Transcript of Missing Heiress: The Disappearance of Juanita Nielsen

They want to replace history and charm with high-rise apartments. But, much to the developers' dismay, protesters aren't giving up that easily. One reporter has been documenting it all. Her name is Juanita Nielsen. She makes it her mission to amplify the protesters' voices, and she's not afraid of going after the developers herself. After all, this is her neighborhood too. But lately, it feels like the locals' efforts are no match for corporate muscle.

And Juanita's passion has put her squarely in danger. Hence, the two strangers tracking down her apartment right now. They have orders to deliver Juanita to their higher-ups. The elites are sick of Juanita. They think she's too outspoken, too loud, and someone needs to shut her up. Welcome to Conspiracy Theories, a Spotify podcast.

I'm Carter Roy. New episodes come out every Wednesday. We would love to hear from you, so if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Or check us out on Instagram @TheConspiracyPod. This episode includes discussions of kidnapping and murder. Consider this one deciding how and when you'll listen. Stay with us.

As she grows up, Juanita exudes confidence. The world is her oyster. She's the kind of person who attends galas on the regular. And when she does, she's in her element, chatting up guests with the ease of a gregarious socialite. She knows who she is. But Juanita isn't sure yet what she wants out of life. After dropping out of school at the age of 15, she tries a little bit of everything. She works in her family's department store, writes in acts and plays.

She even poses for a risqué cover of a pulpy detective magazine, which doesn't thrill her family, but Juanita doesn't seem to mind what other people think. In 1959, at the age of 22, Juanita hops on board a freighter headed for America. She trades in her first-class life for something a little more adventurous and meets a man who becomes her husband and then her ex-husband. She does know that being a dutiful housewife is not for her.

So Juanita moves back to Sydney and back to her old job at the department store. For her, though, it's not a step backward. It's an opportunity. Juanita launches an in-house newsletter, which allows her to hone her writing chops. Things are going great until her family business gets an offer from a competitor to the tune of $4.4 million. The board members love the idea. Juanita, she hates it. She knows employees who have dedicated their entire careers to working for her family.

If the sale goes through, they may get kicked to the curb. She actually quits her own job to focus on rallying shareholders to fight against the takeover. But this time, Juanita's tenacity just isn't enough. The buyout gets pushed through. And that's more or less how Juanita Nielsen winds up becoming a reporter for a local news outlet. The paper is a biweekly lifestyle publication that covers where to eat, shop, and be entertained.

Perhaps because of her status in the city, Juanita gets her own column. Just a few months into her tenure at the paper, she gets the opportunity to buy it. And she's more than ready for the challenge. She purchases the paper and renames it to Sydney Now. And yes, okay, it sounds a little bit like a nepo baby situation. I mean, let's be honest, let's be real. But she really is a good writer and a hard worker, and her heart is in the right place.

It's around this time she also decides to put down roots. And in her eyes, the best place to live is the place she writes about most: King's Cross. The Cross, as people call it, is a relatively cheap place where students and starving artists live. About 20 minutes outside the city. As the bohemian red light district, it's also a popular spot for Sydney's nightlife. People flock to the neighborhood's restaurants, jazz clubs, and cabaret shows. The Cross is a place where people can reinvent themselves.

Business owners and residents alike see her paper as a huge boost to the area. Now, Juanita's not just doing this because she's a social butterfly. It's business. The success of her paper, Sydney Now, relies on her ability to sell ad space. As a matter of principle, she tries to only work with locals. And after her family's business sold out to a competitor, Juanita's determined not to take on investors if she can help it, which is a lot easier said than done.

Toward the end of 1968, Juanita gets an offer to review a new cocktail bar in King's Cross called The Venus Room. She goes and has a great time. The servers dubbed the Venus Girls. Wine and dine, Juanita, making her feel like a true celebrity. In turn, she writes a glowing review of the place. And the cherry on top of it all, The Venus Room asked for a full-page ad in Sydney Now. Seems like a win-win, right? Well, here is the downside.

This part of town is also home to the seedy underbelly of Sydney. Mob bosses pull the strings, running the area from behind closed doors. The Venus Room is managed by a guy called Big Jim Anderson. Not only is he physically imposing, he's also so well-connected that he'd once gotten out of a murder charge scot-free, supposedly thanks to some friends in high places.

It's also an open secret that Big Jim works with Abe Saffron, a hugely successful Sydney crime boss. Big Jim is notorious enough, but Abe is practically the king of King's Cross. He literally owns portions of it, including the property that houses The Venus Room. He can get anything you need, especially if what you need is liquor. Sometimes he even allegedly works in cahoots with local police.

Some see Abe as a kind of benefactor, but with a nickname like Mr. Sin. You probably don't have the cleanest reputation, which Abe himself will readily admit. In his early days, he tells People magazine something to the effect of, "My name seems to be linked with everything notorious around this town." And here's why that's a problem for Juanita. After she runs the full-page ad for The Venus Room, she sends Big Jim the bill.

And Big Jim refuses to pay up. Juanita isn't scared to make a fuss, but Big Jim won't even give her the time of day. And thanks to Abe Saffron's creative business practices, ownership of The Venus Room is set up like a giant Russian nesting doll of shell companies. Even if she wants to sue, it's hard to know where to direct a lawsuit. Ultimately, she decides to back down. This time, it's one of her first experiences with the underworld of King's Cross.

She may have lost money, but she's learned a valuable lesson. Be careful who you do business with. Aside from that hiccup, things are going well. Sydney Now has about 20,000 copies of each edition in circulation. And Juanita's loving her new home, The Cross. As it turns out, though, somebody else loves it too. A businessman named Frank Teeman. See, it's around this time that new zoning laws go into effect, allowing for construction of taller buildings in the area.

That starts a real estate frenzy, and Frank spends millions of his own money buying up residences. He even focuses on the very road Juanita lives on, Victoria Street. Initially, he plans to build three 45-story apartment buildings and a 15-story office block. To do that, he needs to get rid of the current residents and bulldoze the area. In 1973, nearly 400 residents receive eviction notices from Frank's company.

Everyone has to be out within a week. Those who have stricter protections on their homes are bribed. A few hundred dollars there, a couple thousand here. And many of the families take the deal because they need the money. Still, there are some residents who stand firm under pressure. They refuse to move out. Some even tag graffiti in protest. Frank's company retaliates by cutting off their gas and electricity.

For now, Juanita keeps tabs on everything happening on her street. But within the pages of Sydney Now, she doesn't report much on the issue yet. She agrees that people shouldn't be forced out of their homes, but she's perhaps annoyed by the fact that many of the protesters don't even live in The Cross. There's students and young professionals eager to fight the man. That all changes when Frank's plans move closer to home for Juanita.

As in, he wants to develop the land next door. First, she registers her complaints with the local planning council. When that doesn't work, Juanita sits down at her typewriter. "My neighbors are being evicted," she writes. She makes the case that those who have lived and grown old here are being forced to abandon their homes. On August 28th, 1973, her hit piece arrives on newsstands.

The following month, the situation turns deadly. That September, a 23-year-old Aboriginal woman named Esther George is passing through the neighborhood. As night falls, she looks for shelter and notices that 103 Victoria Street is vacant. She finds a secluded spot and falls asleep. Then, in the middle of the night, she awakes surrounded by flames. By the time Esther realizes what's happening, it's too late and she's killed.

The official cause of the fire is listed as unknown, but residents believe there is an explanation. They suspect Frank Teeman is behind it. Now, to be clear, they aren't alleging that anybody was supposed to be killed. If it was Frank's goons, they probably didn't realize someone was inside the house. Although whoever did do it should have checked. Protesters have been sneaking into abandoned homes and squatting.

It's their way of preventing Frank from bulldozing the place. When Esther's story is reported by larger news outlets, they refer to Esther as a, quote, "derelict." Some insinuate the tragedy was her own fault. Juanita reads those articles and reaches her breaking point. In Sydney Now, she writes, "There seems to be a whole new way of looking at life and death here in Victoria Street. If you are burned to death anywhere else, you are an accident victim.

They destroy everything. They smash down doors while residents are still inside and drag people out of their homes. The police and henchmen work together to get all of the protesters out. About 50 are arrested in all. The siege lasts 48 hours, and by the end of it, most of Victoria Street has been completely cleared. A month after everything calms down, the few remaining squatters have all given up and left too.

For the next year, Juanita becomes a permanent fixture at city council meetings. She writes scathing op-eds about Frank's ventures. Her mission in life seems to be making his life hell, even if it does cost her in ad sales. But what Juanita does next will put her in the crosshairs of some very dangerous people. And by the next year, Juanita will have vanished.

In 1975, 38-year-old Sydney journalist Juanita Nielsen is in the midst of waging a years-long war against Frank Teeman. Frank is a wealthy and well-connected man who's used to having things go his way. Now, thanks to protesters like Juanita, he's losing money every day that his development project is stalled. He claims he only wants to revitalize King's Cross, but his plans threaten to change the face of the eclectic neighborhood Juanita has come to know and love.

So she's fighting back every way she knows how. That June, Juanita decides it's time to turn up the heat on Frank. She gives a speech at a Save the Family Home rally when she runs into an old acquaintance. His name is John Gleab. Like Juanita, John is no fan of Frank's, and he just so happens to be the secretary of the Water and Sewage Employees Union. Now, yeah, maybe it's not the sexiest job in the world, but when you control how water gets into a neighborhood and how waste gets out, well, John has a lot of power at his fingertips.

John writes a letter stating that if Frank's project moves ahead, then his union will be forced to upgrade the entire sewage system. If that happens, it could stress the city's water pipe so much that all of King's Cross could be without water for months. And where does John's letter go? Juanita publishes it in her paper, Sydney Now. Then she waits for chaos to erupt. Shortly after, citizens are in an uproar. The union institutes a ban on new water projects for Victoria Street, which makes Frank Teeman irate.

Every step he takes is thwarted by this no-good heiress. Perhaps that's why he seemingly decides to switch up his tactics, because the next thing he does is invites Juanita to a civilized lunch. It goes horribly. If anything is accomplished, it's that Juanita is even more certain she doesn't trust Frank. But she also knows deep down that she's toeing a dangerous line.

After her meeting with Frank, Juanita sometimes finds herself jolted awake in the middle of the night to the sound of a pounding on her door. Other times, she receives phone calls threatening her to step out of the way. It's time to get out of the city for a while, so she travels to her father's home on a remote island. And yet, even on this island, Juanita gets a strange phone call. It's from an unknown man, and he asks her to meet at a motel that night to discuss advertising in her paper.

If tracking Juanita down on her vacation isn't a big enough red flag, there's this. The man refuses to tell her his name. Juanita hangs up. By the end of June, she's back home in King's Cross. On the 30th, two men come knocking at Juanita's door. She doesn't answer, but her partner, David, does. While she hides just out of sight, Juanita listens in on the conversation. The two men introduce themselves as Eddie Trigg and Shane Martin Simmons.

They work at a local hotspot called The Carousel Club. It's possible that name rings a bell to Juanita and David. Not too long ago, they'd received an invitation to a press night there. Being so in the know about King's Cross, Juanita's probably aware that the Carousel Club is another one of Big Jim Anderson's businesses. That could explain why at the time she ignored the invite. What's not so clear is whether Juanita is aware that Big Jim is friendly with none other than Frank Teeman.

That day at Juanita's doorstep, Eddie Trigg claims his employer is desperate to speak with her. He wants to discuss advertising in the paper. And the reality is Sydney Now needs ad revenue. Ever since Juanita joined the battle for Victoria Street, she's been losing money. For now, David turns Eddie and Shane away. But a few days later, when Eddie calls again, Juanita finally agrees to hear him out.

They schedule a meeting at the Carousel Club for the following morning. The last day Juanita Nielsen will ever be seen alive. On July 4th, 1975, Juanita goes through her usual morning routine. She applies a full face of makeup, styles her hair, and she makes her way to the club around 10:40 a.m. She's greeted by a receptionist named Loretta Crawford. Before the two women can even make small talk, Eddie Trigg descends the club stairs and whisks Juanita away.

Loretta watches as the two head back upstairs and into the VIP lounge. That evening, Juanita's partner, David, calls her apartment, but he gets the answering machine. And honestly, he's a bit annoyed. They had dinner plans that night, and he assumes she's blowing him off. David waits for Juanita at her place until finally giving up around 6:00 p.m. The following day, he still hasn't heard from her. David returns to Victoria Street to check on her, but she still isn't home.

Before he can let himself inside, another acquaintance shows up. It's John Gleab, the union rep who joined forces with Juanita in the fight against Frank. John has also been calling her nonstop, but never got an answer. Both men know Juanita's been receiving threatening phone calls and loud knocks on her door at night, so they decide to search her home. Inside, everything looks to be in its proper place. But crucially, it's clear that Juanita hasn't been home at all for a couple of days.

And she's not the type to leave without telling people where she's going. David and John's next stop is the New South Wales Police Department. They report Juanita missing. David even tells officers that he knows she was last seen at the Carousel Club. But according to most sources, the cops brushed the men off. Now, there is another account of that day. Peter Rees, author of the book Killing Juanita, writes in a 2015 article for the Sydney Morning Herald that officers do go to the Carousel Club.

On July 7th, the Special Crime Squad takes over the case. The club's receptionist, Loretta, echoes Eddie's story. Juanita was here, but she left after the meeting. However, when these detectives interview Eddie again, his story changes just a little bit. This time, he says he and Juanita did agree to advertise the club in Sydney Now. He even produces a receipt for $130, which appears to bear Juanita's signature, as well as a torn corner.

And he adds, he only talked to her because his boss, Big Jim Anderson, wanted him to. Later that day, detectives get another clue. A couple of road maintenance workers find a blood-stained purse on the side of a freeway, about an hour's drive from King's Cross. Inside are a few of Juanita's business cards. In the grass, not far away, are more of her belongings, including bank checks. The optimists on the squad hope this means she could still be alive somewhere.

Perhaps she was kidnapped and threw her purse from a moving car to signal her whereabouts. Others think it's sadly more likely that her assailants tossed the evidence. At this point, Juanita has been missing for over 72 hours. Her disappearance has been leaked to the media, so the NSW police appoint a well-respected professional to head up the investigation. Carl Arkins is a homicide detective who'd made a name for himself in Sydney's Criminal Investigation Bureau.

Now he is determined to keep his stellar record. Arkins' gut tells him Eddie Trigg is the key to figuring out what happened to Juanita. So on July 13th, he visits Eddie at his apartment to interview him yet again. But Eddie maintains his stance. Meanwhile, the people of Victoria Street haven't forgotten about Juanita. They put out the following release. We believe that Juanita's disappearance and probable death should be looked at in the context of more than two years of violence and intimidation directed against people opposed to the development of Victoria Street.

We believe that the emphasis of any inquiry should be shifted to investigating those interests which stand to gain most from Juanita's disappearance. They don't have to name names for people to know who they're talking about. The developer, Frank Teeman. Frank's been laying low, but now he has to make a statement of his own to save face. According to him, quote, "For me to have had anything to do with the disappearance of Mrs.

Nielsen would have been against my own interest." For what it's worth, friends of Frank's will later insinuate he must be innocent because in private, he laments how bad the situation makes him look. Still, investigators scour all the buildings Frank owns on Victoria Street. They comb through every floor, searching for any evidence of Juanita. They don't find a thing. That August, Detective Arkins questions Frank.

Specifically, he wants to know about Frank's relationship with Big Jim. First, Frank tries to make it sound like he and Big Jim are just associates, mere acquaintances. But then he admits, well, he once paid Big Jim to help get his son a job in a nightclub. And this wasn't some paltry sum. He paid Big Jim $25,000. Finally, it seems like Arkins is getting somewhere.

He's established a pretty strong connection between Frank and Big Jim. Except before he can dig deeper, he's removed from the Juanita Nielsen case. Why? Well, there are a couple of potential reasons. One, Frank Teeman happens to be friends with Police Commissioner Fred Hansen. Many in the police department believe Arkins' questioning shook up Frank so badly that he asked Hansen to remove Arkins from the case.

And two, maybe Arkins was getting too close to Big Jim. I mean, he runs the Carousel Club, the place where Juanita was last seen alive. He's friends with Frank. He's a known associate with Abe Saffron, the crime boss. And yet Jim hasn't really been treated as much of a suspect so far. That could be because he is allegedly one of the police department's best informants. Maybe with Big Jim involved, the Juanita Nielsen case was never going to be conducted fairly.

The truth was never really going to come out. Not until some of the witnesses finally decide to talk. Detective Carl Arkins had been making good headway in the Juanita Nielsen case, which some say is precisely why he's taken off of it. He was pushing the wrong people, well-connected people like Frank Teeman a little too hard. Arkins gets replaced by a younger, greener detective named Norm Maroni.

But as it turns out, Maroni is no pushover. He picks up where Arkins leaves off and zeros in on the one guy who's barely figured into the police investigation so far, Big Jim Anderson, the man connected to Sydney's crime syndicate and to Juanita's nemesis, Frank. Maroni questions Big Jim on October 2nd, 1975, nearly three months after Juanita's disappearance. But Jim claims he has a good alibi and wasn't even in town the day she came to his club.

And he seems pretty confident this will keep him out of any trouble. According to modern reporting, Big Jim might have good reason to feel that way. He's also working as a police informant. He'd supplied police with underworld intel for years. It's unclear if Maroni is fully aware of Jim's role. For now, all he can do is question him. And since he can't really disprove Jim's alibi, the lead gets dropped.

As 1975 wears on, the case comes to a standstill. Despite extensive searches of the Sydney area and a $10,000 reward for any information, no one has answers. Eventually, Detective Arkins is put back on the investigation. Yeah, the police commissioner who had him replaced, the one who's friends with Frank Teeman, he gets ousted following accusations of corruption. What? No way. Now Arkins and Maroni get to team up and they start by retracing Arkins' original steps.

In case initial witnesses or suspects remember anything new, as luck would have it, someone is ready to talk. By October 1976, Loretta Crawford, the hostess, wants revenge on the Carousel Club. Eddie Trigg had fired her for stealing money and she's fallen on hard times. So when Detective Arkins questions her a second time, she has more to say. Loretta admits she originally lied to protect Eddie.

They track down the club's old PR manager, Lloyd Marshall, who confirms Loretta's account. Then they speak to Shane Martin Simmons, Eddie's cohort. He claims Eddie offered him money to help kidnap Juanita. He even reveals that the day he and Eddie showed up at her house, they were planning to abduct her right then and there. And they changed their minds when her partner, David, answered the door. However, Shane insists the plot always stopped at kidnapping.

He thought his bosses just wanted to scare Juanita, to talk to her a little bit, not kill her. As for Eddie, he points the finger at Lloyd Marshall. Eddie says there was a kidnapping plot, but the whole thing was Lloyd's idea. It's the old Spider-Man pointing at Spider-Man meme. With all the suspects reporting conflicting accounts, Arkins and Maroni can't make heads or tails of who did what. But there is one thing they're sure of.

Eddie Trigg, Shane Martin Simmons, and Lloyd Marshall all had something to do with Juanita's disappearance. They only have circumstantial evidence at this point, but they haven't come this far for nothing. So in 1977, they arrest all three men and charge them with conspiracy to abduct Juanita Nielsen. It takes three years for the trials to move ahead. Lloyd is acquitted. Shane is convicted and sentenced to a couple of years. And Eddie is convicted too, albeit in absentia.

He's on the run. He fled on bail. Authorities track him down in San Francisco in 1982 and deport him to Australia, where he spends a few years in jail. These two convictions are something, but they still don't answer the question of what happened to Juanita. Perhaps that's why authorities finally hold a coronial inquest. In 1983, several people are brought in for questioning, including Detective Arkins, Eddie Trigg, and Frank Teeman.

Big Jim is also present, and he brings up a theory that had been floating around ever since Juanita vanished. Maybe her disappearance had nothing to do with her fight against the Victoria Street development, he says. Maybe she had dirt on somebody completely unrelated and they had her killed. Specifically, Jim suggests she targeted a man named Frank Crea, a former police detective. According to Big Jim, Juanita had proof that Crea was having an affair, so he had her killed.

It's a convenient theory considering Crea is already dead by this point and can't be questioned. In the end, the inquest finds that Juanita is dead, and in all likelihood, she was murdered. But there isn't enough evidence to determine how she died or who was responsible. As sad as the conclusion is, it doesn't come as much of a surprise. The more startling finding, according to the inquest, the investigation may have been inhibited by an atmosphere of corruption, quote, "real or imagined."

Eventually, Frank Teeman gets to break ground on part of his development project. According to him, he, quote, "made good money." After years of fighting, the last of the protesters backed down, perhaps out of fear. Juanita's body is never recovered, and questions about her fate linger for years. But in 2001, author Peter Reese is working on a book about the case. As part of his research, he speaks with Loretta Crawford.

This time, Loretta tells yet another version of her story. Now she claims that Juanita never left the Carousel Club alive. Somebody she won't name killed Juanita in the basement. Loretta insists she even saw the body for herself. Peter, the author, urges Loretta to bring this new lead to the police. 29 years after Juanita disappeared, they forensically analyze the basement, searching for anything that might support Loretta's story.

Once again, they find nothing. When Juanita's family members release a podcast called Unravel, they talk to Loretta too. She says she knows who the killer is. She always has, but she won't say who because all these years later, she's still afraid. In 2025, the 50th anniversary of Juanita's disappearance, Detective Inspector Nigel Warren shares his thoughts with the Sydney Morning Herald.

After nearly 30 years on the cold case, he doesn't buy the theory that Juanita was blackmailing anybody with incriminating evidence. If she was, why wouldn't she have told her longtime boyfriend, David, about it? Why would she have gone alone to the Carousel Club without telling David what she was doing? He knew all about her other battles against powerful men, but not this one. It makes no sense that she would have kept this a secret when it could have gotten her killed. According to Inspector Warren, there's one more person's testimony we need to take into account.

Eddie's ex-partner, who later goes by the name Monet. Toward the end of Monet's life, he admits he went looking for Eddie at the club on July 4th, 1975. He had no clue about Eddie's meeting with Juanita, so Monet sat and waited. He started to get a bad feeling when he realized Eddie's car was suddenly gone. Monet had been sitting by the stairway the whole time and never saw his boyfriend come downstairs, which means Eddie snuck out of the building using a different exit.

It just wasn't like him. On the drive home, Eddie refused to say what had happened to Juanita, but Monet remembers he noticed blood stains on Eddie's shirt and on a piece of paper sticking out of Eddie's pocket. The receipt, the one signed by Juanita. When Eddie turned it over to police in 1975, the corner had been ripped off. Monet says that's because there was blood on it.

Inspector Warren finds Monet's story credible, and he points out Eddie Trigg had absolutely no dealings with Juanita Nielsen until Big Jim Anderson told him to set up a meeting with her, which means, in this case, the most obvious answer may be the correct one. Juanita may have been larger than life in person. She may have been an heiress, but she represented regular people going up against the man.

No matter what it took, she never backed down from her fight. And it sounds like it may have taken several powerful men to bring down one tenacious journalist. Thank you for listening to Conspiracy Theories. We're here with a new episode every Wednesday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at The Conspiracy Pod. If you're watching on Spotify, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Our sources for today's episode include Killing Juanita by Peter Reese and the Sydney Sentinels who killed Juanita.