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The Veil is a chilling true crime podcast that pulls listeners deep into the world’s darkest and most haunting cases. Hosted by Ryan Wolf, each episode is crafted like an immersive thriller - a story told not just through facts, but through atmosphere, tension, and detail that makes you feel as though you’re standing inside the crime scene itself.
These are not urban legends or ghost stories; every case is real, every victim and every clue drawn from documented fact.
From unsolved murders to bizarre disappearances, infamous trials to cold cases that still whisper through history, The Veil strips back the layers of time and rumor to confront the unsettling truths hidden beneath.
With an eye for detail and a voice that guides you through the shadows, Ryan brings both journalistic rigor and cinematic storytelling to each 30-minute episode. What emerges is an experience that is at once gripping and unnerving, reminding us that the scariest stories are not fiction at all.
Pull back The Veil - but beware. Because sometimes, when we lift it, we don’t like what we find.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
- 73 - E75 | Feature Series | 5 4 3 2 1 - Part Two: The Gang
5, 4, 3, 2, 1: The Incredible True Story of How Australian Police Trapped Daniel Morcombe’s Killer, Part Two of Three
In April 2011, days after giving evidence at the inquest into Daniel Morcombe’s disappearance, Brett Cowan flew home to Perth and made a new friend on the plane. Within weeks he was out of work, out of a home and running jobs for what he believed was a powerful criminal organisation: debt collections, gun deliveries, brothel takings and a bag of diamonds worth close to a million dollars. The gang paid him, praised him and told him there was nothing in the world it couldn’t fix. He called it the first family he’d ever had. Every member of it was a police officer, and every word he said was being recorded. Then a notice arrived from the Coroners Court in Brisbane, and the man at the top of the gang asked to see him.
This is Part Two of a three part series. Subscribers have all three parts now. On the free feed, Part Three, The Confession, is out Friday.
SUBSCRIBE
One Brevity Studios subscription unlocks every part of every series on the day it launches, plus all of Guilt: https://guilt.supportingcast.fm/
FURTHER READING
Kate Kyriacou, The Sting: The Undercover Operation That Caught Daniel Morcombe’s Killer (Echo Publishing). This series relies heavily on Kate’s reporting, and her book is highly recommended: https://booktopia.com.au/the-sting-kate-kyriacou/book/9781760681036.html
THE DANIEL MORCOMBE FOUNDATION
Bruce and Denise Morcombe founded the Daniel Morcombe Foundation in 2005 to teach children how to keep themselves safe. Learn more about their work: https://danielmorcombe.com.au
Support the foundation: https://danielmorcombe.com.au/get-involved/
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Brett Peter Cowan was convicted in 2014 of the murder of Daniel Morcombe. His appeal was dismissed by the Queensland Court of Appeal in 2015 and the High Court refused special leave in 2016. The undercover officers in this episode are referred to only by their cover names. Every crime Cowan took part in during the operation was staged, and every debtor, sex worker and official he met was a police officer; no real offences were committed. Dialogue from the operation is drawn from covert recordings as quoted in the court judgments and in Kate Kyriacou’s The Sting. Where those accounts differ, the court record is followed. Cowan’s own claims and stories recorded during the operation are presented as his words, and none of the evidence connects them to anyone else. The Coroners Court notice to attend was genuine; the trial judge found it was not a ploy. Private individuals, including Cowan’s former partners and girlfriend, are not named.
This episode contains strong language from recorded conversations.
SOURCES
R v Cowan [2013] QSC 337, 12 Dec 2013
R v Cowan; R v Cowan; Ex parte Attorney-General (Qld) [2015] QCA 87, 21 May 2015
Coroners Court of Queensland, findings of inquest into the death of Daniel James Morcombe, State Coroner Terry Ryan, 5 Apr 2019
Cowan v The Queen [2016] HCATrans 57, 11 Mar 2016
Kate Kyriacou, The Sting (Echo Publishing, 2015)
SBS News / AAP, trial coverage, 2014
SUPPORT
This series deals with the abduction and murder of a child. If it raises anything for you: Lifeline 13 11 14 (Australia), Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800 (Australia), 1737 (New Zealand).
Written and hosted by Ryan Wolf. Researched with AI assistance and fact-checked against the court judgments and coronial findings.
A Brevity Studios production. https://theguiltpodcast.com | https://brevityplus.com
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Tue, 03 Nov 2026 - 38min - 72 - E74 | Feature Series | 5 4 3 2 1 - Part One: The Overpass
5, 4, 3, 2, 1: The Incredible True Story of How Australian Police Trapped Daniel Morcombe’s Killer, Part One of Three
On Sunday 7 December 2003, thirteen year old Daniel Morcombe walked from his family’s farm at Palmwoods to wait for a bus under the Kiel Mountain Road overpass on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast. He was going to Sunshine Plaza to buy Christmas presents for his family. The bus was running late, and when it finally came it drove straight past him. Minutes later, the next bus found nobody there. What followed became the largest investigation in Queensland’s history: thousands of interviews, a hunt for a blue car, a million dollar reward and a family who never stopped pushing. Seven years on, a coronial inquest put a man in the witness box for two days, and he gave nothing away. But on the flight home, someone sat down beside him.
This is Part One of a three part series. Subscribers get all three parts today. On the free feed, Part Two, The Gang, is out Wednesday and Part Three follows on Friday.
SUBSCRIBE
One Brevity Studios subscription unlocks every part of every series on the day it launches, plus all of Guilt: https://guilt.supportingcast.fm/
FURTHER READING
Kate Kyriacou, The Sting: The Undercover Operation That Caught Daniel Morcombe’s Killer (Echo Publishing). This series relies heavily on Kate’s reporting, and her book is highly recommended: https://booktopia.com.au/the-sting-kate-kyriacou/book/9781760681036.html
THE DANIEL MORCOMBE FOUNDATION
Bruce and Denise Morcombe founded the Daniel Morcombe Foundation in 2005 to teach children how to keep themselves safe. Learn more about their work: https://danielmorcombe.com.au
Support the foundation: https://danielmorcombe.com.au/get-involved/
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Brett Peter Cowan was convicted in 2014 of the murder of Daniel Morcombe. His appeal was dismissed by the Queensland Court of Appeal in 2015 and the High Court refused special leave in 2016. His earlier offending is described only as recorded by the coroner and the Court of Appeal. Every other person of interest in the investigation is unnamed, and none has been charged with any offence relating to Daniel. Persons of interest at the inquest were identified by code under suppression orders. The account of the bus and roadside witnesses follows the 2019 coronial findings, which note that some accounts conflict. Details of Daniel’s life and family come from Kate Kyriacou’s The Sting and from published interviews with the Morcombe family, and are attributed on air.
SOURCES
Coroners Court of Queensland, findings of inquest into the death of Daniel James Morcombe, State Coroner Terry Ryan, 5 Apr 2019
R v Cowan [2013] QSC 337, 12 Dec 2013
R v Cowan; R v Cowan; Ex parte Attorney-General (Qld) [2015] QCA 87, 21 May 2015
Cowan v The Queen [2016] HCATrans 57, 11 Mar 2016
Kate Kyriacou, The Sting (Echo Publishing, 2015)
ABC News, coverage of the inquest, 1 and 6 Apr 2011
ABC News, 2009 (reward appeal) and 3 Dec 2012 (committal)
ABC 7.30, interview with former detective Kenneth King
Stephanie Wood, Brisbane Times / Sydney Morning Herald, 2014 (trial coverage)
Brisbane Times, 2015 (Daniel Morcombe Foundation)
Newcastle Herald, 2023 (interview with Bruce Morcombe)
SUPPORT
This episode deals with the abduction of a child. If it raises anything for you: Lifeline 13 11 14 (Australia), Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800 (Australia), 1737 (New Zealand).
Written and Researched with AI assistance and fact-checked against the coronial findings and court judgments.
A Brevity Studios production. https://theguiltpodcast.com | https://brevityplus.com
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 01 Nov 2026 - 41min - 71 - E73 | Listener Cases | Who Killed Allison Newstead?
Subscribe to The Veil get ad free listening, bonus episodes and early release and listen on any platform via Supporting Cast here:
https://guilt.supportingcast.fm/
On Wednesday 6 October 1993, seventeen year old Allison Newstead went into Cessnock, a coal town in the NSW Hunter Valley, and never came home. Her car was found the next morning in the ex-servicemen's club carpark. A week later two men walking a bush track near the disused Pelton colliery found her body under two sheets of corrugated iron. She had no wounds and no fractures, toxicology ruled out an overdose, and the cause of her death has never been established. Her clothes turned up a year later in a plastic bag in other bushland. A man charged with concealing her body was acquitted in 1997. Police now say several people may have been there when Allison died. Who were they, and why has nobody spoken?
Thanks to listener Caroline for suggesting this case.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
The NSW Government reward of $750,000 for information into Allison's death still stands. The case is with the State Crime Command's Unsolved Homicide Unit, Strike Force Bain. Police especially want to hear from people who knew Allison in 1993 and have never spoken to them, including anyone who may have been present when she died or who knows the circumstances of her death.
Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000 or nsw.crimestoppers.com.au. Information is treated in strict confidence. Please do not report information via NSW Police social media pages.
The NSW Legislative Council inquiry into unsolved murders and long-term missing persons cases (1965 to 2010) is taking submissions until 30 October 2026: parliament.nsw.gov.au (search "unsolved murders inquiry").
A NOTE ON SOURCING
No one has ever been convicted in connection with Allison's death. The 1994 inquest was terminated and referred to the DPP, so no coronial finding exists. A man charged with concealing her body and perverting the course of justice was acquitted by a jury in 1997; he is not guilty in law and is not named. A second man, per 2013 reporting, pleaded guilty to supplying amphetamines; no court has linked that offence to her death. The account of three people denying they saw Allison that night is her mother's, given to the Daily Telegraph in 2013; police have made no finding against anyone. The 1993 timeline comes from AAP reports in the Canberra Times. The purse detail is from 2018 reporting only. Police say evidence including her clothing is being re-examined; no result has been published. The working theory in Part Three is the host's reading of the public record, not a finding of any court or coroner. As of 26 October 2026 nobody has been charged over how Allison died.
SOURCES
NSW Police, $750,000 reward, Death of Allison Newstead: police.nsw.gov.au/can_you_help_us/rewards
NSW Government Gazette No. 11, 3 Feb 1995, p700 (reward notice, 9 Dec 1994), via Trove
Canberra Times (AAP), 10, 11, 15, 16 and 17 Oct 1993, via Trove
Janet Fife-Yeomans, Daily Telegraph, 7 Oct 2013
Belinda-Jane Davis, Maitland Mercury / Newcastle Herald, Oct 2013
Matt Carr and Nick Bielby, Newcastle Herald, 5 and 6 Oct 2018
Krystal Sellars, Cessnock Advertiser, 29 Jun 2022; Gabriel Fowler, Newcastle Herald, 23 Jun 2022 (Operation Veritas)
Carly Cook, ABC News, 22 Oct 2022
Simon McCarthy and Sam Rigney, Newcastle Herald, 22 and 23 Oct 2022
NSW LC Portfolio Committee No. 1, inquiry into unsolved murders and long-term missing persons cases, hearing transcript 11 Jun 2026 and terms of reference
Cessnock Advertiser, Pelton colliery history, 2016
SUPPORT
This episode discusses the death of a teenager and its effect on her family. If it raises anything for you: Lifeline 13 11 14 (Australia), 1737 (New Zealand).
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 26 Oct 2026 - 33min - 70 - E72 | Listener Cases | The Disappearance of Iraena Asher
At 9pm on Sunday 10 October 2004, 25 year old Iraena Asher rang 111 from a house on Piha Road. She said she was afraid, that a man was pressuring her for sex, and that she had been given drugs. Police sent a taxi, which went to the wrong side of Auckland. A local family took her in for four hours. Just after 1am she walked out into a stormy night, and she was last seen naked under a streetlight, walking down Seaview Road towards the beach. A coroner found she went into the sea and drowned, and that the police failure to send a car contributed. Her body has never been found, and nobody saw her beyond the second streetlight.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
If you were at Piha on the night of 10 to 11 October 2004, stayed at the Piha camp ground that weekend, or know anything about Iraena's last day or her disappearance, please contact:
Police non emergency: 105, or online at police.govt.nz
Crime Stoppers (anonymous): 0800 555 111, crimestoppers-nz.org
A NOTE ON SOURCING
The heart of this episode is the Police Complaints Authority report of 18 January 2006, which includes transcripts of Iraena's calls with police, and the High Court judgment Carroll v Coroner's Court at Auckland [2013] NZHC 906, which reproduces parts of Coroner Peter Ryan's 2012 findings. The full coronial findings were not available online and were not obtained.
Nobody has ever been charged in connection with Iraena's disappearance, and the coroner found no evidence of foul play. The people at the Piha Road house are not named in this episode, and some witnesses at the inquest had name suppression. Nothing in this episode suggests wrongdoing by anyone at that house.
In 2013 the High Court quashed the coroner's finding that Julia Woodhouse, Bobbie Carroll and Henry Woodhouse contributed to her death, finding it rested on speculation. The findings that Iraena drowned and that the police failure contributed still stand.
Some details, including where the taxi went and accounts of the inquest evidence, come from contemporaneous reporting in the NZ Herald, Stuff and RNZ.
SOURCES
Police Complaints Authority, report on the 111 call made by Iraena Asher, 18 Jan 2006 (ipca.govt.nz)
Carroll v Coroner's Court at Auckland [2013] NZHC 906, 29 Apr 2013 (coronerscourt.govt.nz)
NZ Police media releases, 12 to 28 Oct and 30 Nov 2004, 28 Feb 2005, 3 Jan 2023
Communications Centres Service Centre Independent External Review, May 2005
NZ Herald, Juliet Rowan, 15 Nov 2004; Anna Leask, 17 and 19 Jul 2012; Phil Taylor, 20 Sep 2019
Stuff, Kirsty Johnston, 18 Jul 2012
RNZ, 17 and 19 Jul 2012; 29 Apr 2013; Sam Olley, 16 Jan 2023
NZ Listener, Sarah Catherall, 22 Jan 2024
SUPPORT
This episode discusses mental illness, a disappearance, sexual pressure and drowning. If it has raised anything for you:
1737, free call or text, any time
Safe to Talk (sexual harm): 0800 044 334
Alcohol Drug Helpline: 0800 787 797
Youthline: 0800 376 633
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 25 Oct 2026 - 37min - 69 - E71 | Listener Cases | The Mysterious Death of Phoebe Handsjuk
On 2 December 2010, 24 year old Phoebe Handsjuk was found dying in the ground floor refuse room of her St Kilda Road apartment building, after coming down the rubbish chute from the twelfth floor. Police first treated it as suicide. Her grandfather, a retired detective, did not believe she could have climbed in. In 2014 Coroner Peter White found she entered the chute herself in a sleepwalking-like state brought on by Stilnox and alcohol, and that no one else was involved. The family has never accepted it, and the questions about the chute, the lost CCTV and the missing notes remain.
Suggested by listener Angela.
IN MEMORY
Phoebe Handsjuk, 9 May 1986 to 2 December 2010. Baillee Schneider, 19 February 1993 to 23 June 2018.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
This episode is built on two published coronial findings: Coroner Peter White's finding into Phoebe's death (COR 2010 4605, 10 December 2014, amended February 2015) and Deputy State Coroner Caitlin English's finding into Baillee's death (COR 2018 3002, 23 April 2020). Coroner White found Phoebe's death was not the result of an assault by, or with the aid of, any other person. Coroner English found Baillee's death was not suspicious. The man both women were in a relationship with is not named. He has never been charged with any offence, he denied any involvement on oath, both coroners found no one else was involved, and nothing in this episode suggests otherwise. The Coroners Court of Victoria made non-publication orders over parts of the inquest material in Phoebe's case; this episode uses only the published finding and open court reporting. Phoebe's family does not accept the finding.
SOURCES
Coroners Court of Victoria, Finding into death with inquest, Phoebe Handsjuk, COR 2010 4605: coronerscourt.vic.gov.au
Coroners Court of Victoria, Finding into death without inquest, Baillee Petra Schneider, COR 2018 3002: coronerscourt.vic.gov.au
ABC News, 9 August 2013 and 10 December 2014; 21 June 2018
The Age and Sydney Morning Herald, Richard Baker and Michael Bachelard, Phoebe's Fall (2016) and related reporting; Richard Baker, 24 June 2019 and 16 June 2020
Wendy Carlisle, RadioDoc Review, Vol 3(2), 2017
Robin Bowles, Into the Darkness: The Mysterious Death of Phoebe Handsjuk (Scribe, 2016)
Premier of Victoria, Coroners Court appeal process to be reviewed, 16 December 2016; Victorian Coronial Council, report on rights to appeal coronial findings, 2017
phoebehandsjuk.com (family site)
SUPPORT
This episode discusses depression and a death by suicide. If you are struggling, please reach out.
Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14, Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636, Suicide Call Back Service 1300 659 467.
New Zealand: 1737 (call or text), Lifeline 0800 543 354.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 19 Oct 2026 - 33min - 68 - E70 | Listener Cases | Who Killed Gordana Kotoveski?
On a Thursday night in November 1994, sixteen year old Gordana Kotevski left Charlestown Square to walk about 500 metres to her aunt's house on Powell Street. A passing driver saw two young men at a white Toyota Hilux, then a girl walking with a shopping bag. Minutes later her aunt heard screams and men's voices. Gordana's torn bag and her purse were left near the house. A 2003 inquest found she was deceased, most likely as a result of foul play. In 2026 police searched properties at Edgeworth and West Wallsend, excavated an Edgeworth backyard, and appealed for two anonymous callers from 1994 and 1996. Nobody has ever been charged.
Suggested by listener Rene.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
A NSW Government reward of $1,000,000 is offered for information leading to the arrest and conviction of any person or persons responsible for Gordana's disappearance.
Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000 or nsw.crimestoppers.com.au (confidential).
Strike Force Bambil, Belmont Detectives: 02 4922 8774, SFBambil@police.nsw.gov.au (per NSW Police, June 2026).
Police want to hear from the man who rang Newcastle Police Station about 6.50pm on Monday 5 December 1994, and the man who rang KOFM Newcastle about 9.25pm on Wednesday 18 September 1996, and from anyone who saw a light coloured, single cab Toyota Hilux with a silver work tray around Charlestown in late 1994.
The NSW Legislative Council inquiry into unsolved murders and long term missing persons cases (1965 to 2010) names Gordana, Robyn Hickie and Amanda Robinson in its terms of reference. Submissions close 30 October 2026.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Nobody has ever been charged over Gordana's disappearance and no court has found anyone responsible. Corey Lovett was named as a person of interest at the 2003 inquest; he has never been charged and is presumed innocent. The allegation about him was never tested, and we could not find whether he gave evidence. He is named because the inquest named him and the lost statement is part of the case. The written 2003 finding is not published online; inquest evidence comes from contemporaneous ABC and Sydney Morning Herald court reports. Police have not said what was seized in April 2026 or what the May excavation found. The theory in Part Three is the host's reading of the public record, not a police or coronial finding. The investigation is open.
SOURCES
NSW Police reward page and releases, 4 May and 26 June 2026: police.nsw.gov.au
SMH, Greg Wendt, Witness hypnosis called for in lost girl case, 6 Nov 2002
SMH, Les Kennedy, On the scent without a clue, 9 Jul 2003
ABC News, 5 and 6 Mar 2003; 27 Feb 2009; 25 May 2022; 24 Nov 2023; 18 Jul 2025; 4 May 2026
ABC News, Hickie and Robinson rewards, 16 Aug 2021; Torana lead, 25 Nov 2019
Newcastle Herald, 2009 to 2026 coverage, incl. Dan Proudman (2011)
Newcastle Weekly, Rod Thompson, 2024 to 2026
New Idea, 2020 (Peggy Kotevski interview)
news.com.au, Nathan Jolly, 2016
NSW Legislative Council, Q&A No. 78 (2023) and inquiry 3148 terms of reference
NSW Coroners Court, State Coroner's report on deaths in custody 2006 (Coroners Act 1980 s 19)
Crime Commission Act 2012 (NSW), ss 21, 24, 39, 39A
AAP, October 2024 (police statement on common offender)
Australian Missing Persons Register profile: missingpersons.gov.au
SUPPORT
This episode discusses the abduction and suspected murder of a teenager. Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14, 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732. New Zealand: 1737, Safe to Talk 0800 044 334.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 18 Oct 2026 - 36min - 67 - E69 | Auckland Unsolved | Who Killed Katrina Jefferies?
At about 7.30pm on Sunday 10 July 2005, 22-year-old Katrina Jefferies left the Mt Roskill home she shared with her mother, her younger brother and her 20-month-old son. On the morning of Tuesday 12 July she was found partly undressed on a bank beside Waikowhai Road, wrapped in a red tarpaulin, a yellow raincoat and black rubbish bags, about a kilometre from home. She had been killed somewhere else. The police have never said how she died. They have traced everything found with her to one Mt Roskill address, and believe more than one person knows what happened. As of October 2026, nobody has been charged.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
Police want to hear from anyone who saw Katrina between the evening of Sunday 10 July and Tuesday 12 July 2005, or who knows where she went and who she was with. They also want to hear from anyone who was in Waikowhai Reserve or around Hillsborough Road in the early hours of Tuesday 12 July 2005. And they are asking about the red tarpaulin, the yellow Stormwear raincoat, the black rubbish bags, a framed river and mountain print signed "Haver", and a piece of marine plywood found with her, and about the clothes she left home in, which have never been found: blue tracksuit pants, a black duffle coat, burgundy slip-on shoes (size 10), a peaked cap and a black Walkman cassette player.
Call 0800 COLD CASE (0800 2653 2273), use the cold case contact form at police.govt.nz, or call Police on 105. Anonymous information: Crime Stoppers 0800 555 111 or crimestoppers-nz.org.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Nobody has ever been charged with Katrina's death, and no court has made any finding against any person. In November 2011 Coroner Gordon Matenga found that she died at the hands of another and suppressed the cause of death, which has never been published. We did not obtain the full text of the finding and rely on contemporaneous reporting of it. The man charged in 2014 after Operation Lyra interviews was convicted of offending against other women; police have said those charges were unrelated to Katrina, and nothing in the public record connects him to her death. The 2016 claim reported by One News is untested. The investigation remains open.
SOURCES
NZ Police, Cold Case: Katrina Jefferies, 2005: police.govt.nz/stolenwanted/coldcase/2019/katrina-jefferies-2005
NZ Police releases, 13, 14 and 21 Jul 2005, 26 Aug 2005, 25 Jun 2007 and 23 Jun 2019
Kirsty Wynn, "Haunted by the death of Katrina", Herald on Sunday, 31 Jul 2005
Martin Johnston, NZ Herald, 26 Aug 2005
NZPA, "Murdered woman died 'highly unusual death'", 26 Jul 2005, and "Mother thinks of her murdered daughter every day", 26 Jun 2007, via nzherald.co.nz
NZ Herald, "Jefferies family now have body", 19 Jul 2005; "New murder information 'contradicts earlier statement'", 3 Jul 2007; "Woman claims lead on 2005 cold case", 20 Apr 2016
Elizabeth Binning and Louisa Cleave, "Unsolved: the murder mysteries of 2005", NZ Herald, 2 Jan 2006
"More false confessions in cold case", NZPA via ODT, 21 Nov 2011
Jared Savage, NZ Herald, 24 May 2016 and 23 Jun 2019
RNZ and 1News, 23 Jun 2019
High Court sentencing in the Marie Jamieson case, [2010] NZHC 540
SUPPORT
This episode discusses the killing of a young mother. If it raises anything for you: 1737 (call or text), Victim Support 0800 842 846, Alcohol Drug Helpline 0800 787 797.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 12 Oct 2026 - 37min - 66 - E68 | Auckland Unsolved | The Murder of Claire Hills
Before dawn on 28 April 1998, Claire "Lisa" Hills, a 30-year-old McDonald's shift manager, left her Herne Bay flat for a 3.30am start at Auckland Airport and never arrived. About three hours later a woman walking on Māngere Mountain watched a man set a car alight beside the sports clubrooms, then came face to face with him as he ran. Lisa was in the back seat, alive but probably unconscious. A DNA profile believed to be her killer's has excluded the police's original prime suspect and around 300 other men, and it has never matched anyone on the New Zealand or Australian databanks. Police say all they need is a name.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
Call Operation Hills on 0800 OP HILLS (0800 674 4557) or Police on 105. To stay anonymous, call Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111. Police have asked about: anyone who saw a black Mazda Familia hatchback in South Auckland between 3am and 6am on 28 April 1998; the steering wheel lock missing from her car; where the killer got the petrol, which police believe he brought in a container; a slim man in dark clothing, possibly in a hooded sweatshirt, seen running from Māngere Domain towards the motorway and Māngere Bridge shops; and anyone with concerns about a person's behaviour after April 1998. Police say they can assure confidentiality, and that simply offering a name could be the key.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
No one has ever been charged in connection with Lisa's death, and no court has made any finding against any person. The coroner found that she died of smoke inhalation and carbon monoxide poisoning after being left in a car set on fire by a person or persons unknown. The men described in this episode as suspects, including the man the first inquiry suspected, are not named. Police have said publicly that DNA excluded both her estranged husband and a convicted South Auckland rapist who matches that description. The police reconstruction of the abduction at traffic lights is their best reading, not a proven sequence. Witness accounts come from police statements and the witness's 2018 interview with the Herald on Sunday. Published times for the fire vary between about 5.25am and 5.45am.
SOURCES
Anna Leask, "Claire Hills murder cold-case: witness tells of coming face-to-face with killer", Herald on Sunday, 22 Apr 2018
Anna Leask, "Cold case: police look to search overseas in hunt for Claire Hills' killer", Herald on Sunday, 22 Apr 2018
"Someone knows Claire Hills' killer", Herald on Sunday editorial, 22 Apr 2018
Tony Wall, "Police: we know who killed Claire Hills" and "Baffling murder mystery", NZ Herald, Jun 2000
Scott Inglis, "New police team to hunt Claire Hills' killer", NZ Herald, Jun 2000
Tony Stickley, "Claire Hills police 'grasping at straws'", NZ Herald, Jun 2000
Scott Inglis, "Police need more evidence in Claire Hills murder case", NZ Herald, 28 Apr 2001
NZPA, "Horror death still haunts investigators", NZ Herald, 10 May 2002
Patrick Gower, "Book remains open on five-year-old murder", NZ Herald, 29 Apr 2003
NZPA, "Killer must be haunted by murder, say police", NZ Herald, 9 Dec 2009
Anna Leask, "A Moment In Crime: Murder at Mangere Mountain", NZ Herald podcast, Jul 2021
SUPPORT
This episode discusses sexual violence and a violent death. Safe to Talk 0800 044 334 (24/7, sexual harm), 1737 (call or text). In Australia: 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732, Lifeline 13 11 14.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 11 Oct 2026 - 34min - 65 - E67 | Auckland Unsolved | The Murder of Tracey Anne Patient
On the night of 29 January 1976, thirteen-year-old Tracey Ann Patient left a friend's house in Henderson, West Auckland, and ran for home along Great North Road, late for her 9.30 curfew. She was last seen about five minutes from her front door. The next morning a man walking his dog found her body in bush beside a layby on Scenic Drive in the Waitākere Ranges, strangled with pantyhose tightened with a piece of wood. Nearly two years later an anonymous caller led police to her missing ring, wrapped in tissue in an Avondale rubbish bin, and gave them a six-digit number, 126040. The caller promised to ring back and never did. Nobody has ever been charged.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
Information can be given anonymously through Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111 (crimestoppers-nz.org), or to Police on 105, quoting reference 990810/0373. Over the years police have asked about the meaning of the number 126040, about the identity of the person who rang Henderson police on 22 November 1977, about the driver of a cream or white 1967 Mark II Ford Cortina seen on Great North Road near Edmonton Road that night, and about anyone who has kept quiet about what they know. Tracey's sister Debbie asks people to come forward even if the person they suspect has died.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
No one has ever been charged in connection with Tracey's death, and no court has made any finding against any person. The coroner recorded a finding of homicide by strangulation with a ligature. Over fifty years police have examined hundreds of persons of interest. None is named in this episode, and anyone who was questioned and cleared is presumed innocent. Accounts from 1976 and 1977 come from New Zealand Press Association reports carried in The Press and accessed through Papers Past. Contemporary police statements say the pantyhose were not Tracey's, while some later reporting describes them as her own. Later police statements date the ring call to 1978, but contemporaneous reports put it at 22 November 1977. Debbie Sheppard's words come from her published interviews. The investigation remains open.
SOURCES
The Press (NZPA reports), 31 Jan 1976 to 18 Oct 1990, via Papers Past: paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
"Police hunt for murderer of strangled girl", The Press, 31 Jan 1976
"Car driver may have lead to girl's murder", The Press, 2 Feb 1976
"Evidence body was moved", The Press, 12 Feb 1976
"Tracey Patient reward of $10,000", The Press, 22 May 1976
"Ring a new clue in death?", The Press, 16 Dec 1977
"Patient inquest closed", The Press, 7 Feb 1978
"Numbers mystery in Tracy Patient case", The Press, 12 Dec 1980
NZ Police media release, Jan 2016: police.govt.nz
Lynley Ward, "Tracey Ann Patient killing: the 40-year murder mystery", NZ Herald, 28 Jan 2016
"New witness in Tracey Ann Patient cold case", NZ Herald, 3 Jul 2016
Matthew Gray, "Tracey Ann Patient: the case that shocked a nation", Stuff, 29 Jan 2016
"Mystery remains in cold case murder", Timaru Herald, 26 Oct 2016
RNZ, "Mystery of 40-year-old murder case continues", Oct 2016
Jared Savage, "What happened to Tracey Ann Patient in cold case murder 49 years ago?", NZ Herald, 29 Jan 2025
Debbie Sheppard with Claudia Siron, "Cold case murder: Do you know who killed Tracey Ann Patient?", that's life!, 9 Apr 2025
SUPPORT
This episode discusses the murder of a child. If it raises anything for you: 1737 (call or text), Youthline 0800 376 633, Safe to Talk 0800 044 334. In Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 05 Oct 2026 - 37min - 64 - E66 | Auckland Unsolved | Who Killed Elsie Walker?
On the night of 1 October 1928, seventeen-year-old Elsie Walker vanished from her aunt and uncle's farm at Pāpāmoa, near Te Puke, in her apron and sand shoes. The family car vanished with her. By morning it was parked in a Papatoetoe street, with fuel for about 275 kilometres burned and a wheel changed on the road. Four days later a boy found Elsie's body under scrub in a scoria pit at Panmure. Police said she had driven herself. The coroner said she couldn't drive, that a man was at the wheel, and that he could not say who. Two inquiries, a 15,000-signature petition and a change to the law later, the case has never been solved.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Elsie's cousin, William Alfred Bayly, was publicly suspected at the time but was never charged with any offence connected to her death. At the 1929 inquest he swore he was in Auckland on 1 October 1928, and the police told the inquest they had found no evidence placing him anywhere near Pāpāmoa. The later claims that he was seen on a train that day came from witnesses whose earlier statements to police contradicted them, and the Minister of Justice rejected them. No court ever made any finding about him in relation to Elsie Walker. In 1934 he was convicted of murdering Samuel and Christobel Lakey at Ruawaro, and he was executed that year. That conviction is not evidence about Elsie's death, and this episode does not treat it as such. He is named because everyone involved is long dead, the suspicion against him is part of the public historical record, and it shaped everything that followed.
Courtroom testimony in this episode comes from the New Zealand Herald's day-by-day reporting of the January 1929 inquest. It is close to verbatim but it is press gallery reporting, not a transcript. The coroner's original file (Archives New Zealand, J46 1929/187) has not been digitised and was not consulted. One claim reported only by NZ Truth is not used in the narration. The coroner's open finding still stands: death from concussion following a blow to the head, with nothing to show whether the blow was accidental or deliberate.
SOURCES
New Zealand Herald, inquest coverage, 8 Oct 1928 to 26 Jan 1929, and follow-up coverage Feb to Nov 1929, via Papers Past: paperspast.natlib.govt.nz
Coroner's finding, reported in "The Tamaki Mystery: Open Verdict Given", NZ Herald, 26 Jan 1929: paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19290126.2.105
Auckland Star, 6 and 8 Oct 1928, via Papers Past
NZ Truth, "New developments in Elsie Walker mystery", 8 Aug 1929: paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZTR19290808.2.26
"Police Exonerated", report of the Page Commission, NZ Herald, 5 Apr 1929: paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/newspapers/NZH19290405.2.114
Statement by the Minister of Justice on the Elsie Walker case, AJHR 1929, H-28: paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/parliamentary/AJHR1929-I.2.3.2.33
Public Petitions Committee reports, AJHR 1929, I-01 (Petition No. 414): paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/parliamentary/AJHR1929-I.2.3.3.1
Police annual report, AJHR 1929, H-16
"Reopening of Inquests: Legislation Passed", Auckland Star, 30 Sep 1930, via Papers Past
"Elsie Walker's Death: Reference in Bayly Case", Pahiatua Herald, 18 Jan 1934, via Papers Past
Northcroft clemency memorial, reported in NZ Herald, 14 Jul 1934, via Papers Past
Dictionary of New Zealand Biography, "Bayly, William Alfred": teara.govt.nz/en/biographies/4b15/bayly-william-alfred
Archives New Zealand catalogue, coronial records for the Walker and Lakey cases: collections.archives.govt.nz
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 04 Oct 2026 - 39min - 63 - E65 | Special | Sydney Unsolved - The Disappearance of Katrina Bohnenkamp
She was removed from her parents at two and placed under the parental responsibility of the Minister. Between two and fifteen she went through thirteen different carers and care facilities, and in her last two years she was reported missing thirty three times. Just after midnight on 26 October 2012, police found the fifteen year old inside a Strathfield boarding house, did a risk assessment and left her there. One of the adults present had given them a false name. A sergeant filed a Child at Risk report at two in the morning. Nobody followed it up, and she was not reported missing for another eight days. In 2020 a coroner found she is dead, and that she died in suspicious circumstances.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
A $500,000 NSW Government reward stands for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for Katrina's disappearance or death, and for information leading to her recovery. The investigation is Strike Force Delange, run by detectives at Auburn. Following the coroner's recommendation the case was referred to the NSW Police Unsolved Homicide Unit.
Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000, or nsw.crimestoppers.com.au. Information is treated in strict confidence and you do not have to give your name.
In November 2019 police released a photograph taken from Katrina's own Facebook page in the months before she disappeared, showing her with an unidentified man with a shaved head, and asked the public to help identify him. He has not been publicly identified.
Police have never established where Katrina was sleeping during the last three months of her life. She told a cousin she had a little flat and was happy there. It has never been found.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
This episode is built on the findings of Deputy State Coroner Carmel Forbes, 2 October 2020, delivered after eleven hearing days and read in full.
The coroner found Katrina died on or after 26 October 2012, that the evidence does not allow findings as to the place, manner or cause of her death, and that she died in suspicious circumstances. She found the people last with Katrina gave inconsistent and varying versions of when they last saw her, then expressly declined to comment further because the police investigation is ongoing.
Nobody has ever been charged. No court has made any adverse finding against any person in connection with Katrina's disappearance.
Her father is named because she carries his surname, because he gave evidence at the inquest, and because he candidly accepted there that he was not a good role model for her. Nothing here suggests he had any involvement in her disappearance, and the coroner made no such finding. Other adults associated with the Strathfield address are deliberately not named, for the reason the coroner gave.
The coroner made no recommendations against the Department of Communities and Justice, on the basis that without a finding as to manner of death she could not assess how significant its shortcomings were. Katrina's caseworker is not named here.
SOURCES
Inquest findings, Deputy State Coroner Carmel Forbes, 2 October 2020: coroners.nsw.gov.au
NSW Police, reward and appeal, Strike Force Delange: police.nsw.gov.au
ABC News, Patrick Begley, on the delay in naming Katrina publicly, 19 Nov 2019
Yahoo News Australia, on the Facebook photograph, 28 Nov 2019
SUPPORT
This episode deals with a missing child, the death of a teenager, children in state care, family violence and drug use.
Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14. Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800. 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732.
New Zealand: Need to talk? 1737. Youthline 0800 376 633.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 28 Sep 2026 - 40min - 62 - E64 | Special | Sydney Unsolved - The Acid Murder
For about three weeks in December 2013, a homeless woman caught the same bus out of Liverpool at eight each night, sat in the same seat, fell asleep, and was woken at her stop by the driver. Each time there were more bandages around her head. She begged in shopping centres, walked into a hospital lobby and declined a doctor. On 4 January 2014 police found Monika Chetty in bushland at West Hoxton with full thickness acid burns to eighty per cent of her body, injuries a surgeon later put at three to four weeks old. She died four weeks after that. In 2024 a coroner found she was killed. Nobody has ever been charged.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
A $500,000 NSW Government reward stands for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible for Ms Chetty's death. The investigation is Strike Force Lanlo, and following the coroner's recommendation it was referred in June 2024 to the NSW Police Force's Unsolved Homicide Team for further review and evaluation.
Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000, or nsw.crimestoppers.com.au. Information is treated in strict confidence.
Four specific things have never been answered. Who supplied roughly nine litres of acid in Sydney's south west in late 2013. Where she was lying when it was poured on her. Who paid her up to $20,000 for an immigration visa that never came. And who she was speaking to on the telephone in the last days of December, when a bus driver heard her whisper, why are you doing this to me.
In 2014 police specifically asked Sydney's Sikh and Hindu communities for information about her final weeks.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
This episode is built on the coronial finding of Magistrate Elaine Truscott, handed down on 28 March 2024, which was read in full, and on the Commissioner of Police's response of 14 June 2024.
The coroner found that Monika Chetty's death was the result of a homicide by a person or persons unknown, and that the cause of death was complications from burns, those burns being from acid doused over 80 per cent of her body. She found the fatal burns were caused by another person or persons, in circumstances other than those Monika described to police.
Four people were separately represented at the inquest. All are living, none has ever been charged, and the coroner made no adverse finding against any of them. Non-publication orders were made during the hearing. None of them is named or identified in this episode, and that is deliberate.
Monika Chetty is widely described in reporting as a nurse. The coroner's finding does not. It records that she worked in a nursing home between 2001 and 2003 and was otherwise not formally employed. This episode follows the finding.
The NSW Police reward page and contemporaneous reporting date the discovery to 3 January 2014. The coronial finding says 4 January. The finding is followed here and the conflict is stated on air.
SOURCES
Inquest into the death of Monika Chetty, findings of Magistrate Truscott, 28 March 2024: coroners.nsw.gov.au
Response of the Commissioner of Police to the coronial recommendation, 14 June 2024: dcj.nsw.gov.au
NSW Police, reward and appeal, Strike Force Lanlo: police.nsw.gov.au
ABC News, reporting on the case in February 2014, including Superintendent James Johnson and Ronald Chetty
ABC News, inquest coverage, November 2020
SUPPORT
This episode describes serious burn injuries, homelessness, gambling addiction and the death of a woman.
Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14. Gambling Help 1800 858 858. 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732.
New Zealand: Need to talk? 1737. Gambling Helpline 0800 654 655.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 27 Sep 2026 - 38min - 61 - E63 | Special | Sydney Unsolved - The Disappearance of Juanita Nielsen
She published a local newspaper out of her own front room and used it to fight a developer who wanted to put three forty-five storey towers on her street. On a Friday morning she walked into the Carousel Cabaret in Kings Cross for a meeting about advertising, rang her business partner at half past ten to say she was running late, and was never seen again. Two men were later convicted of conspiring to abduct her four days earlier. Nobody has ever been charged over her disappearance. In 1983 a coroner's jury found police inquiries had been inhibited by an atmosphere of corruption. Eleven years later a federal parliamentary committee found something else.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
A $1 million reward, announced on 21 June 2021, stands for information about the 1975 disappearance and suspected murder of Juanita Nielsen, or for the location of her remains. The case is held by the Unsolved Homicide Team as Strike Force Euclid.
Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000, or nsw.crimestoppers.com.au. Information is treated in strict confidence. Do not report through police social media.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Juanita Nielsen has never been found. There is no body, no scene and no cause of death. The only physical trace ever recovered is her handbag and personal effects, found on a freeway near Penrith on 7 July 1975.
Nobody has ever been charged over her disappearance or death. Two men, Eddie Trigg and Shayne Martin-Simmonds, were convicted of conspiring to kidnap her on 30 June 1975, four days before she vanished. A third man charged with that conspiracy, Lloyd Marshall, was acquitted in 1980 and is entitled to the presumption of innocence.
Frank Theeman, Abe Saffron, James McCartney Anderson and Fred Krahe are all named in this episode. All four are dead. None was ever charged in connection with Juanita Nielsen. Theeman, Saffron and Anderson each denied involvement on oath at the 1983 inquest. The committee that examined Anderson's dealings with the National Crime Authority recorded that he had apparently never been convicted of any offence.
Loretta Crawford's 2004 television account has never been tested in a criminal court and no one has been charged as a result of it. This episode reports that she made the allegation. It does not repeat the names of the individuals she placed at the scene.
The 1983 coronial finding of City Coroner Bert Wilson is not published online. Its wording here is taken from the Australian Dictionary of Biography. The 1984 internal police inquiry that cleared three senior officers was not obtained.
SOURCES
The National Crime Authority and James McCartney Anderson, report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Crime Authority, March 1994, read in full: aph.gov.au
NSW Police, reward and appeal, Strike Force Euclid: police.nsw.gov.au
Australian Dictionary of Biography, Juanita Joan Nielsen, by Richard Morris, volume 15
Dictionary of Sydney, on the 1983 inquest, by Darrienne Wyndham
ABC News, $1 million reward announcement, 21 June 2021
ABC News and Unravel: Juanita, Michael Dulaney, 2021, for Arthur King's account in his own words
SUPPORT
This episode deals with the abduction and suspected murder of a woman, and with the kidnapping and threatening of a man.
Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14. 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732.
New Zealand: Need to talk? 1737. Safe to Talk 0800 044 334.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 21 Sep 2026 - 41min - 60 - E62 | Special | Sydney Unsolved - The Disappearance of Trudie Adams
Just after midnight, an eighteen year old left a dance at the Newport Surf Life Saving Club and walked out to Barrenjoey Road to hitchhike home to Avalon. Her boyfriend watched her get into a light coloured Holden panel van. Nobody has seen Trudie Adams since. In the weeks that followed, around fifteen young women came forward to say they had been abducted at gunpoint on the same road by two men in disguise, driven into the bush and raped. Detectives had a name within months. Nobody has ever been charged, and the coroner who finally heard the case in 2011 found that the person responsible never came to police attention.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
A $250,000 reward offered by the NSW Government stands for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for Trudie's suspected death. The case is held by the Unsolved Homicide Team as Strike Force Keldie, and police say they are still working strong lines of inquiry, with inquiries run in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and New Zealand.
Police also want to hear from any woman attacked on the northern beaches who has never reported it. The linked assaults ran from 1971 to 1978 in and around Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, against girls and young women aged 14 to 20.
Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000. You can remain anonymous.
A NSW parliamentary inquiry into unsolved murders and long-term missing persons cases between 1965 and 2010 is sitting now, before Portfolio Committee No. 1. Submissions close 30 October 2026, through the Parliament of NSW website.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Trudie Adams has never been found and no cause of death has ever been established. There is no body, no scene and no forensic material connected to her. Every forensic detail in this episode belongs to the women who survived the linked assaults.
Neville Tween, named in this episode, was never charged over Trudie Adams or over any of the assaults, denied all of it, gave evidence at the 2011 inquest and died in custody in 2013. No court has made any finding against him in this case. His associate is not named here, because he has never been charged with anything.
Mark Standen has never been charged with anything relating to Trudie Adams or the assaults, and no court or inquiry has found that he protected Neville Tween. The ABC put those allegations to him in 2018 and he denied them at length in writing. His own words are read in the episode. He was released on parole on 1 June 2024.
The 2011 coronial finding of Deputy State Coroner Scott Mitchell is not published by the NSW Coroners Court, which does not publish every finding. What he found is reported here from coverage filed the day he delivered it, not from the document itself.
Survivor accounts and several investigator quotes come from one body of reporting, the 2018 ABC investigation by Neil Mercer and Ruby Jones.
SOURCES
NSW Police, reward and appeal, Strike Force Keldie
Neil Mercer, Submission 63 to the NSW unsolved murders inquiry, 24 March 2026
Parliament of NSW, Portfolio Committee No. 1, inquiry page and transcripts
ABC News, Unravel: Barrenjoey Road, Neil Mercer and Ruby Jones, 2018
ABC News inquest coverage, January to April 2011
NSW State Parole Authority media release, 17 May 2024
Stab Magazine on the surf film Highway One, 1 November 2018
SUPPORT
This episode deals with sexual violence and with the murder of a young woman.
Australia: 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732. Lifeline 13 11 14.
New Zealand: Safe to Talk 0800 044 334. Need to talk? 1737.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 20 Sep 2026 - 42min - 59 - E61 | Murder at Sea? Part Two - Fatal Honeymoon (AUS)
Eleven days after her wedding, 26-year-old Tina Watson died on a honeymoon dive 48 nautical miles off Townsville. She was found on the sea bed in 30 metres of water with her regulator in her mouth and most of her air still in her tank. Her husband, Gabe Watson, was committed for trial for her murder by a Queensland coroner, pleaded guilty instead to manslaughter by criminal negligence, served 18 months, was deported, and was then tried for capital murder in Alabama. That trial collapsed before the defence called a witness. Two countries, eight years, one conviction, one acquittal, and no jury verdict of any kind about how she died.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
David Gabriel "Gabe" Watson was convicted in Queensland on his own plea of manslaughter on the basis of criminal negligence, for failing in the duty he undertook as his wife's dive buddy. He was sentenced on 5 June 2009 to four and a half years imprisonment suspended after 12 months, increased on the Attorney-General's appeal to suspension after 18 months.
He was acquitted of murder in Jefferson County, Alabama, on 23 February 2012, on a judgment of acquittal granted by Circuit Judge Tommy Nail at the close of the state's case. An acquittal cannot be appealed. No court in either country has found that he intended to kill his wife, and he is entitled to the presumption of innocence. As at September 2026 there have been no further proceedings against him anywhere.
The theory that he interfered with his wife's air supply was advanced publicly by Queensland investigators. It was never tested at trial, never proved and was abandoned. It was also never disproved. The Police Diving Squad's examination of her equipment found no life-threatening fault in any part of it and her cylinder still held 2,200 psi, which rules out a malfunction but is consistent with either an accident or the police theory.
Two official records conflict on how she died. The coroner recorded drowning. Chesterman JA, in the Court of Appeal, found she did not drown and that the cause was asphyxiation, "for some reason wholly unexplained in the materials provided". That conflict is left standing in the episode because neither court has resolved it.
The coroner's findings date Watson's rescue diver certification to 2001; the agreed statement of facts before the Court of Appeal says April 1999. The episode uses the agreed facts.
Mike Ball Expeditions Pty Ltd pleaded guilty in the Cairns Magistrates Court on 9 May 2007 to a workplace health and safety offence and was fined $6,500 plus $1,500 in costs, for failing to follow its own procedures, which the inquest was told were significantly stricter than Queensland law required.
Trial testimony comes from court reporting, reliable as to substance but not exact wording. One witness quotation is paraphrased.
SOURCES
Inquest into the death of Christina Mae Watson, Findings of Inquest, Coroner David Glasgow, Townsville, delivered 20 June 2008. courts.qld.gov.au
R v Watson; ex parte A-G (Qld) [2009] QCA 279, 18 September 2009.
Statement of David Gabriel Watson to Det Snr Const K J Gehringer, Townsville CIB, 22 October 2003.
QPS Police Diving Squad, evaluation of scuba equipment, Snr Const D M E Netting, 10 September 2004.
Victoria Colvin, "Plea Bargaining and Miscarriage of Justice" (2015) 34 University of Queensland Law Journal.
Queensland Museum, SS Yongala online exhibition.
Contemporaneous court reporting of the Alabama trial, February 2012.
SUPPORT
This episode deals with a sudden death and with a family's long grief. New Zealand: free call or text 1737. Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14, Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 14 Sep 2026 - 41min - 58 - E60 | Murder at Sea? The Joyita Mystery (NZ/Pacific)
Before dawn on 3 October 1955, the MV Joyita left Apia on one engine, bound for Tokelau with 25 people aboard, among them a doctor on his way to operate, Tokelau's District Officer, and two children aged 3 and 11. She never arrived. Five weeks later she was found drifting north of Fiji, flooded and listing, with nobody aboard. Her life rafts, logbook, navigation gear and the captain's guns were gone. On deck was a doctor's bag holding a scalpel and blood-stained bandages. A 1956 Commission of Inquiry explained the flooding, but found the fate of the 25 "inexplicable on the evidence." So was it an accident at sea, or a crime?
IN MEMORY
Thomas Henry Miller, Charles R. Simpson, Tekokaa Teeweka, Aberaam Tanini, Henry McCarthy Jr, Penaia Kolio Pedro, Ihaia Kitiona Faraimo, Tagifano Latafoti Lepaio, Haipele Fihaga Himona, Ioakimi Iapeha Apete, Himeti Falaniko Mohe, Tuhaga Hila Elekana, Leota Telepu Kolo, Mohe Maota Peleti, James William Wallwork, George Kendall Williams, Takama Lapana, Tekai Lapana, Liua Noama Rosaiti Faiva, Founuku Uluola Talama, Herbert Hodgkinson, Alfred Denis Parsons, Roger Derrick Pearless, Joseph Hipili Pereira, Tomoniko Teofilo.
Memorials stand at Mulinu'u Point, Apia, and on Fakaofo (2012). The Atafu Tokelau Community Group keeps a page on the families' campaign for formal declarations of death: matauala.org.nz
A NOTE ON SOURCING
This is a historical case. No one was ever charged and no court has found that any crime occurred. The mutiny theory involving Captain Miller and mate Chuck Simpson comes from Miller's friend Capt. S. B. Brown and the writer Robin Maugham (1962). It was never proved, and both men are presumed long dead. The 1956 Commission report (C. C. Marsack) could not be obtained for this episode; its findings are taken from reporting, including by a journalist who covered the inquiry. Criticism of the inquiry (a "suppressed" witness, the Fiji Guardian editor's unpublished report) reaches us through one family memoir and is untested. The "four tons" of missing cargo conflicts with the owners' representatives' 1955 statement that provisions were still aboard. The cash figure comes from reports at the time. The Thelma Todd link is ownership only. Status of death declarations checked 11 Sep 2026.
SOURCES
- RNZ, "Call for coronial hearing into Tokelau's Joyita tragedy", 8 Mar 2012Atafu Tokelau Community Group, "Joyita - Unsolved Mystery" (incl. PMN, 2022) matauala.org.nzTerry Dunleavy tribute, Savali News, 11 Mar 2012Rosemary Francis, "A Watery Grave", Pae Koroki, Tauranga City Libraries, 2013Julie Parsons, Westmeath Independent, 28 Oct 2020; julieparsons.ieTe Vakai (Tokelau Government), 10th ed., 2012China Mail, 21 and 23 Nov 1955 (UP wires); Life, 12 Dec 1955; FATE, Apr 1961 (archive.org)Fiji Times, "Joyita - the ghost ship mystery", 5 May 2014Martinborough Star, 8 May 2023; Fijivillage, 7 Mar 2012David G. Wright, Joyita: Solving the Mystery (AUP, 2002); Robin Maugham, The Joyita Mystery (1962); John Harris, Without Trace (1981)
SUPPORT
This episode discusses sudden death and loss at sea. NZ: 1737 (call or text). AU: Lifeline 13 11 14.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 13 Sep 2026 - 40min - 57 - E59 | In Cold Blood | Part One of the Book Series
On a Monday morning in November 1959, Truman Capote found a three hundred word wire story deep inside the New York Times. A wheat farmer, his wife and two of their children had been found bound and shot in their farmhouse in western Kansas. Nothing had been stolen. Capote went to Kansas with Harper Lee, stayed six years, and wrote the book that made true crime respectable. This episode tells both stories at once: what happened to Herb, Bonnie, Nancy and Kenyon Clutter, and what happened to the facts on their way into In Cold Blood. It ends with the two daughters who survived, and the letter they sent to everyone who asked.
IN MEMORY
The Clutters are buried at Valley View Cemetery, Garden City. A shelter at the Kansas State 4-H camp at Rock Springs Ranch, a stained glass window at the First United Methodist Church in Garden City, and the Garden City Co-op building are dedicated to the family. The 1959 murders of Cliff, Christine, Jimmie and Debbie Walker at Osprey, Florida, remain an open investigation with the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were convicted of all four murders on 29 March 1960 and hanged on 14 April 1965. The Kansas Supreme Court never determined which man fired which shot; both were guilty as principals. Hickock's signed statement blamed Smith for all four; Smith's first account had Hickock shooting Nancy and Bonnie, and he later asked to take all four himself but signed neither version. The sequence inside the house is taken from the Kansas Supreme Court's 1961 judgment only. Neither man was ever charged over the Walker murders; the 2013 DNA result was inconclusive and the lab work has since been found contaminated. We have named nobody else. Capote's account of the night is attributed to him wherever it appears. The two versions of the last words are as reported by the wire services and by Capote; Phillip Tompkins's 1966 witnesses are the source for the claim that Capote did not hear them. The 1965 wire text was reached through a secondary source. On Bonnie Clutter's health we report only what her family said in 2005 and what Capote wrote. The daughters' letter and interviews are from the Lawrence Journal-World, 2005. As of September 2026 the KBI investigative file has not been released; the Nye notebooks were published in 2019.
SOURCES
State v. Hickock and Smith, 188 Kan. 473 (1961): law.justia.com/cases/kansas/supreme-court/1961/42-068-0.html
Hickock v. Crouse, 334 F.2d 95 (10th Cir. 1964): law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/334/95/108910/
State ex rel. Schmidt v. Nye, Kansas Court of Appeals, 2019: law.justia.com/cases/kansas/court-of-appeals/2019/118666.html
New York Times, 16 Nov 1959, "Wealthy Farmer, 3 Of Family Slain" (NYT archive)
George Plimpton, "The Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel", NYT, 16 Jan 1966 (NYT archive)
Garden City Telegram, 16 Nov 1959 and 4 Jan 1960; AP, 30 Mar 1960 and 8 Apr 1965
Kansas Memory, Hickock and Smith inmate files and execution witness list: kansasmemory.gov/item/208965
Lawrence Journal-World, "In Cold Blood: A Legacy", 3 to 5 Apr 2005 (Patrick Smith, Melissa Lee, Van Jensen)
Kevin Helliker, Wall Street Journal, 8 Feb 2013, and On the Media, 15 Feb 2013
Phillip K. Tompkins, "In Cold Fact", Esquire, June 1966; Purdue oral history, 2015
Casey Cep, Furious Hours (2019); Gerald Clarke, Capote (1988); Too Brief a Treat (2004)
Tampa Bay Times / CBS News, 6 Feb 2023, and ABC News, 14 Aug 2013, on the Walker case
SUPPORT
This episode describes the murder of a family including two children, and discusses capital punishment. If you need to talk to someone: New Zealand, call or text 1737. Australia, Lifeline 13 11 14.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 06 Sep 2026 - 42min - 56 - E58 | Who turned off the light? The disappearance of Eloise Worledge (AUS)
In January 1976, eight year old Eloise Worledge went to bed in her family's home on Scott Street, Beaumaris. Her father looked in on her at 11:40pm. At 7:30am her younger brother and sister woke their parents to say Ella was not in her room. The flyscreen on her window had been cut and rolled back, but forensic examination found the cut was made from the inside, the dust and cobwebs undisturbed, and the scene staged. Fifty years on, Eloise has never been found, nobody has been charged, and a coroner's open finding is the only formal answer anyone has.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
On 13 January 2026, the fiftieth anniversary, Victoria Police announced a reward of up to $1 million. It is offered at the discretion of the Chief Commissioner of Police for information leading to the discovery of Eloise's remains, or the apprehension and subsequent conviction of the person or persons responsible. Police say it is currently the only reward of its kind in Victoria because it pays for the recovery of remains, not only for a conviction. The Director of Public Prosecutions may grant an informant indemnity from prosecution.
The investigation remains open with the Victoria Police Missing Persons Squad. Police believe Eloise was murdered.
Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000
Confidential online report: crimestoppersvic.com.au
You do not have to give your name.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Nobody has ever been charged over Eloise Worledge's disappearance. Her parents, Lindsay and Patsy Worledge, were treated as suspects from the first days and lived under public suspicion for decades. No evidence implicating either was ever found. A 2001 cold case review found none, and Victoria Police have since told the family they have concluded the parents were not involved. Lindsay died in 2017 and Patsy in 2022, before that conclusion was conveyed.
Alistair Duncan Webster, named in this episode, died in 2020. He had convictions for sexual offences in 1953, 1970 and 1972. He was never charged over Eloise Worledge, and no court or coroner has found he had any involvement. The case for examining him is ABC journalist Russell Jackson's, and Jackson states he found circumstantial evidence and coincidences but nothing definitive. Police say they cannot comment on individuals.
The Board of Inquiry into historical child sexual abuse at Beaumaris Primary School reported in February 2024 and found no connection between Eloise's disappearance and the abuse at the school.
Coroner Frank Hender's 2003 finding is not published online, so we worked from contemporaneous reporting of it. The 631 page police coronial brief is not public. Some widely repeated details about that night could not be traced to a source and were left out. The argument in Part Two that a staged window is equally consistent with an intruder misdirecting the search is the host's own analysis, not any investigator's finding.
SOURCES
Victoria Police cold case, missing person and reward pages, police.vic.gov.au
Board of Inquiry into Historical Child Sexual Abuse in Beaumaris Primary School and Certain Other Government Schools, final report, Chair Kathleen Foley SC, February 2024
Russell Jackson, ABC News, 11 and 14 January 2026
ABC News, 13 January 2026 and 7 July 2003
Australian Women's Weekly, January 2026
SUPPORT
This episode deals with the abduction and presumed murder of a child, and with historical child sexual abuse.
New Zealand: 1737 call or text. Safe to Talk 0800 044 334. Family violence 0800 456 450.
Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14. Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636. 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 31 Aug 2026 - 40min - 55 - E57.5 | BONUS - While the Baby Slept: Jess Rigby (companion to Episode 57)
A companion to Episode 57 — the death of Jason Rigby
On the evening of 14 December 2024, Jess Rigby and her husband Chris had put their youngest to bed and started a movie when the calls began. Chris's brother Jason, forty years old and second-in-charge of a resort in Nadi, had died in his staff apartment that morning — ten hours earlier, on the other side of the Pacific, with a stab wound to the chest. By the time the family were told, the scene had already been cleared and released.
In this conversation Jess describes what the twenty months since have been like: three trips to Fiji, a private investigator, a missing phone, a knife nobody can account for, a toxicology form with a word crossed out - and the single document her family has been given about how Jason died.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
Jason's family want to hear from anyone who worked at, or stayed at, the Crowne Plaza Fiji Nadi Bay Resort & Spa on 14 December 2024. There were hundreds of guests and hundreds of staff on the property that day, and almost none has ever been asked what they saw. No detail is too small.
Justice for Jason Rigby — on Instagram and Facebook
Or message anonymously via theguiltpodcast.com and it will be passed to the family.
THE BOOK
WHILE THE BABY SLEPT: A Family's Fight for Justice in Fiji Over the Unsolved Death of Jason Rigby, by Jessica Rigby (Hembury Books), publishes 24 November 2026. Ebook pre-orders are open now: amazon.com/dp/B0HGL7VG7P
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Nobody has been charged with any offence in relation to Jason Rigby's death, and no court or coroner has made any finding about how he died. The Fiji Police Force's public position, stated by Assistant Commissioner Mesake Waqa in June 2025, is that they could not establish foul play and that there was no cover-up.
People who were present or nearby that morning are referred to in this conversation. None of them has been charged with anything, all are entitled to the presumption of innocence, and nothing said here should be taken as alleging criminal conduct by any of them.
What Jess describes of what happened inside that apartment is her family's understanding of what they have been told. It is not a matter of record, because the record has not been released to them. There were two post-mortem examinations — one in Fiji, and a second by the Queensland Coroner after Jason was repatriated — and the family has been permitted to read neither. The reason given for withholding the Queensland report is that the matter forms part of an open investigation in Fiji. No wound count, no toxicology beyond a single alcohol screen, no scene examination, no witness statement and no incident report has ever been made public.
Fiji Police referred the file to a Resident Magistrate in March 2025 recommending a full inquest. As at the end of August 2026, no inquest finding is on the public record.
For the full case, the timeline and the sources, listen to Episode 57.
SUPPORT
This episode concerns a death officially recorded as suicide, and a family who do not accept that finding. If it raises anything difficult for you:
New Zealand — 1737, call or text any time. Safe to Talk 0800 044 334.
Australia — Lifeline 13 11 14. Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 30 Aug 2026 - 49min - 54 - E57 | Jason Rigby (Aus/Fiji)
On the morning of 14 December 2024, Jason Rigby put on a suit, went to a meeting, and told colleagues in the lobby of the Fijian resort he had helped build that he would see them in half an hour. He was forty, the resort's executive assistant manager, living in staff quarters a hundred metres away. Within that half hour he was stabbed in the chest. His scene was cleared by four o'clock that afternoon — before his family in Australia had been told he was dead. Twenty months later they have obtained exactly one document about how he died, and somebody had already crossed a word out of it.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
Jason's family want to hear from anyone who worked at, or stayed at, the Crowne Plaza Fiji Nadi Bay Resort & Spa on 14 December 2024. There were hundreds of guests and hundreds of staff on the property that day, and almost none has ever been asked what they saw. No detail is too small.
LINKS
Justice for Jason Rigby — on Instagram and Facebook
Or message anonymously via theguiltpodcast.com and it will be passed to the family.
Jessica Rigby's account of the case, WHILE THE BABY SLEPT: A Family's Fight for Justice in Fiji Over the Unsolved Death of Jason Rigby (Hembury Books), publishes 24 November 2026. Ebook pre-orders are open now: amazon.com/dp/B0HGL7VG7P
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Nobody has been charged with any offence in relation to Jason Rigby's death, and no court or coroner has made any finding about how he died. The Fiji Police Force's public position, stated by Assistant Commissioner Mesake Waqa in June 2025, is that they could not establish foul play and that there was no cover-up. Everyone who was near Jason that morning is entitled to the presumption of innocence, and nothing in this episode should be taken as suggesting otherwise. None of them is named in this episode.
Almost nothing about this death has been released. There were two post-mortem examinations — one in Fiji, one by the Queensland Coroner after Jason was repatriated — and his family has been permitted to read neither. The reason given for withholding the Queensland report is that the matter forms part of an open investigation in Fiji. No wound count, no toxicology beyond a single alcohol screen, no scene examination and no witness statement has been made public.
Accounts of what happened inside the flat come from Jason's family, and are their understanding of what they have been told rather than established fact. The published record on this case amounts to three things: the Fijian reporting of December 2024, the 60 Minutes broadcast of June 2025 and the police response to it, and Mamamia's interview with Jess Rigby in June 2026. The rest comes from the family.
Fiji Police referred the file to a Resident Magistrate in March 2025 recommending a full inquest. As at the end of August 2026, no inquest finding is on the public record.
SOURCES
The Fiji Times, 16 Dec 2024 — the resort's statement that there was no criminal investigation
FBC News, 17 Dec 2024 — ACP Mesake Waqa's first statement
fijivillage / FBC News, 22–23 Jun 2025 — "We could not establish any foul play... there is no cover up"
60 Minutes Australia, "Murder in Paradise", 22 Jun 2025
Mamamia, Gemma Bath, 30 Jun 2026
True Crime Conversations (Mamamia) — "A Families' Fight For Answers After A Death In Paradise"
Interview with Jess Rigby, 26 Aug 2026
SUPPORT
This episode concerns a death officially recorded as suicide. If it raises anything difficult for you:
New Zealand — 1737, call or text any time. Safe to Talk 0800 044 334.
Australia — Lifeline 13 11 14. Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 30 Aug 2026 - 27min - 53 - E52.5 | BONUS - Hunting Elly's Killer: Paul Warren, ten years on (companion to Episode 52)
Elly Rose Warren was twenty years old, three days from flying home, when she was found dead beside a toilet block at Tofo Beach in Mozambique on 9 November 2016. The Mozambican autopsy recorded a violent death — a homicide — with sand obstructing her airways. The Australian autopsy left the cause undetermined. Nearly ten years later nobody has been charged, and almost everything now known about how Elly died was found by her father.
In this conversation Paul Warren describes what he found: a crime scene he believes was altered before investigators arrived, a photograph that existed for two years before his family was shown it, clothing that never came home, and an Australian agency he says did not go to Mozambique officially until seven years after his daughter died.
ELLY WARREN — THE TRUE FACTS
Paul has published his entire ten-year investigation, including scanned primary documents, at ellywarren.net. If you take one thing from this episode, take that.
THE ELLY WARREN PROTOCOL
Paul's proposed reform for what should happen when an Australian dies overseas in suspicious circumstances — putting the coroner in control from the start, and using state homicide expertise rather than leaving families to investigate for themselves. It is set out on his website. It has not been taken up.
THE BOOK
HUNTING ELLY'S KILLER: A father's relentless pursuit of justice, by Paul Warren (Simon & Schuster Australia, ISBN 9781761636486). Available in print, ebook and audiobook.
https://www.simonandschuster.com.au/books/Hunting-Ellys-Killer/Paul-Warren/9781761636486
Kindle: amazon.com.au/dp/B0GR1JY5H4
Ebook ISBN 9781761636493 — also at Booktopia, Dymocks, Readings, QBD and Mighty Ape in New Zealand.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
If you were at Tofo Beach in November 2016, or know anything about what happened there, you can reach us through theguiltpodcast.com — anonymously if you prefer. Anything concerning Elly is passed to Paul directly.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Nobody has been charged with any offence in connection with Elly Warren's death.
The Victorian coronial inquest was held in 2023. Judge John Cain delivered his findings on 15 December 2023: the cause of death was aspiration of a large amount of sand; he could not determine how the sand came to be there; he could not rule on whether the death was a homicide; he found it possible that a person or people caused or contributed to her death; he could not say whether she died where she was found or was moved there; and he could not determine whether she had been sexually assaulted, though he accepted it was possible.
Three post-mortem examinations reached different conclusions — in Mozambique, in South Africa and in Melbourne — and all three found sand in her airways. The Melbourne finding of "undetermined" was later amended following evidence at the inquest.
Paul is severely critical of the Australian Federal Police, the Mozambican police and the Victorian coronial process. Those criticisms are his, they are strongly held, and the documents he relies on are published on his website for you to read and weigh. Nothing in this episode should be taken as alleging criminal conduct by any identified person.
SOURCES
ellywarren.net — Paul Warren's published investigation and primary documents
Coroners Court of Victoria — inquest into the death of Elly Rose Warren, findings delivered 15 December 2023
ABC News, 22 August 2023 and 15 December 2023 — inquest and findings reporting
Hunting Elly's Killer, Paul Warren (Simon & Schuster Australia)
Interview with Paul Warren, recorded 25 August 2026
SUPPORT
This episode concerns the unexplained death of a young woman overseas, and refers to the possibility of sexual assault. If it raises anything difficult for you:
New Zealand — 1737, call or text any time. Safe to Talk 0800 044 334.
Australia — Lifeline 13 11 14. 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732.
Hosted by Ryan Wolf. brevityplus.com
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Thu, 27 Aug 2026 - 1h 08min - 52 - E55 | How did she Fall? The Case of Warriena Wright and Gable Tostee (NZ/AUS)
Warriena Tagpuno Wright was 26, a New Zealander, and had flown to Queensland for a friend's wedding. In the early hours of 8 August 2014 she fell 14 floors from a balcony at the Avalon apartments in Surfers Paradise. Almost the entire night had been recorded on the phone of the man she had met that evening — hours of audio, later played to a jury in Brisbane. In October 2016 Gable Tostee was acquitted of both murder and manslaughter. Two months later the Queensland State Coroner reopened the coronial investigation into how she died. Nearly ten years on, no finding has been published.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Gable Tostee was tried in the Supreme Court of Queensland and acquitted of murder and of manslaughter on 20 October 2016. He has never been convicted of any offence in relation to Warriena Wright's death, and this episode does not suggest he should have been. The defence case is set out at length, including evidence from the recording of Warriena's own conduct that night. Nothing about his life after the verdict appears in the episode; that is a deliberate editorial decision, stated on air.
A sound described as choking-like is audible on the recording. The pathologist, Dr Dianne Little, found reddening around Warriena's neck but considered it more likely caused by the fall than by strangulation, and found no internal neck injury. Those two pieces of evidence sit together in the episode and have never been publicly reconciled.
A coroner in Queensland cannot find that anyone is guilty of an offence or civilly liable. The reopened coronial investigation was never a second prosecution.
The statement that no coronial finding has been published is based on a direct search of the Coroners Court of Queensland findings archive and its inquest proceedings list, both checked on 20 August 2026. Not every coronial investigation produces a published document, so this establishes that nothing is publicly available — not that nothing was done.
SOURCES
ABC News trial coverage, October 2016, including "The Tinder date and the fatal fall" (20 Oct 2016) and the pathology evidence (13 Oct 2016): abc.net.au
ABC News, "Plea for help from sister of Warriena Tagpuno Wright", 14 Aug 2014
RNZ court reporting: "Tostee trial: Jury hears Warriena Wright's last words"; "Warriena Wright had 80 injuries after balcony fall, court told"; "Gable Tostee found not guilty of killing Warriena Wright": rnz.co.nz
The New Daily, "Coroner reopens investigation into Warriena Wright balcony death", 18 Dec 2016
Coroners Court of Queensland — findings archive, inquest proceedings list, and guidance on coroners' powers: coronerscourt.qld.gov.au
SUPPORT
This episode deals with a violent death, family violence and alcohol.
New Zealand: 1737 (call or text, any time) · Family violence 0800 456 450 · Women's Refuge 0800 REFUGE · Alcohol Drug Helpline 0800 787 797
Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14 · 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732 · Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 24 Aug 2026 - 37min - 51 - E54 | Finding Alysha (NZ/USA)
On 10 December 2001, her 24th birthday, Alysha Krsangi Hanin flew out of New Zealand for Florida, having just left her three-year-old son with his grandmother. The plan was to collect her things in Miami and come home to raise him here. Four weeks later, in the small hours of Sunday 6 January 2002, she left the Shore Club hotel on Collins Avenue to get something to eat, and was never seen again. Her passport, purse, luggage, ID and credit cards were still in her room. Nobody reported her missing for three weeks. In the 24 years since: no verified sighting, no activity on her accounts. Police suspect foul play. Nobody has ever been charged.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
Miami Beach Police confirm the case is active. Her family asks five questions:
Did you know Alysha — as Alysha, Krsangi or Yami — in Miami, Los Angeles, or within the Hare Krishna community, before 2002?Were you at or near the Shore Club on Collins Avenue in early January 2002 — including working there, on the door, valet, desk, housekeeping or bar?Do you remember seeing or hearing from her, anywhere, after 6 January 2002?Do you have photographs, letters or recordings in which she appears?Did anyone you know ever speak about her disappearance, then or since?Crime Stoppers of Miami-Dade: 305-471-TIPS (anonymous)
Miami Beach Police Department: 305-673-7900 — case 2002-3368
Florida Dept of Law Enforcement: 1-888-FL-MISSING (1-888-356-4774)
Tips direct to her family, anonymously if you wish: findingalysha.com
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Nobody has ever been arrested, charged or named. Alysha Hanin is legally a missing person: no finding of death, no inquest, no judgment anywhere in this case. "Foul play is suspected" is Miami Beach Police's published position, not a finding.
The episode refers to a former boyfriend who spoke briefly to the family's private investigator and then left the state. He has never been named, arrested or charged, and nothing in the record suggests any involvement. He is not named or described here, and no inference should be drawn.
Almost everything known about the New Zealand end comes from two articles by one reporter — Katie Ham at Stuff, Jan 2024, republished by RNZ: one outlet, not two. The Miami reporting is Miami Herald copy syndicated across several sites, plus independent television reporting by Bridgette Matter at WPLG Local 10.
The episode mentions that Alysha told her family she had been invited to party on Jeffrey Epstein's island. That comes from a single outlet, is an account of things she said, has never been tested, names or implicates no one, and is not connected to her disappearance.
Cilla Senk's account of clothing returned to her that she did not recognise is her account, not a forensic finding; nothing indicates it was ever examined. Her recollection of a call with Interpol in Wellington is her own account, unanswered by any agency. Sources conflict on when she left the hotel and why she was in Miami; the episode sets out both and resolves neither.
SOURCES
Katie Ham, Stuff, 18 & 27 Jan 2024 (also on RNZ): stuff.co.nz/nz-news/350152238
Bridgette Matter, WPLG Local 10, 13 Aug 2026: local10.com
Miami Herald, Jan 2024 and 15 Aug 2026
NamUs MP19635: namus.nij.ojp.gov/case/MP19635
The Charley Project: charleyproject.org/case/alysha-krsangi-hanin
The family's site: findingalysha.com
SUPPORT
This episode deals with a disappearance, sexual exploitation and drug use.
New Zealand: 1737 (call or text, any time) · Safe to Talk 0800 044 334 · Alcohol Drug Helpline 0800 787 797 · Women's Refuge 0800 REFUGE
Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14 · Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636 · 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 23 Aug 2026 - 41min - 50 - E52 | The Murder of Elly Warren (AUS)
Elly Warren was 20, from Mordialloc in Melbourne, six weeks into a marine conservation placement and days from flying home to study marine biology. On the night of 8 November 2016 she was last seen outside a bar in Tofo, about half past eleven. At five the next morning a fisherman found her beside a public toilet block less than forty metres away, face down, her clothing disturbed, her airways packed with sand. Three autopsies in three countries reached three different conclusions. Her clothes were incinerated without being tested. Nearly ten years on, nobody has been charged, and the sand has never been compared.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
No reward has ever been offered in this case. If you were in Tofo on the night of 8 November 2016, worked there, or were told something afterwards, the family are still asking.
Elly's father maintains the case archive and a contact page: ellywarren.net
In Australia, information can be passed anonymously to Crime Stoppers — 1800 333 000 — or through the AFP's online reporting form at afp.gov.au
The questions still open: whether the golden beach sand in Elly's airways came from somewhere other than the dark grey ground she was found on; whether she died at that spot or was moved there; and who was near the market and the bar between 11.30pm and 5am.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Nobody has ever been charged over Elly Warren's death, and no person is named as a suspect in this episode. No private individual is named at all.
On 15 December 2023 the State Coroner of Victoria, Judge John Cain, found Elly died from aspiration of sand into her lungs. He could not establish how it got there, could not determine whether she died where she was found, and could not establish whether she was sexually assaulted, though he accepted it was possible. He made NO finding of homicide — he found it possible that a person or persons unknown caused or contributed to her death. Mozambique refused to provide its evidence brief to the court.
The opinions of retired homicide detective Charlie Bezzina, and the beliefs of Elly's father, are given as opinion and belief. They are not findings.
Material concerning the crime-scene photographs, the position of Elly's body and the state of her shirt comes from documents obtained by Paul Warren. It is untested and no court has ruled on it.
Much of the detail of Elly's last evening rests on the reporting of a single outlet. The coronial findings are reported here from news coverage; the finding document itself is not published online.
SOURCES
marie claire Australia — "Mozambique Murder: What Really Happened To 20 Year Old Aussie, Elly Warren?" The most detailed reporting on this case anywhere.
The New Daily (AAP), 15 December 2023 — the coronial findings.
The Canberra Times (AAP) — inquest evidence of David Cafarella, AFP Commander Andrew Smith and honorary consul Blake Gray.
Club of Mozambique — Mozambican police homicide classification, August 2023.
Now to Love, Sarah Marinos — interview with Paul Warren.
ellywarren.net — Paul Warren's case archive: the three autopsies, the 2019 radiological review, and the Elly Warren Protocol.
"Hunting Elly's Killer: A father's relentless pursuit of justice" by Paul Warren, Simon & Schuster Australia, 2026.
SUPPORT
This episode deals with the violent death of a young woman and with a suspected sexual assault.
Australia — 1800RESPECT: 1800 737 732. Lifeline: 13 11 14. Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636.
New Zealand — Safe to Talk: 0800 044 334. Need to talk? Free call or text 1737.
Narrated by Ryan Wolf
www.brevityplus.com
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 17 Aug 2026 - 41min - 49 - E51 | The Whiskey Au Go Go Murders (AUS)
At 2.08am on 8 March 1973, two drums of petrol were lit in the foyer beneath the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub. Fifteen people died upstairs of carbon monoxide poisoning, in a first-floor room with one obstructed exit. Every one of them was dead before the fire brigade arrived. And months earlier, a career criminal named John Andrew Stuart had told a journalist — who printed it, and who personally warned the Police Commissioner and the Police Minister — that an empty club would be firebombed first, and then the Whiskey Au Go Go would be burned while it was full of people. On 25 February an empty club burned. Eleven days later, so did the Whiskey.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
James Finch and John Stuart were convicted in October 1973 of one murder — that of Jennifer Denise Davie, 17. The other fourteen charges were never proceeded with. Stuart died in Boggo Road Gaol in January 1979. Finch was released in 1988 and deported to England, where he confessed to a British newspaper and retracted within a day. He died of Covid in London, and the reopened inquest was told of his death on the opening day of its second tranche.
Police fabricated the evidence used to arrest Stuart. That is not in dispute. Finch was convicted largely on a typewritten record of a police interview that he never signed, in Queensland, in the years before the Fitzgerald Inquiry examined that police force.
A coronial inquest was reopened in 2017 and sat from June 2021 into 2022 — 30 days, more than 65 witnesses, over 2,000 exhibits — hearing credible evidence that Finch and Stuart did not act alone. As at the time of recording, the coroner's findings had not been delivered.
At a 2017 Supreme Court sentencing for the murders of Barbara McCulkin and her daughters, Vincent O'Dempsey told the court he had nothing to do with the Whiskey firebombing, and Justice Peter Applegarth said there was available evidence to the contrary. That is reported here as what was said in open court. It is not a finding about the fire. Mr O'Dempsey has never been charged over the Whiskey Au Go Go and denies any involvement in it. No other person is named in this episode in connection with the fire.
Two motives have been argued for fifty years — an extortion campaign, which is what the 1973 jury accepted, and an insurance fraud that went wrong. Neither has been established.
SOURCES
Geoff Plunkett, The Whiskey Au Go Go Massacre: Murder, Arson and the Crime of the Century (Big Sky Publishing, 2018) — written with access to the original police files
Matt Condon, 'What really happened at the Whiskey Au Go Go?', Courier-Mail, 4 March 2023
'Secrets of Whiskey may never come out', Courier-Mail, 8 March 2023
Both archived at whiskeyfire.info
Contemporaneous reporting: The Age, 9 and 13 March 1973; 7 January 1974; 2 January 1979; 6 June and 7 July 1984. The Sydney Morning Herald, 14 October 1966; 9 May 1974; 10 February 1984; 24 November 1988.
Australian Institute for Disaster Resilience, Whiskey Au Go-Go nightclub bombing 1973
Monument Australia — Whiskey Au Go Go Fire Victims
SUPPORT
This episode deals with mass killing, self-harm and death in custody.
Australia — Lifeline: 13 11 14. Beyond Blue: 1300 22 4636.
New Zealand — Need to talk? Free call or text 1737.
www.brevityplus.com
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 16 Aug 2026 - 33min - 48 - E49 | How does it Feel to Hug a Murderer? (NZ)
In July 2011 Bruce Mouat came home drunk from a work function at 1am. Workmates walked him to his own front door. Minutes later he went backwards down the concrete steps outside it. He was 48, worked at the local dairy factory, and led the Taranaki Alpine and Cliff Rescue team. He died in Wellington Hospital eleven days later. Police considered homicide and ruled it out. A coroner found no foul play. At the tangi, his sister told police, his wife had hugged her and asked how it felt to hug a murderer — and the finding was accidental death regardless. It took five more years, and her own friends going to police about what she had been telling them, before Susan Mouat admitted she had pushed him. No new evidence was ever found.
IN MEMORY
Bruce Mouat led the Taranaki Alpine and Cliff Rescue team, volunteers who turn out for people in trouble on a mountain that has killed more than eighty people since the 1890s. If this episode stays with you, the volunteer search and rescue teams in your region are worth a thought.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Susan Mouat pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was convicted. She was never charged with murder, and the Crown accepted she did not intend to kill her husband. All proceedings, including her sentence appeal, concluded in December 2017.
Because she pleaded guilty, there was no trial. Her account that she pushed him in self-defence has never been tested by cross-examination, and no court has made findings of fact about what happened at that door. Between 2011 and 2016 she gave police three statements denying involvement before admitting it. Only the final version has ever been accepted, and it was accepted unchallenged. In that account she alleges Bruce was behaving abusively that night. That allegation has never been tested, he cannot answer it, and his family have never accepted it.
Her confession is quoted from a transcript released to the Weekend Herald and reported by Kelly Dennett. The remark at the tangi is a witness's recollection recorded in a coronial finding, not a recording. Susan Mouat told the coroner she could not remember saying it, and that if she did, it was black humour.
Much of the direct quotation in this episode comes from journalists reporting from court, some of it from a single outlet. Bruce and Susan Mouat's daughter is named in a public judgment; she is not named here, and will not be.
No detailed post-mortem or scene evidence in this case has ever been made public.
SOURCES
Exclusive: What Susan Mouat told police about husband's death / Son of Bruce Mouat breaks his silence — NZ Herald and Herald on Sunday, Kelly Dennett, 2017
Couple had rocky past before fatal fall — RNZ, 13 October 2017
rnz.co.nz/news/national/341480
Wife's guilty plea six years after death — Taranaki Daily News, 5 September 2017, reporting by David Burroughs
pressreader.com/new-zealand/taranaki-daily-news/20170905/281479276561336
Fall death ruled accidental — despite wife's quip — NZ Herald, February 2012
Home detention for Susan Mouat / Appeal denied — NZ Herald, 2017
Son of Taranaki manslaughter victim awarded thousands by court — Stuff, 2018
Estate: Kawana-Mouat v Mouat, High Court, 17 July 2018 — summarised at nzbloglex.blogspot.com
Sentencing Act 2002, s 15A (home detention) — legislation.govt.nz
SUPPORT
This episode deals with family violence, alcohol dependence and a death in the home.
New Zealand — Family violence: 0800 456 450. Women's Refuge: 0800 REFUGE. Alcohol Drug Helpline: 0800 787 797. Need to talk? Free call or text 1737.
Australia — 1800RESPECT: 1800 737 732. Lifeline: 13 11 14.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 10 Aug 2026 - 39min - 47 - E48 | The Luna Park Ghost Train Fire (AUS)
On a quiet winter Saturday in 1979, three separate passengers rode the Ghost Train at Sydney's Luna Park, saw a small fire burning inside an imitation fireplace, and thought it was part of the show. Minutes later the ride was an inferno. Seven people died: John Godson and his two young sons, and four Waverley College schoolboys. A fifth boy was lifted out of his carriage seconds before it went in. The coroner could not say how the fire started. Forty-seven years on, a police report sits suppressed, a million-dollar reward stands unclaimed, and the State Coroner has still not decided whether to ask the question again.
A $1,000,000 reward remains on offer from the NSW Government and NSW Police for information about the Ghost Train fire. It is unusual, and worth understanding: it does not require the charge or conviction of any person. It is offered for information alone.
Strike Force Sedgeman, run by the Homicide Squad's Unsolved Homicide Team, has reviewed the case. Investigators have asked for anything about that night, including:
* the group of five men in distinctive motorcycle clothing seen near the Ghost Train shortly before the fire, who left the park quickly as it took hold and were never traced
* the smell of kerosene reported around the ride by several people
* anything from anyone who gave a statement to police in 1979 and was never called to the inquest
* anything about the conduct of the original police investigation
Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000\
[nsw.crimestoppers.com.au](https://nsw.crimestoppers.com.au)\
Information is treated in strict confidence. Police ask that you do not report information via their social media pages.
**A NOTE ON SOURCING**
Nobody has ever been charged over this fire. Abe Saffron, Detective Inspector Douglas Knight, Jack Rooklyn and Neville Wran are all deceased and none was ever charged in connection with it. No court has made any finding against any of them in relation to the fire.
The allegation that Saffron ordered the fire came from an anonymous source in the ABC's 2021 series and was assessed by independent reviewers as essentially hearsay. The 1981 accusations that Knight took bribes were never tested or proved. Separate and on the public record: in 1974 Justice Athol Moffitt condemned Knight for dishonesty in evidence to his royal commission.
On Neville Wran we have followed the independent review commissioned by the ABC and conducted by Rodney Tiffen and Chris Masters, which found no evidence he interfered in the Luna Park lease decision and found the series' suggestion of a direct link between him and Saffron misleading. The same reviewers found the fire was, on the balance of probabilities, arson, and that the police investigation was inadequate and corrupted.
The investigation remains open.
**SOURCES**
Coroner Kevin Anderson, Inquiry into the fire and deaths at Luna Park, findings 3 September 1979 — [coroners.nsw.gov.au](https://coroners.nsw.gov.au)\
ABC Editorial Review 25: Exposed: The Ghost Train Fire, Rodney Tiffen and Chris Masters, August 2021\
ABC News, "Accident or arson?" — Meldrum-Hanna, Begley, Karagic, Balendra, 2021\
NSW Police Force, $1m reward — [police.nsw.gov.au](https://police.nsw.gov.au)\
AAP, Miklos Bolza, 10 September 2024\
Dictionary of Sydney; Australasian Leisure Management; The Conversation
**SUPPORT**
This episode concerns the deaths of children and the grief of the families left behind. If it lands heavily: Australia — Lifeline 13 11 14, Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636. New Zealand — call or text 1737.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 09 Aug 2026 - 49min - 46 - E45 | The Gatton Murders (AUS)
There was no Australia yet. Six British colonies, six sets of laws, and a farming town of fewer than five hundred people west of Brisbane. On Boxing Day 1898, Michael Murphy and his sisters Norah and Ellen drove ten kilometres into Gatton for a dance that had been cancelled. They turned for home and never arrived. The next morning their brother-in-law followed the tracks of his own sulky into a paddock and found all three dead, arranged in a triangle with a shot horse, their feet pointing west. Within hours, forty townspeople had walked across the only evidence there would ever be. No one was ever charged.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
Every person named in this episode died more than a century ago. No one was ever charged with the murders of Michael, Norah and Ellen Murphy. No coroner or court has ever made a finding as to who was responsible, and the case remains formally unsolved.
Thomas Day, Richard Burgess and William McNeill are named because each was publicly investigated at the time and named in the 1899 Royal Commission material and the Queensland Police Museum's own account. None was ever charged. Nothing here should be taken as a finding against any of them.
A man was charged in relation to the death of Alfred Stephen Hill at Oxley in December 1898. That indictment was not proceeded with, and that killing is also unsolved. He is not named here, and some widely-circulated sources are wrong to state the matter as settled.
The two sisters were sexually assaulted before they were killed. That is stated plainly in the episode and not described in detail.
Where testimony reaches us through a stenographer, then a book, then a retelling, it is described rather than quoted, and the episode says so on air. Direct quotation is confined to the Royal Commission's published findings and to Frederic Urquhart's own published verse. Single-source material — the calibre of the recovered bullets, the reported cry of "Father!", and the conclusion that more than one attacker was involved — is attributed as such.
SOURCES
Queensland Police Museum, "The Gatton Murders of 1898" — police.qld.gov.au/museum
1899 Royal Commission into the Queensland Police Force — testimony, post-mortem evidence and recommendations (archived copies linked at brevityplus.com)
The Telegraph (Brisbane), "Gatton Tragedy", 4 January 1899 — the £1,000 reward — nla.gov.au/nla.news-article173352686
Toowoomba Chronicle, "Police Inquiry", 5 December 1899 — nla.gov.au/nla.news-article217713782
The West Australian, "Suicide in Sydney — The Deceased and the Gatton Tragedy", 27 Oct 1900, and "The Oxley Murder — The Inquest", 18 Feb 1899 — both via Trove
Queensland State Archives — "Police Detectives and trackers in Blackfellow Creek, Gatton, c 1899"
Australian Dictionary of Biography — W. Ross Johnston on Frederic Charles Urquhart
Queensland Places (University of Queensland) — "Gatton"
Stephanie Bennett, The Gatton Murders (Pan Macmillan, 2004) and The Killer with 300 Names (2013)
Raymond Evans, A History of Queensland (Cambridge, 2007)
With thanks to the Queensland Police Museum and to the National Library of Australia's Trove — without Trove, the 1899 press record would be out of reach to anyone outside a reading room.
SUPPORT
This episode deals with sexual violence and, in its closing section, with suicide. If any of it lands close to home: Australia — Lifeline 13 11 14, Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636, 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732. New Zealand — 1737, Safe to Talk 0800 044 334.
Written and hosted by Ryan Wolf. Researched and produced with AI assistance — I use it to help me find and check the record, and I go through everything before it reaches you.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 03 Aug 2026 - 43min - 45 - E44 | The Murder of Pauline Sowry (AUS)
Pauline Sowry was 49 when she had lunch with her son at a Warrawong pub in December 1993. Her family never saw her again. A coroner found she had died but could not say how, when or where. Thirty years later a witness led police into bushland at Figtree, where they dug up a blouse she had stitched herself. In January 2026 the only charges ever laid in connection with her death were withdrawn. Nobody has ever been convicted. Police say there are people in the Illawarra who know exactly what happened.
IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
A $500,000 reward remains open for information leading to the arrest and conviction of those responsible.
Crime Stoppers — 1800 333 000 — anonymous
Wollongong Police — (02) 4226 7899
Police especially want to hear about two things:
A cream-coloured, button-down, long-sleeved blouse with a hand-stitched design in coloured cotton, believed added by Pauline herself. Images were released by NSW Police in December 2024.
A white 1968-model Holden HK Kingswood sedan, in pristine condition, reportedly seen carrying Pauline south of Wollongong after she disappeared.
A NOTE ON SOURCING
All charges against the man named in this episode were withdrawn by the DPP on 28 January 2026. No court has ever made a finding against him, he has never been convicted of any offence connected to Pauline's death, and he is entitled to the presumption of innocence. Nobody has ever been charged with her murder.
Where this episode describes covert police recordings, those descriptions come from what the Crown told a bail hearing they contained, as reported by one journalist present in court. We have not heard the recordings and neither has anyone outside that courtroom, so they are described rather than quoted. The defence disputed their accuracy and context. None of it was tested at trial.
Strike Force Anthea remains open.
SOURCES
NSW Police — reward appeal and case summary
police.nsw.gov.au/can_you_help_us/rewards/500000_reward/disappearance_of_pauline_sowry
The Illawarra Mercury is the only outlet that covered the court proceedings in this case, and the reason it is still being talked about.
Jason Lawrence on his mother — who Pauline actually was. Read this one.
illawarramercury.com.au/story/8707899
Clothing unearthed at Figtree, December 2024
illawarramercury.com.au/story/8841308
Charges withdrawn, January 2026
illawarramercury.com.au/story/9162611
SUPPORT
This episode discusses suicide.
Lifeline (AU) 13 11 14 · Beyond Blue (AU) 1300 22 4636 · New Zealand: free call or text 1737
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 02 Aug 2026 - 44min - 44 - E43 | The Masterton Massacre
On a winter Friday night in 1992, Raymond Ratima let himself into his in-laws' house on Judds Road, Masterton, with a key he had taken when he was told to leave. He waited forty-five minutes. Then he killed seven members of his own family — including his three small sons and a woman a month from giving birth — before lying in wait in the dark for the rest of them to come home. He pleaded guilty. He has never been released. And across thirty-four years, fourteen parole boards, a High Court judgment and the country's best forensic psychiatry, nobody has been able to answer the only question that matters: why.
Sources used:
Court and official records
Ratima v The New Zealand Parole Board [2024] NZHC 613 (Preston J, 20 March 2024) — https://thelawassociation.nz/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Ratima-v-Parole-Board.pdf
New Zealand Parole Board, decision of 12 March 2024 — https://www.paroleboard.govt.nz/decisions/decisions_2024/raymond_wahia_ratima_12032024
Parole Act 2002 — https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2002/0010/latest/DLM137632.html
Sentencing Act 2002, s 103 — https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/2002/0009/latest/DLM136499.html
Contemporaneous reporting
"Man charged over massacre of seven," UPI, 26 June 1992 — https://www.upi.com/Archives/1992/06/26/Man-charged-over-massacre-of-seven/7593709531200/
History and reference
"Masterton massacre, 1992," NZHistory, Manatū Taonga — https://nzhistory.govt.nz/page/masterton-massacre
"Mass homicides since 1990," Te Ara: The Encyclopedia of New Zealand — https://teara.govt.nz/en/violent-crime/page-6
Later reporting
Nikki Macdonald, "Faces of Innocents: The Ratima massacre — remembering the children of Judds Rd," Stuff, 23 July 2016 — https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/faces-of-innocents/81305979/faces-of-innocents-the-ratima-massacre--remembering-the-children-of-judds-rd
"Mass murderer believed he was 'putting them in a better place'," NZ Herald, 2017 — https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/mass-murderer-believed-he-was-putting-them-in-a-better-place/SYPSCTINWHZJSKXKURBIXI7W5M/
"Mass murderer Raymond Ratima to have opportunity to apply for parole again," RNZ, 21 March 2024 — https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/512331/mass-murderer-raymond-ratima-to-have-opportunity-to-apply-for-parole-again
Melissa Nightingale, "Mass murderer denied parole for 16th time, reveals motive for killing his kids," NZ Herald / Newstalk ZB, 24 July 2025 — https://www.newstalkzb.co.nz/news/crime/mass-murderer-raymond-wahia-ratima-denied-parole-explains-why-he-killed-seven-people/
"No parole for Raymond Ratima who murdered seven in Masterton," Stuff, January 2026 — https://www.stuff.co.nz/nz-news/360931145/no-parole-raymond-ratima-who-murdered-seven-masterton
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 27 Jul 2026 - 42min - 43 - E42 | The Red Fox Tavern
On Labour Weekend 1987, two disguised men walked into the Red Fox Tavern at Maramarua, shot the publican Chris Bush dead in front of his staff, and disappeared into the night with the contents of his safe. For more than thirty years, the case stayed cold. Then, in 2021, two men were convicted of the murder — one of them so notorious that his name was suppressed for years. In July 2026, the Supreme Court took those convictions apart, entered acquittals, and left a killing that is, once again, officially unsolved. This week on The Veil, we trace the case backwards from that courtroom: the night itself, the circumstantial evidence that was never quite enough, and the dead man whose alleged confession pointed somewhere else entirely. It's a story about the uneasy gap between what the law can prove and what we think we know. Some veils lift; this one fell closed again.
Sources
Supreme Court of New Zealand — Wilson v R [2026] NZSC 88 (judgment): https://www.courtsofnz.govt.nz/assets/cases/2026/2026-NZSC-88.pdf
RNZ — "Red Fox Tavern murder: How the case and trial unfolded": https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/442059/red-fox-tavern-murder-how-the-case-and-trial-unfolded
RNZ — "Pair's convictions over Red Fox Tavern killing quashed by Supreme Court": https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-justice/683311/pair-s-convictions-over-red-fox-tavern-killing-quashed-by-supreme-court
RNZ / The Detail — "The life and crimes of James Henry Wilson": https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/crime-and-justice/706724/the-life-and-crimes-of-james-henry-wilson
1News — "Red Fox Tavern killing convictions quashed by Supreme Court": https://www.1news.co.nz/2026/07/07/red-fox-tavern-killing-convictions-quashed-by-supreme-court/
NZ Herald — "Red Fox Tavern murder convictions overturned by Supreme Court, James Henry Wilson named": https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/red-fox-tavern-murder-convictions-overturned-by-supreme-court-james-henry-wilson-named/S7HLC2IW4RCMBKHM6RPZVKPXDY/
NZ Herald — "Red Fox Tavern murder: Two men found guilty after 33-year wait for justice" (2021): https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/red-fox-tavern-murder-trial-two-men-found-guilty-after-33-year-wait-for-justice/WZ4T6AHA4ISJHM6QUOXOE27OHI/
New Zealand Police — "Police acknowledge Supreme Court decision in Red Fox Tavern case": https://www.police.govt.nz/news/release/police-acknowledge-supreme-court-decision-red-fox-tavern-case
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 26 Jul 2026 - 43min - 42 - E41 | The Bounty's Children
In 1790, the mutineers of HMS Bounty burned their ship in a hidden bay and vanished onto a mis-charted Pacific rock, sealing themselves off from the world. Two centuries later, that isolation had a price. When a visiting British officer, sent merely to train the local constable, was quietly told that a girl had been raped, she pulled a thread that unravelled generations of abuse on Pitcairn — and forced one of the strangest trials in legal history. Could British law even reach an island settled by men who fled it? Courts were built from scratch; a third of the island's men stood accused.
Sources used
Wikipedia — "Mutiny on the Bounty," "HMS Bounty," "Pitcairn Islands," "2004 Pitcairn Islands sexual assault trial": backbone for the mutiny (28 April 1789), Bligh's open-boat voyage (~3,600 nmi to Timor, ~47 days), the burning of the Bounty in Bounty Bay (23 Jan 1790), the founding violence and Fletcher Christian's death (~1793), John Adams, and the full trial record — charges (55), verdicts (6 of 7 convicted on 35 charges; Jay Warren acquitted), individual sentences, the jurisdiction defence, Betty Christian's counter-testimony, the firearms surrender, Bob's Valley prison, sentences served by 2010.
History.com, National Geographic, History Hit, EBSCO, Historical Maritime, History Chronicles, Shipwrecks & Sea Dogs: corroboration for the Bounty mission (breadfruit for West Indies plantations), Tahiti layover, mutiny mechanics, settlement of Pitcairn (15 Jan 1790), Topaz/Folger discovery 1808, Thursday October Christian, Norfolk Island relocation.
HMS Bounty (Wikipedia): the detail that the Tahitian men/women were effectively kidnapped (per a follower's journal) — attributed in script.
NZ Herald ("Law descends on Pitcairn," Kathy Marks): the 1996 first report, Kent detectives as first police on the island, Gail Cox sent 1997 to train local officer Meralda Warren, two girls' 1999 disclosure, the global scope of Operation Unique, the from-scratch legal infrastructure, Governor Richard Fell.
ProQuest review of Kathy Marks, "Pitcairn: Paradise Lost": 1996 Australian girl's report; Cox's "rose-coloured glasses" quote; the detective's "100 per cent" observation; 13 men / 96 charges figure.
Irish Times (Oct 2004, Rosita Boland): trial in converted schoolroom, guns handed in Aug 2004, victims testifying by video link and breaking down, the seven named accused, islanders' belief Britain wanted to depopulate the island, Ricky Quinn 1999 case (100 days).
Into the Shadows; HubPages/Crimewire: Operation Unique = 27-month investigation, 100+ allegations / 31 men, 24 women testified, "tip of the iceberg" (Simon Moore), prosecutor's "child abuse on a grand scale."
NBC News (AP, Oct 2004): sentences up to six years; the longboat-lifeline problem and Prof John Connell's prediction that prisoners would be released to crew it; Randy Christian 6 years, Len Brown (78) 2 years.
Wikipedia "Pitcairn Islands" + en-academic + Wikishire + Apple Podcast "The Pitcairn Trials": prison at Bob's Valley built by the community, sentences began late 2006, all served/home detention by 2010, "ludicrously short" (Marks), trial cost (~NZ$14.1m as of April 2006), later off-island trials.
Huck Magazine (Rhiannon Adam, "Big Fence"): a convicted man (Shawn Christian) later served as mayor of Pitcairn (2014–2019) — used with light attribution; present-day decline and ageing population.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 29 Jun 2026 - 37min - 41 - E40 | Mona Blades
On Queen's Birthday weekend, 1975, eighteen-year-old Mona Blades set out hitchhiking from Hamilton to Hastings, carrying a birthday gift of plastic cups for her baby nephew. She reached Taupō — and vanished. A truck driver's sighting of her in an orange Datsun launched one of New Zealand's largest manhunts: more than 500 cars, thousands of hours, not a single trace found. Fifty years on, her body has never surfaced and no one has been charged. But a cold-case review revealed something unsettling: the famous orange Datsun may have been a wrong turn from the very start, sending an entire country chasing a mirage.
Sources used
Wikipedia — "Disappearance of Mona Blades": backbone for timeline, sightings table, the 500+ orange Datsun owners, John Freeman (rental + St Cuthbert's shooting/suicide), Hinton allegation and 2012 Kawerau dig, 2003 Huntly garage-floor false alarm, 2018 Cold Case documentary findings, gang-link theory, family detail.NZ History (nzhistory.govt.nz) — "Mona Blades vanishes": family context (sister Lillian, brother-in-law Tom, niece Angela), the surprise trip and nephew's 1st birthday, plastic tumblers, dropped on Cambridge Rd/SH1, ~10am orange-Datsun sighting, fencing contractor on Matea Rd.NZ Herald / The Listener (Greg Bruce, "On the wrong trail" / "No DNA, no CCTV, no chance," May–June 2025): the central reassessment — the short/spiky hair vs the long-haired bridesmaid photo; the truck driver interviewed four times with escalating certainty and the "half-pie smile"; the memory-as-fresh-snow interviewing material; the alternative sightings (blue/green wagon, red Toyota, Spa Hotel); detectives Ron Cooper, John Hope, Mark Loper and the on-camera conclusions; 145km road; "solved in a week today" (Henwood/Beard); Scott Bainbridge "deathbed confession."1News (May 2025, 50th anniversary): hundreds of police across a 200km Tokoroa–Napier stretch; fencing contractor detail; "steady stream" of tips since the 2018 doc; Det Snr Sgt Ryan Yardley; clothing/pack detail.The Post (May 2025): surprise trip, items found in searches incl. discarded dresses, identikit of the man, ~360 Datsun station wagons by Oct 1975, "suspects — the driver of the orange Datsun and four others — two of whom are dead," the living person of interest's public denials and DNA sample.NZ Police cold-case page: ~5000 hours over 6 months; webpage now lists blue/green wagon and red Toyota (the Taupō-local / gang-adjacent theory); appeal re: bike-gang associates.NZ Herald (Sept 2025 / "Cop v Cop," Jan 2012): Tony Moller (former Kawerau policeman) and the Hinton allegation; the family's strong rejection; the red-Toyota / rolled-carpet sighting not followed through.While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 28 Jun 2026 - 29min - 40 - E39 | The Snapshot Killer
He was a successful Florida businessman with a waterfront house, fast cars, and a camera — and a name that surfaced, twenty years earlier, among the suspects at Wanda Beach. In early 1984, Christopher Wilder began to kill. Over six weeks and sixteen states, the Australian-born "Beauty Queen Killer" lured young women with the promise of a modelling shoot, abducting at least twelve and murdering eight. Three survived, and their testimony narrowed the net. He died in a struggle with police a few miles from the Canadian border. The chilling question isn't who — it's how he stayed free so long.
Sources used
Wikipedia — "Christopher Wilder" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christopher_Wilder): primary backbone for biography, full spree chronology (victims, dates, locations), death scene, FBI Most Wanted, estate distribution, The Collector, disputed electroshock/near-drowning (per McNab).UPI Archives (April & August 1984): Tina Risico contemporaneous reporting — released at Boston/Logan, treated as victim not accomplice, told authorities of electric-shock torture and abuse.ABC News / People / E! News / USA Today (2024, re: Hulu's The Beauty Queen Killer: 9 Days of Terror): three survivors (Grober, Risico, Wilt); Risico's "arms crossed above her head" detail; accomplice debate and her status as a minor/victim; spree framing (8–9 killed, 12 abducted, "47 days").Palm Beach Post (2025) — "Boynton Beach serial killer Christopher Wilder's … rampage": numbered victim chronology, dates/locations, Risico lured Wilt, Dodge last murder, death scene; FBI Most Wanted 5 April.WickedWe (victims overview) and Yahoo/Palm Beach Post reprints: corroborating sequence for Logan, Bonaventura, Korfman, Risico, Wilt, Dodge; Charlie Laursen (truck driver) and Penn Yan hospital.A&E — "Elusive 'Beauty Queen Killer'": private investigator hired by Kenyon's father; Wilder's proximity/profile; nine-month delay theme (used re: the Wanda link, consistent with prior episode).Duncan McNab, The Snapshot Killer (2019), via Wikipedia citation: debunks electroshock and near-drowning stories.While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 22 Jun 2026 - 31min - 39 - E38 | The Sandhills of Wanda
On a windy Monday in January 1965, two fifteen-year-old best friends, Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock, took four young children to Cronulla. When the little ones tired, the girls walked on into the sandhills behind Wanda Beach and never returned. Their bodies were found the next morning, stabbed and partially buried, a thirty-four-metre drag mark telling the story of one friend's desperate, failed escape. Sixteen thousand people were interviewed. Three men were named and never charged. A weak DNA profile survives; a crucial sample was lost. Sixty years on, it remains New South Wales' oldest unsolved homicide.
Sources used
Wikipedia — "Wanda Beach murders" (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wanda_Beach_murders): primary backbone for timeline, crime-scene reconstruction, autopsy findings, drag mark, weapons, reward, investigation scale, suspect summaries, 2012 DNA, 2014 lost sample, Kruger/Dowlingkoa linked cases.Illawarra Mercury — "Blood spot offers new Wanda murders clue" (2012) and "Australian serial killer Christopher Wilder linked to the Wanda Beach murders" (2018): corroborates the knife-wipe blood mark / weak male DNA profile; Wilder named as official police suspect, Det Insp Ian Waterson "number one suspect," family not told, ~9-month delay before seeking to interview Wilder.that's life! — "Hans Schmidt breaks silence over his heartache": corroborates 2007 cold-case reopening, 2012 DNA, 2014 lost semen sample, mother died 2009; Hans's belief that someone still knows.Alchetron (mirror) and en-academic (Wikipedia mirror): corroborating detail on autopsy, alcohol/food findings, suspect profiles, reopening.NZ Herald — "Derek Percy believed to be Australia's worst child serial killer": Percy family Sydney holiday Jan 1965 / Ryde; story found in Percy's belongings with "striking similarity" to Wanda; map marked at Ryde.serialkillercalendar.com (Percy & Wilder pages): Percy's "I could have done it but I can't remember" reported remark; underwear-slashing at Mount Beauty late 1964; Wilder biography and US spree.Penguin Books AU (Australia's Least Wanted promo): senior-police confidence in Wilder; "lost crucial evidence."A&E — "Elusive 'Beauty Queen Killer'": Wilder profile match, proximity, delay before interview.murdersheposted (Substack) — "Death on the Sandhills": Bassett conviction (Carolyn Orphin, near Cronulla), painting, no physical link; Percy could not be physically placed at scene; right-to-silence detail.crimeimmemorial.com: corroborates semen present / hymens intact / attempted-rape inference; body positions.NFSA (Nine News / Ten News archive descriptions): investigation scale (7,000 by 1966; >16,000 and ~5,000 suspects by 1981); Wilder named 2018.Goodreads / "Lambs to the Slaughter" (Percy biography listing): Yvonne Tuohy murder July 1969, NGRI, held indefinitely; Wanda among suspected cases.While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 21 Jun 2026 - 34min - 38 - E37 | The Princes in the Tower
In the summer of 1483, two boys vanished behind the walls of the Tower of London. Edward the Fifth, twelve years old and uncrowned, and his nine-year-old brother Richard were last seen at the windows, growing fainter, until they appeared no more. Their uncle took the throne as Richard the Third. For five centuries the blame has shifted — Richard, Buckingham, Henry Tudor — while pretenders claimed to be the lost princes and bones turned up beneath a staircase. Today a sealed urn in Westminster Abbey may hold the answer, untested by choice. Ryan Wolf looks through history's coldest veil.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 15 Jun 2026 - 38min - 37 - E36 | Special | Mystery in the British Isles: Part Three - Bible John
Between 1968 and 1969, three women — Patricia Docker, Jemima MacDonald and Helen Puttock — were each murdered after a night at Glasgow's Barrowland Ballroom. All three were beaten and strangled, their handbags taken, their bodies left near home. The press named the unknown killer "Bible John," after the scripture-quoting stranger who shared a taxi with Helen and her sister Jean — the one witness who ever truly saw him. Despite Scotland's largest manhunt, fifty thousand statements and a face built from memory, he was never caught. In this final episode, Ryan Wolf looks through the thinnest, cruellest veil of all.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 14 Jun 2026 - 29min - 36 - E35 | Special | Mystery in the British Isles: Part Two - A Light Left On in West Cork
On the night of 23 December 1996, French film producer Sophie Toscan du Plantier was beaten to death outside her isolated holiday cottage in West Cork, Ireland — chased down her own lane and killed with a rock and a concrete block. Fifty injuries; a body left exposed so long the time of death was never fixed; a bloodstained gate that vanished from police custody. A local journalist, Ian Bailey, became the prime suspect and was convicted in France in his absence — but never charged in Ireland, where he denied it until his death. Decades on, new DNA testing offers fresh hope.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 08 Jun 2026 - 38min - 35 - E34 | Special | Mystery in the British Isles: Part One - The Unsolvable Case
On a January night in 1931, an insurance agent named William Wallace was lured across Liverpool by a phone call from a stranger — "Qualtrough" — to an address that didn't exist. While he searched, his wife Julia was beaten to death in their own parlour. Yet his suit was spotless, the weapon vanished, and the timing was almost impossible. Convicted of her murder, Wallace became the first person in English history freed on appeal because the evidence simply couldn't support the verdict. No one else was ever charged. Every clue points two ways at once — the case crime writers still call unsolvable.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 07 Jun 2026 - 37min - 34 - E33 | Horror on St Andrews Street
On the last night of February 2000, in the small Hunter Valley town of Aberdeen, a miner named John Price was stabbed to death in his own home — a death he had predicted aloud to his workmates the day before. But the murder was only the beginning. Over the hours that followed, Katherine Knight, a skilled abattoir worker, used the trade she'd spent thirty years perfecting to do the unthinkable to his body. This episode traces the forensic evidence, the warnings everyone missed, and the historic sentence that followed — and asks what it means when horror hides in plain sight.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Tue, 02 Jun 2026 - 37min - 33 - E32 | Special Series | Murder in the Pacific: Part Three - The Black Cat Track
In the final chapter of Murder in the Pacific, The Veil leaves the islands for the mountains of Papua New Guinea — and the Black Cat Track. In September 2013, a guided trekking party was ambushed at a remote jungle camp. The story made headlines as an attack on eight foreign hikers, but the truth lay with the men carrying their bags. Three porters died; others were maimed for life. Ryan Wolf examines the chilling forensic detail that rewrites the case — why the foreigners were struck with the flat of the blade, and the porters with its edge. Nothing here was hidden. Except from us.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 31 May 2026 - 37min - 32 - E31 | Special Series | Murder in the Pacific: Part Two - Norfolk Island's Darkest Day
On Easter Sunday 2002, Janelle Patton — a 29-year-old Sydney woman seeking a fresh start — was found brutally murdered on Norfolk Island, a tiny, idyllic community of fewer than 2,000 people. With 64 injuries and no clear motive, the case sent shockwaves through a place that hadn't seen a murder in over a century. Investigators faced a closed, tight-knit community reluctant to talk, and a tangle of unidentified DNA that raised more questions than answers. A conviction eventually came — but did justice? In this episode of The Veil, we pull back the curtain on Norfolk Island's darkest day.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 25 May 2026 - 35min - 31 - E30 | Special Series | Murder in the Pacific : Part One - Mystery in Paradise
In June 2016, a Russian couple — Yuri Shipulin and Nataliya Gerasimova — drove away from their farm in the Fijian highlands and never came back. Two days later their Landcruiser was found at Natadola Beach. A week after that, the first remains began washing up on the sand. This is the first of a three-part Murder in the Pacific series for The Veil — three cases set in the places we usually think of only as holiday destinations. Tonight, Fiji: paradise, a married couple in their forties, the slow horror of pieces returning across a winter, and a case that, ten years on, remains wide open.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 24 May 2026 - 37min - 30 - E29 | The Outback Killer - The Murder of Peter Falconio
On a winter night in 2001, an orange Kombi pulled over on the Stuart Highway. By morning, Peter Falconio was missing, his girlfriend Joanne Lees was hiding in the scrub, and Australia had its most enduring outback mystery. This episode traces what happened that night, the manhunt that followed, the DNA evidence that convicted Bradley Murdoch, and the death — in July 2025 — that took the location of Peter's body to the grave. It's also about the way the press treated Joanne Lees, twenty years after they did the same thing to Lindy Chamberlain in the same country.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 18 May 2026 - 37min - 29 - E28 | A Dingo Took My Baby - The Lindy Chamberlain Story
On a Sunday night in August 1980, a baby disappeared from a tent at the base of Uluru. Her mother said a dingo took her. The country called it a lie. Lindy Chamberlain spent three and a half years in a Darwin prison for a murder that never happened — convicted on forensic evidence that turned out to be sound deadener from a Holden Torana, by a public that decided early she didn't grieve correctly. A backpacker's fatal misstep eventually unearthed the truth. This episode asks the harder question: how many others are still inside, waiting for their own matinee jacket?
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 17 May 2026 - 37min - 28 - E27 | "They're All Dead" - The Bain Family Murders
On the morning of 20 June 1994, in a weatherboard house in Andersons Bay, Dunedin, five members of the Bain family were shot dead. One survived: 22-year-old David Bain, who had come home from his paper round and called 111. Convicted in 1995. Acquitted at retrial in 2009 after the Privy Council quashed the original verdict. Two stories, told for thirty years, about one morning. The rifle prints, the lens, the gloves, the bladder, the cobweb — every piece of it argued both ways. A country still working out what it thinks.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 11 May 2026 - 41min - 27 - E26 | The Murder of Kurt Cobain?
On the morning of 8 April 1994, an electrician named Gary Smith climbed the stairs to a greenhouse above a Seattle garage and discovered the body of Kurt Cobain. The ruling was suicide. It held for thirty years — through a Seattle Police review, through documentaries, through one private investigator who never accepted it. Then in November 2025, an international forensic team published a peer-reviewed paper concluding Kurt was murdered and the scene was staged. We walk through the discovery, the note, Courtney Love's vigil reading, and the new evidence — what holds up, and what doesn't.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 10 May 2026 - 38min - 26 - E25 | "We Want to Go Back" - The Adelaide Oval Abduction
On a cold Saturday afternoon in August 1973, eleven-year-old Joanne Ratcliffe took four-year-old Kirste Gordon to the toilet at the Adelaide Oval, and the two of them never came back. Thirteen thousand people were at the football. Three witnesses, in three different parts of the city, watched a middle-aged man carry the smaller girl through the parkland while the older one fought him for the entire kilometre. None of them stopped him. Fifty-three years on, the case is still open. Ryan Wolf listens for what's still behind the veil.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 06 May 2026 - 37min - 25 - E24 | Aramoana - Pathway to the Sea
The episode examines the Aramoana massacre, one of New Zealand’s deadliest mass shootings. Over 36 hours in November 1990, gunman David Gray killed 13 people in the small coastal settlement of Aramoana. The story traces how an isolated dispute escalated into extreme violence, the fear that gripped the community, and the police response that ultimately ended the siege. It also explores the lasting impact on survivors and how the tragedy reshaped New Zealand’s approach to firearms, public safety, and collective memory.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 03 May 2026 - 43min - 24 - E23 | Natalie Wood - Beware Dark Water
The death of Hollywood star Natalie Wood remains one of the industry’s most enduring mysteries. In November 1981, Wood vanished from a yacht off Catalina Island during a weekend trip with her husband, Robert Wagner, and actor Christopher Walken. Hours later, her body was found floating in dark, cold waters. Officially ruled an accidental drowning at the time, the case has since been reopened amid conflicting accounts, shifting testimonies, and lingering questions about what happened that night. This episode examines the timeline, the key figures on board, and the unresolved inconsistencies that continue to fuel speculation decades later, leaving one haunting question: was it truly an accident?
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 27 Apr 2026 - 39min - 23 - E22 | Special Series: Byron Bay - The Secret Coast - Part 3/3
Byron Bay is paradise. It is also, by NSW Police's count, one of the places where 67 women vanished or were killed between 1977 and 2009. In the final part of our Byron Bay series, Ryan Wolf walks the coast between Newcastle and the Queensland border — ten names, five decades, and one question the region has been asking for nearly fifty years. Théo Hayez. Jackson Stacker. And all the others still hidden behind The Veil.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 26 Apr 2026 - 40min - 22 - E21 | Special Series: Byron Bay - The Mystery - Part 2/3, Jackson Stacker
Jackson Stacker’s death in Byron Bay raised more questions than answers. What initially appeared routine quickly unravelled into a case marked by inconsistencies, missing details, and uneasy silence. This episode examines the known facts, the gaps in the narrative, and why Stacker’s final hours continue to provoke suspicion and scrutiny.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 19 Apr 2026 - 39min - 21 - E20 | Special Series: Byron Bay - The Vanishings. Part 1/3, Theo Hayez
This is Part One of Three of our Special Series Byron Bay Vanishings
In May 2019, 18-year-old Belgian backpacker Theo Hayez vanished after a night out in Byron Bay, Australia. He was last seen leaving the Cheeky Monkey's bar in the early hours of May 31st. Despite an extensive search involving police, volunteers, and his family who flew from Belgium, Theo was never found. His phone data showed he had headed toward Tallow Beach. The case remains officially unsolved, leaving his family with no closure.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 13 Apr 2026 - 39min - 20 - E19 | The Man on the Hill - The Koiterangi Incident
In October 1941, a struggling West Coast farmer named Stanley Graham shot four police officers on his remote Koiterangi property, then vanished into the New Zealand bush. What followed was the largest manhunt in New Zealand history — hundreds of police, soldiers, and Home Guardsmen, aircraft overhead, a tank in the valley — all hunting one wounded man for thirteen days. By the time it ended, seven people were dead. This is the story of how a quiet farming community was torn apart, how a nation at war turned its attention inward, and how some crimes leave wounds that never fully close.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 22 Mar 2026 - 40min - 19 - E18 | The Body in the Wych Elm
In April 1943, four boys trespassing in Hagley Wood, Worcestershire, discovered a human skull inside a hollow wych elm. Police found an almost complete female skeleton, folded into the narrow trunk while the body was still warm. She was approximately thirty-five years old, five feet tall, and carried a cheap wedding ring. Nobody reported her missing. No suspect was ever charged. Then, in 1944, graffiti began appearing on walls across Birmingham: Who put Bella in the Wych Elm? The author was never identified. The case was officially closed in 2014. The remains have since been lost. The question endures.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 15 Mar 2026 - 34min - 18 - E17 | The Body in the Copse - The Last Day of Shelley Morgan
On a clear June morning in 1984, Shelley Morgan left her Bristol home with a camera, a commission, and a day full of plans. She never came back. Her body was found four months later in a rural Somerset copse, eight miles from where she was last seen. Fourteen stab wounds. Every belonging removed. No arrest in forty years. This is the story of a woman, a blue van, and a question that has never been answered.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 08 Mar 2026 - 43min - 17 - E16 | The Enigma of the Dark - The Claremont Killings
In 1996, three young women vanished from the same affluent Perth suburb within fourteen months. Sarah Spiers, Jane Rimmer, and Ciara Glennon were the last known victims of Australia's most expensive homicide investigation — a case that gripped an entire city for over two decades. This episode traces the crimes, the hunt, and the man who hid behind an ordinary life. Some cases get solved. Not all of them get answered.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Thu, 05 Mar 2026 - 38min - 16 - E15 | The Girl in the Basement - Jon Benet Ramsey
Six-year-old JonBenét Ramsey was found dead in her family’s Boulder, Colorado home on Christmas Day, 1996. What followed was a baffling investigation marked by a ransom note, a compromised crime scene, and suspicion that shifted repeatedly between family members and unknown intruders. Decades later, despite forensic advances and renewed scrutiny, the case remains unresolved—an unsettling study in media pressure, investigative missteps, and the enduring question of what truly happened inside that house.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Thu, 26 Feb 2026 - 35min - 15 - E14 | The Mystery of the Somerton Man
In December 1948, an unidentified man was found dead on Somerton Beach in Adelaide. He carried no identification. Clothing labels had been removed. Hidden in his pocket was a scrap of paper bearing the words Tamám Shud—“ended.” Investigators uncovered an unclaimed suitcase, a cryptic code, and a trail that led nowhere. The case stalled, then lingered, becoming one of Australia’s most enduring mysteries—defined not by what was discovered, but by what could not be explained.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Thu, 19 Feb 2026 - 30min - 14 - E13 | Double Jeopardy - The Bowraville Murders
The Bowraville murders refer to the deaths of three Aboriginal children in the NSW town of Bowraville in the early 1990s. Despite strong community advocacy and multiple investigations, only one accused was tried, acquitted, and no convictions followed, leaving families seeking justice decades later amid allegations of systemic investigative failures.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Thu, 12 Feb 2026 - 25min - 13 - E12 | Streets of Blood - Jack The Ripper
In the gas-lit slums of Victorian London, terror stalks the streets. Women are butchered with surgical precision. Bodies are left mutilated, posed, and abandoned in the shadows of Whitechapel. As panic spreads and the press fans the flames, police chase a killer who seems to vanish into the fog itself. This is the story of Jack the Ripper—his victims, his violence, and the city that bled while the world watched.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Thu, 05 Feb 2026 - 43min - 12 - E11 | Mother - The Ed Gein Story
Plainfield, Wisconsin was a quiet farming town where everyone knew everyone else. That’s why no one paid much attention to the man who lived alone on the old family property at the edge of town. Ed Gein was polite, soft-spoken, and harmless — or so it seemed. But when Bernice Worden vanished in 1957, the door to Gein’s world was forced open. What investigators found inside wasn’t just evidence of murder — it was the collapse of a mind shaped by isolation, devotion, and grief. This episode pulls back the silence surrounding Plainfield, and the horror it unknowingly lived beside.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Thu, 06 Nov 2025 - 45min - 11 - E10 | OJ Simpson & The Murders of Nicole Brown and Ronald Goldman
In June 1994, the brutal murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman ignited one of the most infamous trials in American history. Former NFL superstar O.J. Simpson stood accused, his white Bronco chase and televised courtroom drama gripping the world. But behind the spectacle lay a deeper story — of violence, celebrity, race, and a justice system pushed to its limits. In this episode of The Veil, we cut through the media frenzy to examine the evidence, the contradictions, and the haunting question that still divides America: what really happened that night on Bundy Drive?
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Thu, 30 Oct 2025 - 40min - 10 - E09 | The Vengeance Episode
In this haunting episode, The Veil turns its gaze toward the raw and dangerous territory of revenge. From small-town justice to national headlines, these are the stories of people who decided the system had failed — and took matters into their own hands. A father who pulls the trigger in front of rolling cameras. A community that snaps after years of terror. A killer who demands his own execution. Each act, born from grief, anger, or twisted morality, forces us to confront an uncomfortable truth: where does justice end and vengeance begin?
Told with restraint and precision, Vengeance peels back the thin line separating righteousness from ruin. Through police records, court transcripts, and the silence left behind, host Ryan Wolf guides listeners into the moments when reason gives way to rage — and the consequences that follow.
Behind every act of retribution lies a wound that never healed. This is not a story about heroes or villains. It’s about what happens when the veil between justice and revenge finally tears.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Thu, 23 Oct 2025 - 46min - 9 - E08 | Oscar Pistorious & The Murder of Reeva Steenkamp
On Valentine’s Day 2013, four gunshots shattered the stillness of a Pretoria night. By morning, one of the world’s most celebrated athletes — Oscar Pistorius — stood accused of killing his girlfriend, Reeva Steenkamp. What followed was a courtroom drama broadcast to millions: a story of fame, fear, and a nation forced to question what it believed about its heroes.
Told through transcripts, testimony, and the words of those who were there, this five-part series unravels the case that gripped the world — from the night of the shooting, through the investigation and trial, to the final appeal that changed everything.
No speculation. No mythology. Just the facts, the evidence, and the human tragedy at the centre of it all.
Because behind the veil of fame and justice lies a locked door — and the truth we may never fully know.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Thu, 16 Oct 2025 - 51min - 8 - E07 | The Zodiac Killer
He called himself The Zodiac. A man who murdered without mercy, taunted without fear, and wrote his name into the history of American crime with ink, blood, and code. Between 1968 and 1970, he struck across Northern California — couples on quiet roads, a taxi driver in San Francisco, and perhaps others still unknown. Then he disappeared, leaving behind only letters, ciphers, and a symbol that came to define him: a circle and a cross.
In this episode of The Veil, we return to those nights — to the still air over Lake Herman Road, the gunfire at Blue Rock Springs, the terror by the water at Lake Berryessa, and the quiet horror in Presidio Heights. Using only verified evidence and original records, we unravel the investigation that followed — the mistakes, the suspects, and the trail of arrogance the killer left behind.
From Arthur Leigh Allen to the Case Breakers’ modern claim, from the unsolved ciphers to the endless theories, the story remains the same: a man who wanted to be both invisible and unforgettable.
More than half a century later, the Zodiac’s true identity is still hidden — but his voice still echoes. “This is the Zodiac speaking,” he wrote. And maybe that’s the point. The murders ended, but the message never did.
Because behind every mystery, there’s a darker one waiting — and the Zodiac still waits behind the veil.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Thu, 09 Oct 2025 - 57min - 7 - E06 | Arthur Allen Thomas & The Crewe Murders
In June 1970, Harvey and Jeannette Crewe vanished from their quiet farmhouse in Pukekawa, New Zealand. Five days later, their infant daughter was found alive in her cot, weak but still breathing. Weeks later, their bodies surfaced downstream in the Waikato River — bound, weighted, and shot. What followed became one of the most infamous miscarriages of justice in New Zealand’s history.
Police arrested neighbour and farmer Arthur Allan Thomas, claiming his rifle had fired the fatal shots. He was convicted twice and spent nine years behind bars before a Royal Commission revealed the truth: key evidence had been fabricated by detectives. Thomas was pardoned, compensated, and freed — but the real killer was never found.
Fifty years later, the Crewe murders remain unsolved. Theories persist about family rifts, mysterious visitors, and hidden hands inside the investigation itself. The evidence that remains — blood, bullets, wire, and silence — tells a story of ambition, corruption, and the fragility of truth.
In this season of The Veil, investigative journalist Ryan Wolf revisits the case that shattered public trust and forced a nation to look at itself. Because behind every official story, behind every file stamped closed, there are darker truths waiting to be seen.
When you pull back the veil, what you find isn’t always evil — sometimes it’s something far more dangerous: ordinary people, making extraordinary mistakes.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 06 Oct 2025 - 54min - 6 - E05 | The Snowtown 'Barrel Bodies' Murders
In the late 1990s, the quiet South Australian town of Snowtown became the unlikely epicentre of Australia’s most infamous serial murder case. Behind the doors of an abandoned bank, police uncovered six plastic barrels. Inside were the acid-preserved remains of eight people — men and women who had been strangled, tortured, mocked, and discarded by John Bunting, Robert Wagner, and their small circle of accomplices.
Over seven years, twelve lives were taken. Victims included neighbours, friends, even family. Some were killed for their sexuality, some for their disability, some simply for being inconvenient. At trial, jurors were confronted with not only photographs and forensic evidence, but also tapes — audio recordings of victims being humiliated and begging for mercy while their killers laughed.
The Veil pulls listeners inside the full story: Bunting’s twisted rise from a childhood of cruelty to self-styled leader; the spider’s web chart that mapped out his hatred; the growing group of followers who became entangled in his violence; and the police operation that finally exposed what lay hidden in the barrels.
But Snowtown is more than a catalogue of murders. It is about betrayal, complicity, and the fragility of trust in the most ordinary of places. It is about how prejudice can mask cruelty, and how silence can allow horror to thrive.
Behind every closed door is another veil. In Snowtown, when it was torn open, the truth was almost too grotesque to comprehend.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Tue, 30 Sep 2025 - 1h 00min - 5 - E04 | Scott Watson - Murder in the Sounds
New Year’s Eve, 1997. Hundreds of revelers pack into Furneaux Lodge in the Marlborough Sounds, celebrating the end of one year and the beginning of another. But by dawn, two young friends — Ben Smart and Olivia Hope — have vanished. What follows is one of New Zealand’s most infamous and enduring mysteries.
The Veil takes you back to that night and deep into the investigation that gripped a nation. At the centre of it all is Scott Watson, a young yacht owner whose steel-hulled boat, Blade, becomes the focus of police suspicion.
The Crown’s case builds on circumstantial evidence, witness identifications, and forensic claims — most controversially, two strands of blonde hair said to belong to Olivia. Wiretap recordings and the words of jailhouse informants are presented as glimpses of guilt, while Watson’s repainting of his yacht is framed as concealment. But holes appear: no bodies, no weapon, no direct evidence linking Ben and Olivia to Blade. Witnesses describe a mysterious ketch police insist never existed, and questions of contamination, tunnel vision, and confirmation bias cloud the trial.
Decades later, Watson remains behind bars, proclaiming his innocence. Appeals, media investigations, and public doubt have kept the case alive, dividing opinion between those convinced the jury was right and those certain justice miscarried.
This is more than a murder mystery — it’s the story of how memory, science, and suspicion collide, and how the search for truth can become tangled in shadows that may never lift.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 29 Sep 2025 - 59min - 4 - E03 | The Disappearance of Madeleine McCann
On the night of May 3rd, 2007, three-year-old Madeleine McCann vanished from her family’s holiday apartment in Praia da Luz, Portugal. What followed became the most famous missing child case in the world. From the frantic first searches and questionable police work, to the media circus that hounded her parents Kate and Gerry, every step deepened the mystery and divided public opinion. Were the McCann's victims of a terrible crime — or suspects in a dark cover-up?
This episode of The Veil takes you inside the investigation that spanned continents and decades. We unravel the flawed witness accounts, the cadaver dog alerts that ignited suspicion, the battles in court and the press, and the extraordinary scale of the global campaign to “Find Madeleine.” Finally, we confront the case’s most chilling turn: the emergence of German drifter Christian Brückner, a convicted rapist and pedophile, whose presence in Praia da Luz that night — and alleged confessions — put him at the center of prosecutors’ claims that Madeleine is no longer alive.
Sixteen years on, Madeleine’s fate remains unknown. But in the shadows of the Algarve, her absence still haunts — a story without closure, hidden behind the veil.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Fri, 26 Sep 2025 - 1h 01min - 3 - E02 | The Backpacker Murderer - Ivan Milat
In this episode of The Veil, we journey deep into the shadow cast by Australia’s most infamous serial killer: Ivan Milat, the Backpacker Murderer. Between 1989 and 1992, seven young travelers vanished along the Hume Highway, their bodies later uncovered in Belanglo State Forest. What began as isolated missing persons cases became one of the nation’s darkest criminal investigations, exposing a predator who turned the bush into his hunting ground.
This is not just the story of a killer, but of the young lives stolen, the families left searching for answers, and the haunting legacy of Belanglo. As we pull back the veil, we confront the darkness hidden in plain sight — and the chilling reminder that sometimes, evil wears the most ordinary face.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Wed, 24 Sep 2025 - 48min - 2 - E01 | The Hinterkaifeck Murders
In 1922, on a lonely farmstead deep in the Bavarian countryside, six people were slaughtered in one of the most chilling unsolved crimes in history. The family at Hinterkaifeck — Andreas and Cäzilia Gruber, their daughter Victoria, her two young children, and the new maid Maria — were found brutally murdered, their bodies hidden beneath straw in the barn. Yet the true horror lay not only in the killings themselves, but in the days that followed.
Neighbors saw smoke rising from the chimney. The animals were fed, the dog barked then fell silent, and food was cooked inside the house — all while the family’s corpses lay cold. Whoever the killer was, they hadn’t fled. They had stayed.
In this premiere episode of The Veil, investigative journalist Ryan Wolf pulls back the layers of one of true crime’s darkest mysteries. With immersive storytelling and chilling detail, he guides listeners through the ominous signs leading up to the murders, the grisly discovery that shocked the village, and the suspects who remain debated to this day.
Footprints led from the forest to the farmhouse door — and then stopped. A century later, the question remains: who never walked back?
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Mon, 22 Sep 2025 - 43min - 1 - Trailer
The Veil is a chilling true crime podcast that pulls listeners deep into the world’s darkest and most haunting cases. Hosted by Ryan Wolf, each episode is crafted like an immersive thriller - a story told not just through facts, but through atmosphere, tension, and detail that makes you feel as though you’re standing inside the crime scene itself.
These are not urban legends or ghost stories; every case is real, every victim and every clue drawn from documented fact.
From unsolved murders to bizarre disappearances, infamous trials to cold cases that still whisper through history, The Veil strips back the layers of time and rumor to confront the unsettling truths hidden beneath.
With an eye for detail and a voice that guides you through the shadows, Ryan brings both journalistic rigor and cinematic storytelling to each 30-minute episode. What emerges is an experience that is at once gripping and unnerving, reminding us that the scariest stories are not fiction at all.
Pull back The Veil - but beware. Because sometimes, when we lift it, we don’t like what we find.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.
If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website atwww.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.
Sun, 21 Sep 2025 - 1min
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