A Black Day for Society

The clock is ticking and psychopath Vince O'Dempsey, after so many decades of freedom, is finally held accountable for murder. Justice may be served in the McCulkin case, but countless questions remain unanswered. What of the string of missing persons - from prostitutes and low-level criminals to drug crop cooks, female backpackers and even a four-year-old child - that police think may be linked to Vince? With Vince in his 80s, it's a race against time for cold case detectives to resolve these mysteries. And finally, have we found Vince's private graveyard, and the last resting place of Barbara, Vicki and Leanne McCulkin?

Episode 8: As homicide detectives get closer to arresting Vince, he disappears deep into the Australian bush, living off the land, hiding in caves and dug-outs in and around Ghost Gate Road. Vince is finally captured and charged with the McCulkin murders, as is his accomplice Shorty Dubois. But it's still a long road to a guilty verdict, and like a trapped wild animal, Vince starts making plans to eliminate some of the witnesses who plan to testify against him.

Episode 7: Vince and his de facto, Di Pritchard, are like Australia's version of Bonnie and Clyde, keeping one step ahead of the police for years after the McCulkin triple murder. Meanwhile, more details emerge of people around Vince who have vanished. After an inquest recommends that Vince be charged with the murders, the Queensland Government declines to pursue the case in court and, once again, Vince is set free. Then forty years to that day after the McCulkin killings, two tenacious detectives decide to crack the cold case once and for all, and they set their sights on Vince.

Episode 6: Stunning revelations emerge about the possible location of Vince's almost mythical private graveyard, where he has buried his victims and visits them when it takes his fancy. Meanwhile, Vince goes on the run after the McCulkin murders and unbelievably plots another hideous multiple murder. This time he wants the girls - who saw him and his mate Shorty with the McCulkins before they disappeared in Dorchester Street - liquidated.

Episode 5: In the aftermath of the Whiskey tragedy, to that point Australia's worst mass murder, two men are arrested and charged, but did police get all of the perpetrators? Shocking new details emerge about the planning behind the Whiskey attack, and the possible involvement of corrupt police and organised crime. And one of the country's most notorious police officers lets slip a tantalising clue about Vince and the firebombing. Within 10 months of the blaze, suburban mother Barbara McCulkin and her two young daughters are taken into bushland outside Warwick and brutally murdered and raped. Why? Did Barbara and the girls die because she knew the truth behind the Whiskey?

Episode 4: Vince organises an arson attack on a Brisbane city restaurant for top-level gangsters as part of an insurance scam. Soon after police begin hearing whispers on the street about the pending firebombing on a nightclub. In the early hours of March 8, 1973, the Whiskey Au Go Go nightclub is attacked, killing 15 innocent people. Survivors tell of the chaos and mayhem inside the club during that horrific moment. And the question remains - was Vince O'Dempsey behind the Whiskey mass murder?

Episode 3: In the early 1970s, after several stretches in prison for assault, possession of a handgun and robbery, Vince is a free man. A monster is on the loose. He makes powerful connections with the Sydney underworld and is a gunman for hire. He also hooks up with a Brisbane criminal outfit called the Clockwork Orange Gang. Secretly, however, he commits the cardinal sin for a crook. He goes into business with corrupt police.

Episode 2: Vince becomes a full-blown Bodgie - a name for the anti-authoritarian youth cult inspired by Hollywood movies like The Wild One with Marlon Brando - in his late teens, and his violence escalates. By the early 1960s he is dealing in marijuana, running prostitutes out of a Warwick hotel, and has become a dangerous sexual predator. He finally pushes the envelope too far and earns a lengthy stint in prison. On his release, his attempt to stay on the straight and narrow doesn't last long, and he's back in jail. After this stretch, he soon becomes the most feared gangster in the Australian underworld.

Episode 1: In the small country town of Warwick in Queensland, Australia, a child psychopath, local Vince O'Dempsey, sets out on the long road to mass murder. He terrorises this quiet farming community, dropping out of school, spending time in a mental institution, then torturing animals and sexually assaulting other children. Author and journalist Matthew Condon, who has worked on the O'Dempsey case for ten years, investigates the early years of Australia's worst serial killer.

Through time psychopaths have lived amongst us. But there are psychopaths and then there is Australia's Vince O'Dempsey. Currently in prison for life for three murders, and charged with another, he has self-confessed to thirty-three killings. On the serial killer pop charts thirty-three victims puts him way above the Milwaukee cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, on a level-pegging with the Killer Clown, John Wayne Gacy, and just a fraction behind the infamous Ted Bundy. In this podcast series, author and journalist Matthew Condon, pieces together the story of his victims over half a century. We talk to men and women who were close to him - family, workmates, fellow gangsters - and survived his evil. Gang members and criminals who worked shoulder to shoulder with Vince finally speak out about the killer in their midst. And we will search deep into wild bushland for that unholiest of Grails - Vince O'Dempsey's mythical private graveyard, where his many victims rest. Episode 1 of Ghost Gate Road will launch in November 2020.