Bondi Badlands, from The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, investigates a series of murders and mysterious disappearances that happened on the southern headland at Sydney's Bondi Beach in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

When a high profile TV newsreader and weatherman disappeared on the Bondi cliff tops on a frigid winter's night in July 1989, it received nationwide news coverage but such a shoddy police investigation that links would not be drawn to a series of other murders at Bondi and across Sydney at the time.

More than a decade later, one police investigator would join the dots, revealing a dark mosaic of murder that would keep unfolding to this day. Subscribe now wherever you get your podcasts.

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Ahead of the first episode of Bondi Badlands this week, listen to host and Good Weekend deputy editor Greg Callaghan in conversation with Good Weekend editor Katrina Strickland about the series and a special preview of what to expect.

For over 15 years, Greg Callaghan has been writing about the murders of gay men at the clifftops on the southern headland of Sydney's Bondi. This was the epicentre of a wave of gay hate killings that spread across Sydney at the time. Now Callaghan hosts a podcast which delves into the factors behind this war on gay men and why these murders continue to reverberate as cold cases.

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On a freezing night in July 1989, Ross Warren, a newsreader from WIN TV in Wollongong, NSW, vanishes into thin air on the southern headland at Sydney’s Bondi. After a brief investigation, the case lies dormant for years until a detective at Paddington police station, moved by a bundle of letters from Ross Warren’s mother, picks up the case – and discovers a pattern of horrific violence on the headland.

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