The Reid Thorpe Files
This is a true crime podcast. This young man was murdered in March 1944. Two Australians, a 23 year old ‘domestic’ and a 40 year old taxi-driver, were charged with his murder…
One of the extraordinary things about the process of research is serendipity. The things you come across by chance – and I have come across some extraordinary things in the time I’ve been at State Library of Queensland, searching on keywords like ‘family papers’ and ‘diaries’ and ‘WW2 security’, digging through those grey archive boxes, coming across photos and reports and newspaper clippings of flower shows and war bond drives, side by side with submarine attacks and Japanese advances down the Kokoda Trail, troops and aeroplanes and tanks down Queen Street, maps of Brisbane River from the 1920’s to 2000, boys in dinghies chasing US destroyers on the New Farm river reaches… and sometimes, military police reports – grog-running, petrol-theft, burglaries, rapes and murders in Brisbane suburbs involving soldiers – both Australian and American.
In 1942, Technical Sargent Ervin Albert Task arrived in Brisbane and was attached to the Criminal Division of the U.S Provost Marshall’s unit – the U.S. military police. He investigated all of those crimes – from straightforward AWOLs where some soldier overstayed his leave with his girlfriend to the murder of American servicemen. His investigations reveal wartime Brisbane’s character and the friendships and the tensions of the war front. And I’ll be diving into those files, amongst others, to write another podcast series – at the moment, 4 x short-form episodes (8-15 minutes) that track through cases and wonder at their outcomes…
The podcast episodes will be available through State Library of Queensland’s website and Apple Podcasts or Stitcher.
Another part of this project is me, learning a bit more about podcasting! I’m doing an Australian Film Television and Radio School short course on podcasting – and finding it very challenging – rewarding but challenging! If I want to work in audio, I need to understand more about audio…
This project is supported by the Queensland Government through Arts Queensland.
