man she had met that evening — hours of audio, later played to a jury in Brisbane. In October 2016 Gable Tostee was acquitted of both murder and manslaughter. Two months later the Queensland State Coroner reopened the coronial investigation into how she died. Nearly ten years on, no finding has been published. A NOTE ON SOURCING Gable Tostee was tried in the Supreme Court of Queensland and acquitted of murder and of manslaughter on 20 October 2016. He has never been convicted of any offence in relation to Warriena Wright's death, and this episode does not suggest he should have been. The defence case is set out at length, including evidence from the recording of Warriena's own conduct that night. Nothing about his life after the…

On 10 December 2001, her 24th birthday, Alysha Krsangi Hanin flew out of New Zealand for Florida, having just left her three-year-old son with his grandmother. The plan was to collect her things in Miami and come home to raise him here. Four weeks later, in the small hours of Sunday 6 January 2002, she left the Shore Club hotel on Collins Avenue to get something to eat, and was never seen again. Her passport, purse, luggage, ID and credit cards were still in her room. Nobody reported her missing for three weeks. In the 24 years since: no verified sighting, no activity on her accounts. Police suspect foul play. Nobody has ever been charged. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING Miami Beach Police confirm the case is active. Her family asks five questions: Did you know Alysha — as Alysha, Krsangi or Yami — in Miami, Los Angeles, or within the Hare Krishna community, before 2002? Were you at or near the Shore Club on Collins Avenue in early January 2002 — including working there, on the door, valet, desk, housekeeping or bar?…

Elly Warren was 20, from Mordialloc in Melbourne, six weeks into a marine conservation placement and days from flying home to study marine biology. On the night of 8 November 2016 she was last seen outside a bar in Tofo, about half past eleven. At five the next morning a fisherman found her beside a public toilet block less than forty metres away, face down, her clothing disturbed, her airways packed with sand. Three autopsies in three countries reached three different conclusions. Her clothes were incinerated without being tested. Nearly ten years on, nobody has been charged, and the sand has never been compared. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING No reward has ever been offered in this case. If you were in Tofo on the night of 8 November 2016, worked there, or were told something afterwards, the family are still asking. Elly's father maintains the case archive and a contact page: ellywarren.net In Australia, information can be passed anonymously to Crime Stoppers — 1800 333 000 — or through the AFP's online reporting…

At 2.08am on 8 March 1973, two drums of petrol were lit in the foyer beneath the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub. Fifteen people died upstairs of carbon monoxide poisoning, in a first-floor room with one obstructed exit. Every one of them was dead before the fire brigade arrived. And months earlier, a career criminal named John Andrew Stuart had told a journalist — who printed it, and who personally warned the Police Commissioner and the Police Minister — that an empty club would be firebombed first, and then the Whiskey Au Go Go would be burned while it was full of people. On 25 February an empty club burned. Eleven days later, so did the Whiskey. A NOTE ON SOURCING James Finch and John Stuart were convicted in October 1973 of one murder — that of Jennifer Denise Davie, 17. The other fourteen charges were never proceeded with. Stuart died in Boggo Road Gaol in January 1979. Finch was released in 1988 and deported to England, where he confessed to a British newspaper and retracted within a day. He died of Covid…

In July 2011 Bruce Mouat came home drunk from a work function at 1am. Workmates walked him to his own front door. Minutes later he went backwards down the concrete steps outside it. He was 48, worked at the local dairy factory, and led the Taranaki Alpine and Cliff Rescue team. He died in Wellington Hospital eleven days later. Police considered homicide and ruled it out. A coroner found no foul play. At the tangi, his sister told police, his wife had hugged her and asked how it felt to hug a murderer — and the finding was accidental death regardless. It took five more years, and her own friends going to police about what she had been telling them, before Susan Mouat admitted she had pushed him. No new evidence was ever found. IN MEMORY Bruce Mouat led the Taranaki Alpine and Cliff Rescue team, volunteers who turn out for people in trouble on a mountain that has killed more than eighty people since the 1890s. If this episode stays with you, the volunteer search and rescue teams in your region are worth a…

On a quiet winter Saturday in 1979, three separate passengers rode the Ghost Train at Sydney's Luna Park, saw a small fire burning inside an imitation fireplace, and thought it was part of the show. Minutes later the ride was an inferno. Seven people died: John Godson and his two young sons, and four Waverley College schoolboys. A fifth boy was lifted out of his carriage seconds before it went in. The coroner could not say how the fire started. Forty-seven years on, a police report sits suppressed, a million-dollar reward stands unclaimed, and the State Coroner has still not decided whether to ask the question again. A $1,000,000 reward remains on offer from the NSW Government and NSW Police for information about the Ghost Train fire. It is unusual, and worth understanding: it does not require the charge or conviction of any person. It is offered for information alone. Strike Force Sedgeman, run by the Homicide Squad's Unsolved Homicide Team, has reviewed the case. Investigators have asked for anything about…

There was no Australia yet. Six British colonies, six sets of laws, and a farming town of fewer than five hundred people west of Brisbane. On Boxing Day 1898, Michael Murphy and his sisters Norah and Ellen drove ten kilometres into Gatton for a dance that had been cancelled. They turned for home and never arrived. The next morning their brother-in-law followed the tracks of his own sulky into a paddock and found all three dead, arranged in a triangle with a shot horse, their feet pointing west. Within hours, forty townspeople had walked across the only evidence there would ever be. No one was ever charged. A NOTE ON SOURCING Every person named in this episode died more than a century ago. No one was ever charged with the murders of Michael, Norah and Ellen Murphy. No coroner or court has ever made a finding as to who was responsible, and the case remains formally unsolved. Thomas Day, Richard Burgess and William McNeill are named because each was publicly investigated at the time and named in the 1899 Royal…

Pauline Sowry was 49 when she had lunch with her son at a Warrawong pub in December 1993. Her family never saw her again. A coroner found she had died but could not say how, when or where. Thirty years later a witness led police into bushland at Figtree, where they dug up a blouse she had stitched herself. In January 2026 the only charges ever laid in connection with her death were withdrawn. Nobody has ever been convicted. Police say there are people in the Illawarra who know exactly what happened. IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING A $500,000 reward remains open for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible. Crime Stoppers — 1800 333 000 — anonymous Wollongong Police — (02) 4226 7899 Police especially want to hear about two things: A cream-coloured, button-down, long-sleeved blouse with a hand-stitched design in coloured cotton, believed added by Pauline herself. Images were released by NSW Police in December 2024. A white 1968-model Holden HK Kingswood sedan, in pristine condition,…

On a winter Friday night in 1992, Raymond Ratima let himself into his in-laws' house on Judds Road, Masterton, with a key he had taken when he was told to leave. He waited forty-five minutes. Then he killed seven members of his own family — including his three small sons and a woman a month from giving birth — before lying in wait in the dark for the rest of them to come home. He pleaded guilty. He has never been released. And across thirty-four years, fourteen parole boards, a High Court judgment and the country's best forensic psychiatry, nobody has been able to answer the only question that matters: why. Sources used: Court and official records Ratima v The New Zealand Parole Board [2024] NZHC 613 (Preston J, 20 March 2024) — https://thelawassociation.nz/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Ratima-v-Parole-Board.pdf New Zealand Parole Board, decision of 12 March 2024 — https://www.paroleboard.govt.nz/decisions/decisions_2024/raymond_wahia_ratima_12032024 Parole Act 2002 —…

On Labour Weekend 1987, two disguised men walked into the Red Fox Tavern at Maramarua, shot the publican Chris Bush dead in front of his staff, and disappeared into the night with the contents of his safe. For more than thirty years, the case stayed cold. Then, in 2021, two men were convicted of the murder — one of them so notorious that his name was suppressed for years. In July 2026, the Supreme Court took those convictions apart, entered acquittals, and left a killing that is, once again, officially unsolved. This week on The Veil, we trace the case backwards from that courtroom: the night itself, the circumstantial evidence that was never quite enough, and the dead man whose alleged confession pointed somewhere else entirely. It's a story about the uneasy gap between what the law can prove and what we think we know. Some veils lift; this one fell closed again. Sources Supreme Court of New Zealand — Wilson v R [2026] NZSC 88 (judgment): https://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/assets/cases/2026/2026-NZSC-88.pdf RNZ…

In 1790, the mutineers of HMS Bounty burned their ship in a hidden bay and vanished onto a mis-charted Pacific rock, sealing themselves off from the world. Two centuries later, that isolation had a price. When a visiting British officer, sent merely to train the local constable, was quietly told that a girl had been raped, she pulled a thread that unravelled generations of abuse on Pitcairn — and forced one of the strangest trials in legal history. Could British law even reach an island settled by men who fled it? Courts were built from scratch; a third of the island's men stood accused. Sources used Wikipedia — "Mutiny on the Bounty," "HMS Bounty," "Pitcairn Islands," "2004 Pitcairn Islands sexual assault trial": backbone for the mutiny (28 April 1789), Bligh's open-boat voyage (~3,600 nmi to Timor, ~47 days), the burning of the Bounty in Bounty Bay (23 Jan 1790), the founding violence and Fletcher Christian's death (~1793), John Adams, and the full trial record — charges (55), verdicts (6 of 7 convicted on…

On Queen's Birthday weekend, 1975, eighteen-year-old Mona Blades set out hitchhiking from Hamilton to Hastings, carrying a birthday gift of plastic cups for her baby nephew. She reached Taupō — and vanished. A truck driver's sighting of her in an orange Datsun launched one of New Zealand's largest manhunts: more than 500 cars, thousands of hours, not a single trace found. Fifty years on, her body has never surfaced and no one has been charged. But a cold-case review revealed something unsettling: the famous orange Datsun may have been a wrong turn from the very start, sending an entire country chasing a mirage. Sources used Wikipedia — "Disappearance of Mona Blades": backbone for timeline, sightings table, the 500+ orange Datsun owners, John Freeman (rental + St Cuthbert's shooting/suicide), Hinton allegation and 2012 Kawerau dig, 2003 Huntly garage-floor false alarm, 2018 Cold Case documentary findings, gang-link theory, family detail. NZ History (nzhistory.govt.nz) — "Mona Blades vanishes": family context…

He was a successful Florida businessman with a waterfront house, fast cars, and a camera — and a name that surfaced, twenty years earlier, among the suspects at Wanda Beach. In early 1984, Christopher Wilder began to kill. Over six weeks and sixteen states, the Australian-born "Beauty Queen Killer" lured young women with the promise of a modelling shoot, abducting at least twelve and murdering eight. Three survived, and their testimony narrowed the net. He died in a struggle with police a few miles from the Canadian border. The chilling question isn't who — it's how he stayed free so long. Sources used Wikipedia — "Christopher Wilder" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Wilder): primary backbone for biography, full spree chronology (victims, dates, locations), death scene, FBI Most Wanted, estate distribution, The Collector, disputed electroshock/near-drowning (per McNab). UPI Archives (April & August 1984): Tina Risico contemporaneous reporting — released at Boston/Logan, treated as victim not accomplice,…

On a windy Monday in January 1965, two fifteen-year-old best friends, Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock, took four young children to Cronulla. When the little ones tired, the girls walked on into the sandhills behind Wanda Beach and never returned. Their bodies were found the next morning, stabbed and partially buried, a thirty-four-metre drag mark telling the story of one friend's desperate, failed escape. Sixteen thousand people were interviewed. Three men were named and never charged. A weak DNA profile survives; a crucial sample was lost. Sixty years on, it remains New South Wales' oldest unsolved homicide. Sources used Wikipedia — "Wanda Beach murders" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanda_Beach_murders): primary backbone for timeline, crime-scene reconstruction, autopsy findings, drag mark, weapons, reward, investigation scale, suspect summaries, 2012 DNA, 2014 lost sample, Kruger/Dowlingkoa linked cases. Illawarra Mercury — "Blood spot offers new Wanda murders clue" (2012) and "Australian serial killer…

In the summer of 1483, two boys vanished behind the walls of the Tower of London. Edward the Fifth, twelve years old and uncrowned, and his nine-year-old brother Richard were last seen at the windows, growing fainter, until they appeared no more. Their uncle took the throne as Richard the Third. For five centuries the blame has shifted — Richard, Buckingham, Henry Tudor — while pretenders claimed to be the lost princes and bones turned up beneath a staircase. Today a sealed urn in Westminster Abbey may hold the answer, untested by choice. Ryan Wolf looks through history's coldest veil. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by…

Between 1968 and 1969, three women — Patricia Docker, Jemima MacDonald and Helen Puttock — were each murdered after a night at Glasgow's Barrowland Ballroom. All three were beaten and strangled, their handbags taken, their bodies left near home. The press named the unknown killer "Bible John," after the scripture-quoting stranger who shared a taxi with Helen and her sister Jean — the one witness who ever truly saw him. Despite Scotland's largest manhunt, fifty thousand statements and a face built from memory, he was never caught. In this final episode, Ryan Wolf looks through the thinnest, cruellest veil of all. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is…

On the night of 23 December 1996, French film producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier was beaten to death outside her isolated holiday cottage in West Cork, Ireland — chased down her own lane and killed with a rock and a concrete block. Fifty injuries; a body left exposed so long the time of death was never fixed; a bloodstained gate that vanished from police custody. A local journalist, Ian Bailey, became the prime suspect and was convicted in France in his absence — but never charged in Ireland, where he denied it until his death. Decades on, new DNA testing offers fresh hope. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity…

On a January night in 1931, an insurance agent named William Wallace was lured across Liverpool by a phone call from a stranger — "Qualtrough" — to an address that didn't exist. While he searched, his wife Julia was beaten to death in their own parlour. Yet his suit was spotless, the weapon vanished, and the timing was almost impossible. Convicted of her murder, Wallace became the first person in English history freed on appeal because the evidence simply couldn't support the verdict. No one else was ever charged. Every clue points two ways at once — the case crime writers still call unsolvable. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and…

On the last night of February 2000, in the small Hunter Valley town of Aberdeen, a miner named John Price was stabbed to death in his own home — a death he had predicted aloud to his workmates the day before. But the murder was only the beginning. Over the hours that followed, Katherine Knight, a skilled abattoir worker, used the trade she'd spent thirty years perfecting to do the unthinkable to his body. This episode traces the forensic evidence, the warnings everyone missed, and the historic sentence that followed — and asks what it means when horror hides in plain sight. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity…

In the final chapter of Murder in the Pacific, The Veil leaves the islands for the mountains of Papua New Guinea — and the Black Cat Track. In September 2013, a guided trekking party was ambushed at a remote jungle camp. The story made headlines as an attack on eight foreign hikers, but the truth lay with the men carrying their bags. Three porters died; others were maimed for life. Ryan Wolf examines the chilling forensic detail that rewrites the case — why the foreigners were struck with the flat of the blade, and the porters with its edge. Nothing here was hidden. Except from us. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by the…

On Easter Sunday 2002, Janelle Patton — a 29-year-old Sydney woman seeking a fresh start — was found brutally murdered on Norfolk Island, a tiny, idyllic community of fewer than 2,000 people. With 64 injuries and no clear motive, the case sent shockwaves through a place that hadn't seen a murder in over a century. Investigators faced a closed, tight-knit community reluctant to talk, and a tangle of unidentified DNA that raised more questions than answers. A conviction eventually came — but did justice? In this episode of The Veil, we pull back the curtain on Norfolk Island's darkest day. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by…

In June 2016, a Russian couple — Yuri Shipulin and Nataliya Gerasimova — drove away from their farm in the Fijian highlands and never came back. Two days later their Landcruiser was found at Natadola Beach. A week after that, the first remains began washing up on the sand. This is the first of a three-part Murder in the Pacific series for The Veil — three cases set in the places we usually think of only as holiday destinations. Tonight, Fiji: paradise, a married couple in their forties, the slow horror of pieces returning across a winter, and a case that, ten years on, remains wide open. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by…

On a winter night in 2001, an orange Kombi pulled over on the Stuart Highway. By morning, Peter Falconio was missing, his girlfriend Joanne Lees was hiding in the scrub, and Australia had its most enduring outback mystery. This episode traces what happened that night, the manhunt that followed, the DNA evidence that convicted Bradley Murdoch, and the death — in July 2025 — that took the location of Peter's body to the grave. It's also about the way the press treated Joanne Lees, twenty years after they did the same thing to Lindy Chamberlain in the same country. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team…

On a Sunday night in August 1980, a baby disappeared from a tent at the base of Uluru. Her mother said a dingo took her. The country called it a lie. Lindy Chamberlain spent three and a half years in a Darwin prison for a murder that never happened — convicted on forensic evidence that turned out to be sound deadener from a Holden Torana, by a public that decided early she didn't grieve correctly. A backpacker's fatal misstep eventually unearthed the truth. This episode asks the harder question: how many others are still inside, waiting for their own matinee jacket? While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios…

On the morning of 20 June 1994, in a weatherboard house in Andersons Bay, Dunedin, five members of the Bain family were shot dead. One survived: 22-year-old David Bain, who had come home from his paper round and called 111. Convicted in 1995. Acquitted at retrial in 2009 after the Privy Council quashed the original verdict. Two stories, told for thirty years, about one morning. The rifle prints, the lens, the gloves, the bladder, the cobweb — every piece of it argued both ways. A country still working out what it thinks. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its…

On the morning of 8 April 1994, an electrician named Gary Smith climbed the stairs to a greenhouse above a Seattle garage and discovered the body of Kurt Cobain. The ruling was suicide. It held for thirty years — through a Seattle Police review, through documentaries, through one private investigator who never accepted it. Then in November 2025, an international forensic team published a peer-reviewed paper concluding Kurt was murdered and the scene was staged. We walk through the discovery, the note, Courtney Love's vigil reading, and the new evidence — what holds up, and what doesn't. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by…

On a cold Saturday afternoon in August 1973, eleven-year-old Joanne Ratcliffe took four-year-old Kirste Gordon to the toilet at the Adelaide Oval, and the two of them never came back. Thirteen thousand people were at the football. Three witnesses, in three different parts of the city, watched a middle-aged man carry the smaller girl through the parkland while the older one fought him for the entire kilometre. None of them stopped him. Fifty-three years on, the case is still open. Ryan Wolf listens for what's still behind the veil. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated…

The episode examines the Aramoana massacre, one of New Zealand’s deadliest mass shootings. Over 36 hours in November 1990, gunman David Gray killed 13 people in the small coastal settlement of Aramoana. The story traces how an isolated dispute escalated into extreme violence, the fear that gripped the community, and the police response that ultimately ended the siege. It also explores the lasting impact on survivors and how the tragedy reshaped New Zealand’s approach to firearms, public safety, and collective memory. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its…

The death of Hollywood star Natalie Wood remains one of the industry’s most enduring mysteries. In November 1981, Wood vanished from a yacht off Catalina Island during a weekend trip with her husband, Robert Wagner, and actor Christopher Walken. Hours later, her body was found floating in dark, cold waters. Officially ruled an accidental drowning at the time, the case has since been reopened amid conflicting accounts, shifting testimonies, and lingering questions about what happened that night. This episode examines the timeline, the key figures on board, and the unresolved inconsistencies that continue to fuel speculation decades later, leaving one haunting question: was it truly an accident? While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all…

Byron Bay is paradise. It is also, by NSW Police's count, one of the places where 67 women vanished or were killed between 1977 and 2009. In the final part of our Byron Bay series, Ryan Wolf walks the coast between Newcastle and the Queensland border — ten names, five decades, and one question the region has been asking for nearly fifty years. Théo Hayez. Jackson Stacker. And all the others still hidden behind The Veil. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Jackson Stacker’s death in Byron Bay raised more questions than answers. What initially appeared routine quickly unravelled into a case marked by inconsistencies, missing details, and uneasy silence. This episode examines the known facts, the gaps in the narrative, and why Stacker’s final hours continue to provoke suspicion and scrutiny. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

This is Part One of Three of our Special Series Byron Bay Vanishings In May 2019, 18-year-old Belgian backpacker Theo Hayez vanished after a night out in Byron Bay, Australia. He was last seen leaving the Cheeky Monkey's bar in the early hours of May 31st. Despite an extensive search involving police, volunteers, and his family who flew from Belgium, Theo was never found. His phone data showed he had headed toward Tallow Beach. The case remains officially unsolved, leaving his family with no closure. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.…

In October 1941, a struggling West Coast farmer named Stanley Graham shot four police officers on his remote Koiterangi property, then vanished into the New Zealand bush. What followed was the largest manhunt in New Zealand history — hundreds of police, soldiers, and Home Guardsmen, aircraft overhead, a tank in the valley — all hunting one wounded man for thirteen days. By the time it ended, seven people were dead. This is the story of how a quiet farming community was torn apart, how a nation at war turned its attention inward, and how some crimes leave wounds that never fully close. While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts. If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work. This podcast is researched, and written by…