Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective see a side of life the average person is
Speaker 1: never exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years, I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: Welcome to another episode of I Catch Killers. Placing at
Speaker 1: the sharp end is a tough business. When you spent
Speaker 1: the majority of your career working as a detective in rape,
Speaker 1: homicide and missing person squads, You're going to see and
Speaker 1: experience some heavy things worked in those environments, and I
Speaker 1: can assure you it's a tough gig. It's even harder
Speaker 1: if you're a FEMA, because, let's face it, regardless of
Speaker 1: how progressive. We'd like to believe policing has become. It's
Speaker 1: still a bloky environment. Today's guest is a highly decorated
Speaker 1: former Victorian police officer, Neel Fraser. She spent twenty seven
Speaker 1: years in the job, working on high profile cases. I've
Speaker 1: been wanting to get Norell on I Catch Killers for
Speaker 1: a long time and today We've got to hear and
Speaker 1: I'm very excited about it. It's going to be a
Speaker 1: good chat. She's a lot of fun. Noreel Fraser, welcome
Speaker 1: to I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2: Thank you, it's an absolute pleasure.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm glad. I've been trying to get you on
Speaker 1: for a while and it's good we've finally got the opportunity.
Speaker 1: I'm going to ask just up front, howe's life outside
Speaker 1: the police. You're enjoying yourself.
Speaker 3: That's not an easy question to answer. We've been affected
Speaker 3: by the floods in Rochester here in Victoria, yeah, and
Speaker 3: we're out of our home for fourteen months. Our home
Speaker 3: got decimated, so we've only just come back. We came
Speaker 3: back in just at the end of December and we're
Speaker 3: evacuated two weeks later for another flood that completely wrecked
Speaker 3: our whole property, but just this time it didn't get
Speaker 3: into the house whereas last time it did. And to
Speaker 3: be honest, if it got into our house again, I
Speaker 3: don't think I could do it again. But so life
Speaker 3: at the moment, it's been it's been pretty stressful, to
Speaker 3: be honest. But we're back home now. I'm just so relieved,
Speaker 3: so happy that we're back in our own home and
Speaker 3: not renting and living out of motels, to be honest.
Speaker 3: So there's a very very long answer or a very
Speaker 3: shure christ.
Speaker 1: Well, clearly. But look, it's interesting you say with the floods,
Speaker 1: because we've got a lot happening up in New South
Speaker 1: Wales and you hear it all over the place, and
Speaker 1: I don't think unless you actually involved, how disruptive it
Speaker 1: is and how long it takes to get your life
Speaker 1: back in order. And yeah, it's a hell of a
Speaker 1: thing to be going through. So sorry to hear that,
Speaker 1: but I'm glad you're back in the house now, finally
Speaker 1: we are.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we are, thank you.
Speaker 1: Okay, let's jump into it. I've done a lot of
Speaker 1: research and there's a lot of articles that have been
Speaker 1: written about you in cases that you've been on and
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff in the media. One thing, and
Speaker 1: I just want people to understand what we're talking about
Speaker 1: with policing, because sometimes people don't fully grasp the depth
Speaker 1: and the horror that we see and experience. There's a
Speaker 1: good side, so we'll talk about later on in the podcast.
Speaker 1: But there was one particular thing that really hit me.
Speaker 1: It was twenty twelve and you had to as part
Speaker 1: of your duties review I think it was seventeen hundred
Speaker 1: child sex abuse tapes.
Speaker 3: Yes, and they were actual videos of children being abused.
Speaker 3: And you know, Gary, I thought that I'm not saying
Speaker 3: I'd seen everything, but I felt like I could. I
Speaker 3: felt like I could handle it. It wasn't something I've
Speaker 3: been thought of.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: I had to look at the tapes for court, and
Speaker 3: so I did. But there's something happened with these seventeen
Speaker 3: hundred videos that I had a reaction I'd never had before,
Speaker 3: and I thought, you know, where the hell did that
Speaker 3: come from. So what I was doing was we'd done
Speaker 3: a warrant on a pedophile we've got and to be honest,
Speaker 3: I felt we're at the wrong house because it was
Speaker 3: just such that Mum and Dad were there. They were professionals.
Speaker 3: It was must have been a Friday afternoon or something.
Speaker 3: But oh, there's they're two sons, adult sons, and one's
Speaker 3: got his girlfriend there and they're getting married. They're engaged.
Speaker 3: And I thought to myself it just looked so harmonious,
Speaker 3: and I thought, my god, how could we have got
Speaker 3: this so wrong? But we had computer crime there with us. Anyway,
Speaker 3: we just said, look, can we just have a quick
Speaker 3: look at your computer, and you know, we should be
Speaker 3: out of there, and we went and had a look
Speaker 3: at the son's computer who was getting married. It was
Speaker 3: about twenty two to twenty three, and I can remember
Speaker 3: the computer. I'm squad guy opening it and he sort
Speaker 3: of gasped and I looked and I thought, my god,
Speaker 3: it was like something I had never seen before. And
Speaker 3: I only had a quick look. So obviously you would know,
Speaker 3: but the listeners may not. So as police to give
Speaker 3: evidence in court, we have to.
Speaker 2: We had to.
Speaker 3: I don't know it's changed a bit since then, but
Speaker 3: we had to look at all the videos and grade
Speaker 3: them from one to five, five being the absolute worst. Well,
Speaker 3: these were off the scale. If there was something one hundred,
Speaker 3: I would have ticked a one hundred but I watched
Speaker 3: the seventeen hundred. But as I said, I had a
Speaker 3: reaction I'd never had before. And it was the first day.
Speaker 3: It took two days, and the first day I can
Speaker 3: remember watching something and it just came out of nowhere,
Speaker 3: and I remember going and I thought I was going
Speaker 3: to be sick, and I just couldn't I just couldn't
Speaker 3: control it. And I remember I went downstairs and had
Speaker 3: a coffee and just sort of tried to get myself
Speaker 3: back together, but I just could not get that particular
Speaker 3: vision out of my mind. Anyway, a couple of days later,
Speaker 3: I go back to work, and you know how it is,
Speaker 3: given my evidence in court and off we go to
Speaker 3: another job.
Speaker 1: I think, Yeah, and that's the nature of policing. We
Speaker 1: accept that you sign up for it. You're not conscripted
Speaker 1: into policing. You choose that career. But that type of
Speaker 1: that type of experience, there's some things you see that
Speaker 1: you just cannot unsee. And when you're talking about children,
Speaker 1: I think any normal human being, it hits a little
Speaker 1: bit harder. You know, the innocence of these kids to
Speaker 1: be caught up in the evil that is there. And yeah,
Speaker 1: another interesting point just what you said on that story.
Speaker 1: That's the creepy part about pedophiles is that they do
Speaker 1: hiding plain sight and people think they're the creepy dude
Speaker 1: and the raincoat and flashing at school kids. It's not
Speaker 1: that way. It's quite often people that you don't suspect,
Speaker 1: and that's what they pray on in other times. But
Speaker 1: I make this point, but I'm sure you agree with
Speaker 1: it that sometimes people go but yeah, I wasn't participating
Speaker 1: child porn. I was just watching, sorry, And I shouldn't
Speaker 1: call it child porn too. I've been corrected on that before.
Speaker 1: It's not porn, it's child sex abuse, tapes abuse, and
Speaker 1: that's the proper terminology. I didn't participate in it. I
Speaker 1: was just a voyeur. I was just watching. But the
Speaker 1: way I look at it, they're just as guilty as
Speaker 1: the people participating in it, because they're all part of
Speaker 1: that whole criminal, horrible world.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But also, Gary, if you think about it, every single
Speaker 3: when they say they're not participating, but every single child
Speaker 3: in those videos is a victim and they are all suffering,
Speaker 3: so somebody, and if we didn't have people wanting to
Speaker 3: watch them, those children wouldn't.
Speaker 1: There wouldn't be a market for it.
Speaker 3: Correct, So you know they are living victims and it
Speaker 3: will affect them for the rest of their life.
Speaker 1: I doubt and me, yeah, I understand how old were
Speaker 1: the victims?
Speaker 3: The youngest I saw was about three months old and
Speaker 3: the oldest I saw was probably about four.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I can understand for obvious reasons why that would
Speaker 1: impact so heavily on you. Does it sitting down like that?
Speaker 1: And that's what the people don't understand. They think, Okay,
Speaker 1: we'll live sees that, But that is the role of
Speaker 1: the police officer. We can't shirk it. You've got to
Speaker 1: go through. You've got to present the evidence, and to
Speaker 1: present the evidence, you've got to view the evidence. Did
Speaker 1: it destroy your faith in humanity when you see stuff
Speaker 1: like that?
Speaker 2: You know what? It didn't? Gary?
Speaker 3: Because I thought I wanted pardon me. I wanted to
Speaker 3: get those pricks, and the only way you can get
Speaker 3: them is to watch, you know, to execute search warrants
Speaker 3: and identify them and arrest them and get them off
Speaker 3: the streat, you know, get them away. But it's funny
Speaker 3: you'd think with I suppose my career has been mostly
Speaker 3: to do with sex offenses and you know, you think
Speaker 3: it would actually turn you off men because most of
Speaker 3: the offense are committed by men. But it's funny, like
Speaker 3: I love men, I love men's company. I love so
Speaker 3: much about them, and what we see is the darkest
Speaker 3: of the dark. And no, it didn't really change, you
Speaker 3: know how I felt about humanity. I think it made
Speaker 3: me realize that not all in the world is good.
Speaker 3: But if there's one less pedophile I can get inside
Speaker 3: and away from children, I think, you know, it's a
Speaker 3: good day.
Speaker 1: I love hearing that sort of attitude, the motive from detectives,
Speaker 1: because that's people look at detectives. They're passionate, driven or whatever,
Speaker 1: the good detectives and that's what you need. I'm going
Speaker 1: to catch these pricks. I Am going after them and
Speaker 1: going to do everything and destroy it, literally destroy their lives,
Speaker 1: and enjoy doing it because that's what they deserve.
Speaker 2: You know. You know, sorry, just on that.
Speaker 3: One of the best things I love about what I
Speaker 3: miss is you know, when you've got all the evidence
Speaker 3: you need, you've got the videos, you've got, it doesn't
Speaker 3: matter what they say. You know they are going with
Speaker 3: you and they're going to get slotted put in the cells.
Speaker 3: And I used to love knocking on the door and think,
Speaker 3: and you know what, you prick, I am taking you
Speaker 3: back to the station. It doesn't matter what you say.
Speaker 3: Oh I just happened to glance at it.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter. I just missed that.
Speaker 1: I'm how I don't know what I'm hearing you, Noel,
Speaker 1: And yeah, we shouldn't talk about revenge, vengeance and all that,
Speaker 1: but sometimes there needs to be a little bit. I
Speaker 1: would like knocking on the doors when someone's done the
Speaker 1: despicable crime and have the wife or parents or someone
Speaker 1: answer the door and Okay, well, yeah, your world is
Speaker 1: just about to finish. Time has been up. Now we're
Speaker 1: chatting the other day and you mentioned on the back
Speaker 1: of that we're talking about that particular case, and you
Speaker 1: say that wasn't long after I think a matter of
Speaker 1: days or a week after that, you attended another case.
Speaker 1: And it was the way you told it to me,
Speaker 1: then if you could tell it again, because it was
Speaker 1: quite sort of confronting, but it also sort of represents
Speaker 1: how you go about your pleasing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I had it was only a couple of days
Speaker 3: after I'd view these seventeen hundred videos. There's just so
Speaker 3: many of these offenses, isn't there and people in the
Speaker 3: real world they just don't see it, which is good.
Speaker 3: But yeah, a couple of days later, I was helping
Speaker 3: the AFP, the Australian Fed Police with a warrant on
Speaker 3: a suspected pedophile and we went to the house and
Speaker 3: it was myself and another member from my office and
Speaker 3: a number of AFP members and commuter computer crime. And
Speaker 3: when we went to the house again going back to
Speaker 3: what you said, it's just a normal house in normal suburbia,
Speaker 3: quite a nice house. And when we knocked on the door,
Speaker 3: the guy that we were looking for that search on
Speaker 3: it was attributed to. He answered the door and he
Speaker 3: looked like anyone's brother, a boyfriend, Like he was a
Speaker 3: little bit tubby. But you'd see him on the train,
Speaker 3: you know, you'd see him at footy. He was just
Speaker 3: so normal looking. But we could almost not get in
Speaker 3: the door without him saying, you've got me, I've done this,
Speaker 3: you know. He wanted to confess there, and then it
Speaker 3: was like, could you just wait until we get in
Speaker 3: the door and then you can you know, like he
Speaker 3: just he knew we had him. But with this job,
Speaker 3: it was horrendous. It's one of those jobs that you
Speaker 3: can never ever walk away from and ever forget. And
Speaker 3: so when we went into his room. He was in
Speaker 3: a sharehouse and it was a bedroom. His bedroom was
Speaker 3: made up like a little film studio, and he had
Speaker 3: all these props and all female sex toys. There was
Speaker 3: female clothing, a whole lot of things, and then there
Speaker 3: was this what do you call it, a stool in
Speaker 3: the middle of all this black curtains. And anyway, he
Speaker 3: told us who it was. It was a young twelve
Speaker 3: year old boy. He'd been a friend of the family,
Speaker 3: and he told us who it was straight up. So
Speaker 3: I offered, and I think I probably would have got
Speaker 3: the job anyway, because I really want I wanted to
Speaker 3: go and talk to this young boy victims. Yeah, somebody
Speaker 3: had to go and tell his parents. Somebody had to
Speaker 3: get the hopefully get the little boy on board and
Speaker 3: talk to us. And I just sort of felt that
Speaker 3: was my forte and I thought I can do this.
Speaker 3: I'd seen a couple of the videos and it was sickening,
Speaker 3: and anyway, so I went around and as sorry and
Speaker 3: as I'll just go back a little bit. This man
Speaker 3: had befriended the family. This is a very typical story.
Speaker 3: He'd befriended the family. He used to the parents were
Speaker 3: really hard workers. They didn't have a lot, so he'd say, look,
Speaker 3: I'll look after the kids and you go off and
Speaker 3: do your night shift or whatever. So he used to
Speaker 3: stay over a lot. And as we found out, he'd
Speaker 3: been grooming this little boy for probably since he was
Speaker 3: about six, and the offending started at about seven, so
Speaker 3: he'd been partaking in child abuse material from when he
Speaker 3: was about seven to twelve. So he had been groomed
Speaker 3: well and truly by this man. But the man was
Speaker 3: giving him gifts.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 3: Again, it's so typical. If you say anything, I'm going
Speaker 3: to go to jail. But you know, your mum and
Speaker 3: dad don't love you.
Speaker 2: This is my love.
Speaker 1: It it's like a framework, isn't it a step by
Speaker 1: step every year he had again.
Speaker 3: Yep, yeah, anyway, so I went around to the home,
Speaker 3: to the family home, and it was about three point
Speaker 3: thirty in the afternoon, and there's mum and dad sitting
Speaker 3: on the couch watching Telly or whatever, and mum comes
Speaker 3: to the door, and of course the minute you say,
Speaker 3: look where with the police, Mum goes, I there's anything wrong, Well,
Speaker 3: I just need to come inside.
Speaker 1: You know, how do you break this news?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: What do you say? And to be honest, Gary, I
Speaker 3: was dreading telling the mum and dad because, as you said, before,
Speaker 3: that visit I knew would change their lives forever. And
Speaker 3: so when we went inside and sat down, we said
Speaker 3: the man's name, and you know what, in the end,
Speaker 3: you've just got to be honest, there's no point sugarcoating
Speaker 3: it to a point, and we said that their son,
Speaker 3: we'd identified him in this child abuse material. Well, they
Speaker 3: were as you would expect. The mum fainted. It was
Speaker 3: an awful, an awful place to be. But I also
Speaker 3: felt confident is the wrong word, but I knew I
Speaker 3: was the right person to do it. I just sort
Speaker 3: of felt right. And after a while I didn't tell
Speaker 3: them every you know, but I told them that he'd
Speaker 3: been groomed by him, and they said, what did we miss?
Speaker 3: You know, they were blaming themselves.
Speaker 1: It's a horrible legacy to carry, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Oh, yeah it is, and you know, why didn't we
Speaker 3: see it? And anyway, so then they said, oh, the
Speaker 3: little boy should be home shortly from school. So of
Speaker 3: course he walks in from school, and again I just
Speaker 3: dreaded it. But he walks in and he goes to
Speaker 3: the fridge and he opens up and Hi Mum, Hi Dad,
Speaker 3: and he goes and Mum goes, you're better come in here.
Speaker 3: The police want to speak to you. And the place
Speaker 3: just went quiet, and I can remember he didn't come in,
Speaker 3: So with the mum, I went into the kitchen with him,
Speaker 3: and I remember just standing there and saying, I've got
Speaker 3: to tell you there's nothing wrong. But we've spoken to
Speaker 3: blah blah and this is you know, and I know
Speaker 3: everything that's happened, that's.
Speaker 2: Not your fault.
Speaker 3: Well, he just he exploded and he rarely screamed at me,
Speaker 3: and he ran out the door, and Mum and I
Speaker 3: ran after him, but we had no hope of getting him.
Speaker 3: So the mom said he'll come back anyway. He came
Speaker 3: back about an hour later, and he wanted to go
Speaker 3: into his mum and dad's room and he said, can
Speaker 3: I talk to your mum? So Mum goes in there
Speaker 3: and there in behind closed doors for maybe fifteen minutes.
Speaker 3: Again it was a torture, yeah, to wait, you know.
Speaker 3: And anyway, then the Mum comes out and she says,
Speaker 3: on Narel, he'd like to talk to you. So I
Speaker 3: walked into the bedroom and him and his muma laying
Speaker 3: on the bed, and I just sort of felt wrong.
Speaker 3: Here I am in a suit, you know, the detectives,
Speaker 3: I've got my diary and all this sort of stuff,
Speaker 3: and it just looked it was all wrong. I went
Speaker 3: and sat on the edge of the bed, and I
Speaker 3: was trying to reassure him that he hadn't done anything
Speaker 3: or whatever. But I just felt I needed to get
Speaker 3: onto his level. Big because I'm sitting at the edge
Speaker 3: of the bed, he's lying down with his mum, and
Speaker 3: I don't know, but I just said, would you mind
Speaker 3: if I laid there next to you and mum? And
Speaker 3: he goes, no, that'd be nice. So anyway, I laid down.
Speaker 3: He held my hand like it was just yeah.
Speaker 1: I got the image in my head.
Speaker 2: It was just so powerful.
Speaker 3: It was, oh my god, it could nearly bring me
Speaker 3: to tears now and then and he told me pretty
Speaker 3: much everything, and then he agreed to do he Eventually,
Speaker 3: after a while, he realized that he wasn't in trouble,
Speaker 3: that mum and dad weren't going to go to jail.
Speaker 3: But the man was because he'd done something very naughty.
Speaker 3: And in the end he actually said to his mum
Speaker 3: because we asked the parents if about a medical because obviously,
Speaker 3: you know, we would have liked some evidence, it would
Speaker 3: have helped the case. And we explained that to mum
Speaker 3: and dad and they they were fantastic and they said,
Speaker 3: whatever you need, we will, you know, with the boys
Speaker 3: agreeing anyway, the boy said to me, would you do
Speaker 3: the medical with Minerela, I want you to come with me,
Speaker 3: not the mother.
Speaker 2: Oh god, Gary, I.
Speaker 3: Can remember sitting at the head, Oh God, sitting at
Speaker 3: the head of the bed and holding his hand while
Speaker 3: they're doing the most intimate examinations. But it was in
Speaker 3: a really weird way. It was a really lovely, beautiful
Speaker 3: almost way, like the boy trusted us, you know, and
Speaker 3: and he eventually told us, Oh, it was horrendous what
Speaker 3: he told us. But and you know, I can always
Speaker 3: remember him when we were lying on the bed, just
Speaker 3: going back a little bit, when we were lying on
Speaker 3: the bed, he was crying, he was very upset, and
Speaker 3: he said, am I gay Mum? And I mean answer that,
Speaker 3: and he was kind he said, I don't want to
Speaker 3: be game. I like girls, you know.
Speaker 1: Just the cruelty of what that does.
Speaker 3: And you know what, the next day I go back
Speaker 3: to work and another job comes in.
Speaker 1: You know, It's just Wellll, I wanted you to give
Speaker 1: people an understanding of what policing is about, and I
Speaker 1: think you captured so much and that just the short
Speaker 1: examples of the stories you told there. But Norell, I
Speaker 1: normally wait to the end of the podcast before I
Speaker 1: thank someone for the work that you do. I know policing,
Speaker 1: I know policing well, and what you displayed there in
Speaker 1: that situation, if you did nothing else in your career,
Speaker 1: you should be able to walk away and feel like
Speaker 1: you made a difference because you had empathy and care
Speaker 1: and everything that needed in that situation. And to me,
Speaker 1: that's what makes some people in the job as a cop,
Speaker 1: as detectives, those special type people. So I'm giving you
Speaker 1: a wrap right at the start. Well see if I
Speaker 1: take it away when we have a further discussion. But honestly, Norell,
Speaker 1: and every person I see that I considered to be
Speaker 1: a good detective, and I've been surprised that when I
Speaker 1: talk to talk to them. What makes a good detective.
Speaker 1: And they all talk about the empathy and what you
Speaker 1: displayed there was in bucket loads and the difference that
Speaker 1: you made and probably restored the faith for that poor
Speaker 1: little kid in life. And his parents say, well done, great,
Speaker 1: great policing. And people don't see that as policing. People
Speaker 1: wouldn't even understand what you just told us. You lay
Speaker 1: down on the bed with the mother and the young
Speaker 1: young boy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but when you think about it, if you heard
Speaker 3: somebody say that, you'd think, God, how inappropriate, wouldn't you? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Initially?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, And I'm sure I'm sure there would be
Speaker 1: some resistance. Are you're getting too close, you're feeling it
Speaker 1: too much. But when you're talking about crimes or the
Speaker 1: nature you just described, that's what you've got to give.
Speaker 1: And if you can't give that, don't investigate those crimes.
Speaker 1: Really let some ken. But no, you can make a
Speaker 1: world of difference just in a little example like that.
Speaker 1: So thanks for what you did there, and thanks for
Speaker 1: telling us that story. We're going to wind it back
Speaker 1: a little bit. I want to find out about norell
Speaker 1: As growing up. What was your what was your childhood like?
Speaker 2: Are you basic?
Speaker 1: Yeap?
Speaker 3: Very suburbia. Dad was a shoe salesman, and isn't it funny?
Speaker 3: He loved it, thought it was the best job in
Speaker 3: the world.
Speaker 2: Hilarious, he did.
Speaker 3: Mum had been a secretary she had. Mum and Dad
Speaker 3: married quite late, so they had three of us in
Speaker 3: two and a half years. I've got two sisters, yeah,
Speaker 3: so what are you saying? Yeah, so I'm the eldest,
Speaker 3: and then I've got a sister eleven month younger and
Speaker 3: another one seventeen months younger. Again, so they gave me.
Speaker 3: My parents gave me the most beautiful sisters, and they
Speaker 3: gave me something that I saw in policing a lot
Speaker 3: of people didn't have, and that's, you know, a roof
Speaker 3: over my head, love support, you know. You know, we
Speaker 3: did what all kids do, you know, played up the
Speaker 3: road and you know, in the BlackBerry bush, all sorts
Speaker 3: of stuff. And I think they introduced us to a
Speaker 3: fantastic group of their friends. We used to go away
Speaker 3: every Christmas down to wind Block and spent four or
Speaker 3: five weeks down there. And I always remember something funny.
Speaker 3: I always remember all the boys, like the fathers. They
Speaker 3: always used to say, at about four o'clock, we need
Speaker 3: to go into town and get the sugar, you know.
Speaker 3: And you know, it never dawned on me until years later.
Speaker 3: What the actually do we.
Speaker 1: You make me laugh because I remember it wasn't to
Speaker 1: get the sugar. But I remember that all the men
Speaker 1: in the street where I grew up, that on a
Speaker 1: Saturday afternoon, they'd all say they're going up the road.
Speaker 1: As a kid, I'm thinking, why do they always get
Speaker 1: up the road? Yeah. Then they'd come back in and
Speaker 1: they'd seem very happy or in different different states. And
Speaker 1: I think when you have a childhood like that, you
Speaker 1: can look at other kids and situations, and the offenders
Speaker 1: too when they come through, and it makes a difference
Speaker 1: because you carry what your childhood with you, whether you
Speaker 1: like it or not. Why did you want to join
Speaker 1: the police?
Speaker 3: It came out of nowhere. I was counseling. I've been
Speaker 3: a secretary, shorthand typing, you know, a PA to company directors.
Speaker 3: You know. I was sort of reasonably good at my job.
Speaker 3: I loved it, but I started. I'd always been a
Speaker 3: sort of fairly caring person, interested in, you know, the
Speaker 3: psychology behind people, and I just sort of felt I
Speaker 3: had something to offer with people who hadn't been as
Speaker 3: fortunate as I had, And so I did a counseling
Speaker 3: course with Lifeline. As I said, it just came out
Speaker 3: of nowhere and I just loved it. But what I
Speaker 3: found and I became a telephone counselor. But I started
Speaker 3: to think. I thought, how can I get to these
Speaker 3: people before they get to the point of bringing lifeline. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so because a lot of them were homeless, a
Speaker 3: lot of them were you know, suicidal, They just they
Speaker 3: had no one, you know, they were helpless, they were hopeless,
Speaker 3: and I just thought, how could I get to them
Speaker 3: before they get to the point where they've got a
Speaker 3: ring lifeline, you know. And that's when I thought policing.
Speaker 3: And then it all started to sort of you know,
Speaker 3: how things happen, a little bit of fate, I don't know.
Speaker 3: But at the time I was very fit. I was
Speaker 3: running a lot, and clearly I've stopped running, but.
Speaker 2: Everything just, I don't know, it just jelled.
Speaker 3: It was all right. And I went to the police
Speaker 3: careers when lunchtime and the they used to have one
Speaker 3: in the middle of the city. I went there and
Speaker 3: this is what you need and it just all sort
Speaker 3: of flowed and boy, and then I went out to
Speaker 3: the academy. My god, was that a like I'd never
Speaker 3: in my upbringing. I'd never seen an angry man. I'd
Speaker 3: never heard somebody yell. And at the Academy it was
Speaker 3: bros up, you know, and they'd yell at you, and
Speaker 3: it was like, excuse me. But then you couldn't do
Speaker 3: that because you had to toe the line. But I
Speaker 3: really struggled at the academy academically, really struggled, you know.
Speaker 3: I left school at fifteen to be a secretary, so
Speaker 3: that's how I got into police.
Speaker 1: Okay. I like hearing the stories and it just brings
Speaker 1: back my own memories of going in the academy. And
Speaker 1: there's so much to take on board, isn't it. There's
Speaker 1: so much. You're really stepping into a new world and
Speaker 1: you've got to get your head around the laws and
Speaker 1: your police powers, and then you've got to shoot, and
Speaker 1: you've got to train and powers of arrest, just so
Speaker 1: many things. But I remember in the academy, I loved
Speaker 1: it when they were yelling at us, and that I'm thinking, oh,
Speaker 1: didn't you and we yet paid for this. I still
Speaker 1: still remember. I think it was the first week I'm
Speaker 1: in the academy and they took us on a run
Speaker 1: on a Friday afternoon and I loved it. And someone
Speaker 1: had thrown up and were doing push ups and they
Speaker 1: made them do the push ups over their own own vomit,
Speaker 1: and I just thought, and they're paying us for this.
Speaker 1: So that was my experience in the academy.
Speaker 3: And you know, and one other thing is with a gun.
Speaker 3: I'd never seen a gun, let alone handle one and
Speaker 3: actually shoot it right. So I used to get very
Speaker 3: nervous in the shooting range. And the first time I
Speaker 3: ever went in there. You know how, we used to
Speaker 3: have thirty targets and used to have to get let's say,
Speaker 3: I don't know, I think it was almost thirty out
Speaker 3: of thirty. I can't remember now, but let's say it
Speaker 3: was thirty out of thirty. Anyway, I ended up getting
Speaker 3: twenty eight out of thirty, but the bloke next to
Speaker 3: me got thirty two.
Speaker 1: You might have a couple of your way. I'm not
Speaker 1: saying this has ever happened, but I've been through a
Speaker 1: lot of qualifying shoots and all that, and there might
Speaker 1: be someone that's not as handy with the weapon standing
Speaker 1: beside you and a shot might have gone gone into
Speaker 1: their target. It's terrible thing. But yeah, but you know, again,
Speaker 1: these are things and you see people and it doesn't
Speaker 1: have to be a man or woman. I've just seen
Speaker 1: people that guns are confronting things like when you're handling them,
Speaker 1: and you see people that it's the greatest fear in policing.
Speaker 1: Joining policing have to handle the weapon. And you know,
Speaker 1: if that's your phobia or your fear, I can understand
Speaker 1: that mine and you wouldn't have had this in the academy.
Speaker 1: We had to touch type it. I don't know whether
Speaker 1: it was forty words a minute or something you had
Speaker 1: to pass. You'd be going to typing class each day.
Speaker 1: Touch typing. That was the biggest stress I had in
Speaker 1: the academy to make sure a could touch type. And
Speaker 1: I remember between the initial training and the secondary training,
Speaker 1: I had a holiday and I had to get a typewriter.
Speaker 1: I'd take away and sit in the tent. I was
Speaker 1: just away on a surfing holiday. People must have thought
Speaker 1: I met this creative writer sitting in this tent typing.
Speaker 1: It was met practicing my touch typing.
Speaker 3: But you see, that's something I didn't struggle with because.
Speaker 1: I was jealous of people like you like that, But
Speaker 1: that's a skill. I I never hung on the touch typing,
Speaker 1: and I was told it's one of my biggest regrets.
Speaker 1: I sort of an abbreviated version of touch typing. But
Speaker 1: when you get out in the police station, you're filling
Speaker 1: out the forms and this and that, and like I
Speaker 1: can type quickly. But yeah, it's a skill that I
Speaker 1: should have hung on to. And shorthand note taking, that
Speaker 1: would have been a fantastic skill to have.
Speaker 3: I was going to say shorthand was. There's only one
Speaker 3: time whenever you're giving evidence in a court where you're
Speaker 3: on top of things and the defense start going to water,
Speaker 3: and it was when they used to stay to me,
Speaker 3: do you have your notes there?
Speaker 2: Constable?
Speaker 3: I used to wait for them to say that, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm given to them and they I could see them
Speaker 3: like they go white, the blood would drain out of
Speaker 3: their face. And of course you never ask a question
Speaker 3: you don't know the answer to, so of course they
Speaker 3: couldn't say what does this say, because it might say
Speaker 3: I did it? Seem you know I did it?
Speaker 1: In Noarrell, Yeah, no, that would have been beautiful. I
Speaker 1: wish I had that in my back pocket seeing the
Speaker 1: witness box under intense cross examination. But yeah, no, that's
Speaker 1: that's good. I can understand why the benefits. So you're
Speaker 1: out out where were you first stationed in uniform?
Speaker 2: Would you believe some Kilda?
Speaker 1: Right? Okay? So in the in the figure of it, woh.
Speaker 3: Was it ever talk about a baptism of fire? But again, talking,
Speaker 3: I sound like I'm terribly soft and fluffy, but I
Speaker 3: can you know, I can yell at the best of
Speaker 3: times and get people to do what I want them
Speaker 3: to if I have to. But I can always remember
Speaker 3: I'd never seen a prostitute. We're again, they're not prostitutes.
Speaker 1: Sex sex workers. Yep, you and I are showing that
Speaker 1: we can evolve and understand the world.
Speaker 2: We can.
Speaker 3: Ye, So i'd never seen a sex worker and an
Speaker 3: ice boy? Did I seem at some killed? And you know,
Speaker 3: there's some things you learn in policing. You learn a
Speaker 3: lot of good things, but you also learn a lot
Speaker 3: of things, And you think I will.
Speaker 2: Never do that.
Speaker 3: I never ever treated them any differently to anyone else.
Speaker 3: In fact, by talking to them and being kind and
Speaker 3: a bit understanding, they gave me grade info.
Speaker 1: Right, And I think People sometimes misunderstand that that if
Speaker 1: you didn't come across gruff and the hard ass cop,
Speaker 1: people are going to walk over you. But the reverse
Speaker 1: is quite often. There's times, as you identified, you need
Speaker 1: to crack down and that tough guy or tough lady.
Speaker 1: But just treating people with a little bit of respect
Speaker 1: can go a long way, especially when they're being treated
Speaker 1: like just kicked around all their life and then someone
Speaker 1: shows them some interest and sits down, actually sits in
Speaker 1: thegether with them or wherever, and has a conversation. It's
Speaker 1: amazing the information that you can get. What attracted you
Speaker 1: to detectives, What was the drive there?
Speaker 3: It sounds wrong, but the more serious the offense, the
Speaker 3: more I want to be there. I'm not saying the
Speaker 3: little old lady coming in and saying she'd lost her purse,
Speaker 3: that was big to her. But I wanted, you know,
Speaker 3: I wanted the rapes. I wanted to be involved in
Speaker 3: the rapes, in the murders, in the abductions, the challenge
Speaker 3: and the real as you referred to before, the real
Speaker 3: hard assed crooks. That's what I wanted. But it wasn't
Speaker 3: so much. It was more about I wanted to get
Speaker 3: into sort of get into their head. For instance, a rapist.
Speaker 3: I found it absolutely fascinating. Maybe I don't know if
Speaker 3: that's the right.
Speaker 1: The psychology of it is incorrect.
Speaker 3: To get into their you know, their thinking, and to
Speaker 3: talk to them about what made them do it, What
Speaker 3: were you thinking?
Speaker 2: What had you done?
Speaker 3: A lot of them had been watching pornography. A lot
Speaker 3: of younger offenders had been watching pornography. But you learn
Speaker 3: a lot by being interested in people and showing literally
Speaker 3: I did. I was interesting in what made them tick,
Speaker 3: what was it on that day, that person, you know,
Speaker 3: all that sort of stuff. That's what I wanted. And
Speaker 3: also the victims, not the offenders, were very challenging because
Speaker 3: some just don't want to talk to you, and that's fine,
Speaker 3: you've got to accept that. But also the victims, you know,
Speaker 3: I can remember a rape I went to where the
Speaker 3: victim had been oh, bashed. I've never seen anybody bashed
Speaker 3: so hard, not even in a street fight. Her head
Speaker 3: was like a bowling ball, and she had been raped
Speaker 3: and stood on, stomped on, and she couldn't see. And
Speaker 3: I sat with her for a week in a hospital,
Speaker 3: just trying to get as much information as we could
Speaker 3: and again talking about her parents and she had other
Speaker 3: siblings and to take them in and see her the
Speaker 3: way she was in a hospital bed. But for some reason, Gary,
Speaker 3: that drew me like a honeypot. If that makes sense.
Speaker 1: No, it does make sense. And it's and I'm always
Speaker 1: cautious to say this when I'm speaking to detectives because
Speaker 1: we gravitate towards detectives on this show. I totally respect
Speaker 1: the men and women that stay in uniform, and you
Speaker 1: know they are at the sharp end the front line
Speaker 1: of the police when shit happens. Usually the first one,
Speaker 1: first one's there and they never know what they're going
Speaker 1: to be confronted with. It shift and you would have
Speaker 1: seen it. I saw it. Some of these good uniform
Speaker 1: police has spent their whole career in uniform. They had
Speaker 1: a skill set we didn't have as detectives. They had
Speaker 1: a mannerism and a way that they went about their business.
Speaker 1: So it's not saying one is better or the other,
Speaker 1: but yeah, the curiosity. Curiosity drove me to detectives. I
Speaker 1: was at a scene I think it was a murder,
Speaker 1: and I see the detectives walk in, they go through
Speaker 1: the crime tape. I'm out guard the crime tape and
Speaker 1: then they come out with this knowing look on their face,
Speaker 1: and I think, I want to I want to get
Speaker 1: behind the tape. I want to go inside the scene
Speaker 1: and see it. But you obviously enjoyed it.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I also used to love the debriefs, and you know,
Speaker 3: when a job had come in and you'd all sit
Speaker 3: around the table and you'd have the paper up there
Speaker 3: and people would be scribbling. You know, Norell, you're doing this,
Speaker 3: somebody else do just to talk about it. I missed
Speaker 3: that so much, you know, that working in a team,
Speaker 3: because often when you're on the div van, it's just
Speaker 3: you and your colleague. But I loved that working in
Speaker 3: a team because everybody brings a different skill. I was
Speaker 3: never the you know such and this power of arrest
Speaker 3: and this, you know, this section of the crimes out.
Speaker 3: There were people that could just recite things and that
Speaker 3: wasn't my forte. I knew what mine was, and mine
Speaker 3: was working with the victims and just the cycleologue logical
Speaker 3: part is what I love.
Speaker 1: Yeah, shut up, Nell, you're bringing me back to the
Speaker 1: memories of in the incident room when something's breaking and
Speaker 1: there's a collaborative group of minds there and everyone's staring
Speaker 1: at the whiteboard and what says have we missed something?
Speaker 1: And someone will say something that, yeah, it's exciting that,
Speaker 1: it's exhilarating that. Yeah. They try to capture it on
Speaker 1: you know, you see the TV shows and all that.
Speaker 1: Sometimes they do. But when you see it, when you've
Speaker 1: got something where it's everyone working together, the soul of
Speaker 1: this crime, it is a good place. Now. I just
Speaker 1: said we'll jump forward and we'll move backwards and forwards.
Speaker 1: But again, research and preparing for this the murder of
Speaker 1: Anna and Gracie Sharp Mornington monster case. Can you tell
Speaker 1: us about that case, your involvement in the case, and
Speaker 1: just lead us to how the bodies were found and
Speaker 1: different things like that. Just take us through that.
Speaker 3: Sure, I was a missing persons at the time. I
Speaker 3: think it was around two thousand and four.
Speaker 1: Yep, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: Okay, thanks. And a job came in and our analysts
Speaker 3: looked at it and thought, you know, the analysts a
Speaker 3: lot of unsung heroes in oh and our analyst Helen,
Speaker 3: she was just fantastic and she could smell a rat
Speaker 3: a mile off. And this job came in and it
Speaker 3: was a bit old. It was a couple of months
Speaker 3: down the track a woman had gone missing from Mornington
Speaker 3: with her little daughter. And what had happened was it
Speaker 3: was Anna and Gracie Sharp. Anna was married to John Sharp.
Speaker 3: They moved down to Mornington and they had little Gracie
Speaker 3: and Anna was pregnant with their second child. And Anna's
Speaker 3: mum lived in New Zealand because that's where Anna came from,
Speaker 3: and and his mum would ring. They were very close
Speaker 3: and they bring each other all the time, almost daily. Anyway,
Speaker 3: for a while, Anna's mum couldn't get on to Anna
Speaker 3: and she thought there was something something was just bubbling away,
Speaker 3: thinking there's something not right here. And I think she
Speaker 3: tried for a couple of weeks and she'd ring John
Speaker 3: and she'd say I haven't been able to speak to Anna.
Speaker 3: And John and say, oh, she's shopping or you know whatever,
Speaker 3: out with girlfriends.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But then as time went on there was something not
Speaker 3: right and eventually John said to his mother in law, look,
Speaker 3: she's had an affair and she's actually left me. I
Speaker 3: didn't know how to tell you. Anna's mum knew that
Speaker 3: wasn't right. Because Anna was pregnant with their second child.
Speaker 3: She'd never ever mention anything about being unhappy or anything anyway.
Speaker 3: So Ana's mum rang the local Dunedin police in New Zealand,
Speaker 3: and of course they make a few inquiries. They ring
Speaker 3: John and John says, oh, she's had an affair in
Speaker 3: left me. So they then ring they smell a rat
Speaker 3: and they ring Mornington Police, the local police, and they
Speaker 3: tell them, you know the information they've got, can you
Speaker 3: go around and check it out. So off they go
Speaker 3: round to John's.
Speaker 2: And he's there.
Speaker 3: He's very it was quite sort of distraught, a bit nervous,
Speaker 3: as you'd expect, you know, anyone coming into contact with
Speaker 3: police is nervous, so but there was something about him.
Speaker 3: They just you know, we get it as police, not
Speaker 3: just detectives. All police, I think get these gut feelings.
Speaker 3: And the police at Mornington thought there's something right here,
Speaker 3: so they go back to Mornington. No, I don't think
Speaker 3: the actually got back to Mornington. I think actually got
Speaker 3: out front of the house and they rang our office
Speaker 3: and they said something is very wrong here. So that's
Speaker 3: when we started the ball rolling. And I think we're
Speaker 3: about six or eight weeks down the track, so we
Speaker 3: had we were behind that April.
Speaker 1: Yeah, from the start, if that's when you're talking investigations,
Speaker 1: you're playing catch up. And back then it was you're
Speaker 1: losing information, you're losing witnesses or that the longer it
Speaker 1: takes before you ramp up the investigation.
Speaker 3: So anyway, we eventually the bosses make a decision, Yes,
Speaker 3: we're going to go down. We're going to have a
Speaker 3: look at it. So we get a team together. Off
Speaker 3: we go down to Mornington. We have that briefing, and
Speaker 3: again it's just it's exciting, you know, like is this
Speaker 3: and what we had to determine was with any missing
Speaker 3: person case, is the person missing or is there an
Speaker 3: offense involved? Have they just decide number one, has she
Speaker 3: had an affair and has she gone off with somebody else? Yeah,
Speaker 3: it's possible, of.
Speaker 1: Course, And that's why those investigations are a little bit
Speaker 1: harder if you start with the body, you know, okay,
Speaker 1: here's the offense, and then you can work from there. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it adds another layer to an investigation when someone's.
Speaker 3: Just just to establish if a crime has been committed, you know,
Speaker 3: and so we know, did the usual you know, Norell
Speaker 3: you do this, somebody else do that? So off we go,
Speaker 3: We make our we do a few inquiries, and we
Speaker 3: come back and then we decide we're going to go
Speaker 3: around to John's and speak to him. So we go around.
Speaker 3: This is probably two days later, Oh maybe not that long,
Speaker 3: but anyway, we go around to John's to the house.
Speaker 3: The house is a lovely two story house in Mornington,
Speaker 3: quite reasonably nice house, I would you know. Anyway, we
Speaker 3: knock on the door and John answers, and he's very accommodating,
Speaker 3: Oh yes, please come in, and he's sort of a
Speaker 3: bit upset. But the house itself, it was that cold.
Speaker 3: And I don't mean cold temperature, I mean cold as
Speaker 3: in there was just nothing, no warmth in the house.
Speaker 3: It was like almost like a death house sort.
Speaker 1: Of, you know, seeing what you're saying, Oh God.
Speaker 3: And there was no sort of little knickknacks. Anyway, we say, look,
Speaker 3: we don't have a warrant at this point, but we say,
Speaker 3: look we just have a bit because we're just there
Speaker 3: having a chat to him, and you know, we don't
Speaker 3: know what's going on. So we said, oh, can we
Speaker 3: just have a bit of a look around you. So
Speaker 3: he takes us upstairs and we go up to the
Speaker 3: main bedroom and there's no bed and it's like, oh,
Speaker 3: what's where's the bed? And he said, oh, I had
Speaker 3: to get rid of it because the memories were just
Speaker 3: too difficult, too hard to bear. Again, yep, I can
Speaker 3: understand that. So then we go into Grace's room and
Speaker 3: her COT's missing, and oh, where's Grace's cot? Oh well,
Speaker 3: you know the man that she's moved in with, he
Speaker 3: didn't have a cot. So they took Grace's cot again, right,
Speaker 3: but we didn't the word is I was going to
Speaker 3: say we didn't like him from the start.
Speaker 2: That's that's not very fair. But you know I didn't
Speaker 2: like it.
Speaker 1: You smelled something about.
Speaker 2: It, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 3: But what we did, what we did notice was in
Speaker 3: the kitchen there was you know how we have a
Speaker 3: calendars in the kitchen and oh, you know the doctor's appointment,
Speaker 3: haircut all that. We noticed that there were all these
Speaker 3: appointments for Anna, you know, the doctor, all this sort
Speaker 3: of stuff.
Speaker 2: It was just wrong.
Speaker 3: Anyway, we ended up.
Speaker 1: I love hearing these stories in the rel in that
Speaker 1: just yeah, these these little things from a keen eye
Speaker 1: of a detective, investigators looking at it, going okay, that's
Speaker 1: something and it's not. It's not evidence as such. You're
Speaker 1: not going to convict a person. But it all starts
Speaker 1: to add their red flags are indicators.
Speaker 3: Oh absolutely, and you know how you just start getting
Speaker 3: it just starts. Yep, that's right. The bed's missing, the
Speaker 3: COT's missing. So when we went back that night, we
Speaker 3: drew up a search on and when it's not I
Speaker 3: was a team in a team of let's say, there
Speaker 3: was maybe five or six of us, so it's not.
Speaker 1: I it's right, and I accept that when anyone's talking
Speaker 1: to investigations team sport.
Speaker 3: That's absolutely anyway. So we go back and throw a
Speaker 3: few things around. None of us believed him, but of
Speaker 3: course we've got no evidence, so we do a search
Speaker 3: warrant the following day. Again all very you know, chatty,
Speaker 3: but you know he had the personality of a stop sign. Okay, serious, seriously,
Speaker 3: he had.
Speaker 2: He just had nothing.
Speaker 3: He you know, I think most people I can get
Speaker 3: a little bit of a I don't know, rapport with,
Speaker 3: but it was like getting rapport with a block of wood.
Speaker 2: Seriously, it was it was just a non nothing.
Speaker 1: I've met those people, offenders like people and yeah, there's
Speaker 1: something that what what am I not getting here something.
Speaker 1: There's no connection there. It's it's interesting, isn't it.
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 3: Nothing, And anyway, so we did a warrant the next
Speaker 3: day and we took away you know, a whole lot
Speaker 3: of stuff as you'd expect, you know, the computer and
Speaker 3: I can't remember, but we must have had somebody doing
Speaker 3: the luminole and all that sort of stuff. But the
Speaker 3: place was as clean as and we found nothing. Anyway,
Speaker 3: So we we go on. You know, everyone's doing their
Speaker 3: their stuff there.
Speaker 2: Oh that's right.
Speaker 3: John had said that he'd seen a green car down
Speaker 3: the road or something. So we do a door knock.
Speaker 3: And I've said many times and you would agree with this,
Speaker 3: you get so much from a door knock. People think
Speaker 3: the young police think a door knock it's boring, But
Speaker 3: you get so much information, don't you.
Speaker 1: We call it Canvassin. And I used to lecture at
Speaker 1: the Academy of Homicide courses and detective courses, and I
Speaker 1: couldn't stress enough the importance of the information. And I
Speaker 1: learned that from people that trained me when I first
Speaker 1: in detectives, or first a couple of big jobs, and yeah,
Speaker 1: do the canvas and yea, they just pile there and
Speaker 1: then the good detectives again, what did that person say?
Speaker 1: Who did you speak to? There? And just going through
Speaker 1: the canvas FMS in my neute detail, Yeah, the amount
Speaker 1: of information you gets incredible.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, and you're right, Oh, you've just reminded me. Yes.
Speaker 3: So when the uniform police come back and they've filled
Speaker 3: out their form and the questions you wanted asked, and
Speaker 3: then there's some and you think, did you ask them?
Speaker 3: Did you go into any detail about this particular thing. No,
Speaker 3: we'll go back, or we go back and you don't
Speaker 3: have another chat anyway. So we get let's say, a
Speaker 3: week down the track. Anna's mum receives a bunch of
Speaker 3: flowers for her birthday from Anna, but then she realizes
Speaker 3: that it's not She knows her daughters the way she
Speaker 3: writes her expressions, it's not Anna's words.
Speaker 2: She also gets.
Speaker 3: A bunch of flowers and there was something else, but
Speaker 3: she knew it wasn't Anna anyway. She then, So things
Speaker 3: are starting to add up, and we keep going back
Speaker 3: to John to get more information. What we find out
Speaker 3: is that John's from a close family. He's got four
Speaker 3: older sisters, his parents are still alive. He provided a
Speaker 3: photo to us that we actually established later was taken
Speaker 3: two days before Anna and Gracie were murdered, and this was,
Speaker 3: you know, we'd been to a family do or something.
Speaker 3: Because we can't find any signs of disturbance, there is
Speaker 3: nothing to suggest that they have been done away with.
Speaker 3: But there's also nothing to suggest that she's had an
Speaker 3: affair either, because what's happening is her phone is still
Speaker 3: being used and her credit card is still being used.
Speaker 2: So that adds to the.
Speaker 1: Is she having a confusion whether there was some legitimacy
Speaker 1: to her going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely. So over the next week.
Speaker 3: We you know, we keep doing what we were doing,
Speaker 3: but then we're getting nowhere. And then in that briefing,
Speaker 3: somebody says, we've got to try surveillance, but we can't
Speaker 3: do We can't put an elder a listening device in
Speaker 3: John's house or in his car because he talks to
Speaker 3: no one.
Speaker 1: Is there on his own.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but he's got no friends, he's got no he's
Speaker 3: just a loner. Some could call him a loser, but anyway,
Speaker 3: I won't.
Speaker 2: So what we do.
Speaker 3: Is we think, well, let's just watch him, let's do it,
Speaker 3: get him to do a media release, and we'll just
Speaker 3: follow him from them. So he does a media release
Speaker 3: on Channel seven and I think a number of people
Speaker 3: have seen this where he you know, he cries and
Speaker 3: holds up them. I don't know how he could do this,
Speaker 3: but he holds up a photo of little Gracie. You know,
Speaker 3: please if just ring the police, you know, please with
Speaker 3: her to contact and anyway, So what happens is the dogs,
Speaker 3: the surveillance that's what we call the the listeners.
Speaker 2: I know what you you know what it is.
Speaker 1: Why are you calling them dogs? Let's the term that's
Speaker 1: frequently used for our surveillance place.
Speaker 3: And so the dogs following from straight after the interview
Speaker 3: is just the most exciting, almost day of my life.
Speaker 3: They follow him anyway, he goes down to the Chelsea Beach,
Speaker 3: maybe twenty minutes away from where he's done the interview.
Speaker 3: And he goes down to the Chelsea Beach, and of
Speaker 3: course the dogs are watching him.
Speaker 2: They've got.
Speaker 3: Binoculars, they're taking videos and all this, and they watch
Speaker 3: him and he gets out of his car and he
Speaker 3: goes behind a toilet block and you can see the
Speaker 3: video and he looks round checks and he digs down
Speaker 3: under a bin and he brings out this plastic bag.
Speaker 3: You see him make a phone call. There's a phone
Speaker 3: in the bag, so he makes a phone call, puts
Speaker 3: that back, and then he goes to the local shopping center,
Speaker 3: withdraws two hundred dollars from the bank, which of course
Speaker 3: has got no CCTV. Withdraws a two hundred bucks, puts
Speaker 3: the bag, everything back in the bag by the two hundred,
Speaker 3: and then you see him go back to where he'd
Speaker 3: got the bag originally. He buries the bag again, gets
Speaker 3: back in the car, and he goes back home and
Speaker 3: he rings our office. We know what he's been and
Speaker 3: he rings our office and he said, you're not going
Speaker 3: to believe this, but Anna's just rung me on the phone,
Speaker 3: and he said, and she's just taken two hundred dollars
Speaker 3: out or somebody has just taken two hundred dollars out
Speaker 3: of the bank. You can imagine, Gary, we would do high.
Speaker 1: Fives dancing on the tables with that one for well
Speaker 1: an investigation, yeah, just about.
Speaker 2: But yeah, we were.
Speaker 3: It was but you know, it was just it was
Speaker 3: such a moment to realize, my god, he really has
Speaker 3: done this.
Speaker 2: And then it was where are they? So we waited
Speaker 2: probably about.
Speaker 3: A day a day and a half, hoping that he
Speaker 3: would take us, let's say, to where the bodies were,
Speaker 3: but that never happened. So we arrested him pretty shortly afterwards. Oh,
Speaker 3: the interview.
Speaker 2: The interview.
Speaker 3: We took him back to the homicide squad officers in
Speaker 3: Saint Kilda Road and the interview he chose to make
Speaker 3: no comment. Well, that's his right. You know, nothing we
Speaker 3: can do about that.
Speaker 2: But where were they?
Speaker 3: You know, we didn't, We had no idea, but we
Speaker 3: knew it was him now anyway, so we did.
Speaker 1: A really did you charge him at this point in time?
Speaker 1: You had enough to charge him?
Speaker 2: No?
Speaker 3: No, they're interviewing him right so that no, he's not
Speaker 3: charged at this point. They're interviewing him. And so what
Speaker 3: happens is we take the bosses make a really brave decision.
Speaker 3: Our priority was to find Anna and Gracie rather than
Speaker 3: they weighed up do we want a conviction or do
Speaker 3: we want to find them? So they wanted both obviously,
Speaker 3: but they had to make a decision. They decided they
Speaker 3: wanted to be the only way we could get John
Speaker 3: to talk was to bring his family in. So, of
Speaker 3: course there are the chants that the court would find
Speaker 3: that they were police. You know, we were using them.
Speaker 1: As agent for the police.
Speaker 3: Correct, And he hadn't been cautioned all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3: And that's what I mean. It was a decision what's
Speaker 3: more important, and the boss has made the decision it
Speaker 3: is more important to find Anna and Gracie than get
Speaker 3: a conviction. So what we did was but anyway, that's
Speaker 3: up to the courts, isn't it to decide whether we did.
Speaker 1: There's discretionary powers in the courts to the judge's discretion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, and we were hoping, Oh, it was a
Speaker 3: chance that we had to take anyway. So we bring
Speaker 3: the parents in and we show them just as snippet
Speaker 3: of him going to the bin, because of course they
Speaker 3: couldn't believe it. John, our you know, our lovely son.
Speaker 3: But when they saw that, they realized that we weren't
Speaker 3: playing games, that this was you know, this is what
Speaker 3: we thought, and it was pretty much confirmed, and we
Speaker 3: wanted to know where the bodies were. So we left
Speaker 3: them in with John for probably about an hour and
Speaker 3: they came out and that's when they said, he'll talk
Speaker 3: to you, okay, and Gary he talked He did the
Speaker 3: interview full and like he told, he took hours to
Speaker 3: tell what had happened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all the admissions and the proofs.
Speaker 3: But Gary to listen because of course the team were
Speaker 3: behind the two way mirror, and to listen to it
Speaker 3: because we were all sitting there and you know, the
Speaker 3: big bosses had come in. The ac came in and
Speaker 3: we were all sitting watching this interview. How the guys
Speaker 3: Rocky and Kenno that did the interview they had daughters
Speaker 3: Gracie's age themselves. I don't know how they did it.
Speaker 3: But he spoke like he was he killed an ant
Speaker 3: on the footpath. It was just the most Oh, it
Speaker 3: was chilling and in a nutshell. He said that Anna
Speaker 3: was moody and controlling and that was it.
Speaker 1: That was his reason, reason.
Speaker 3: Moody and controlling, and that he could think of no
Speaker 3: other way.
Speaker 2: He just had to do it.
Speaker 3: But it was pre planned because he had been to
Speaker 3: the fishing shop. He got a couple of spears, he
Speaker 3: bought a chainsaw, he bought tarps.
Speaker 2: He knew what he was going to do.
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Speaker 1: x plus on Apple Podcast Today. How did he kill them?
Speaker 3: So he said in this interview, just like I'm talking
Speaker 3: to you now. So he says, you know, Anna was
Speaker 3: giving me the shits this particular night. I had a scotch,
Speaker 3: got a bit of courriage up and I went down
Speaker 3: to the shed, the got the spear gun and I
Speaker 3: went upstairs and I spared her in the head. But
Speaker 3: this is what we had to listen to. And so
Speaker 3: he speared her and then he dragged her downstairs and
Speaker 3: buried her in the yard. And then after a day
Speaker 3: he thought they're going to find that with the chainsaw,
Speaker 3: he dug her up, cut her up, cut her cut
Speaker 3: her torso her legs and arms, et cetera, put her
Speaker 3: in a garbage bag and threw her out with the
Speaker 3: household rubbish. Now this is he's just, you know, just
Speaker 3: talking like this.
Speaker 1: This is this is what I did.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 3: And then of course the dread came when Rocky or
Speaker 3: Keno go so and we hear all about Anna, right,
Speaker 3: and then also what happened with Gracy anyway, So he
Speaker 3: he didn't know what to do with Gracie, but he thought,
Speaker 3: he kept thinking, I can't deal with this. Gracie needs
Speaker 3: to be with her mum. So he takes little Gracie
Speaker 3: down to the fishing shop. There's CCTV footage of him
Speaker 3: holding her little hand and he walks up to the
Speaker 3: counter and yeah, I'll have that spear there, and I'll
Speaker 3: have a couple of extras there. Takes them back to
Speaker 3: the house. Gracie goes to bed that night in her cot.
Speaker 1: Look, I think, oh, it's chilling. We're talking about a crime,
Speaker 1: horrendous crime, and you know, sometimes people don't need to
Speaker 1: hear all the details. But yeah, when it's said and done,
Speaker 1: lives have been taken, a lady and a child's lives
Speaker 1: just so brutally. But how did he kill the child?
Speaker 3: So Gracey's asleep again. He has a couple of scotches,
Speaker 3: needs a bit of bravado and he goes downstairs. He
Speaker 3: gets the spear gun and he loads it and he
Speaker 3: shoots Gracie in the head, but it doesn't kill her,
Speaker 3: so he gets another spear, spares her again. She's screaming, obviously,
Speaker 3: spares her again. She's still alive. He's got three spears.
Speaker 3: He uses the third spear, she is still alive. He
Speaker 3: takes one of the spears out of her head, reloads,
Speaker 3: and that fourth one kills her. M It's beyond words, isn't.
Speaker 1: He I'm lost for words on it. The real we're
Speaker 1: both worked in homicide. You hear some horrible things and
Speaker 1: when it's breaken down with that, that's what we're talking about.
Speaker 1: That's why people, why detectives pursue these people who are
Speaker 1: capable of crimes like that, Like you can't you can't
Speaker 1: even comprehend it.
Speaker 3: And as if that's not bad enough, he then throws
Speaker 3: her in a garbage bag mhm, and throws her out
Speaker 3: in the rubbish.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I can remember they had a bit of a break
Speaker 3: during this interview, and I can remember going into the
Speaker 3: ladies bathroom with another detective another a lady obviously, and
Speaker 3: I remember putting my head in my hand and I
Speaker 3: was crying. I just I just couldn't. We both were.
Speaker 3: And you know, there was an AC in there, an
Speaker 3: Assistant commissioner watching all this, and everyone was the same, like,
Speaker 3: oh my god. And I remember one of the detectives
Speaker 3: next to me, the AC put his hand on her
Speaker 3: shoulder and I thought, please don't put your hand on
Speaker 3: my shoulder because in comfort, because I thought I will
Speaker 3: absolutely lose it. Thank god he didn't. So but then,
Speaker 3: of course, is the dread they're in.
Speaker 2: They're in a tip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I've searched tips for bodies and it's not a
Speaker 1: nice experience and you've literally got to go through you
Speaker 1: can't do it nicely. You've literally got to go through
Speaker 1: all the rubbish people have discarded. But I know with
Speaker 1: this one, Norell, if you could just tell us that
Speaker 1: it was searching for days and days and days it
Speaker 1: maybe you were the one that found the bags of
Speaker 1: the bodies in it. Do you want to just tell
Speaker 1: us briefly about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny. It was costing about half a million
Speaker 3: dollars a day. And in the end the bosses said
Speaker 3: on the eleventh, this is the tenth day, and they said,
Speaker 3: we're going to have to pull up stumps tomorrow. We
Speaker 3: just can't do it. And you know what, Gary, I
Speaker 3: don't know why, but from the minute we started searching,
Speaker 3: I know this sounds a bit funny, but I knew
Speaker 3: i'd find her. I knew i'd find one of them.
Speaker 3: I just I was that determined to make sure that
Speaker 3: one or both of them weren't going to wind their
Speaker 3: life in a filthy, rat infested as best as ridden tip, cold, wet, windy. Oh,
Speaker 3: it was shocking. It was about July, I think by
Speaker 3: this stage. And anyway, so the last day comes and
Speaker 3: it's I don't know, nearly morning tea time, and you
Speaker 3: know we're the big.
Speaker 2: Front end.
Speaker 3: What's that thing called the front Later, Yeah, I saw
Speaker 3: that many blue bags because that's what we're looking for,
Speaker 3: a blue bag, and I never want to see a
Speaker 3: blue bag again. I saw thousands of blue bags, and
Speaker 3: we had to check every single blue bag. And this
Speaker 3: one it comes up, it digs it up, and I
Speaker 3: hold it because I don't want him to you to
Speaker 3: ruin if it does contain anything. Anyway, it's up the
Speaker 3: top of the sort of mound that he'd sort of
Speaker 3: done this with all the with the rubbish, and you
Speaker 3: had to sort of scramble up the top and go
Speaker 3: through it all anyway, this blue bag, I open it
Speaker 3: and I see a kitchen glove and a few and
Speaker 3: I just sort of and I went to go back down,
Speaker 3: and I thought, I don't reckon that was a glove.
Speaker 3: So I go back and it's an arm, a human arm.
Speaker 2: So I knew then, obviously.
Speaker 3: And it was an adult, so I knew that i'd
Speaker 3: sound Anna. And the euphoria that I felt in finding
Speaker 3: her was almost indescribable. And everyone comes from everywhere and
Speaker 3: we're all hugging and we're all crying and we're all
Speaker 3: someone and it was just lovely in a way terrible,
Speaker 3: but it was just.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know what you're saying, the real and like
Speaker 1: the people, yeah, they think when you're telling a story
Speaker 1: this and you felt you found the body. This is
Speaker 1: just the nature of policing. This is how you have
Speaker 1: to survive policing. And you're looking for bodies. And I've
Speaker 1: been in situations just like that, where you find the body,
Speaker 1: you carry sadness the whole time. At that particular point
Speaker 1: in time, you feel like you've done your job and
Speaker 1: you exactly you're bringing. I never say closure with homicide
Speaker 1: because it just people don't get it. But you bring
Speaker 1: a degree of peace that the bodies have been found.
Speaker 3: And that's a very good point. I just felt so
Speaker 3: Initially it was euphoria that I'd found it, but it
Speaker 3: didn't take long, maybe thirty seconds, and then I thought,
Speaker 3: pardon me, that means a little grace is around it somewhere,
Speaker 3: and that was a dread that I could hardly bear.
Speaker 3: We wait for so they call crime scene, and of
Speaker 3: course everybody goes up to the caravan where the cup
Speaker 3: of tea two hundred, we call it the caravan with
Speaker 3: the meals and everything. And we were waiting for crime
Speaker 3: scene and one of my colleagues said, come on, phrase,
Speaker 3: we're going up for a coffee. And you know what, Gary,
Speaker 3: I couldn't leave her. Yeah, I sat with that bag.
Speaker 3: Of course I didn't look. I mean I looked away,
Speaker 3: but I just thought, how could I leave her like
Speaker 3: I'd found her? And I just sort of couldn't leave
Speaker 3: her alone anymore.
Speaker 1: Again, that's Norell. That's that that empathy and caring nature.
Speaker 1: It just seems so brutal when you find the discarded body.
Speaker 1: And I can understand that feeling that you just feel
Speaker 1: like you're abandoning this poor person, this poor lady, just
Speaker 1: in this rubbish tip. So yeah, heavy stuff.
Speaker 3: And I never and I've got to say you said before,
Speaker 3: I need to correct her. I didn't find Gracey. I
Speaker 3: thought that afternoon. I think the next day we went
Speaker 3: back down to begin looking for Gracy. And what I
Speaker 3: thought was just amazing. I was dreading finding Gracy. I
Speaker 3: just hoped that I wasn't going to be there person. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but I can remember we called it time and we
Speaker 3: were going to go back the next day. But as
Speaker 3: we were walking looking back, like this is at four
Speaker 3: o'clock in the afternoon, and it was really windy and
Speaker 3: everything was blown around. Would you believe there are these
Speaker 3: photos blown around? And one of the detectives picks up
Speaker 3: the photo and he looks at it and he says
Speaker 3: to me, do you recognize her? And I didn't, but
Speaker 3: apparently it was Anna's mum, So yeah, yeah, So I
Speaker 3: didn't go back the next day. I'm not sure why.
Speaker 3: I think I would have used any excuse in the
Speaker 3: world not to because I didn't believe that I could
Speaker 3: handle it. But anyway, they found little Gracey and now
Speaker 3: they are at peace. Little Gracey and Anna are at
Speaker 3: peace over in New Zealand on Anna's mum's property.
Speaker 1: Okay, well that's some consolation for the mother. But look,
Speaker 1: that's I won't say typical, because there's no typical homicide investigation,
Speaker 1: but the way you describe that, I think if you
Speaker 1: work in that sort of very long enough, these are
Speaker 1: the type of cases that you get. So thank you
Speaker 1: for explaining that. So, John, the bodies were found. John
Speaker 1: was convicted of these horrendous crimes. How long was he
Speaker 1: sentenced to?
Speaker 2: Not long enough?
Speaker 3: Yeah, he got thirty three years.
Speaker 1: Thirty three years, yeah.
Speaker 3: Which you know is going to be an old man
Speaker 3: when he gets out. His life's over. You know, if
Speaker 3: he doesn't ever breathe the air that we breathe. You know,
Speaker 3: there's not many there's not many people I feel like
Speaker 3: that about, but John Sharp one of them.
Speaker 1: I understand. We'll take a break here. I'm finding our
Speaker 1: chat fascinating. When we come back to part two, we're
Speaker 1: going to talk about more of you, more of your
Speaker 1: cases and how your career came to an end, and
Speaker 1: the toll that policing takes on you and everything else.
Speaker 1: So we'll join you back here shortly thank you. It
Speaker 1: is