Dead Bodies Podcast

The dead body of 41-year-old intellectually disabled man Lindsay Jellett was found on the side of the road in Ararat in 1994. At first it appeared he was the victim of a hit-and-run, but accident investigators uncovered the sad truth of his death.

In 1971 in Accountant John List shot his wife, mother, and his three children, then he disappeared. Eighteen years later a forensic artist helped police track him down.

Seventeen-year-old Melanie Road was stabbed to death as she made her way home from a nightclub in Bath in the UK in June 1984. With no DNA technology to work with, and despite massive efforts, police struggled to find her attacker. Thirty-two years later, science caught up with her killer.

In Illinois, US, in 2014, Two people were lured to the apartment of Alissa Massaro, where they were robbed and strangled to death. Then Massaro and her friend Joshua Miner had sex on top of the bodies. Two others, Adam Landerman and Bethany McKee, were also accused in the murder.

James Byrd Jr. was a black man who was murdered by three white supremacists in Jasper, Texas, on June 7, 1998. Shawn Berry, Lawrence Brewer, and John King dragged along the road Byrd behind a pickup truck. The sickening incident led to a change in the Texas hate-crimes law.

Melbourne’s Yarra River is the deadliest inland river per metre in Australia. One of the earliest bodies dragged from its murky depths was Bertha Coughlan in 1923, a young, unmarried mother who had died at the hands of abortionist Hannah Mitchell.

We rely on our refrigerators to keep our food fresh. But when it’s time to throw an old fridge out, there’s a warning: they can become deadly.

“Tillie” Klimek was born in Poland in 1876, but lived most of her adult life in Chicago, where in 1923 she was found guilty of the murder of her third husband by poisoning. There is a list of 20 of her victims, most of who died at her hands.

In the early 1960’s, police were baffled by a series of gruesome crimes that they said was the work of The Sydney Mutilator. William MacDonald was eventually caught and jailed for life for the killing spress. He freely admitted that he hated the world and would gleefully murder and mutilate again if he was released.

American music producer Phil Spector is acknowledged as one of the most influential figures in pop music history..In 2009, he was convicted of second-degree murder.

Actress Rebecca Schaeffer lived in a quiet and seemingly safe area of LA. But a crazed fan stalked her, found her home, and murdered her in cold blood.

Workers cleaning out a massive storage tank at Velva Liquids in the UK in 1979, found the torso and head of a young woman named Eileen McDougall. How had the body gotten there, how long had it been there, and who killed her? And was the right man jailed for the crime?

In 2011, 24-year-old Daniel O'Keeffe went missing from his parent's home in Geelong. His family mounted and extraordinary social media campaign,but it was five years before they found out what had happened to him.

The Black Dahlia is one of the most famous dead bodies of all time. Hollywood hopeful Elizabeth Short was found in Leimert Park, murdered and mutilated. Her killer has never been found.

A necrophile is a person who is sexually attracted to corpses. Nine out of ten necrophiles are men. It is extremely rare for a woman to indulge in necrophilia: Karen Greenlee was one of them. She was caught after stealing a body on its way to a funeral in 1979.

What happens if one identical twin commits a horrible crime, but points the finger at the other? How do police know they have got the right or wrong man?

Serial killer Todd Kohlhepp was convicted of murdering seven people in South Carolina between 2003 and 2016. His violent life of crime started when he was just 15, and ended when one of his eight victims was found alive being held captive on his property.

Brisbane mother Dianne Brimble died over a drug overdose in 2002 on a P&O Cruises cruise ship, and police named a group of men as “persons of interest”. The investigation, inquest, and eventual trial related to her death concluded in 2010, and resulted in changes to safety procedures aboard cruise ships.

Two very special guests join us to celebrate our 50th episode: it’s Bassmah and Sabrina!!!!

When an actor “dies” on stage, the audience is usually confident that they’re only acting, but that is not always the case. On more than one occasion, theatre-goers have unwittingly watched an actual death take place.

The Darwin Awards are given out each year for the most stupid death, rewarding the person’s willingness to “remove themselves from the human gene pool.” We look at the most recent Top Ten thrillseekers who met an untimely end.