Dead Bodies Podcast

A dead body found in a rubbish bin in Maryland in 1985 has finally been identified through genetic genealogy. The victim, Roger Kelso, had been murdered back in 1963, but his body was unidentified for years As First Lady of Argentina, Eva Peron was loved by the working class. She died in 1952 and millions of people filed past her coffin. But there was a military coup two years later, and her body was moved multiple times over the next two decades.

Conditions at the Cantrell Funeral Home deteriorated over the years, with horrific treatment of the bodies of the dead. In August 2018 investigators entered the building and discovered rotting corpses and the remains of hundreds of people. A naked, unconscious man found under a car in Chicago earlier this year, turned into a bizarre case of mistaken identity. Alfonso Bennett found himself declared dead, when he was very much alive. We talk to Tamara - the daughter of a fatal work accident inspector - who herself worked as a trauma and organ donation nurse.

The dead body of 41-year-old intellectually disabled man Lindsay Jellett was found on the side of the road in Ararat in 1994. At first it appeared he was the victim of a hit-and-run, but accident investigators uncovered the sad truth of his death. In 1971 in Accountant John List shot his wife, mother, and his three children, then he disappeared. Eighteen years later a forensic artist helped police track him down.

Seventeen-year-old Melanie Road was stabbed to death as she made her way home from a nightclub in Bath in the UK in June 1984. With no DNA technology to work with, and despite massive efforts, police struggled to find her attacker. Thirty-two years later, science caught up with her killer. In Illinois, US, in 2014, Two people were lured to the apartment of Alissa Massaro, where they were robbed and strangled to death. Then Massaro and her friend Joshua Miner had sex on top of the bodies. Two others, Adam Landerman and Bethany McKee, were also accused in the murder.

James Byrd Jr. was a black man who was murdered by three white supremacists in Jasper, Texas, on June 7, 1998. Shawn Berry, Lawrence Brewer, and John King dragged along the road Byrd behind a pickup truck. The sickening incident led to a change in the Texas hate-crimes law. Melbourne’s Yarra River is the deadliest inland river per metre in Australia. One of the earliest bodies dragged from its murky depths was Bertha Coughlan in 1923, a young, unmarried mother who had died at the hands of abortionist Hannah Mitchell.

We rely on our refrigerators to keep our food fresh. But when it’s time to throw an old fridge out, there’s a warning: they can become deadly. “Tillie” Klimek was born in Poland in 1876, but lived most of her adult life in Chicago, where in 1923 she was found guilty of the murder of her third husband by poisoning. There is a list of 20 of her victims, most of who died at her hands.

In the early 1960’s, police were baffled by a series of gruesome crimes that they said was the work of The Sydney Mutilator. William MacDonald was eventually caught and jailed for life for the killing spress. He freely admitted that he hated the world and would gleefully murder and mutilate again if he was released. American music producer Phil Spector is acknowledged as one of the most influential figures in pop music history..In 2009, he was convicted of second-degree murder.

Actress Rebecca Schaeffer lived in a quiet and seemingly safe area of LA. But a crazed fan stalked her, found her home, and murdered her in cold blood. Workers cleaning out a massive storage tank at Velva Liquids in the UK in 1979, found the torso and head of a young woman named Eileen McDougall. How had the body gotten there, how long had it been there, and who killed her? And was the right man jailed for the crime?

In 2011, 24-year-old Daniel O'Keeffe went missing from his parent's home in Geelong. His family mounted and extraordinary social media campaign,but it was five years before they found out what had happened to him. The Black Dahlia is one of the most famous dead bodies of all time. Hollywood hopeful Elizabeth Short was found in Leimert Park, murdered and mutilated. Her killer has never been found.

A necrophile is a person who is sexually attracted to corpses. Nine out of ten necrophiles are men. It is extremely rare for a woman to indulge in necrophilia: Karen Greenlee was one of them. She was caught after stealing a body on its way to a funeral in 1979. What happens if one identical twin commits a horrible crime, but points the finger at the other? How do police know they have got the right or wrong man?

Serial killer Todd Kohlhepp was convicted of murdering seven people in South Carolina between 2003 and 2016. His violent life of crime started when he was just 15, and ended when one of his eight victims was found alive being held captive on his property. Brisbane mother Dianne Brimble died over a drug overdose in 2002 on a P&O Cruises cruise ship, and police named a group of men as “persons of interest”. The investigation, inquest, and eventual trial related to her death concluded in 2010, and resulted in changes to safety procedures aboard cruise ships. Two very special guests join us to celebrate our 50th episode: it’s Bassmah and Sabrina!!!!

When an actor “dies” on stage, the audience is usually confident that they’re only acting, but that is not always the case. On more than one occasion, theatre-goers have unwittingly watched an actual death take place. The Darwin Awards are given out each year for the most stupid death, rewarding the person’s willingness to “remove themselves from the human gene pool.” We look at the most recent Top Ten thrillseekers who met an untimely end.

In 1959, nine hikers died in the northern Ural Mountains in the former Soviet Union, in what became known as The Dyatlov Pass incident. They set up camp, but during the night, something caused them to tear their way out of their tents and flee in the sub-zero temperatures. In Melbourne, in 1999, Gabriel Omar Chang took to the dead body of Dianne Psaila with a meat tenderiser, and carried her corpse in the boot of her car for five days. His erratic behaviour that took him from the murder scene in Melton to Lorne on Victoria’s west coast.

In Tasmania, in 1822, Alexander Pearce is one of eight convicts who escape from the Macquarie Harbour penal settlement into the mountain wilderness on the mainland. When they run out of food their only option is to kill and eat each other. Did Pearce cannibalise his mates out of necessity, or pleasure? Have you ever played Chubby Bunny? DON’T!!! It’s the childhood game that has turned deadly. We talk to Laura who has been investigating the story of Alice Pengel, a woman who was jailed in Western Australia over the death of a young mother at the end of World War Two. Laura reveals how a member of her family became embroiled in the scandal.

Imagine dying, and nobody came to your funeral. Homeless men and women are spared that bleak prospect thanks to Roxbury Latin School’s Ave Atque Vale program — through which Class I boys act as pallbearers at the funerals of homeless men and women. In Antwerp, Victoria, in 1993, 49 year old Joan Vollmer was killed by her husband and a group of devout Christians, who performed an exorcism on her, believing that she was possessed by demons.