Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 2: Detective see aside of life.
Speaker 1: The average person has never exposed her I spent thirty
Speaker 1: four years as a cop. For twenty five of those
Speaker 1: years I was catching killers. That's what I did for
Speaker 1: a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer
Speaker 1: just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into
Speaker 1: the world in which I operated. The guests I talk
Speaker 1: to each week have amazing stories from all sides of
Speaker 1: the law. The interviews are raw and honest, just like
Speaker 1: the people I talk to. Some of the content and
Speaker 1: language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes
Speaker 1: into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now
Speaker 1: as I take you into this world. Most people go
Speaker 1: on honeymoons to relax Kansas. Fox goes to San Quentin
Speaker 1: to hang out with serial killers. She's an award winning
Speaker 1: force of nature I'm happy to call a friend and
Speaker 1: one of the sharpest minds in crime writing. Today we're
Speaker 1: diving into the real life murders that fuel her darkest plots.
Speaker 1: This is Candace Fox. Candace Fox, Welcome to I Catch Killers.
Speaker 3: Hi, Gary, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1: Well I'm excited about getting on. We've got a lot
Speaker 1: to talk about. I think our paths first crossed when
Speaker 1: we were or when I was out of the cops
Speaker 1: at the writer's festival or whatever. You were the well known,
Speaker 1: established fictional crime writer. Yeah, and I was the unemployed,
Speaker 1: criminally charged ex detective try and make my way in
Speaker 1: the media.
Speaker 3: I thought to myself, this guy is the best dressed
Speaker 3: guy at this festival. You know, it's a whole bunch
Speaker 3: of fiction writers walking around in hoodies and that kind
Speaker 3: of thing. And you had like the nice shirt and
Speaker 3: the suit and all that. You look great, you're up
Speaker 3: on the stage.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I wasn't. I wasn't trying to make a statement.
Speaker 1: That's just how I thought you had to dress. Now,
Speaker 1: I just turned up in the casual.
Speaker 3: Gift dacks and uggies, you know, where you.
Speaker 1: Turn up at that fancy dress party. That's not a
Speaker 1: fancy dress party or whatever.
Speaker 3: So I dressed like a frog or something.
Speaker 1: I'd never dressed like a frog. Now, last time I
Speaker 1: spoke to you were looking for a home for twelve chickens.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's right. Things have changed. I mean that was
Speaker 3: what forty eight hours ago. Things have changed since I've
Speaker 3: rescued a gigantic muscovy duck and a pekin duck that
Speaker 3: were both dumped at the same park, and somebody's called
Speaker 3: them in, you know, thinking these don't belong here, and
Speaker 3: they don't because they're farm ducks. And I've gotten rid
Speaker 3: of the chickens. I've picked up two fantail pigeons and
Speaker 3: seven wood duck ducklings. My daughter loves poultry. She's six
Speaker 3: years old and she's had a long fascination with eggs
Speaker 3: and chickens and ducks. So I started out with wires
Speaker 3: doing wildlife rescue, but then we ended up getting chickens
Speaker 3: and ducks and just filling the driveway with them and
Speaker 3: rehome them. It's just so much fun because it's good
Speaker 3: for her because the wildlife bite her and scratch her,
Speaker 3: whereas these ducks and things that don't they're kind of mild.
Speaker 1: Well, given the fact this is a true crime podcast,
Speaker 1: we better put this in perspective. Not only are you
Speaker 1: a renowned fictional crime writer, you've also been working or
Speaker 1: volunteer work. I believe it is for wives rescuing wildlife.
Speaker 3: I don't stop well, I need I need something to
Speaker 3: distract me because I can't write from nine to five.
Speaker 3: You know, I'll send Violet to school and I'll sit
Speaker 3: down and I'll do a big burst of writing, you know,
Speaker 3: for an hour and a half, and then I need
Speaker 3: to get out and think. So sometimes when I'm driving
Speaker 3: to these rescues, you know, there's a possum stuck in
Speaker 3: a down pipe or something, I'm thinking, what am I
Speaker 3: going to write next when I get home, you know,
Speaker 3: drive out there, pop the possum out of the pipe,
Speaker 3: chuck it in a carrier, come home, put it in
Speaker 3: the garage because I'll go back and release it tonight
Speaker 3: there's nothing wrong with it, and then hammer the again.
Speaker 3: It's like a little refresher.
Speaker 1: It seuns like you must have a lot of empathy
Speaker 1: for animals, rescuing them, and I put my detectives hat
Speaker 1: on here. I look at some of your novels and
Speaker 1: you go into a very dark place. How do you
Speaker 1: get into the dark dark place when you've got empathy
Speaker 1: so you understand things, But how do you get into
Speaker 1: the dark world that you do when your.
Speaker 3: Crime not It's I really think that animal rescue shows
Speaker 3: you the best and the worst parts of humanity. You know,
Speaker 3: I've gone out to chicken dumping and there's this, you know,
Speaker 3: there's there's four chickens and they're starved half to death,
Speaker 3: and they're covered in disease and they're super sick, and
Speaker 3: it's a raging hot day. And I think, whoever has
Speaker 3: put you in this situation is a bad, bad person,
Speaker 3: you know. But then whoever's reported them and brought me
Speaker 3: out there is dropping everything in their life to help
Speaker 3: me wrangle them, you know. And then you take him
Speaker 3: to the vets who are rushing there trying to save
Speaker 3: the lives of these chickens, trying to CPR to this chicken.
Speaker 3: It's the heart of people, And yeah, I get to
Speaker 3: super dark places. I kind of grew up like that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: My mother had four kids, and then she adopted two,
Speaker 3: and then she fostered one hundred and fifty five kids
Speaker 3: as I was growing up.
Speaker 2: A lot of people coming through your house.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Yeah, it was just a madhouse because she did
Speaker 3: the animal rescue as well, and she also loved to
Speaker 3: rescue things off the side of the street. So this
Speaker 3: house was crammed with all of these kids who all
Speaker 3: had terribly dark stories as to how they'd gotten there.
Speaker 3: My mum is someone who was born without subtlety, so
Speaker 3: she would tell you. She'd say, oh, that kid's uncle's
Speaker 3: been sexually abusing him for the last year and a half,
Speaker 3: and those kids, their parents have just done an armed robbery.
Speaker 1: Okay, that makes it. It's because, sadly, the type of
Speaker 1: kids that pass through foster homes might have that backstory
Speaker 1: of growing up in not the perfect, perfect world, not
Speaker 1: the perfect childhood. I know in your book Red Belly Crossing,
Speaker 1: I'm reading that and I've seen them and done a
Speaker 1: lot of things, so there's not much that shocked me.
Speaker 1: And you know, you take me to a dark place.
Speaker 1: I've seen that or heard that before. But there was
Speaker 1: one particular early in the book, and we won't give
Speaker 1: away the storyline of the book, but where a father
Speaker 1: comes across his two sons in a car parking with
Speaker 1: their girlfriends as teenagers do at night, stopped them, got
Speaker 1: them out, berated the boys, berated the girls, and then
Speaker 1: directed his sons to get back in there and continue
Speaker 1: on what the teenagers do in a park car at
Speaker 1: night while he watches And I thought.
Speaker 2: That's really icky, that's horrible. Where do you dig up
Speaker 2: this stuff?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that's real deep character work for me. That's
Speaker 3: a lot of contemplation of that father, Arthur and how
Speaker 3: he feels about his sons. For Arthur in this novel,
Speaker 3: it's all about control and humiliation, and for them it
Speaker 3: was all about escape and fantasy. So Russell and Evan
Speaker 3: are the two teenage boys and they have fixed up
Speaker 3: this car so that they can just have, you know,
Speaker 3: a couple of hours of escape from this guy. So
Speaker 3: they're there with these girls and he turns up, of course,
Speaker 3: because he's just this malevolent presence in the novel who
Speaker 3: just knows, he knows what they're doing all the time,
Speaker 3: and he says to them, you know, you can't get
Speaker 3: anything past me, I know. And in that moment, I
Speaker 3: was thinking to myself, you know, how would they try
Speaker 3: to escape? What would they do with themselves? And once
Speaker 3: he's caught them, how could he humiliate them as much
Speaker 3: as possible, just you know, spun the wheel of things
Speaker 3: that he could do to them. And Yeah, sometimes it's
Speaker 3: things that I just come up with, and sometimes it's
Speaker 3: stories I've heard from people. I pride myself on being
Speaker 3: someone that anyone can talk to. And you know, my
Speaker 3: husband says to me. If you get on a train
Speaker 3: and there's eighty people in the carriage, but one of
Speaker 3: them is like a half psycho. He's been in prison
Speaker 3: half his life. He was accused of murder and he's
Speaker 3: now homeless. He will wander through the carriage and he
Speaker 3: will find you, and he will sit next to you
Speaker 3: and tell you his life story. Like I just attract,
Speaker 3: you know, talkers, and it must be that I'm listening
Speaker 3: and making them feel validated, and then they just keep going.
Speaker 3: They keep going because I'll listen to anyone. And I've
Speaker 3: had whole novels inspired.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I wrote a novel called Devil's Kitchen and it was
Speaker 3: inspired by these builders who came to my backyard. They're
Speaker 3: building a deck in my backyard. There's four builders and
Speaker 3: just listening to them, the way they talk to each other,
Speaker 3: the way they all henpeck to the apprentice. Everyone in
Speaker 3: that group had their role and the way that the
Speaker 3: guys would all tense up and everything when the boss
Speaker 3: Matt was coming. You know, they get a call and
Speaker 3: they go mad, I'll be here in ten minutes, put
Speaker 3: that away, do this, do that, And I'm.
Speaker 1: Just watching and watching and a story can evolve from
Speaker 1: that in the dynamics of that group and the power
Speaker 1: plays and bullies and all that. Yeah, it's interesting. But
Speaker 1: in terms of writing, you told me so much about
Speaker 1: that person at that particular point in time. If he's
Speaker 1: prepared to go that far, I wonder what else he
Speaker 1: would do. And yeah, very very descriptive. But I got
Speaker 1: to say, I'm thinking, oh, like, that's taking that too far.
Speaker 2: What about breaking it up?
Speaker 1: Like in a crime the way I look at it,
Speaker 1: You've got you've got the offender, you've got the victims,
Speaker 1: and you've got the police. Are you looking for something
Speaker 1: in each of those characters.
Speaker 3: Yeah. When I'm writing, you know, someone like Arthur the villain,
Speaker 3: I'm trying to channel all of the seriously vile people
Speaker 3: that I have even known, and things that they've said,
Speaker 3: and how they've undermined their own children, you know, and
Speaker 3: the how do you display that callousness? You know. So
Speaker 3: one of the worst people I've ever met in my
Speaker 3: life was an actual serial killer that I went and
Speaker 3: I sat with him, and I did that because I
Speaker 3: had written twelve novels at that time. So I've written
Speaker 3: about twelve killers, but I've never actually met one sat
Speaker 3: with one.
Speaker 1: I want you to tell us about that, because that
Speaker 1: I won't say funny because there's nothing funny about but
Speaker 1: that is a little bit funny.
Speaker 2: And how naive you were.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the toolbox killer, like they are. Well, because
Speaker 1: there was two of them, wasn't there. Yeah you met
Speaker 1: what was it.
Speaker 2: Lawrence Lauren Vitecker.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I did.
Speaker 1: So tell the story, tell the crimes, and tell the
Speaker 1: story because people will just be shocked. This is what
Speaker 1: you do for research for a book.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I wasn't researching it for a particular book. It
Speaker 3: was just one of those experiences that I thought, I'm
Speaker 3: going to go and do that and we'll see what
Speaker 3: it feels. Do that a lot in my life. So
Speaker 3: I was watching a documentary. I was living in LA
Speaker 3: because I had TV and film stuff that I was doing,
Speaker 3: and then we're just my husband and I just love LA.
Speaker 3: So we're just living there and having all sorts of
Speaker 3: experiences there. And I watched this documentary and I stopped
Speaker 3: what I was doing. Because I'm a multitasker, I stopped
Speaker 3: and I just watched this thing. This is the worst
Speaker 3: crime I think I've ever heard of. These two guys
Speaker 3: were driving around La in the late seventies, and they
Speaker 3: were picking up teenagers and taking them in a van
Speaker 3: into the mountains, the San Gabriel mountains, and they were
Speaker 3: doing horrific things to them for up to three days
Speaker 3: at a time, and then throwing their bodies off the.
Speaker 2: Canyons, basically torturing them with tools.
Speaker 3: Yeah, with tools and pliers and screwdrivers and ice picks
Speaker 3: and stuff. And they're victims, are you know, thirteen? And
Speaker 3: one of the girls was walking home from church, you know,
Speaker 3: and they've picked her up and they've done this. And
Speaker 3: so I just went down this deep spiral of who
Speaker 3: are these men? And I sort of through the court
Speaker 3: documents and that kind of thing. I found that Lawrence.
Speaker 3: There was Roy and Lawrence, and Lawrence was sort of
Speaker 3: the ringleader. I felt like he was the one that
Speaker 3: was in control. Certainly Roy was saying it was all
Speaker 3: Lawrence was idea. So Lawrence was in San Quentin on
Speaker 3: death row, and that was only an hour and a
Speaker 3: half away. So I said to Tim, I think I'm
Speaker 3: going to write to Lawrence and say, you know, I
Speaker 3: have some questions that i'd like you to answer, and
Speaker 3: if he says yes, I'd like to go and visit
Speaker 3: him because I want to look at him. And Tim said,
Speaker 3: you'll have fun, you know, I'll stay here if you go,
Speaker 3: And so I did that. I wrote to Lawrence and
Speaker 3: in that first letter, I'm starting the first letter, and
Speaker 3: this is where the moral gray territory will come into
Speaker 3: it later with red belly crossing and what inspired that.
Speaker 3: But I wrote, dear Lawrence, and then I went, oh, dear,
Speaker 3: like dear Lawrence and Lawrence, and I just thought, this
Speaker 3: guy is clearly a psychopath. He's gonna manipulate me and
Speaker 3: lie to me the entire time, you know. So I'm
Speaker 3: going to be brutally honest. And I said in that
Speaker 3: first letter, I've just watched the documentary about you. I
Speaker 3: have the feeling that you might be like an absolute monster.
Speaker 3: Are you interested in trying to bring my bring more
Speaker 3: complexity to my understanding of you, because you seem to
Speaker 3: be just the worst person on the planet. And I said,
Speaker 3: please understand, there is no romantic underpinnings to this whatsoever.
Speaker 3: I'm not interested in you romantically. And I'm really not.
Speaker 3: If you're going to come to me and say I
Speaker 3: didn't do it, it wasn't me, don't bother because I
Speaker 3: really I want you to be accountable.
Speaker 1: So interesting, interesting approach. But I understand why you put
Speaker 1: those barriers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, you know, because I don't want to waste
Speaker 3: my time going there.
Speaker 2: It wasn't me. You don't understand.
Speaker 1: There's nothing more boring than hearing someone plead that they're
Speaker 1: sitting in there.
Speaker 3: So he wrote back and he said, yeah, sure, great,
Speaker 3: Come you know what else am I? John? I'm sitting
Speaker 3: around in a cage or twenty three hours a day,
Speaker 3: you know, and then for one hour a day I
Speaker 3: go to a bigger cage. Come. So I filled out
Speaker 3: all of the stuff I'm supposed to fill out and
Speaker 3: I sent it off. And what they give you when
Speaker 3: you visit San Quentin is the visitor's handbook, okay, which
Speaker 3: is not a book at all. It's an a four
Speaker 3: sheet of paper, one sided, three columns, and it says
Speaker 3: this is you know, this is the prison, and this
Speaker 3: is where it is, and this is where you should park.
Speaker 3: And then yeah, it says this is what you should
Speaker 3: and shouldn't wear. So don't wear denim, don't wear ten
Speaker 3: because the prisoners wear denim and the guards wear ten.
Speaker 3: And if there's a riot, you know, we're going to
Speaker 3: need to know who to shoot, and don't wear an
Speaker 3: underwire bra because you'll be X ray and that kind
Speaker 3: of thing. And column three was like, you're allowed to
Speaker 3: bring in, you know, twenty dollars in one dollar notes only,
Speaker 3: you can have ten a four sheets of paper. You
Speaker 3: can have twenty photographs and bring everything in a plastic
Speaker 3: bag so we can see through it. And then there
Speaker 3: was like a little line that said, if an inmate
Speaker 3: takes you hostage, we will not negotiate for you.
Speaker 2: So that's a big disclaimer.
Speaker 3: Yeah, like no monkey business with the you know, oh,
Speaker 3: the hostage, you know, none of that. So I went, okay,
Speaker 3: it doesn't say anything about how the visit's going to go,
Speaker 3: but I imagine it's just he's getting to be a
Speaker 3: screen with a screen and the phone and all that,
Speaker 3: like you see in the movies. So I'll get there
Speaker 3: and I go through all the levels of security and
Speaker 3: the guards are really stern, and I had like a
Speaker 3: V neck back on my shirt that went pretty low,
Speaker 3: like mid back, I guess, and they were like, no,
Speaker 3: you'll have to wear a jacket over that. That's too
Speaker 3: provocative and all this. I was like okay. So I
Speaker 3: went back to my car, I got my jacket, and
Speaker 3: they said stay on the line. Follow the line, do
Speaker 3: not go anywhere else in the prison. You know. I'm
Speaker 3: walking along this line and there's dogs and barking and
Speaker 3: fences and stuff. Then then I got to death row
Speaker 3: and maybe I go in the door clank shut, and
Speaker 3: there's no one telling me what to do. I was like, okay.
Speaker 3: So I see all of the phones with the windows,
Speaker 3: and there was a guard just standing there and he's
Speaker 3: like picking his fingernails, and I said, Hi, my name's Candas.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. I don't know what to do. I'm supposed
Speaker 3: to be meeting Laurence Bittaka, you know, the serial killer,
Speaker 3: you know him, meet him here at eight o'clock. And
Speaker 3: I don't know which window is mine. And the guard goes, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, and and in this thing. I said, actually,
Speaker 3: as well, while I'm at it, can I borrow a
Speaker 3: pencil because I got my paper but I don't have
Speaker 3: a pencil. He goes, oh, yeah, well you're gonna have
Speaker 3: this pencil. I saw his pencil. He said, you're gonna
Speaker 3: have this pencil. And no Lawrence will be He's not
Speaker 3: one of the ones with the phones. He'll be in
Speaker 3: that cage there, and I went, oh, oh, he's going
Speaker 3: to be in the cage. And there was this floor
Speaker 3: to ceiling shark cage style thing with steel mesh and
Speaker 3: bulletproof glass all the way around. There's a whole row,
Speaker 3: two rows of them with an aisle. I said, oh,
Speaker 3: he'll be in there. Where am I going to be?
Speaker 3: And the guard said in there and I said at
Speaker 3: the same time, and the guard was like yes at
Speaker 3: the same time, and he's like, didn't you know, And
Speaker 3: I'm like, no, I didn't know, and he said, didn't
Speaker 3: you read the visitor's handbook. I said, that's not a book,
Speaker 3: it's an a foor sheet of paper. And I said,
Speaker 3: nothing about this, you know. And at this point that
Speaker 3: they're leading Lawrence out because then he's all cuffed up
Speaker 3: and everything, and I didn't want to be rude and
Speaker 3: be like making a fuss, like I don't want to
Speaker 3: get in a cage with you type of thing, because
Speaker 3: this is like the start of the relationship, I suppose
Speaker 3: I don't want to, and so I just went off.
Speaker 3: And so they unlocked the cage and they put him in,
Speaker 3: and he's cuffed and the guard said, all right, in
Speaker 3: your hop. So I got in and we both sat
Speaker 3: on our plastic chairs and we were sitting closer than
Speaker 3: you and I are sitting now, like there was a
Speaker 3: gap like this between half a yeah, yeah, yeah. And
Speaker 3: he sits down and I was saying, oh, thank god,
Speaker 3: he's cuffed, you know. So then he turned sideways in
Speaker 3: his chair and he stuck his wrists through a hole
Speaker 3: and they uncuffed him. And they while that's happening, they've
Speaker 3: shut the grille on the cage and they're threading a
Speaker 3: pet a padlock through it and snapping it shut. And
Speaker 3: I'm watching all of this happen like this, and then
Speaker 3: the guards went around the corner.
Speaker 2: So no one's getting in there.
Speaker 3: And I was like, well, you know, and but like
Speaker 3: I said, I feel like one of my skills as
Speaker 3: a writer as I can talk to anyone. So I
Speaker 3: was just matching his energy and he was like, oh,
Speaker 3: so how are you going? And I'm going fine, but
Speaker 3: how are you? You know? I like what you've done
Speaker 3: with the place. It's very industrial chic, you know. And
Speaker 3: but then in terms of like nerves, I just started
Speaker 3: like word vomit. And I was just like well, I'm
Speaker 3: kind of surprised that this is happening. Actually, you know
Speaker 3: that we're in here and the cage together. And he said, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's full contact visit. Didn't you It's in a handbook,
Speaker 3: isn't it. It's not handbook. And then he said, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a full contact visit. We can touch each other
Speaker 3: if you want. And I was like, okay. He goes,
Speaker 3: I'll put my hand out. Will you shake my hand?
Speaker 3: And then I was like, oh will I though, you know,
Speaker 3: because these are the hands. I'm looking at the hands
Speaker 3: that tortured and murdered the girls, you know, at least
Speaker 3: five and I and so I shook his hand. His
Speaker 3: hand was ice cold and super soft. I was like, oh,
Speaker 3: like full bodies shiver.
Speaker 1: How do you feel like with that? Because I know
Speaker 1: I've sat opposite serial killers and just evil human beings
Speaker 1: and when they offer the hand, and invariably if I'm
Speaker 1: sitting there trying to get a rapport and all that,
Speaker 1: and you shake the hand, and what you were going
Speaker 1: through and as a police officer, at least there was
Speaker 1: a build up to by the time I'm sitting opposite
Speaker 1: like that going in there.
Speaker 2: That must have freaked you out.
Speaker 3: I was going in thinking this is incredibly moral gray
Speaker 3: territory because one of the any joy yeah and attention.
Speaker 3: And I'm listening to him, and you know, I'm thinking
Speaker 3: to myself, if he asks me to buy him commissary
Speaker 3: as payment for this, what am I going to do?
Speaker 3: Am I going to buy this guy muffin? Does he
Speaker 3: deserve a crumb? This guy for what he's done? Shouldn't
Speaker 3: he just be put in a hole and forgotten forever.
Speaker 3: So it's very it's very hard morally. And I'm sitting
Speaker 3: there and I'm starting to get him to talk about
Speaker 3: the crimes. And the two things that I'd said in
Speaker 3: the letter was please don't tell me that it wasn't
Speaker 3: all your fault, and please don't try to come on
Speaker 3: to me. And that's exactly what he did for the
Speaker 3: five and a half hours. He just blamed it all
Speaker 3: on Roy, essentially. And when I really pressed him to say,
Speaker 3: you know, you took over five hundred photos of this
Speaker 3: one victim. Five hundred photos were entered into evidence. You know,
Speaker 3: you can't tell me that you were taking five hundred
Speaker 3: photos of something that you weren't enjoying or that you
Speaker 3: weren't participating in and you know, Roy, even if Roy
Speaker 3: was the A man doing all of the stuff, you
Speaker 3: were the b man sitting there not into he would
Speaker 3: just start crying and I'd go, okay, well, you know,
Speaker 3: but the more I allowed him to speak, the more
Speaker 3: he said. And I didn't kind of press him on.
Speaker 3: I didn't press him on it too hard, and I
Speaker 3: just got more and more and more. And what I
Speaker 3: was getting out of him is a real understanding of psychopaths.
Speaker 3: And yeah, it was morally gray, but and I wasn't
Speaker 3: able to use that knowledge that I gained until years
Speaker 3: later when I was talking to the victims of homicides
Speaker 3: and they were saying to me, you've met a serial killer.
Speaker 3: What are they like? You know, is he sorry? And
Speaker 3: I had to say, you know, to these these husbands
Speaker 3: of these murdered wives, know he wasn't sorry. And maybe
Speaker 3: that's a hard question to answer for these guys, but
Speaker 3: at least they're not wondering anymore. People say to me,
Speaker 3: you know, murderers and killers and psychopaths, do they live
Speaker 3: with it for the rest of their lives? Do they
Speaker 3: think about it every day? No, they don't. You know.
Speaker 3: Lawrence was talking about his victims. And he said, oh,
Speaker 3: you know, by the time we got to number five,
Speaker 3: what was her name? And I said her name and
Speaker 3: he went, oh, whatever her name was like this, yeah,
Speaker 3: I And I saw the hand flick and like a
Speaker 3: piece of dust, like, oh whatever a name was like that,
Speaker 3: And I thought, oh, you're not sorry. There's all this
Speaker 3: crying and saying that you're sorry, but I don't think
Speaker 3: he has the capacity for that. He's dead now, he
Speaker 3: doesn't have the capacity for anything.
Speaker 2: But he.
Speaker 3: Wasn't sorry, and he wasn't able to be sorry. And
Speaker 3: maybe that adds a level of understanding, you know, to
Speaker 3: me of what these murderers are actually like. But also,
Speaker 3: you know, victims of murder to say you were dealing
Speaker 3: with someone who didn't have it wasn't a person who
Speaker 3: had a layer of evil genius added to them. It
Speaker 3: was a person who had something to taken away the
Speaker 3: ability to see this girl as a real human being.
Speaker 3: Like I was saying to Lawrence, you know, not only
Speaker 3: did you kill her, and you deleted her from the
Speaker 3: rest of the life that she would have had, you know,
Speaker 3: the children that she would have had, maybe whoever she married,
Speaker 3: the friends she would have had, the rest of her
Speaker 3: life that she would have had without you. You deleted
Speaker 3: her from that strain, but you also deleted her from
Speaker 3: the rest of her mother's life and the rest of
Speaker 3: her father's life. And the cops. You know, there was
Speaker 3: a police officer who committed suicide and he he named
Speaker 3: you know, he said this, Yeah, this case really messed
Speaker 3: me up. You know, you deleted that guy. And the
Speaker 3: effect that you've had is so huge and profound, it's massive,
Speaker 3: Like do you understand do you understand what I'm saying?
Speaker 3: And he said, oh, you know, the mother of that girl,
Speaker 3: like it was thirty eight years ago, she'd be over
Speaker 3: it by now. I'm thinking she'd be over it by now.
Speaker 3: You don't understand that people don't get over that kind
Speaker 3: of thing ever. But he, you know, he couldn't get it,
Speaker 3: and I think because he wasn't able.
Speaker 1: To and that getting that experience, so I would imagine
Speaker 1: that that helped you in what you're doing writing or understanding.
Speaker 1: And as you said, when you speak to speak to
Speaker 1: parents or people that have experienced murder, quite often it's
Speaker 1: in any climax meeting these people. You've heard and read
Speaker 1: so much, and that the crimes I'm looking at the
Speaker 1: crimes A committed. We're talking about the worst of the worst,
Speaker 1: what they were doing. There was two of them that
Speaker 1: was planning and enjoying it that but yeah, you just
Speaker 1: get nothing from them. There's just no soul, is there
Speaker 1: and no comprehension.
Speaker 3: No, And I was saying to him, literally, the only
Speaker 3: good thing that you can do now is you can
Speaker 3: reveal other victims, or you can reveal the locations of
Speaker 3: their bodies. That's all you have left until the day
Speaker 3: you die, and you're gonna die soon, like he was old,
Speaker 3: and that's all you can do, and you can do
Speaker 3: it today right now. Today, you can admit to this killing,
Speaker 3: which was so clearly you. It was two guys. They
Speaker 3: looked exactly like you in the van you live two
Speaker 3: blocks over from this girl. It was so clearly you.
Speaker 3: You can do a good thing today if you admit
Speaker 3: to that crime and solve that case. And he's like, oh, no,
Speaker 3: it wasn't me.
Speaker 1: I always think it's a little bit of power they
Speaker 1: have hanging on to that. That's like people like my
Speaker 1: latt before he passed away and cops going to see
Speaker 1: him and all that, that was power that he had still.
Speaker 2: Control keeping relevant. They need me for something, But yeah,
Speaker 2: how did you walk away?
Speaker 1: You personally walk away, because in a room like that,
Speaker 1: you walk away, you feel a little bit dirty and conflicted,
Speaker 1: and just yeah.
Speaker 3: I was absolutely shattered. I didn't realize that it was
Speaker 3: a five and a half hour visit, you know, because
Speaker 3: he said, you've come from more than fifty miles away,
Speaker 3: so you get the extended visit. But I feel like
Speaker 3: it felt like it passed in an hour. And then
Speaker 3: I just felt like i'd really scratch the surface. So
Speaker 3: immediately after that, I wrote a letter with all of
Speaker 3: the questions that I didn't get in, and we exchanged
Speaker 3: letters for two years after that, and he died. And
Speaker 3: in those two years, I was just hammering him to say,
Speaker 3: what about this girl? What about that girl? I was
Speaker 3: occupying this arrogant space where I was thinking, he hates
Speaker 3: law enforcement, but he has these girlfriends. You know, he
Speaker 3: has four girlfriends. He's trying to recruit me as number five.
Speaker 2: So he's not going to eat you didn't say.
Speaker 3: I like, no, I would just ignore it, and he
Speaker 3: would be bragging about the other girls and saying, oh,
Speaker 3: I had some German girl come and visit me. The
Speaker 3: other day, and you know, she said she wants to
Speaker 3: have my baby and all this kind of stuff. I was, Oh,
Speaker 3: I thought, maybe between the girlfriends, he's not going to
Speaker 3: tell them what he did, and he's not going to
Speaker 3: tell the police what he did. But maybe if I
Speaker 3: stay on him for long enough, right at the end,
Speaker 3: he'll tell me, you know, and I'll be able to help.
Speaker 3: Because the helping and this completely arrogant idea, maybe I
Speaker 3: can be the one to help. That's what fueled the.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's arrogant, may be a little bit naive,
Speaker 1: but incredibly like thinking outside the square. I think with
Speaker 1: these like if you come at from a police point
Speaker 1: of view, and then the girlfriend, I'm trying to impress
Speaker 1: the girlfriend, I think when you're dealing.
Speaker 2: With people like that, you've got to think outside the square.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I gave it a red hot go and he,
Speaker 3: you know, over the years, displayed a tiny bit of
Speaker 3: curiosity in me. He was only able to see himself
Speaker 3: as this great sun and all the planets, you know,
Speaker 3: they all go around him. And in that five and
Speaker 3: a half hours, he didn't ask me a single question
Speaker 3: about myself, not one, you know, where'd you grow up?
Speaker 3: Or your husband, what do you do? Nothing? And that
Speaker 3: kind of fueled me for my understanding of other psychopaths,
Speaker 3: because that's happened to me before. I had the mother
Speaker 3: of a kid that Violet went to daycare with over
Speaker 3: for a playdate and she's there three and a half hours.
Speaker 3: She didn't asked me a single question about myself, not one.
Speaker 3: And I thought I could be anything from an airline
Speaker 3: pilot to a bloody Olympic swimmer? Are you not curious
Speaker 3: at all about what I do? And it just never
Speaker 3: came up, and she never Yeah, because I'm proud of
Speaker 3: what I do and I'm ready to tell you I'm
Speaker 3: a crime writer. It's super interesting nothing you know, not
Speaker 3: what does Tim do or anything like that. And once
Speaker 3: you've seen psychopaths, I'm sure you can spot them a
Speaker 3: mile away and you go, I know what that is?
Speaker 1: You can they give out an energy? I think that's
Speaker 1: something without even articulating the signs, there's an energy, there's
Speaker 1: a darkness or something.
Speaker 2: You meet a.
Speaker 1: Person and you feel the energy from that person. You
Speaker 1: meet one of these evil types and it's sort of
Speaker 1: it's just like a black hole. You're looking and just
Speaker 1: thinking what's there. There's nothing there seeing there, and they
Speaker 1: function and they talk and they communicate, but I would
Speaker 1: imagine that I've had situations where I've had to know
Speaker 1: the friend is probably too strong a word, but that's
Speaker 1: the way I'm trying to build a relationship people that
Speaker 1: I hate for the crimes that committed, but I'm speaking
Speaker 1: to them, I'm talking to them and all that, and
Speaker 1: I always walk away from it. I just feel a
Speaker 1: little bit lucky at the end of it, because you've
Speaker 1: got to give a little bit of yourself, like shaking
Speaker 1: the hand. I would do that with some evil people.
Speaker 3: And I'm thinking, but the sadness in it and what
Speaker 3: I explained to the victims of homicide later, the only
Speaker 3: way you can feel sorry for them, and the way
Speaker 3: I felt sorry for Lawrence is that no one in
Speaker 3: the world love him. And also he had never really
Speaker 3: loved anyone because he doesn't have the capacity for love.
Speaker 3: And you know, having my daughter Violet, that is a
Speaker 3: love that it's unlike anything else. I would throw myself
Speaker 3: off a bridge for this child. And that the selflessness
Speaker 3: that you have, I mean nothing in comparison to what
Speaker 3: I would give you. He has never felt that and
Speaker 3: that is a beautiful thing that just doesn't operate in
Speaker 3: his brain. And then also I don't think that anyone
Speaker 3: had truly ever loved him, because he was this just
Speaker 3: this bad person who couldn't reciprocate it, you know. And
Speaker 3: he was very he was just reptilian. It was as
Speaker 3: close as you'd come to knowing an alien, you know.
Speaker 3: And he's like, so, how do things happen in your world?
Speaker 3: You know? And I'm like, how do things happen in
Speaker 3: your world? You know? And trying to understand each other.
Speaker 3: I was telling him a out. When I was in La,
Speaker 3: I did a few animal rescues, but so I wasn't
Speaker 3: part of an organization. I rescued a gopher and I
Speaker 3: was telling him about this gopher that had been poisoned.
Speaker 3: People poison their whole lawn full of gophers and they
Speaker 3: all die. And I found this one, little sick one.
Speaker 2: After watching Shack.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, like that. It was. It was called a
Speaker 3: bottle's pocket gopher. It's only as big as a golf ball.
Speaker 3: And I nursed it back to health and it would
Speaker 3: sit on my knee and I was, you know, and
Speaker 3: I was telling him all about it, and he said,
Speaker 3: why would you do that? Why you know it could
Speaker 3: bite you, You could get rabies, you know. He said,
Speaker 3: there's nine hundred different types of ticks in the US.
Speaker 3: I don't understand you, and I'm saying I don't understand
Speaker 3: you either.
Speaker 2: He's like, it's not even comprehendive. Yeah, if you did.
Speaker 1: You ever see the work of doctor James Fallon, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I spoke to him, had a lot of communications with
Speaker 1: him about psychopaths, and he's a neuroscientist. Did a pet
Speaker 1: scan the brains of some of the psychopaths that have
Speaker 1: been caught in America, the worst of the worst, looking
Speaker 1: for that pattern in their brain, and he he needed
Speaker 1: something to test it with, so he did the PET
Speaker 1: scan of his own brain. He had the same whatever
Speaker 1: it was, pattern in the brain that the psychopaths had.
Speaker 1: And he said to me, and I learned a lot
Speaker 1: from this. He came up with it because you were
Speaker 1: talking about your mate in prison, Lawrence, who you could
Speaker 1: have been his fifth girlfriend, missed opportunity, not having the
Speaker 1: love support when he was a kid, and all that
Speaker 1: and what James Fallon talked about, and it made a
Speaker 1: lot of sense to me in those formative years from
Speaker 1: birth to the age of two or three. If a
Speaker 1: person has a predisposition as in the brain pattern like
Speaker 1: James Fallon had other psychopaths, he's not term psychopath, not
Speaker 1: a psychopathic killer. If they have in an environment where
Speaker 1: they've got love and nurturing and the type of environment
Speaker 1: that kids should have, it won't play out. But if
Speaker 1: you have that predisposition with the brain to start with,
Speaker 1: and in those formative years you haven't got love and
Speaker 1: you know, the type of kids that you would have
Speaker 1: seen come through your own home, the foster kids, that's
Speaker 1: where it can go terribly, terribly well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, adding the violence. You know, I've known psychopaths that
Speaker 3: that aren't violent, but they just go through workplaces and
Speaker 3: they go through relationships and that's just a it's just carnage,
Speaker 3: you know, like a tornado going through leaving all of
Speaker 3: these girlfriends in their wake, and manipulative and lying and
Speaker 3: it's fascinating, you know, And and so that's how you
Speaker 3: make the fascinating villain. And then you come to it,
Speaker 3: you know, you're writing the book. You come to it
Speaker 3: with a hero that you have something in common with,
Speaker 3: and you know, in Red Belly Crossing it's a it's
Speaker 3: a father trying to get to know his teen daughter again.
Speaker 3: And I have daughter, so I have that, you know,
Speaker 3: I was writing about that yearning to know her.
Speaker 1: It was interesting and I'll choose my words carefully so
Speaker 1: I don't reveal the plot because you wrote the book
Speaker 1: and I don't want to.
Speaker 2: Give away the plot.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that relationship was interesting, and from a bloke's
Speaker 1: point of view, the struggle to make that connection and
Speaker 1: you know, the focus of other things that are more
Speaker 1: pressing and trying to make that connection with a teenage kid,
Speaker 1: how difficult was so that certainly came out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh good, well, thank you. I'm trying well.
Speaker 1: I think you've been doing pretty good so far. Twenty
Speaker 1: two books. Maybe one day you'll prove yourself. And you're
Speaker 1: still trying. The people that knock back your first novel,
Speaker 1: you still I.
Speaker 3: See him around. I see publishing people, and they've said,
Speaker 3: you know, the first time they meet me, they go,
Speaker 3: I don't know if you know this, but I reject you,
Speaker 3: and I think I know, of course.
Speaker 2: Finger up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, hey guys, it's Gary jubilin here. I want to
Speaker 1: get more out of I catch killers. Then you should
Speaker 1: head over to our new video feed on Spotify where
Speaker 1: you can watch every episode of I Catch Killers. Just
Speaker 1: search for I Catch Killers video in your Spotify app
Speaker 1: and start watching today. Tell us a bit about your background.
Speaker 1: You said you grew up in the family, had two
Speaker 1: kids adopted into the family for other siblings, and then
Speaker 1: one hundred and fifty foster children.
Speaker 3: Yeah, my mum was counting them and taking pictures of
Speaker 3: them all and putting it on. She had like a
Speaker 3: wall of all the kids, you know, that she had fostered,
Speaker 3: and then she also had a wall of all the
Speaker 3: animals that she had rescued. So it was kind of
Speaker 3: weird to have the two walls, and you know, and
Speaker 3: they were just I was taking them to school and
Speaker 3: saying to my friends, this is Eric. Eric's going to
Speaker 3: be here for an unknown amount of time, you know.
Speaker 3: As a teenager, it was kind of annoying because I
Speaker 3: was like, please, nobody date him, and that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: And it was also kind of my role in the
Speaker 3: family was the capable child. You're capable, you're responsible, you're smart,
Speaker 3: you know what you're doing, so for that reason, you
Speaker 3: don't need help. So I would come to my mum
Speaker 3: as a teenager and say, you know, I'm being pretty
Speaker 3: badly bullied at school. Can I get some help? And
Speaker 3: she's like, well, actually, you know, these kids have just
Speaker 3: lost their parents. They're in jail and you know, so
Speaker 3: they have problems. You don't have problems. And I'm like, well, okay.
Speaker 2: That's an interesting way to grow up. It would give
Speaker 2: you a resilience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's given me a lot of things. It's
Speaker 3: given me a desire to solve all of my own
Speaker 3: problems all the time, and a perspective. And they always
Speaker 3: had perspective on things. My father was an interesting characters
Speaker 3: as well. He worked in prisons, his prole officer in
Speaker 3: several Sydney prisons, and so as a kid, I worked
Speaker 3: out that he had this big Vinyl recliner that he
Speaker 3: would sit in right in front of the TV, and
Speaker 3: Mum would sit on the end of the couch here.
Speaker 3: And I found out that if I crawled around the
Speaker 3: back of his recliner and sat in the gap, neither
Speaker 3: of them could see me because the arms of the
Speaker 3: recliner and the couch went like this. Neither of them
Speaker 3: can see me. So I'm there and I'm hearing all
Speaker 3: of the prison talk. Oh, right, okay, yeah, he was
Speaker 3: saying things. I remember he was talking at one point
Speaker 3: about that a prisoner was about to be released and
Speaker 3: they had him on suicide watch and he committed suicide
Speaker 3: using the lid of a tuna can. And I remember
Speaker 3: as a kid sitting there going what like, what does
Speaker 3: that mean? How did he do it? You know, and
Speaker 3: feeling like this whole body rush. And then in a
Speaker 3: household like that, there wasn't a lot of supervision either.
Speaker 3: So I was reading dad's police magazines and law enforcement magazines.
Speaker 3: Remember I was on mum and Dad's bed, and I
Speaker 3: was looking at these. They had graphic.
Speaker 2: Crime scene favor yeah, the.
Speaker 3: Crime scene phatus. I'm looking at them all, you know,
Speaker 3: I would have been seven or eight years old. Wow,
Speaker 3: And my mom comes in and I froze because no,
Speaker 3: I'm not looking. I'm not supposed to be looking at
Speaker 3: this naughty stuff. And Mum leaned over me and she goes, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: that's what the inside of your leg looks like. So
Speaker 3: that's the muscle, and that's the fat, and that's the skin.
Speaker 3: You can see the bone there. Isn't that interesting? And
Speaker 3: she just walked out and I was like, you know,
Speaker 3: but I got in trouble. I think I was in
Speaker 3: fifth grade. All my friends were reading the Chronicles of
Speaker 3: Narnia and I had been reading all her True Crime,
Speaker 3: and I said, I'm reading this book at the moment
Speaker 3: about these kids. It's kids who kill and these kids
Speaker 3: all murdered this girl named Shanda Sheirah, and I described
Speaker 3: all the ways that they tortured her and all this
Speaker 3: kind of stuff, and they burned her alive. And then
Speaker 3: my friends all and told the teacher, and I got
Speaker 3: in trouble.
Speaker 2: How old were you then?
Speaker 3: In grade five? So probably I don't know, nine or something.
Speaker 3: And then mums like, you can't read any of the
Speaker 3: true crime, none of this. These shelves are off, you know.
Speaker 3: And I was like, oh, so that left me with
Speaker 3: the crime fiction.
Speaker 1: Do you think that was the attraction to it? Like
Speaker 1: you've had that little bit of exposure to it. Your
Speaker 1: interesting in crime because your fictional crime writer, but you
Speaker 1: must have an interest in true crime to get you there.
Speaker 1: Is that a little bit of exposure, a little bit
Speaker 1: of curiosity, and that's what's taken you down that path.
Speaker 3: It's that feeling you know that this is real, this
Speaker 3: really happened. Those kinds of people who would do these
Speaker 3: things are out there in society, and you know, being
Speaker 3: someone who had no subtlety, Like I said, my mother,
Speaker 3: she would warn you about certain things. She'd say. You know,
Speaker 3: she wouldn't just say don't talk to strangers, or if
Speaker 3: anyone you know comes up and says, can you help
Speaker 3: me find my puppy, you know, don't help them. She
Speaker 3: would say, there were these children. There was this girl
Speaker 3: named Elizabeth Smart, and then this happened to her, and
Speaker 3: she'd tell the whole story. She told me about the Mare's.
Speaker 2: Murderers right they were over in the UK.
Speaker 3: She was like, oh, a little boy was walking along
Speaker 3: and a woman said, can you help me find my glove?
Speaker 3: And then they did this, and then they did this,
Speaker 3: and I'm sitting there as a kid going they did what.
Speaker 1: You know, it sounds like got no filter, But was
Speaker 1: that the way of preparing you for society? Because you
Speaker 1: can only shield kids from so much, You've got to
Speaker 1: give them a bit of Okay, this is.
Speaker 2: What the world's like. So yeah, maybe street wise at
Speaker 2: their very young age.
Speaker 3: Very street wise and just seeing things that I couldn't
Speaker 3: really explain. I remember, you know, for that as a teenager,
Speaker 3: I'd get home from school, chuck my stuff in my room.
Speaker 3: I've got twenty minutes to write my stories because I
Speaker 3: was furiously writing the books as a teenager. And come
Speaker 3: downstairs and Mom's like, right, it's the it's the night
Speaker 3: routine for the toddlers and then the bigger kids, and
Speaker 3: then the sort of teenagers, and just for the rest
Speaker 3: of the night, it was night routine, you know, feeding, bathing,
Speaker 3: putting to sleep. And she said, wash this kid. And
Speaker 3: I was washing this kid in the laundry tub. I
Speaker 3: take his shirt off. This kid has just got here
Speaker 3: this afternoon. Pulled his shirt off and he's covered all
Speaker 3: over in white spots. And I said to Mom, I
Speaker 3: think he's got ringworm or something. Can you come and
Speaker 3: have a look, because ringworm was something that kids would
Speaker 3: come with ringworm all the time. And she's like, oh no,
Speaker 3: there's cigarette burns, scars, it's all over, you know, and
Speaker 3: they've all healed. And he just and I remember going, whoa.
Speaker 2: How.
Speaker 3: Too, you know, to fit in a laundry to dub
Speaker 3: he would have been too, you know. So all you
Speaker 3: think about all my friends as teenagers, they're all going
Speaker 3: home and they've got like one brother and play with
Speaker 3: the dog and do your homework and I was just
Speaker 3: in a factory. Yeah, and it was exciting. I remember
Speaker 3: with the phone would ring and everyone just freeze because
Speaker 3: we just hear like is it an animal? Is it?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: Three kids are coming? How old are they?
Speaker 1: You know?
Speaker 3: And you'd all listen for what chaos was going to
Speaker 3: come into the house next.
Speaker 2: Did you have any attachments to when the kids that
Speaker 2: came through? Was there?
Speaker 3: Mom did short to medium term care, so sometimes that was,
Speaker 3: you know, overnight. We had three kids come in overnight
Speaker 3: because they were found wandering around the car park of
Speaker 3: the Star City Casino in their pajamas and the police
Speaker 3: were like, whose kids are they? You know? So they
Speaker 3: just were with us for a couple of nights while
Speaker 3: the police number one find their parents and number two
Speaker 3: find out why did you leave them in the car
Speaker 3: and go to the casino. And those three kids ended
Speaker 3: up having to come to my brother's wedding because it
Speaker 3: was my brother's wedding the next day. Yeah, so Mum's
Speaker 3: called him and gone, I've got three extra kids coming
Speaker 3: to the wedding and he was like, you can't out
Speaker 3: and she was like all right, bye, see there by,
Speaker 3: you know, and yeah, so it was short to medium,
Speaker 3: but you know, she had four and she adopted two.
Speaker 3: She tried to adopt another three kids out of that collection.
Speaker 3: And those kids we had for longer while their parents
Speaker 3: went through the court system to say can we have
Speaker 3: custody or not? And then an aunta and uncle would
Speaker 3: try to take custody and it was all being worked
Speaker 3: out in the courts. Mums decided that she wanted to
Speaker 3: adopt them and that it hasn't it hasn't worked out,
Speaker 3: so she would have had nine of us.
Speaker 2: You know, all good on your family.
Speaker 1: Like I see the importance of sadly in police and
Speaker 1: you come across it a lot fostering in kids that
Speaker 1: need to go in the foster homes. I just full
Speaker 1: courage to the people that can take kids in because
Speaker 1: you rescue animals, and I would imagine that's hard enough
Speaker 1: giving away an animal, But when a child comes into
Speaker 1: your house and you're giving that child a bit of
Speaker 1: love and comfort and security for the first time in
Speaker 1: your life, perhaps it must be so hard handing them
Speaker 1: back to where the future may lie.
Speaker 3: And especially when you send them back and then two
Speaker 3: months later they came back back and they're thinner. And
Speaker 3: this kid came back one time and his mother had
Speaker 3: tried to shave his head with like a big razor
Speaker 3: and she'd cut his head all over and this kind
Speaker 3: of stuff, and he was he would really plumped him up,
Speaker 3: and he was all seen and he come back again.
Speaker 3: You go, and then you got handing back again.
Speaker 1: I can see how it gives you a distored not
Speaker 1: a distorted view on life, but the understanding of the
Speaker 1: dark side life. Making the career out of the writing,
Speaker 1: is that what you aspired to do? So what you
Speaker 1: left school?
Speaker 2: What did you like?
Speaker 3: My mom? I wanted to leave school at sixteen and Mum,
Speaker 3: you know, because I've big bullied. And Mom said, I said,
Speaker 3: I've got a big plan. I'm going to become a
Speaker 3: famous author. And she said, well, you're missing a few
Speaker 3: steps there. You can't just go from sixteen year old
Speaker 3: child to famous authors. She said, if you want to
Speaker 3: be a writer, you got to get a real job,
Speaker 3: and that'll be a side hustle, and then when you
Speaker 3: make money enough money doing that, you give up your
Speaker 3: real job. So I joined the Navy at eighteen. The experience,
Speaker 3: oh yeah, it was a very strange life choice. I
Speaker 3: think to myself, why didn't anyone who knew me as
Speaker 3: a massive creative person, super spacey, not disciplined at all.
Speaker 3: I get violently seasick. Why didn't anyone say this is
Speaker 3: not for you? What are you doing?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: I wanted to join the Cops and the Navy, and
Speaker 3: I thought the Cops is just the Navy is just
Speaker 3: the cops at sea? Really, And I put the applications
Speaker 3: in and I said, whoever comes back first, I'll go
Speaker 3: with them. Yees. So I went with the Navy, and
Speaker 3: it was eye opening and I learned a lot. But
Speaker 3: one of the ways in which I didn't fit in
Speaker 3: one of them many ways is that I'll talk to
Speaker 3: anyone and I'll listen to anyone. So I got in
Speaker 3: trouble one time because I joined as a direct entry officer.
Speaker 3: I'm standing there on the bridge wing and all these
Speaker 3: sailors are talking to me, and they're telling me these
Speaker 3: fascinating stories and I can't I can't hear enough of it,
Speaker 3: you know. And my EXO said to me, this unbecoming
Speaker 3: of an officer. To be a young female officer eighteen
Speaker 3: years old. You're standing there You've got six sailors in
Speaker 3: their twenties all talking to you. That's unbecoming. And I'm like, well,
Speaker 3: we weren't talking about anything unbecoming. No, we weren't. We were.
Speaker 3: They were saying spinning warries, were spinning warries. They were
Speaker 3: telling me things, and I was super interested. And he
Speaker 3: was like, it look like you were really lapping it up,
Speaker 3: and I thought, well, I probably was like I'll love
Speaker 3: to hear things, you know, and I'm just I'll just
Speaker 3: talk to anyone.
Speaker 2: So your first book, when when was your first published book? Sorry,
Speaker 2: how did you get out of the Navory?
Speaker 3: Well, not kicked out, but I left. How long were
Speaker 3: But they were like bye, I was two years, just
Speaker 3: two years. And in between that and becoming a published
Speaker 3: author for the first time, I did every job under
Speaker 3: the sun. I cleaned houses, I taught kids to swim.
Speaker 3: I worked in a tattoo shop. I taught at university.
Speaker 3: I qualified. I went to university and qualified as a
Speaker 3: high school teacher. So I did high school teaching and
Speaker 3: I subbed for primary schools. I worked for a magazine.
Speaker 3: I did all sorts of different stuff, so all levels
Speaker 3: of society I'm meeting all and that kind of thing.
Speaker 3: And then I was just constantly putting novels in for publication.
Speaker 2: And right so you were knocking them out, going oh.
Speaker 1: Yeah, look at this, this is the greatest story in
Speaker 1: the history that's ever been told, and people go, oh, thank.
Speaker 3: You, Oh yeah, thanks. I thought to myself, I'm going
Speaker 3: to put one novel in per year until I'm seventy five.
Speaker 3: And when I'm seventy five, I quit. And after you know,
Speaker 3: a publisher has rejected five of you not wolves, they
Speaker 3: start to feel bad and so they call me on
Speaker 3: the phone to reject me. And oh the crying. I
Speaker 3: would try to hold it together as long as I could.
Speaker 3: And then the crying, which is another reason I didn't
Speaker 3: fit in the navy. Whenever someone yells at me, I
Speaker 3: burst into tearsok's not becoming it's not becoming of an
Speaker 3: officer at all. And so when I finally got my agent,
Speaker 3: she said to me, do you know anyone in the
Speaker 3: publishing industry in Australia. I said, I have cried on
Speaker 3: the phone to every I could give you a list
Speaker 3: of all the publishers that I have cried too. So
Speaker 3: I wrote four full novels and then I had a
Speaker 3: whole bunch of starts with.
Speaker 2: The crime crime based. No, they were not all sorts.
Speaker 3: They were vampires and wear wolves, you know. And then
Speaker 3: there was one like kind of crime vampire where wolf crossover.
Speaker 3: Don't know, it's a hard genre.
Speaker 1: So the crime when did you find that was your
Speaker 1: genre that well? And I should say this because people
Speaker 1: listening you are a very very successful author to thanks
Speaker 1: twenty two books at this stage published books, and.
Speaker 3: Nine of them I wrote with James Patterson, you know,
Speaker 3: and so they were all New York Times bestsellers. And
Speaker 3: then I have the TV show The Tropic made out
Speaker 3: of a couple of them. But I came to crime
Speaker 3: slowly because I was intimidated by the procedural aspects. I
Speaker 3: didn't know any cops, and I didn't know how to
Speaker 3: approach any cops, and they seemed intimidating. So I thought, oh,
Speaker 3: stuff it, I'll just make it all up. Who's going
Speaker 3: to know? And I was living in the back of
Speaker 3: the Sunshine Coast with what ended up being my first husband,
Speaker 3: and we were living in this house down this five
Speaker 3: kilometer track and we didn't have any garbage collection because
Speaker 3: it's just a dirt road. So we had to take
Speaker 3: our garbage every week to this guy and he had
Speaker 3: like a cutout in the rainforest and he just had
Speaker 3: a whole bunch of skip bins and all the locals
Speaker 3: will come and bring their rubbish every week. And he
Speaker 3: was this short, stocky guy with little half moon glasses
Speaker 3: and like a greasy pony towel, and he had all
Speaker 3: this rescued furniture and he was really menacing looking, and
Speaker 3: he had all his friends and they'd all sit there
Speaker 3: drinking and drinking black coffee and smoking, and we'd just
Speaker 3: drive in with our rubbish. And I kept looking at
Speaker 3: this guy and going, this guy has a history, you know,
Speaker 3: I can tell. And so my first novel, Hades, was
Speaker 3: about this ex criminal overlord and in his retirement he
Speaker 3: buys a landfill. He buys a tip, and so people
Speaker 3: come to him with bodies and he hides him in
Speaker 3: there for a fee. Yeah, thank you. That's a good idea. Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's a little side hustle. And that was my first
Speaker 3: novel that was picked up, and that won the Ned
Speaker 3: Kelly Award, and it was very successful. I had two
Speaker 3: more in that series, and then I was off to
Speaker 3: the races, you know, I was teaching at university at
Speaker 3: that time, and in between semesters of university, I was
Speaker 3: teaching kids to swim and that was my twenty five
Speaker 3: dollars an hour, and then off I went. And suddenly
Speaker 3: people are super interested in who I am as a
Speaker 3: person and where I grew up and I didn't was
Speaker 3: that was shocking to me. I thought, what do you
Speaker 3: want to know about me? For? Just read the book?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I think, like, you know, I asked you,
Speaker 1: where do you come up with these ideas? Like it's
Speaker 1: one thing to sit down and put words on paper,
Speaker 1: but okay, where did this story come from? What's clothing
Speaker 1: around in your head? So that always makes me curious
Speaker 1: when I read a fictional crime book, I understand the
Speaker 1: world from the real world, and I've seen that there's
Speaker 1: not much that I've read that doesn't you know. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I can relate to that because that type of thing happens.
Speaker 1: But where do you get it when you haven't? But
Speaker 1: you've explained that in part the fact the way you
Speaker 1: grew up and what you were exposed to when you
Speaker 1: got those first books up. How did that feel like?
Speaker 1: That must have been?
Speaker 3: That was dream come true?
Speaker 2: Stuff?
Speaker 3: And I just having the one book published in Australia.
Speaker 3: That was enough for me. I thought, I've made it.
Speaker 3: And if I don't get a second book, you know,
Speaker 3: that's fine. And I was holding it in my hands
Speaker 3: and going I've made it. I've made it.
Speaker 2: Walking around the streets.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I'm in big w and I'm like, you
Speaker 3: know this, and I've heard that's really good, and all
Speaker 3: of the highlights. Beyond that, the stuff I get to
Speaker 3: do for research. You're like, you know, writing a book
Speaker 3: about New York firefighters, I guess I'll just have to
Speaker 3: go to New York. You know, it's all on tax
Speaker 3: and just wander around New York talking to New York
Speaker 3: firefighters and it's just the best job ever.
Speaker 2: And that's the type of research you do.
Speaker 1: Like if you've got a character in there that's a
Speaker 1: New York firefighter, you want to get the sense of Sometimes.
Speaker 3: The stories come and they're not they're not something you
Speaker 3: have to travel half of the world away to get.
Speaker 3: It's just taking the seed of an idea. For example,
Speaker 3: my daughter Violet started kindergarten and I'm bringing her to
Speaker 3: school every day and doing the drop off, and at
Speaker 3: drop off she's howling, and she's clinging onto my leg
Speaker 3: and I'm trying to peel her off, and I've got
Speaker 3: you know, I've got a hand to the teacher like
Speaker 3: a screaming mental patient being to mommy and all this
Speaker 3: and every day we would do this, and for weeks,
Speaker 3: I'm looking at this other mother and she's going, you know, bye, Jimmy.
Speaker 3: Jimmy's like, you know, And I took that idea, and
Speaker 3: I was thinking to my because after a few weeks
Speaker 3: the mother came over to me and she said, I'd
Speaker 3: much rather like i'd gone her. And She's like, I'd
Speaker 3: much rather yours than mine. Actually like that problem. And
Speaker 3: I walked away and I thought about her, thought, what
Speaker 3: if you have this child who is cold and callous?
Speaker 3: And it got me thinking about the mothers of school shooters. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because they always pointed the mother and they always say
Speaker 3: why didn't you know? And everybody's fascinated by you know,
Speaker 3: Ted Bundy's mother and this person's mother. They always look
Speaker 3: at the mother. And so that's what's inspired my novel
Speaker 3: that I'm about to finish and running it right now.
Speaker 3: I'm always one book ahead whatever's coming out. And yeah,
Speaker 3: so I didn't have to travel halfway across the world
Speaker 3: to get that idea. The ideas are just everywhere.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll take a break now. When we come back,
Speaker 1: we want to talk about the crossover into some true
Speaker 1: crime that filtered into the book, and your thoughts on
Speaker 1: that and the impact that you see with murtherer when
Speaker 1: you're talking the true crime, and quite a few other things.
Speaker 3: All right, I look forward to it.
Speaker 2: Okay, cheers.