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Australia's first true crime festival draws citizen sleuths to cold cases

4h

Summary

  • Crime Scene Victor Harbor, billed as Australia's first true crime festival, was held in the seaside town an hour from Adelaide.
  • Founder Bryan Littlely, a former journalist who hosts the podcast 'Sleepers', brought together writers, podcasters and citizen sleuths to discuss unsolved cases.
  • The audience, mostly women, was asked to help with cases that have never been solved, including the 1970 disappearances of Hazel Pope and Joyce Eastwood.
  • Families and amateurs have driven searches such as Sally Leydon's podcast The Lady Vanishes, about her missing mother Marion Barter.
  • Tasia Haag overturned a coroner's suicide finding for her sister through her own investigation.
  • True crime's consumers over the past decade have been overwhelmingly women, and the genre has become more participatory as podcasts multiply.

Reactions

  • Bryan Littlely promised an Adelaide radio host the festival would bring revelations on some major cases.
  • Max Marten said the subject affects every person in the room and that through conversation things get solved and people get listened to.
  • Debi Marshall said people peddling true crime on social media ramp each other up into hysterical nonsense like the Salem witch hunts and call it fact.
  • Meni Caroutas told the crowd the evidence convicting Bradley John Murdoch of Peter Falconio's murder is overwhelming.
  • A poster on the 'Peter Falconio what really happened' Facebook page asked readers to look at people in Barrow Creek and their connections with motorcycle gangs.
  • The reporter judged the weekend felt less like voyeurism than a community coming together to help victims and their families.

Timeline newest first

  1. Bryan Littlely told an Adelaide radio station that victims' families carry out independent investigations because police are resource poor and cannot keep examining the cases.

Sources newest first

  • Can these true crime sleuths solve Australia's most infamous cold cases?abc.net.au· 4h

    ABC's Long Read by Rhiannon Stevens reports on Crime Scene Victor Harbor, billed as Australia's first true crime festival, where founder Bryan Littlely, podcasters, and citizen sleuths ask an audience of mostly women to help with long-unsolved cases. The piece follows families like Sally Leydon, whose podcast The Lady Vanishes aided the search for her missing mother Marion Barter, and Tasia Haag, who overturned a coroner's suicide finding for her sister, while Stevens finds the weekend felt less like voyeurism than a community trying to help victims' families.