Dead Man Walking

Investigative journalism is not for the faint-hearted. I know our job is not to be loved – our job is to tell the truth and do so without fear or favour.

Employing her insider status and trademark wit, pace and intelligence, Kate McClymont unravels the complex business relationships between Michael McGurk and Ron Medich.

Rumour has it that Sydney is full of corruption and crime, but no one expected to read about a Sydney businessman being shot, in the back of his head, in his driveway, in Cremorne. Nor that, ultimately, a Point Piper millionaire would be convicted for ordering the hit. But this is not just a Sydney story. Its strands traverse Moscow, Brunei, Indonesia and Hawaii and involve property deals, fraud, conspiracy, false identities, kidnapping and a miniature Koran. There are bumbling criminals, turncoats, snitches, wealthy people brought down, and devastated families.

Just prior to his murder, Michael McGurk – who had a history of violence, threats, arson charges, intimidation and failed businesses – had informed Kate McClymont, Australia’s best-known investigative journalist, that he believed there was a hit out on him. They agreed they would meet, and then he was shot.

This is an extraordinary story of ten years of events that you simply could not make up.

About the Author

Investigative journalist Kate McClymont must be the best-known journalist in NSW, and probably has the most intriguing muses of any writer around. She is certainly the most-awarded Australian journalist. As a crime reporter for the Sydney Morning Herald, Kate spends her time mixing with and writing about some of the shadiest characters in the story of Sydney.

Once derided by Paul Keating for spending her time "chasing subterranean odours", Kate's sense of smell has led her to unearth some of the underworld’s most fascinating tales of betrayal, corruption and crime. They are the stories the central characters don’t want told, and these non-fiction villains will do their best to silence the storyteller.

Her phone’s been tapped, she's had police security, and received death threats in the aftermath of her Gold Walkley-winning expose of the Bulldogs salary cap scandal. It was Kate in whom millionaire businessman Michael McGurk confided that he feared for his life, just one week before he was fatally gunned down outside his Sydney home.