I've been meaning to pick up KILLING JODIE since a friend, who knows her True Crime mentioned the book in glowing terms. I can see what she meant. This book probably told me more about the frustrations of investigating crimes and illustrated the dedication of members of Police more than any other True Crime book I've read in a while. It also provides a very poignant reminder that murder can devastate the lives of more than just the immediate victim(s).
The book is the story of the investigation into the activities of one Daryl Suckling. Accused of rape and kidnap, the tale that unfolds around Suckling's seeming luck in evading conviction is breathtaking (and not in a good way). The way that the original investigators stayed with the fate of Jodie Larcombe for as long as they did really was a profoundly reassuring aspect of this book. Extremely well written, the author, Janet Fife-Yeomans tells the story, she doesn't overtly editorialise, there's no overarching sign of her own voice in the book. The story is told carefully and sensitively, informatively and illustratively without the need to direct a reader's conclusions, emotions or reactions. The events do that perfectly well for themselves.
Killing Jodie
When women looked at him, what they saw was a little old man who couldn't possible hurt them . . .
By the time he was arrested for the murder of Jodie Larcombe in the late 1980s, Daryl Suckling had escaped conviction more then once for his brutal assault 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 on Suckling as he stalked his next victim.
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