Dead Bodies Podcast

Two-year-old Nikki Coslovich went missing in Mildura in 2015. Sharnelle recalls covering the search for her, the finding of her body, and the ensuing court case. In 2003 the bodies of Amarjit Chohan, his wife and mother, were found floating in the sea off Bournemouth in England. His two young boys are still missing. Three men have been jailed over the Chohan murders and a plot to steal the family’s freight business.

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

Would you eat human flesh? A man who had his leg amputated after a motorcycle accident made it into fajita tacos and served it to his friends. Ruth Snyder was sent to the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in 1928, and the image of her dead body was plastered on the front page of the New York Daily News. The case changed forever the protocols for media at executions.

Neil Gordon Wilson pretended to be a fish. People in his home town of Horsham in Victoria accepted his quirky ways, but were shocked when his dead body was found in a paddock in 1995. Maria Korp was strangled by her husband Joe Korp’s lover Tania Herman, put into the boot of a car and abandoned in Melbourne in 2005, in what became known as The Body In The Boot case. Herman was jailed, and Joe Korp met his own fate.

The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home was run by Catholic nuns in Tuam, County Galway, in Ireland, from 1925 to 1961. Dee Dee looks at the ongoing investigation into a mass burial chamber found on the site of the home, and the fate of hundreds of babies and children who lived and died at Tuam. The rich and famous spend millions of dollars on a final goodbye to the world. Sharnelle looks at the world’s most expensive funerals.

James Gargasoulas murdered six pedestrians and injured another 27 when he sped his car along a footpath in Bourke Street, Melbourne, in 2017. After covering his trial, Sharnelle recounts the horror of his actions. George Melville was sentenced to hang for his part in one of Australia’s biggest robberies in 1853. His wife requested his body after his death and put it on public display in the middle of Melbourne. We speak to James, a funeral director, who first saw a dead body when he was four years old.

Ned Kelly was a notorious Irish-Australian outlaw. He killed three police officers and was hanged in 1880, and buried close to another vile murderer, Frederick Deeming, who was once suspected of being Jack The Ripper. The hunt for the skulls of both men continues to this day. Movie star Charlie Chaplin died in 1978 at the age of 88, and was buried near his home in Switzerland. But not for long. Grave robbers stole his corpse and demanded a ransom from his wife. They didn’t count on Oona being quite so sassy.

Funerals take many forms, but in Taiwan it’s next level, with strippers being called in to send dead bodies off with a thrill. In 1935 a shark at the Coogee Aquarium in Sydney vomited up a human arm, which triggered the bizarre case of the murder of former boxer Jimmy Smith. Sharnelle finally reveals where she would hide a dead body.

Singer songwriter Gram Parsons was loved by his friends in the music industry. But when he died of a drug overdose in September 1973 at Joshua Tree in California, their efforts to carry out his wishes for his dead body went horribly wrong. We look at what happens to the bodies of people who die on an aeroplane.

Sharnelle, who doesn’t believe in ghosts - has a bizarre night in a Florida hotel room while covering Hurricane Michael. Dee Dee looks into the disappearance of Ahmet Hagune in Cyprus in 1974, and the fig tree growing out of a cave that led to the discovery of his body.

On November 18, 1978, more than 900 devotees of cult leader Jim Jones died at The Peoples Temple compound in Guyana. On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the horror, we look back at what happened, and the extraordinarily gruesome task that faced those tasked with repatriating the dead. And we share some feedback on unusual burial customs.

Could you sleep with a dead body? A number of people have done that without actually realising. Dee Dee looks at a number of cases where dead bodies have been found under motel beds. Sharnelle is concerned that she may have inadvertently helped someone commit a crime. We talk to Caitie who worked as a nursing assistant and saw her first dead body when she was 19. She sat with a man as he died, but was also on alert for the return of a person who had already tried to murder him. Her story is both terrifying and touching.

Sharnelle tells the story of Sofina Nikat, a depressed woman who killed her baby at a park in Melbourne's north-east because she thought her daughter was "possessed". With so many Dead Bodies listeners guessing that Sharnelle’s hiding spot for a dead body would be a drain, Dee Dee remembers a 6 year old girl named Sheree Beasley whose body was found in a drain on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula in 1991.

Sharnelle looks at the families of people who died in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, and the importance of being reunited with the remains of their loved ones. Some are still waiting today, 17 years after the Twin Towers fell. Dee Dee looks at one of Australia’s worst mass murders that became known as the bodies in the barrels. John Bunting, Robert Wagner, and James Vlassakis killed 12 people between August 1992 and May 1999, in South Australia, and hid several of their bodies in a disused bank in Snowtown. Pat has recently retired after 41 years as a gravedigger. He gives us an insight into his daily work with the dead.

Sharnelle has the disturbing story of a woman who woke up in refrigerated storage in the morgue. Can you bury a body in your backyard? Dee Dee looks whether a do-it-yourself burial is legal, and where you’re allowed to sprinkle cremated remains of your loved ones . Photographer Arthur Fellig’s ability to arrive at a crime scene in New York in the 1930’s and 40’s just as the cops did was so uncanny that he renamed himself “Weegee,” claiming that he functioned as a human Ouija board. Weegee was famous for his graphic photos of dead bodies, as well as the city itself. The girls talk to Christopher Bonanos, author of book Flash: The Making of Weegee The Famous, about the man now regarded as an innovator and a pioneer, an artist as well as a newsman, whose photographs are among most powerful images of urban existence ever made.