Who Bombed the Hilton?

On 13 February 1978 a bomb exploded outside the Hilton Hotel in George Street, Sydney. It happened during the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting, the first major international political event Australia had hosted. Two garbage men and a police officer were killed. While three members of the sect Ananda Marga were gaoled, it was not for their alleged involvement with the Hilton bombing, as many assume. A man called Evan Petherick, renowned as an unreliable witness, confessed to the crime. He too was gaoled and even though he kept claiming he was guilty, he was released when it was concluded that he wasn’t. No-one has been charged since.

In Who Bombed the Hilton? Rachel Landers unravels the compelling details of this unsolved case in forensic detail. It is a voyage through the archive, but also through the political developments in Australia in the past three decades. Fearless, though never guileless, Landers assumes nothing, asks questions no-one had thought of and takes readers through a murky, conspiracy-laden underworld where nothing is as it seems. Stranger than fiction, with more threads than an unravelled carpet, there are few more compelling stories in recent Australian political history. And she thinks she knows who did it.