Victorian True Crime

CSI Told You Lies is a surprisingly moving account of the real forensic pathologists at the frontline of Australia's major crime and disaster investigations. These are the men and women whose post-mortem examinations help the dead to speak. Along with the pathologists, Meshel Laurie, host of the Australian True Crime podcast, also speaks to the homicide detectives, defence barristers and victims' families in this groundbreaking study of the ripple effect of violent crime and largescale natural disaster.

This gripping historical crime fiction novel, based on fact, is set in Bradford, England, 1888. It explores the horrific murder of Johnny Gill; a murder and mutilation so gruesome, it stuns a nation. Even hardened detectives are affected by its savagery, swiftly comparing it to the work of Jack the Ripper.

As the train rattled westward on the outskirts of Dublin, James Berry didn’t stand out amongst his fellow passengers, but they couldn’t see the long, Italian silk rope coiled in the black leather bag by his side, nor the white cap and pinion straps, nor the revolver in his coat pocket. Galway, the winter of 1885. The violent murders of John Moylan, killed on a dark country lane, and Alice Burns, shot dead in the dining room of the Royal Hotel, have shaken the county. Now, following painstaking investigations and charged courtroom drama, justice beckons for the guilty parties.

Number 4 Euston Square was a respectable boardinghouse, like many others in Victorian London. But beneath this ordinary veneer lurked a murderous darkness. On 8th May 1879, the corpse of former resident Matilda Hacker was uncovered in the coal cellar. The investigation that followed stripped bare the shadow-side of Victorian domesticity, throwing the lives of everyone within into an extraordinary maelstrom.

Who lived to regret her "deathbed" confession? Was Amelia Dyer mad or wicked? Why did the judiciary look compassionately on women who committed infanticide? Among over 80 women whose stories appear in this book, some were tragic; some were evil; some were mad; and several were undoubtedly innocent of the murders for which they were hanged.

The Vanishing Act brings together the first three gripping installments of the Shadows of the Past series, diving deep into the lives, disappearances, and legacies of three extraordinary women. Each case reveals the darker side of history, where secrets, scandals, and societal pressures converge into captivating mysteries that remain unsolved to this day.

Dublin, November 1856: George Little, the chief cashier of the Broadstone railway terminus, is found dead, lying in a pool of blood beneath his desk. He has been savagely beaten, his head almost severed; there is no sign of a murder weapon, and the office door is locked, apparently from the inside. Thousands of pounds in gold and silver are left untouched at the scene of the crime. Augustus Guy, Ireland's most experienced detective, teams up with Dublin's leading lawyer to investigate the murder. But the mystery defies all explanation.

It took three tortured days in 1876 for Charles Bravo to die from the poison that burned its way through his body. The subsequent investigation revealed many people with a grudge against the young barrister. The dramatic inquest was covered in sensational detail by the press, but no one was convicted of his murder. Over a century later, James Ruddick draws on new evidence to solve one of the most famous murders in criminal history.

On Halloween night, 1828, in the West Port district of Edinburgh, Scotland, a woman sometimes known as Madgy Docherty was last seen in the company of William Burke and William Hare. Days later, police discovered her remains in the surgery of the prominent anatomist Dr. Robert Knox. Docherty was the final victim of the most atrocious murder spree of the century. Together with their accomplices, Burke and Hare would be accused of killing 16 people over the course of 12 months in order to sell the corpses as "subjects" for dissection.

In 1898, a group of schoolboys in Bridgeport, Connecticut, discovered gruesome packages under a bridge holding the dismembered remains of a young woman. Finding that the dead woman had just undergone an abortion, prosecutors raced to establish her identity and fix blame for her death. Suspicion fell on Nancy Guilford, half of a married pair of “doctors” well known to police throughout New England. A fascinated public followed the suspect’s flight from justice, as many rooted for the fugitive.

One sunlit evening, May 6, 1882, Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Burke, Chief Secretary and Undersecretary for Ireland, were ambushed and stabbed to death while strolling through Phoenix Park in Dublin. The murders were funded by American supporters of Irish independence and carried out by the Invincibles, a militant faction of republicans.

“A tour de force of storytelling.” —Louise Penny, #1 New York Times bestselling author of the Chief Inspector Gamache series “Jobb’s excellent storytelling makes the book a pleasure to read.” —The New York Times Book Review ”When a doctor does go wrong he is the first of...

A tragic death, a murder trial and a 170-year-old mystery - but what really happened? Shortly after Maria Kirwan died in a lonely inlet on Ireland’s Eye, it was decided that she had drowned accidentally during a day spent with her husband on the picturesque island. This inquest verdict appeared to conclude the melancholy events that consumed the fishing village of Howth, Co Dublin, in September 1852.

In the summer of 1889, young Southern belle Florence Maybrick stood trial for the alleged arsenic poisoning of her much older husband, Liverpool cotton merchant James Maybrick. The ‘Maybrick Mystery’ had all the makings of a sensation and cracked the varnish of Victorian respectability. Florence’s fate was fiercely debated on the front pages of the newspapers and in parlours and backyards across the country.