Re-Issue: Meet the WAGS - #178

**Rochelle Jackson** (0:00)
He had convictions for extortion, assault, imprisonment, armed robbery, arson, drug trafficking and threats to kill. And their marriage lasted six years.

**Meshel Laurie** (0:14)
This is Australian True Crime with Meshel Laurie. In speaking to Pete and Belinda Bates recently about their relationship, which started in jail, I frequently mentioned an earlier episode of Australian True Crime about women who hadn't had great experiences marrying offenders. I thought we should reissue that episode so you can hear for yourself why it kept popping into my mind.
This is an interview with author and journalist Rochelle Jackson about her book Partners in Crime. This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, the Wurundjeri Woi Wurrung people of the Kulin Nation. And a warning, this episode of the podcast contains graphic prescriptions of violence.

**Rochelle Jackson** (1:00)
I'm a journalist that's come probably through the investigative journalist background. I mean, I've worked, you know, for the investigators on Channel 2 and I worked on Channel 7 Previously, I've worked as a television producer and I've done a lot of producing and always worked in crime and police stories. So I suppose that's really what I've been doing. I'm a journalist who's always specialised in true crime and my father was a chief superintendent in Victoria Police and so I suppose to a certain extent, the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree. I started writing books. Initially, I had made contact with Billy the Texan, Lonely. Of course, he was a very infamous figure in Melbourne's Docklands during the 1950s right up to about the 1970s.
So I started sort of getting involved and I wrote his biography, which was an absolute experience and yeah, he was someone who loved the Good Feet of Rabbits and his favorite movie was On the Waterfront with Marlon Brando and he was a ballroom dancer and he's also a convicted killer with an enormous list of priors to his name. And I suppose what sort of got me intrigued was I started to really look at what created him, you know, the depression created him to a certain extent. There was a lot of police interesting occurings or police brutality in those days. And he was picked on from a very early day and it created the person that he became. And I suppose out of that, after I published Billy's book, I then started working with probably one of the best forensic psychologists in the business, by the name of Ian Joblin.
We were focused on about eight specific individuals. And my second book, Inside Their Minds, I went around Australia interviewing all these people's relations. So Ivan Molat's family members, Martin Bryant's mother, Hal Williams' family, and then brought all those interviews back and worked with the forensic psychologist, interviewed him about what created these people. So I suppose I've always had an investigative approach to what I've done, but I've also really learned, you've got to be the reader's eyes and ears, for a certain extent. You've got to lead them along that path. So, you know, when I'm writing about one of the Molat brothers, I'll write about going down into his ship, because that was the location for him. That was his house. And that was where he kept all his licensed guns in these big steel-grade lockers underneath the house. You know, I write about those things, and I draw a picture for the reader, because they haven't been there, so you've got to take them there, you know?
And then this third book, I decided I met Sylvia Bruno. She was married to Nicolai the Bulgarian, the Rediff, who was one of the gangsters in the gangland wars. And I met her in 2009, and she really wanted me to write her story. And I just thought about it for a while, and I thought, you know, there's enough women here that I could certainly, you know, I really want to hear their truth. I want to hear their story. We all get told certain things. We always get told about these women's lives, and they're referred to at the bottom of a paragraph about their partners. But I thought, well, I want to hear their story. There's a lot of stereotyping. There's a lot of, oh, you know, they just like bad men and they're gangsters, moles and all. Well, that's actually inaccurate. There's a whole range of complex phrases for white-arsed women with those men. And so, Partners in Crime, my third book, that was how that emerged.
I suppose probably one of the most interesting ones for me, and certainly one of the most curious and complex was Tanya Herman.