Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective see aside of life the average person is never
Speaker 1: exposed to. I spent thirty four years as a cop.
Speaker 1: For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
Speaker 1: That's what I did for a living. I was a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
Speaker 1: I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
Speaker 1: The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
Speaker 1: from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
Speaker 1: and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
Speaker 1: of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
Speaker 1: no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Speaker 1: Join me now as I take you into this world.
Speaker 1: We live in the most connected era in human history,
Speaker 1: mobile phones, the Internet, CCTV on every corner. Yet there's
Speaker 1: currently almost three thousand long term missing persons in this country.
Speaker 1: Nicole Morris is the founder of Australia's only missing person's
Speaker 1: database and the author of Lost, a book dedicated to
Speaker 1: the long term missing. She has spent decades ensuring that
Speaker 1: the people who vanished are not simply forgotten. In Part
Speaker 1: two of my conversation with Nicole, we explore the strange,
Speaker 1: sometimes baffling circumstances in which people disappear and ask the
Speaker 1: questions that linger longer after the search parties have gone home.
Speaker 1: Was it a choice, a terrible accident, or something much
Speaker 1: more sinister? Nicole Morris, welcome back to part two of
Speaker 1: I Catchkillers.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: When we were finishing off in part one, we're talking
Speaker 1: about people that reach out to you a lot about
Speaker 1: information that they might have or not about missing persons.
Speaker 1: I'm going to pray this out to your clearvoyance. You laugh, Okay,
Speaker 1: I have.
Speaker 2: I've never been quite about my condemnation of people who
Speaker 2: will take advantage of vulnerable missing person's families. And it
Speaker 2: happens all the time, whether they mean to or not.
Speaker 2: And it happened recently as well. There was a very
Speaker 2: well known American clairvoyant who came to Australia specifically to
Speaker 2: talk about missing children, including William I think, and didn't
Speaker 2: like it when I went onto their page and pointed
Speaker 2: out that that spelled his name wrong. Oh you know
Speaker 2: that doesn't matter. Yes it does, Yes it does. And
Speaker 2: you're profiting from the terrible distress of these families, and
Speaker 2: it's concerning to me the impact that it has on
Speaker 2: the families as well. Having said that, almost every missing
Speaker 2: person's family will consult a medium or a psychic at
Speaker 2: some point because they have that desperation to find answers,
Speaker 2: and sometimes it brings them comfort and it is one
Speaker 2: hundred percent their right to do that, and I would
Speaker 2: never tell them not to. What concerns me is when
Speaker 2: when people will randomly decide to pass on information to
Speaker 2: a family that they have dreamed up, that they've they've
Speaker 2: felt in their waters, and that can cause great distress
Speaker 2: to a family. I remember a woman whose daughter had
Speaker 2: gone missing. She hadn't come home from a nightclub, and
Speaker 2: some person contacted her and said, oh, I feel that
Speaker 2: she has been abducted and raped and murdered and she's
Speaker 2: lying bound in a shed. And the woman came home
Speaker 2: safe the next day, but for that period of time,
Speaker 2: that image was in that mother's head, and that is unforgivable,
Speaker 2: absolutely unforgivable. And there are families I don't remember, one
Speaker 2: of the Clermont in Western Australia, the victims of that
Speaker 2: serial killer. Her dad was sloshing around in a swamp
Speaker 2: trying to dig through the mud because a clearvoyant had
Speaker 2: told him that's where the body was. And I think
Speaker 2: he said he was standing in this swamp, going why
Speaker 2: am I doing this? This is crazy? But that's the
Speaker 2: level of distress. The families of missing people feel. It's
Speaker 2: a desperation, so they'll listen to anything. And there are
Speaker 2: people who will take advantage of that, either innocently, you know,
Speaker 2: they might go they might really believe that they feel this,
Speaker 2: or they might be trying to profit in some way
Speaker 2: from that.
Speaker 1: What you said right up front. They're exploiting vulnerable people.
Speaker 1: That's what I take issue with clairvoyance. I was at
Speaker 1: a symposium, international symposium with unsolved homicides, and I think
Speaker 1: it was someone from Scotland Yard or the FBI was
Speaker 1: talking and talking about clearvoyance and just said, show me
Speaker 1: a clearvoyant that takes you to the body, and I'll
Speaker 1: show you the person that put the body there. Now,
Speaker 1: what that's meaning is no case. And this person was
Speaker 1: brought from overseas and speaking it couldn't reference any case.
Speaker 1: And there was some very experienced law enforcement officers there
Speaker 1: from right around the country and internationally there and no
Speaker 1: one knew of any clearvoyant that.
Speaker 3: Has helped solve a case.
Speaker 1: So if they're saying they know where the body is,
Speaker 1: they must have put the body there. That's that's my taken.
Speaker 1: I have an open mind to a lot of things,
Speaker 1: but also a practicality that comes with investigating homicide. And
Speaker 1: no clearvoyant has ever assisted an investigation that I'm aware of,
Speaker 1: Certainly not any investigation I have been involved in. I've
Speaker 1: heard clairvoyance say they helped investigations that I was involved
Speaker 1: in and before for whatever reason. I'm a strong advocate
Speaker 1: for victims of crime, the victim's families and what I
Speaker 1: do take issue with, and I think you balanced it
Speaker 1: nicely when you said, yeah, they might be genuinely thinking
Speaker 1: they're doing the right thing, and I accept that. But
Speaker 1: the trauma they cause victims families when they contact them
Speaker 1: out of the blue and say, look, I've got the
Speaker 1: information that your loved one might be buried under the
Speaker 1: bridge or different type of things like that. The victims
Speaker 1: contact me, they're almost embarrassed to contact me, but it
Speaker 1: plays on their mind, and it plays on their mind
Speaker 1: to the point sometimes the victims will actually go out
Speaker 1: and search the area themselves where I say, well, I
Speaker 1: can't actually dedicate resources to that based on the information
Speaker 1: from a clear voyant. But again, perception is a funny
Speaker 1: thing because I think we've all watched enough crime shows
Speaker 1: or whatever where a clearvoyant has solved the crime a vision.
Speaker 1: But all the detectives I've dealt with, all the detectives
Speaker 1: I respect, I think they sit in the same boat
Speaker 1: as I do in regards to clairvoyance and their impact
Speaker 1: on investigations. The troubling part of it is when you're
Speaker 1: running an investigation, if someone's providing information, sometimes I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: is this someone just trying to ingratiate themselves into investigation.
Speaker 1: Maybe I've got to have a look at that person
Speaker 1: because they why are they getting themselves involved? But yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm aware of it, and I've had family members contact
Speaker 1: me so many times about clearvoyance and the only thing
Speaker 1: that provides false hope, and you know when that hope
Speaker 1: is lost again, just further paint. Having said that, I
Speaker 1: do understand why the families because they're desperate, they're vulnerable,
Speaker 1: and they will try anything. So yeah, it's a murky,
Speaker 1: murky area. But I just wanted to I got a
Speaker 1: sense maybe I'm a clear I got a sense that
Speaker 1: I got a sense that you would have come across
Speaker 1: that a lot with the profile you've got with missing persons,
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to get your your.
Speaker 2: Take on it constantly. And so it is. It is
Speaker 2: a delicate balance of not wanting to to criticize the
Speaker 2: family's decision to do that, because that's completely up to them,
Speaker 2: and most of them do and with varying results they can.
Speaker 2: And then some of them will tell me that they've
Speaker 2: gone to see five different cleairvoyance taro readers, psychics, mediums,
Speaker 2: and and they've all told them something different, and so
Speaker 2: I'm going, okay, so what does that tell you? And
Speaker 2: and but again it's their right to do that. And
Speaker 2: if it makes them feel better, if if a clearvoyance
Speaker 2: said they've passed there, they're watching over you there, they
Speaker 2: want you to be happy in your life, then that's
Speaker 2: fairly harmless and not going to dress them too much.
Speaker 2: And if it provides them comfort, that's a good thing.
Speaker 2: But again, if they're if they're saying, you know, yes,
Speaker 2: they were horribly murdered, and and and you will find
Speaker 2: their body somewhere near a town Starting with R that
Speaker 2: that can make things so much worse because then they're
Speaker 2: constantly going, oh, could it be the River Arena? Could
Speaker 2: it be you know, it's it's it's so hard.
Speaker 1: The other thing I've noticed, so higher the profile the investigation,
Speaker 1: the more Clearboyance come out to.
Speaker 4: And that's yeah, quite attention to them, and they don't
Speaker 4: care who they who they use, particularly that these high
Speaker 4: profile ones that they picked William for a reason because
Speaker 4: he is Australia's highest profile missing person, they're not They
Speaker 4: didn't pick a case that no one has ever heard of.
Speaker 3: So yeah, and they're going to solve that.
Speaker 1: And I cautioned any any police that because I have
Speaker 1: seen some police actually want to follow up up the
Speaker 1: information based on Clearvoyant.
Speaker 3: But I think there's my experience.
Speaker 2: I think the police sometimes want to kind of help
Speaker 2: the family deal with it by not disagreeing with it.
Speaker 2: So if the police officer says, don't be ridiculous, you
Speaker 2: can't listen to them, that can cause the family distress.
Speaker 2: But if sometimes a police officer will say, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's do that to keep you, you know, to give
Speaker 2: you a little bit of peace. Let's bring that on board,
Speaker 2: they can come with us, and we'll have a little
Speaker 2: look something like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I do understand that, and I've been guilty
Speaker 1: of that myself sometimes.
Speaker 3: Okay, we'll have a look at that park, Yeah, a.
Speaker 1: Cursory look and see to put people's minds at these
Speaker 1: But again, I suppose it just comes into how vulnerable
Speaker 1: people are when they lose their loved ones. In your book,
Speaker 1: there's a quote that in your last book Lost, all
Speaker 1: missing persons need to be treated as homicides until proven otherwise,
Speaker 1: certainly not written off as suicide, especially if there is
Speaker 1: mental health present. I'll jump in there just on my
Speaker 1: takeaway from it. All missing persons need to be treated
Speaker 1: as homicides until proven otherwise. I say that all the
Speaker 1: time with anywhere, if we're called homicide to a deceased person,
Speaker 1: and the same with a missing person. So one hundred
Speaker 1: percent agree, we agree with that. I'm interested in your
Speaker 1: take on that part, but also the second part of it.
Speaker 1: Certainly not written off as a suicide, especially if there's
Speaker 1: mental health present. So that quotes in your book for
Speaker 1: a reason. Let's break it down.
Speaker 2: It sort of became very apparent to me in my
Speaker 2: second book Missing, when I was writing about Sandri and
Speaker 2: Jordan she had had a previous suicide attempt and therefore
Speaker 2: the coroner and police have said, well, obviously she's killed herself.
Speaker 2: But her family strongly agree with that, and there has
Speaker 2: been I think a lot of evidence since then to
Speaker 2: suggest that she could well be the victim of foul play,
Speaker 2: but police, I think are just doggedly sticking to that
Speaker 2: no previous suicide attempt, therefore this is what's happened. And
Speaker 2: just this week, this week, last week, the Queensland authorities
Speaker 2: have said no, there's not enough evidence to sort of
Speaker 2: push for a full coronial inquiry, which is so frustrating.
Speaker 2: So I'm actually going to send Debra Frecklington a copy
Speaker 2: of my book, though I want her to read Sandrine's
Speaker 2: chapter and then if she still says no, I really
Speaker 2: don't think there's any foul play here, then I think
Speaker 2: I don't know what else we can do. But in
Speaker 2: Lost it was particularly evident with the case of Brian Maxthead,
Speaker 2: who twenty five year old young man who went missing
Speaker 2: from Darwin jumped on a plane to Sydney, and I
Speaker 2: think because he was on antidepressants. Then the coroner said, well,
Speaker 2: obviously he's taken his own life. That doesn't make any
Speaker 2: sense to me or to his family. He caught a
Speaker 2: taxi to King's Cross for a night out, wherein that
Speaker 2: is the suggestion of suicide. He left all his stuff
Speaker 2: at the hotel. And just because someone is on anti
Speaker 2: there's vast numbers of people on antidepressants, that doesn't mean
Speaker 2: they're suicidal at all. And the issue that his mother
Speaker 2: took exception to was a police officer who had never
Speaker 2: met Brian, who was basing all of her conclusions and
Speaker 2: assumptions on a report that she had in front of her,
Speaker 2: stood up to the coroner and said, yes, in our opinion,
Speaker 2: Brian has taken his own life. And his mother is
Speaker 2: sitting there going you didn't even meet him, and she
Speaker 2: knew him inside out and backwards. They were they were
Speaker 2: extremely close. Every time I talked to Janine, she says
Speaker 2: I loved Brian so much, and Brian loved me. In
Speaker 2: every conversation we have that exact phrase, we loved each
Speaker 2: other so much. She knows her boy, And why wouldn't
Speaker 2: police think Okay, a young, fairly naive twenty five year
Speaker 2: old from Darwin who'd never really left Darwin jumps on
Speaker 2: a plane to Sydney and goes to King's Cross and
Speaker 2: in this was I think two thousand and nine, and
Speaker 2: King's Cross was not for the fainthearted. You know, it's
Speaker 2: been a bit gentrified now, but two thousand and nine
Speaker 2: it was very wild and wooly and a lot of robberies,
Speaker 2: a lot of fights, a lot of violence. And you've
Speaker 2: got a naive twenty five year old from Darwin in
Speaker 2: that mix. Why wouldn't you consider that that could be
Speaker 2: a homicide. And the problem also with that case is
Speaker 2: it was handpled back between Northern Territory Police and New
Speaker 2: South Wales Police because they were saying, oh, well, he
Speaker 2: technically went missing from the Northern Territory, but he was
Speaker 2: last seen in Sydney. So it's not our case, it's
Speaker 2: your case where it clearly it should have been handed
Speaker 2: by King's Cross. Polus.
Speaker 1: Families don't need to be caught up with that. I
Speaker 1: understand what you're saying on that case and valid points
Speaker 1: that you're bringing up. I've got to say, and I'm
Speaker 1: sure you've encountered this situation as well. I've had situations where, yeah,
Speaker 1: the evidence is overwhelming that a certain thing has happened
Speaker 1: that might be self harm, but it's very hard for
Speaker 1: the families to come to terms with that, And I
Speaker 1: think we've got to acknowledge that occurs as well. And
Speaker 1: I understand that completely that families are looking the worst
Speaker 1: thing you could think is someone's taken your own life.
Speaker 1: So I understand the starting point for families are going, no,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't have done that. But that's a very difficult
Speaker 1: part of the play sometimes where you've got to get
Speaker 1: opinions across and show the evidence. How do you overcome
Speaker 1: those difficult situations. Communication presents as much as the evidence
Speaker 1: as you can and let the family sit on it.
Speaker 1: Understand that no matter what you say is not going
Speaker 1: to pease the family if they're protecting the memory of
Speaker 1: their loved one exactly. That's my experience in that sort
Speaker 1: of area where it's a bit ambiguous about as to
Speaker 1: what's happened, and if the evidence is leaning towards it
Speaker 1: was self harm or misadventure, that doesn't necessarily sarily have
Speaker 1: to be self harm, could be misadventure, and the family
Speaker 1: don't want to want to believe it. And I understand
Speaker 1: the pain the families are going through, and I understand
Speaker 1: how dare from their point of view, anyone say this
Speaker 1: about our loved ones, what's your take on it? Because
Speaker 1: I'm sure you would have seen situations like that before,
Speaker 1: and how do you deal with it?
Speaker 2: I actually wrote an entire chapter on this exact topic.
Speaker 2: I wrote a whole chapter that was supposed to be
Speaker 2: I think it was supposed to be in the second book.
Speaker 2: And it was a young man missing from the Newcastle
Speaker 2: area and he had a history of severe mental illness.
Speaker 2: He was the most distressed, tortured young man. It absolutely
Speaker 2: broke my heart. His mum found him in a really
Speaker 2: terrible state. He hadn't showered for weeks, he hadn't been
Speaker 2: eating properly, he hadn't been taking his medication, and she
Speaker 2: took him home with her for a few days, and
Speaker 2: he disappeared from her home. And because of his severe
Speaker 2: mental illness, he was schizophrenic and he was very paranoid
Speaker 2: about things. He had installed cameras in his home because
Speaker 2: he was absolutely convinced that people were trying to break
Speaker 2: in and harm him, and his mother believed that. So
Speaker 2: to me, it was clear that this young man was
Speaker 2: just tortured and he had had multiple suicide attempts in
Speaker 2: the past, and was it was very clear that he
Speaker 2: was extremely unwell at the point at the time he
Speaker 2: went missing. He was at the lowest point. He was
Speaker 2: sort of facing criminal charges and he didn't have a
Speaker 2: great future ahead of him, and he had been hospitalized
Speaker 2: multiple times, which he absolutely hated. He knew that that's
Speaker 2: what was going to happen again. They would they would
Speaker 2: commit him again. He was just an absolute mess. And
Speaker 2: so to me, it was clear that that's what had
Speaker 2: happened to him. He had chosen to take his own life,
Speaker 2: and that was the conclusion of police and the coroner
Speaker 2: as well. But his mother was absolutely adamant, he said,
Speaker 2: she said, no, no, no, people would after him. He
Speaker 2: told me that people were after him and that's what
Speaker 2: was happening. So I wrote the chapter based on what
Speaker 2: she had told me and the available evidence, and I
Speaker 2: sent it to her and she was absolutely furious. Was
Speaker 2: she I'm horrified at what you've written. And I said,
Speaker 2: I'm so sorry, I've written what you've told me. Oh,
Speaker 2: that's just not that's just not him, that's just not
Speaker 2: what happened. You're you're suggesting, And I said, I'm not
Speaker 2: suggesting anything. I'm just presenting what the facts of his life,
Speaker 2: the facts his entire history, and the facts of the situation.
Speaker 2: And she said, that's he's not going to be in
Speaker 2: your book because that's not an accurate portrayal of my son.
Speaker 2: And I said, that's completely fine, that's absolutely fine, because
Speaker 2: she is not there in her catching up to the reality.
Speaker 2: And maybe it's that's too painful, it's too hard, too
Speaker 2: painful to think he took his own life. So she said, no,
Speaker 2: that's it. Someone's someone's murdered him, and no one's listening
Speaker 2: to me. So I said, and you are completely entitled
Speaker 2: to believe that, but you know this, I can't help
Speaker 2: you get past that.
Speaker 3: Difficult, isn't it.
Speaker 1: It's listening to you tell that story and that just yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see how how hard hard it is. But
Speaker 1: again it just shows the impact. The only peace and
Speaker 1: getting back to that quote to start with that you
Speaker 1: can give to the families is demonstrating that the matter
Speaker 1: has been properly investigated, Everything that can be done has
Speaker 1: been done, and the end result, the only court of
Speaker 1: law that they can go to to get someone to
Speaker 1: adjudicate on it is the coronial inquest at the coroner's court,
Speaker 1: and a lot of times that's what the families want.
Speaker 1: They just want all the evidence presented at the coroner
Speaker 1: and the coroner to make an assessment of what's happened
Speaker 1: happened to their loved one. I've seen situations like that
Speaker 1: the regardless of the result, regardless of the evidence, that
Speaker 1: the family is not going to not going to be
Speaker 1: happy with the results. But I think the way that
Speaker 1: you're adopting it, step back, give them piece if that's
Speaker 1: the way that they've got to process it. And it's
Speaker 1: such a deeply personal thing telling someone what's happened to
Speaker 1: their loved one.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And I'll still make appeals for him as
Speaker 2: long as it takes absolutely you know, I'm not going
Speaker 2: to withdraw my help from a family just because that
Speaker 2: they were upset. There's very few people who have chosen
Speaker 2: to not want their appeals out there, which is an
Speaker 2: interesting concept as well. I could count on one hand
Speaker 2: the people who have said no, I don't want you
Speaker 2: to make appeals for my missing person, so they still
Speaker 2: want the appeals to keep going.
Speaker 1: Other problems associated when people have disappeared, and sometimes a
Speaker 1: coroner's court can resolve this. But someone disappears, who has
Speaker 1: access to their bank accounts, if they're running a business,
Speaker 1: how they manage a business, if they're renting a property,
Speaker 1: who takes over that. There's so many issues that need
Speaker 1: to be followed up when someone disappears. And we've talked
Speaker 1: not children in this regards. We're talking adults that are
Speaker 1: living a life. Talk us through the problems that people
Speaker 1: are found with that because quite often if someone, if
Speaker 1: you love one, disappears and they're running a business, you
Speaker 1: don't have a lot of rights initially until things have
Speaker 1: been properly adjudicated on the decisions have been made.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and people don't know where to start as well.
Speaker 2: And I don't think I would know where to start
Speaker 2: if I had to suddenly take over a family member's
Speaker 2: of theirs. I mean, I've you know, if your parents
Speaker 2: are elderly, they can appoint you as guardians of their afairs.
Speaker 2: But when someone goes missing suddenly, particularly if they're younger,
Speaker 2: the families find themselves in a huge mess. And sometimes
Speaker 2: the coronial process can take many years, and depending on
Speaker 2: which state it's in, it can be difficult as well.
Speaker 2: In Lost, I talk about the case of Michael Graham,
Speaker 2: who went missing in the outback on the gold fields
Speaker 2: in Western Australia, and his wife managed to get his
Speaker 2: inquest quite quickly, sort of within a year, because it
Speaker 2: was very obvious that Michael was deceased at that point
Speaker 2: and was not coming home, so it would have been
Speaker 2: easy for the coroner, but she found herself with ridiculous
Speaker 2: red tape to She wanted to take their daughter over
Speaker 2: to New Zealand to visit Michael's family, and she couldn't
Speaker 2: because Michael wasn't there to sign the consent and she's
Speaker 2: standing there arguing saying, I just he's not here to
Speaker 2: sign the consent form. He's missing. They go, well, he's
Speaker 2: not alive or dead. He's missing. We don't have a
Speaker 2: box for missing. And she couldn't even put a notice
Speaker 2: in the paper for a memorial service for him because
Speaker 2: they said, no, we can do a funeral notice, but
Speaker 2: we can't do a memorial notice unless there's a notification
Speaker 2: from the funeral home. And she said, well there isn't
Speaker 2: one because I don't have a body and I haven't
Speaker 2: had a funeral and con frustrating, Yeah, and it is
Speaker 2: absolutely ridiculous. Tony Ryan had to take over car payments
Speaker 2: for his sister. Who does that? Who keeps paying the
Speaker 2: rent on a house? And how long do you keep
Speaker 2: paying the rent after someone goes missing, you know, because
Speaker 2: you expect them to come back, So the rent still
Speaker 2: needs to be paid, the car payments still have to
Speaker 2: be made, but for how long? And then once you
Speaker 2: decide that they're not coming back, you may not have
Speaker 2: been able to get an inquest yet, so you don't
Speaker 2: have the legal right to sell their car. You just
Speaker 2: have to keep making the payments somehow. And that's not
Speaker 2: easy if you're adopting someone else's financial burden. It's very,
Speaker 2: very difficult because it's being missing is a state in
Speaker 2: between alive and dead, and it's so difficult.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can.
Speaker 1: Then you're dealing with the emotional trauma of losing the
Speaker 1: loved one and not knowing what's happened, And then you've
Speaker 1: got all these other layers onto it, and that came
Speaker 1: out in your book and I when I say, I
Speaker 1: hadn't really thought about it. I'm thinking about the trauma
Speaker 1: and all that, but the practical day to day things
Speaker 1: of how do you move forward when you're caught up
Speaker 1: in the red tape.
Speaker 2: And when do you move forward? How long do you
Speaker 2: leave it? It's because there's no cutoff times if you think, oh,
Speaker 2: they might have just taken is it a month or
Speaker 2: is it three months? Or is it a year? How
Speaker 2: long do you leave it?
Speaker 1: With the cases that you deal with, there's many reasons
Speaker 1: why people disappear, Like if you break it down, you
Speaker 1: look at the full spectrum. They're choosing to disappear because
Speaker 1: they've got their life in a rut or whatever and
Speaker 1: they want to start out again, and they're just starting cleanly. Misadventure,
Speaker 1: they're walking in the mountains, they get lost and they've
Speaker 1: never found mental health or self harm type situations where
Speaker 1: they choose to life's not for them anymore, or outside
Speaker 1: human interference where someone is something more sinius has occurred
Speaker 1: in the dealings with all the missing people that you've had.
Speaker 1: What sort of differences do the families have to the
Speaker 1: type of thing that might happen that they all looking
Speaker 1: at the worst case scenario or do they just want
Speaker 1: answers so that they.
Speaker 2: I think everyone's different. They all definitely want answers. A
Speaker 2: lot of them don't even it is more important to
Speaker 2: find the remains of the missing person than to even
Speaker 2: get a conviction for a killer. They want to know
Speaker 2: what happened and they want the remains back is the
Speaker 2: primary thing that we're thereafter. I think that's something that
Speaker 2: Race Spitchley's daughter Nicki said to me, was that there
Speaker 2: is a level of not relief, but there is that
Speaker 2: different level because she knows that her father wandered off
Speaker 2: into the bush and was lost, so she doesn't have
Speaker 2: that my father was murdered, extra layer of trauma added
Speaker 2: to her. So she said that that makes it slightly
Speaker 2: easier for her. So I think the victims of crime
Speaker 2: families have the worst time of it because they're obviously
Speaker 2: imagining the worst that can happen and what happened to
Speaker 2: their person and their final moments of their person, and
Speaker 2: then they've got to find the person. And then then
Speaker 2: it almost is the beginning of the worst bit because
Speaker 2: then they've got possibly a criminal trial, and as you know,
Speaker 2: these things can take years, and then there's no guarantee
Speaker 2: like the Levison's there's no guarantee that you're going to
Speaker 2: find justice at the end.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And when you talk about justice and also bring
Speaker 1: in their misconceptions, people often think if there's no body,
Speaker 1: we can't charge people with murder.
Speaker 3: That's not the case.
Speaker 2: Look at Chris Dawson.
Speaker 1: Well, a classic case and a very high public profile case.
Speaker 1: And I think that's interesting that you mentioned that because
Speaker 1: it taps into missing person when Lynette disappeared. But it
Speaker 1: was so there were so many things there that should
Speaker 1: have raised red flags, and thank goodness that the right
Speaker 1: results come, but it was come a long time, long
Speaker 1: time after. But I think you could perhaps use that
Speaker 1: as a test case for mistakes that were made about
Speaker 1: assumptions that someone's just wandered.
Speaker 2: Off exactly exactly, particularly that there's a lot of almost
Speaker 2: identical cases to Lynnette's that I list, and you think, Okay,
Speaker 2: did this woman really leave to a three and a
Speaker 2: four year old at home and just go off? You
Speaker 2: really did that really happen? And I think as a
Speaker 2: homicide investigator you'd know that A great deal of the time,
Speaker 2: police know exactly what's happened. Yeah, but you've got that
Speaker 2: burden of proof. You can't you can't convict someone without
Speaker 2: being very sure. You can't even take it to trial
Speaker 2: unless you are sure that you're going to win, because
Speaker 2: you've sort of got one shot at.
Speaker 1: It, and certainly when you haven't got the body, you've
Speaker 1: got to be able to prove beyond the reasonable doubt
Speaker 1: that the person is deceased, which is sometimes hard to do.
Speaker 1: I had a case Bob Lubik matter. He was thrown
Speaker 1: off the gap and the assumptions made there initially when
Speaker 1: he went off the gap that suicide because the car
Speaker 1: was found up there and it was treated initial parts
Speaker 1: of it were treated as a suicide.
Speaker 3: As it turned out it was a murder.
Speaker 1: His body was found I think it was five days later,
Speaker 1: had floated in the ocean down to just south of
Speaker 1: Cronulla and his body was found there. But again that
Speaker 1: could have been written off purely as a suicide based
Speaker 1: on the assumptions that, oh, well, the car was found
Speaker 1: that the gap, therefore he's committed to That was the
Speaker 1: exact intent of the people that murdered him at the
Speaker 1: gap to take him up there and threaten him. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of different things. Do you think it's
Speaker 1: harder with social media and the way the world's changed,
Speaker 1: were virtually a cashless society, do you think it's harder
Speaker 1: for people to disappear and in this day and age
Speaker 1: and that was three or four decades ago, or even
Speaker 1: even closer two decades.
Speaker 2: Ago, very much. So, yeah, because we've got number plate recognition.
Speaker 2: There was a case last week I think, and they
Speaker 2: were able to find they know exactly where her car
Speaker 2: was going because they capture number plates on the highway.
Speaker 2: So it's not like she left in a car and
Speaker 2: we've got no idea where she went after that. Run
Speaker 2: the plate through the system and they say, okay, yep,
Speaker 2: she was captured on this particular highway. So you've got
Speaker 2: you need to prove your identity at every level in
Speaker 2: the world that we live in now. To do anything
Speaker 2: you need to access your work emails, you need a
Speaker 2: pin numbered and they can log in. I was reading
Speaker 2: the other day they know exactly what time a missing
Speaker 2: person last access to their Facebook page, so Meta must
Speaker 2: have given them that particular data. They can ping cell
Speaker 2: phones to quite a specific radius, they know when it
Speaker 2: was last used. So you've got all of that forensic
Speaker 2: evidence that pinpoints exactly the last moments of a missing
Speaker 2: person and exactly where they were. So it is really difficult.
Speaker 2: But on the flip side of that is you're mentioning
Speaker 2: people can just go for a walk in the mountains
Speaker 2: and have never seen again. And we live on a
Speaker 2: big island surrounded by water. A lot of people go
Speaker 2: missing in the water. A lot of people go missing
Speaker 2: in the bush and they say, well, how could you
Speaker 2: not find a body? Get out in the bush. And
Speaker 2: you'll understand that, particularly in certain places in Tasmania and
Speaker 2: it's the Blue Mountains. It's so thick and you can
Speaker 2: just walk a couple of seconds into the bush and
Speaker 2: you're completely invisible and you're lost.
Speaker 1: But with the technology, if someone disappeared now we've all
Speaker 1: got phones. You know someone, well the phone's not pinging,
Speaker 1: that phone hasn't That can be readily checked and quite
Speaker 1: easily by police. It's not like where pre mobile phone
Speaker 1: days you'd go away up the coast and you'd have
Speaker 1: to find a public phone box to phone home and
Speaker 1: say hey, I'm here, or contact you next week. So exactly, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think we've got the advantage now that if someone's
Speaker 1: got concerns about someone's welfare, they can see if there's
Speaker 1: something sent us very early in the piece. If they
Speaker 1: stop using their credit cards before, well they might have
Speaker 1: got a lot of money out of the bank. They're
Speaker 1: living on cash. It's not the way the world operates
Speaker 1: these days.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I was also thinking that because we've got such a
Speaker 2: vast population now, it's in some ways it's easier to
Speaker 2: disappear into that vast population, because I was thinking about
Speaker 2: the case of Barbara Brown, who was last seen in
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy eight. She was a blonde Texan and therefore
Speaker 2: people remembered her. So you've got physical sightings of her
Speaker 2: because there were less people around, and a blonde Texan
Speaker 2: hitchhiker stood out and was remembered because there were less
Speaker 2: people around, and I think it would have been harder
Speaker 2: for her to blend into the population as it was,
Speaker 2: So you've got I guess in a big city, that's
Speaker 2: how people go missing, because so many millions of people.
Speaker 3: Well that was.
Speaker 1: I read some information last reported drinking that epin hotel
Speaker 1: then heading north up the coast or whatever.
Speaker 2: The hotel was a red herring. I proved in the
Speaker 2: book that she couldn't have been so, and that was
Speaker 2: presented to the coroner as a as factual evidence.
Speaker 1: And there was a lot of assumptions based on the
Speaker 1: fact that they believe she was at the hotel having
Speaker 1: a drink that was one, and there's this parliamentary inquiry
Speaker 1: and a lot of people that disappeared, hitchhikers and different people.
Speaker 1: In reference to that particular case, you mentioned the paper
Speaker 1: Latform matter where a boyfriend and girlfriend disappeared. I think
Speaker 1: that might have been seventy nine or around that time
Speaker 1: as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very close, and they were last.
Speaker 1: Seen in the Green Bedford van. I remember that because
Speaker 1: when I was a local detective, I was put on
Speaker 1: the case and ended up at Mullum Bimbi and everywhere
Speaker 1: else trying to locate that van. But their mysteries, aren't
Speaker 1: they they're mysteries that we a.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you think it's generally it's not so unbelievable that
Speaker 2: you can't locate people, but to not locate distinctive vehicles
Speaker 2: as well is you know whatever happened to that van?
Speaker 3: Well, I learned a lot about mull and Bimby. I
Speaker 3: can tell.
Speaker 1: Turning up there in an unmarked police car I thought
Speaker 1: were fairly COVID and run up there and into a
Speaker 1: hippie commune and everyone just disappears in the bush and
Speaker 1: screaming out government here, government here, and like a Green
Speaker 1: Bedford van. I thought they would be pretty easy to locate,
Speaker 1: but I can assure you there was a lot of
Speaker 1: Bedford vans up up there and it was an interesting
Speaker 1: line of inquiry. But yeah, all these cases, is there
Speaker 1: one that jumps out to you, one that resulted you
Speaker 1: didn't see coming, like when you've sat down spoken to
Speaker 1: the families or seeing how that played out, or when
Speaker 1: you were researching any of the cases. Did it have
Speaker 1: a twist and turn that you didn't expect.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think Gary Conwall's case was like that actually
Speaker 2: went missing two years ago. We've just had the second anniversary.
Speaker 2: He went missing on his own property at Rookhurst near
Speaker 2: Gloucester in New South Wales, and I started thinking it
Speaker 2: was some of the family had approached me and said,
Speaker 2: we really like you to look into this story, and
Speaker 2: so I thought, oh, well, you know, it's an elderly
Speaker 2: man who's just gone missing in fairly rugged country Gloucester.
Speaker 2: Rookhursed area is very mountainous, thick bush landlots of thick lantana,
Speaker 2: old gold mines. I thought, oh, well, he's just wandered
Speaker 2: off on his own property. Perhaps he had early dementia.
Speaker 2: And then I discovered that he did have a sort
Speaker 2: of an acquired brain injury, had previously had a stroke,
Speaker 2: was having some confusion. So I thought, well, okay, that's
Speaker 2: a fairly clear cut case. And then when I started
Speaker 2: to talk to the family and I to I ended
Speaker 2: up talking to everybody in his life. I talked to
Speaker 2: his partner, his sister, his brother, his sons, his neighbors.
Speaker 2: I talked to absolutely everybody, and a clear picture began
Speaker 2: to form in my mind, and I thought, I think
Speaker 2: that this actually could be foul play, which was a
Speaker 2: complete surprise. I thought that it was absolutely a case
Speaker 2: of someone wandering off, and it was the middle of winter,
Speaker 2: it was very cold. He would have had hypothermia. But
Speaker 2: the more people I talked to, I began to be
Speaker 2: really concerned, and to the point where they had ordered
Speaker 2: the inquest. And I went to the coroner and I said,
Speaker 2: if you haven't, if the police haven't looked into this
Speaker 2: particular aspect of it, I think that they need to
Speaker 2: and I would like to. I gave the coroner the
Speaker 2: chapter that I had written, and I said, this is
Speaker 2: why I have concerns. And I knew that a particular
Speaker 2: person of interest had not been spoken to by police,
Speaker 2: and I said, I think that's a problem. And the
Speaker 2: coroner came back to me and said, I agree with you.
Speaker 2: I'm directing the police to reinvestigate it. And so they
Speaker 2: went back and I think that is happening as we speak.
Speaker 2: So it was I never expected that to happen. And
Speaker 2: even when they started telling me the stories about why
Speaker 2: this particular disagreement may have happened, I was thinking, oh, okay,
Speaker 2: you know, it's just is it an argument about a dog?
Speaker 2: Is it? You know what is? But then it turned
Speaker 2: much more sinister, and then events are still happening even
Speaker 2: today that make me think something very wrong has happened
Speaker 2: in that particular case. And his sons had concerns as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I think that leads to you know, you
Speaker 1: make assumptions. If you make the wrong assumption, then I'm
Speaker 1: saying you're making the assumption that I know this is
Speaker 1: someone that's wandered off. When that happens from a policing
Speaker 1: point of view, that can be when the real problems
Speaker 1: with in the investigation. If wrong assumptions are made are
Speaker 1: made at the start and the investigations not done thoroughly,
Speaker 1: information that evidence can be be lost. The teenage disappearance
Speaker 1: so that there's a chapter in your book about teenagers
Speaker 1: are disappearing. It's quite frightening how many how many people
Speaker 1: have disappeared as teenagers? And I'm taking this from your book,
Speaker 1: I think, so, I hope it's right. Thirty seven thousand
Speaker 1: teenagers gave missing each year for many reasons. That would
Speaker 1: be roughly we're talking across the nation. The fact that
Speaker 1: I didn't put into it. Most of them are found safely,
Speaker 1: almost all of the yeah, yeah, found safely. But the
Speaker 1: amount of homelessness for teenagers of some of young adults,
Speaker 1: so twelve to twenty four, twenty three percent of homelessness
Speaker 1: or twenty eight thousand age between twelve and twenty four.
Speaker 1: So I break that down, there's twenty eight thousand, two
Speaker 1: hundred homeless people age between twelve and twenty four. That's frightening,
Speaker 1: and I think that would play in a lot to
Speaker 1: missing people if you haven't got a home.
Speaker 2: Absolutely absolutely, And there's a case that's still is probably
Speaker 2: one of those ones that's going to haunt me for
Speaker 2: the rest of my life. Is a kid in Melbourne
Speaker 2: who was missing and his actually his social workers were
Speaker 2: on the phone to me saying, can you put this
Speaker 2: information out and I remember the social worker called me
Speaker 2: and she said, we know where he is, but the
Speaker 2: police won't go and pick him up. And that's part
Speaker 2: of the problem as well, because police hate dealing with
Speaker 2: these cases because there isn't a compulsion to return them
Speaker 2: to their parents, and sometimes if the kids refuse to
Speaker 2: go home. It is a very complicated and it's a
Speaker 2: situation a system that really needs an overhaul as well.
Speaker 2: But in this particular case, this kid was in a
Speaker 2: group high and had run away from the group home
Speaker 2: multiple times. They knew where he was, but police wouldn't
Speaker 2: go and pick him up because he was just you know,
Speaker 2: he would just run away again. And I ended up
Speaker 2: getting a phone number for this kid, and I spoke
Speaker 2: to him myself and said the social worker was trying
Speaker 2: to call TRIPLEO and even that wasn't working to go
Speaker 2: and pick up this kid. They knew where he was,
Speaker 2: and I said, where are you And he said, well,
Speaker 2: I'm with this older guy. And you know it's not
Speaker 2: great because he does bring all these men home and
Speaker 2: I have to do things to earn my keep here,
Speaker 2: and so in return for him looking after me, this
Speaker 2: is what I do. And this is what I have
Speaker 2: to do. And I said, you don't have to do that.
Speaker 2: You can go back. He said, I don't want to
Speaker 2: go back. Why would I go back here? I get
Speaker 2: drugs and I get food and you know, so why
Speaker 2: would I go back and get locked up? I'm not
Speaker 2: going to do that. And there was nothing I could say.
Speaker 2: I didn't know what to say in response to that.
Speaker 2: You know, as a as a mother, as a parent,
Speaker 2: as an older person, I can't say this is so
Speaker 2: bad for you. This is this is traumatic and wrong.
Speaker 2: And even though you hate being in the care home,
Speaker 2: that's where you need to be.
Speaker 1: It's it's sad that they choose that option, living with
Speaker 1: pedophile being abused. What we can provide you talk about
Speaker 1: and yeah, you're an advocate on helping people and in
Speaker 1: the missing person space, there needs to be more resources.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the failings, if there have
Speaker 1: been failings with policing, has been the under resourcing of
Speaker 1: what's needed to properly follow these things up. When kids
Speaker 1: are living like that. Society, we haven't got it right,
Speaker 1: have we. You can't have a kid living living like that.
Speaker 1: We've got to We've got to protect the protect the kids.
Speaker 2: Exactly, and you know, if it's not safe in their home,
Speaker 2: then they shouldn't be there. But there also needs to
Speaker 2: be an alternate system. I think the foster care system
Speaker 2: is also you know, it has its own issues. There
Speaker 2: shouldn't children shouldn't be in danger, children shouldn't be abused,
Speaker 2: and I don't know how to fix that. It's sort
Speaker 2: of you know, missing persons is my area. So I
Speaker 2: don't pretend to be an expert in child safety. My
Speaker 2: parents worked in child welfare in the sixties and seventies,
Speaker 2: and so it's something I've always been aware of. And
Speaker 2: in the book, I talk about Shiri Westall's case, and
Speaker 2: she had the best foster family in the world, but
Speaker 2: the trauma that she had experienced as a child still
Speaker 2: caused her issues throughout her whole life. And so when
Speaker 2: you've got these traumatized kids, it's almost impossible to I
Speaker 2: think Francis, her foster mother, said that. The social workers said,
Speaker 2: it is almost impossible. It's almost inevitable that these children
Speaker 2: will run away, will act out, will get into trouble
Speaker 2: because of the.
Speaker 1: Starting What's the circumstances of her disappearance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, she Ree was fifteen years old and in foster
Speaker 2: care from the age of five with all of her siblings.
Speaker 2: But I was thinking that, like William's case, I don't
Speaker 2: know that her status as a foster kid had anything
Speaker 2: to do with her disappearance. That's my opinion. I think
Speaker 2: that she was probably abducted from the street by an
Speaker 2: opportunistic person. It's a crime of opportunity. And she has
Speaker 2: never been seen again. And they did say she's a
Speaker 2: foster kid, she's run away. That's just not that. But
Speaker 2: then they're not listening to the family that say no,
Speaker 2: she she had plans for the future. She was enrolled
Speaker 2: in tafe. She was an amazingly talented young woman. She
Speaker 2: could play the piano my ears, she was artistic. This
Speaker 2: is not something she would have done. She was really
Speaker 2: close to her siblings, in contact with her siblings. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: she was a foster kid, but she'd been a foster
Speaker 2: kid for ten years in a great home.
Speaker 1: So yeah, thank you for mentioning the Willim Turrol matter,
Speaker 1: because I think that is quite often been misrepresented, the
Speaker 1: fact that William was a foster kid, and there was
Speaker 1: so much confusion about it, and I know the views
Speaker 1: they hear people. Yeah, constantly coming up and saying this
Speaker 1: or saying that, have just misread the situation, like there's
Speaker 1: nothing to be ashamed of. A child's a foster child
Speaker 1: and the environment that was raised. I always say on
Speaker 1: the wim Tural matter, we talk about the he was
Speaker 1: a foster child. See all the beautiful photos of him
Speaker 1: riding his bike and playing and all that. Ye, those
Speaker 1: photos are from the foster Yeah, and that was the
Speaker 1: environment that he disappeared in. But yeah, when when kids,
Speaker 1: you know, most recently we had that the young fellow
Speaker 1: down in South Australia, guss Lamont, disappeared, that it does
Speaker 1: capture the attention of the country because I think you
Speaker 1: look at children that young, that innocent and just disappeared
Speaker 1: and no answers, So it just goes on, doesn't it.
Speaker 2: And it's rare to have children go missing in this country,
Speaker 2: as you'd be aware, it's a really rare thing. From
Speaker 2: from William to Gas there's none. So Cleo she was located.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, not just rare here, rare in any similar
Speaker 1: type community is as we have here in the in Australia.
Speaker 1: And I've often been asked that and I think this
Speaker 1: way on why children around the age of three or four.
Speaker 1: Anyone that's had supervision or of three or four year
Speaker 1: old know that you can't turn your back for a
Speaker 1: moment because you don't know what they're going to get
Speaker 1: up to. And I think that's why it's so rare.
Speaker 1: There's not the opportunity if there has been something sinister involved,
Speaker 1: there's not the opportunity because we've got eyes on the children.
Speaker 1: That's why it's such a rare, rare situation. And then yeah,
Speaker 1: in willim circumstances, playing at the foster grandparents place, everyone
Speaker 1: feels safe having their child run around the yard in
Speaker 1: the grandparents place. So it's just that opportunity where eyes
Speaker 1: are often for a moment, and that's where they've disappeared.
Speaker 3: So that's why it.
Speaker 1: Doesn't happen happen very often, and I suppose that's what
Speaker 1: gets the attention of everyone talking about it. If you
Speaker 1: had to and you've been doing this now and working,
Speaker 1: and I don't know where you get the energy to
Speaker 1: do all this, Like it's you're making a lot of
Speaker 1: sacrifices because you're bringing in a lot of people's pain
Speaker 1: into your life. You've been doing it for over two decades,
Speaker 1: I think you're entitled to offer an opinion as to
Speaker 1: how could the whole situation with missing persons be improved.
Speaker 1: When we talk law enforcement, we talk every way, even
Speaker 1: the way that message that you would put out to
Speaker 1: the families if they've got concerns about someone that's disappeared.
Speaker 2: I think you've mentioned resourcing, and that's got to be
Speaker 2: right up there. It's got to be. You know, as
Speaker 2: a country, we're spending a lot of money on things
Speaker 2: that I think are frivolous. If I could use that term,
Speaker 2: you know, I think maybe.
Speaker 1: Sorry, can't we stop there? Are you accusing the government
Speaker 1: of wasting our taxes a little bit? A little bit, yeah.
Speaker 2: I think they could be better repurposed on policing. You know,
Speaker 2: the community is crying out not just for missing persons,
Speaker 2: but for youth crime and for the community is that
Speaker 2: doesn't feel safe. And the Parliamentary Inquiry is demanding that
Speaker 2: cases of cold cases are reinvestigated, but I don't know
Speaker 2: that there are police to do that, or you're going
Speaker 2: to pull them off current cases to look at old cases.
Speaker 2: Whereas there needs to be recruitment, there needs to be
Speaker 2: supporting policing because you're losing vast numbers of police, good
Speaker 2: police that I could mention, are no longer out there
Speaker 2: doing a job. And so there needs to be resourcing
Speaker 2: in staffing and resourcing in the very basics of DNA
Speaker 2: testing the remains that are in that are lying in
Speaker 2: Gleep morgue. So as I said to the other day,
Speaker 2: I'm making appeals for people that were found years ago
Speaker 2: but we don't know we don't know who they are.
Speaker 2: They haven't got a name.
Speaker 1: So we're talking a body or skeletal remains staying at
Speaker 1: the morgue that haven't been identified.
Speaker 2: Yep. Absolutely, and it's how awful to then one day
Speaker 2: say to the family, oh, you know, they were found
Speaker 2: in twenty and ten, but we just didn't have any
Speaker 2: money to do a DNA test on them. That's ridiculous,
Speaker 2: absolutely ridiculous. So we need to overhaul the labs. You know,
Speaker 2: the Queensland Lab was in such a mess and there's
Speaker 2: a massive backlog of sampling now and then there's cases
Speaker 2: in jeopardy because of potential contamination. So overhauling the labs
Speaker 2: and resourcing funding for all aspects of missing persons. We're
Speaker 2: a rich country and there's got to be money there
Speaker 2: somewhere to put into I just think giving a family
Speaker 2: a little bit of peace when the worst thing in
Speaker 2: the world. If you think the worst thing in the
Speaker 2: world is losing somebody that you love, that's got to
Speaker 2: be the worst thing in the world. That's worse than
Speaker 2: other disasters and terrible things that happen in the world.
Speaker 2: So if we can fit that, why wouldn't we if
Speaker 2: we have the ability to fix that. We're not a
Speaker 2: poor country.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and the things that you're talking about there, and
Speaker 1: I understand the monetary restraints with budgeting issues, but it's
Speaker 1: not a great deal of expense just to set the
Speaker 1: system up so and it should be nationwide, so there's
Speaker 1: not this you know, we're operating in silos in each state.
Speaker 1: That should be national across the country. But set up
Speaker 1: the systems and make sure that you know, and I'm
Speaker 1: not here and I don't get the sense you are
Speaker 1: seeing here beating up on the police. There's been mistakes made,
Speaker 1: which is understandable. Mistakes happen, But what we have we
Speaker 1: learned from those mistakes and making sure we prevent those
Speaker 1: mistakes from happening again. And I think we could set
Speaker 1: up a system it's complex in that each case is
Speaker 1: different and each person that disappears there's a different set
Speaker 1: of set of circumstances. But the process to document the
Speaker 1: initial report, the steps that need to be taken a
Speaker 1: pretty clear cut. It's not that complicated. It's pretty obvious
Speaker 1: what needs to be done if someone's been reported as
Speaker 1: missing and the inquiries, and that should be the benchmark.
Speaker 1: That should be the benchmark that every time that someone
Speaker 1: is recorded as a missing person, these things are done.
Speaker 2: Yeah, as I understand it, and maybe you can confirm
Speaker 2: this having worked there, As I understand it, all missing
Speaker 2: persons cases suspected homicides are reviewed every five years, so
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's still the case, but that's
Speaker 2: at the very minimum of what needs to happen. I
Speaker 2: actually think it should be kind of a cursory glance
Speaker 2: at it, at least yearly, and a phone call to
Speaker 2: the family saying, just wanted to double check you. We've
Speaker 2: still got your contact details, just want to reassure you
Speaker 2: that we haven't forgotten them. Just that communication that we
Speaker 2: were talking about before.
Speaker 1: Well, I worked in unsolved homicide as an inspector, and
Speaker 1: I didn't see it that way. Now there's been an overhaul,
Speaker 1: and there's been criticism, wide range of criticisms about how
Speaker 1: unsolved is dealt with, But it's something that I think
Speaker 1: we've got to understand, or when I say, where I'm
Speaker 1: talking to police, understand the families are unforgiving in regards
Speaker 1: to what inquiries are done with their loved ones, and
Speaker 1: there should be a system in place not attacking individuals.
Speaker 1: And even the command resources are limited. We haven't got
Speaker 1: unlimited resources, but I definitely think it could be the
Speaker 1: quality could be enhanced if the numbers were increased, but
Speaker 1: also having the people with the right experience investigating these
Speaker 1: unsolved homicides.
Speaker 2: Absolutely with a focus on compassion, not just yeah, your
Speaker 2: person's gone missing, you know, don't increase their distress. It's
Speaker 2: just have a little bit of you know, to you
Speaker 2: you know, one hundred and thirty missing persons reports today,
Speaker 2: police would become kind of a little bit immune to
Speaker 2: that whole process. But to that family, this is the
Speaker 2: only time in their whole life that they're going to
Speaker 2: walk into a police session and report someone as a
Speaker 2: missing person. So you need to that they need to
Speaker 2: recognize that that's a horrific thing that the person's doing
Speaker 2: and just a little bit of compassion towards them.
Speaker 1: I think if you say compassion the way that I
Speaker 1: tried to get that across, and it was taught to
Speaker 1: me when I was a younger detective or a younger
Speaker 1: police officer, and I tried to pass this on. Treat
Speaker 1: the person that comes in as you would want your
Speaker 1: family member to be treated. And yeah, when someone's phaning
Speaker 1: up and the loved one is missing and they might
Speaker 1: have slept worrying about what's happened. If you phone up
Speaker 1: and you've got the name of a police officer and
Speaker 1: the response is I know that police officer has gone
Speaker 1: on leave or whatever. Yeah, I can understand why families
Speaker 1: would get concerned. But I don't think anyone said it's
Speaker 1: out to add trauma two families. I don't think the
Speaker 1: police do. It's just something that if there have been mistakes,
Speaker 1: we need to need to overhaul it. And the type
Speaker 1: of stuff that you're talking about is practical and I
Speaker 1: think achievable that we could possibly do another thing that
Speaker 1: I just wanted to ask you this because I don't
Speaker 1: know where it stems from, but quite often now with technology,
Speaker 1: if someone disappears around the area in which you live.
Speaker 1: You moybile phone gets a text that look out for
Speaker 1: such and such a person. What was a genesis behind that?
Speaker 1: I think it's a great idea, But how did that
Speaker 1: come about? Do you have any understanding of that?
Speaker 2: Not a huge amount sort of technology isn't really my area.
Speaker 2: But I do think it's amazing. It's interesting to see
Speaker 2: the public reaction to that. It annoys people, and it
Speaker 2: annoys me that it annoys people like you're thinking, honestly,
Speaker 2: the amount of spam emails we get, this is an
Speaker 2: important one. People go, how do I blow this number
Speaker 2: so I don't get these? Like, no, no, these are
Speaker 2: really important.
Speaker 3: Day.
Speaker 1: I didn't realize it was annoying people. I thought that
Speaker 1: to me, it so like a good idea.
Speaker 2: Oh this text, And it was I don't know anything
Speaker 2: about this, Why are they texting me? Like? No, it's
Speaker 2: a very small thing that everybody can do, and it works.
Speaker 2: That's the thing. It actually works that they're able to
Speaker 2: send a specific geographical area a text message and people
Speaker 2: are going, okay, oh, well, okay, there's this missing person.
Speaker 2: Hang on a minute. I'm sitting at a bus stop
Speaker 2: and they're right here. That has happened, and people may
Speaker 2: see them walking down the street, a particularly an elderly person.
Speaker 2: If you see someone walking down the street in a
Speaker 2: dressing gown, you've got to think to yourself, all right,
Speaker 2: that's not quite right. So maybe just think, oh okay,
Speaker 2: and then you get this text saying you know missing
Speaker 2: eighty year old in your area. Oh okay, hang on
Speaker 2: a minute, I'm going to call the number that's on
Speaker 2: my text. It's a brilliant time.
Speaker 1: I think it idea and the credit to the police
Speaker 1: for initiating in that. But the community members, let's have
Speaker 1: a bit of a community feel here, or it's not
Speaker 1: that bigger impossitive. You're not sending out because someone hasn't
Speaker 1: come home in the past five minutes. Where is a person?
Speaker 1: There's obviously where there's concerns. If people want to reach
Speaker 1: out and find out what you do or get advice,
Speaker 1: what's the easiest way to get in contact with you?
Speaker 1: And you're going to regret that. You're going to regret
Speaker 1: that I've asked this, but I know that's what I'm
Speaker 1: here for.
Speaker 2: So yeah, through the Facebook page, it's if you send
Speaker 2: me a message, I'm there all the time. My husband
Speaker 2: said to me last night, it's seven point thirty. Why
Speaker 2: are you still talking to people? It's like, oh, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: I have to remember that I should have business hours,
Speaker 2: but I don't, so it's whenever I get a spam
Speaker 2: minute to answer somebody. Then I'm always available for advice
Speaker 2: or to get a missing person appeal out there, and
Speaker 2: I'm constantly up the website. So for long term missing persons,
Speaker 2: jump on there and have a look. It's all organized
Speaker 2: by state and by gender, and so people can look
Speaker 2: at New South Wales mail missing persons from now and
Speaker 2: from right back until the nineteen fifties, so every case
Speaker 2: you can imagine.
Speaker 1: Well, good on you. I don't know where you get
Speaker 1: the time, the energy. I hope you're looking after yourself.
Speaker 1: And you've also managed to write three books of missing,
Speaker 1: vanished and lost. I don't know where you get the
Speaker 1: time to do any of that. Your husband must be
Speaker 1: very understanding, as your children because putting a lot out there.
Speaker 1: But look, I think it's an important thing. I hope
Speaker 1: people that have listened to our conversation now get an
Speaker 1: appreciation of the type of emotion and dramas that come
Speaker 1: when someone disappears. So next time you hear of someone
Speaker 1: having gone missing, understand the pain that that causes. And
Speaker 1: that's a ripple effect too, isn't It just doesn't impact
Speaker 1: on one person, that can pass on the generations.
Speaker 2: Yep, and a whole community, a whole community is affected
Speaker 2: when the person goes missing.
Speaker 1: Well, keep up the good work, thank you so much,
Speaker 1: get some rest and yeah, but good luck to what
Speaker 1: you're doing there. I think it's a really important role
Speaker 1: that you've managed to carve out for yourself. And all
Speaker 1: the best for the future. And thanks very much for
Speaker 1: coming on.
Speaker 2: I catch killers, thank you and thank you for all
Speaker 2: your hard work. Great and if people say that, enough
Speaker 2: to you, but thank you for everything you've done.
Speaker 3: I appreciate it. Thank you all the best.