Dead Bodies Podcast

58-year-old Warren Meyer went for a walk in the bush at Dom Dom Saddle in the Yarra Ranges National Park on March 21, 2008. He was never seen again. We track the search for him, through evidence heard in the Coroners Court of Victoria.

Spontaneous Human Combustion occurs when a living human body is burned without an apparent external source of ignition. Often the legs and feet are the only remains. We look at a number of cases of people bursting into flames, and examine what causes this bizarre phenomenon.

We chat with Jaimie and Deb to find out about their fascinating new project, the Gympie Bone Museum.

The death of Edward Baldock in Brisbane in 1989 was described as one of the most brutal and bizarre crimes Australia had ever seen at the time. The discovery of his body, found drained of 75 percent of its blood, led to the arrest of Tracey Wigginton, who was dubbed the “Lesbian Vampire Killer”, a woman with six separate personalities.

The suburbs of Australia seem to be littered with skeletons. Sharnelle’s search through the files of the Coroner’s Court of Victoria has uncovered multiple cases of people handing in human bones to police.

In 2003 the bodies of a woman, her three children, and her mother were found dead in a house in Bakersfield California. Police used extraordinary forensics, including insects embedded in a rental car, to convict the woman’s husband Vincent Brothers of the murders.

In August, 1974, a massive flood hit Queanbeyan in New South Wales, and locals claimed that bodies from the local cemetery were washed down the river and into Lake Burley Griffin in the heart of Canberra.

Bona Lual murdered his wife Suzi Oghia and then mutilated her eyes in their Noble Park, Victoria, home in 2013. As he desecrated her dead body their four children lay sleeping nearby.

Laura Van Ryn and Whitney Cerak were students at Taylor University in Indiana in 2006. They barely knew each other, but after a terrible accident, a huge mistake, and the death of one of the girls, their families became forever entwined.

For those who don’t like the thought of burial or cremation, new ways of disposing of human bodies are being found, including composting and hydrolysis.

Gunther Von Hagens is the German scientist known as Dr Death. He invented the process of plastination which preserves human bodies so they can be put on display. We look at how it is done, and where do the bodies come from?

Update on the Babies of Tuam, and details on Joseph Michael Housden and his murder of Lillian Mole in Frankston in 1984.

Ruth Coker Burks cared for hundreds of dying people from 1984 until the mid 1990’s. Many of them she buried herself when their families abandoned them because they were gay, and had AIDS.

Bassmah and Sabrina are back, with a surprise revelation. And Hanna tells us her horrific dead body story (in her own American accent).

You never know what you’ll find in the hard rubbish. In 1984 three Columbia University students picked up what they thought was a nice piece of carpet, but it contained a nasty surprise.

In the 1800’s, scientists thought that electricity could bring dead bodies back to life. Professor Andrew Ure’s grotesque experiment on a dead body left many feeling ill.

Two-year-old Nikki Coslovich went missing in Mildura in 2015. Sharnelle recalls covering the search for her, the finding of her body, and the ensuing court case.

In 2003 the bodies of Amarjit Chohan, his wife and mother, were found floating in the sea off Bournemouth in England. His two young boys are still missing. Three men have been jailed over the Chohan murders and a plot to steal the family’s freight business.

In our final episode for 2018, we share Dead Bodies stories from our listeners. Dice has seen three dead bodies and had two near-death experiences; Miranda has a comment on the Sofina Nikat case; Catherine got thrown in the deep end at a Maori funeral; and Candice shares Death By Tortoise.