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Joy and Roger Membrey in 2005, with a picture of their daughter, Elisabeth, who was killed in 1994. There is a million-dollar reward for information on the Membrey murder.

A cold case, a new suspect, and fresh hope for a mother desperate for answers

For three decades, Joy has been hunting for answers over the murder of 22-year-old Elisabeth. There have been false dawns but she’s never given up.

  • John Silvester

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Judy Moran’s last ride from freedom in 2009. In police car with Stuart Bateson

A shooting in front of children at a footy clinic shifted everything in the notorious Underbelly war

The gangland wars between Carl Williams and the Moran family dominated Melbourne for years. Now, John Silvester talks to one of the lead police investigators about what it took to put some of them behind bars.

John Silvester’s Naked City: Market Murders, The Great Bookie Robbery, Russell Street bombing, Neighbourhood Wine, coffee with Carl Williams and the Black Prince of Lygon Street, St Mary Star of the Sea.

A bloody mafia war, a heist and a courthouse execution: The secrets bubbling below a city’s surface

Coffee with Carl Williams, sacred sites where gangsters roam free: This is the dark history of Australia’s underbelly

  • John Silvester and Pablo Barnes
John Taylor, former bomb disposal expert with the special operations group

John Taylor says being little has its advantages when you’re a cop. You can be ‘pushed through small windows’

As part of the elite special operations group, John Taylor chased criminals, defused bombs, and navigated deadly sieges, never letting the fact that he “didn’t look the part” get in the way.

Tim Peck (left) graduates from the Police Academy.

At first, being part of the work-hard, play-hard club suited detective Tim Peck. Then it crushed him

Tim Peck worked on some of the country’s most notorious murder investigations. He was old-school police, rising through the ranks, until he had to face his wife after a car crash.

Phyllis Chan and her daughters Karen, 8, and Karly, 10, grieve and pray at the site in Thomastown where her daughter Karmein’s body was found in 1992, some time after being abducted from the family home. Her killed was dubbed Mr Cruel and The Age reported in 2024 detectives believed he may have killed himself, died of natural causes or moved to a country that is lax on child exploitation.

High IQ, need for control, clean: Criminal profiler John Kelly on the notorious Mr Cruel

In his Naked City podcast, veteran crime reporter John Silvester talks to criminal profiler John Kelly about Mr Cruel and why no one has caught him yet.

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Was Mr Cruel responsible for the abduction and murder of 13-year-old Karmein Chan in 1991?

A young girl was abducted and police named a suspect fast. Too fast for some

The abduction of Karmein Chan in 1991 changed Melbourne forever. Veteran crime reporter John Silvester talks to the police officer who was first on the scene, and first to question the “Mr Cruel” theory.

How the cold case murder of six-year-old Bonnie Clarke was solved

It took 20 years to find six-year-old Bonnie Clarke’s killer. The cold case detective tells why

As a young detective, Tim Day was only meant to “get a feel” for murder investigations when he was handed the dusty files from the cold case of Bonnie Clarke.

There were 10 hurdles Erin Patterson needed to jump, writes John Silvester.

The 10 hurdles Erin Patterson needed to jump. She hit every one

Despite the marathon legal arguments and the testimony of expert witnesses, the Morwell jury needed to use common sense rather than common law to examine 10 key questions.

  • John Silvester

‘The consequences are much greater’: John Silvester on the Easey Street secret he kept

The Age crime columnist unpacks the major breakthrough in the notorious Easey Street cold case – and takes us behind the scenes of the long police operation that led to it.

  • Samantha Selinger-Morris