Mapping Evil with Mike King

Touching down in Los Angeles after a fairly uneventful 14-hour flight from Australia, criminal profiler Mike King is tired but happy to be home after a gruelling fortnight of back-to-back meetings, events, and media engagements.

As he makes his way through LAX, his phone rings. On the other end the caller says: "I listened to your interview on the news. My father killed Betty Shanks".

In the explosive final episode of Mapping Evil, Mike and Tory introduce listeners to Ken and his story. It’s a story Ken has waited seven decades to tell and it’s difficult to hear.

Is Ken a witness to a murderer’s confession, or the victim of an unspeakably cruel father who used the savage murder of Betty Shanks to terrorise his young son?

And does an old, weathered briefcase, full of photos, notes, letters and other seemingly innocuous artefacts hold the secret to ‘Who killed Betty Shanks?’

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Mapping Evil is hosted by award-winning journalist Tory Shepherd, featuring renowned criminal profiler, cold case specialist, and crime mapping master – Mike King. Offering listeners a look at real crimes through an experienced investigator’s eye, Mapping Evil takes you on a journey into the minds of predators and the lives of those tasked with bringing them to justice.

MappingEvil.com

Exploring where cruelty blooms

Join Mike King and Tory Shepherd as they unpack the crimes of two of the most malevolent human beings to ever draw breath: Utah’s Blaine Hogge Nelson – suspected of 70 to 80 rapes across 11 states – and Australia’s own Boogieman, Mr Cruel.

Walk with King as he dramatically retraces the steps of both Nelson and Cruel – exploring what the geography of their crimes truly reveals about these sadistic serial predators.

Understand the difference today’s crime analytics techniques and cutting-edge technology could have made to investigators during the predators’ reign of terror.

And be completely creeped out when Mike shares the super-helpful tips given to him by Blaine Hogge Nelson himself on how to limit your chance of becoming a victim.

Don’t miss this episode of Mapping Evil with Mike King...

“...there's this weird psychology in prisoners or in inmates, specifically in serial predators. They want a legacy. Some of those people, the legacy is to be the most prolific serial predator known to man.”

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Mapping Evil is hosted by award-winning journalist Tory Shepherd, featuring renowned criminal profiler, cold case specialist, and crime mapping master – Mike King. Offering listeners a look at real crimes through an experienced investigator’s eye, Mapping Evil takes you on a journey into the minds of predators and the lives of those tasked with bringing them to justice.

Mapping precious last steps

Oliver Ben Gerrish is every parent’s worst nightmare – charismatic and cunning, he represents the most dangerous of serial predators.

By the end of his reign of terror, ‘Big Ben’ as he came to be known, had irreparably damaged the lives of more than 550 children and their families.

In this episode, Mike and Tory discuss the key learnings from studying Gerrish’s modus operandi. Mike walks through the boldest of Gerrish’s crimes, painting a terrifying picture of how easily a skilled predator can gain the trust of otherwise protective parents.

Tory and Mike then explore the cold case disappearance of 13-year-old Melbourne schoolgirl Bung Siriboon – who simply vanished on the short ten-minute walk from her house to her school.

Mike challenges the rumour suggesting contacts close to home were responsible for Bung’s disappearance, instead exploring the theory that at some point between 8.00am and 8.30am on 2 June, 2011 – along Harcourt Road, Boronia – Bung came face-to-face with a monster like Gerrish.

"He was really a... patient predatory paedophile. Once he selected his preferred targets, he would spend weeks, literally weeks grooming not only the child, but the child's parents.”

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Mapping Evil is hosted by award-winning journalist Tory Shepherd, featuring renowned criminal profiler, cold case specialist, and crime mapping master – Mike King. Offering listeners a look at real crimes through an experienced investigator’s eye, Mapping Evil takes you on a journey into the minds of predators and the lives of those tasked with bringing them to justice.

MappingEvil.com

Exploring where all is lost.

When married mother of two Suzanne Morphew went missing from her Colorado home on Mother’s Day 2020, it appeared as if she had simply vanished off the face of the earth.

Together with her anxious family, Mike King mobilised an army of 700 volunteers, all equipped with cutting-edge tracking technology, to scour and map more than 6,500 linear miles of remote and rugged terrain surrounding the Morphew’s Salida property.

In this episode, Mike and Tory take a closer look at the mysterious disappearance of Suzanne Morphew. They explore the four theories of her fate – as offered by her husband – and examine whether this loving mother of two young girls fell afoul of one of nature’s wildest and most merciless predators... or one closer to home.

Tory then invites Mike to consider how he would approach the enduring mystery surrounding the disappearance of Adelaide’s Beaumont children, who – like Suzanne Morphew – simply vanished on Australia Day, 55 years earlier.

Listen as the ever-so-cool King holds true to his training, to push aside the notoriety of the Beaumont children case, and the decades of supposition, innuendo and rumour – to offer investigators a technology-led lifeline to better understand the 1966 crime scene.

“...sometimes that's all we have in these kinds of investigations – the victimology and what a normal day was like for them, what they would have generally done. We have to build our theories upon evidence."

The man behind the map

In this special bonus episode of Mapping Evil with Mike King, award-winning journalist Tory Shepherd takes a closer look at the man behind the map. With a little encouragement from Tory, Mike delves deep into his past, sharing intimate details of the stories that have shaped his life and career.

From a near fatal accident during the earliest days of his time on the force, to his encounters with a sitting president and some of America’s most malevolent serial killers – Mike reveals the twists and turns of a career that reads more like a Hollywood script than a resume. His walk down memory lane takes Mike back over the most defining cold cases of his career, venturing deep into the heart of America’s ‘Wild Wild West’ and all the way back to the time of Tutankhamen.

Join Tory as she shares some of the more candid moments captured with Mike throughout Season One of Mapping Evil.

“And we should not make any mistakes about this. These people that kill people – it's hard to kill someone and yet they will continue to do it. And when they fail or fall short or the victim lives, they have to return back to their confines and work out in their mind, that fantasy, figure out what they did wrong and solve it the next time.”

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Mapping Evil is hosted by award-winning journalist Tory Shepherd, featuring renowned criminal profiler, cold case specialist, and crime mapping master – Mike King. Offering listeners a look at real crimes through an experienced investigator’s eye, Mapping Evil takes you on a journey into the minds of predators and the lives of those tasked with bringing them to justice.