Somebody whose True Crime reading I follow closely mentioned this book ages ago and I've been meaning to pick it up ever since then.
From the Blurb:
By the time he was arrested for the murder of Jodie Larcombe in the late 1980s, Daryl Suckling had escaped conviction more than once for his brutal assaults on vulnerable young women. But without Jodie's body, prosecutors struggled to prove a homicide, and once again he was allowed to walk free.
Unwilling to give up, two Sydney policemen spent nearly a decade fighting to bring the psychopathic killer to justice. Frustrated by legal obstacles and sheer bad luck, one officer resigned in disgust, but detectives eventually closed in on Suckling as he stalked his next victim.
Daryl Suckling's arrest in remote NSW in the late 1980s revealed his disturbing connections with the disappearance of Jodie Larcombe from Melbourne. Charged with the murder of Jodie, then a sex worker on St Kilda's streets, Suckling was allowed to walk free, as police investigators struggled to prove a homicide without a body. He'd previously escaped conviction more than once after brutally abducting several women.
Frustrated by legal obstacles and bad luck, one officer resigned from the force in disgust, but the case was never forgotten and investigators closed in as Suckling stalked his next victim. The grisly murder linked St Kilda with the lonely, windswept sandhills of the NSW outback near Mildura, and brought two hardened policemen close to a brave family pushed to breaking point - in the end, it was too much for Jodie's mother, who committed suicide when Suckling appealed his eventual conviction.
Suckling is now one of 15 prisoners serving life in NSW, never to be released.