Who killed Beth Williams? On a warm evening in December 1949, two young people met by chance under the clocks at Melbourne's Flinders Street railway station and decided upon a spontaneous night on the town. The next morning, one of them, twenty-year-old typist Beth Williams, was found dead on Middle Park beach. When police arrested the other, Australians were transfixed: twenty-four year-old John Bryan Kerr was a son of the establishment -- a suave and handsome commercial radio star educated at Scotch College.

There were three 'sensational' trials after which Kerr was sentenced to hang, based on an unsigned confession. Amidst a frenzy of public outcry his sentence was subsequently commuted to twenty years imprisonment. Kerr always maintained his innocence and became a Pentridge celebrity and poster boy for rehabilitation. More than fifty years after the event another man confessed on his deathbed to the crime, and two other unsolved murders, outing himself as an untried serial killer. But could he be believed?

Compelling and brilliantly evoked, Certain Admissions is stranger than any crime fiction. It's a real-life story of murder, corruption, blood ties and social history that will leave you guessing long after the final page.

1. Murder on a summer night -- 2. Certain persons and certain admissions -- 3. Nervous lives -- 4. Star pupil -- 5. "Murder is their business" -- 6. The best defence -- 7. A city transfixed -- 8. Cold Charlie, frosty Frank -- 9. The maximum penalty -- 10. Prince of Pentridge -- 11. Mr X -- 12. "The Kerr legend will never die" -- 13. Meet John Wallace -- 14. A cold case -- 15. Out of the past.

Includes bibliographical references.