Hanged - Executions in Australia by Jim Main
Category: True Crime
The last judicial execution in Australia was in 1967 when Ronald Ryan was hanged in Melbourne. Ryan was the last of hundreds who all paid the supreme penalty. This book covers dozens of the most sensational and controversial of Australia's executions, all by hanging.There are crimes of murder, rape and even sheep stealing, and those who committed these crimes. There are also the victims, the trials and in some cases the post-mortems, of victims and of those hanged. Most importantly for this book, there are the executions themselves. Some went according to plan, but some were gruesome in the extreme and in many instances here, are covered in detail. This is a book for all those who enjoy reading about true crime, but be warned: DO NOT READ ALONE AND/OR AT NIGHT. ...Show more
The Spy Runner - Ronnie Reed and Agent Zigzag, Operation Mincemeat and the Cambridge Spies by Nicholas Reed
Most of us remember the seventh of September 1940 as the day the London docks were bombed and devastated by fire. I remember it as the day I was called up. But the police car that collected me took me to Wormwood Scrubs Prison . . .Major Ronnie Reed never spoke about what he did in the Second World War. He was only 23 when it broke out; an amateur radio enthusiast who was working as a maintenance engineer for the BBC. And yet, despite minimal money and qualifications, he became one of the men behind some of the most remarkable spy stories of all time. Recruited in the dead of night from his Anderson shelter, Ronnie became a case officer for double agents, including Eddie Chapman, known then as Agent Zigzag. The passport photo of The Man Who Never Was, was a photo of Ronnie Reed. For ten years after the Second World War, he headed the anti-Russian department of MI5, dealing with notorious spies such as Philby, Burgess and Maclean.In 1994, shortly before Ronnie's death, he revealed the truth of his remarkable past to his son, Nicholas. In Spy Runner he reveals his father's fascinating story with a collection of recently released reports and photos from The National Archives, and intimate family snaps. ...Show more
Encyclopedia of Australian Crime : A Calendar of Murder, Mayhem, Rape, Robbery and Much, Much More by Jim Main
Australia has had more than its share of crime and, in fact, bloodshed, butchery and brutality has been with us since white settlement in 1788. From murder and mayhem to riot and rape, Australia has experienced every imaginable crime. There have been headless corpses, limbs in rivers, plane hijackings, audacious robberies and brazen con-men. Some of these crimes are etched deep into the Australian psyche and many of the central characters are part of the nation's folklore. Ned Kelly, a hanged criminal, is part of our culture and almost every Australian knows of such notorious cases as "The Pyjama Girl" and the horrific Anita Cobby murder. These are just the tip of a massive iceberg as crimes, both gruesome and mundane, have been committed on every day of the calendar. Here, for the first time, crimes have been listed when they have occurred, from New Year's Day to the singing of Auld Lang Syne at midnight on December 31. Every era of Australian criminal history is covered, from bushranging in colonial times to modern-day murder monsters. There is the unusual and the bizarre, from a train explosion to a head in a sink, from kidnapping and torture to escaped criminals. There are parent killers and perverts, corpses and conspiracies. All on a daily basis! ...Show more
The Devil's Work: Australia's Jack the Ripper and the serial murders that shocked the world. by Garry Linnell
He was a murderer, swindler, bigamist and suspect in the Jack the Ripper killings. Frederick Deeming was also the most hated man in the world. Claiming to be haunted by the ghost of his dead mother, Deeming had spent years roaming the planet under various aliases, preying on the innocent, the gullible a nd the desperate. But the discovery by Australian police in 1892 of the body of one of his wives in a shallow concrete grave triggered one of the greatest manhunts in history and exposed a further series of grisly murders - those of his first wife and four children - that stunned the Victorian era. The Devil's Work is a gothic journey into the twisted mind of a serial killer, set in the dying years of the 19th century when science and religion had collided and some of the world's most powerful and influential people believed in spirits and an afterlife. It reveals Deeming's crime spree across three continents, raising fresh questions about his role in the Jack the Ripper killings and culminating in his sensational trial where he was defended by a future Australian Prime Minister who believed he could also speak to the dead. Born bad or simply mad? It's time to meet Frederick Deeming, the man known and reviled throughout the United States, England and Australia as the Criminal of the Century. ...Show more
The Arsonist: A Mind on Fire (Indie Non-Fiction Winner 2019) by Chloe Hooper
On the scorching February day in 2009 that became known as Black Saturday, a man lit two fires in Victoria's Latrobe Valley, then sat on the roof of his house to watch the inferno. In the Valley, where the rates of crime were the highest in the state, more than thirty people were known to police as fir ebugs. But the detectives soon found themselves on the trail of a man they didn't know. The Arsonist takes readers on the hunt for this man, and inside the strange puzzle of his mind. It is also the story of fire in this country, and of a community that owed its existence to that very element. The command of fire has defined and sustained us as a species - understanding its abuse will define our future. A powerful real-life thriller written with Hooper's trademark lyric detail and nuance, The Arsonistis a reminder that in an age of fire, all of us are gatekeepers. ...Show more