This year I have read true crime books about crooks, books about crimes and books about the personalities involved, but this is the first book I've read that tells the story from, the perspective of the investigating officers.
KILLING JODIE is an in-depth nuts-and bolts look at the investigation. Because there was no body, not only did the detectives have to collect evidence proving the Suckling had commited murder, they also had to discount the inevitable claims that Jodie was still alive.
The author, Janet Fife-Yeomans became intrigued with the case when covering the story for The Australian newspaper. In her acknowledgements she states that "I have tried to take the reader inside the investigation so the evidence unfolds for the reader as it did for the police" and she has succeeded. KILLING JODIE reads like a police procedural. We share the ups and downs of the case with the investigating officers who refused to let go, the relationships formed with Jodie's family and other witnesses during the case and the impact it had on all their lives.
Fife-Yeomans had the co-operation of both police and family in writing KILLING JODIE and has written it in such a way that it is almost impossible not to become emotionally involved while reading the book.
KILLING JODIE is a must-read for true crime devotees. If you're not, perhaps this book will change your mind.
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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