Victoria's gun system failed Marilyn Burdon
Australian True Crime
Meshel Laurie
4.6 • 979 Ratings
🗓️ 17 August 2025
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Marilyn Burdon was a 70-year-old mother and grandmother who, in 2017, was killed in her Kew home by her former partner, Charles Bisucci, who then took his own life.
Despite being banned from owning firearms for over a decade, Bisucci was able to access multiple guns, a failure later examined at a coronial inquest that led to recommendations for change.
One of Marilyn’s three children, Rebecca Burdon, joins us to speak about her mother’s life, the circumstances of her death, and why the system still hasn’t fixed the gaps that allowed it to happen.
Links:
- www.burdonlegal.com.au
- A child’s right to be heard | Pursuit by the University of Melbourne
- Losing a parent to domestic homicide – and everything that’s wrong with this headline | Pursuit by the University of Melbourne
- A child’s right to be heard | Pursuit by the University of Melbourne
- OPEN Event Reflection: You Should Ask That – Continuing the conversation with the children of women killed by men.
- Children and young people bereaved by domestic homicide: A focus on Australia.
For Support:
Lifeline on 13 11 14
13 YARN on 13 92 76 (24/7 crisis support phone line for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples)
1800RESPECT: 1800 737 732
Blue Knot Helpline: 1300 657 380
CREDITS:
Host: Meshel Laurie
Guest: Rebecca Burdon
Executive Producer/Editor: Matthew Tankard
GET IN TOUCH:
Follow the show on Instagram @australiantruecrimepodcast and Facebook
Email the show at [email protected]
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We wanted to know every minute detail. |
| 0:03.1 | And I know some families are not interested in it, |
| 0:05.2 | but we were all absolute. |
| 0:07.9 | We needed it to be able to process in our minds. |
| 0:11.4 | And then, of course, the police didn't want to tell us too much |
| 0:13.7 | because they had their views that remember your mum like she was. |
| 0:16.8 | Well, no, actually. |
| 0:18.0 | I'd like to know what happened, you know? |
| 0:25.6 | Music Well, no, actually. I'd like to know what happened, you know? There's a headline template that appears with horrifying regularity in Australian media. |
| 0:31.0 | It goes something like man and woman found dead, insuspected murder suicide. |
| 0:37.1 | Today on Australian true crime, we speak to a woman whose mother was the subject of one of |
| 0:42.1 | those headlines in August 2017. |
| 0:46.5 | Marilyn Burden was an outgoing 70-year-old mother and grandmother with several degrees, including |
| 0:52.6 | a master's Criminology. |
| 0:55.0 | She enjoyed a successful career in which she advised various government bodies about crime |
| 0:59.7 | prevention in the community. |
| 1:02.2 | One night in 2010, she was introduced by mutual friends to Charles Basucci. |
| 1:07.3 | He was around the same age as Marilyn and presented himself as a successful lawyer with interesting passions and an eccentric way about him. |
| 1:16.3 | Although they never really warmed to him, Marilyn's family discovered there was much more to Basuchi than met the eye. |
| 1:23.0 | They discovered that during the inquest into their mother's death in 2021, |
| 1:30.9 | and her daughter, Rebecca Burden, joins us to talk about it. |
| 1:33.6 | This is Australian True Crime. We acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which this podcast is created, |
... |
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