The Veil

She published a local newspaper out of her own front room and used it to fight a developer who wanted to put three forty-five storey towers on her street. On a Friday morning she walked into the Carousel Cabaret in Kings Cross for a meeting about advertising, rang her business partner at half past ten to say she was running late, and was never seen again. Two men were later convicted of conspiring to abduct her four days earlier. Nobody has ever been charged over her disappearance. In 1983 a coroner's jury found police inquiries had been inhibited by an atmosphere of corruption. Eleven years later a federal parliamentary committee found something else.

IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING

A $1 million reward, announced on 21 June 2021, stands for information about the 1975 disappearance and suspected murder of Juanita Nielsen, or for the location of her remains. The case is held by the Unsolved Homicide Team as Strike Force Euclid.

Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000, or nsw.crimestoppers.com.au. Information is treated in strict confidence. Do not report through police social media.

A NOTE ON SOURCING

Juanita Nielsen has never been found. There is no body, no scene and no cause of death. The only physical trace ever recovered is her handbag and personal effects, found on a freeway near Penrith on 7 July 1975.

Nobody has ever been charged over her disappearance or death. Two men, Eddie Trigg and Shayne Martin-Simmonds, were convicted of conspiring to kidnap her on 30 June 1975, four days before she vanished. A third man charged with that conspiracy, Lloyd Marshall, was acquitted in 1980 and is entitled to the presumption of innocence.

Frank Theeman, Abe Saffron, James McCartney Anderson and Fred Krahe are all named in this episode. All four are dead. None was ever charged in connection with Juanita Nielsen. Theeman, Saffron and Anderson each denied involvement on oath at the 1983 inquest. The committee that examined Anderson's dealings with the National Crime Authority recorded that he had apparently never been convicted of any offence.

Loretta Crawford's 2004 television account has never been tested in a criminal court and no one has been charged as a result of it. This episode reports that she made the allegation. It does not repeat the names of the individuals she placed at the scene.

The 1983 coronial finding of City Coroner Bert Wilson is not published online. Its wording here is taken from the Australian Dictionary of Biography. The 1984 internal police inquiry that cleared three senior officers was not obtained.

SOURCES

The National Crime Authority and James McCartney Anderson, report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on the National Crime Authority, March 1994, read in full: aph.gov.au
NSW Police, reward and appeal, Strike Force Euclid: police.nsw.gov.au
Australian Dictionary of Biography, Juanita Joan Nielsen, by Richard Morris, volume 15
Dictionary of Sydney, on the 1983 inquest, by Darrienne Wyndham
ABC News, $1 million reward announcement, 21 June 2021
ABC News and Unravel: Juanita, Michael Dulaney, 2021, for Arthur King's account in his own words

SUPPORT

This episode deals with the abduction and suspected murder of a woman, and with the kidnapping and threatening of a man.

Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14. 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732.
New Zealand: Need to talk? 1737. Safe to Talk 0800 044 334.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.

If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Just after midnight, an eighteen year old left a dance at the Newport Surf Life Saving Club and walked out to Barrenjoey Road to hitchhike home to Avalon. Her boyfriend watched her get into a light coloured Holden panel van. Nobody has seen Trudie Adams since. In the weeks that followed, around fifteen young women came forward to say they had been abducted at gunpoint on the same road by two men in disguise, driven into the bush and raped. Detectives had a name within months. Nobody has ever been charged, and the coroner who finally heard the case in 2011 found that the person responsible never came to police attention.

IF YOU KNOW SOMETHING
A $250,000 reward offered by the NSW Government stands for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the person or persons responsible for Trudie's suspected death. The case is held by the Unsolved Homicide Team as Strike Force Keldie, and police say they are still working strong lines of inquiry, with inquiries run in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria and New Zealand.
Police also want to hear from any woman attacked on the northern beaches who has never reported it. The linked assaults ran from 1971 to 1978 in and around Ku-ring-gai Chase National Park, against girls and young women aged 14 to 20.
Crime Stoppers: 1800 333 000. You can remain anonymous.
A NSW parliamentary inquiry into unsolved murders and long-term missing persons cases between 1965 and 2010 is sitting now, before Portfolio Committee No. 1. Submissions close 30 October 2026, through the Parliament of NSW website.

A NOTE ON SOURCING
Trudie Adams has never been found and no cause of death has ever been established. There is no body, no scene and no forensic material connected to her. Every forensic detail in this episode belongs to the women who survived the linked assaults.
Neville Tween, named in this episode, was never charged over Trudie Adams or over any of the assaults, denied all of it, gave evidence at the 2011 inquest and died in custody in 2013. No court has made any finding against him in this case. His associate is not named here, because he has never been charged with anything.
Mark Standen has never been charged with anything relating to Trudie Adams or the assaults, and no court or inquiry has found that he protected Neville Tween. The ABC put those allegations to him in 2018 and he denied them at length in writing. His own words are read in the episode. He was released on parole on 1 June 2024.
The 2011 coronial finding of Deputy State Coroner Scott Mitchell is not published by the NSW Coroners Court, which does not publish every finding. What he found is reported here from coverage filed the day he delivered it, not from the document itself.
Survivor accounts and several investigator quotes come from one body of reporting, the 2018 ABC investigation by Neil Mercer and Ruby Jones.

SOURCES
NSW Police, reward and appeal, Strike Force Keldie
Neil Mercer, Submission 63 to the NSW unsolved murders inquiry, 24 March 2026
Parliament of NSW, Portfolio Committee No. 1, inquiry page and transcripts
ABC News, Unravel: Barrenjoey Road, Neil Mercer and Ruby Jones, 2018
ABC News inquest coverage, January to April 2011
NSW State Parole Authority media release, 17 May 2024
Stab Magazine on the surf film Highway One, 1 November 2018

SUPPORT
This episode deals with sexual violence and with the murder of a young woman.
Australia: 1800RESPECT 1800 737 732. Lifeline 13 11 14.
New Zealand: Safe to Talk 0800 044 334. Need to talk? 1737.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.

If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Eleven days after her wedding, 26-year-old Tina Watson died on a honeymoon dive 48 nautical miles off Townsville. She was found on the sea bed in 30 metres of water with her regulator in her mouth and most of her air still in her tank. Her husband, Gabe Watson, was committed for trial for her murder by a Queensland coroner, pleaded guilty instead to manslaughter by criminal negligence, served 18 months, was deported, and was then tried for capital murder in Alabama. That trial collapsed before the defence called a witness. Two countries, eight years, one conviction, one acquittal, and no jury verdict of any kind about how she died.

A NOTE ON SOURCING
David Gabriel "Gabe" Watson was convicted in Queensland on his own plea of manslaughter on the basis of criminal negligence, for failing in the duty he undertook as his wife's dive buddy. He was sentenced on 5 June 2009 to four and a half years imprisonment suspended after 12 months, increased on the Attorney-General's appeal to suspension after 18 months.
He was acquitted of murder in Jefferson County, Alabama, on 23 February 2012, on a judgment of acquittal granted by Circuit Judge Tommy Nail at the close of the state's case. An acquittal cannot be appealed. No court in either country has found that he intended to kill his wife, and he is entitled to the presumption of innocence. As at September 2026 there have been no further proceedings against him anywhere.

The theory that he interfered with his wife's air supply was advanced publicly by Queensland investigators. It was never tested at trial, never proved and was abandoned. It was also never disproved. The Police Diving Squad's examination of her equipment found no life-threatening fault in any part of it and her cylinder still held 2,200 psi, which rules out a malfunction but is consistent with either an accident or the police theory.

Two official records conflict on how she died. The coroner recorded drowning. Chesterman JA, in the Court of Appeal, found she did not drown and that the cause was asphyxiation, "for some reason wholly unexplained in the materials provided". That conflict is left standing in the episode because neither court has resolved it.

The coroner's findings date Watson's rescue diver certification to 2001; the agreed statement of facts before the Court of Appeal says April 1999. The episode uses the agreed facts.

Mike Ball Expeditions Pty Ltd pleaded guilty in the Cairns Magistrates Court on 9 May 2007 to a workplace health and safety offence and was fined $6,500 plus $1,500 in costs, for failing to follow its own procedures, which the inquest was told were significantly stricter than Queensland law required.

Trial testimony comes from court reporting, reliable as to substance but not exact wording. One witness quotation is paraphrased.

SOURCES
Inquest into the death of Christina Mae Watson, Findings of Inquest, Coroner David Glasgow, Townsville, delivered 20 June 2008. courts.qld.gov.au
R v Watson; ex parte A-G (Qld) [2009] QCA 279, 18 September 2009.
Statement of David Gabriel Watson to Det Snr Const K J Gehringer, Townsville CIB, 22 October 2003.
QPS Police Diving Squad, evaluation of scuba equipment, Snr Const D M E Netting, 10 September 2004.
Victoria Colvin, "Plea Bargaining and Miscarriage of Justice" (2015) 34 University of Queensland Law Journal.
Queensland Museum, SS Yongala online exhibition.
Contemporaneous court reporting of the Alabama trial, February 2012.

SUPPORT
This episode deals with a sudden death and with a family's long grief. New Zealand: free call or text 1737. Australia: Lifeline 13 11 14, Beyond Blue 1300 22 4636.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.

If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Before dawn on 3 October 1955, the MV Joyita left Apia on one engine, bound for Tokelau with 25 people aboard, among them a doctor on his way to operate, Tokelau's District Officer, and two children aged 3 and 11. She never arrived. Five weeks later she was found drifting north of Fiji, flooded and listing, with nobody aboard. Her life rafts, logbook, navigation gear and the captain's guns were gone. On deck was a doctor's bag holding a scalpel and blood-stained bandages. A 1956 Commission of Inquiry explained the flooding, but found the fate of the 25 "inexplicable on the evidence." So was it an accident at sea, or a crime?

IN MEMORY
Thomas Henry Miller, Charles R. Simpson, Tekokaa Teeweka, Aberaam Tanini, Henry McCarthy Jr, Penaia Kolio Pedro, Ihaia Kitiona Faraimo, Tagifano Latafoti Lepaio, Haipele Fihaga Himona, Ioakimi Iapeha Apete, Himeti Falaniko Mohe, Tuhaga Hila Elekana, Leota Telepu Kolo, Mohe Maota Peleti, James William Wallwork, George Kendall Williams, Takama Lapana, Tekai Lapana, Liua Noama Rosaiti Faiva, Founuku Uluola Talama, Herbert Hodgkinson, Alfred Denis Parsons, Roger Derrick Pearless, Joseph Hipili Pereira, Tomoniko Teofilo.
Memorials stand at Mulinu'u Point, Apia, and on Fakaofo (2012). The Atafu Tokelau Community Group keeps a page on the families' campaign for formal declarations of death: matauala.org.nz
A NOTE ON SOURCING
This is a historical case. No one was ever charged and no court has found that any crime occurred. The mutiny theory involving Captain Miller and mate Chuck Simpson comes from Miller's friend Capt. S. B. Brown and the writer Robin Maugham (1962). It was never proved, and both men are presumed long dead. The 1956 Commission report (C. C. Marsack) could not be obtained for this episode; its findings are taken from reporting, including by a journalist who covered the inquiry. Criticism of the inquiry (a "suppressed" witness, the Fiji Guardian editor's unpublished report) reaches us through one family memoir and is untested. The "four tons" of missing cargo conflicts with the owners' representatives' 1955 statement that provisions were still aboard. The cash figure comes from reports at the time. The Thelma Todd link is ownership only. Status of death declarations checked 11 Sep 2026.
SOURCES

RNZ, "Call for coronial hearing into Tokelau's Joyita tragedy", 8 Mar 2012
Atafu Tokelau Community Group, "Joyita - Unsolved Mystery" (incl. PMN, 2022) matauala.org.nz
Terry Dunleavy tribute, Savali News, 11 Mar 2012
Rosemary Francis, "A Watery Grave", Pae Koroki, Tauranga City Libraries, 2013
Julie Parsons, Westmeath Independent, 28 Oct 2020; julieparsons.ie
Te Vakai (Tokelau Government), 10th ed., 2012
China Mail, 21 and 23 Nov 1955 (UP wires); Life, 12 Dec 1955; FATE, Apr 1961 (archive.org)
Fiji Times, "Joyita - the ghost ship mystery", 5 May 2014
Martinborough Star, 8 May 2023; Fijivillage, 7 Mar 2012
David G. Wright, Joyita: Solving the Mystery (AUP, 2002); Robin Maugham, The Joyita Mystery (1962); John Harris, Without Trace (1981)

SUPPORT
This episode discusses sudden death and loss at sea. NZ: 1737 (call or text). AU: Lifeline 13 11 14.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.

If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

On a Monday morning in November 1959, Truman Capote found a three hundred word wire story deep inside the New York Times. A wheat farmer, his wife and two of their children had been found bound and shot in their farmhouse in western Kansas. Nothing had been stolen. Capote went to Kansas with Harper Lee, stayed six years, and wrote the book that made true crime respectable. This episode tells both stories at once: what happened to Herb, Bonnie, Nancy and Kenyon Clutter, and what happened to the facts on their way into In Cold Blood. It ends with the two daughters who survived, and the letter they sent to everyone who asked.

IN MEMORY
The Clutters are buried at Valley View Cemetery, Garden City. A shelter at the Kansas State 4-H camp at Rock Springs Ranch, a stained glass window at the First United Methodist Church in Garden City, and the Garden City Co-op building are dedicated to the family. The 1959 murders of Cliff, Christine, Jimmie and Debbie Walker at Osprey, Florida, remain an open investigation with the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office.

A NOTE ON SOURCING
Richard Hickock and Perry Smith were convicted of all four murders on 29 March 1960 and hanged on 14 April 1965. The Kansas Supreme Court never determined which man fired which shot; both were guilty as principals. Hickock's signed statement blamed Smith for all four; Smith's first account had Hickock shooting Nancy and Bonnie, and he later asked to take all four himself but signed neither version. The sequence inside the house is taken from the Kansas Supreme Court's 1961 judgment only. Neither man was ever charged over the Walker murders; the 2013 DNA result was inconclusive and the lab work has since been found contaminated. We have named nobody else. Capote's account of the night is attributed to him wherever it appears. The two versions of the last words are as reported by the wire services and by Capote; Phillip Tompkins's 1966 witnesses are the source for the claim that Capote did not hear them. The 1965 wire text was reached through a secondary source. On Bonnie Clutter's health we report only what her family said in 2005 and what Capote wrote. The daughters' letter and interviews are from the Lawrence Journal-World, 2005. As of September 2026 the KBI investigative file has not been released; the Nye notebooks were published in 2019.

SOURCES
State v. Hickock and Smith, 188 Kan. 473 (1961): law.justia.com/cases/kansas/supreme-court/1961/42-068-0.html
Hickock v. Crouse, 334 F.2d 95 (10th Cir. 1964): law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/334/95/108910/
State ex rel. Schmidt v. Nye, Kansas Court of Appeals, 2019: law.justia.com/cases/kansas/court-of-appeals/2019/118666.html
New York Times, 16 Nov 1959, "Wealthy Farmer, 3 Of Family Slain" (NYT archive)
George Plimpton, "The Story Behind a Nonfiction Novel", NYT, 16 Jan 1966 (NYT archive)
Garden City Telegram, 16 Nov 1959 and 4 Jan 1960; AP, 30 Mar 1960 and 8 Apr 1965
Kansas Memory, Hickock and Smith inmate files and execution witness list: kansasmemory.gov/item/208965
Lawrence Journal-World, "In Cold Blood: A Legacy", 3 to 5 Apr 2005 (Patrick Smith, Melissa Lee, Van Jensen)
Kevin Helliker, Wall Street Journal, 8 Feb 2013, and On the Media, 15 Feb 2013
Phillip K. Tompkins, "In Cold Fact", Esquire, June 1966; Purdue oral history, 2015
Casey Cep, Furious Hours (2019); Gerald Clarke, Capote (1988); Too Brief a Treat (2004)
Tampa Bay Times / CBS News, 6 Feb 2023, and ABC News, 14 Aug 2013, on the Walker case

SUPPORT
This episode describes the murder of a family including two children, and discusses capital punishment. If you need to talk to someone: New Zealand, call or text 1737. Australia, Lifeline 13 11 14.
While some dramatic license is taken during the retelling of these stories, but you can be sure that these true crime stories are all based 100% on real events and facts.

If you would like to suggest a case, you can message us via our website at www.brevityplus.com
Subscribers get ad free listening to The Veil and all of our podcasts. Please consider subscribing to support our work.
This podcast is researched, and written by the Brevity Studios team using AI tools, and is narrated in its entirety by - Ryan Wolf.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.