Leonard Lawson: The Comic Book Killer

In Australia in the early fifties, one man had created his own superhero.

Leonard Keith Lawson was barely in his mid-twenties when he gave the country The Lone Avenger — a masked Wild West vigilante, riding out of the fictional town of Redrock to make things right. Children swore the Lone Avenger's Code. They wore the replica gun belts. They queued at newsagents for the next issue.

At its peak, the comic was selling seventy thousand copies an issue across Australia, New Zealand and Fiji.

He was twenty-six years old, married with three children, and one of the most recognised names on Australian news-stands.

But underneath all of it, something dark had been growing. Something that had been there for a long time — waiting.

And on the morning of the seventh of May, 1954, it finally got out.

Five young women drove into the bush with Leonard Lawson that day. What happened in those trees would change everything — and would end with Leonard standing in a courtroom, a death sentence hanging over his head.

But the sentence didn't hold. After seven years, he walked free.

He was out for just five months, and In that time, he would take two young lives — and set in motion a chain of events that would claim a third.

This is the story of Leonard Keith Lawson. The comic book killer.

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📚 Sources for this episode: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J6vSx1GsVzts1o-ZT_-MKMYGmesaTZ2g/view?usp=share_link