Cirrus@Austlit

'Journalist Rachael Brown talks about the cold-case investigation of the 1980 murder of Melbourne bookseller Maria James, as featured in her award-winning ABC podcast, Trace. This is a live recording from our event.' (Production summary)

'Every cop has a case that dug its claws in and would not let go. For veteran detective Ron Iddles, it was his very first homicide case—the 1980 murder of single mother Maria James at the back of her bookshop. He never managed to solve it, and it still hurts like hell.

Maria’s two sons, Mark and Adam, have lived in a holding pattern longer than Rachael Brown has been alive. When the investigative journalist learned that a crucial witness’s evidence had never seen daylight, the case would start to consume her—just as it had the detective nearly four decades prior—so she asked for his blessing, and that of the James brothers, to review Maria's case.

In her exhaustive and exhausting 16-month investigation for the podcast Trace, Rachael reviewed initial suspects, found one of her own, and uncovered devastating revelations about a forensic bungle and possible conspiracies that led to calls for the coroner to hold a new inquest.

This is a mesmerizing account, as Rachael traces back through her investigation—one that blew the dust off a 38-year-old cold case, and gave a voice to the forgotten and the abused.'

Source: Publisher's blurb.

'On a winter morning in June 1980, Maria James turned to her son Mark and looked him in the eyes.

"She said to me, 'if anything happens to me, look after your brother.'"

Later that day she was found stabbed to death at the back of her suburban Melbourne bookshop, where she lived with her two boys.

Was it a scorned lover? A random stranger? Or was the murder tied up in the sins of the Catholic Church?

Presented by ABC investigative reporter, Rachael Brown, Trace sifts through evidence to see whether police missed anything at the time, revisits suspects, and finds a new one of its own.

The story is propelled by three men who've refused to give up hope Maria's killer will be found; her two sons, Mark and Adam James, and one of Australia's best-known detectives, Ron Iddles. Ron recently hung up his boots with a Bradmanesque strike rate, but this case — his first — well, he’s never really let it go.

"Someone knows who killed Maria James," says Iddles. "The answer’s always in the file.'

Source: ABC.