Dead Bodies Podcast

L'Inconnue de la Seine translates from French as The Unknown Woman of the Seine. The unidentified young woman whose dead body was pulled from the River Seine in the 1800’s later became known as The Drowned Mona Lisa. We explain why her face is familiar to hundreds of millions of people the world over as part of a lifesaving training. Hart Island, in the northeast Bronx, New York City, serves as the city's potter's field and is run by the New York City Department of Correction. More than one million dead are buried on Hart Island. We look at where all these dead bodies come from.

Kodokushi or lonely death refers to a Japanese phenomenon of people dying alone and remaining undiscovered for a long period of time. We look at why a growing number of dead bodies are being found abandoned in Japanese apartments, as well as Japan’s suicide forest, Aokigahara. The people of New Orleans have embraced a trend for keeping life-size cardboard cut-outs of their loved ones who have died.

America has a glut of unclaimed bodies, and the dead are piling up quicker than morgues can deal with them. We look at where the corpses end up. Leonard Lawson was an Australian artist who wrote The Lone Avenger comic books in the 1950’s. He was also a notorious rapist and murderer, and one of the last people sentenced to death in New South Wales.

James Bulger was two years old in 1993 when he was abducted, tortured and killed by two 10-year-old boys, Robert Thompson and Jon Venables in Merseyside in the UK. 26 years later the case is still having legal repercussions. Clement Vallandigham was a politician in Ohio in 1871. His attempt to clear a man named Thomas McGehean of a murder charge went horribly wrong, with fatal consequences. Dee Dee and Sharnelle talk to Kara who came across a horrifying fatal car accident on the isolated road between Broome and Karratha in outback Western Australia.

An emerging DNA technique has been used to solve the murders of two young women in El Dorado County, California, more than 40 years ago. Joseph Holt was identified as the killer of Brynn Rainey in 1977 and Carol Andersen 1979 using genealogy databases. Caroline Byrne was a model found at the bottom of a cliff at The Gap in Sydney in 1995. Her boyfriend Gordon Wood was convicted of her murder but later acquitted. Sharnelle and Dee Dee talk to Wendy who worked as a funeral and mortuary assistant.

Frances Knorr was known as the Baby Farming Murderess. She was found guilty of strangling an infant and hanged at Pentridge Prison in Melbourne on Monday 15 January 1894. Other bodies of babies that had been in her care were found buried in the garden of houses where she had lived. A couple who made a trip to honor the memory of their late son, and staff at the hotel constructed a bizarre spectacle on the bed, as their way of paying tribute to his memory. And to celebrate our Fortyversary we finally ask our producer Kirsten whether she has seen a dead body.

In 2001, Armin Meiwes killed and ate Bernd Brandes, who had placed an ad in the paper offering “the chance to eat me alive”. We establish whether it is okay to eat someone if they have given you their permission. New South Wales, 1994, fisherman pulled the body of a man strapped to a steel crucifix from the mouth of the Hawkesbury River in New South Wales. Dubbed “Rack Man”, his dead body still lies in the Sydney morgue.

58-year-old Warren Meyer went for a walk in the bush at Dom Dom Saddle in the Yarra Ranges National Park on March 21, 2008. He was never seen again. We track the search for him, through evidence heard in the Coroners Court of Victoria. Spontaneous Human Combustion occurs when a living human body is burned without an apparent external source of ignition. Often the legs and feet are the only remains. We look at a number of cases of people bursting into flames, and examine what causes this bizarre phenomenon. We chat with Jaimie and Deb to find out about their fascinating new project, the Gympie Bone Museum.

The death of Edward Baldock in Brisbane in 1989 was described as one of the most brutal and bizarre crimes Australia had ever seen at the time. The discovery of his body, found drained of 75 percent of its blood, led to the arrest of Tracey Wigginton, who was dubbed the “Lesbian Vampire Killer”, a woman with six separate personalities. The suburbs of Australia seem to be littered with skeletons. Sharnelle’s search through the files of the Coroner’s Court of Victoria has uncovered multiple cases of people handing in human bones to police.

In 2003 the bodies of a woman, her three children, and her mother were found dead in a house in Bakersfield California. Police used extraordinary forensics, including insects embedded in a rental car, to convict the woman’s husband Vincent Brothers of the murders. In August, 1974, a massive flood hit Queanbeyan in New South Wales, and locals claimed that bodies from the local cemetery were washed down the river and into Lake Burley Griffin in the heart of Canberra.

Bona Lual murdered his wife Suzi Oghia and then mutilated her eyes in their Noble Park, Victoria, home in 2013. As he desecrated her dead body their four children lay sleeping nearby. Laura Van Ryn and Whitney Cerak were students at Taylor University in Indiana in 2006. They barely knew each other, but after a terrible accident, a huge mistake, and the death of one of the girls, their families became forever entwined.

For those who don’t like the thought of burial or cremation, new ways of disposing of human bodies are being found, including composting and hydrolysis. Gunther Von Hagens is the German scientist known as Dr Death. He invented the process of plastination which preserves human bodies so they can be put on display. We look at how it is done, and where do the bodies come from?

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

Ruth Coker Burks cared for hundreds of dying people from 1984 until the mid 1990’s. Many of them she buried herself when their families abandoned them because they were gay, and had AIDS. Bassmah and Sabrina are back, with a surprise revelation. And Hanna tells us her horrific dead body story (in her own American accent).

You never know what you’ll find in the hard rubbish. In 1984 three Columbia University students picked up what they thought was a nice piece of carpet, but it contained a nasty surprise. In the 1800’s, scientists thought that electricity could bring dead bodies back to life. Professor Andrew Ure’s grotesque experiment on a dead body left many feeling ill.