Organised crime in Australia doesn't just exist on our television screens. The real world of serious crime operates every day and in every state of the country. It is a multi-billion dollar business and at its core are the drug trade and a world of secrecy and self-protection where intimidation and violence are used as the first and only resort.Smack Express takes us deep into this world and unravels the web of criminal connections that are at the heart of the Australian underworld...

Organised crime in Australia is more reckless and more violent than ever before. Controlled by a new wave of gangland bosses, it has broken old taboos and formed alliances that would have once been unthinkable. So who now holds the power?There are the Middle Eastern gangs whose core business is drugs, the sale and stockpiling of dangerous weapons, extortion and large-scale fraud; the outlaw motorcycle gangs with their fortified club houses and amphetamine labs; and the Calabrian Ma...

'I've cheated, lied and deceived people. I've ruined marriages, ruined lives, ruined relationships, ruined the health of others, not to mention my own.'What is it really like to live as an undercover cop? Joe and Jessie joined the NSW Police believing they could make a difference, but their whole life became a lie. They were cops pretending to be crooks. And their targets? Drug dealers, criminal gangs and, worst of all, bent police.Surviving on deceit and gut instinct, Joe ...

‘Each year at least $10 billion is laundered in and through Australia. Much of this money is derived from illicit drugs.’ Hooked on the limitless profits of the drug trade, organised crime has grown so powerful that it now poses a major threat to Australia’s national security. Clive Small and Tom Gilling show how Australian crime gangs, in partnership with violent international syndicates, have exploited lax law enforcement and corruption on the nation’s waterfront to import narcotics on a...

The Calabrian Mafia in Australia is alive and well. This is the first time its real story in this country has ever been told. The Calabrian mafia is Australia's oldest, largest and most ruthless crime syndicate, trafficking drugs worth billions of dollars and laundering the proceeds through sophisticated international networks. Enforcing discipline with age-old tools of violence and intimidation, the Calabrians have been responsible for nearly 40 murders in Australia since the mid-1970s an...

Milat - the serial killer who preyed on young hitchhikers. The backpackers - the innocent victims of a brutal murderer. Belanglo - a place that became synonymous with pure evil. It was the biggest and most complex manhunt in Australian history, an investigation that gripped a nation. Behind the many false leads and dead ends, precious clues emerged that pointed to one man. This is the story of how Ivan Milat was caught. Clive Small takes us inside the operation he led as his team painstaki...

A true insider's story of the Backpacker Murders from the detective who led the team that arrested Ivan Milat.Milat - the serial killer who preyed on young hitchhikers. The backpackers - the innocent victims of a brutal murderer. Belanglo - a place that became synonymous with pure evil.It was the biggest and most complex manhunt in Australian history, an investigation that gripped a nation. Behind the many false leads and dead ends, precious clues emerged t...

At thirteen, Jim McNeil quit school for good. At fourteen, he started an affair with a brothel madam and was introduced to Melbourne's underworld. Despite his love of reading and philosophy, McNeil relished his life among thugs, thieves and whores, becoming one of the city's most violent criminals.In 1967, having jumped bail and fled to New South Wales, 32-year-old McNeil shot a policeman during an armed robbery. He was convicted and began a seventeen-year prison sentence, leaving b...

An insider look into the workings of Melbourne's famous crime family, from Australia's most notorious criminal lawyer - including stories on Lewis and Jason Moran, the central crime figures in Melbourne's gangland killings.This chapter ebook is an extract from In Any Case, a compelling blue-chip collection of Fraser's fascinating stories of people he has defended over the years as well as his own battles with the law, and himself.

How did a father with no criminal history come to be on trial for the brutal murder of his wife?It began with a phone call to Brisbane police on 20 April 2012. Allison, wife of real estate agent Gerard Baden-Clay, was missing.When investigating officers arrived at the family home, in one of the city’s wealthiest suburbs, a neatly dressed Gerard was about to send the couple’s three daughters off to school.Scratches on his face were shaving cuts, he t...

Belinda Neil lived and breathed her high–octane job. She relished her roles as a homicide investigator and hostage negotiator with the NSW police force, but she never knew what her work day might bring. She could be investigating brutal murders such as the De Gruchy killings or , in her negotiator role, persuading the murderous and suicidal to drop their weapons., stop terrorising their families, step back from the ledge.It was hardly surprising that over time the horrors she saw b...

One man. One bike. A whole lotta trouble. MEET SLIM. He bought his first motorcycle, a Bridgestone 175 cc, at age sixteen in 1968. Since then, he's been in and out of trouble (mainly in) and experienced the thrills and perils of riding on the highway. He's been a guest inside some of Australia's toughest jails where he learned a lifetime's worth of human behaviour and handy life skills, such as how not to do an armed hold-up. Never one to shy from a punch or retreat from a fight, Slim is a...