Crime Investigation Australia: Date with a Serial Killer

The next episode of Crime Investigation Australia revisits the gruesome serial killings of Rodney Cameron.

Hosted again by Steve Liebmann, this episode features detailed reenactments and interviews with key figures from Cameron’s crimes including the brother of one of the murder victims and investigating police.

According to the Press Release, it’s another grisly tale of murder and tragedy:

Cameron’s psychopathic tendencies appeared very early in life when, at the age of just ten, he tried to strangle his first victim – a young girl. He then attempted to strangle two other women, and moved onto a life of alcohol and drug abuse, including experimenting with hallucinogenic chemicals and Satanism.

At the age of 19, while working at a nursing home in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, he raped and strangled nurse, Florence Jackson. The victim was left with a towel stuffed down her throat in what was to become his signature “mark of death”.

A week later, heading south to Melbourne, he hitched a lift with a 19-year-old bank clerk, Francesco Ciliberto, whom he bashed and strangled with a football sock.

A short time later, in 1974, he was caught in Queensland after abducting a mother and daughter. He told arresting police he “had to kill three.” He was sentenced to prison for life and served 16 years. While incarcerated he married a lifelong friend named Anne.

Soon after his release in 1990, Cameron moved onto his crime that saw him dubbed the “Lonely Hearts Killer” after he used a radio match-making program to lure an unsuspecting woman to her death. Cameron rang the late-night Melbourne talkback program and described himself as a non-smoker, non-drinker, marine biologist who was searching for a partner “willing to share his happiness”. Forty-four-year-old Maria Goellner was one of six women who responded to his call.

A few weeks later Maria was found lying dead on a motel room floor in the Blue Mountains, the same area where Cameron had committed this first murder 16 years earlier. She had been brutally bashed and strangled, and had a handkerchief stuffed down her throat. Rodney Francis Cameron was jailed again for life – this time his file was marked “never to be released.”

This ep screens on Crime & Investigation, Thursday, July 30, at 7:30pm..