Mark Whittaker | |
---|---|
Born | Mark Cornelius Whittaker 29 July 1965 |
Education | Newington College |
Occupation(s) | Journalist, non-fiction writer, writing coach |
Spouse | Amy Willesee |
Children | 4 |
Parent | Bill Whittaker (father) |
Website | www |
Mark Cornelius Whittaker (born 29 July 1965 [1] ) is an Australian journalist, non-fiction writer and writing coach. [2] He lives in Berry, New South Wales. [2]
Whittaker was born in Sydney, New South Wales, the son of horse racing journalist Bill Whittaker, [3] and attended Newington College (1978–1983). [1]
In 1985 Whittaker commenced as a copy boy with News Limited and became a staff writer on The Weekend Australian Magazine in 1993. Seven years later he left the Magazine to travel around Australia and write. In 2005, his book Sins of the Brother was made into a television mini-series, Catching Milat. He regularly writes for the Good Weekend magazine and The Australian newspaper.
In 2016, SBS Australia ran a 5-part podcast series called Out of Sight: The Untold Story of Adelaide’s Gay Hate Murders which was written and narrated by Whittaker. [4] [5] The series highlighted gay-hate crimes, including the murder of George Duncan, The Family Murders, and the deaths of David "John" Saint (d. April 1991), Robert Woodland (d. 2004), and Andrew Negre (d. April 2011). The series also connected to SBS's Deep Water (TV series) and its related documentary about other unsolved gay hate crimes in Sydney. In 2019, he investigated the death of Jimmy O'Connell to write and narrate a podcast about the murder, Blood Territory, [6] for Audible.
Gordon Greig Pickhaver AM is an actor, comedian and writer, who forms one half of the Australian satirical sports comedy duo Roy and HG as the excitable sports announcer HG Nelson. The award-winning duo teamed up in 1986 for the Triple J radio comedy program This Sporting Life, and were broadcast nationwide for 22 years, leading to several successful television spinoffs.
Albert Watson Newton was an Australian media personality. He was a Logie Hall of Fame inductee, quadruple Gold Logie award-winning entertainer, and radio, theatre, and television personality and presenter.
Jana Bohumila Wendt is an Australian Gold Logie award-winning television journalist, reporter and writer.
Belanglo State Forest is a planted forest, of mainly pine but some native forestry around the edges, open to the public, in the Australian state of New South Wales; its total area is about 3,800 hectares. The Belanglo State Forest is located south of Berrima in the Southern Highlands, three kilometres west of the Hume Highway between Sydney and Canberra. The forest is owned by the New South Wales Government and contains some of the earliest pine plantings in the state. The first radiata pines were planted in this area in 1919.
The backpacker murders were a spate of serial killings that took place in New South Wales, Australia, between 1989 and 1993, committed by Ivan Milat. The bodies of seven missing young people aged 19 to 22 were discovered partially buried in the Belanglo State Forest, 15 kilometres (9.3 mi) south-west of the New South Wales town of Berrima. Five of the victims were foreign backpackers and two were Australians from Melbourne. Milat was convicted of the murders on 27 July 1996 and was sentenced to seven consecutive life sentences, as well as 18 years without parole. He died in prison on 27 October 2019, having never confessed to the murders for which he was convicted.
David Robert Warner is an Australian rock musician, author and screenwriter. He lives in Sydney with his wife and three children.
Hugh Clifford Mackay is an Australian psychologist, social researcher and writer, who founded the Australian quarterly research series The Mackay Report 1979–2003, which later became The Ipsos Mackay Report. He was a weekly newspaper columnist for 25 years and is a regularly appearing commentator on radio and television.
Mount Buggery is a mountain located in the Alpine Shire within the Alpine National Park in the alpine region of Victoria, Australia. The mountain is located on the end of a ridgeline known as the Crosscut Saw between Mount Speculation and Mount Howitt, both located 4 kilometres (2.5 mi) to the south of Mount Buggery.
George Ian Ogilvie Duncan was an Australian law lecturer at the University of Adelaide who drowned in 1972 after being thrown into the River Torrens by a group of men believed to be police officers. Public outrage generated by the murder became the trigger for homosexual law reform which led to South Australia becoming the first Australian state to decriminalise homosexuality.
Michael Robert Willesee, was an Australian television journalist, interviewer and presenter.
Ivan Robert Marko Milat, commonly referred to in media as the Backpacker Murderer, was an Australian serial killer who abducted, assaulted, robbed and murdered two men and five women in New South Wales between 1989 and 1992. His modus operandi was to approach backpackers along the Hume Highway under the guise of providing them transport to areas of southern New South Wales, then take his victims into the Belanglo State Forest where he would incapacitate and murder them. Milat is also suspected of having committed many other similar offences and murders around Australia.
Lillian May Armfield ISM KPFSM was an Australian nurse and pioneering Sydney female police detective, one of the first women to serve in that role.
Dulcie May Markham was a prominent Sydney prostitute and associate of gangland figures in Sydney during the 1930s, 1940's and 1950s, when she was closely involved with the razor gang milieu of that era of organised crime within that city. During her criminal career, she had amassed 100 convictions in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland and Western Australia for prostitution, vagrancy, consorting, assaulting police and the public, keeping a brothel, drunkenness, and drunk driving, and was sent to prison on numerous occasions. Markham was known in the media as The Angel of Death, The Black Widow, Pretty Dulcie, Australia's most beautiful bad woman, Bad Luck Doll, and The One-Way Ticket.
Mark Tedeschi, is an Australian barrister, law professor, photographer and author. He is in private practice at Wardell Chambers in Sydney. He was formerly the Senior Crown prosecutor for New South Wales and the Head of Chambers of the 100 or so Crown prosecutors. He was the founder and president of the Australian Association of Crown Prosecutors and is a visiting professor at the University of Wollongong. As a prosecutor, Tedeschi was best known for the prosecution of numerous high-profile cases in Australia, including the backpacker murders committed by Ivan Milat in the 1990s. He has won numerous awards for his photography and has been featured in galleries throughout the world, including in the State Library of New South Wales, the New South Wales Art Gallery, the Center for Fine Art Photography in Colorado, and the National Library in Canberra.
Mount Buggery is a mountain located in the Wangaratta Rural City local government area, near Abbeyard above the Buffalo River in the alpine region of Victoria, Australia.
"You" is a 1977 single by Australian recording artist Marcia Hines, first recorded by writer Tom Snow on his 1975 Taking It All in Stride LP. "You" was the second single from her third studio album, Ladies and Gentlemen, released in October 1977. It peaked at No. 2 in Australia, and remains Hines' highest-charting single in Australia.
Catching Milat is a two-part Australian television miniseries that screened on the Seven Network, in collaboration with Screen Australia on 17 and 24 May 2015. It is based on the 1998 book Sins of the Brother by Mark Whittaker and Les Kennedy and is loosely based upon the true story of how New South Wales Police and detectives under "Task Force Air" tracked down and caught serial killer Ivan Milat, who was responsible for the infamous backpacker murders.
Princess Shanti Singh of Nepal or Shanti Rajya Lakshmi Devi was a Nepalese princess and Rani of Bajhang after her marriage to Kumar Deepak Jang Bahadur Singh, 60th Raja of Bajhang. The eldest child of King Mahendra of Nepal, she was one of the ten people who died in the Nepalese royal massacre.
Criminal activity in New South Wales, Australia is combated by the New South Wales Police Force and the New South Wales court system, while statistics about crime are managed by the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research. Modern Australian states and cities, including New South Wales, have some of the lowest crime rates recorded globally with Australia ranked the 13th safest nation and Sydney ranked the 5th safest city globally. As of September 2018 the City of Penrith (475.7) and City of Blacktown (495.1). Rural areas have comparatively high crime rates per 100,000 with rural shires such as Walgett Shire (1350.3) and Moree Plains Shire (1236.2) having some of the highest violent crime rates in the state. The overall NSW crime rate has been in steady decline for many years.
The gay gang murders are a series of suspected anti-LGBT hate crimes perpetrated by large gangs of youths in Sydney, between 1970 and 2010, with most occurring in 1989 and 1990. The majority of these occurred at local gay beats, and were known to the police as locations where gangs of teenagers targeted homosexuals and trans individuals. In particular, many deaths are associated with the cliffs of Marks Park, Tamarama, where the victims would allegedly be thrown or herded off the cliffs to their deaths. As many as 88 gay men were murdered by these groups in the period, with many of the deaths unreported, considered accidents or suicides at the time.
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