Forensic Investigators

Last updated

Forensic Investigators
Forensic Investigators LOGO.png
GenreFactual/crime show
Created by Fiona Baker
Endemol Southern Star
Starring Lisa McCune
Country of originAustralia
Original languageEnglish
No. of seasons3
No. of episodes33
Production
Running timeApprox. 60 minutes
(including commercials)
Production company Southern Star Group
Original release
Network Seven Network
ReleaseSeptember 2004 (2004-09) 
25 October 2006 (2006-10-25)
A Seven Network advertisement for the show Forensic Investigators.JPG
A Seven Network advertisement for the show

Forensic Investigators: Australia's True Crimes is an Australian television show hosted by Lisa McCune which aired on the Seven Network. It aired for three seasons from 2004 to 2006.

Contents

Focusing on actual Australian crimes, each episode unfolds the drama minute-by-minute showing viewers the tireless work of detectives, and the scientific procedures required to solve these mysteries.

The series includes exclusive footage that has never been seen outside the courtroom, including police videos, crime scene stills and other forensic evidence. The 1st and 2nd seasons have been released on DVD.

The third season featured a new time slot – Wednesday at 8:30 pm.

Season 1 (2004)

Season 2 (2005)

Season 3 (2006)

Infamous cases

Throughout all seasons of the show, Forensic Investigators has covered a few of Australia's most bizarre and gruesome crimes. The show has also covered some infamous serial killers and murderers, including:

Home media

In early 2006, the 1st and 2nd seasons were released on DVD in Australia (region 4). Series 1 was also released in the US (region 1). South Africa was the only country to release the third and final series 3 on DVD in 2007.

Each episode on the DVDs has bonus features. The main feature is that each episode has a longer running time than when it was shown on TV. All the episodes have longer interviews with police, family or friends of the victim or victims, and even interviews with family or friends of the killer or killers. There are also more video clips and photos shown of the crime scene.

DVD releases

DVD titleFormatEp #DiscsRegion 1 (USA)Region 2 (UK)Region 4 (Australia)Special featuresDistributors
Forensic Investigators Season 01DVD0635 September 2006N/A8 May 2006NoneDestra Entertainment
Forensic Investigators Season 02DVD123N/AN/A8 May 2006NoneDestra Entertainment
Forensic Investigators Season 03DVD114N/ASouth Africa (2007)N/ANone

Online streaming

All seasons of Forensic Investigators are currently streaming on Amazon Prime and 7plus.

TitleFormatEpisodes #Release dateStreaming StatusStreaming On
Forensic Investigators: Season 01StreamingEpisodes 01–0624 June 2019Currently streaming 7plus, 10Play & Amazon Prime
Forensic Investigators: Season 02StreamingEpisodes 01–1629 July 2019Currently streaming 7plus, 10Play & Amazon Prime
Forensic Investigators: Season 03StreamingEpisodes 01–1025 July 2019Currently streaming 7plus, 10Play & Amazon Prime

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Gary Ridgway</span> American serial killer (born 1949)

Gary Leon Ridgway is an American serial killer known as the Green River Killer. He was initially convicted of 48 separate murders committed between the early 1980s and late 1990s. As part of his plea bargain, another conviction was added, bringing the total number of convictions to 49, making him the second most prolific serial killer in United States history according to confirmed murders.

A psychic detective is a person who investigates crimes by using purported paranormal psychic abilities. Examples have included postcognition, psychometry, telepathy, dowsing, clairvoyance, and remote viewing. In murder cases, psychic detectives may purport to be in communication with the spirits of the murder victims.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Wayne Glover</span> English-Australian serial killer

John Wayne Glover was an English-Australian serial killer convicted of the murders of six elderly women, over a period of 14 months from 1989 to 1990 including Winifreda, Lady Ashton, widow of the English-Australian impressionist painter Sir Will Ashton, in suburbs located in Sydney's North Shore. The fact that the victims were all elderly women led to Glover attaining the nickname by the press of The Granny Killer. Following his arrest in 1990, he admitted to the murders and was sentenced to consecutive terms of life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. He hanged himself in prison on 9 September 2005.

The Colonial Parkway murders were the serial murders of at least eight people in the U.S. state of Virginia between 1986 and 1989. The killings mostly took place along the Colonial Parkway, a 22-mile long thoroughfare that cuts through the Colonial National Historical Park and connects Jamestown, Williamsburg and Yorktown. Long stretches of the road are devoid of any streetlights and are extremely isolated, making it a popular lovers' lane location frequented by young adults.

The Wanda Beach Murders, also known simply as "Wanda", were the unsolved murders of Marianne Schmidt and Christine Sharrock at Wanda Beach near Cronulla in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, on 11 January 1965. The victims, both aged 15, were best friends and neighbours from the suburb of West Ryde, and their partially buried bodies were discovered the next day. The brutal nature of the slayings and the fact that they occurred on a deserted, windswept beach brought massive publicity to the case. By April 1966, police had interviewed some 7,000 people, making it the largest investigation in Australian history. It remains one of the most infamous unsolved Australian murder cases of the 1960s, and New South Wales' oldest unsolved homicide case.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Paul Denyer</span> Australian serial killer

Paul Charles Denyer is an Australian serial killer currently serving three consecutive sentences of life imprisonment with a non-parole period of 30 years for the murders of three young women in Melbourne, in 1993. Denyer became known in the media as the Frankston Serial Killer as his crimes occurred in the neighbouring suburbs of Frankston.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Timothy Wilson Spencer</span> American serial killer (1962–1994)

Timothy Wilson Spencer, also known as The Southside Strangler, was an American serial killer who committed three rapes and murders in Richmond, Virginia, and one in Arlington, Virginia, in the fall of 1987. In addition, he is believed to have committed at least one previous murder, in 1984, for which a different man, David Vasquez, was wrongfully convicted. He was known to police as a prolific home burglar.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Robert Black (serial killer)</span> Scottish serial killer (1947–2016)

Robert Black was a Scottish serial killer and paedophile who was convicted of the kidnap, rape and murder of four girls aged between 5 and 11 in a series of crimes committed between 1981 and 1986 in the United Kingdom.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Peter Tobin</span> Scottish serial killer (1946–2022)

Peter Britton Tobin was a Scottish convicted serial killer and sex offender who served a whole life order at HM Prison Edinburgh for three murders committed between 1991 and 2006. Police also investigated Tobin over the deaths and disappearances of other young women and girls.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Faryion Wardrip</span> American serial killer and rapist on death row

Faryion Edward Wardrip is an American rapist and serial killer who assaulted and murdered a total of five women. Four of the women were killed in Wichita Falls, Texas, and the surrounding counties. One woman was murdered in Fort Worth, approximately a two-hour drive southeast of Wichita Falls. Wardrip's killing spree began at the end of 1984 and lasted until the middle of 1986. All of his female victims were white, were between the ages of 20 and 25, weighed less than 120 pounds (54 kg), and were under 5+12 feet (170 cm) tall.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">John Cooper (serial killer)</span> Welsh serial killer

John William Cooper is a Welsh serial killer. On 26 May 2011, he was given a whole life order for the 1985 double murder of siblings Richard and Helen Thomas, and the 1989 double murder of Peter and Gwenda Dixon. The murders were known in the media as the "Pembrokeshire Murders" or the "Coastal Murders". Cooper was also sentenced for the rape of a 16-year-old girl and a sexual assault on a 15-year-old girl, both carried out while a group of five teenagers were held at gunpoint in March 1996, in a wooded area behind the Mount Estate in Cooper's hometown of Milford Haven, Pembrokeshire.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Dawn Magyar</span> American murder case

Dawn Lee Swan Magyar was found murdered in March 1973, in a wooded area in Chapin, Michigan. She had been reported missing since January 27, 1973, from her home in Chesaning, Michigan. Believed to have been abducted from a shopping center in nearby Owosso, she was found to have been raped and shot three times.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Krista Harrison</span> American murder case

The murder of Krista Lea Harrison occurred on July 17, 1982, in Marshallville, Ohio. The case remained unsolved for two years, until Robert Anthony Buell was convicted of her murder in 1984. In the year 2000, Harrison's case appeared on the fifth season of the American television show Forensic Files in an episode titled "Material Evidence."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Jessie Earl</span> Unsolved death in 1980

Jessie Earl was a 22-year-old student who disappeared from Eastbourne, England in May 1980. It was not until 1989 that her remains were discovered in thick undergrowth on Beachy Head, where she would regularly take walks. The inquest into her death was criticised and attracted considerable controversy in the long term after it was concluded that there was "insufficient evidence" to determine whether she had been murdered, despite the fact that she had been found with her bra tied around her wrists and without any of her other clothes or belongings. Her parents insisted she must have been murdered, but the inquest into her death recorded an open verdict, leading to the key forensic evidence being destroyed in 1997 since the case had not been classed as murder. Despite this, in 2000 Sussex Police opened a murder investigation after further forensic, scene, witness and pathology inquiries, saying that they believed she was murdered.

Ann Heron was a British woman who was murdered on 3 August 1990 at her home in Darlington, County Durham, by an unidentified killer. The case was heavily featured in British media as well as on the BBC programme Crimewatch in October 1990, but her murder remains unsolved.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Joseph Kappen</span> Welsh serial killer (1941–1990)

Joseph William Kappen, also known as the Saturday Night Strangler, was a Welsh serial killer who committed the rape and murder of three teenage girls in Llandarcy and Tonmawr, near his home town of Port Talbot, in 1973. Kappen is also suspected of committing a fourth murder in February 1976.

Alun Kyte, known as the Midlands Ripper, is an English double murderer, serial rapist, child rapist, paedophile and suspected serial killer. He was convicted in 2000 of the murders of two sex workers, 20-year-old Samo Paull and 30-year-old Tracey Turner, whom he killed in December 1993 and March 1994 respectively. After his conviction, investigators announced their suspicions that Kyte could have been behind a number of other unsolved murders of sex workers across Britain in the 1980s and 1990s. He was apprehended due to the ground-breaking investigations of a wider police enquiry named Operation Enigma, which was launched in 1996 in response to the murders of Paull, Turner and of a large number of other sex workers. Kyte was sentenced to a minimum of 25 years imprisonment for the murders of Paull and Turner.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murders of Kate Bushell and Lyn Bryant</span> 1990s murders in England

Kate Bushell and Linda "Lyn" Bryant were a schoolgirl and a woman who were murdered in separate high-profile incidents of West Country, England, in 1997 and 1998 The similar circumstances of the murders led investigators to conclude that there is a high possibility the murders are linked, with both killed with knives while walking their dogs along isolated lanes.

Colin Frederick Campbell is a British double murderer who in the early 1980s abducted two separate and unrelated women in west London and killed them in sexually motivated attacks. In 2013, 32 years after the event, Campbell was convicted of the high-profile unsolved murder of 17-year-old Claire Woolterton after a DNA match was found to him. He was already in prison for the 1984 killing of Deirdre Sainsbury, but had had his murder conviction in this case downgraded to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility in 1999 after he claimed that he had only killed her due to having an epileptic fit. In an open prison and about to be released in the early 2010s, Campbell was finally apprehended for Woolterton's murder, which had led to one of the UK's biggest manhunts at the time and a large amount of press coverage due to it being a murder of a child. The epilepsy experts who had helped Campbell win his appeal in the Sainsbury case accepted that epilepsy could not explain two violent and sexually motivated murders, and in sentencing the judge said that it had been wrong to downgrade his conviction to manslaughter in 1999. Detectives said that had he not been caught, Campbell would have potentially become a serial killer, a term usually used to describe a repeat killer who has killed at least three victims. Campbell is imprisoned at HM Prison Woodhill.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Murder of Sheila Anderson</span> 1983 notorious Scottish unsolved murder

The murder of Sheila Anderson was the 1983 murder of a sex worker in Edinburgh which has been described as "one of Scotland's most notorious unsolved murders". 27-year-old mother Anderson was found run over, possibly repeatedly, on the promenade at Gypsy Brae after she had sex with a client there. Anderson was known to have been confrontational with clients and for having stood in front of their cars if they refused to pay, leading investigators to conclude that she may have been run over after such a disagreement.