Speaker 1: Were we ready?
Speaker 2: Does he call out and tell us or I'm wrong?
Speaker 3: Okay, welcome to Krim City.
Speaker 1: I'm Mark Murray and.
Speaker 2: I'm Clementine Cuneo.
Speaker 3: Another week without Josh. He's still playing daddy early daddy.
Speaker 4: I messaged him yesterday and said, how's the baby going?
Speaker 2: Week old?
Speaker 4: Baby?
Speaker 2: Six days? How's the baby?
Speaker 1: Oh good?
Speaker 4: He said, he's sleeping well, so long may it continue.
Speaker 2: He's in for a red shock. This is the easy part.
Speaker 3: Is the phone calls at three in the morning, saying,
Speaker 3: who's been shot?
Speaker 2: He'll be up, He'll be up, He'll be up. We
Speaker 2: all get him back in a week me.
Speaker 3: In the meantime, A few people probably know is that
Speaker 3: Clem and I have worked together years ago and we've
Speaker 3: covered a lot of stories together. We have and now
Speaker 3: got back again. Now after you had a little hiatus
Speaker 3: and baby. When around the world did start? I don't know,
Speaker 3: but I still think there are two stories that stand
Speaker 3: out in my mind that you and I worked on,
Speaker 3: and not just because it was you and I, but
Speaker 3: they were just massive stories. Now, the biggest one I
Speaker 3: can remember is Maddie Polver now Colobomber, the col Oboma
Speaker 3: and we were the ones that actually tagged at the
Speaker 3: Colon bomber.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: But I remember getting a phone call from you. I
Speaker 1: forget what day I was.
Speaker 4: It was midweek. I'm going to say it was it
Speaker 4: Tuesday or a Thursday. I had a mid week day
Speaker 4: off and I was over in the Mossman area. I'd
Speaker 4: been for lunch and there were a lot of sirens.
Speaker 4: I just remember on Military Road it was just emergency
Speaker 4: vehicle after the next and I thought, you know, you
Speaker 4: hear one or two go past, and you think something's
Speaker 4: going on.
Speaker 1: Three four.
Speaker 4: When it became ten eleven, I rang you and I said,
Speaker 4: it might be nothing, but I'm just letting you know.
Speaker 4: I'm on a day off. Don't forget, but something's going
Speaker 4: on over here.
Speaker 3: And I remember ring and getting stonewalled, which was a
Speaker 3: little bit unusual, and just I think the media unit said, well, look,
Speaker 3: there's just an operation.
Speaker 1: And then I started to try to.
Speaker 3: Ring higher up and people going, oh, mate, just stay away,
Speaker 3: and I said, what do you mean. They said, look,
Speaker 3: we can't tell you anything. There's actually it's a secret operation.
Speaker 4: And then you rang back and said that there was
Speaker 4: an operation in almost the Clifton Gardens down towards the zoo,
Speaker 4: and I thought, oh, I'm here, so I better go
Speaker 4: and check it out. In the very beginning, we didn't
Speaker 4: know what it was. We thought it was some sort
Speaker 4: of hot Do we think it was hostage?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was siege or siege.
Speaker 3: And then it came out that it was an eighteen
Speaker 3: year old girl and there was a bomb thing going on.
Speaker 4: You rang someone who said, oh, look, we don't really
Speaker 4: know what it is was we've never seen a collar
Speaker 4: bomb before.
Speaker 3: That was about seven o'clock that night, when still no
Speaker 3: one really knew what was going on. Everyone thought it
Speaker 3: was a siege. And then I've rung a bloke who
Speaker 3: I'd known for a long long time. He was in
Speaker 3: an operations room at headquarters and he goes, Jem, we've
Speaker 3: never dealt with a colobon before, said colibon.
Speaker 1: Yes, this girl's got some sort of device around her neck.
Speaker 1: And this is early days of the internet. We didn't
Speaker 1: really know what to do.
Speaker 2: But were twenty eleven.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and we put it up on the internet and
Speaker 1: it went crazy.
Speaker 4: Remember it was around HSC time, and there were all
Speaker 4: these ridiculous stories coming out about Madeline Pulva. She's doing
Speaker 4: her HSC trials.
Speaker 1: And the Cue probably one of the richest streets in there.
Speaker 2: Without a doubt, if not Sydney itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and oh.
Speaker 4: No, this is just a ploy to avoid having to
Speaker 4: do a HSC trials. Like there were all these really
Speaker 4: crazy stories flying around and it wasn't until you know, if.
Speaker 1: Murdoch came out. Remember he was a very senior police
Speaker 1: officer who was in charge.
Speaker 3: And Mark Murdoch who would come out and gave these
Speaker 3: briefings almost every hour and a half or so.
Speaker 2: Yes, at the roadblock in her story, I'll never forget it.
Speaker 1: And a terrific guy, a bit like Clint Eastwood.
Speaker 3: He's kind of got that understated the way he talks,
Speaker 3: and he was giving these updates. It took a long
Speaker 3: time before it came out that literally there was a
Speaker 3: policewoman the whole time they thought this bomb was active.
Speaker 3: Remember it was a device around the neck, and this
Speaker 3: policewoman refused to leave Maddie's side.
Speaker 1: Can you imagine terrify it?
Speaker 3: And this device, this bomb was around her neck for
Speaker 3: ten hours before it was deaned that it wasn't explosive.
Speaker 2: So ten hours they couldn't take it off because they
Speaker 2: thought they.
Speaker 1: Thought it could explode.
Speaker 3: They never dealt with a column, and that policewoman hung
Speaker 3: there next to her for ten hours, knowing that she
Speaker 3: could die with Maddie refused to leave her some of
Speaker 3: the bravest police worker I've ever heard of. It was
Speaker 3: a long time before the true story started coming out.
Speaker 4: And the true story is that a businessman, Paul Douglas Peters,
Speaker 4: who was a similar age to Maddie's dad.
Speaker 3: Bill Pulver, a very very successful businessman who'd been around
Speaker 3: the world Hong Kong worked in a whole lot of
Speaker 3: different areas.
Speaker 2: And interestingly, so had this man.
Speaker 1: And he had a business office in the same offices.
Speaker 4: Yeah, there were really weird connections even or you know, parallels,
Speaker 4: even though the two men didn't know each other. But
Speaker 4: this guy, for whatever reason, and I don't think anyone
Speaker 4: will ever know, and I don't think he's ever said,
Speaker 4: targeted this young girl, broke into her house while she
Speaker 4: was studying and strapped a bomb to her neck and
Speaker 4: left a ransom note saying deposit you know, tens of
Speaker 4: thousands of dollars was a random note on that. It
Speaker 4: was bizarre, It was totally like nothing. The police had
Speaker 4: ever seen before, nothing they'd ever dealt with, certainly nothing
Speaker 4: that we'd ever dealt with before.
Speaker 3: And it turned out that it was bits of a
Speaker 3: gun safe that had been made to look like a bomb,
Speaker 3: that it was all wrong, that it was not explosive,
Speaker 3: it wasn't dangerous. By this stage, that had made headlines
Speaker 3: around the world, and then the investigation start.
Speaker 2: It was a fascinating story.
Speaker 1: I was.
Speaker 4: I'm just remembering it was twenty eleven because I had
Speaker 4: met my now husband, and I remember in those early
Speaker 4: days we were so into the story. I had to
Speaker 4: cancel a few dates with him because I was so
Speaker 4: busy covering the collar bomb. And I thought, well, that's
Speaker 4: a really original excuse to give for canceling a date.
Speaker 2: It's nott migraine or I.
Speaker 3: Remember the stomach ache wiped out my car because I
Speaker 3: didn't leave here till about two in the morning because
Speaker 3: the story was just evolving and evolving.
Speaker 4: It was August twenty eleven, so I think that's kind
Speaker 4: of trial.
Speaker 1: You're at lunch. I thought you were at the hairdressers.
Speaker 2: No, it was definitely lunch that day.
Speaker 1: You've rung me before from the hairdressers with a.
Speaker 4: Tip yeah, Yeah, that was a good one. Why should
Speaker 4: claim the hair never run here from the botox doctor
Speaker 4: though Botox?
Speaker 3: Because you're on TV now I can probably claim like
Speaker 3: a hair transplant.
Speaker 2: Well, jam I did write about it.
Speaker 3: Anyway, I was going to say something slanderous, yes, So
Speaker 3: it became a massive, massive story. The two detectives on
Speaker 3: it eventually went to robbery and serious kind of a
Speaker 3: guy called Luke Moore because they look after kidnappings. Luke
Speaker 3: Moore was a terrific policeman who's now out of the force,
Speaker 3: and a young detective called Andrew Marx, who I got
Speaker 3: to meet is now in homicide. These guys did amazing work.
Speaker 3: They somehow tracked down via cars and computers.
Speaker 4: It was now I remembered it was the email, yes,
Speaker 4: And it was an email address that this Paul Douglas
Speaker 4: Peters had set up saying, you know, deposit the money
Speaker 4: in my bank account. And they worked out where that
Speaker 4: email address had been set up. It was a hot
Speaker 4: mail address.
Speaker 1: As it always was regulized.
Speaker 2: It was a library. I don't even know if it
Speaker 2: was a library.
Speaker 1: So they tracked very credentually, looked.
Speaker 4: At the CCTV of the vehicles, that came about library.
Speaker 2: It was fantastic.
Speaker 4: They got him overseas. He'd flown back to the US.
Speaker 4: Police went over and they got him at his ex wife's.
Speaker 1: House, brought him back.
Speaker 4: He's done a ten year jail sentence. We're still here,
Speaker 4: still talking about it. He's done time, he's out.
Speaker 3: And the only other but really amazing thing that I remember,
Speaker 3: and it was about a couple of years later, because
Speaker 3: he's broken in and had a balaclava.
Speaker 1: Everyone said he had a balaclava.
Speaker 3: Great, And then for some reason I found out there
Speaker 3: was a court document and I googled.
Speaker 1: I'd learned to use Google by then.
Speaker 3: I had cutting edge, and I googled the type of balaclava.
Speaker 4: It was because it was fought from just jeans and
Speaker 4: it was quite specific the brand, and.
Speaker 3: It ended up being a multi colored clown balaclava.
Speaker 2: Rick show like colored neon colored stripes.
Speaker 1: That is the ummie she had. It was just a
Speaker 1: black baklava.
Speaker 3: Scary, but this one was freak show and that's what
Speaker 3: she was confronted with now, her father, Bill Polver.
Speaker 1: I actually met him a few times. With the conviction
Speaker 1: and the arrest.
Speaker 3: There was a huge drinks with all the coppers and
Speaker 3: Bill polv a lovely blow and we all go on
Speaker 3: drink and chatting. And at the time I asked about
Speaker 3: his daughter, and very very protective, he said, well, she's
Speaker 3: doing great.
Speaker 1: We're helping her with bring her along. And I'm thinking
Speaker 1: that image twelve.
Speaker 3: Hours, thinking you could get blown to bits, the image
Speaker 3: of a guy in this multi colored freak.
Speaker 1: Anyway, she's now gone on to have real she finished
Speaker 1: her HS.
Speaker 4: She's married and she's had a baby. Her family were fabulous.
Speaker 4: As far as handling the media, I mean, you get
Speaker 4: two very different extremes. You get people who detest the
Speaker 4: media won't have a bar of them and that's okay,
Speaker 4: and you get the poolvers were amazing.
Speaker 1: They were amazing.
Speaker 2: They'd take all our calls.
Speaker 4: He didn't outsourced to someone to handle the median inquiries,
Speaker 4: and my good they were a lot. Yeah, it was
Speaker 4: always really facilitating. So that was a huge story. I
Speaker 4: think of it every time I drive over towards Mossman.
Speaker 3: I think of that story and the other one I
Speaker 3: remember working on, and it's we've talked about it. It's
Speaker 3: probably when you talk crime, you're normally talking horrible stories,
Speaker 3: and this one in some ways is one of the
Speaker 3: happiest but also saddest. And this is this is the
Speaker 3: vicious assault, the gate crashing assault of a young man
Speaker 3: called Liam Knight at an eighteenth birthday party over at Francis.
Speaker 2: Forest in twenty thirteen.
Speaker 3: Well, there you go, and I remember I was actually
Speaker 3: a chief of staff and on the Sunday morning my
Speaker 3: phone rang. There'd been a story about Lamb Night, this
Speaker 3: gate crashing. Now this is to go back.
Speaker 1: This was so bad.
Speaker 3: These girls had tried to come along to a party
Speaker 3: and they had invited some guys from Balmain and Ryde
Speaker 3: and you remember they were over Francis Forest, Leafy north Shore.
Speaker 1: As you say, they were turned back in it and
Speaker 1: somebody got a piece of the building rod I forget
Speaker 1: how it.
Speaker 2: Was Rio Steele there.
Speaker 3: You go, and had thrown it over the fence and
Speaker 3: it has hit Lilliam in the head. Now this was
Speaker 3: a six foot piece and the really vivid memory is
Speaker 3: that they had to sore to get him into the ambulance.
Speaker 4: Because they couldn't It was embedded in his head so
Speaker 4: far that they couldn't remove it. He had to go
Speaker 4: to hospital to have it removed. But they couldn't fit
Speaker 4: him in the ambulance.
Speaker 3: Because it was protruding. And I remember the next day
Speaker 3: because there was a photo then published in one of
Speaker 3: the Sunday papers that had Liam in a hood. It
Speaker 3: wasn't a nice flattering photo, and I remember thinking, Christ,
Speaker 3: if you make him it looks like it, it looks
Speaker 3: like in the.
Speaker 4: Sunday paper was a picture of him, saying, this is
Speaker 4: the boy who was the victim of a gate crashing incident.
Speaker 4: You know he's in hospital fighting for life. But yes,
Speaker 4: the picture wasn't just look like what you choose as
Speaker 4: a parent. He had a hood on. He looked like
Speaker 4: a bit of a thug.
Speaker 1: Very very early Sunday morning.
Speaker 3: And I got in here without a hangover I often
Speaker 3: do sometimes, and the phone went and it was Mary.
Speaker 3: It was Liam's mother, and she was distraught about.
Speaker 2: So ringing on the landline.
Speaker 1: On the landline. We used to have them.
Speaker 2: What they're called.
Speaker 4: No, we didn't know her. She's called the landline. You've
Speaker 4: picked it up without a hangover.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's how we used to get stories people. And
Speaker 3: she was talking about how upset she was about the.
Speaker 2: Photo, and she was pretty fired up memory and I.
Speaker 1: Started talking to her and her argument.
Speaker 4: Was, how dare you you make him look like?
Speaker 3: And then we started talking and she said, I said,
Speaker 3: I'm sorry. Look, I'll try and rect the front. Do
Speaker 3: you have any other photos? And I think I was
Speaker 3: going to have to go over I can't remember. And
Speaker 3: we started talking and she was an amazing lady and
Speaker 3: proven to me since she said, you don't know what happened,
Speaker 3: she said, he's.
Speaker 1: A lovely boy. Well, she said, this is at.
Speaker 3: Like eight o'clock in the morning, and that she went
Speaker 3: through the story. She said she rang lean at about
Speaker 3: eleven thirty and a police officer answered the pharm Now,
Speaker 3: if you're a parent, god, you go to ring your
Speaker 3: eighteen year old son. I didn't know that, yeah, And
Speaker 3: then she raced to Royal North Shore was told that
Speaker 3: her son was in a critical condition and she said
Speaker 3: three times during the night they said go in and
Speaker 3: say goodbye, and she said, I'm not going to say goodbye.
Speaker 3: They said your son mightn't make it. She said, I'm
Speaker 3: going to he's going to make it. I'm not saying goodbye.
Speaker 3: It was amazing because he came.
Speaker 4: Through it, came through it. He's now married with a baby.
Speaker 4: He is the most incredible, incredible survival story.
Speaker 2: They are the most delightful family.
Speaker 4: And who knows, but I think you could probably put
Speaker 4: it down to a lot of things, but largely the
Speaker 4: most incredible paramedics and emergency doctors at the scene. Do
Speaker 4: you remember sixty minutes did a big thing on how
Speaker 4: they had to bring.
Speaker 3: I remember Mary ringing me up and saying, I'm sorry,
Speaker 3: I'm going to go with sixty minutes. We have to,
Speaker 3: I said, She said, we need the money, oh, the rehabilitation.
Speaker 2: Humble, oh, beautiful family.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she said terrific lady, And and well as
Speaker 3: great as survival story as it is. Especially a couple
Speaker 3: of years later talking to Liam and talking to Mary
Speaker 3: and the mother.
Speaker 1: She said, yeah, but he loved Dozsie rules. He couldn't
Speaker 1: kick a football the way he used to.
Speaker 3: He slowly got his memory back, he went back to
Speaker 3: school and did his HSC.
Speaker 1: So terrific, but he still feels very robbed of those years.
Speaker 2: Of course, remember, well, tell.
Speaker 3: You now that the guy's responsible or involved in the
Speaker 3: guy that threw that is not in jail.
Speaker 1: You'd definitely be out. The guy that threw the spear was.
Speaker 2: And they were young, Remember we could have.
Speaker 3: Ever at the time he was sentenced to eight years jail.
Speaker 3: So he's out now and he probably got paroled.
Speaker 4: Oh so well and truly out. Yes, the takeaway from
Speaker 4: it all is that Liam is fabulous. He's brought a house.
Speaker 4: I'm his Facebook friend, so I see what goes on
Speaker 4: or Instagram. He's bought a house, he's married, they've got
Speaker 4: a beautiful little boy. Like you said, the most of
Speaker 4: the stories we cover are doom and gloom, and they
Speaker 4: don't have happy happy. I didn't want to see.
Speaker 2: They don't have into that. I know, I know for it.
Speaker 1: I couldn't have said that anyway.
Speaker 2: But Liam's it's a great story.
Speaker 1: It is, really it is.
Speaker 3: And same with Maddie. Actually we've picked two stories without knowing.
Speaker 2: It that actually have happy endings.
Speaker 1: People don't die, No, they don't, and you know, they go.
Speaker 3: Through trauma and coming out through the other side and
Speaker 3: the crooks have got locked up.
Speaker 1: There you go, we actually came up with them.
Speaker 3: There we are happy stories. Thanks for listening to Krim City.
Speaker 3: Thanks Clem.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure whether I prefer your Josh.
Speaker 2: I prefer Josh doing it.
Speaker 3: I've got to thank executive producer Dan Box and everybody
Speaker 3: else who've helped on this podcast that canna work, okay done,