COMING SOON
Episode 3 of True Crime Tasmania will be released in mid August, and features the story of Rory Jack Thompson. In September 1983, the suburban peace of West Hobart, Tasmania, was shattered when Dr Rory Jack Thompson, an American-born oceanographer working for the CSIRO, meticulously planned and executed the horrific murder of his estranged wife, Maureen Ellen Thompson. Amid a bitter Family Court custody battle over their two young children, Rory snuck into Maureen’s home at 99 Hill Street, where he strangled her to death. In a highly calculated and gruesome attempt to conceal the crime, he used a hacksaw and meat cleaver to dismember her body into 91 pieces, flushing the vast majority of them down the toilet. The crime came to light just days later when local sewage workers discovered a human finger at the Macquarie sewerage treatment farm, prompting a police investigation that quickly led to Rory’s arrest. In February 1984, a Tasmanian jury found Thompson not guilty by reason of insanity, resulting in his indefinite confinement at the hospital attached to the Risdon Prison Complex. He remained there until September 1999, when he took his own life in his cell shortly after a failed escape attempt.
