Folks, a new true crime podcast about Australia’s worst serial offenders is right around the corner. It’s from bestselling Australian-Canadian author Tara Moss, and it’s ten whole episodes long.
The focus of the podcast? Figuring out if convicted murderer Ashley Coulston is tied to the infamous balaclava rapist and killer, who terrorised Queensland in 1979/80 and the Sutherland rapist from Sydney, who committed his crimes in the mid-1980s.
Coulston is an Australian convicted triple murderer serving a life sentence in Victoria’s Barwon prison for the cold-blooded 1992 murder of three young people, Kerryn Henstridge, Anne Smerdon, and Peter Dempsey in Burwood.
He is also reportedly a suspect in a number of sexual assaults in 1979 and 1980 in Tweed Heads, as well as a series of sexual assaults in southern Sydney in the mid 1980s.
“Recent evidence shows that wherever Coulston had been, a pattern of rapes and murders followed,” a synopsis for the podcast reads.
“Along with investigative reporter Mark Whittaker, Tara investigates for the first time whether these brutal sexual attacks and disappearances which took place thousands of miles apart could have been committed by one perpetrator: The Man in the Balaclava”.
Is the balaclava killer and the Sutherland rapist the same person?
Credit: Audible.
Moss is the author of 13 bestselling books, with her most latest being The War Widow. She also hosted the true crime documentary series Tough Nuts – Australia’s Hardest Criminals.
Whittaker is a journalist and non-fiction writer, whose work includes Sins of the Brother: The Definitive Story of Ivan Milat and the Backpacker Murders.
Safe to say both Moss and Whittaker know what they’re talking about, hey?
The Man in the Balaclava, written and presented by Moss with research and reporting by Whittaker, will be available exclusively on Audible from Tuesday, 13 April.
Pssst, it’s free for members or with a 30 day trial. Suss all things Audible right here.
In the meantime, allow me to throw some shameless promotion behind our head of editorial Josie Rozenberg-Clarke‘s podcast, The Zest Is History, co-hosted by the digital editor of Elle and Marie Claire Melissa Mason.
The Zest Is History is for all things weird and spicy in Australia’s wild history, from Schapelle Corby‘s Bali troubles to the tragic Granville Rail Disaster.
Find the podcast wherever you listen to ’em.
