The First Murderer I Ever Met

For more than thirty years, Mark Dapin has been hanging out with crooks, and both types of cop – from Chopper Read and John Killick to Roger Rogerson and Gary Jubelin. In The First Murderer I Ever Met, he sorts the tall stories from the truth about true crime and tells us what some of Australia’s most famous felons are really like. Underbelly meets Louis Theroux.

Mark Dapin was still in school when he met his first murderer – a boy in another year called Ian. In reporting the murder Ian eventually committed, newspapers used the cliché that it ‘shocked even those who knew him best.’ But it didn’t shock Dapin, because he knew Ian in real life, not in clichés.

Criminals are sensationalised in the press and mythologised in their own stories. The truth can be hard to find – both stranger and more recognisable than the many fictions. In The First Murderer I Ever Met, Dapin writes about criminals, police and prison officers he has spent time with, searching for the real people and events behind the headlines and tall tales. How many of Chopper Read’s stories were actually true? What's it like at home with former murder cop Gary Jubelin? Was the biggest art heist in Australian history carried out by one of Dapin’s neighbours, the mysterious Sky Blue? And what happens when you go to visit a prison with celebrated escapee John Killick? These tales are better than a ring-side seat to the underworld: Dapin gets in the ring.

Harrowing, funny, gripping and endlessly surprising, The First Murderer I Ever Met is the truest true crime – it’s what actually happened.

About the Author

Mark Dapin is an acclaimed journalist, author, screenwriter and historian. He is the author of the novels King of the Cross, Spirit House and R&R. King of the Cross won the Ned Kelly Award for Best First Fiction, and Spirit House was longlisted for the Miles Franklin Literary Award, and shortlisted for the Age Book of the Year and the Royal Society for Literature’s Ondaatje Prize. R&R was shortlisted for a Ned Kelly Award. Mark holds a doctorate in military history. His history book The Nashos’ War was shortlisted for the NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, and won the NIB People’s Choice Award and an Alex Buzo Shortlist Award. He has also written three books of true crime: Public Enemies (shortlisted for a Ned Kelly Award), Prison Break and Carnage . He worked as consultant producer on Network Seven TV show Armed and Dangerous, and as screenwriter on Stan’s Wolf Creek 2.