INTRODUCTION
This is Crime Time, so get ready to discover Australia’s very own gallery of rogues – an Aussie litany of heinous crimes, dastardly deeds and terrifying tales…
The human race is extraordinarily diverse in its interests. Some people are captivated by shoes and clothes, some engrossed with football or cricket or snowboarding, some would never be parted from their music players and some cannot turn off their mobiles although their texting thumbs are weak with overuse. Yet everyone – whether it be reluctantly or eagerly – is fascinated by wicked misdeeds and illegal acts.
When I was a child my sisters and I would sneak looks at my father’s paperback copy of The Encyclopaedia of Murder by Colin Wilson and Patricia Pitman. It was kept in his wardrobe and we had to creep into the room and sit on the floor, hidden by the creaking wardrobe door, to read those terrible tales of blood and slaughter, of Jack the Ripper and the cannibal Alexander Pearce. How we shuddered with delicious fear when Pearce said he preferred human flesh because it was far tastier than pork. And we would read on, shuddering, until we were caught, or until it started to get dark and we had to tiptoe down the long, dim corridor after reading about the betrayal and massacre of the crew of the Batavia.
These pleasures, these spine-juddering tales, are now laid out for you, and you don’t even need to hide behind the groaning wardrobe door to read them.
Within these pages lie Pearce the cannibal and murderous Frederick Deeming, here is Sarah Makin with babies buried in her garden and there is Caroline Grills with her poisonous desserts. Here is a gallery of dreadful deeds and matchless crimes, from a well-planned caper that robbed a club full of bookies of all their cash to the sickening Snowtown murders with their ghastly barrels of human flesh. Here too, are the shamelessly audacious – like Lola Montez whose spirited attempt to find a spider in her dress left her nearly naked before an audience of Gold Rush miners.
In this book you may feed yourself on horrors. Murders for money. Murders for status or position, murders for respectability and even murders for fun…
But do not be afraid of dangerous strangers. Most murders in Australia are still carried out by family members. By fathers, mothers, lovers and children. Listen out for the knock on the window or the footsteps on the porch but listen harder for the beating of your own heart…
And now, get ready to unearth Australia’s deep, dark history of crime, true crime…
Kerry Greenwood, Melbourne 2009