Killing Juanita : A True Story of Murder and Corruption

Crows Nest NSW: Allen & Unwin, 2004. Soft cover. Very Good. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. xi 275 pages, illustrated with black and white plates. The pages are tanned and the covers' edges bumped; intermittently throughout the book there are black horizontal streaks along the blank outer edge, a printer's fault. Although the fore edge is marked, no printer's ink touch the writing. Apart from this printer's fault, and it's not pretty, a clean, unmarked and solid copy, though obviously second hand. First edition. "Killing Juanita : A True Story of Murder and Corruption" won the 2004 Ned Kelly Award for True Crime. First edition, first printing "Juanita Joan Nielsen (née Smith; 22 April 1937 - disappeared 4 July 1975) was an Australian newspaper publisher, journalist and activist, and heiress of the Mark Foy family. She was notable for her advocacy against the urban development on heritage Victoria Street, Kings Cross, Sydney, and her support for the Builders Labourers' Federation's Green Bans. Nielsen disappeared in Kings Cross in July 1975. The people responsible for her disappearance have never been identified, and her remains have never been found. It is generally believed that Nielsen was killed because of her activism, and there have been strong suspicions of the involvement of organised crime and corrupt police officers. In the early 1980s, two men associated with Kings Cross crime boss Abe Saffron were jailed for conspiracy to kidnap Nielsen based on incidents leading up to her disappearance. A coronial inquest in 1983 determined that Nielsen had been murdered but failed to identify who killed her. The unsolved mystery has continued to be a concern for the Australian community and has inspired several documentaries and films." (Wikipedia)