Dead Bodies Podcast

In 1959, nine hikers died in the northern Ural Mountains in the former Soviet Union, in what became known as The Dyatlov Pass incident. They set up camp, but during the night, something caused them to tear their way out of their tents and flee in the sub-zero temperatures.

In Melbourne, in 1999, Gabriel Omar Chang took to the dead body of Dianne Psaila with a meat tenderiser, and carried her corpse in the boot of her car for five days. His erratic behaviour that took him from the murder scene in Melton to Lorne on Victoria’s west coast.

In Tasmania, in 1822, Alexander Pearce is one of eight convicts who escape from the Macquarie Harbour penal settlement into the mountain wilderness on the mainland. When they run out of food their only option is to kill and eat each other. Did Pearce cannibalise his mates out of necessity, or pleasure?

Have you ever played Chubby Bunny? DON’T!!! It’s the childhood game that has turned deadly.

We talk to Laura who has been investigating the story of Alice Pengel, a woman who was jailed in Western Australia over the death of a young mother at the end of World War Two. Laura reveals how a member of her family became embroiled in the scandal.

Imagine dying, and nobody came to your funeral. Homeless men and women are spared that bleak prospect thanks to Roxbury Latin School’s Ave Atque Vale program — through which Class I boys act as pallbearers at the funerals of homeless men and women.

In Antwerp, Victoria, in 1993, 49 year old Joan Vollmer was killed by her husband and a group of devout Christians, who performed an exorcism on her, believing that she was possessed by demons.

L'Inconnue de la Seine translates from French as The Unknown Woman of the Seine. The unidentified young woman whose dead body was pulled from the River Seine in the 1800’s later became known as The Drowned Mona Lisa. We explain why her face is familiar to hundreds of millions of people the world over as part of a lifesaving training.

Hart Island, in the northeast Bronx, New York City, serves as the city's potter's field and is run by the New York City Department of Correction. More than one million dead are buried on Hart Island. We look at where all these dead bodies come from.

Kodokushi or lonely death refers to a Japanese phenomenon of people dying alone and remaining undiscovered for a long period of time. We look at why a growing number of dead bodies are being found abandoned in Japanese apartments, as well as Japan’s suicide forest, Aokigahara.

The people of New Orleans have embraced a trend for keeping life-size cardboard cut-outs of their loved ones who have died.

America has a glut of unclaimed bodies, and the dead are piling up quicker than morgues can deal with them. We look at where the corpses end up.

Leonard Lawson was an Australian artist who wrote The Lone Avenger comic books in the 1950’s. He was also a notorious rapist and murderer, and one of the last people sentenced to death in New South Wales.

James Bulger was two years old in 1993 when he was abducted, tortured and killed by two 10-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables in Merseyside in the UK. 26 years later the case is still having legal repercussions.

Clement Vallandigham was a politician in Ohio in 1871. His attempt to clear a man named Thomas McGehean of a murder charge went horribly wrong, with fatal consequences.

Dee Dee and Sharnelle talk to Kara who came across a horrifying fatal car accident on the isolated road between Broome and Karratha in outback Western Australia.

An emerging DNA technique has been used to solve the murders of two young women in El Dorado County, California, more than 40 years ago. Joseph Holt was identified as the killer of Brynn Rainey in 1977 and Carol Andersen 1979 using genealogy databases.

Caroline Byrne was a model found at the bottom of a cliff at The Gap in Sydney in 1995. Her boyfriend Gordon Wood was convicted of her murder but later acquitted.

Sharnelle and Dee Dee talk to Wendy who worked as a funeral and mortuary assistant.

Frances Knorr was known as the Baby Farming Murderess. She was found guilty of strangling an infant and hanged at Pentridge Prison in Melbourne on Monday 15 January 1894. Other bodies of babies that had been in her care were found buried in the garden of houses where she had lived.

A couple who made a trip to honor the memory of their late son, and staff at the hotel constructed a bizarre spectacle on the bed, as their way of paying tribute to his memory.

And to celebrate our Fortyversary we finally ask our producer Kirsten whether she has seen a dead body.

In 2001, Armin Meiwes killed and ate Bernd Brandes, who had placed an ad in the paper offering “the chance to eat me alive”. We establish whether it is okay to eat someone if they have given you their permission.

New South Wales, 1994, fisherman pulled the body of a man strapped to a steel crucifix from the mouth of the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales. Dubbed “Rack Man”, his dead body still lies in the Sydney morgue.