Dead Bodies Podcast

Australia, has been abuzz with discussion about the deaths of three people in Victoria, apparently after eating poison mushrooms. In this episode we look at serial poisoner Velma Barfield, who in 1984 became the first woman to be executed by lethal injection in the United States.

29-year-old Katie Haley was bashed to death with a dumbbell by her vicious, jealous and controlling partner Shane Robertson, while their baby daughter slept in the room next door. Katie’s sad end serves as another reminder that we need to do more as a community to stamp out domestic violence.

A new-age health and wellness workshop went horribly wrong in Quebec, Canada, in 2011, when 38-year-old Chantal Lavigne was literally boiled to death in a bizarre therapy session.

Babies sent to the neonatal intensive care unit are usually the most vulnerable, and in need of the greatest care. But instead of nursing them back to health, British nurse Lucy Letby was doing the unthinkable: attacking and killing them.

In 2018 Lana Clayton found her husband Steve lying dead at the bottom of the stairs in their home in South Carolina. At first it was believed he’d had a heart attack, but when toxicology showed the presence of poison, police were led to something common in most household bathrooms.

Survivors of a plane crash in the Andes in 1972 had to use great ingenuity to stay alive in the blizzard conditions, with very little food, and as the days passed it seemed nobody was coming to rescue them.

Lawyer Garry Hoy fell to his death from a window on the 24th floor of a Toronto law firm in 1993. Was it suicide, was he pushed, or was there another reason behind his tragic death?

In the UK in 2016, Ian Stewart’s fiancee Helen Bailey goes missing. The investigation into her disappearance leads police to take another look at the death of his first wife Diane. They fear they have hit a dead end when they discover that Diane’s body was cremated.

The murder of pastry chef Renea Lau in Melbourne's Kings Domain has been described as one of the city's worst. Senior police were shocked by the brutality and duration of the attack and because of its random nature.

Worldwide, around 1.35 million people die in road accidents each year. Research to make road travel safer is constant, as new technology and design emerge. Crash Test Dummies are used for most of the testing. But that hasn’t always been the case. Kirsten is missing, and we welcome Simon Owens to the studio today in her place. Join our massive tantrum over her (hopefully temporary) disappearance.

Sharnelle continues recounting covering the 2013 trial of Adrian Bayley who was convicted of the rape and murder of Gillian Maher in Melbourne. Thawee Nanra was the leader of a Taiwanese cult. His devotees promised his followers they could cure their ills by consuming his bodily fluids. And that’s not the worst of it …..

Drought has seen Nevada’s Lake Mead drop to historic lows, exposing things which have remained underwater for years. In one case, a discovery on the lake bed brought closure to a family after years of heartache. Convicted rapist Adrian Bayley is responsible for the rape and murder of Gillian Meagher, in a case that brought the people of Melbourne to the streets in 2012. Sharnelle covered his court case.

Grady Stiles Jr. was not only a killer, but a murder victim. He became famous as Lobster Boy in a bizarre travelling sideshow. While most of the world was confined to their homes at the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, UK police were called to investigate a car being driven erratically near Coleford in the Forest of Dean, leading to the uncovering of the murder of Phoenix Netts.

Elmer McCurdy was a drunk and a train robber. It was decades after his death that his body was discovered at an amusement park in California. If you had committed a murder, would you consider yourself to be violent? Would you be chummy with the police when they arrived on your doorstep? Some killers behave differently, as evidenced by the odd behaviour of wife killer Stephen Searle.

Today, Brighton is one of Melbourne’s wealthiest suburbs, but in 1853 it was the scene of two bizarre murders, with a bag of sugar left on the victim’s head. And we unpack some frank feedback from listener Joey.

Nurse Roger Dean was working in a Sydney nursing when he murdered 11 elderly residents by setting a fire to the facility as they slept on November 18, 2011. Allen Lee Davis was sent to the electric chair for brutally killing a mother and her two young daughters. His botched execution is known as Florida’s messiest ever.

In this special Christmas episode we cover the 1992 “Christmas killings” in Dayton, Ohio. Marvallos Keene was the head of a gang that murdered six people. Hospital worker David Fuller pleaded guilty to murdering Wendy Knell and Caroline Pierce in Tunbridge Wells back in 1987. And when police raided his home they found a stash of pornography described as “unimaginable sexual depravity” that led to investigators uncovering his years of necrophilia.

Harold Frederick Shipman (14 January 1946 – 13 January 2004), known to acquaintances as Fred Shipman, was an English general practitioner who is believed to be one of the most prolific serial killers in modern history. On 31 January 2000, he was found guilty of the murder of 15 patients under his care; his total number of victims was approximately 250. Shipman was sentenced to life imprisonment with the recommendation that he never be released.[4] He died by suicide, hanging himself in his cell at HM Prison Wakefield, West Yorkshire on 13 January 2004, a day before his 58th birthday. Sylvia Marie Likens (January 3, 1949 – October 26, 1965) was an American teenager who was tortured and murdered by her caregiver, Gertrude Baniszewski, many of Baniszewski's children, and several of their neighborhood friends. This abuse incrementally lasted for three months before Likens died from her extensive injuries and malnourishment on October 26 in Indianapolis, Indiana. Likens was increasingly neglected, belittled, sex

The body of pregnant Bobbie Jo Stinnett was found in her home in Missouri in 2004. Her unborn foetus had been cut from her womb. The killer, Lisa Marie Montgomery, was put to death by lethal injection in January 2021. Martin van Butchell was an eccentric British dentist who put his dead wife on display. Was it for love, to attract customers, or because of a clause in a marriage contract?

Ten-year-old Candace Newmaker was killed during a bizarre therapy session designed to help her bond with her adoptive mother. She was suffocated by so-called therapists who were trying to force her to be “reborn”. We find Sharnelle in hotel quarantine after her stint reporting from Japan. She shares what makes her embarrassed daily as her meals are delivered.