As Detective Superintendent in charge of Operations at the Criminal Investigations Branch, Ron Stephenson was responsible for the investigation of all major crime in New South Wales. In The Scent of a Crime, Ron relives some of those investigations. The crimes are bizarre, macabre, violent and sad. They are all true.
Ron recounts police investigations into the car bombing of the Hakoah Club in Sydney, the ice-pick murders by serial killer Paul Mason, the murder of bookmaker Lloyd Tidmarsh, the shooting of Edward ‘Jockey’ Smith and the poisoning of tenants by a landlady in Camperdown.
The investigations took place before the introduction of DNA testing, laser fingerprinting and police databases. The crimes were solved ‘the old way’, by doggedness, suspicion, intuition and the odd informant.