Killing Juanita: a true story of murder and corruption. Peter Rees. 2021.

On the morning of 4 July 1975, Juanita Nielsen, a wealthy heiress, Sydney newspaper publisher and anti-development campaigner went to an appointment at a Kings Cross nightclub and simply disappeared. For over a quarter of a century, the Juanita Nielsen case has remained one of Australia’s greatest unsolved murder mysteries.

Killing Juanita is the true story of that crime and of the characters involved: Loretta Crawford, drag queen and night club receptionist, the last person to see Nielsen alive; powerful businessman and property developer, Frank Theeman; his involvement with legendary Kings Cross figures James McCartney Anderson and Abe Saffron; and hired hands like Eddie Trigg for whom Juanita Nielsen’s murder was ‘no loss to society at all.’

It is also a story about greed, police corruption, dirty politics and cover-ups. From failed police investigation to reinvestigation more than two decades later, from coronial inquest to federal parliamentary inquiry, Killing Juanita is an unflinching examination of a crime that remains a shameful blot on the administration of justice.