Strange Investigations with Charlie Bezzina - Part 2

March 29, 2026·55 min·5 clips

Two marks in the soil proved a woman's suicide, overturning her family's accusations against local detectives.

1. Australian True Crime presents the second half of a conversation with Charlie Bezzina, a former Victoria Police homicide detective with 38 years of service. 2. Bezzina is the sole guest; host Michelle Laurie draws out his case recollections and reflections on the justice system over a multi-case interview format. 3. The episode's core thread is how an experienced detective reads crime scenes, manages investigations under legal scrutiny, and maintains psychological detachment across a career involving hundreds of deaths. 4. Bezzina explains his lack of PTSD by describing deliberate emotional compartmentalisation: in the post-mortem room, he focuses on identifying organs and cause of death rather than dwelling on the person, having attended enough autopsies to speak clinical terms fluently. 5. His team handled 14 homicides in one year, each involving multiple families, offenders, and court processes running simultaneously. 6. He recounts the unexplained death of sports journalist Clinton Gribus, whom he met at an Alana Madeline Foundation function and was then called to examine within weeks — a case where no cause of death could be established despite post-mortem examination. 7. A country-town suicide case saw a sister's family demand a full investigation of the local detectives' findings; Bezzina's team confirmed the suicide using gun recoil marks — two depressions in the soil showing the weapon fired and jumped — and pathological research showing women who use firearms tend to target the chest to remain presentable. 8. Bezzina describes his foundational investigative approach: begin at the body, construct a circle of possible suspects from family outward, eliminate all before focusing on the primary, and document everything so a defense barrister cannot raise a reasonable doubt. 9. He explains thinking 'like a defense barrister' from the moment he arrives at a crime scene, referencing cross-examinations that taught him to collect speculative evidence such as a full ashtray of cigarette butts in case a secondary DNA source existed. 10. Bezzina criticises the guilty plea sentencing discount, arguing that when police build an overwhelmingly strong case, the offender's guilty plea should not reduce their sentence — calling it a structural reward for detective competence benefiting the criminal. 11. The Phyllis Hocking case in Box Hill is the episode's centrepiece: an elderly widow found battered to death in her son's converted lounge room, preceded by a burglary and a Molotov cocktail attack on her flat that she survived. 12. Bezzina identified the murder as staged within minutes: electrical equipment had its cords cut and was stacked up — real burglars never cut cords because it destroys resale value — and a lone forced entry suggested a killer waiting for a scheduled arrival, not a random intruder. 13. The case went cold after he left the Homicide Squad for promotion and returned 18 months later; the breakthrough came when the son's de facto voluntarily contacted Bezzina with a full account of the conspiracy. 14. The de facto's account revealed the son directed the grandson to commit the burglary, the arson, and finally the murder, driven by impatience over a $300,000-plus inheritance; the grandson confessed but co-accused evidence rules prevented charging the father. 15. A separate case involved a security guard killed by his wife's lover, who lay in wait at an industrial site after the wife disclosed the husband's daily routine; the lover was identified via DNA from an unknown-source sample on his knees at the blood-saturated scene. 16. A third case involved an accidental asphyxiation during a consensual sex act; the survivor panicked, staged the scene, obtained petrol, and set the premises alight — Bezzina notes the cover-up turned a defensible accident into a much more serious matter. 17. Bezzina recounts finding a dismembered leg at the Brooklyn tip in a plastic bag; bulldozer operators spotted it, which halted tip operations; other body parts were recovered by a large search team, all except the head, leading to identification via a tattoo. 18. The interview is conversational and case-driven; Michelle Laurie prompts Bezzina with follow-up questions about motive and evidence rather than steering toward emotional reflection, maintaining a procedural tone throughout. 19. Listeners interested in investigative procedure, police methodology, and solved cold cases with surprising reveals will find Bezzina's account detailed and direct. 20. Those expecting emotional victim-centred storytelling or a single extended narrative will likely find the multi-case format episodic and police-centric.

As heard by us

A grounded police-work episode built around Charlie Bezzina's scene logic, family contact, and a suspicious Box Hill killing.

Australian True Crime's second visit with former homicide detective Charlie Bezzina works best when it lets him think out loud. The episode moves between how he compartmentalised decades of homicide work, how detectives keep victims' families close to the process, and how one…

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A retired homicide detective explains, with quiet confidence, exactly why the staged burglary was a lie.

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