After Peter Rolfe's former partner and close friend, Stephen Dempsey, was murdered by the so-called "crossbow killer", Richard Leonard, in 1994, Rolfe not only had to deal with the loss of a loved one in gruesome circumstances, but a harrowing trial in which Leonard smirked at him and smiled insolently at Dempsey's distraught mother in the courtroom. The experience pushed Rolfe to establish Support After Murder, a group offering emotional and practical assistance for the partners, families...

Guilty! I’m guilty! Guilty!” declared Scott White -- the alleged killer of American mathematician Scott Johnson -- to the court during a pre-trial hearing in early January 2022. It was an astonishing moment for Scott Johnson's older brother Steve, who was not only face-to-face with White for the first time, but also witnessing this now middle-aged man admitting his guilt for a crime he committed back in 1988. After 30 long years of the police doggedly persisting with the theory that Scott...

When the naked, crumpled body of gifted American mathematician Scott Johnson was found by two fishermen at the base of the soaring cliffs at Sydney's North Head in December 1988, police instantly dismissed the death as a suicide – a theory they doggedly held for nearly 30 years. Scott's older brother, Steve Johnson, was certain that his sibling had met with foul play, and hired an award-winning investigative journalist to look into Scott's death. This journalist later revealed a raft of...

Plenty has happened since the first season of Bondi Badlands. Two men have been sent to prison – one for the manslaughter of gifted mathematician Scott Johnson at the cliffs at Sydney's North Head in December 1988, another for the murder of Raymond Keam in Alison Park in Randwick in January 1987. But there’s more -- thanks to a world-first special inquiry that lifted the lid on the police investigations into a string of gay-hate murders between 1970 and 2010. The police tried – and failed –...

Premiering on November 4, the astonishing true story of how Melbourne homicide detectives broke all the rules in their quest to have Katia Pyliotis convicted for brutally murdering a dirty old man with a statue of the Virgin Mary. The Confession is a podcast where the justice system itself is on trial. At the centre of it all, is Katia Pyliotis, accused of bludgeoning a man to death. Four years of Katia’s life is spent behind bars, until the truth emerges because of a stroke of luck. When...

Since late 2020, the case of missing Sydney woman Melissa Caddick has captivated the country. A seemingly successful businesswoman from Sydney's eastern suburbs went missing after authorities raided her Dover Heights home amid questions over an unlicensed financial planning business. Sydney Morning Herald investigative journalist Kate McClymont would reveal key details of a massive Ponzi scheme and a $23 million fraud that ripped off investors including her family and friends as Caddick lived...

As a long line of persons-of-interest pass through the Coroners Court, Deputy State Coroner Jacqueline Milledge and Detective Sergeant Steve Page are in no doubt some of these men know the killers of Ross Warren and John Russell, if they aren't themselves the murderers. But was the anti-gay violence perpetrated only by teenagers and young men? According to one policeman’s harrowing account, officers were involved in some of the bashings, and when he tried to make a stand against the violence,...

As Detective Sergeant Steve Page closes in on a group of suspects in the likely murders of Ross Warren and John Russell, a new witness comes forward, one who narrowly escaped being thrown off the Bondi cliffs on a hot summer's night in December 1989. In a walk around the headland with the detective, retracing his steps on that fateful night, the witness returns to the spot where he was nearly hurled over. By suspicious coincidence, it's exactly the same location where John Russell was very...

The savage killing on the Bondi clifftops of a Thai man, Kritchikorn Rattanajurathaporn, in July 1990 results in murder convictions for three young men. But as the spree of anti-gay violence and murder escalates across Sydney, the LGBTQ community starts to fight back: from staging a mass demonstration at the gates of state parliament, to street patrols along Oxford Street, to angry activists splattering red paint over public buildings. More than a decade later, as Detective Sergeant Steve...

Barman John Russell has just inherited $100,000 and is about to leave Bondi to build a house on his dad's property and travel Australia.  But after farewell drinks with his best mate, Russell goes for a cliffside walk, where the 31-year-old gay man is set upon by his killers and hurled to his death. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

On a freezing night in July 1989, Ross Warren, a newsreader from WIN TV in Wollongong, NSW, vanishes into thin air on the southern headland at Sydney’s Bondi. After a brief investigation, the case lies dormant for years until a detective at Paddington police station, moved by a bundle of letters from Ross Warren’s mother, picks up the case – and discovers a pattern of horrific violence on the headland. If you value independent, quality journalism, please subscribe to the SMH or The Age....

Ahead of the first episode of Bondi Badlands this week, listen to host and Good Weekend deputy editor Greg Callaghan in conversation with Good Weekend editor Katrina Strickland about the series and a special preview of what to expect. For over 15 years, Greg Callaghan has been writing about the murders of gay men at the clifftops on the southern headland of Sydney's Bondi. This was the epicentre of a wave of gay hate killings that spread across Sydney at the time. Now Callaghan hosts a...

Launching Saturday October 2, Bondi Badlands, a new podcast from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, investigates a series of murders and mysterious disappearances that happened on the southern headland at Sydney's Bondi Beach in the late 1980s and early 1990s.  When a high profile TV newsreader and weatherman disappeared on the Bondi cliff tops on a frigid winter's night in July 1989, it received nationwide news coverage but such a shoddy police investigation that links would not be...