John Silvester Bio

There is a certain kind of reporter who does not merely cover a beat, they become inseparable from it. John Silvester is that reporter for Melbourne crime. For more than four decades, his byline has appeared on stories that have shaped how Australians understand organised crime, police corruption, and the mechanics of the justice system.

Silvester received a Bachelor of Arts in politics and legal studies at La Trobe University in 1978. His father, Fred Silvester, was a former Victoria Police Assistant Commissioner and head of the Australian Bureau of Criminal Intelligence.

 The family connection to law enforcement gave Silvester an early, close-range understanding of policing, and a healthy scepticism about the line between those who enforce the law and those who break it.

A graduate of La Trobe University, John began his career as a police reporter at the Melbourne Sun News-Pictorial, quickly rising to chief police reporter.

He spent 15 years with the Herald Sun before joining The Age, where his reporting has continued to influence and shape public understanding of crime in Australia.

He has also been awarded an Australian Journalists Association ASEAN Scholarship, which took him to South-East Asia to study crime and corruption, and a News Limited Exchange to work with the Sunday Times Insight Team in London.

The breadth of those experiences, courthouses, Royal Commissions, international postings, and decades of source cultivation, feeds directly into his writing.

His dispassionate analysis won the respect of sources in law enforcement agencies, the legal profession, the judiciary, among victims, and in the underworld.

As a reporter for The Sun and The Age, in his work on the “Naked City” column and its associated podcast, Silvester has written some five million words on the subject of crime.

The Underbelly Series

Journalists, social commentators and authors Andrew Rule and John Silvester created a publishing juggernaut as the creative force behind more than thirty true crime titles, including the highly popular fifteen books in the Underbelly series.

Both recipients of multiple awards, including a Walkley and a Best True Crime Ned Kelly, many of their most successful books have been published by their own company, Floradale Productions and Sly Inc.

The first series of the Underbelly television drama is based on the book Leadbelly: Inside Australia’s Underworld by Silvester and Rule, and also borrows the title “Underbelly” from the previously successful series of twelve true crime compilations by the same authors.

Underbelly is an Australian television true crime drama series which first aired on the Nine Network between 13 February 2008 and 1 September 2013, before being revived on 3 April 2022.

He has written, edited and published crime books that have sold more than one million copies in Australia.

 The series became a cultural reference point for true crime in this country, a publishing and television phenomenon built from years of ground-level reporting by two journalists who actually knew the people they wrote about.

The Naked City Column and Later Books

Away from the Underbelly franchise, Silvester has built a second, equally durable body of work through his weekly column in The Saturday Age.

Silvester writes “the Naked City,” an award-winning weekly crime column in The Saturday Age, and hosts a true crime podcast of the same name.

In Dark City (2024), which follows Naked City (2023), Silvester has trawled through this ocean of ink to present a collection of his choicest columns, arranged thematically.

Dark City is the second volume in the Naked City collection, from Australia’s pre-eminent and longest-serving crime reporter.

Dark City was shortlisted for the Danger Award for Best Crime Non-Fiction 2025.

Television and Documentary Work

John narrated and co-wrote true crime documentaries produced and directed by Terry Carlyon, including the Logie-winning ABC documentary Conviction, on the murder of Jill Meagher. He has written or co-authored over 30 books, including Naked City, and the Chopper and Underbelly series, later adapted to film and television.

He presented the ABC documentary Trigger Point, an in-depth examination of police shootings in Victoria, and Conviction, a study of the police investigation into the murder of Jill Meagher. Conviction won the 2017 Logie for Outstanding Factual Program.

Style and Reputation

The Melbourne Press Club’s Australian Media Hall of Fame describes Silvester’s prose style as having “echoes of Jimmy Breslin and Damon Runyon.”

 He is known for precision in his sourcing and a willingness to let the absurdity of criminal life surface on the page.

The journalist Nick McKenzie notes Silvester’s “fair and scrupulous” journalism, his extensive network of contacts, and his longstanding commitment to advocating for justice for victims of crime.

Awards and Recognition

He has won four Walkley Awards, the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year Award, nine Melbourne Press Club Quills, nine Victorian Law Foundation Awards, a Ned Kelly Award for true crime writing, a Ned Kelly Lifetime Achievement Award, an ASEAN Fellowship to study crime and corruption in South-East Asia, and has been elevated to the Australian Media Hall of Fame.

In 2007, Silvester won the Graham Perkin Australian Journalist of the Year for his work covering crime and corruption.

He was highly commended in the same award in 1998 and 2014.

In 2018 he was inducted into the Australian Journalism Hall of Fame.

Silvester is also a passionate supporter of the Hawthorn Football Club.