Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective sy a side of life. The average person is
Speaker 1: never exposed her. 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 that I Catch Killers. What drives
Speaker 1: a person to brutally murder six innocent people? How can
Speaker 1: one man's obsession and pathetic sense of self entitlement lead
Speaker 1: to mass murder? Today we're going to talk to form
Speaker 1: a new South Wales detective and a colleague of mine,
Speaker 1: Ted Bassingwaite, who was a young detective, worked on the
Speaker 1: Central massacre case in which a complete lay life Malcolm
Speaker 1: George Baker killed six innocent people, including his ex girlfriend
Speaker 1: and son. The controlled rage and brutality of that night
Speaker 1: had a lasting impact on Ted and the people whose
Speaker 1: loved ones were murdered in cold blood. He has written
Speaker 1: a book titled Bloody Odyssey about the events leading up
Speaker 1: to that massacre, what took place on the night, and
Speaker 1: the aftermath. It's a harrowing account of mass murder on
Speaker 1: a scale rarely seen in this country. Ted carries with
Speaker 1: him the attention to detail which is part of being
Speaker 1: a good detective. We're going to talk about the murder
Speaker 1: of six people, and I think it's appropriate this stage
Speaker 1: to mention the names of the six victims. Kerry Gannon,
Speaker 1: Lisa Gannon, who is also eight months pregnant, Thomas Gannon,
Speaker 1: David Baker, Ross Smith, Leslie Bred. They are all murdered
Speaker 1: on the evening the twenty seventh of October nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: Ted Bethnon. Wait, welcome to I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much, Gary. I appreciate the chance to
Speaker 2: talk about my book, Bloody Odyssey.
Speaker 1: Well, it's been been a long time, hasn't it.
Speaker 2: It has, mate, Yeah, it has. It's as I mentioned before,
Speaker 2: when I met you. You haven't changed, and hopefully I
Speaker 2: haven't changed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we haven't aged a bit.
Speaker 2: We have an aged a bit.
Speaker 1: I've got the same hairstyle.
Speaker 2: You've got the same hairstyle. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think it was the early nineties when we started
Speaker 1: working together in North Region crimes.
Speaker 2: It was it was nineteen ninety five, I believe. And
Speaker 2: I came up from a Newcastle where I was working
Speaker 2: in the North Region office in Newcastle in the child
Speaker 2: Protection unit and I had a personal issue where a
Speaker 2: marriage failed basically and I had to I chose to
Speaker 2: leave Newcastle and it was very fortunate to get a
Speaker 2: job firstly in the Gosford drugs, good place I didn't
Speaker 2: want to be. And a friend of mine, Phil Vickery,
Speaker 2: who was a sergeant at the Child Protection in Chatswood,
Speaker 2: spoke to the at the time Ron Smith, and they
Speaker 2: gave me a chance and I joined the team there
Speaker 2: in major crime. Chatswould right next to your office.
Speaker 1: Some of the I in my memory and recollection of
Speaker 1: the cops. It was some of the best years in
Speaker 1: my time. I enjoyed that so much. And when we
Speaker 1: reconnected a month or so ago and we're talking and
Speaker 1: I didn't realize well, I realized that you and Peter
Speaker 1: Harkness had got together. But love's found the way and
Speaker 1: you're still together.
Speaker 2: Love. Love did find a way. It certainly didn't bloom
Speaker 2: immediately in that office. Peter was she's twelve years younger
Speaker 2: than me and saw me as damage goods probably, But
Speaker 2: we worked together very closely in that office. And then
Speaker 2: it's so funny the course of events. And during that
Speaker 2: time we did a lot of work in your office
Speaker 2: with you guys, and we had the workload of the
Speaker 2: child protection there was immense And the Royal Commission happened
Speaker 2: in ninety five ninety six, and the impetus on the
Speaker 2: second phase of the Royal Comision, the peder segment. They
Speaker 2: were keen to change the way police were doing child
Speaker 2: sexual assault investigations. And Peter and I were basically taken
Speaker 2: out of that office after the Royal Commission and forced
Speaker 2: transferred into an office in Redfern. But we had to
Speaker 2: travel back to the Northern Beaches to do our job
Speaker 2: because in essence, the Royal Commission created a situation where
Speaker 2: we weren't trusted. We needed this big command of control
Speaker 2: over us, which happened with all the crime squads at
Speaker 2: the time, as you remember, with the organizational structure and
Speaker 2: changes that happened. And when we moved to Redfern, we
Speaker 2: became really close and over time we realized we were
Speaker 2: falling in love. And then I got a job at
Speaker 2: the academy, teaching on the detectives on the investigator's course
Speaker 2: at the Academy, and Peter went to the fraud squad
Speaker 2: and then we thought we love each other, and then
Speaker 2: both and I said to her one day, after twelve
Speaker 2: months at the academy, I said, there's two jobs going
Speaker 2: in the country, one a detective at Noarandra and a
Speaker 2: detective at Griffith. Do you want to come? At that
Speaker 2: time we're just boyfriend and girlfriend said yes, So we
Speaker 2: ended up going time.
Speaker 1: I'm going to have to change the name to catch killers?
Speaker 1: Do I find love of recent times? All the police
Speaker 1: I get on the found relationships. Maybe we should have
Speaker 1: spent more time, more time concentrating on the work than
Speaker 1: looking for love.
Speaker 2: Well for sure, But Garry on reflection, you know, when
Speaker 2: you're in those intense work for places that we're in
Speaker 2: and you're working so closely with somebody, it's not it's
Speaker 2: hard to have a normal life and your partner in
Speaker 2: the work sense. Peter and I just became partners in
Speaker 2: a work sense. It just grew into that relationship. You know,
Speaker 2: later on down the year, psychiatrists have said we're co
Speaker 2: dependent on each other, which I don't see that as
Speaker 2: a bad thing because we survived together and we're still together.
Speaker 1: No, it's beneficial to have someone that understands the work
Speaker 1: that you're going through. And yeah, there were some pretty
Speaker 1: intense times. I think I started first working with Peter
Speaker 1: when she was working on the North Shore rapist case
Speaker 1: with Jaco and Andy Waterman. Who ya at your stage
Speaker 1: of your career, my stage all looked up to those
Speaker 1: guys that was working with the legends.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely, And I know Peter from memory. Peter was
Speaker 2: picked for that job because of her interviewing skills and
Speaker 2: her high level detective skills. And she didn't realize at
Speaker 2: the time, but she was quite privileged to be in
Speaker 2: that position. I mean a lot of a lot of
Speaker 2: others around her would would have envied her that position.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're working working with legends like Paul Jacob and
Speaker 1: Andy Andy Wardoman. That's where I attribute those two for
Speaker 1: teaching me my trade. Absolutely detective, but they were good
Speaker 1: years and I think the culture that we had, and yeah,
Speaker 1: there was shame that came to all major crime detectives
Speaker 1: when the Royal Commission came through. But I've got to
Speaker 1: say the respect I had for the people that were
Speaker 1: our bosses at the time at North Region that I
Speaker 1: haven't found something like that in the cops since at
Speaker 1: that time.
Speaker 2: No definitely changed. It was more about there was a
Speaker 2: more collegiate approach in the crime squad with the bosses
Speaker 2: that we had. I mean, you could have had bosses
Speaker 2: who really just treated us as numbers. But I think
Speaker 2: Ron Smith and the bosses that I met with the
Speaker 2: crime squad, John Heslop, even when I went over to
Speaker 2: Redfern to the new sex crime Squad, that they had
Speaker 2: your back in a lot of sense. But then eventually
Speaker 2: over time bureaucracy kind of got on top of them.
Speaker 1: I often think about leadership in the police and I remember,
Speaker 1: like Ron as a boss and I was fortunate enough
Speaker 1: to also have Nick Cowdos as a boss as well.
Speaker 2: He trained Peter as a UC. Well, she.
Speaker 1: Is blessed she's be trained by the masters. But you
Speaker 1: did the right thing and you worked for those people.
Speaker 1: And I think the difference with what I see with
Speaker 1: some of the leadership now and even before I left
Speaker 1: left the police, is that the people that were leading
Speaker 1: you had done the work. And I think in an
Speaker 1: organization like the police, that counts for so much. Absolutely, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if Ron Smith tells me to do something, I do
Speaker 1: it because I know he's done it before. And like
Speaker 1: I worked under Paul Mager and then Paul Jacob and
Speaker 1: Andy Warterman getting advice about homicide, well they'd been there,
Speaker 1: done that, and they were people that you wanted to
Speaker 1: do the right thing by because the respect that you had.
Speaker 2: And they're not pretending and that and obviously that all
Speaker 2: changed after the Royal Commission and they increased the layers
Speaker 2: of accountability with inspectors and you had people being promoted
Speaker 2: way above beyond their experience. Then it just become too
Speaker 2: bure Greek. They wanted to break up the bureaucracy which
Speaker 2: they saw has potentially corrupt or inert, and created a
Speaker 2: bigger bureaucracy that made it more inert.
Speaker 1: And we lost lost the focus. And I think when
Speaker 1: I look back speaking to you and Peter, who was
Speaker 1: with the catch up before we started the podcast that
Speaker 1: at those those times we were allowed to concentrate on
Speaker 1: being detective. That's right, that was the sole focus. It
Speaker 1: wasn't about all these management and filling out these forms.
Speaker 1: And you know, we're running the business as a profit.
Speaker 1: Well it's not a business. It's a police now, and
Speaker 1: accountability is important. But accountability at the cost of proficiency,
Speaker 1: you know, and outcomes is not good. And that's what's
Speaker 1: happened subsequently. I wonder why, in part that's the reason
Speaker 1: we're having trouble attracting people to the police across across
Speaker 1: the country because something that saddens me that all the police,
Speaker 1: all the state police forces, federal police force, all seemed
Speaker 1: to be struggling with resourcing the police. And I think
Speaker 1: back at the times that we had it was the
Speaker 1: world's greatest job.
Speaker 2: There was the world's greatest job. And you know, there's
Speaker 2: multiple issues. I think that the increase of social media,
Speaker 2: the increase of accountability, hasn't been matched by an increase
Speaker 2: in income or end or support or end or career development.
Speaker 2: And so I think police in the field now may
Speaker 2: very well feel a bit more isolated. I never felt
Speaker 2: isolated wherever I was, whatever job I was. Even when
Speaker 2: I worked in the as a country detective down in Arrange,
Speaker 2: out by myself in the middle of the night, I
Speaker 2: just knew that someone was going to be there from
Speaker 2: a bus down to colleague was. Now I get the
Speaker 2: sense that that's not the same. I actually had an
Speaker 2: experience recently where I had a conversation with a young
Speaker 2: constable and he was his counter skills were very non existent.
Speaker 2: There wasn't any person any service approach at the counter.
Speaker 2: And then I got to talk to him about it, Toddy,
Speaker 2: I was retired, and then I'm talking about my environment
Speaker 2: with the Police Association and all that sort of stuff,
Speaker 2: and he was just so negative about everything that's going
Speaker 2: on in the job. And I could see it on
Speaker 2: his face and I could feel it in the room.
Speaker 2: And I thought to himself like, and I said, how
Speaker 2: much service have you got? He said two and a
Speaker 2: half years, And I thought, you know, I don't know
Speaker 2: how it's got to that.
Speaker 1: I think there's a lot of pressure on junior police
Speaker 1: because yeah, and again if I reference it to what
Speaker 1: we met in major crime, yes, that you find yourself
Speaker 1: in tough pressure positions on investigations. You know, do I
Speaker 1: go left? I do go right. What I could go
Speaker 1: to people like Paul Jacob, Paul mager Ronson and say, okay,
Speaker 1: this is the lemma I've got, and they would give
Speaker 1: me good sage advice on how to deal with the
Speaker 1: situation because they've been there and done that. I worry,
Speaker 1: and I'm looking from the outside as you are. I'm
Speaker 1: worried that sort of experience has been lost and so
Speaker 1: the young people. It's a blind leading the blind. Then
Speaker 1: they gave you a boss to ask for advice on
Speaker 1: the homicide, and that boss may have never worked a homicide.
Speaker 2: In this case. Yeah, exactly, You're exactly right. You know
Speaker 2: I had the same situation with Phil Vickery, my sergeant
Speaker 2: in the child protection there at Chatswood. You know that
Speaker 2: you just felt like you could make a mistake and
Speaker 2: then own up to it and then get the right
Speaker 2: guidance and then just get.
Speaker 1: And like Phil had all that experience, like he was
Speaker 1: from the under the expert in that era. All right, well,
Speaker 1: we've got slightly distracted, but happened.
Speaker 2: Don't get me started worry about the police.
Speaker 1: When old colleagues catch up. Why did you join the cops?
Speaker 2: Well I had I was saying, before to your producer.
Speaker 2: I did an apprenticeship as a pastry cook when I
Speaker 2: was a young man because I surfed and pastry cooks
Speaker 2: could work all night and surf all day. And I
Speaker 2: was quite unsettled throughout my life. I didn't really know
Speaker 2: what I wanted to do. I know, when I was
Speaker 2: a young man, I had a conversation once with my
Speaker 2: mother that I wanted to be a policeman, and she said,
Speaker 2: that's not going to happen. She's a Bankstown girl, and
Speaker 2: she said, I hate coppers. And I never really went
Speaker 2: down that path. So I did the pastry cooking and
Speaker 2: then went back to school and was kind of like
Speaker 2: I was lost in a sense. And it was only
Speaker 2: after I started a nursing or became a psych nurse.
Speaker 1: That's right, I forgot.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I did a psych nasing. Well, I did.
Speaker 2: Before that, I did some journalism or surf journalism. I wrote.
Speaker 2: I wrote for a surf magazine and did so I
Speaker 2: had an interest in writing. But then I did the
Speaker 2: pych nursing and I really loved it. And in hindsight
Speaker 2: reflect on it, my three sisters and nurses, and my
Speaker 2: grandmother was a nurse, so it was kind of the
Speaker 2: way I was going to go. But I really loved
Speaker 2: the psych nursing because it was intense, but it was
Speaker 2: a helping profession and I learned a lot, a lot
Speaker 2: of skills. But when I turned thirty thirty one the
Speaker 2: New South I was police force in those days, recruited
Speaker 2: really heavily in Newcastle and they took a lot of tradees,
Speaker 2: a lot of people with life experience. So at thirty
Speaker 2: two I just applied and got in. So on that
Speaker 2: seventh of May I started at the Police Academy at
Speaker 2: Goldben and I knew the moment I walked in the
Speaker 2: gate at Gobin on that day, this is what I
Speaker 2: want to do. It just felt right, garyt. You know,
Speaker 2: like I never I never had a moment's reflection of
Speaker 2: this is a shit job. Even though I'd been over
Speaker 2: the years, had been in some really difficult situations. I
Speaker 2: always felt that this is what I wanted to do.
Speaker 2: And I was asked before by your producer, how do
Speaker 2: I feel about And I said if they rang me
Speaker 2: and asked me to come back tomorrow, I probably would
Speaker 2: because you know, I feel that was my vocation, that
Speaker 2: was my mission in life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're fortunately in life, aren't you if you find
Speaker 1: something that you're passionate about and you're getting paid to
Speaker 1: do it. That's how I felt with the cops too,
Speaker 1: and exactly as you relate. At the moment I walked
Speaker 1: in the academy, I thought, Yep, this is what I
Speaker 1: want to do. They're yelling at you, screaming at you,
Speaker 1: and you're having a bit of fun and they're paying you,
Speaker 1: and I'm thinking, how good is this?
Speaker 2: Yeah? That was. We had two hundred plus and mostly
Speaker 2: men and actually the police commissioners current police commissions out
Speaker 2: of my class, Karen web we had had. It was
Speaker 2: just a great environment of people from all around the place,
Speaker 2: mostly young. I was thirty two, so I was one.
Speaker 1: Of the old one.
Speaker 2: There's a couple older than me, but not many. And
Speaker 2: then my first station at WI, straight up, it was
Speaker 2: just like it felt like people I'd known all my life.
Speaker 2: It felt no strangers, and it felt like that everywhere
Speaker 2: I went.
Speaker 1: Basically, and what drew you to becoming a detective.
Speaker 2: Well, oddly enough, once I got into the police station
Speaker 2: and I was in uniform work, I just didn't I
Speaker 2: just wasn't stimulated by being in uniform, whether I had
Speaker 2: an inquiring mind, or I had a bigger ego or whatever,
Speaker 2: and I was very fortunate. Why the detective sergeant there
Speaker 2: was a Bill Erickson, and I had a meal room
Speaker 2: conversation with him one day he said I'd like to
Speaker 2: have a go, and he rolled his eyes and thought
Speaker 2: everyone asked me that. And then I just persisted, and eventually,
Speaker 2: after twelve or eighty months in uniform, I was given
Speaker 2: an a list spot. While it just happened that one
Speaker 2: came up. It's about opportunity. One came up, and I
Speaker 2: was given an aily spot and then went through the
Speaker 2: process of the investigator's course and then eventually the d's course,
Speaker 2: mentored by some really good police like Dave Darcy. He
Speaker 2: was a mentor there. Peter Ryan. You probably don't know
Speaker 2: George Adrian Ducker, Peter Donaldson.
Speaker 1: I know Blue Ducker, Blue Daker. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Felt great for me. And because I came to that
Speaker 2: role as a mature thirty to thirty two year old,
Speaker 2: I never had any I kind of fitted in with
Speaker 2: the crew.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, and you had that life experience and
Speaker 1: way to navigate through large characters. Yeah, that's right, and
Speaker 1: navigate your way through ted We got you on here
Speaker 1: talking about crime that I don't think for some reason.
Speaker 1: I think it happened so suddenly, but people don't fully
Speaker 1: appreciate it. But murder of six people on one night
Speaker 1: on the Central Coast is the Central Coast massacre. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it doesn't get spoken about a lot, but it was
Speaker 1: such a horrendous crime. And I've spent the past week
Speaker 1: reading your book and it sort of brought back all
Speaker 1: the things that happened on that crime. Yeah, you were
Speaker 1: you were a young detective at the time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well I was designated. I got designated around about
Speaker 2: that time, so yeah, I was relatively green.
Speaker 1: Yes, And we're working on the Central Cast.
Speaker 2: Working at a while attached to the wildlof as Wines detectives.
Speaker 1: On did you ever think? And I want to break
Speaker 1: just so we know and say the listeners know how
Speaker 1: we're going to do this. I want you to tell
Speaker 1: us a full story, but before do just an overview
Speaker 1: of it. That's a serious crime. Did that shock you
Speaker 1: the magnitude of the crime and the.
Speaker 2: Nightly did on the night? I mean the apprehension that
Speaker 2: me and Steve Potter, the young a lister that attended
Speaker 2: one of the crime scenes with a three separate crime
Speaker 2: scenes across the whole. So every detective on the central coast,
Speaker 2: across three l a c. What do they call patrols
Speaker 2: or l A C's, whatever they were called in those days,
Speaker 2: was involved and and it was quite shocking, but it
Speaker 2: was it was very exciting as well in a sense
Speaker 2: because it was the biggest thing that I that i'd
Speaker 2: been involved.
Speaker 1: Well, reading the book, I the adrenaline was kicking in.
Speaker 1: I'm thinking, yeah, the chaos that the surrounds an event
Speaker 1: like that, yes, and not an adrenaline then that you're
Speaker 1: looking for the blood or no, no, no, the excitement
Speaker 1: that's just okay, this is this is as real as
Speaker 1: it gets.
Speaker 2: A big career tests and I wanted to do it properly,
Speaker 2: and Steve and I, you know, we were given the
Speaker 2: responsibility of that crime scene and doing and doing statements,
Speaker 2: knowing full well that everything you said and did eventually
Speaker 2: could end up in a in a high court situation.
Speaker 1: Basically, you basically got a gunman on the rage going
Speaker 1: around just killing killing people. So I want to I
Speaker 1: want to break it down in the chronology of it
Speaker 1: and not dissimilar in the way that you've you've set
Speaker 1: out the book, but let's talk about the offend. The
Speaker 1: first up, Malcolm Baker, who is who is a person?
Speaker 2: Malcolm Baker was born into a family a mother, father,
Speaker 2: two sisters. His father was a returned soldier from the
Speaker 2: Second World War, but he came back from the war
Speaker 2: completely damaged. Came back from the war with a lot
Speaker 2: of souvenirs like spears and whatever, and came back completely
Speaker 2: addicted to guns. So in the sixties and whatever, he
Speaker 2: had this family situation with his wife, son and two daughters,
Speaker 2: and I think Malcolm was the second born, and it
Speaker 2: was just fear. It was one of those situations where
Speaker 2: he was a drunk. They lived their life in fear.
Speaker 2: So Backer grew up in a house where it was
Speaker 2: just constant fear, constant violence from his father in the
Speaker 2: initial sense. His father did things like threatening them with
Speaker 2: threatened the family with firearms. He'd let a firearm off
Speaker 2: at at his wife and friend, talking over the fence,
Speaker 2: and accuser of infidelity and punching his wife. A hell
Speaker 2: of a lots a lot of domestic violence. And he
Speaker 2: saw all this. At the times he tried to intervene,
Speaker 2: he was knocked unconscious on one occasion, and he was
Speaker 2: beaten on other occasions by his father. And I don't
Speaker 2: want to make an excuse for the guy, because you've
Speaker 2: got to be responsible for your actions in life. And
Speaker 2: he had a shit start really in that context, and
Speaker 2: then he actually subsumed some of his father's personality traits
Speaker 2: cruelty like vanity, uncontrollable rage, all those sort of things
Speaker 2: that he saw on his father. Baker wasn't a drinker
Speaker 2: and didn't have a drug problem. He didn't come to
Speaker 2: that is a petty criminal as he's growing up doing
Speaker 2: stealing cars last knear. He's a bit of a fraudster
Speaker 2: as well. So he's so everasually became a minime of
Speaker 2: his dad in a sense if you can read what
Speaker 2: the evidence, which is scant, the evidence that we have
Speaker 2: about his dad from psychological reports that I researched, and
Speaker 2: in doing that, he developed this hate for the opposite
Speaker 2: sex when he was quite capable of having women in
Speaker 2: his life. He had three wives or four wives, nine
Speaker 2: children before he got to the point of carry Anne
Speaker 2: Kerrian Gannon. But in all those previous relationships that all
Speaker 2: the reporting is that he was violent, he was abusive,
Speaker 2: He was coercive control. He used coercive control, He was jealous,
Speaker 2: all those things which I think he's bringing to his
Speaker 2: adult life from his dad.
Speaker 1: It was like reading the book on how it came out.
Speaker 1: It was like a sense of entitlement and ownership of
Speaker 1: a woman that he's with.
Speaker 2: Yeah. True, Gary, It's not something that I can understand
Speaker 2: as a mar I'm a heterosexual male, and at no
Speaker 2: point have I ever wanted to do what it's reported, Baker,
Speaker 2: did you know punching women in the face, for instance,
Speaker 2: you know, ruling their life that they can't go out,
Speaker 2: won't letting them, won't let them work, won't let them
Speaker 2: have a social life, accusing them of infidelity, and all
Speaker 2: those sorts of things. That the horror that the women
Speaker 2: that were in his life, some of them didn't hang
Speaker 2: around for very long. The horror that he inflicted on
Speaker 2: those women would be unmatched in a sense. And it's
Speaker 2: quite typical of what we see is going on around
Speaker 2: society today.
Speaker 1: Well, and happily that we're starting to use the term
Speaker 1: coercive control. And I think that's something that we're becoming
Speaker 1: aware of. We know the patterns, you see the patterns,
Speaker 1: but we didn't really have a word to place on it,
Speaker 1: but the word, Yeah, we're starting to talk about that
Speaker 1: and understanding the impact. So he not only had the
Speaker 1: controlling aspect in the coercive control, it was also the
Speaker 1: physical abuse.
Speaker 2: Physical abuse as well. Yeah, in the case of carry,
Speaker 2: and he obviously didn't want it to work, didn't want
Speaker 2: to have any finances, didn't want her to see anybody,
Speaker 2: didn't want it to have any friends. It was only,
Speaker 2: as I say reporting the book, that once she got
Speaker 2: away from his grip, his psychological grip or coercive grip,
Speaker 2: that things improved for her, but unfortunately turned really pair shape.
Speaker 1: For the just blind obsession and jealousy that ye him
Speaker 1: to come about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely absolutely, But getting to know the man through
Speaker 2: the research, we actually met him in the first instance
Speaker 2: at a fraud doing a fraud investigation, which has talked
Speaker 2: about in the book, So I had first hand knowledge
Speaker 2: of who he was in his presence. But yeah, the
Speaker 2: jealousy thing was just all consuming, and I just don't
Speaker 2: understand how that is when it was actually to his
Speaker 2: detriment that he the way he behaved and the things
Speaker 2: that he did because he was just leaving a trail
Speaker 2: of human wreckage behind him happened.
Speaker 1: Did they ever get called into account for the previous
Speaker 1: relationships and the domestic violence.
Speaker 2: There's no record of that, so that that was just
Speaker 2: the day that women report it. Yeah, you know, and
Speaker 2: that's part of the reason that it was so endemic
Speaker 2: in those days, and probably part of the reason that's
Speaker 2: still a big problem.
Speaker 1: And without being psychologist, probably emboldens him to think, well,
Speaker 1: I've got the way of it before. That's right, I
Speaker 1: can get away over it again.
Speaker 2: That's right. Well, they had some of the women that
Speaker 2: have interviewed in the book, they're in the book ex Wives.
Speaker 2: They relied on him because he became the breadwinner or whatever.
Speaker 2: There might have been a case where they were getting
Speaker 2: sendling benefits or whatever. But in those days, and I
Speaker 2: reflect on my mother's and father and my young family.
Speaker 2: You know, my mom and dad weren't in a very
Speaker 2: happy relationship, but they stayed together out of necessity for
Speaker 2: each other, out of necessity the state, for the family
Speaker 2: and whatever. And this is what happened with some of
Speaker 2: the women, some of the previous wives.
Speaker 1: They hung in there longer.
Speaker 2: Hung in there, longer than they should have, until he
Speaker 2: got to the point where where they feared for their life.
Speaker 1: Well, there weren't. There weren't many options and still there's
Speaker 1: not enough options now for women to escape from them.
Speaker 2: No refugees, no DV services, the police, you know, we
Speaker 2: know what the police. How the police reacted to DV
Speaker 2: matters in the nineties and the early eighties, you know,
Speaker 2: a completely different approach.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so when what was the circumstances in which he
Speaker 1: met Kerry. Well they were a Gannon.
Speaker 2: Kerry and Gannon. They were in the western suburbs of
Speaker 2: Sydney and apparently Baker was married at the time, and
Speaker 2: over time he just convinced her because she was sixteen
Speaker 2: years of age at the time, nineteen eighty five, and
Speaker 2: he was twenty plus years older than her. And you
Speaker 2: can imagine this man who has this skill of this
Speaker 2: coercive control skill or this the influence he had on
Speaker 2: this sixteen year old girl and she just fell into
Speaker 2: his spell.
Speaker 1: Well it's a real power imbalance that, Like, you've got
Speaker 1: the significant age difference, but you're looking at the sixteen
Speaker 1: year old's life experience and then a man in his
Speaker 1: late late thirties.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, that's right, A powerful man in the
Speaker 2: sense that the psychological tools that he had to manipulate
Speaker 2: and to trick people. Oh, they were at their apex then,
Speaker 2: and she was an easy.
Speaker 1: Catch, sixteen year old girl. So they ended up in
Speaker 1: the relationship.
Speaker 2: They ended up in a relationship and it was a
Speaker 2: sexual relationship, and they were living together. And he burned
Speaker 2: a lot of bridges because he not only was he
Speaker 2: a misogynist, whatever, when he the relationships he had with
Speaker 2: people that he did business with or friends or mates
Speaker 2: or whatever. He burned a lot of bridges. And eventually
Speaker 2: he thought he'd get out of the Sydney and he
Speaker 2: moved up the Terrygel moved up to Terygol in nineteen
Speaker 2: eighty eight.
Speaker 1: Okay, so for people that you know, not Sydney base,
Speaker 1: you've got the western suburbs of Sydney basically then moving
Speaker 1: up to the central case Terrile, so you're looking at
Speaker 1: the sort of an hour and a half two hours
Speaker 1: north of Sydney.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and Tarrgoll in eighty eight would would have been
Speaker 2: quite It was a holiday area for Sydney people and whatever,
Speaker 2: but it still had the opportunity for people that didn't
Speaker 2: have a lot of money to go there. And find
Speaker 2: a spot, and he found a spot on Scenic Drive
Speaker 2: where it was basically just a small property off the
Speaker 2: Scenic Drive and he had the capacity to have two caravans,
Speaker 2: so he brought two cheap caravans and he used that.
Speaker 2: He found again young women and young people who were
Speaker 2: homeless or at their wits end, and he put them
Speaker 2: into these caravans and charged them rent and whatever. Potentially
Speaker 2: he was prostituting some of the women out of there.
Speaker 2: There's evidence that he was a driver for an escort
Speaker 2: agency in Gosford, so he's doing all sorts of devious
Speaker 2: things to make money around the Central Coast and eventually
Speaker 2: carry Anne decided to come up to live with. He
Speaker 2: invited her up to live so hic co worster up there,
Speaker 2: yeah okay, yeah, completely to the complete resistance from her
Speaker 2: mother and her.
Speaker 1: Family, so her family could see them.
Speaker 2: From the outset. From the outset. Her mother and her
Speaker 2: family a father and sister Lisa, and a brother, young
Speaker 2: brother Tom. They were all very resistant to the move,
Speaker 2: but it happened.
Speaker 1: How old was she when she moved up there.
Speaker 2: She's I met in eighty eight, so she would have
Speaker 2: been eighteen.
Speaker 1: Okay, yep, all right, so he's probably forty.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably, well he's about twenty two years old, yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, and moved up. There was how long were
Speaker 1: they together? Was there any stable time in the relationship?
Speaker 2: Okay, so they moved up in eighty eight disaster from
Speaker 2: day one disaster from day one, she tried. She realized
Speaker 2: after time there was a catalyst. Her sister Lisa wanted
Speaker 2: to younger sister Lisa wanted to leave the western Sydney,
Speaker 2: so she decided to come up to the central coast,
Speaker 2: Carrie Anne's younger, younger sister Lisa, and she had nowhere
Speaker 2: to live, and then Baker invited her to come and
Speaker 2: live in the caravan in the house with the caravans
Speaker 2: and whatever. Within days of her being there, Baker, when
Speaker 2: Carrie is not at the house, Bakers has tried to
Speaker 2: coax her into the bedroom for sex. And she's resisted this,
Speaker 2: and she kept that from herself. She she didn't tell
Speaker 2: carry In about that till later.
Speaker 1: And says so much about him, doesn't it. Just when
Speaker 1: in the book when it said the younger sister, I
Speaker 1: was thinking, well, we know what's going to happen there.
Speaker 2: And exactly exactly what happened, so and that Kerrian didn't
Speaker 2: know about that at the time. Lisa and he told
Speaker 2: about that some time later. But Krrian realized when she's there,
Speaker 2: she saw a different well, she saw a world that
Speaker 2: wasn't western suburbs. He saw opportunity, the beautiful beaches. She
Speaker 2: kind of had slight interactions with other people that weren't
Speaker 2: in Baker's So.
Speaker 1: I suppose at that age bosoming like seeing the world
Speaker 1: what the world's got the offer.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely, and she decided that she's going to figure
Speaker 2: out a way to leave him, and that took her
Speaker 2: two or three years to do that.
Speaker 1: That's when when he's controlling aspect really came into the
Speaker 1: fall absolutely and he fought the tooth and nail, and yeah,
Speaker 1: tell us through that. So we've got the situation that
Speaker 1: we've got carrying. Moved up, left family against the family's wishes,
Speaker 1: moved up to the Central Coast, living with Baker. Younger
Speaker 1: sisters come up. She's living there and she's thinking I
Speaker 1: want a different life and starting to move away. Talk
Speaker 1: about the efforts that she made to move away and
Speaker 1: the efforts that he made to keep control over.
Speaker 2: So eventually she wanted to get a job. She wanted
Speaker 2: some independence. Turning a twenty year old woman twenty plasses,
Speaker 2: she wanted some independence, and she badgered him. She wanted
Speaker 2: a job. Eventually he relented, and I'm not quite unsure
Speaker 2: why he did that, but he did. He relented and
Speaker 2: let her get a job at the Evocan nursing Home.
Speaker 2: And it was at the Evocan nursing Home where she
Speaker 2: met two beautiful women who mentioned in the book Sylvia
Speaker 2: and Maureen, and that these women basically mentored her, and
Speaker 2: she saw a different life. She had a job, she
Speaker 2: had an income, she had women that were normal, She
Speaker 2: had people that were normal, saw people living lives that
Speaker 2: were normal. At night, she was going back to that
Speaker 2: claustrophobic relationship she had with Baker. But she grew, she
Speaker 2: developed some sort of energy or some sort of courage
Speaker 2: in that sense to say, well, I want more, I
Speaker 2: want more, want more. Baker did everything he could to
Speaker 2: spoil the job and whatever. So from out of that
Speaker 2: experience in the nursing home, she decided to tell Baker,
Speaker 2: I want to leave, I want my own flat. He relented,
Speaker 2: He resisted, and resisted and resisted. I'm unclear of what
Speaker 2: sort of domestic violence he inflicted on her that period.
Speaker 2: There was a circumstance where he did basher during that period,
Speaker 2: and eventually he relented and found for her a flat
Speaker 2: at Wombrel, which is just a neighboring suburb of Terregol
Speaker 2: in the central case. But in finding her the flat,
Speaker 2: he organized the flat, He set up the bonds. He
Speaker 2: actually made a spare key for himself. He made a
Speaker 2: spare key for a car, and she went and let
Speaker 2: her go to the flat. She thought she was getting
Speaker 2: away from him. She thought that she was having a
Speaker 2: new life, but he was watching her, stalking her. Had
Speaker 2: access to the flat all over this time and got
Speaker 2: to the point she started working in nursing home in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one, So that was in nineteen ninety two
Speaker 2: that he set her up in the flat at one Brill.
Speaker 2: But he he just wouldn't give her any space. He
Speaker 2: demanded that she drove from one Brell to the nursing home,
Speaker 2: which she had to go past his place, that he
Speaker 2: stopped every day and saw and all that sort of stuff.
Speaker 1: It was fake independence, wasn't it that?
Speaker 2: It was contrived independence that he contrived. He contrived, so
Speaker 2: she realized over time that nothing had changed. She was
Speaker 2: sleeping in a house by herself. I'm sure he was
Speaker 2: turning up and pressuring her for sex while she was
Speaker 2: at wm Brill as well, but yeah, over time she
Speaker 2: just realized that this is this is not working. Until
Speaker 2: that till that fateful night he started.
Speaker 1: He started turning up with the work at the nursing home.
Speaker 2: He started to turn up with the work all the time,
Speaker 2: particularly when she was moving to the point where she
Speaker 2: didn't want to have a bar of him.
Speaker 1: The narrative that he would deliver to is to everyone
Speaker 1: he's speaking to, whether it be her family, her work, colleagues,
Speaker 1: or whatever, I just want to be friends, Yeah, just
Speaker 1: like I get frustrated and angry when you see you
Speaker 1: see people like that, and you know, and maybe it's
Speaker 1: because of a life experience or just the work that
Speaker 1: we've done. You know this is not going to end well.
Speaker 2: No, it's that control. I just want to be friends.
Speaker 2: But he still wanted to have sex with her. You know,
Speaker 2: he had those conversations with friends that I should be
Speaker 2: safe for having sex with me because I'm cleaner, rather
Speaker 2: than having sex with someone else. So the sex thing
Speaker 2: was quite quite a prominent thing, and he's thinking about that,
Speaker 2: about the relationship. But yeah, but the overriding of the
Speaker 2: umbrella of it or was his control. You just want
Speaker 2: to complete control.
Speaker 1: And the had some of the ladies that you mentioned
Speaker 1: in the nursing home that would actually stand up to him, and.
Speaker 2: They stood up to him. He'd come to the nursing
Speaker 2: home and demand to see Kerry in whatever they protect her,
Speaker 2: which is quite brave in hindsight when you think about
Speaker 2: the capacity that he demonstrated, you know some months later
Speaker 2: when he went and did what he did, but they
Speaker 2: stood up to him, and oddly enough, on reflection, he
Speaker 2: demonstrated a type of cowardice. And for me, the cowardice was, yes,
Speaker 2: he turned up, he bullied these women and he stood
Speaker 2: at the door, but he never had the courage to
Speaker 2: do any more. And when they said no and gave
Speaker 2: him that cold face no, he always turned.
Speaker 1: And went awake away.
Speaker 2: But he come back. He would always come back.
Speaker 1: And when did his son land on the scene, so
Speaker 1: his son to his So just because it gets a
Speaker 1: little complicated, So we've got Malcolm Baker, we got carry
Speaker 1: Anne living separated, but the son, his son David from
Speaker 1: a previous relationship.
Speaker 2: From his second wife, I believe, wanted.
Speaker 1: To reconnect with the father.
Speaker 2: Well, he was living on the coast earlier, some years
Speaker 2: earlier to that, so he reconnected shortly after the Baker
Speaker 2: moved to the coast and that's where he met carry
Speaker 2: Ann and then so they had quite a ordinary father's
Speaker 2: son relationship. David wanted to be in his father's life,
Speaker 2: but he found it really hard because his father was
Speaker 2: so obsessive and so demanding. But he persisted with his
Speaker 2: dad to have got to the point where he eventually
Speaker 2: had enough of his father's bullying and badgering that he
Speaker 2: left the Central Coast and his father started to accuse
Speaker 2: him David of having an affair with Kerry An. Oddly enough,
Speaker 2: they were becoming intimate during that time. Cary Ane was
Speaker 2: reaching out to David because he was the closest thing
Speaker 2: to Baker at that time, reaching out to him for
Speaker 2: some sort of guidance and support, and they did end
Speaker 2: up in some sort of relationship during that time, and
Speaker 2: Baker was suspicious.
Speaker 1: Of that that would have seen his anger and that.
Speaker 2: Was the Green Eye Dragon. The jealousy thing happened, and
Speaker 2: it was only near the murders, which we're talking about
Speaker 2: later that David disclosed to his dad after many many
Speaker 2: months or eighteen months of deny, that he'd actually had
Speaker 2: a relationship with Karen because he thought it would be
Speaker 2: best to tell his dad the truth, and his dad
Speaker 2: would go, Okay, now you've told me the truth. Everything's
Speaker 2: all right. But it didn't work.
Speaker 1: That was the wrong call with other people that he
Speaker 1: had fallen out with Ross Smith was that the business transaction.
Speaker 1: So this is we're just what I'm trying to do
Speaker 1: here is just getting the sense of it. And I
Speaker 1: look at a lot of this stuff as sort of
Speaker 1: the red flags. You're thinking, this Blake is a ticking
Speaker 1: time bomb. Absolutely, and so what was he's falling out there?
Speaker 1: But that even led into him controlling Kerry Anne, wasn't
Speaker 1: it because he would use her name for his business ventures.
Speaker 2: And so that's when I first met Malcolm Baker and
Speaker 2: Kerriyanne at one describe that to me, Well, they came
Speaker 2: to the police station. Baker had this idea that he
Speaker 2: would get a house up on the coal fields. That
Speaker 2: says noock at Millfielder says not, and he'll take Carryann
Speaker 2: away from everything that was happening because he's took her
Speaker 2: away from Sydney and the family pressures whatever was there
Speaker 2: and her father Tom was visiting, and a brother was
Speaker 2: there and Anne and a mother was visiting. She He
Speaker 2: saw that that that and David Baker was becoming involved.
Speaker 2: He saw that that people was losing controls control, basically
Speaker 2: losing controler. So he had this idea of building a house,
Speaker 2: of moving to a house up in Millfield. And Ross
Speaker 2: Warren Smith was a not a very good house mover
Speaker 2: on the Central Coast. He was basically a fraudster and
Speaker 2: a crook, but he had he had this business of
Speaker 2: moving houses. And Ross had a capacity to move a
Speaker 2: house somewhere.
Speaker 1: And he's like, we're talking literally picking pick up house up,
Speaker 1: crying on the back of the truck.
Speaker 2: And he had the capacity. Then he would sell his skills.
Speaker 2: I can move the house, but I can also renovate
Speaker 2: it to the point of getting to be livable. And
Speaker 2: so Baker had had acquired some land up there somehow
Speaker 2: and the house was on the property. The house was
Speaker 2: moved to the property and the girl with Smith was
Speaker 2: to move the house to the renovations or whatever, and
Speaker 2: Baker would Carry Ann was the person who was on
Speaker 2: the contract to do it, not Baker. So I first
Speaker 2: met him when they came to the police station in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety and carry Anne wanted to complain about Ross
Speaker 2: Smith taking all this money and not doing the house
Speaker 2: smooth because he didn't actually do it. He actually did.
Speaker 2: Ross Smith actually sold the same house to two other
Speaker 2: couples to get the money. He's a good crook, well
Speaker 2: not a good crook, he was a crook anyway. So
Speaker 2: Carry Anne was at the counter on this particular that's
Speaker 2: when I first met her, and I saw Baker outside
Speaker 2: the door, hiding behind the screen. And as I spoke
Speaker 2: to carry And she told me this story about I
Speaker 2: want to complain about this man, Ross Smith, who I
Speaker 2: gave all this money to perform these jobs that he
Speaker 2: didn't do so basically obtained benefit by deception or something
Speaker 2: of fraud. And as I was speaking to carry And
Speaker 2: I said, well, you'll need to give me a police statement.
Speaker 2: You're happy to come upstairs, and carry Anne turned on
Speaker 2: a heel and I I thought she was going to
Speaker 2: leave the police station. Baker walked into the police station
Speaker 2: and stood in front of us and that's when I
Speaker 2: spoke to Baker and he basically stopped her from walking out.
Speaker 1: What was your first impressions of him?
Speaker 2: But he was just like cold, like psychopathically cold, like
Speaker 2: he had no He had the aviator glasses on and
Speaker 2: his uniform of a flannel at shirt and his blue
Speaker 2: jeans and his blue blue singlet underneath, but he just
Speaker 2: had no effect. Coming from a psych nursing background, you
Speaker 2: can tell some people have no effect, and he had
Speaker 2: no effect. He was just cold. And she just said, okay,
Speaker 2: let's go up to the office. So we went up
Speaker 2: to my office at while Saturday, down in the office
Speaker 2: and he stood in the doorway and listen. He wouldn't
Speaker 2: take a seat in the office, he wouldn't participate, to
Speaker 2: the point where I had to ask him, you know,
Speaker 2: what are you doing? Are you all right? Mate? And
Speaker 2: eventually we got through the statement an a list in
Speaker 2: the office. Scottie Haynes, he and I did the investigation.
Speaker 2: Smith was charged eighty months down the track and Smith
Speaker 2: was found guilty on some of the offenses, and unfortunately
Speaker 2: the magistrate didn't order any compensation, so Baker Baker lost
Speaker 2: the money. But it was Baker that put carry up
Speaker 2: just on the protest that she's the one that was
Speaker 2: doing the deal. It's her money that she paid.
Speaker 1: Again, it's that manipulation. Then control was well, he.
Speaker 2: Wanted to cover up the fact that he had money
Speaker 2: because he was routing centerin and he wanted to cover
Speaker 2: up the fact that he had the capacity to do
Speaker 2: this and just wanted wanted her to be the front.
Speaker 1: And the fact he'd been ripped off by Ross Smith.
Speaker 1: He became obsessed with him.
Speaker 2: Completely obsessed with it, and that ber lit a flame
Speaker 2: for revenge that obviously was extinguished on that night in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety two.
Speaker 1: What was the circumstances that led to his guns being
Speaker 1: taken off him? Was that carry Anne reporting the domestic violence?
Speaker 1: What stage did that come in and what was the
Speaker 1: nature of that.
Speaker 2: Good So, a week or say before the seventh of
Speaker 2: October nineteen ninety two, Baker went into the flat at Carrins,
Speaker 2: broke into the flat in the middle of the night
Speaker 2: and wake her up and had a conversation with her.
Speaker 2: She told him to leave, pushed him, then he punched
Speaker 2: her in the face. So he had he kept and
Speaker 2: the flat. Okay, he had access to the place all
Speaker 2: the time, so he just let himself in, broke in
Speaker 2: with the key and had a conversation. She told him
Speaker 2: to get out, leave her alone, hit her with her
Speaker 2: right punched her in the face, give her a bit
Speaker 2: black eye. She had a week off work, went back
Speaker 2: to work. Sylvia and Moore in at the house at
Speaker 2: work said what happened, and she eventually told them and
Speaker 2: they encouraged her to go to Terryko Police to apply
Speaker 2: for an avare.
Speaker 1: And this is, if my reading of it too, this
Speaker 1: is how the downtrodden victims of domestic violence and that
Speaker 1: become She was embarrassed about having the having the black eye.
Speaker 2: She was she wanted to hide it for a week
Speaker 2: from the friends.
Speaker 1: And it's sad, isn't it. Yeah, you get to that
Speaker 1: point that they're victims, they've been assaulted and they're embarrassed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, But if you think about it, it's the pinnacle
Speaker 2: of control of the offender, like the fact that he
Speaker 2: knows he can go and bash carry out and the
Speaker 2: consequences he thought at the time are negligent.
Speaker 1: What she going to do?
Speaker 2: What she going to do? It was only through the
Speaker 2: encouragement of her friends at the Evoca nursing home.
Speaker 1: They gave her the strength.
Speaker 2: They gave her the strength and the advice and she
Speaker 2: she went with a sister to to to Gospeld local
Speaker 2: Quarter a couple of days later, got the a v
Speaker 2: O two days later with the matter was to be heard.
Speaker 2: So the police acted very quickly. And in those days
Speaker 2: the legislation allowed the police to go into the house
Speaker 2: not under a search rank, but to be invited into
Speaker 2: the house and to search for weapons. Baker had possibly
Speaker 2: ten weapons. They found five or seven of the weapons,
Speaker 2: but he had two hidden had one hidden in the
Speaker 2: in his shed down.
Speaker 1: So those were firearms that he had. So yeah, he's.
Speaker 2: A license firearm holder. He had In those days, you
Speaker 2: didn't have to register how many firearms you were, which
Speaker 2: was a flaw in the legislation. I mean, this is
Speaker 2: all post Port Arthur and the like. The New South
Speaker 2: Wales government was kind of wrangling with the notion about
Speaker 2: how we can deal with the firearms issue. But he
Speaker 2: didn't have to have them identified in a registration.
Speaker 1: Of okay, so registered the firearm license holder have as
Speaker 1: many fi.
Speaker 2: As many as his firearms as his one, you know,
Speaker 2: and they just did regular checks and the like, and
Speaker 2: he obviously didn't hand over all his firearms. But that
Speaker 2: moment that the police came, Teriger police came and took
Speaker 2: took the weapons was for me, was the straw that
Speaker 2: breake the camel's back in his sense, because he loved
Speaker 2: the guns, and he loved the power and the effect
Speaker 2: that it had and people knowing he had the guns
Speaker 2: more than anything.
Speaker 1: And the psychology of it. Do you think, how dare
Speaker 1: she calls this drama?
Speaker 2: Absolutely? Absolutely what did I do? All I did was
Speaker 2: punch in a face. Later in his interview, I punched
Speaker 2: her a number of times, so you know she deserved it.
Speaker 1: So it's like she's betrayed him by going to the police. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: when the firearms were seized, that was how long before
Speaker 1: the actual neither of them murder?
Speaker 2: Two weeks?
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, So it was all all brilliing, wasn't it.
Speaker 1: Did he appear at court? Did he get charred?
Speaker 2: He turned up at court for the A v O
Speaker 2: and didn't contest, which is on reflection, you would have
Speaker 2: thought that he was a type of bully that would
Speaker 2: stand up and fight tooth and nail to oppose those things.
Speaker 2: But he agreed to the conditions on the AVO, but
Speaker 2: knowing full well that subsequent with subsequent days following that,
Speaker 2: he breached it two or three times. He chased it
Speaker 2: one day when she's going to work and stopped her
Speaker 2: in a car and jumped into a car and took
Speaker 2: her keys and threatened her or whatever. He turned up
Speaker 2: at the house, he rang, or he demanded other people ringer.
Speaker 2: So he was constantly breaching the AVO during that period,
Speaker 2: right up until the night of the murders.
Speaker 1: There was a couple of people that he spoke to
Speaker 1: after the firearms were seized, and he went in the
Speaker 1: great detail to say, I don't care because I've got
Speaker 1: some more that. So he was blaming the fact that
Speaker 1: he's still got the firearms.
Speaker 2: So advertising the fact that he had the fight.
Speaker 1: And who were the people who was a consulted speaking to.
Speaker 2: But oddly enough, he went back to a mate associates
Speaker 2: that he had through through He didn't have a lot
Speaker 2: of good mates. He just had people that knew through
Speaker 2: business and whatever. And he went back there and basically
Speaker 2: cried on the shoulder and he did that whole wow
Speaker 2: is me, you know, look how poorly I've been treated?
Speaker 2: This is wrong? How can they do this to me?
Speaker 2: I did nothing wrong, you know. And then June, the
Speaker 2: course of the evening, he would talk about, well, you know,
Speaker 2: I'm gonna get them. I'm going to kill them. I've
Speaker 2: got they didn't take all my firearms, you know, I've
Speaker 2: got some in the car. His wife, one of his
Speaker 2: wives from his previous wives, talks about the fact that
Speaker 2: he always drove around with firearms in the back of
Speaker 2: his car. So this has been a lifelong thing, and
Speaker 2: he started to just it's an interesting thing that he
Speaker 2: did because there's two ways to you can look at it.
Speaker 2: He either was a cry for help. I want people
Speaker 2: to help me. This woman has done me bad. I'm
Speaker 2: losing the plot. Come and someone helped. Alternatively, he was
Speaker 2: just verbalizing what he was thinking in his private moments
Speaker 2: about what he was planning to do.
Speaker 1: There was some part where he went down and cried
Speaker 1: on the shoulder of his ex wife, and his ex
Speaker 1: wife worried about having him there and flicked him onto
Speaker 1: the daughter.
Speaker 2: The daughter yes, yeah, yeah, because she didn't want him
Speaker 2: in the house because she knew that he'd had had
Speaker 2: would have guns in the car.
Speaker 1: And he and he would talk about his obsession like
Speaker 1: the conversation seemed to steer towards Kerry Anne. The hatred
Speaker 1: of a family.
Speaker 2: Hatred of a family.
Speaker 1: We would be perfect, And those women at the nursing
Speaker 1: home if they all just stayed away with perfect.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, all the women, and the increased bile and
Speaker 2: hatred that he had for his son once he realized
Speaker 2: that David had been involved.
Speaker 1: So at what stage prior to the shooting spree did
Speaker 1: he become aware that David had, in fact had a
Speaker 1: relationship with Kerry Anne.
Speaker 2: It was pretty close to the shooting spree, wasn't It
Speaker 2: wasn't that far along, he always thought it happened there
Speaker 2: was an incident where when Kerry and David some six
Speaker 2: or twelve months before, Kerriyen and David wanted to meet
Speaker 2: and David was going to babysit a friend at a
Speaker 2: friend's house and carry Anne. She invited Carrien to come
Speaker 2: that night he was babysitting, and he wrote wrote the
Speaker 2: friend's address on a piece of paper, and Carrie Ane
Speaker 2: wrote it on a piece of paper and that's what
Speaker 2: she used to get to the address. And they spent
Speaker 2: the night there at that address and went to the
Speaker 2: pub and whatever. On one of the evenings subsequent to that,
Speaker 2: when Baker was snooping through Carrie Anne's wonderl flat, he
Speaker 2: found the note with a piece of paper on it
Speaker 2: which had the address on it, and he started ringing
Speaker 2: the owner of the house, accusing him of an infidelity
Speaker 2: towards Kerriyen. And it was only laid down the track
Speaker 2: that he realized that the David told him that that
Speaker 2: the truth about this is oh yeah, carry and came
Speaker 2: around we've just been friends and whatever. But that increased
Speaker 2: his motivation to hassle David to tell him the truth
Speaker 2: about about the relationship.
Speaker 1: I look at the build up there ted and it
Speaker 1: was virtually a full time job. He was completely just
Speaker 1: so it was just obsessed. All the conversations for twelve
Speaker 1: months leading up to the murder.
Speaker 2: He completely obsessed because he didn't work. He just sold
Speaker 2: second end parts. He's ran. You know, he's taking money
Speaker 2: off the poor kids in the caravan. The caravans that
Speaker 2: he rented is on settling health benefits. You know. So
Speaker 2: you had had a lot of time to do.
Speaker 1: This and you look at those those periods of time,
Speaker 1: like we've all got friends that have got an issue
Speaker 1: with something. It might be a relationship, it might be
Speaker 1: a work issue, or where it becomes an obsession and
Speaker 1: obsession and the conversation starts so straight into it. It's
Speaker 1: not how are you, It's virtually there. I've probably burned
Speaker 1: the same, You've burned the same. We all get things
Speaker 1: that are stuck stuck in your head. But this, I
Speaker 1: look at it and I just can't help him. With
Speaker 1: the benefit of the hindsight, that's always great, But there
Speaker 1: was just so many red flags and warning.
Speaker 2: And some of the people that he spoke to were
Speaker 2: fully aware that it was a red flag, and I'm
Speaker 2: I'm amused at the lack of foresight to act on it. Now,
Speaker 2: whether that was in the context of because they are
Speaker 2: on the Western Sydney, whether there was in the context
Speaker 2: of their attitude towards police, or their attitude towards domestic violence.
Speaker 2: They were victims of his power and coercive control. You know,
Speaker 2: these women in particular, weren't going to rise up and
Speaker 2: speak out when they know what he was like, because
Speaker 2: he did it to them for years, and so there
Speaker 2: was that fear thing some of the individual friends or
Speaker 2: business associates that that he revealed that he spoke to
Speaker 2: and said that he was angry and was going to
Speaker 2: kill everybody. Why they didn't raise their hand, I don't know,
Speaker 2: that's up to them to speak to. But again, you
Speaker 2: put it in the context of the society and the
Speaker 2: culture at the time. Put it in the context of
Speaker 2: his power over people, in terms of the way he
Speaker 2: manipulated people and the fear that he created in people.
Speaker 2: Everyone might have just been really shit scared of him.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's so many reasons why it didn't come up,
Speaker 1: because there was so many opportunities to nip it in
Speaker 1: the bud before the massacre occurred. But there there's this
Speaker 1: thing that's us sitting here, know, like judging today and
Speaker 1: with the standards today, and it makes me feel good
Speaker 1: about the fact that we've really woken up to the
Speaker 1: concerns with domestic violence and the amount of people that
Speaker 1: we see killed as a result of relationship breakups. And
Speaker 1: that's right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, it would be completely different. An individual like
Speaker 2: this would hopefully think it's christ and I believe true,
Speaker 2: would soon be cut down very quickly if did this
Speaker 2: sort of behavior. With a lot of the domestic violence
Speaker 2: laws that we've got now and the attitude to policing
Speaker 2: and the community attitude to domestic violence. And now that
Speaker 2: we've got this legislation in New South Wales about coercive control,
Speaker 2: hopefully it never happens again. I'm sure it will, but
Speaker 2: on a scale of this.
Speaker 1: Well, I think people listening to this because when we
Speaker 1: go into what actually happened on the night, the brutality
Speaker 1: and the callousness of what's happened, but people listening to this,
Speaker 1: I hope it's an indicator of warning that if someone's
Speaker 1: verbalizing continuously that I'm going to kill this person or
Speaker 1: I'm going to do this, and just this vent and
Speaker 1: hate and then saying yeah, I don't the cops of
Speaker 1: Susana firearms, but don't worry, I've kept some firearms. I'm
Speaker 1: going to kill these people. Yes, so fairly clear plans.
Speaker 2: There's a lot of lot of raised on debtra there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so okay, tick tick tick. So just before we
Speaker 1: take a break, what was a catalyst on the day
Speaker 1: to the seventh, twenty seventh of Octavier. What day of
Speaker 1: the week.
Speaker 2: Was it was Tuesday?
Speaker 1: Tuesday? What was a catalyst that day? What was his
Speaker 1: movements on that day? Because you've been on the investigation,
Speaker 1: the research for your book. You get a clear sense
Speaker 1: of what these movements were on the day. So just
Speaker 1: talk us through that day, what the things happened that day.
Speaker 2: I get the sense on that day that he was
Speaker 2: at the height of his brooding, at the height of
Speaker 2: his anger and frustration about what about the failure of
Speaker 2: his relationship with Carry. And there's a circumstance on the
Speaker 2: day or in the recent days, earlier days where he
Speaker 2: had a conversation with Carrianne's mother down in Terarigo where
Speaker 2: he badgered her in Terarigel stuck up behind her while
Speaker 2: she's walking down the street in his Volvo Sedan and
Speaker 2: demanded to see her and she told him to get
Speaker 2: lost and whatever. He followed her up the hill to
Speaker 2: Barnhill Drive and badgering her, I want to see Cary,
Speaker 2: I want to see Cary, and she just told him to
Speaker 2: get lost. That resistance, that powerful resistance by Kerrian's mother,
Speaker 2: I think would would have started the fire for over
Speaker 2: the next few days where he would just get to
Speaker 2: the point where I want to do something. So on
Speaker 2: the night on the evening of the murders, on the
Speaker 2: twenty seventh of October, he's arrived at that. I found
Speaker 2: out subsequent to the publication of the book that he'd
Speaker 2: actually been seen cruising up and down Barnhill Drive on
Speaker 2: the Sunday Sunday before the Tuesday. Nobody reported that Carry
Speaker 2: Anne didn't know about that. That was another member of
Speaker 2: the family.
Speaker 1: It was another person that so cruising past her place.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Barnhill Drive doing what he did to the flat
Speaker 2: at one brill just just their intimidation or whatever, just
Speaker 2: seeing who's there, seen with us, she's with a fuller
Speaker 2: or whatever. But on the afternoon of the twenty seventh,
Speaker 2: he parked down the graven the street which was a
Speaker 2: tea inter section at Barnhill Drive, hid his car and
Speaker 2: then he went over to the to the house on
Speaker 2: the pretense. And he talks about that in his interviews
Speaker 2: of having a talk with carry and he just wanted
Speaker 2: to talk to her. And as he's walking up the stairs,
Speaker 2: he hears Carry Anne in the bedroom. She subsequently moved
Speaker 2: to Barnhill Drive. Here's Carry Anne in the bedroom talking
Speaker 2: to a mile. At that point a switch has flicked
Speaker 2: and then he's then left the house, gone back to
Speaker 2: his house. The shotgun that he'd had always had the
Speaker 2: Bentley twelve gage. He sawn the butt off that and
Speaker 2: got a full fill that full of ammunition, got a
Speaker 2: bandalia full of ammunition and returned to the house.
Speaker 1: Okay, so that that that was the day of the
Speaker 1: day of the moon. He's gone gone the house after
Speaker 1: cruising up and down and just obsessed. So the Carrie
Speaker 1: Anne's mother has not bowed down to him when he's
Speaker 1: demanding to see a few days before.
Speaker 2: Earlier that night, I'm sorry I forgot to mention he'd
Speaker 2: actually had a conversation with young Tom, carri Anne's brother,
Speaker 2: who lived at Barnhill Drive down in Terriicle, asking the
Speaker 2: same questions, harassing him about carry Anne and telling him
Speaker 2: it's all her fault and it's not my fault and whatever,
Speaker 2: making excuses for it, and to the point where Tom
Speaker 2: was quite terrified of him. Tom, Tom made him fit,
Speaker 2: very fearful. Was in the past. Tom was only a
Speaker 2: teenage kid and he had scant regard for that.
Speaker 1: You feel for the families, don't you like? What could
Speaker 1: could have or could not have been done, like having
Speaker 1: having him front all the family members, And I'm sure
Speaker 1: he didn't hide the emotion or the anger and that
Speaker 1: when he was speaking to them and they're just keeping
Speaker 1: their fingers crossed at nothing terrible, terrible happens.
Speaker 2: Well, they report, you know, they report that whenever they
Speaker 2: had these connections with him, he had that really cold,
Speaker 2: dead eyed stare that I saw at the police station
Speaker 2: two years earlier when he when he pushed carry in
Speaker 2: and the door to do the fraud. He just had
Speaker 2: no he had He was never diagnosed as a schizophrenic
Speaker 2: and never diagnosed as a as A as A as
Speaker 2: a serious psychotropic illness. He was diagnosed later as a
Speaker 2: personality disorder gets affective personality disorder. But he had that cold.
Speaker 1: You were you were the scener as a psychist, Oh.
Speaker 2: You did, yeah, yeah, Well I kind of that radar
Speaker 2: went up straight away when I first met him, because
Speaker 2: he just he just knew that what he was presenting
Speaker 2: to the outside was not what was going on behind
Speaker 2: his eyes. And he was always like that, you know,
Speaker 2: always like that. And that's but on that particular night
Speaker 2: and the week leading up to it, whenever he had
Speaker 2: those interactions with particularly family members, they were quite fearful.
Speaker 1: Okay, well we might might take a break there. So
Speaker 1: we've got the situation where you've you've articulated very clearly
Speaker 1: the obsession and the type of person that he was
Speaker 1: and the build up to what was going to be
Speaker 1: just a horrendous, violent night. And the catalyst appears to
Speaker 1: be that he's seen carry Anne, the woman he's trying
Speaker 1: to control, and refuses to let go. Hears her in
Speaker 1: the bedroom with another man, and that would have kicked
Speaker 1: off all the insecurities and everything else that goes on
Speaker 1: in his mind. Then he's gone back to his house
Speaker 1: to collect the firearm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, just saw the butt of it, lay it up
Speaker 2: with ammunition, Okay, and go on his on his bloody odyssey.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Well, look we'll take a break there and warning the
Speaker 1: listeners that are the second part when we talk about
Speaker 1: what carries on on that night, it's something that thankfully
Speaker 1: we don't see very often in this this country.
Speaker 2: True.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, we'll be back for part two.