Strewth - Australian True Crime and Mystery Podcast

The Unsolved Disappearance of Paddy Moriarty from Larrimah - Part 1 of 2 One evening in December 2017, a man and his dog rode home from the pub in a tiny town on the Stuart Highway, a few hundred metres up the road, and were never seen again. Paddy Moriarty was a seventy-year-old Irish-born ringer, a larrikin and a creature of habit, who lived alone with his young red kelpie, Kellie, in a fading outback settlement of barely a dozen people. When he vanished, he left a half-made dinner on the table, both his hats by the door, and a town full of neighbours who weren't saying much at all. Part one of two. This week on Strewth: the man, the dog, the dying town, and the last ordinary day in Larrimah. Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources: ABC News — Matt Garrick, "Why Paddy Moriarty's disappearance from the tiny town of Larrimah may never be fully solved," 8 June 2024. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-08/paddy-moriarty-case-nt-dpp-decision-larrimah-mystery-continues/103947002 ABC News — Roxanne Fitzgerald, "Case involving suspected death of Paddy Moriarty handed to Director of Public Prosecutions," 13 September 2022. https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-13/paddy-moriarty-case-handed-to-director-of-public-prosecutions/101433924 The Guardian — Caroline Graham and Kylie Stevenson, "Paddy Moriarty inquest hears NT police recordings of man allegedly saying he 'killerated the bastard'," 6 April 2022. https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2022/apr/06/paddy-moriarty-inquest-hears-nt-police-recordings-of-man-allegedly-saying-he-killerated-the-bastard NT Independent — "'I killerated old Paddy ... I struck him on the head and killerated the bastard': Inquest played bizarre murder song" (April 2022). https://ntindependent.com.au/i-killerated-old-paddy-i-struck-him-on-the-fucking-head-and-killerated-the-bastard-inquest-played-bizarre-murder-song/ NT Independent — "No charges to be laid in Paddy Moriarty case: DPP" (June 2024). https://ntindependent.com.au/no-charges-to-be-laid-in-paddy-moriarty-case-dpp/ The Nightly — "Paddy Moriarty: Major development announced in Larrimah missing person case made famous on Netflix show" (June 2024). https://thenightly.com.au/australia/northern-territory/paddy-moriarty-major-development-announced-in-larrimah-missing-person-case-made-famous-on-netflix-show-c-14929564 Podcast — Lost in Larrimah, Caroline Graham and Kylie Stevenson (The Australian / News Corp, 2018). Winner, 2018 Walkley Award for Radio/Audio Feature. Radio — A Dog Act: Homicide on the Highway, ABC Radio National (2018). Documentary — Last Stop Larrimah, directed by Thomas Tancred, executive produced by Mark and Jay Duplass (HBO, 2023; also distributed internationally).

A Lone Wolf? - The Ivan Milat Backpacker Murders - Australian True Crime Everyone knows how the number seven relates to the Ivan Milat case. Seven backpackers. Seven graves in the Belanglo State Forest. Seven life sentences handed down in a Sydney courtroom in 1996. But in August 2025, a list was tabled in the New South Wales parliament that had been sitting in police files since 1993. Fifty-eight names. Fifty-eight missing or murdered young people that detectives from the task force that caught Ivan Milat had identified as potentially connected to him. Every state and territory in Australia. Decades of cases. Families who were never told. In this episode of Strewth, we aim to answer two big questions that still hang over this horrific case. How many of those fifty-eight is Milat really responsible for and did he receive help when committing these crimes? Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources: NSW Legislative Council Hansard Motion by the Hon. Jeremy Buckingham regarding production of Ivan Milat criminal records, 2025. URL: https://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/Hansard/Pages/HansardResult.aspx#/docid/HANSARD-1820781676-98950/link/92 ABC News "Police doubt Milat had a woman's help," Saturday 16 July 2005. URL: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2005-07-16/police-doubt-milat-had-awomans-help/2059768 News.com.au / Candace Sutton "Belanglo backpacker murders: Ivan Milat confessed to his mother before her death." URL: https://www.news.com.au/national/crime/belanglo-backpacker-murders-ivan-milat-confessed-to-his-mother-before-her-death/news-story/c56d825d8cde4acd3ce05e7bbeffcfbe Daily Telegraph / Charles Miranda "How forensic evidence finally solved Ivan Milat accomplice mystery," May 14, 2019. URL: https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/truecrimeaustralia/behindthescenes/last-forensic-evidence-solves-ivan-milat-accomplice-mystery/news-story/b27c2d9b3b1ba60b3ead841d9a7e6508 The Guardian / Michael McGowan "Ivan Milat's chilling serial backpacker murders still haunt Australia," October 27, 2019. URL: https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/oct/27/ivan-milat-chilling-serial-murders-haunt-australia-after-death AAP News, "Police files link Milat to 58 cold cases over decades," August 22, 2025

The Shark Arm Case - Australian True Crime Mystery Anzac Day, 1935. A live tiger shark in a Coogee swimming pool vomits up a human arm in front of a crowd of holiday families. And on the inside of the forearm, a tattoo that a man reading the Sunday paper over breakfast will recognise as his brother's. What follows is one of the strangest murder cases in Australian history. A bankrupt billiard hall manager. A respectable boatbuilder running cocaine through Sydney Heads. A four-hour police chase around the harbour. And a body found in a car at Dawes Point in the small hours of the morning. Nobody was ever convicted of anything. Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources: The Shark Arm Case — Vince Kelly, Angus & Robertson, 1975 The Shark Arm Murders — Alex Castles, Wakefield Press, 1995 Shark Arm Murder 1935 — Dictionary of Sydney, 2010 - https://dictionaryofsydney.org/entry/shark_arm_murder_1935 The Shark Arm Murders — Sydney Crime Museum, 2015 - https://www.sydneycrimemuseum.com/crime-stories/the-shark-arm-murders/

Leanne Holland - Part 2 of 2 - Not a Scintilla - Unsolved True Crime On Christmas Eve 2009, Graham Stafford's conviction for the murder of Leanne Holland was quashed. A Court of Appeal found his trial had been fundamentally unfair. One of its judges would have acquitted him outright. The murder of Leanne Holland was officially unsolved. Then Queensland Police conducted a two-year review, declared there was not a scintilla of evidence against anyone other than Stafford, and locked the report away for a decade. In Part 2, we ask the question nobody in authority has seriously tried to answer: if not Graham Stafford, then who? Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources: R v Stafford [1992] QCA 269 R v Stafford; ex parte A-G [1997] QCA 333 R v Stafford [2009] QCA 407 Stafford and Queensland Police Service [2021] QICmr 21 ABC Australian Story, "Body of Evidence" Parts 1 & 2, aired 20 & 27 August 2007. Channel 9, Under Investigation with Liz Hayes, aired 14 February 2024. Graeme Crowley and Paul Wilson, Who Killed Leanne Holland? One Girl's Murder and One Man's Injustice, New Holland Publishers, 2010 Graeme Crowley, Joe Crowley, Darrell Giles and Greg Cary, The Leanne Holland Murder, 2024 Podcast - Who Killed Leanne Holland?, Six10 Media, hosted by Graeme Crowley and Jamie Pultz, 2020 Thomas Chamberlin, "Leanne Holland murder case reopened by coroner after 35 years," The Courier Mail, 22 April 2026

The Unexplained Disappearance of the Patanela | Australian Mystery In November of 1988, a steel-hulled schooner called the Patanela made three radio calls from ten miles off Botany Bay and disappeared. No wreckage. No bodies. No distress signal. No explanation that holds together under examination. Just an experienced skipper asking for directions to a town he'd already passed, a silence where a voice used to be, and one barnacled lifebuoy that turned up six months later and raised more questions than it answered. Four people were aboard. Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources: Janice Jarrett, "Operation 'Lilac' The mystery of the Patanela", Platypus: The Journal of the Australian Federal Police, Issue 36/38, July 1992. NSW Coronial Inquest, Deputy State Coroner Derrick Hand, Glebe Coroner's Court, 1992. Sydney Morning Herald, 9 February 2008. "Message in a bottle redeems lost sons." Paul Whittaker and Robert Reid, Patanela Is Missing: Australia's Greatest Sea Mystery, Bantam Books, Sydney, 1993. Philip Temple, The Sea and the Snow, 1966 (reissued). Derrick Hand, The Coroner, ABC Books, 2004. John Pinkney, Great Australian Mysteries, Five Mile Press, 2004. Under Investigation with Liz Hayes, "Ghost Ship: What happened to the Patanela?", Channel Nine, 1 March 2023.

The 6:30 to Gippsland - Australian Unsolved Mystery On the evening of Saturday, 7 June 1919, a fireman named Frederick Mills climbed the coal pile in his tender as a steam train approached Korumburra station in South Gippsland. In the light of the signal box, he saw a body on the carriage roof. It was still warm. The deceased was Alexander Gordon Eastman, a twenty-one-year-old butcher from Prahran, who had boarded the 6:30 to Gippsland a few hours earlier with his aunt. He had stepped away at Dandenong to find a friend. The friend was never traced. This episode examines the discovery, the inquest, and the four competing theories about what happened on the South Gippsland line that winter night. No conclusion the evidence doesn't support is reached. Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources The Argus (Melbourne), 10 June 1919, p. 4: "Train Mystery. Body Identified. Gold Ring Missing from Finger." Trove: nla.news-article1477101 The Argus (Melbourne), 26 June 1919, p. 9: "Train Mystery. Deputy Coroner's Finding. No Foul Play." Trove: nla.news-article1482558 The Advertiser (Adelaide), 11 June 1919, p. 9: "The Death of Eastman." Trove: nla.news-article5655217 The Ballarat Star, 11 June 1919, p. 1: "Korumburra Train Mystery — Supposed Solution." Trove: nla.news-article212643831

The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich - The Flight - Australian Unsolved Mystery On the evening of Saturday, October 21, 1978, a twenty-year-old pilot named Frederick Valentich took off from Moorabbin Airport in Melbourne. He crossed the coast at Cape Otway at seven o'clock, right on schedule. Six minutes later, he radioed Melbourne Flight Service to ask if there was any known traffic below five thousand feet. There wasn't. What followed was a six-minute radio exchange that has never been satisfactorily explained. Frederick described something above him, a long shape, metallic, shiny, with a green light, hovering, orbiting, moving at speeds he could not identify. His last clear words were: it is hovering and it's not an aircraft. Then seventeen seconds of metallic sound. Then silence. Frederick Valentich and his Cessna were never found. In Part One of this two-part Strewth investigation, we follow Frederick from the beginning, his obsessive love of flying, the exam failures he hid from everyone, the engagement ring on layaway, the Saturday evening plans he would never keep. We put him in that aircraft. We fly that route with him. And we listen to every word of that radio transmission, in full, exactly as it was recorded. Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources: Aircraft Accident Investigation Summary Report (1982) Department of Transport, Commonwealth of Australia. File reference V116/783/1047, approved for publication April 27, 1982. Marine Search and Rescue File (1978) National Archives of Australia, Series A4703, control symbol 1978/1205. Radio Transcript of VH-DSJ Final Transmission (1978) Reconstructed for broadcast from the official BASI published transcript. Haines, Richard F. (1987) Melbourne Episode: Case Study of a Missing Pilot. LDA Press (LSRG) Simpson, George (2022) Nothing on Radar: The Valentich Mystery. Self-published (Amazon). Haines, Richard F. & Norman, Paul (2000) "Physical Evidence Related to UFO Reports: The Proceedings of a Workshop." Journal of Scientific Exploration, 14(2). Haines, Richard F. (1981) Sound spectrum analysis of the 17-second metallic transmission. Journal of UFO Studies. McGaha, James & Nickell, Joe (2013) "The Valentich Disappearance: Another UFO Cold Case Solved." Skeptical Inquirer, 37(6), November/December 2013. Haines, Richard F. (undated, published PSU CiteSeerX) "Valentich Disappearance: New Evidence and a New Conclusion." Chalker, Bill (2019) "Australian UFO Mysteries: The Disappearance of Frederick Valentich." New Dawn, Issue 173 (March–April 2019) Flight Safety Australia (February 2025) "Leaving This World." Official publication of the Civil Aviation Safety Authority (CASA) Chalker, Bill (1979) "The Missing Cessna and the UFO: A Preliminary Report on the Bass Strait-King Island Affair." Flying Saucer Review, Volume 24, No. 5, March 1979. Chalker, Bill (1984) "Vanished? The Valentich Affair Re-examined." Flying Saucer Review, Vol. 30, No. 2. Basterfield, Keith (2012) "Valentich Files Released by Australian Government." Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena – Scientific Research blog. Basterfield, Keith (2015) "Found: Two More Australian Government Files on the 1978 Valentich Disappearance." Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena – Scientific Research blog. Basterfield, Keith (catalogue) "A Catalogue of UAP Reports from Victoria, Bass Strait and Tasmania at the Time of the Valentich Disappearance." Chalker, Bill (2013) "Strange Days, Strange Tales — A Valentich Connection." The OZ Files blog, October 2013. Tasmanian Aviation Historical Society (2020) "Mysteries of Aviation — Frederick Valentich and VH-DSJ." Available via tahs.org.au. Discovery Science Channel (September 2013) The Unexplained Files, Season 1. NBC / Cosgrove-Meurer Productions (September 29, 1993) Unsolved Mysteries, Season 6, Episode 2. The Age (Melbourne), October 23, 1978 Herald Sun (Melbourne), 2014 Coverage of the Victorian UFO Action group's "Age of Reason" conference; Coonabarabran Times, November 17, 1994

The Lithgow Panther - Unsolved Australian Mystery For over a century, something large and black has been moving through the sandstone gorges and eucalyptus forest west of Sydney. Farmers have found their sheep with broken necks and grass still between their teeth killed instantly, mid-graze. Carcasses have been discovered wedged in the forks of trees, well above the ground. A seventeen-year-old boy came home one night covered in blood. More than five hundred and sixty people have formally reported seeing it since 1998 alone. Four NSW government inquiries have been commissioned. Two concluded its existence was more likely than not. One of those reports was edited before public release, its finding quietly removed, its author instructed not to speak publicly on the subject. No body has ever been found. No DNA confirmed. No camera trap has ever captured a frame. In this episode of Strewth, we go deep into the Blue Mountains to follow the evidence and the cover-up behind Australia's most enduring predator mystery. Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources: NSW Department of Primary Industries, Large Free-Ranging Felines in New South Wales: A Review, John Parkes (2013) Dr Johannes Bauer, ecological assessment commissioned by NSW Agriculture (1999) Michael Williams & Rebecca Lang, Australian Big Cats: An Unnatural History of Panthers (2010) Kevin Sheridan correspondence, released under Freedom of Information Hills Shire Times, March 2003 (Luke Walker attack) Hawkesbury Gazette, December 2013 (Peter Russel encounter) Lithgow Mercury, March 2018 (Sam Maher encounter)

Australian True Crime - Part 1 of 2 On April 17, 1991, a stranger walked in off the street and stood behind the hairdresser without making a sound. The door had a bell. It hadn't rung. He watched her in the mirror, told her he didn't like hairdressers, and said he'd be back. Claire Acocks locked up and went home early. She told her friends she had never, in her life, been so frightened. On May 3, tragedy struck Claire and a customer in that very salon. In part one of The Old London Affair, we trace the crime, the victims, and the single most unsettling detail in this case: a stranger who knew how to move through that building unseen, and who might have come back sixteen days after he first appeared in Claire Acocks' mirror. Subscribe now to Strewth Premium on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/cw/StrewthPodcast Strewth social media links - https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact us - strewthpodcast@gmail.com Theme Music - Jesse Frank on Pixabay Sources: Wallace, L. (2012). Horrible Man: Sinister Secrets and Truths Untold — The Portland Hair Salon Murders. Fontaine Press. The Standard, Warrnambool. "Portland's salon killings still chill 20 years on." 2011. The Standard, Warrnambool. "Portland's darkest day still the talk of the town." April 13, 2015. The Standard, Warrnambool. "Husband Robert Penny charged over cold case murders at Portland hair salon." April 13, 2015. Wright, T. "Portland hairdresser murder mystery persists after all these years." The Age, October 2, 2017. Coroner Jacqui Hawkins, findings of inquest, June 30, 2017. Cited via The Standard and The Age. Presswire. Statement from Aphra Williams regarding film project, June 29, 2017.

WANDA BEACH: PART TWO - LINGERING QUESTIONS The bodies of Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock were found on 12 January 1965. By April 1966, approximately 7,000 people had been interviewed in what was then the largest criminal investigation in Australian history. By 1981, that figure had risen to more than 16,000. The case file exceeded 10,000 pages. Three suspects have emerged across the decades. Derek Percy, Australia's longest-serving prisoner, whose grandmother lived on the same street as both victims. Christopher Wilder, who was living on the Northern Beaches at the time of the murders and had a 1963 conviction for another serious offence at a Sydney beach. Alan Bassett gave a painting to detective Cec Johnson in 1975 that Johnson beieved depicted details of the Wanda Beach crime scene. In part two, we examine sixty years of unanswered questions and try to solve this heartbreaking mystery. Sources Whiticker, Alan J. Wanda: The Untold Story of the Wanda Beach Murders. New Holland Publishers, 2003. Illawarra Mercury. "Australian serial killer Christopher Wilder linked to the Wanda Beach murders," 14 June 2018. https://www.illawarramercury.com.au/story/5461703 St George and Sutherland Shire Leader. "Australian serial killer linked to nation's most infamous cold case," 11 June 2018. https://www.theleader.com.au/story/5458975 Forgotten Illawarra. "The Last Dance" (Carolyn Orphin / Alan Bassett), January 2017. https://forgottenillawarra.wordpress.com/2017/01/19/the-last-dance/ Forgotten Illawarra. "The Piccadilly Murder" (Wilhelmina Kruger), June 2013. https://forgottenillawarra.wordpress.com/2013/06/01/the-piccadilly-murder/ Australian Missing Persons Register. "Carolyn Orphin." https://australianmissingpersonsregister.com/ampr/CarolynOrphin.htm Sunday Night, Channel Seven, broadcast 2018. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TQDW9pr_KzA Title Music: by Jesse Frank from Pixabay Strewth Social Media Links: https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact us: strewthpodcast@gmail.com

Somewhere in the Outer Barcoo, on a remote cattle station in central-western Queensland, there is a waterhole that terrified a district for sixty years. Station hands abandoned a hut they would never return to. Shearers fled in the middle of the night, leaving their swags behind. Two men went out armed with rifles to settle the matter once and for all. They came back without answers, and with their weapons discharged. The sounds they heard were described consistently, across multiple independent accounts spanning six decades. Wailing, screaming, something that built from silence until it filled the whole night. Something that, by the repeated testimony of people who had spent their lives in the Australian bush, could not have been made by any animal or bird they knew. It stopped around 1925. Nobody knows why. Nobody heard it again. Sources: Bill Beatty, "The Wilga Waterhole Ghost," Sydney Morning Herald, 4 January 1947, p.10 (Trove article #18004435) Western Star and Roma Advertiser, 14 February 1947, p.4 (Trove article #98205020) S.W. Cleary, letter to the editor, Narromine News and Trangie Advocate, 4 March 1932, p.5 (Trove article #98921925) Bill Beatty, A Treasury of Australian Folk Tales and Traditions (1960), chapter "Here's a Queer Tale" Philip Shields, "In Search of the Wilga Ghost," Ontology Site (19 August 2017): https://ontologysite.wordpress.com/2017/08/19/in-search-of-the-wilga-ghost/ Title Music: by Jesse Frank from Pixabay Strewth Social Media Links: https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact us: strewthpodcast@gmail.com

The Florence Broadhurst Mystery In October 1977, nineteen-year-old Constable Tony Russell responded to a welfare check on his first day at Paddington Police Station. What he found in Florence Broadhurst's wallpaper factory would haunt him for nearly fifty years. This special follow-up to our "A Murderer Takes Tea" episode tells the story that couldn't be told in our original Florence Broadhurst investigation, because at the time, the first officer on the scene was never allowed to tell it. Tony Russell saw critical evidence that morning but within hours of finding the body, Tony was told to forget what he'd seen. He was never interviewed. Never asked for a statement. Never allowed to document his observations. Through Tony's own words, recorded in a phone interview, we reconstruct what he saw that day, what happened to him afterward, and what his observations tell us about who really killed Florence Broadhurst. Sources: Thomson, Katherine: Unfolding Florence: The Many Lives of Florence Broadhurst - Shand Adam: Australian Crime Stories (Season 2, Episode 4) "Killing Florence" O'Neill, Helen. The Laughing Hangman: The True Story Behind the Florence Broadhurst Murder. Sydney: Random House Australia, 2006. Title Music: by Jesse Frank from Pixabay Strewth Social Media Links: https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact us: strewthpodcast@gmail.com

The official story seemed simple: Vivienne Cameron murdered Beth Barnard in jealous rage, then jumped from the San Remo Bridge. Case closed. But when forensic scientists examined the evidence, they found something impossible. A pink mohair jumper that never left a single fibre. A blood-soaked murder scene where the killer left no victim's blood in the escape vehicle. Phone calls at times that don't match the timeline. A handbag that appeared in two different places. And a woman who supposedly drowned hours before her friend received a phone call from her discussing sewing patterns. In Part 2, we examine what the evidence really shows and why every piece of forensic science points away from the official narrative toward something more complex, more troubling, and more deliberately concealed. After forty years, the bones in the sand might finally reveal the truth. Or they might prove that Phillip Island's secrets run even deeper than anyone imagined. Sources Petraitis, Vikki and Paul Daley: The Phillip Island Murder (1993, 3rd edition 2018) Petraitis, Vikki: The Vanishing of Vivienne Cameron: Forty Years Searching for the Phillip Island Murderer (Simon & Schuster, January 2026) Casefile Presents Podcast (2020): The Vanishing of Vivienne Cameron Sensing Murder (2006) The Scarlett Letter (Series 1 - Episode 8) Under Investigation: Adultery, Murder and Mayhem (2021) Title Music: by Jesse Frank from Pixabay Strewth Social Media Links: https://linktr.ee/strewthpodcast Contact us: strewthpodcast@gmail.com