A prison escape story widens into a family's view of a notorious reputation.
Brendan Abbott's story opens in a cramped Nullamara police station room, where a cup of tea becomes the unlikely prelude to his first real escape.

Mamamia Podcasts
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True Crime Conversations explores the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the people who know the most about them. Hosted by Gemma Bath.
Based on 6 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Case reconstruction gives way to candid testimony about justice, survival, institutional failures, and the consequences that continue after a crime.
True Crime Conversations builds episodes around substantial exchanges, framed by scene-setting cold opens that establish the case and its stakes.
A suspect's published journal meets a mother's courtroom testimony; your curiosity needs room for both.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A prison escape story widens into a family's view of a notorious reputation.
Brendan Abbott's story opens in a cramped Nullamara police station room, where a cup of tea becomes the unlikely prelude to his first real escape.
A familiar evening walk becomes a sober case study in care, supervision, and risk.
The Murder Of Australian Schoolgirl Marsa Vukicic traces a familiar evening routine into a case marked by uneasy questions about care, supervision, and risk.
A suburban morning, a devastating blast, and a rent dispute tied to Melbourne's underworld.
John Furlan's ordinary morning turns into the start of a car-bombing case with a brutal physical trail. On August 3, 1998, the Melbourne businessman drives his white Subaru Liberty to buy coffee and a newspaper before work, only for the blast on Lawrenson Street to rip the car…
A quiet bedroom scene leads into a measured look at the legal fragility behind an Adelaide cold case.
An open window and a cut fly screen turn a quiet Adelaide bedtime into the start of a case that stayed in Australia's memory for decades. True Crime Conversations keeps Louise Bell's disappearance and murder close to the home itself: the pale yellow pyjama top, the two single…
A steady survivor-centered account of Chowchilla's bus kidnapping, where one teenager's courage carries real weight.
A summer-school bus carrying 26 children and driver Ed becomes the center of a kidnapping survival story shaped by fear, endurance, and one unexpected passenger.
A Perth killing, a twisted plan, and the messages that exposed it.
The story moves through a nondescript brown house in Perth in June 2016, where Gemma Lilly and Trudy Lennon had been living together for just three weeks before their talk turned to homicidal fantasies and a plan to kill.
A plainspoken Gacy episode that links Timothy Jack McCoy's disappearance to the failures around it.
True Crime Conversations opens with Timothy Jack McCoy's 1972 disappearance and uses it to widen the frame around John Wayne Gacy. The setup is simple and effective: a layover in Chicago, a brief offer of a city tour, a hunger stop that turns into a disappearance, then the hard…
A sober BTK account that stays with the families, not the killer's mythology.
This episode opens with the Otero family arriving home in Wichita and landing in one of the case's bleakest scenes. It works best when it stays with the human cost: the children's shock, the sequence of that day, and the way Dennis Rader's taunts to police kept hanging over the…

Grave questions, carefully organized.

Paranormal talk with room to wander.

Oz reimagined, then argued with afterward.

Crime memory with prison-wall detail.

Irish true crime, evidence first.

True crime with forensic bite and blunt banter.
True Crime Conversations episode featuring Samantha Stites, who survived 13 years of stalking by Christopher Thomas and a 2022 abduction.
John Killick built a reputation as a bank robber who kept trying to break out of custody.
Daryl Gardner describes seeing his mother’s abuser in a supermarket in 2023, feeling the old violence rise, and walking away because his family was waiting in the car.
This episode explores the murder of Courtney Herron by Henry Hammond in Melbourne, focusing on her father John Herron's perspective as a lawyer.
This episode delves into the Jodi Arias murder case, exploring her obsessive relationship with Travis Alexander, the brutal killing, and the sensational trial.
The blast that tore his Subaru down the middle will be felt up to five kilometres away.
True Crime Conversations explores the BTK killer case through two lenses: the investigation spanning 30 years and the untold story of Dennis Rader's daughter, Kerry.
Gemma Bath revisits the case of Clifford Bartholomew, who killed ten people at a remote farmhouse 40km south of Adelaide in 1971.
True Crime Conversations examines Ed Gein through Harold Schechter, the author of Deviant, who argues that Ryan Murphy’s Monster series is “90% fabrication” and often far from historical truth.
True Crime Conversations focuses on Riley Elder, whose ex Scott Quinn Burkett allegedly tried to have her killed after a breakup and an earlier assault allegation in Beverly Hills.
Karen Rostewski vanished from Avondale Heights on June 29, 2016, and her remains were found months later in Macedon Regional Park after Boris had publicly played the grieving husband.
True Crime Conversations covers the 1976 Chowchilla bus kidnapping, where 26 children and bus driver Frank Edward Ray were seized after a masked gunman stopped the school bus on Treeline Avenue 21.
Patrick McManus says he rejected a John Wayne Gacy project twice before agreeing to make The Devil in Disguise as a victim-centered series for Peacock and Universal Content.
Claire Murphy and Kate Katcher examine the disappearance of Elaine Johnson and Kerri-Anne Joel, two teenagers last seen in the Shire south of Sydney in early 1980.
True Crime Conversations follows the disappearance of Chantelle McDougall, Simon, Leela, and Tony from Nunup in 2007, after years of increasing isolation and secrecy.
Michelle Milthorpe describes waking on Sunday, October 27, 2013, in Albury, New South Wales, when her five-year-old daughter Rose disclosed sexual assault by a family friend and then asked, "can I watch TV now?" She says the abuse had been happening to both Rose and Pippa for years, and that the man was later charged and convicted only on the charges connected to Pippa.
Michelle Steck says Kevin East looked like a “successful, put-together gentleman” when they met at a Perth shopping centre in 1989, but she describes years of coercive control, financial restriction, and isolation.
Mike Malloy, an Irishman in Depression-era New York, becomes the target of Tony Marino and a group later nicknamed the “Murder Trust,” who try to profit from his life-insurance policy.
Claire Murphy speaks with Kathleen Folbigg about the years that made her one of Australia's most notorious cases.
True Crime Conversations/The Spill crossover analyzes Disney+ series 'The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox.' Amanda Knox (American exchange student) and Raffaele Sollecito (Italian boyfriend, one week together) accused of murdering roommate Meredith Kircher (British exchange student) November 1, 2007 in Perugia.
True Crime Conversations examines Australia's forced adoption history, which the episode says ran from the 1940s through the 1980s and affected an estimated 250,000 women.
True Crime Conversations examines the 2016 murder of 18-year-old Aaron Page Sweetman in Perth, where Gemma Lilly and Trudy Lennon lived together for three weeks before the killing.
Gemma Bath introduces Christopher Wilder as the Beauty Queen Killer and says Terri Ferguson was approached at 2.30pm in a Florida shopping centre by a man with an Australian accent, a camera, and a business card who offered a beach shoot.
Gemma Bath opens on a Friday afternoon in July 1979.
It starts in Knoxville on a dreary Friday in October 1976.
This episode recounts the kidnapping and 8-year captivity of Natasha Kampusch, exploring her survival and controversial decision to buy her prison.
This episode examines the 2001 disappearance of three-year-old Courtney Morley-Clark, exploring the possibility of teenage perpetrators.
This episode investigates the mysterious death at the Cecil Hotel, starting with complaints about brown water leading to a grim discovery.
The episode recounts the case of Gary Francis Newman, a man who posed as a teenage boy online to lure and murder 14-year-old Carly Ryan.
A real estate agent discovers the bodies of Barry and Honey Sherman while showing their mansion.
The episode investigates the mysterious disappearance of Marion Barter, whose daughter discovers hidden secrets after checking her bank account.
This episode investigates the 1966 disappearance of the three Beaumont children in Adelaide, Australia.
This episode recounts the horrific Scaff Gang Rapes in Sydney in 2000, detailing the series of sexual assaults by multiple perpetrators.
Host Gemma Bath introduces a series of chilling true crime episodes, then presents a conversation with Dati Erlich about her sexual abuse by a former principal.
A woman recounts being raped, then forced to marry her attacker and excommunicated by her ultra-conservative Pentecostal church.