Dead Bodies Podcast

Would you eat human flesh? A man who had his leg amputated after a motorcycle accident made it into fajita tacos and served it to his friends. Ruth Snyder was sent to the electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in 1928, and the image of her dead body was plastered on the front page of the New York Daily News. The case changed forever the protocols for media at executions.

Neil Gordon Wilson pretended to be a fish. People in his home town of Horsham in Victoria accepted his quirky ways, but were shocked when his dead body was found in a paddock in 1995. Maria Korp was strangled by her husband Joe Korp’s lover Tania Herman, put into the boot of a car and abandoned in Melbourne in 2005, in what became known as The Body In The Boot case. Herman was jailed, and Joe Korp met his own fate.

The Bon Secours Mother and Baby Home was run by Catholic nuns in Tuam, County Galway, in Ireland, from 1925 to 1961. Dee Dee looks at the ongoing investigation into a mass burial chamber found on the site of the home, and the fate of hundreds of babies and children who lived and died at Tuam. The rich and famous spend millions of dollars on a final goodbye to the world. Sharnelle looks at the world’s most expensive funerals.

James Gargasoulas murdered six pedestrians and injured another 27 when he sped his car along a footpath in Bourke Street, Melbourne, in 2017. After covering his trial, Sharnelle recounts the horror of his actions. George Melville was sentenced to hang for his part in one of Australia’s biggest robberies in 1853. His wife requested his body after his death and put it on public display in the middle of Melbourne. We speak to James, a funeral director, who first saw a dead body when he was four years old.

Ned Kelly was a notorious Irish-Australian outlaw. He killed three police officers and was hanged in 1880, and buried close to another vile murderer, Frederick Deeming, who was once suspected of being Jack The Ripper. The hunt for the skulls of both men continues to this day. Movie star Charlie Chaplin died in 1978 at the age of 88, and was buried near his home in Switzerland. But not for long. Grave robbers stole his corpse and demanded a ransom from his wife. They didn’t count on Oona being quite so sassy.

Funerals take many forms, but in Taiwan it’s next level, with strippers being called in to send dead bodies off with a thrill. In 1935 a shark at the Coogee Aquarium in Sydney vomited up a human arm, which triggered the bizarre case of the murder of former boxer Jimmy Smith. Sharnelle finally reveals where she would hide a dead body.

Singer songwriter Gram Parsons was loved by his friends in the music industry. But when he died of a drug overdose in September 1973 at Joshua Tree in California, their efforts to carry out his wishes for his dead body went horribly wrong. We look at what happens to the bodies of people who die on an aeroplane.

Sharnelle, who doesn’t believe in ghosts - has a bizarre night in a Florida hotel room while covering Hurricane Michael. Dee Dee looks into the disappearance of Ahmet Hagune in Cyprus in 1974, and the fig tree growing out of a cave that led to the discovery of his body.

On November 18, 1978, more than 900 devotees of cult leader Jim Jones died at The Peoples Temple compound in Guyana. On the eve of the 40th anniversary of the horror, we look back at what happened, and the extraordinarily gruesome task that faced those tasked with repatriating the dead. And we share some feedback on unusual burial customs.

Could you sleep with a dead body? A number of people have done that without actually realising. Dee Dee looks at a number of cases where dead bodies have been found under motel beds. Sharnelle is concerned that she may have inadvertently helped someone commit a crime. We talk to Caitie who worked as a nursing assistant and saw her first dead body when she was 19. She sat with a man as he died, but was also on alert for the return of a person who had already tried to murder him. Her story is both terrifying and touching.

Sharnelle tells the story of Sofina Nikat, a depressed woman who killed her baby at a park in Melbourne's north-east because she thought her daughter was "possessed". With so many Dead Bodies listeners guessing that Sharnelle’s hiding spot for a dead body would be a drain, Dee Dee remembers a 6 year old girl named Sheree Beasley whose body was found in a drain on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula in 1991.

Sharnelle looks at the families of people who died in the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Centre, and the importance of being reunited with the remains of their loved ones. Some are still waiting today, 17 years after the Twin Towers fell. Dee Dee looks at one of Australia’s worst mass murders that became known as the bodies in the barrels. John Bunting, Robert Wagner, and James Vlassakis killed 12 people between August 1992 and May 1999, in South Australia, and hid several of their bodies in a disused bank in Snowtown. Pat has recently retired after 41 years as a gravedigger. He gives us an insight into his daily work with the dead.

Sharnelle has the disturbing story of a woman who woke up in refrigerated storage in the morgue. Can you bury a body in your backyard? Dee Dee looks whether a do-it-yourself burial is legal, and where you’re allowed to sprinkle cremated remains of your loved ones . Photographer Arthur Fellig’s ability to arrive at a crime scene in New York in the 1930’s and 40’s just as the cops did was so uncanny that he renamed himself “Weegee,” claiming that he functioned as a human Ouija board. Weegee was famous for his graphic photos of dead bodies, as well as the city itself. The girls talk to Christopher Bonanos, author of book Flash: The Making of Weegee The Famous, about the man now regarded as an innovator and a pioneer, an artist as well as a newsman, whose photographs are among most powerful images of urban existence ever made.

Thousands of people have been killed as a result of the Mexican drug wars, and at least 300 bodies were disposed of by a man named Santiago Meza Lopez who was known as The Stewmaker. Sharnelle looks at people who have had quirky requests for their own burials, and reveals her breakdown after reporting on the murder trial of Adrian Bayley, who killed Jill Meagher in Brunswick in 2012. Bassmah and Sabrina are back with more guesses to where to hide hide a dead body

Jean Stevens didn’t want to live without her late husband and her twin, so she didn’t. Sharnelle looks at how she kept their bodies in her house. Dee Dee talks about the lucrative body snatching trade in the early 1800’s, and the infamous pair Burke and Hare who killed 16 people to sell their bodies to a medical school for dissection. We hear from a listener who had a close call with a cannibal.

Emmett Till was just 14 years old in 1955 when his mutilated body was pulled from the Tallahatchie River in Tennessee. His mother insisted on his brutalised body being shown in an open casket, to expose the evil of his racially-motivated murder, which played a crucial role in improving the human rights of African Americans. Dee Dee tells the story of “The Boy Who Whistled”. Sharnelle looks at some bizarre wills left behind by the dead. The girls talk to Catherine, who tagged along with her room-mate when he went to work as an undertaker.

Sharnelle looks at German photographer Walter Schels who was terrified of death, but conquered his fear by taking a series of portraits of people before and on the day they died. Dee Dee cover the discovering in 1954 of a naked, battered body of a woman, found laying against rocks in Boulder, Colorado. It was more than 50 years before the woman known as Boulder Jane Doe was formally identified. And who killed her? Martha Needle was one of only five women ever hanged in Victoria’s history, convicted of the murder of her brother-in-law, and suspected of killing many more, including her own husband and children. Author Dr Brian Williams joins the girls to share details from his new book, Martha Needle

We asked “Have you ever seen a dead body?”, and it seems many people have. In this episode Sharnelle and Dee Dee share stories of dead bodies from listeners, including the fascinating Memento Mori: photographs of the dead that were taken in Victorian days. The girls talks to certified dog trainer Craig Murray, who specialises in handling cadaver dogs that search for dead bodies. He talks about his incredible work including finding a human bone that was thousands of years old, and his crucial role with police investigating the backpacker murders in the Belanglo State Forest.

Funerals are distressing enough, and Sharnelle has found one that left mourners distressed when the body came out of the coffin. Dee Dee looks at Leonarda Cianciulli who was known as the Correggio soap-maker. She boiled the bodies of her victims to make soap, and in some cases, biscuits. Channel Seven reporter Michael Scanlan shares the moving story of his moment with death, that of his beloved sister Jes.

Dee Dee thinks she has finally worked out where Sharnelle would hide a dead body. And she looks into the gruesome legend of Sweeney Todd. Sharnelle discusses juries and the horrors that they have to view during a murder trial. The girls speak to Professor Andrew Heggie, who says the first time he saw a dead body, there was a whole room full of them.