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.
Speaker 2: 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 that I Catch Killers. I think
Speaker 1: it's fairly obvious homicide investigation is where my true passion lies.
Speaker 1: So I'm really looking forward to today's episode because we're
Speaker 1: going to have a deep dive into the world of
Speaker 1: homicide investigation. So if you want to find out what
Speaker 1: really happens when someone gets murdered, I think you're going to.
Speaker 2: Enjoy today's guest.
Speaker 1: Today, I'm talking to recently retired Detective Inspector Steve Ko,
Speaker 1: who had a decorated thirty year career in London's Metropolitan Police,
Speaker 1: including time in New Scotland Yard's elite anti terrorism branch. However,
Speaker 1: for the last twelve years of his career they were
Speaker 1: spent in Scotland Yards Murder Investigation Team. He has extensive
Speaker 1: knowledge of what it takes to catch killers and how
Speaker 1: to bring him to justice, and that's exactly what he
Speaker 1: and I are going to be talking about today. Steve Kay,
Speaker 1: Welcome to I Catch Killers, Gary.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much for having me on. A real
Speaker 3: pleasure to be invited on.
Speaker 2: Well.
Speaker 1: I always enjoy talking to x or current homicide detectives.
Speaker 1: I read your book Murder Investigation Team and How Killers
Speaker 1: Are Really Caught, and what jumped out at me reading
Speaker 1: the book was the similarities between the work that you
Speaker 1: guys do over there in the UK and what we
Speaker 1: do in New South Wales. Very similar.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I suppose procedurally things might change, but
Speaker 3: catching a killer is catching a killer, isn't it. You're
Speaker 3: looking for the same type of evidence, you're looking for
Speaker 3: the same time of motives. The what's inside the killer's
Speaker 3: brain doesn't change if they're in America or Australia. So
Speaker 3: what's going to change is a nuances around procedure, but
Speaker 3: actually going after someone who's murdered somebody and catching them
Speaker 3: it's going to be similar across all sorts of territories.
Speaker 1: Yeah, most definitely. It certainly certainly comes across in the book.
Speaker 1: The other thing that comes across in the book and
Speaker 1: having the conversations I've had with you, is that I
Speaker 1: think you it's fear to say being a police officer,
Speaker 1: you share the passion I share for homicide investigation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent. So I came into it quite late.
Speaker 3: I mean you started a lot earlier, mean in your career.
Speaker 3: I was about eighteen years in when I first started it,
Speaker 3: and I think for me it was that first time
Speaker 3: we were at court and you're noticed, like you could.
Speaker 3: Solving murders isn't easy, getting through all the see the
Speaker 3: the through the lawyers first off, to get a charge
Speaker 3: isn't easy. Then you're having to prepare for court. Then
Speaker 3: you get to court and the defense, I mean they
Speaker 3: try every trick under the sun right now to try
Speaker 3: and get their client off. So it's a horrible journey
Speaker 3: for you, it's an even worse journey for the family.
Speaker 3: But when you're that first time, when I was at
Speaker 3: court and that jury came back with that guilty verdict,
Speaker 3: I mean, I honestly, I know you've been there, and
Speaker 3: you know what this feels like. It was it was
Speaker 3: a feeling I'd never had in the police before, and
Speaker 3: I thought, I can't that moment, I thought, I can't
Speaker 3: do anything else that that feeling of getting that justice
Speaker 3: for that victim, forgetting that, And you go outside and
Speaker 3: the family give you a cuddle and they're like, more
Speaker 3: often than not they say something on the lines of
Speaker 3: thank you so much. We feel like we can start
Speaker 3: to move on now, because they're stuck in a limbo
Speaker 3: whilst all this stuff is going on. Because losing someone
Speaker 3: that your love is bad enough for anybody losing it,
Speaker 3: losing someone through a there is even worse. I mean,
Speaker 3: it's unimaginable. And just to feel that you can give
Speaker 3: them that, I call it a gift, that gift of
Speaker 3: being able to move on and once you once you're
Speaker 3: done now, I thought, mate, I can't. There's nothing else
Speaker 3: I could do in the police it's going to replicate that.
Speaker 3: So I stay for the rest of my career.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's a nice, nice way of putting it.
Speaker 1: Helping those people, and it has to be the worst situation,
Speaker 1: absolute worse situation, when someone's been taken away like that,
Speaker 1: murdered and quite often senseless murder, and you're trying to
Speaker 1: find some peace. I don't think the families ever get
Speaker 1: closure when someone's been murdered, but it helps in a
Speaker 1: way that you can get justice for the families. And
Speaker 1: once I found homicide in my career, I found it
Speaker 1: very difficult to find the passion in other areas of policing.
Speaker 1: And I'm not putting homicide detecteves better than other detectives
Speaker 1: or the general duties police, the uniform police, but from
Speaker 1: my point of view, it was a pinnacle of what
Speaker 1: I wanted to do. That was what I wanted to do,
Speaker 1: and I spent as long as I could could doing
Speaker 1: that because of the rewards that came, the personal rewards.
Speaker 1: But you felt like you were doing something worthwhile.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the point you just made are completely one
Speaker 3: hundred percent agree with you. I never use the word
Speaker 3: closure because that that you often hear people say that
Speaker 3: they can have closure. There is no closure when you've
Speaker 3: lost someone through murder. But it's that being able to
Speaker 3: allow them to start to grieve like we would normally grieve.
Speaker 3: But you can't really agrieve when you know you've got
Speaker 3: this court case hanging over you. And yeah again, yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm not saying murder detectives are better than anybody else,
Speaker 3: but for once you're doing it, job satisfaction is huge,
Speaker 3: isn't it, Especially when you're doing a job where you're
Speaker 3: you're committed to it so much that you sacrifice your
Speaker 3: personal life. You sacrifice time, your family use, the long
Speaker 3: hours and lack of sleep, losing your hair, well we
Speaker 3: both had here before we started, Yeah exactly, yeah, folowing locks.
Speaker 3: But you do that because of that feeling that you
Speaker 3: get and you go for all that, all that crack.
Speaker 3: But by the end of it, when you sat there
Speaker 3: in court and you get that girl, we've verdict everything,
Speaker 3: everything is worthwhile. The sacrifices you've made and your family
Speaker 3: essentially have made. You've done it because because of it
Speaker 3: always haunds up a bit of a bit of a cliche.
Speaker 3: But I feel like I've found my call it. When
Speaker 3: I started investigating murders, it was like I've found what
Speaker 3: I should be doing in my life. And as I say,
Speaker 3: and since I can't let it go, everything I do
Speaker 3: without talking about murder because it just becomes part of you,
Speaker 3: isn't it. You are a murder detective.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I understand exactly what you're saying. I don't think
Speaker 1: we're on our own. You speak to other the true
Speaker 1: homicide detectives that the passionate ones, and we all feel
Speaker 1: the same. It was important worker and rewarding work. And
Speaker 1: people would often say, was it worth the sacrifices that
Speaker 1: you made in your personal life and your own well
Speaker 1: been I supposed to a degree. But the satisfaction you
Speaker 1: get and the reward you get back from the families,
Speaker 1: and I'm sure you're the same as I am. I say,
Speaker 1: in touch with some of the families that I I
Speaker 1: work cases for, and they like family to me. Now,
Speaker 1: it's just the nature of the beast. When you work
Speaker 1: a homicide investigation, you've got to put yourself in there
Speaker 1: one hundred percent. That's not a nine to five job,
Speaker 1: is it.
Speaker 3: Yeah? And it states so true when we were chatting
Speaker 3: before and you said you were doing it for twenty
Speaker 3: odd years. I've got so much respect for that garer
Speaker 3: because I did it for the last twelve years of
Speaker 3: my career and it's changed now. But when I joined you,
Speaker 3: you signed up for thirty years. At the end of
Speaker 3: that you walk away your pension. It's changed slightly now,
Speaker 3: And so I was psychologically prepared that I knew I'd
Speaker 3: be doing it for a maximum of twelve years and
Speaker 3: I could give my all one hundred percent. And I
Speaker 3: always said if I couldn't do that, I wouldn't would
Speaker 3: go and do something else because I think, I think
Speaker 3: for those families and that big team, you have to
Speaker 3: be able to give one hundred percent. But I would say,
Speaker 3: by the end of my end of my career, I
Speaker 3: think I was spent. I think I'd given so much
Speaker 3: of myself and so much energy and so many sacrifices. Personally,
Speaker 3: If they sit to me, you got to do another
Speaker 3: three I think it may have broken Huck actually, and
Speaker 3: it wouldn't be It wouldn't be fair for anybody. It
Speaker 3: wouldn't be fair for the victims, it wouldn't be fair
Speaker 3: for anyway. If I can't give on hundred percent, then
Speaker 3: I shouldn't be investigating murder. Sometimes not everybody who investigates
Speaker 3: murders has the same attitude, and that was what some
Speaker 3: of the biggest frustrations I've ever come across, where I
Speaker 3: was working with people that didn't have that commitment and
Speaker 3: couldn't see that bigger picture of what you're doing it for,
Speaker 3: and that used to really wind me up. And I
Speaker 3: didn't want to be that person. I wanted to be
Speaker 3: the one that gave it all, and if I couldn't,
Speaker 3: then I had to find something else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you bought up some interesting points there, and I
Speaker 1: know what you say. There were some points in time
Speaker 1: in my career, especially doing the homicide, where I thought
Speaker 1: I don't know if I can do this anymore. I
Speaker 1: just yeah, it was hard. I took twelve months leave
Speaker 1: away from the police, which was was good. That sort
Speaker 1: of very invigorated me, and I think that extended my
Speaker 1: stay in the police. But I got to the point
Speaker 1: where you became so accustomed to it where it didn't
Speaker 1: challenge me or excite me. I thought that was the
Speaker 1: time to leave. But as my career played out, I
Speaker 1: ended up with investigations were a little bit different to
Speaker 1: the ones I'd done before, and it sparked my interests
Speaker 1: and I could find the passion, But I wholeheartedly agree
Speaker 1: with you that if you haven't got that passion for
Speaker 1: the work, you shouldn't be in homicide. And my saying was,
Speaker 1: we're not conscripts here. You don't have to be in homicide.
Speaker 1: It's not for everyone. And I fully respect and understand
Speaker 1: people that don't want to invest so much of themselves
Speaker 1: into a job if homicide is not their path.
Speaker 3: Yeah, no, hundred percent. There's lots you can do in
Speaker 3: the police, lots lots of different roles. And I'll say
Speaker 3: one of the things as well, we've murdered quite often
Speaker 3: you find yourself in a situation where it almost feels
Speaker 3: like you're the only one there for a victim. A
Speaker 3: lot of when you watch crime dramas and true crime
Speaker 3: will cost a lot of things. People make get this
Speaker 3: warped idea of what your average MURDERY know, there's not
Speaker 3: there's no average murder, but more often than not, it's
Speaker 3: it's crime related in some way, there's some way that
Speaker 3: the victim's victim's lifestyle has lent itself to the reason
Speaker 3: why they've been killed, and very often they're in their
Speaker 3: circle around them. It felt I'm sure it wasn't but
Speaker 3: it felt like they didn't care as much as we did.
Speaker 3: And quite often you felt like you were the voice
Speaker 3: for that victim, like they're not here anymore. You might
Speaker 3: have I've had family members that were with them when
Speaker 3: they're murdered and don't help us. Best friends apparently don't
Speaker 3: help us. And you feel like you're the only one
Speaker 3: fighting for that victim. And yeah, it felt like a
Speaker 3: weird situation, but it was like I always found, I
Speaker 3: don't want to overplay what's it feels like you're some
Speaker 3: kind of mission for that victim, and it sometimes it
Speaker 3: literally feels like you're the only one that's fighting for
Speaker 3: them that, regardless of how they lived their life, that
Speaker 3: they didn't deserve to die, and that's what you're doing
Speaker 3: it for.
Speaker 1: Well, I think there was something in your book, Steve,
Speaker 1: where you went to a funeral and there was only
Speaker 1: four people there and that was you and your partner
Speaker 1: and I've earned your funeral where there was seven of
Speaker 1: us and three of us were police officers working the case,
Speaker 1: and yeah, someone's got to look out for these people.
Speaker 3: I mean, in that situation that because said to me,
Speaker 3: you're not saying words. I was like, well, I mean
Speaker 3: I literally, I literally never met a person in a life.
Speaker 3: I felt like a new room. Because when there's there's
Speaker 3: a saying investigation, to understand our person diet, you have
Speaker 3: to understand how they lived. So it's about building up
Speaker 3: a picture of someone's life in order because generally there's
Speaker 3: some someone or something in their life that would be
Speaker 3: the reason why they were murdered. So you do although
Speaker 3: you never meet these people, you don't, you delve so
Speaker 3: far into their lives. It was almost like you do
Speaker 3: know that they almost become like this sort of pseudo
Speaker 3: friend because because you know so much of their life,
Speaker 3: you probably know more about their life than than most
Speaker 3: people do. I've ever done. But that was a weird situation. Yeah,
Speaker 3: being there just us, it was quite sad. Really, it
Speaker 3: was really quite sad.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're like.
Speaker 1: To think a life carried more, but yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: the circumstances people find themselves in. Before we break down
Speaker 1: homicide investigation, because as I said at the start, I
Speaker 1: want to take a deep dive into the nuances of
Speaker 1: homicide investigation and get your thoughts on things that I
Speaker 1: think people will find fascinating.
Speaker 2: But let's just a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 1: Your career, where you worked, and your background a little
Speaker 1: bit about yourself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so I joined really young. I was twenty and
Speaker 3: I grew up on We couldn't counsel the states in
Speaker 3: the UK, like social housing type places. I've always lived
Speaker 3: on those as a kid, so mymies tended to go
Speaker 3: the other way rather than the police. And no one
Speaker 3: in my family had ever joined the police, so it
Speaker 3: was a bit left field and I did it. But
Speaker 3: when I left school, I did an a level in
Speaker 3: accountancy and I thought, coming from a poor background, I
Speaker 3: was like, well this, this could be a bit of
Speaker 3: money in this, so I'll go and do some accountancye
Speaker 3: oh Gary. It was so boring. It was so boring,
Speaker 3: and we had offices at the back of the Old Bailey,
Speaker 3: the main court in London, and I used to see
Speaker 3: the comings and goings of the police. They bring the
Speaker 3: terrorists in with blue lights and sirens and convoys and everything.
Speaker 3: That looks so much more exciting what I'm doing. So
Speaker 3: I ended up I ended up applying for the police,
Speaker 3: got in about two weeks after my twentieth birthday, and
Speaker 3: then I got posted to where I grew up and
Speaker 3: I went quite a rough school, So I did nicking
Speaker 3: people I went to school with, and so it was
Speaker 3: a bit of a test of but I've I strongly,
Speaker 3: strongly believed this right. So I one of my bosses said,
Speaker 3: I took it to I con ductor water. And the
Speaker 3: only reason I'm saying it is because I was basically
Speaker 3: policing the people I grew up with. So I could
Speaker 3: spot a criminal a mile off, like of from my
Speaker 3: from my demographic, from my area, I could spot on
Speaker 3: my mile off because I knew them. I grew up
Speaker 3: with them, I played with them at school, you know
Speaker 3: what I mean. We all grew up to if not
Speaker 3: that person, then someone liked them. And it allowed me
Speaker 3: to sort of I hit the ground running in terms
Speaker 3: of a knew the area or I knew the people,
Speaker 3: so I can then concentrate on targeting. And I just
Speaker 3: found this passion for chasing a criminal. So even when
Speaker 3: I was in uniform, when I came on, it was
Speaker 3: about going out and trying to find a criminal. And
Speaker 3: I literally just pick up some car keys go out
Speaker 3: and it was it was a bit like a game.
Speaker 3: I was out there hunting, hunting criminals. And I think
Speaker 3: when you do that, it sort of pulls you down
Speaker 3: the route of being a detective because you then want
Speaker 3: to chase the more serious criminals. You want your Yeah,
Speaker 3: I might nick someone for burglary, but what about fucking
Speaker 3: nick and with an arm robbery? Or what about a
Speaker 3: fucking murder or what? And you always trying to You're
Speaker 3: always trying to up your game in terms of who
Speaker 3: you're chasing. So that's what dragged me. I ended up
Speaker 3: in terrorism and murder. And that's so every everything I
Speaker 3: did from the first time I came out in uniform.
Speaker 3: So when I was when I was at the Old
Speaker 3: Bailey convicted murderers, it was it was all the same
Speaker 3: thing for me. It was all about catching that catching
Speaker 3: that criminal. And as I say, you just sort of
Speaker 3: you end up on the path. And I'm sure it's
Speaker 3: very similar for you going and how you ended up
Speaker 3: in normicide and what was motivating you aread imagine.
Speaker 1: Well, I like the use of the word hunting. People
Speaker 1: might say, oh, that's a bit strong, you're talking humans,
Speaker 1: But you were hunting in homicide. I was hunting the killer.
Speaker 1: And that's the type of and I don't think it's
Speaker 1: too strong a word. That's what you're actually doing so,
Speaker 1: I do understand where you're coming from and in your book,
Speaker 1: and that's why I thought, Okay, I know what this
Speaker 1: blokes about when you talk about hunting, and that was
Speaker 1: a thrill of the chase and finding out what's happened.
Speaker 1: Now people can probably put it in more noble terms
Speaker 1: than that, you know, finding truth and justice and all that.
Speaker 1: But when it all comes down to it, and a
Speaker 1: lot of detectives that I know, detectives I've had on
Speaker 1: the podcast I haven't worked with, I've had quite a
Speaker 1: few of them refer to it was the thrill of
Speaker 1: a hunt. That's what That's what we're doing. And I
Speaker 1: think that does drive you, and you've got to have that.
Speaker 1: I believe that competitive edge. And I know the common
Speaker 1: PC thing is I don't let it get personal. And
Speaker 1: I get told you too passionate, but I deliberately made
Speaker 1: it personal when I was on the case. It was
Speaker 1: personal to me, and I think it helps you and
Speaker 1: drives you as a detective.
Speaker 3: I used to I used to do some of my
Speaker 3: best detective work in bed, which which sounds weird, Okay, Well, yeah,
Speaker 3: I literally never switched off. So what you said something
Speaker 3: about do you say it as a competitive so I've
Speaker 3: a very competitive person. I hate losing, and that's what
Speaker 3: it felt like. If I didn't if I didn't solve
Speaker 3: a murder, I'd lost, and I hate losing. So I
Speaker 3: was you come home and even though you finish work,
Speaker 3: it's you're still thinking about it. And when I was
Speaker 3: in bed and sort of all the other noise has
Speaker 3: gone and you can just concentrate. So many times I'd
Speaker 3: be laying in and something would spark in my mind
Speaker 3: about a line of inquiry that we could follow, or
Speaker 3: something we could do, or someone someone we could speak to,
Speaker 3: or some tactic we could use. And quieter coming in
Speaker 3: the next morning and I'd be like, right, this is
Speaker 3: this is what we're going to do. To the team.
Speaker 3: We're doing this, And it's because my brain was able
Speaker 3: to just really fully concentrate on it. And you don't
Speaker 3: switch off. It's a constant. Once you've picked up a murder,
Speaker 3: all right, you don't just investigate one. So you'll get
Speaker 3: one and you get another and toge another. So it's
Speaker 3: difficult to always put your concentration on that one murder,
Speaker 3: but it'd always be one that's the focus on your mind,
Speaker 3: and it does kind of take over your life, and
Speaker 3: I think, I mean, I think that's what makes us
Speaker 3: better homicide detectives than someone who's just going to come
Speaker 3: along and think, as you say, you could do a
Speaker 3: nine to five. You can't do that.
Speaker 2: You can't do that.
Speaker 1: And I look, I'm not saying that would make you
Speaker 1: a great partner or a person to live with, but
Speaker 1: I understand understand what you're saying. You would carry it home.
Speaker 1: It was twenty four to seven. You're on the job
Speaker 1: and you're thinking about it, and sometimes you'd come up
Speaker 1: with an idea you hadn't thought about and you couldn't
Speaker 1: wait to get up and get to work the next day.
Speaker 1: Or you go in on your day off and start
Speaker 1: following that line of inquiry. It takes a bit out
Speaker 1: of you. But if it's your passion, that doesn't feel
Speaker 1: like work, and that's what I would say to people,
Speaker 1: that was my passion, so it didn't feel like work,
Speaker 1: and that will wire you in on your day off, well,
Speaker 1: this is what I do, this is what I've signed
Speaker 1: up for, and yeah, it's an extraordinary job. I always
Speaker 1: thought the crooks were in more trouble, the bad guys
Speaker 1: were in more trouble when my relationship was in a
Speaker 1: bad position or it wasn't in a relationship, because that's
Speaker 1: when I had nothing to distract me and just concentrate on. Okay,
Speaker 1: let's crack this case. The murder investigation team, just can
Speaker 1: you break it down? In New South Wales we have
Speaker 1: our major crime squad and that sits over the top
Speaker 1: of it, and then we have our breakup of squads.
Speaker 1: We have the hold up squad, the sexual assault squad,
Speaker 1: the homicide squad, the fraud squad, that type of thing.
Speaker 1: Explain the role of the murder investigation team in the
Speaker 1: New Scotland yard that you were part of.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So in the UK, there's a system where we use.
Speaker 3: They always have different aims. We call a murder investigation team.
Speaker 3: That could be a major crime team, but the structure
Speaker 3: is the same because we follow a manual across the
Speaker 3: country and essentially it's a team that will investigate murders.
Speaker 3: It wouldn't be individual detectives and they would be made
Speaker 3: up something along the lines of this. So you know,
Speaker 3: have a detective chief inspector, a couple of detective inspectors,
Speaker 3: about four detective sergeants and roughly eighteen to twenty detective constables,
Speaker 3: and so in that all of those will have different
Speaker 3: kinds of responsibilities. And I use an analogy of a car,
Speaker 3: so if you think of how a car works, So
Speaker 3: the detective constables are the engine. They drive it. So
Speaker 3: they're the people that are doing what would we consider
Speaker 3: the police work. So they're doing they're taking the statements,
Speaker 3: arresting people, looking for CCTV, becoming a family aising officer.
Speaker 3: So the detective work, and that's the engine. That's the
Speaker 3: engine that drives it. And then the sergeants are like
Speaker 3: the pedals. They regulate the engine, make sure it's make
Speaker 3: sure it's working proper, make sure it's not going too fast,
Speaker 3: make sure it's not stopping. And then the d I
Speaker 3: and the d C I is like steering wheel on
Speaker 3: the top and they're directing the car in which the direction,
Speaker 3: directing investigation, which which way we headed. So that that's
Speaker 3: the kind of roles it is. So if you're a
Speaker 3: d d c I, it's about sitting up top and
Speaker 3: looking at which direction that it's going in. The d
Speaker 3: S is sort of straddle both and I've got to
Speaker 3: be honest, that was my favorite role as a DS
Speaker 3: because I could, I could get my hands dirty, and
Speaker 3: I had that overall sort of control because when it
Speaker 3: was my job, it was me that would take it
Speaker 3: to court as a DS and then the dcs would
Speaker 3: do that work. And it does work really really well.
Speaker 3: So everybody when a murder breaks, everybody will have their
Speaker 3: own roles and responsibilities. So you will have an officer
Speaker 3: that's designated as the exhibit officer, so it would be
Speaker 3: those that would go into the crime scene and take
Speaker 3: out the evidence. From there, you'd have a CCTV officer.
Speaker 3: We use family liais and officers really important role where
Speaker 3: they're the earlier wh When I was talking on about
Speaker 3: build up a picture of a victim's life to try
Speaker 3: and solve the crime, the family laser officer is pivotal
Speaker 3: to that because they're going into those that are closest
Speaker 3: to the family sorry, closest to the victim to try
Speaker 3: and build up that picture. So every single role, every
Speaker 3: strand and investigation is separated off to an individual officer
Speaker 3: and it does work really well. It works really well.
Speaker 3: Obviously important thing of that is team meeting so that
Speaker 3: everybody got twenty five detectives or running off in different
Speaker 3: directions they need to come back, and you know, regular
Speaker 3: team meeting, so everybody knows what everybody else is doing
Speaker 3: and how their strand fits.
Speaker 1: In with the over the murder investigation team, your sole
Speaker 1: responsibility was responding to murders and investigating murders. That's the
Speaker 1: makeup of the term.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah, we also had responsibility for a couple of
Speaker 3: other things, so high risk missing person so if someone
Speaker 3: has gone missing and there's a real fear that some
Speaker 3: harmer come to them, then we'd take on those and
Speaker 3: also link series rapes. So the idea being that normally
Speaker 3: the deficers that investigate rate normally would be singular officers
Speaker 3: on their own, and if you've got a link series
Speaker 3: a serial rapist across boundaries and various primes, it would
Speaker 3: come to us because we would have the sort that
Speaker 3: the resources to properly investigate it.
Speaker 1: Okay, well again, not this similar to what we had here.
Speaker 1: At one point in time, we were called homicide and
Speaker 1: serial violin offenders, and that was for serial rapists that
Speaker 1: we would target. On the homicide team, we've sort of
Speaker 1: separated a little bit and our main focus is homicide.
Speaker 1: Do you have an on call response over here in
Speaker 1: New South Wales, we're on call every six weeks. So
Speaker 1: your team, which was detective inspector, two or three sergeants
Speaker 1: and six constables, that was a team. So every six
Speaker 1: weeks you'd be responsible for responding to any murder that
Speaker 1: happened with suspicious disappearance. Is that the similar type of
Speaker 1: role that the murder investigation teams had been on call?
Speaker 3: Percent So there are twenty in London than there are
Speaker 3: twenty of these murder teams, and geographically the split so
Speaker 3: London split into four four quarters and mine was southeast,
Speaker 3: so people would have heard of Greenwich, so we covered
Speaker 3: Greenwich and that side of London, and you would so
Speaker 3: there were five teams at each base, so four times
Speaker 3: five to twenty and then so every five weeks you'd
Speaker 3: be on call and you provide twenty four to seven
Speaker 3: cover and you'd separate your team and any murders that
Speaker 3: came in in your area, you would be the ones
Speaker 3: that would have to respond to them.
Speaker 1: Right again, I picked up something in your book and
Speaker 1: I think it's funny because it's very much the police
Speaker 1: humor and logic in our thinking too. We're on call,
Speaker 1: we'd start on a Monday or sometimes start midweek. They
Speaker 1: shifted it a round sometimes, but as you got towards
Speaker 1: the end of the on call period, because it was
Speaker 1: sort of the phone could bring at any time at night,
Speaker 1: you never slept really well, you couldn't get on the drink.
Speaker 1: You're virtually just waiting for the call the happen. And
Speaker 1: then if we look like we got through the weekend,
Speaker 1: some idiot would say, Jesus, it's been a quiet on
Speaker 1: call period, and that was that was a CHINX. And
Speaker 1: I saw in your book someone mentioned that I can't
Speaker 1: believe how quiet it is, and you're all in the office,
Speaker 1: looked at the person and going, we call it.
Speaker 3: The Q words. You don't use the Q word.
Speaker 2: I didn't realize.
Speaker 1: Out of all the things that I didn't realize impacted
Speaker 1: on me as much when I was in homicide, was
Speaker 1: the joy of not being on call. So every six
Speaker 1: weeks or more you'd have a week out of your
Speaker 1: life where you had to make sure you're ready to
Speaker 1: respond and go anywhere. When I started the first day
Speaker 1: of on call, I wanted something to happen, to get
Speaker 1: it out of the way, because it was almost just
Speaker 1: hanging there waiting for it. I don't want to get
Speaker 1: through five nights sleep and then almost at the end
Speaker 1: and then you get the case.
Speaker 2: Did you feel that when.
Speaker 1: You're on call, the pressure of being on call and
Speaker 1: you don't realize how heavy it is until you've step
Speaker 1: away from it.
Speaker 3: Unupset? Yeah, everything your same resonates with me so much. Yeah,
Speaker 3: all the funny alto you basically have to write your
Speaker 3: life off. You can't. You can't plan anything, do anything
Speaker 3: because SOBS law says if you if you were viewed
Speaker 3: to have a family party, something was going to come
Speaker 3: along and you're not going to be able to make it.
Speaker 3: One of the things I really appreciate now about not
Speaker 3: being in the police is I feel like I've got
Speaker 3: my life back in terms of so I love football, soccer,
Speaker 3: and so when a World Cup was on, I could
Speaker 3: I could never guarantee I could watch the games. If
Speaker 3: my mates were going out having a drink, I could
Speaker 3: kind of commit to it. But there's always that off chance,
Speaker 3: even when I wasn't on care, there's a good chance
Speaker 3: I'm gonna have to cancel family parties, theater tickets, New's
Speaker 3: Eve parties, so much of my life if I had
Speaker 3: to counsel, and it's quite it's quite a nice feeling
Speaker 3: now to when I say I'm going to do something,
Speaker 3: I can commit to it and I'm not going to
Speaker 3: let people down. And I felt like throughout basically my
Speaker 3: because I was a detective quite early. I think being
Speaker 3: a detective more than in uniform you have this is
Speaker 3: I was continually letting people down, continue missing birthday parts
Speaker 3: for the kids and all that kind of stuff. So
Speaker 3: it's nice now that i'd say, if someone says I've
Speaker 3: got a wedding, I can go, Yeah, I can RSVP.
Speaker 3: You say, yeah, I'm going to be there, which is
Speaker 3: a nice feeling.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I understand. I understand because you couldn't commit, and
Speaker 1: it felt like you tempted faith. If you decide, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: i'll try, hopefully it'll stay quiet, and you virtually guarantee
Speaker 1: that something was going to come in. Let's talk about murders,
Speaker 1: like you get a call, a response to a body
Speaker 1: being found to solve a murder, these questions and a
Speaker 1: game from your book. But I'll just break it down
Speaker 1: and then we'll talk about what actually happens. You're looking
Speaker 1: at things, who is a victim, what happened where did
Speaker 1: it happen, When did it happen, why did it happen,
Speaker 1: and how did it happen? When you break it down there,
Speaker 1: it seems very simple, but it's far from a simple process.
Speaker 1: But sometimes it's easy to put a structure and trying
Speaker 1: to work out what's happened. So what your response is
Speaker 1: when you're on call, you get a call and there's
Speaker 1: been a situation that you've got to respond to. What
Speaker 1: type of thing are you likely to be confronted with?
Speaker 3: Yeah, so first off, it's a really important time because
Speaker 3: if you don't get it right at the beginning of
Speaker 3: a murder, those first hour, two hours, three hours, whether
Speaker 3: it is, you can't get that time back. So you
Speaker 3: know there's a lot of pressure on you. And one
Speaker 3: of the things that you also know is that every
Speaker 3: decision you make and everything you do now at this
Speaker 3: early stage is going to be poured over by clever
Speaker 3: lawyers later on who are going to have months and
Speaker 3: months to second guess what you've had. Decisions you've had
Speaker 3: to make in seconds. So there is a lot of
Speaker 3: pressure on you. So you go in and and knowing
Speaker 3: you've got to get it right. So and what we
Speaker 3: do in the UK detectives don't use blue lights and
Speaker 3: sirens generally, but on a homicide team we do. So
Speaker 3: you need to get there as quickly as possible, So
Speaker 3: you get in the car, blue lights and sirens to
Speaker 3: get there, and we call it the golden hour, that
Speaker 3: time immediately after a murder, and it's when the evidence
Speaker 3: is most abundantly there. There's going to be there's going
Speaker 3: to be chances to the case there that if you
Speaker 3: don't get it right, you're going to lose. It's really important,
Speaker 3: so you've got all that pressure on you and also
Speaker 3: as well, like you know, it's like when you're driving
Speaker 3: blue lights and sirens, your adrenaline is going anyway, so
Speaker 3: your adrenaline is through the roof by the time you
Speaker 3: get there. More often not, you're going to get there
Speaker 3: and it's and it's chaos and there's going to be
Speaker 3: there's going to be so much going on, and the
Speaker 3: moment you turn up, the local officers are going to
Speaker 3: be looking at you. You get this look, I'm sure
Speaker 3: you've seen it, where they're so relieved that you're there
Speaker 3: because you can now take the pressure. If anything's going
Speaker 3: to get wrong, it's down to you exactly exactly so
Speaker 3: you get that and what we do in the UK
Speaker 3: we train our detectives to use a system that because
Speaker 3: you've got all that adrenaline going through your system, because
Speaker 3: you know that pressure is on you, you don't want
Speaker 3: to make mistakes. We use a system known as the
Speaker 3: five Building Blocks and it's just a simple, simple steps
Speaker 3: you can go through when you're at a crime scene
Speaker 3: when you've got all that pressure on you. And it
Speaker 3: needs to be simple because if you're if you're working
Speaker 3: in pressure, you can't be trying to think of some complicated,
Speaker 3: convoluted way investigating the murder. You need to break it
Speaker 3: down into something very very simple. So we use these
Speaker 3: five steps and it's preservation of life, preservation of scene,
Speaker 3: securing of evidence, identify victim, identify and the rest suspects.
Speaker 3: So there are five steps you go through. So the
Speaker 3: first one preservation of life. Obviously the major thing in
Speaker 3: any police officer's role is that preservation of life. We're
Speaker 3: there to protect people and that may sound well, they're dead,
Speaker 3: you've been called there a homicide, but you have to
Speaker 3: think about things like so if you were to go
Speaker 3: to a house and there was a dead body in
Speaker 3: the living room, Well, have you checked upstairs, do we
Speaker 3: know for a fact there aren't any other victims, because
Speaker 3: you do end up at scenes where are multiple victims,
Speaker 3: and the last thing you want is to have someone
Speaker 3: bleeding out upstairs because the police have just seen a
Speaker 3: dead body downstairs and haven't thought about So you're thinking
Speaker 3: about that. Then the preservation of scene, and that's where
Speaker 3: we use Cordon's and we're trying to make it a
Speaker 3: situation where nobody's going to be interfering with evidence or
Speaker 3: trampling over DNA that kind of thing. They're securing of evidence.
Speaker 3: So I'm not talking about fingerprints and DNA. I'm talking
Speaker 3: about evidence that would be there that would be lost.
Speaker 3: So for instance, witnesses there might be quick when CCTVs.
Speaker 3: If you check CCDV quickly, it might give you the suspect.
Speaker 3: It could be a weapon's been discarded or some clothing
Speaker 3: has been discarded, but things that you've got to think
Speaker 3: about getting hold of quickly. Then identification of victim because
Speaker 3: as I said I said before, if you understand a
Speaker 3: victim in their life, you got much better chance of
Speaker 3: solving a murder.
Speaker 1: Just on the preservation of the crime scene. I understand
Speaker 1: the preservation of life, that's an obvious thing. And there's
Speaker 1: also the potential threat if there's a dead body, there
Speaker 1: is a killer still around. Who knows like there's been
Speaker 1: circumstances where that the killer has been found there and
Speaker 1: it could have inflicted more dammage on people. But the
Speaker 1: preservation of the crime scene is crucial we and I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's similar to you in and out a perimela,
Speaker 1: a crime scene log who goes in there, keep everyone out?
Speaker 1: No one needs to go in there unless they need
Speaker 1: to be in there. But the chaos that you've just
Speaker 1: described it is that way. And quite often that's two
Speaker 1: o'clock in the morning or lack a sleep and you've
Speaker 1: turned up there and people are running around. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of emotion, and it is just breaking it down,
Speaker 1: doing the simple things, but doing them properly, Isn't it
Speaker 1: making sure that you've set up all the steps, Yeah,
Speaker 1: one hundred percent.
Speaker 3: I mean there are certain skills I think you need
Speaker 3: to be a detective, and one of them is to
Speaker 3: be able to make good decisions. And you're being asked
Speaker 3: to make decisions on the flight. You've got to make them. Now,
Speaker 3: you can't you can't go home and think about it
Speaker 3: for an hour. You've got to make a decision there
Speaker 3: and then. So I always had a system in my
Speaker 3: mind of how I came to making decisions, because you're
Speaker 3: not always going to get it right, but you need
Speaker 3: to have thought it through to a point where you
Speaker 3: can at least justify yourself in court because it's very
Speaker 3: easy months later. So we should have done that, well, yeah,
Speaker 3: I should have done on the information I had. That
Speaker 3: was what I felt was the right decision. And what
Speaker 3: we do is so what I would do when I
Speaker 3: would turn up at a murder scene is I would
Speaker 3: have I'd call it my scribe. I'd have a DC
Speaker 3: with me writing down. So if I'm one of the
Speaker 3: first things I'll do and I turn up to the
Speaker 3: murder scene, is I need to identify which officer there
Speaker 3: can give me the information I need to go about
Speaker 3: investigating this crime. And that might be the senior officer,
Speaker 3: it might be the first on scene, but I need
Speaker 3: to get information from them. So I'm going to want
Speaker 3: to know from them what has happened and what have
Speaker 3: you done? And then I'm going to be starting to
Speaker 3: ask questions. I'm going to be starting to make decisions
Speaker 3: telling them to do things, and I would have a
Speaker 3: DC writing down what I was saying. And that's really
Speaker 3: important because later on when you're asked, well, why did
Speaker 3: you do why did you do that? What did you
Speaker 3: tell them to do? That kind of thing, You can't
Speaker 3: write and talk and record everything and remember everything, and
Speaker 3: it all comes down. So one of the things that
Speaker 3: you have to at point where you get in the
Speaker 3: car and you drive to the murder scene, whether consciously
Speaker 3: or subconsciously, you're thinking about court because everything you do
Speaker 3: is about what plays out in the trial. Everything the
Speaker 3: decisions you make now in the first ten minutes are
Speaker 3: going to impact what happens at the trial. So you
Speaker 3: always have to have that on your mind. So, yeah,
Speaker 3: I've only just got here, I might have only been
Speaker 3: here five minutes, but this decision I'm making now could
Speaker 3: well I could be in the box justifying it a
Speaker 3: year later. So recording everything you do is so important
Speaker 3: when it comes to that all the way for remote investigation,
Speaker 3: but definitely at the beginning.
Speaker 1: I understand what you're saying because there is so much
Speaker 1: accountability in when you're investigating the homicide. I was taught
Speaker 1: by people that taught me, and when we talk about
Speaker 1: what I do or that, and I know you acknowledge it.
Speaker 1: It's such a team effort, and we'll talk about the
Speaker 1: components of the team. It's not one individual. But we're
Speaker 1: always taught that you're a homicide on call. Once you've
Speaker 1: been notified, you're going to have to make decisions from there.
Speaker 1: You're going to have to contact the person that scene
Speaker 1: and make sure the scenes preserve. You're responsible for it
Speaker 1: from the time that you've been notified about it, say
Speaker 1: the decisions. You've got to be able to justify having ascribe.
Speaker 1: I know, and it seems like a thankless task, but
Speaker 1: when I was in that position where I needed someone
Speaker 1: that could make notes of all the decisions I'm making,
Speaker 1: I would pick someone that I relied upon heavily, someone
Speaker 1: that I could trust, Because you knew how crucial it
Speaker 1: was that you had those records that you could be
Speaker 1: able to produce and justify your decisions when you come
Speaker 1: to court. So you've preserved the crime scene, you've made
Speaker 1: the decisions. You talk CCTV footage, which is it's grown
Speaker 1: exponentially the type of electronic data you can get, canvassing
Speaker 1: of the area, interviewing witnesses. What's your thought on canvassing,
Speaker 1: because again, that's something that was drummed into me very
Speaker 1: early in my homicide career, and it's something I like
Speaker 1: to think I passed on the importance of speaking to
Speaker 1: people right at the time when this incidents occurred, finding
Speaker 1: out who was in the area, that type of thing.
Speaker 3: Yeah, one hundred percent. So we have two different ways
Speaker 3: of doing that. We have what's known as directed local inquiries.
Speaker 3: So that's where you are there at the very beginning,
Speaker 3: and you're saying, right, these these are the houses that
Speaker 3: overlook the murder scene. Let's go knock on the doors,
Speaker 3: speak to the people there and see if anybody saw
Speaker 3: or heard anything of One of the things that those
Speaker 3: five steps I was talking about, and one of the
Speaker 3: fifth one is arresting the suspect. I don't don't want
Speaker 3: to jump here, but it's it's so important that if
Speaker 3: you can get hold of a suspect and the rest
Speaker 3: and the sooner you do it, the better chance you've
Speaker 3: got a convicted them, because you've got more chance of
Speaker 3: getting their DNA fingerprint, DNA from the from the victim,
Speaker 3: blood from the victim, the murder weapon, any property and
Speaker 3: stolen in their telephone. There's so much you can get
Speaker 3: and if you go knocking on the door, all you
Speaker 3: need is that nosy neighbor to say, actually, yeah, I
Speaker 3: was looking at a window and actually here's a registration
Speaker 3: number of a car. And if you don't go knocking
Speaker 3: on the doors, you're not you're not going to find that.
Speaker 3: So that's directed local inquiries. And then we then we
Speaker 3: have what we call house to house and that's the
Speaker 3: more strategic, long term thing, where's it might be the
Speaker 3: days that follow, and it's all it's all really thought
Speaker 3: out about where you're going to knock, what questions are
Speaker 3: going to ask, are you going to take descriptions of
Speaker 3: the people you're speaking to, where are you going to
Speaker 3: do it? So this is those two stages, but those
Speaker 3: more often than not, there's those directed local inquiries initial
Speaker 3: ones where you're not going on the door, where you're
Speaker 3: going to get that really important information that's going to
Speaker 3: that's going to push your investigation of.
Speaker 1: So often there's so much that can be gained by
Speaker 1: being methodical in the way that you gather that information.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hundred percent. I mean, this old of the murder
Speaker 3: is about just trying to get those little bits of information,
Speaker 3: and you're pulling them all together and somehow you've you've
Speaker 3: been at Gary where you're at the beginning of a
Speaker 3: murder inquiry and you think, Ada, how are we going
Speaker 3: to solve this one? I mean, this looks like we
Speaker 3: call them a sticker. This looks like it's going to
Speaker 3: be a sticker. Where are we going with this? And
Speaker 3: then's just one tiny little bit of information from the
Speaker 3: old lady potentially that was that was just walking past
Speaker 3: or something like that can can completely andly change everything
Speaker 3: because you do you get that red car, and then
Speaker 3: when you look at the red car, you're looking at
Speaker 3: the CCTV AMPR. You can look at intelligence as a
Speaker 3: huge rivers of red and I mean it can just
Speaker 3: it can change an investigation just one tiny little piece
Speaker 3: of information.
Speaker 1: Let's delve into the importance of finding out about the victim. Now, victimology,
Speaker 1: we refer to it over here. I think you probably
Speaker 1: use the same terminology. But invariably, the answer to finding
Speaker 1: out who killed this person comes from who this person was,
Speaker 1: who this person associated with. You do get random murders,
Speaker 1: but they they're rarer the person in the wrong place,
Speaker 1: at the wrong time, invariably at someone connected to that
Speaker 1: person or the lifestyle of that person that might potentially
Speaker 1: lead to them becoming a victim. How much weight do
Speaker 1: you place on victimology and how do you approach it?
Speaker 1: I found until we found out who the victim was,
Speaker 1: I was always because part of the role when you're
Speaker 1: running the investigation was identifying lines of inquiry, and quite
Speaker 1: often when you hadn't found out who the victim was,
Speaker 1: it was hard to find where do we start up
Speaker 1: with it? As you said, you get overwhelmed with This
Speaker 1: is going to be a tough one.
Speaker 3: Mate, Yeah, completely, completely, completely. I mean you can't overemphasize
Speaker 3: the importance of victimology. In the UK, the government published
Speaker 3: figures every year. They really I love stats, so I
Speaker 3: geek out on these stats every year when they publish them.
Speaker 3: But they're really interesting that they break it down into
Speaker 3: the relationship between a suspect and a victim, and it's
Speaker 3: really off the top of my head, it's something like
Speaker 3: less than ten percent of women are killed by strangers,
Speaker 3: so that shows that in the vast majority of murders,
Speaker 3: there is a link between the victim and the killer,
Speaker 3: and it's your job to try and identify that link.
Speaker 3: So you're looking into their life for any kind of
Speaker 3: motive that is there someone within their life that is
Speaker 3: an obvious suspect, or is there an aspect of their
Speaker 3: life that would lend itself to a motive, or what
Speaker 3: could somebody gain from killing from murdering them as there
Speaker 3: been some kind of event that's triggered this. So looking
Speaker 3: into their life you got and building up that picture,
Speaker 3: you've got much better chance of solving a crime. And
Speaker 3: as you say, if you don't know who the victim is,
Speaker 3: then you then just reliant on what evidence is there
Speaker 3: at the scene. Has someone seen something is sectv is
Speaker 3: the forensics.
Speaker 1: That was always gave the kick along to an investigation
Speaker 1: once you identified who the victim is too, or if
Speaker 1: you didn't know who the victim was, if you didn't
Speaker 1: have a starting point for their lifestyle, so that would
Speaker 1: open up all sorts of lines of inquiry and double
Speaker 1: triple the workload at that particular point in time in
Speaker 1: a good way. Post mortem examinations the importance of that
Speaker 1: again can't be underestimated. People I think wondered, Well, you've
Speaker 1: got the forensic pathologists going there to examine the body.
Speaker 1: Why are you sending detectives there? But I've always found
Speaker 1: that it was a crucial part of the investigation to
Speaker 1: have a detective there. Why the post more examination was
Speaker 1: going on, so you could find out more about how
Speaker 1: the crime was committed and what actually took place. What's
Speaker 1: your thought on the attendance at past mortems.
Speaker 3: It's crucial, It's crucial. I could come up with an example.
Speaker 3: So we had this crime. It was quite a brutal one, really.
Speaker 3: It was two men in the flat and one of
Speaker 3: them had been stabbed off the top of my head
Speaker 3: and there it was something like sixty seventy times and
Speaker 3: he had his face really basically caved in with an
Speaker 3: eye and I mean, it's a really brutal one. And
Speaker 3: then his flatmate was in the front room. He had
Speaker 3: twenty seven stab wounds to his back and stuff. So
Speaker 3: it was really really brutal crime. So imagine there's lots
Speaker 3: of blood. And it wasn't actually a detective. It was
Speaker 3: the crime scene manager. And the crime see manager a
Speaker 3: really important role in the UK. They're a civilian, they're
Speaker 3: not a detective, but they are almost like the CSI
Speaker 3: promoted so that they started off as as scenes of
Speaker 3: crime off service and then they're proed and so we
Speaker 3: were there. There was detectives there, crime scene manager and
Speaker 3: the forensic pathologist. And part of the job is obviously
Speaker 3: the pathologies looking to identify how a person diet and
Speaker 3: the circumstances around it, but also looking to retrieve samples
Speaker 3: from the body that can be tested for DNA et cetera.
Speaker 3: And he was doing this and the CSM pointed, so
Speaker 3: you imagine a body that's that's got a lot of
Speaker 3: blood on it, but on his toe there was a
Speaker 3: drop of blood, so like someone had done a nose bleed.
Speaker 3: The blood looked like it had dropped onto his toe
Speaker 3: and he was laying in bed, so how how could
Speaker 3: this blood have got there? And the pathologists was like, well,
Speaker 3: there's lots of blood, and the CSM was really strong,
Speaker 3: and it was like, no, look that that just doesn't
Speaker 3: look right. That drop of blood on his toe doesn't
Speaker 3: fit with the rest of it. So essentially made the
Speaker 3: cs that made the pathologists sample his blood on the
Speaker 3: toe and it came back as the suspect. The one
Speaker 3: bit of DNA we had, the one bit of evidence
Speaker 3: we had that can link him to the crime scene,
Speaker 3: because when you stabbing someone in a frenzy, there's a
Speaker 3: good chance you're going to cut your own hand because
Speaker 3: knives don't have hilts, and that's why in the old
Speaker 3: day's swords had hilts. Let's stop your hand traveling up
Speaker 3: the sword and slipping. But when someone's stabbing in a frenzy,
Speaker 3: is a good chance they're going to cut their hand.
Speaker 3: And that it was essentially that bit of evidence that
Speaker 3: completely artly blueed case open. And although we were looking
Speaker 3: at this person, we couldn't put them in the crime
Speaker 3: sceing and this blood did it. And if we just
Speaker 3: left it to mythologist to just crack on and do that,
Speaker 3: that would have been missed. And there's a good chance
Speaker 3: that that person would now be walking free as opposed
Speaker 3: to having thirty seven years in prison, which which they got.
Speaker 1: So it's crucial again that attention to detail, and you
Speaker 1: talk about the crime saying officers, and we had some
Speaker 1: great ones here, and they were a wealth of experience
Speaker 1: that comes from years and years and years of turning
Speaker 1: up at these crime scenes and just being able to
Speaker 1: look at things a little bit differently and a little
Speaker 1: bit clearer. I saw in your book you talked about
Speaker 1: you'd like to stand still in the crime scene when
Speaker 1: when all the chaos is set, and then put yourself
Speaker 1: in the crime scene and try to visualize, not in
Speaker 1: a fanciful way, but just get a sense of, Okay,
Speaker 1: what took place here. Talk us about that, because I'm
Speaker 1: a big believer in that too. I think you can
Speaker 1: learn a lot if you're going to be investigating a
Speaker 1: crime getting in the real sense by just standing and
Speaker 1: getting the feel of what's gone on.
Speaker 3: It sounds, it sounds so simple, but it's such an
Speaker 3: important I wouldn't say it's even a skill. It's just
Speaker 3: something that a detective should do, is just stand still.
Speaker 3: And so many sexes don't do that. And a lot
Speaker 3: of it comes down to when I was talking earlier
Speaker 3: about that adrenaline. When you're turning up at a crime
Speaker 3: scene and you've got all that chaos, sometimes it's very
Speaker 3: difficult to sent to yourself and say, right, I need
Speaker 3: to just slow myself down and just standing still and
Speaker 3: just looking around, looking up, looking down, and trying to
Speaker 3: take in what you're seeing, not just not just not
Speaker 3: just looking around, but trying to interpret what you're seeing.
Speaker 3: Trying if there's I don't know, if there might be
Speaker 3: something out of place within a bedroom, and if you're
Speaker 3: if you're not, if you're not looking out for that,
Speaker 3: you won't see it because you just you're just looking
Speaker 3: at around the room and then you're trying to interpret it.
Speaker 3: So so for instance, that that that crime scene I
Speaker 3: was talking about, on the bed, there were there were
Speaker 3: a pair of trousers and the pockets were turned out.
Speaker 3: So when you're looking at that, you think, right, okay,
Speaker 3: so why would somebody be going through is robbery or motive?
Speaker 3: So just just tiny little things like that, and it's
Speaker 3: so easy to miss if you do get caught up
Speaker 3: in that I'm running around and I need to solve
Speaker 3: this crime and I'm under pressure that had just stop,
Speaker 3: slow down outside the crime scene. Just have a look around,
Speaker 3: look at look look look at look at everything around
Speaker 3: this crime scene. And another thing I used to do
Speaker 3: as well is because of that chaos, go back to
Speaker 3: that crime scene and do that exercise when everything everyone
Speaker 3: else is gone, because you get a very different feel
Speaker 3: for a crime scene once all the police officers gone,
Speaker 3: the blue light have gone, that the crowds that are
Speaker 3: there taking pictures. Once all that chaos has gone, you
Speaker 3: get a much different feel for a crime scene and
Speaker 3: what it would have been like at the time a
Speaker 3: murder took place. And that was that always found that
Speaker 3: a really valuable exercise for me to understand that crime
Speaker 3: scene and not what I was presented with that night
Speaker 3: when when it was chaos. And another thing as well,
Speaker 3: I always used to do is you go back and
Speaker 3: just just just mingle with the people that are there.
Speaker 3: And children were a great one. So I grew up
Speaker 3: on these states I grew up on. I knew what
Speaker 3: was going on as police officers didn't. They didn't live there.
Speaker 3: I was hanging around on the street corners. I knew
Speaker 3: what was going on. So just just just wonder and
Speaker 3: just have a really relaxed chat with some of the
Speaker 3: kids that are hanging around, and you'll be shocked what
Speaker 3: they tell you because they know what's going on. So
Speaker 3: it's just little things like that that that's not written
Speaker 3: down in a book. You don't get a menual on
Speaker 3: how to how to solve these crimes. But as you're saying,
Speaker 3: you you got handed down in for for people to
Speaker 3: have been there before, and I did, and you just
Speaker 3: pick up on these little things that just that can
Speaker 3: nine times out of tain. It might not lead anywhere,
Speaker 3: but it's just that one time you might speak to
Speaker 3: a kid and say, oh, yeah, I saw him another
Speaker 3: day having an argument with Joe Blogs and actually, yeah,
Speaker 3: when you look at Joe Blogs and you suddenly you
Speaker 3: can then put him at the Sime scene with his
Speaker 3: phones or whatever. So yeah, there's little a nuances like
Speaker 3: that and an investigation that can be so important.
Speaker 1: The other thing about homicide they don't think people appreciate
Speaker 1: is the sheer volume of information that can come in
Speaker 1: very early. You can sometimes be overwhelmed by the information.
Speaker 1: And again I pay homage to the people that passed
Speaker 1: on their skill set to me, and it's almost like
Speaker 1: a lineage that gets passed down. But people would often
Speaker 1: So what happens when you go to a homicide and
Speaker 1: from our point of view and what I was shown,
Speaker 1: just make sure you've got the information system set up properly.
Speaker 1: And that might be as simple as having an intray
Speaker 1: where pieces of information that coming in set up your
Speaker 1: computer system. You've got homes over here in New South
Speaker 1: Wales we had a system called cops. Not this similar
Speaker 1: to what you have with homes, but the importance of
Speaker 1: getting on top of the chaos of the information that
Speaker 1: comes in so you can gather, assess, collate and then
Speaker 1: allocate task flowing from that. Do you want to talk
Speaker 1: on that management of information in a homicide investigation because
Speaker 1: it's not the sexy topic, it's not the topic that
Speaker 1: gets shown shown on the TV shows, but it's crucial.
Speaker 3: Yeah, lookka, I'll be honest. Homes be brutally honest. I
Speaker 3: was sort of I wanted to be out and about.
Speaker 3: I didn't want to be in an office dener with homes.
Speaker 3: But it's so important, as you say, you're getting thousands
Speaker 3: of bits of information coming in and you've got to
Speaker 3: be able to collate that, cross reference it. And so
Speaker 3: what happened in the UK is we in the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 3: I want to say, Now, yeah, it was a seventies
Speaker 3: We had the Yorkshire Ripper and Peter Sutcliffe killed thirteen
Speaker 3: women in Yorkshire in this cross It was but so
Speaker 3: many lessons have been learned from that. So one of
Speaker 3: the what went wrong is they didn't have a computer system,
Speaker 3: they had a paper system, and he was committing murders
Speaker 3: across multiple policing areas, and so when he was eventually
Speaker 3: identified as the killer, he appeared in all their different
Speaker 3: various bits of paperwork in that he had been interviewed
Speaker 3: by the police nine times and there was no way
Speaker 3: of cross reference in those so unless you had an
Speaker 3: officer that happened across his name, remembered it and whatever.
Speaker 3: But the problem was you had so much paperwork in
Speaker 3: different police forces, none of it was being married up
Speaker 3: out of that you think how many time And there
Speaker 3: was a note at the end from a friend of
Speaker 3: his saying I think Peter Suckcliffe is the Yorkshire Ripper
Speaker 3: and they found this note. So that was a turning
Speaker 3: point brilliant and homicide investigations in the UK well, we can't.
Speaker 3: This cannot happen again. So HOMES was introduced. HOMES stands
Speaker 3: for Home Office Large Major Inquiry System. I mean they
Speaker 3: really shoehorn that they get, but they're really they come
Speaker 3: up with that and it is really really important. And
Speaker 3: as I say, it's not the sexy side of police
Speaker 3: in and it wasn't. It wasn't for me, didn't I
Speaker 3: didn't enjoy it, but I understood the importance of it
Speaker 3: to your investigation.
Speaker 1: And again when you're putting together or bringing together an
Speaker 1: investigation team. There were some people that bought into that
Speaker 1: type of stuff. They loved that, the computer geeks. That
Speaker 1: was their era of expertise. When I would put a
Speaker 1: team together for a murder investigation, you can't always get
Speaker 1: the ones you want. Sometimes it's whatever's available. But I
Speaker 1: would try to get a cross section of skills across
Speaker 1: on a team because you need that mix in a team.
Speaker 1: You don't want everyone like you or me running out
Speaker 1: the door chasing chasing crooks with no one's doing the
Speaker 1: information management. But it's crucial to build that up. And
Speaker 1: when you talk about being in the witness box at court,
Speaker 1: you feel good when you know you've set your information
Speaker 1: management system up properly. Yes, we received two thousand calls
Speaker 1: from crime stoppers, we filed them and you know where
Speaker 1: all the information's gone and things weren't missed. It's funny
Speaker 1: you talk about the Yorkshire Ripper, because I think our
Speaker 1: skill set in homicide investigation was vastly improved by the
Speaker 1: Ivan Malatt, the backpack of murderer, and also we had
Speaker 1: he murdered seven seven people and a granny killer which
Speaker 1: was another one that was operating around the north shore
Speaker 1: of Sydney and killed six people. And it was that
Speaker 1: type of pressure where information where investigations were operating in
Speaker 1: let's say silos, and the information wasn't being passed on
Speaker 1: and lessons were learnt from that. So it is an
Speaker 1: improved system. We'll go now to when you've identified the victim,
Speaker 1: because I think this is at the heart and soul
Speaker 1: of homicide investigations too, because when we talk about people's
Speaker 1: lives being impacted upon, it has an impact on families.
Speaker 1: It's not just one person. It's like a ripple effect
Speaker 1: and it's a generational impact. But I just want to
Speaker 1: read something that and I think if you've been in
Speaker 1: homicide long enough, for a police officer long enough, you've
Speaker 1: had to deliver the horrible messages and how hard that
Speaker 1: is to knock on someone's door and know that you're
Speaker 1: going to destroy their lives by the information you've got.
Speaker 1: And this is what you said talking about not deifying
Speaker 1: the families. When you've identified who the victim is, the
Speaker 1: family mightn't be aware and you've gone to inform them,
Speaker 1: you know, the next words that come out of your
Speaker 1: mouth will change their lives forever, and they are unlikely
Speaker 1: to ever forget what you say. That makes choosing the
Speaker 1: right words so important. There is no easy way and
Speaker 1: no right way, but there can be a wrong way.
Speaker 1: For me, it was always a balance, a balance between
Speaker 1: leaving them in no doubt but being as sympathetic as
Speaker 1: possible your words talking about informing families of their loved
Speaker 1: ones being murdered. Do you want to talk us through
Speaker 1: your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean you've been there, Gary like it's you
Speaker 3: feel I don't know what the word would be, but
Speaker 3: you feel like it is so important on on for
Speaker 3: the rest of their lives. Well, the words that are
Speaker 3: going to come out of your mouth now, and if
Speaker 3: I say you there is no right there's no there's
Speaker 3: nobody can say to you. These are the words you
Speaker 3: have to say, So there's no right way. But if
Speaker 3: you mess it up, you know that that's what they're
Speaker 3: going to remember that and that's that This this scenario
Speaker 3: now for you is this is your job, this is
Speaker 3: their life and and and they're going to replay this
Speaker 3: over and over again for the rest of their life.
Speaker 3: And you feel that pressure, You feel like I need
Speaker 3: I need to get this messages across. I need to
Speaker 3: make it clear so there is no There's different stages
Speaker 3: of grief and one of those is NIW and quite
Speaker 3: often that that's that's the first thing you'll get when
Speaker 3: you when you tell someone that their loved one's dead,
Speaker 3: they will be in denial. They'll be like that, it
Speaker 3: can't be them. I just spoke. I just spoke to
Speaker 3: them to find that it can't be there. So you
Speaker 3: need it's almost cruel to sort of deliver it in
Speaker 3: a way where there's almost hope in there. So you
Speaker 3: have to be definitive. You have to make it clear
Speaker 3: to them that no, you loved one's dead. But you
Speaker 3: don't want to deliver it in a blunt way. You
Speaker 3: need to deliver it. You need to sugarcoat in a
Speaker 3: way that isn't isn't going to completely destroy me. It's
Speaker 3: such an odd things I did fowl that pressure because
Speaker 3: even now I think back to when I've done that
Speaker 3: to me, I have to really try and think about it.
Speaker 3: But to them, I imagine in my face, is one
Speaker 3: of those things that they will always remember because of
Speaker 3: that message I delivered to them. And it's hard, isn't it.
Speaker 2: It is hard and it stays with you.
Speaker 1: And I've got images of you know, walking up the
Speaker 1: driveway or knocking on the door and the moment the
Speaker 1: door's open, they know something's up, or they might have
Speaker 1: reported their child missing or something like that, and you
Speaker 1: carry it for a long time. And I think with
Speaker 1: the families too, like the relationship that you have the
Speaker 1: families and you talk about the family liaison officer and
Speaker 1: people that keep the families informed. I think, the worst
Speaker 1: possible news, the worst possible event of their life, and
Speaker 1: you remind them of it because you're the one that
Speaker 1: bought the book the news to it. It's very very heavy,
Speaker 1: heavy stuff, but I read that out because it is
Speaker 1: important what you said, because I know you can't hedge
Speaker 1: your bets. You can't go, look, we think it is
Speaker 1: this person. You're not telling them it's a person unless
Speaker 1: you know it's a person, so you can't heage your bets,
Speaker 1: and it just it feels so cruel, but there's no
Speaker 1: good way of saying it, and you don't know how
Speaker 1: the people are going to react. I've had people react
Speaker 1: in every way you could imagine, complete denial, aggression.
Speaker 2: Or just collapse on the floor.
Speaker 1: You just don't know, but you do carry it with you,
Speaker 1: and those type of things I think for a homicide
Speaker 1: detective also carry you give your strength to make sure
Speaker 1: you do everything humanly possible to find out what's happened
Speaker 1: to their loved one.
Speaker 3: Just a section of my book and I write about
Speaker 3: our all murders treated equally and in terms of like
Speaker 3: do you differentiate in how how you investigate one murder
Speaker 3: to another? The simple answer is no, you give you
Speaker 3: give your all two to every murder investigate, but there
Speaker 3: is no doubt that you become emotionally invested in others.
Speaker 3: More For me, it was always about children. If I'm
Speaker 3: investigating the murder of a child, I've become emotionally invested
Speaker 3: in it. And and you do get you do. You're
Speaker 3: on that journey with the family, that journey through the
Speaker 3: initial stages where they've just found out it could could
Speaker 3: have been you that told them about it, trying to
Speaker 3: trying it. That that what the most number one question
Speaker 3: I always got when it found is that initial stage
Speaker 3: was why, why why did this happen? Why why is
Speaker 3: my loved one dead? And so you're you're there trying
Speaker 3: to find the answer to them. For that. You go
Speaker 3: on that journey through investigation, get through the charge, going
Speaker 3: through the trial, and you do become you do you
Speaker 3: do get close to them. You're you're you're in the
Speaker 3: worst that their worst nightmare stage of their life. You're
Speaker 3: with them through that and you can't help but become
Speaker 3: emotionally attached to them. Only you'd have to be a robot.
Speaker 2: Not too Yeah, the double edged part of it too.
Speaker 1: But sometimes the family members are the suspect and you've
Speaker 1: got to play that role of the sympathetic, caring cop
Speaker 1: that's delivered this horrendous news, then looking at the way
Speaker 1: they react and keeping an eye open are they involved.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a difficult thing.
Speaker 2: I have one.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if you have a similar one. But
Speaker 1: there was a certain person that he was an uncle
Speaker 1: of the victim, and at the time that we were
Speaker 1: notifying the family, we were not one hundred percent sure,
Speaker 1: but had some good red flags indicating that he might
Speaker 1: have been the person responsible for it. It was a horrific,
Speaker 1: sexually motivated murder. It was a horrendous one. We've knocked
Speaker 1: on the door and the famili's answered door and said,
Speaker 1: you know, with the empathy that is required for this
Speaker 1: gone in and said, look, got some bad news. Do
Speaker 1: you want to sit down? Is there anyone else here?
Speaker 1: And they sat on the lounge and said, look, we've
Speaker 1: identified this body that were found at such and such,
Speaker 1: and there was genuine grief in the room. Our suspect
Speaker 1: was doing his best to cry, like, had his head down,
Speaker 1: hands in his hands, in his face, and I remember
Speaker 1: he looked up at me and pretend why he's trying
Speaker 1: to cry and said do you think do you think
Speaker 1: they'll solve it? And I said, I'm one hundred percent
Speaker 1: certain will solve it. And he should have seen the
Speaker 1: look on his face. I still remember that, and that
Speaker 1: still brings a smile to my face that, yeah, he
Speaker 1: knew that at that point in time, he was stuffed
Speaker 1: and we didn't have enough to arrest him at that stage,
Speaker 1: but we certainly we fired the first shot and the
Speaker 1: look on his face was, Yeah, something I'll never forget.
Speaker 3: Yeah, as you're talking, so we've mentioned a family lais
Speaker 3: and officer. I think even in the police, certainly in
Speaker 3: the UK, people don't understand the role of the family
Speaker 3: laiser officer. They think it's some sort of pink and
Speaker 3: fluffy I'm going to it's like there for tea and
Speaker 3: sympathy type thinks it's not they're a detective, they're an investigator.
Speaker 3: And I mean in those type of investigations it comes
Speaker 3: to the fore. It's like you're putting somebody into that
Speaker 3: family situation and what you're talking about, they're looking for
Speaker 3: the clues. Picking up on what they're saying, how they're
Speaker 3: reacting is so important. And say that that they're an
Speaker 3: investigator and they're building up that picture the victim's life
Speaker 3: and they're central to that. So he is in those
Speaker 3: situations that crucial.
Speaker 1: They are crucial. Steven and I learned a bit because
Speaker 1: quite often families that you come into contact with haven't
Speaker 1: had dealings with police before, and it breaks my heart sometimes.
Speaker 1: And we have appointed family liaison.
Speaker 2: Officers as well.
Speaker 1: It's a it's a role that we used to do organically.
Speaker 1: You do it naturally, but sometimes it'd be forgotten when
Speaker 1: you get caught up in the speed of the investigation.
Speaker 1: And family spoke to me that they haven't had dealings
Speaker 1: with police and had my number to contact me if
Speaker 1: they wanted to contact me, and we're busy with the
Speaker 1: investigation and They contacted me months later and they were
Speaker 1: livid that hadn't been in contact with them. And I
Speaker 1: was shocked because I said, any questions, you've got, here's number,
Speaker 1: anytime the day or night. But they are of the
Speaker 1: view they are laura by any citizens, and they thought,
Speaker 1: we can't disrupt the detective inspector. He's busy doing work.
Speaker 1: We can't just phone him up. And it broke my
Speaker 1: heart that they felt that way. But yeah, it is
Speaker 1: an important role and it's not the fluffy cake eating
Speaker 1: type role. There's an investigative aspect to it as well.
Speaker 3: So yeah, and as well as I mean, they are
Speaker 3: so the duel roll really, so first and foremost it's
Speaker 3: about being an investigator, but they're also there for the family.
Speaker 3: So when you've lost someone through murder, certain procedures are
Speaker 3: going to have to go through the coronial procedures we
Speaker 3: have over here, So identifying the body, there'll be an inquest,
Speaker 3: releasing the body for the funeral, keeping them updated to
Speaker 3: progress the investigation. They'll be there at court with them
Speaker 3: so that they can lead, they can help them through
Speaker 3: the trial, explaining things, et cetera, so that they they
Speaker 3: they do have that it's not a counseling role, but
Speaker 3: they're they're they're almost like a crutch for the family,
Speaker 3: and that they're they're a port of call. So you're right,
Speaker 3: I mean calling the detective inspector it probably isn't something
Speaker 3: that's going to be easy to do, whereas having your
Speaker 3: family aisen off so you can just drop a WhatsApp
Speaker 3: to whatever is is a much easier way of if
Speaker 3: you've got a question, you can ask it. So as
Speaker 3: when I was one of the senior officers, I would
Speaker 3: always at a very early stage meet with the family,
Speaker 3: introduce themselves, let them know of any if they've got
Speaker 3: any questions, do you ask me? What for questions you've got,
Speaker 3: but go forward, John and Sarah, they are your poets,
Speaker 3: are contact. If you've got any questions of me, to
Speaker 3: go via them. That was an important part.
Speaker 1: That makes sense. Well, Steve, we could talk all day,
Speaker 1: day and night. We're going to take a break now
Speaker 1: and when we get back we're going to take the
Speaker 1: next step forward in terms of homicide investigation, lines of inquiry,
Speaker 1: interview room, time of arrest, when do you arrest someone,
Speaker 1: when do you move on someone, and a whole range
Speaker 1: of aspects that come out with homicide.
Speaker 2: We're back for part too shortly, all right,