Time for another round up of the best true crime podcasts from around the world…
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Canada
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True North Heists
(Audible Originals)
Andrew Kaufman’s True North Heists features some serious criminals and some serious Canadian crimes, though accentuates the slightly madcap nature of many of the crimes and their heists. Episodes feature Rory Shayne who hijacked a helicopter and robbed a bank in downtown Montreal; Red Ryan, the “Jesse James of Canada”; Bill Miner, Canada’s greatest train robber; and Ken Leishman, the man behind Canada’s biggest ever gold robbery. And what could possibly be more Canadian than the 2012 great maple syrup heist of 2012 when thieves stole barrels of maple syrup worth over C$18 million. It took Canada’s maple syrup producers years to realize they’d even been ripped off. That’s right—your breakfast pancakes may have been dripping in stolen syrup and you never even knew!
The Dark North
(Montreal Gazette)
Crime writer Paul Cherry lays out the history of Montreal’s organized crime—the Rizzuto family, the Westside Irish mob, the city’s numerous street gangs, and of course Montreal’s biker gangs. Good old-fashioned criminal activity and traditional divisions fell apart when Montreal became a major trafficking point and market for hard drugs. Control of the port, the city, and the trafficking routes down to the USA all became worth fighting to the death over. If you’ve seen the two seasons of Bad Blood on Netflix with Kim Coates and Anthony LaPaglia then you’ll be fascinated in the true stories behind the series and the collapse of the old rulers of the city’s underworld.
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South Africa
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Blood Lands
(BBC Radio 4)
The BBC’s South Africa correspondent Andrew Harding deep dives a murder case in a remote rural community that exposes South Africa’s bloody social rifts past and present. In 2016 Samuel Tjexa, 35, and Seun Tangasha, 25, both black, were chased by a mob of white farmers who allegedly beat them to death. The case resulted in four white men on trial for the killing of two black men with families divided, neighbors turning on neighbors, and old racial scars resurfacing. Harding’s three-year investigation into the case is part murder investigation, part courtroom thriller, and a profound exploration of the enduring tensions threatening the “rainbow nation” and its attempt to put apartheid behind it.
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Sweden
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Vietas: Lapland’s Greatest Heist
(Audible Original)
In 1971 Sweden was building a new power station in remote Lapland. The construction crew was paid in cash and with Easter coming the safe was jam packed. Murder, a very clever robbery that remains unsolved, waterfalls and, of course, reindeer. For fans of heists and locked room mysteries Vietas was dubbed by the Swedish police a ‘reverse Rififi’—in the 1954 Jules Dassin movie Rififi, the thieves rob a safe in a locked room by entering and leaving via the roof of the apartment above. In Vietas the thieves entered the safe from underneath, digging into it. Vietas is presented by Jenny Rogneby who worked for seven years as a Criminal Investigator with the Stockholm City Police Department. Rogneby is now the best-selling crime author of a series of thrillers featuring Leona Lindberg of Stockholm’s Violent Crimes Division.
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Australia
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King of Sting
(Audible Original)
Justin Armsden is an investigative reporter with Australian TV’s A Current Affair (Nine Network). For 25 years Armsden’s been chasing Australia’s most prolific conman, Peter Foster. From Oz’s Gold Coast, to the UK’s inner political circles in the Blair years, to rigging elections in Fiji, Foster keeps on moving and keeps on conning. To date Foster has swindled people out of over US$100 million and roped in many gullible celebrities and political figures into his elaborate cons. Every time the local law, or Armsden, get close Foster disappears. But maybe at last the reporter can finally pin down Australia’s King of Sting.
The Night Driver
(The Australian)
Janine Vaughan, a 31-year-old menswear shop manager, went missing on December 7, 2001, after she was seen getting into a car minutes after leaving a hotel in Bathurst, a town 200km west of Sydney. On the night in question, Janine lost her handbag, which was found a few hours later by a cleaner working at the hotel. The bag contained her money, mobile phone, her money, and her house keys, which meant that when she disappeared, she had no money and no way of calling anyone to report what had happened to her. She is still missing. Ever since Janine’s sister Kylie has been on a relentless quest for the truth about Janine’s murder. Despite two police strike force investigations, a coronial inquest and a Police Integrity Commission inquiry, the driver of the car remains a mystery, as does Janine’s ultimate fate.
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Colombia/Mexico
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Real Narcos
(Noiser Podcasts)
Noiser is a podcast studio based in Bristol in the UK that is turning out some major new true crime and history series. Real Narcos goes undercover to reveal the lives of the King of Cocaine, Pablo Escobar, through to the Godmother of the drugs trade, Griselda Blanco, and the powerful drug trafficker and notorious prison escapee, El Chapo. Real Narcos also follows the Mexican and American agents working to take down Latin America’s narco-terrorists. Pretty much a must listen for fans of the Narcos TV show.
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UK
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Manhunt
(BBC Radio 5 Live)
Former Scotland Yard detective Peter Bleksley wants to find Kevin “Hemp” Parle, a man who has been on the run now for over fifteen years. Parle remains wanted in connection with the murders in Liverpool of 16-year-old Liam Kelly in 2004 & Lucy Hargreaves in 2005. Parle is still Liverpool’s Most Wanted Man. Bleksley, supported by sightings, believes Parle may be hiding in Spain, on the Costa Blanca, the infamous “Costa del Crime” (due to arguments over Gibraltar Spain does not extradite anyone to the UK meaning the region has become home to many British criminals on the run). Manhunt is effectively a live and ongoing criminal investigation by podcast with Bleksley appealing to experts, underworld figures and the general public to help locate Parle.
The Halifax Slasher
(Audible Original)
A slightly different podcast as this is a dramatization (by Nick Baker and John Woolf), with some narration, and ‘talking heads’, of The Halifax Slasher, an incident of mass hysteria that occurred in the town of Halifax, Yorkshire, over eleven days in 1938 following a series of reported attacks on local people, mostly women. The podcast weaves narration (by the Halifax actress Carolyn Pickles) with commentary from local historians and recreations built on contemporary newspaper and police reports.
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International
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Heist…With Michael Caine
(Somethin’ Else Productions)
Who better to tell the story of six heists around the world than Sir Michael Caine? Nobody…obviously. The heists Caine looks at include the 2003 Antwerp diamond robbery (the biggest in Belgian and international history), the Transylvania University rare book heist (that’s Lexington , Kentucky rather than Romania), the 2009 Västberga helicopter robbery in Stockholm, the United California Bank vault burglary in 1972, and the theft of $150 million from a Sydney bank in 2003. Caine talks to some of the criminals, detectives and victims involved and there’s a pretty cool soundtrack too. However, as you might expect it’s Caine himself that really steals the show. Every so often he repeats a line to us from a cop, a thief or a witness, but of course in Caine’s voice the comment becomes 100 per cent cooler.
