NEW PODCAST: Dear Rachelle

NEW PODCAST: Dear Rachelle

Author: Daily Telegraph April 4, 2025 Duration: 3:27

A killer is on the loose in an Australian country town.

Excited for the June long weekend, bubbly 23-year-old Rachelle Childs leaves work, calls her sister, and is dead within hours. Her burning, partially naked body is found nine hours later in bushland on a lonely coastal road. Her killer has never been caught.

Now innocent people, once too afraid to speak, are breaking their silence.

If you’re looking for your next true crime podcast obsession, search out Dear Rachelle.

An unstoppable cold case team is reinvestigating and uncovering damning new evidence. Could this finally be the break the family needs?

Dear Rachelle is hosted and investigated by journalist Ashlea Hansen, who teams up with retired detective and renowned cold case specialist Damian Loone.

The first episode of Dear Rachelle is now available on all podcast platforms. If you’re looking for your next true crime podcast binge and you want to be first to hear what’s next, visit dearrachelle.com.au - your News Corp Australia subscription grants you access to podcast episodes three weeks before everyone else, as well as exclusive access to videos, interactive evidence, behind-the-scenes content, and more.

Dear Rachelle is a podcast from True Crime Australia.

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.


There’s a particular kind of light that emerges from the darkest moments, and Mates Under Fire is a series dedicated to capturing exactly that. From the Daily Telegraph, this podcast immerses you in the heart of Malua Bay, a coastal community in southern New South Wales that faced an unprecedented bush fire season. Rather than a distant news report, each episode is built from the ground up through the voices of those who lived it. You’ll sit with residents as they recount the harrowing split-second decisions made for survival, and you’ll walk alongside the volunteers who fought the flames even as their own homes were threatened. The narrative often turns to the profound, everyday heroism that defines recovery-like the young surf lifesaver whose instincts cleared a crowded beach, or the countless quiet acts of kindness that began long before the smoke cleared. This isn't just about the disaster itself, but about the human infrastructure of courage and community that holds a town together. Tune in for an intimate, sound-rich portrait of resilience, where stories of bravery and loss are told not as headlines, but as personal testimony from neighbors who became each other’s lifelines.
Author: Language: en-us Episodes: 8

Mates Under Fire
Podcast Episodes
Rebuilding [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 16:12
Has COVID-19 stopped the rebuilding after the bushfires? Dick Adams was a deputy police commissioner but he says he has never seen a disaster of this scale and it is his job to fix the coast. He is a recovery coordinator…
Kindness [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 30:01
Heroes are easy to find in Malua Bay. Raj Gupta is a lifesaver. Too humble to talk about his own fire losses, he would rather talk about the patients who come to his Malua Bay pharmacy. He opened it in the wake of the fi…
Trauma [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 18:01
Amid the horror, one thing is sure in Malua Bay. No one will be the same. We speak to Lifeline about how they are helping people come to terms with the trauma. Post traumatic stress is already apparent in many who stared…
Heroes [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 36:58
Stoic fire chief Shane Fitzsimmons gave comfort to the people of Malua Bay 24 hours after the inferno. The toll of the dreadful fire season is never far when the commissioner recounts the toll of 25 deaths across the sta…
Ashes [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 35:37
Former Wallaby Al Baxter was fearsome on a rugby field but on New Year’s Eve he joined more than 1000 people in a terrifying fight for life on Malua Bay beach. A whiskey in his beach bag settled his nerves to some degree…
Fear [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 32:05
Paradise is a fair description of Malua Bay before the Black Summer fires. Crystal waters lapped at pristine sand, tree lined green hills with narrow roads where hundreds of families lived in modest homes rising above th…
Coming Soon [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 0:43
The Daily Telegraph takes you into the heart of a community at the epicentre of one of Australia's worst bushfires in recent years. Meet the cast of characters, the heroes and the true Aussies in this new podcast serial,…