Kiwi investigator’s tale of hunt for Charlie
True crime podcasts always rate well, especially with women over the age of 35, and it’s a female private investigator who retells the story of her eight-year manhunt for a conman in the new Australian podcast Chasing Charlie.
Julia Robson is a Melbourne-based private investigator and former police officer, originally from New Zealand.
In 2011, she was contacted by an Australian woman in her 50s, Vivien, who had a whirlwind romance with a man who sent her thousands of text messages and managed to fleece her out of $70,000 in a matter of months.
Vivien tells Robson how she was groomed by the stranger whom she met on Craigslist and called himself Charlie Giltrap.
He said he was a Kiwi who lived six months of the year in France, and was developing a set of luxury apartments in Melbourne.
Robson soon finds out that Charlie is actually New Zealander Paul Bryan Gill, who has been declared bankrupt multiple times and left the country in 2009.
Her pursuit of Charlie takes her all over the world to France, Portugal, Britain and the United States, and she discovers other women who have been conned and sexually manipulated by him.
Robson is on a quest to avenge these women, and this six-part series culminates in her coming face to face with the conman.
The podcast has all the hallmarks of a great true crime story: a sexual and immoral villain, vulnerable and brainwashed victims, and a dogged female private investigator who stays the course.
Fans of the 2019 Australian podcast Who the Hell is Hamish will enjoy this one.