Is ‘Animal Kingdom’ Based on a True Story? All About the Real-Life Australian Crime Family That Inspired the Hit Film and Series (2025)

No fictional family is more terrifying than the Codys, but the Australian criminals who inspired their story come close.

The hit TNT series Animal Kingdom premiered in 2016, and followed Joshua “J” Cody (Finn Cole), who moves in with estranged relatives in Southern California after the death of his mother. However, he soon learns that the family’s lavish lifestyle is funded by a violent criminal enterprise run by matriarch Janine “Smurf” Cody (Ellen Barkin) that he must partake in to survive.

Though the series wrapped up in 2022, it’s seen a resurgence in popularity after it started streaming on Netflix in June 2025. Animal Kingdom was adapted from a 2010 Australian crime film that was loosely based on one of Melbourne’s most volatile families: the Pettingills.

So, is Animal Kingdom based on a true story? Here’s everything to know about the real-life crime family that inspired the Codys.

Is Animal Kingdom based on a true story?

While Animal Kingdom is a work of fiction, it was inspired by real events. The film that launched the TV series was loosely based on the notorious Pettingill crime family of Melbourne, Australia, and the 1988 Walsh Street police shooting, which is recreated in the movie.

On Oct. 12, 1988, two Melbourne policemen answered a routine call to check on an abandoned car in the middle of a street. When they approached the vehicle, they were ambushed and shot dead by a group of men.

"That event, it seemed so chilling and unusual," Animal Kingdom writer and director David Michôd told The Guardian in 2011. "Cops die in the line of duty all the time all over the world, but they don't die that way. It was so brazen and so cold that I almost immediately started imagining what the events immediately before and after something like that might have been.”

The following investigation was one of the longest-running in Australian criminal history, according to Green Left. After 895 days, four men were brought to trial. Two of them, Victor Peirce and Trevor Pettingill, were the sons of one of the most feared matriarchs in Australian criminal history.

Who is Kathleen Pettingill?

Kathleen "Kath" Pettingill is a former brothel owner and matriarch of the Pettingill crime family, who built a violent reputation as a ruthless and influential figure in Melbourne’s underworld in the 1970s and 1980s. She has 10 children, all of whom are either incarcerated, in witness protection, dead or relatively unknown.

Adrian Tame, who wrote a biography on Kathleen in 1996, told the True Crime Conversations podcast in March 2024 that the matriarch wasn’t the ring leader the movie made her out to be. Though she had her “own little empire of crime,” she mainly dealt in prostitution and drug dealing.

“She certainly wasn’t the mastermind,” Tame said, pointing out that, unlike Animal Kingdom's "Smurf," who was the one in charge of her children's criminal activities, Kathleen wasn't necessarily coordinating too many of their actions, and many of her children acted of their own accord.

Who are Kathleen Pettingill’s children?

Kathleen has 10 children, many of whom have followed in her criminal footsteps and are incarcerated or in witness protection. A number are also dead.

Tame told True Crime Conversations that three of her children were taken from her at birth in “somewhat suspicious circumstances.”

Her eldest, Dennis Bruce Allen, was a notorious drug dealer and mass murderer nicknamed “Mr. Death.”

When hisyounger brother, Peter John Allen, was sentenced to four years in prison for aggravated burglary in 2021, the judge said that if he recounted all of Peter's criminal history, he would “be here ‘til Christmas,” News.com.au reported.

Though Victor and Trevor were charged in the Walsh Street shootings, they were later acquitted. However, Victor’s widow, Wendy Peirce, gave a public statement in 2005 that her late husband was guilty.

What crimes did the Pettingill family commit?

The Pettingill family has been involved in a wide range of criminal activity, including drug trafficking, armed robbery and violent assaults.

While the full extent of their offenses is difficult to quantify, their criminal record is extensive. One of Kathleens’s sons, Peter, alone has been charged with more than 80 offenses, ranging from violent assaults and rape to drug trafficking, blackmail, burglary and theft.

Where is the Pettingill familynow?

Victor was shot and killed by an underworld hitman in May 2002, per the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and Dennis died of a heart attack.

Kathleen relocated to Venus Bay, Victoria, and still resides there as of 2014, according to The Monthly. She spoke out against the Animal Kingdom film in 2011, telling theSunday Herald Sun, per The Advertiser, that she didn't feel that Jacki Weaver, who played Smurf in the movie, accurately represented her.

"We're both short and blonde, but that's where the similarities end," she said. "If this is supposed to be a film about the life of me and my family, it couldn't be further from the truth."