Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective see a side of life the average persons never
Speaker 1: 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 back to part two of my chat. We've retired
Speaker 1: Scotland yard detective Steve Kere. If you miss part one,
Speaker 1: Steve has given us a good understanding of the processes
Speaker 1: that go into place after his murder investigation team is
Speaker 1: called to a deceased talked about what happens at the
Speaker 1: crime scene, the importance of the crime scene information management,
Speaker 1: notifying the families, and all other aspects of homicide investigation.
Speaker 1: I really like Steve talking about standing still and just
Speaker 1: taking in the crime scene and getting a feel of it.
Speaker 1: And that's the thing that you can't teach. It something
Speaker 1: that you learn through years of experience and probably be
Speaker 1: shown by others that came before you. Let's get past
Speaker 1: the crime scene. Now where do you guys run your
Speaker 1: investigation from?
Speaker 2: So there are different police bases, so we call us.
Speaker 2: We don't call ourselves really, but the press tend to
Speaker 2: call the Scotland Dart Detectives. But nobody works out of
Speaker 2: Scotland Old anymore. Is shrunk.
Speaker 1: It does sound cool, but yeah, yeah, I wouldn't like
Speaker 1: Scotland Yard coming after.
Speaker 2: That's shrunk down to a really small building. Budget cuts
Speaker 2: everything got smaller, even the buildings, so we work out
Speaker 2: a different basis. I worked out a place called Lewisham
Speaker 2: Lusian Police Station in southeast London and we would have
Speaker 2: a section of the police station that was set aside
Speaker 2: for homicide and all that teams would be there. So
Speaker 2: you nominally you work at a police station, but that
Speaker 2: you're not connected to the police station in terms of
Speaker 2: local policing. It's just the building your workout.
Speaker 1: And we refer to them as a strikeforce room or
Speaker 1: an incident room that when things are going well, each
Speaker 1: police station has a room allocated that should be under
Speaker 1: lock and seal in case a murder or a serious
Speaker 1: investigation comes through, and they've got computers in there and
Speaker 1: it's all right to go and ready to set up.
Speaker 1: But I found running homicide investigations, it's crucial to have
Speaker 1: a good functioning strikeforce room or investigation room, a place
Speaker 1: where you've got all your team together, a place where
Speaker 1: you've got your computers, you've got all your paperwork set up.
Speaker 1: Would you agree with that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, as is permanent. So we have as the MII.
Speaker 2: So it's the major instant room, and it's where all
Speaker 2: the homes computers are and you have permanent staff there.
Speaker 2: They're not police officers, they're civilians whose job it is
Speaker 2: to maintain all the information that goes on to homes.
Speaker 2: And yeah, that's central, that's central to it. So and
Speaker 2: then you'd have a different office called the squad office
Speaker 2: where the detectives would work out of. And a really
Speaker 2: important element is that at some point at the beginning
Speaker 2: of a murder, every day as a murder goes on,
Speaker 2: maybe not as regular, but everybody comes together. Everybody from
Speaker 2: the typists to all the detectives come together and share
Speaker 2: in information, and that's really important.
Speaker 1: I learned very early in my career as a homicide detective.
Speaker 1: I could tell and even when I was a senior
Speaker 1: detective running investigation, so I could almost tell the quality
Speaker 1: of investigation by the manner in which briefings were done,
Speaker 1: briefings in that incident room, detective's room, squad room.
Speaker 2: Whatever you want to call it.
Speaker 1: And I had some people and who I looked up
Speaker 1: to as just great detective and they had an ability
Speaker 1: to put all the information in a briefing, so everyone
Speaker 1: felt like they were contributing to what's gone on, summarizing
Speaker 1: what we know at this point in time, and explaining
Speaker 1: the lines of inquiry and information and having not a
Speaker 1: free for all, like someone was running the briefing, but
Speaker 1: inviting everyone to have some form of input. What's your
Speaker 1: thoughts on the importance of briefings, because I think they're crucial.
Speaker 2: No, one hundred percent. So if you've got twenty five
Speaker 2: detectives all running off in different directions, they need to
Speaker 2: know what everybody else is doing and just as importantly,
Speaker 2: how what they're doing fits in with everyone else. So
Speaker 2: just as example, if you've got someone who's doing the
Speaker 2: CCTV and then you've got if they understand what the witnesses,
Speaker 2: officers the information they're coming back with, what the witnesses
Speaker 2: are saying, what they've seen, the description of the suspect,
Speaker 2: et cetera. Makes their job much easier. And there may
Speaker 2: be something on the CCTV that wouldn't on its own,
Speaker 2: wouldn't make sense, but when you fit in with everything else.
Speaker 2: I'm a bit of a sci fi geek, and in
Speaker 2: Star Trek they've got at this alien race called the
Speaker 2: Borg and they're like a high mind where everybody knows
Speaker 2: what everyone else is thinking. And that's a stage where
Speaker 2: you want to try and reach. You want to be
Speaker 2: able to get to a stage where everybody knows what
Speaker 2: everybody else is doing. So that so it all does
Speaker 2: fit in, because if you're all pulling off in different directions,
Speaker 2: it's going to be much harder to solve the crime.
Speaker 2: And the only way, really, you know what cops a
Speaker 2: like area if you put something in a document, they
Speaker 2: ain't going to read it. So if you've got them
Speaker 2: in a room and they're all talking to each other.
Speaker 2: They're much more likely to digest what's going on, and
Speaker 2: they crucial and if you don't hold those meetings, you
Speaker 2: don't have that cohesion and you make it much more
Speaker 2: difficult for yourself to solve the crime.
Speaker 1: One hundred percent. I think bringing everyone into that room,
Speaker 1: and obviously it was sometimes that people couldn't make it,
Speaker 1: but you'd have someone that they're working with that could
Speaker 1: make the briefing, and I would go around the room
Speaker 1: like if I was running the briefing. Okay, this is
Speaker 1: what we know at this point in time. A lady's
Speaker 1: body has been found in Parkland. We've got witnesses, have
Speaker 1: been interviewed, but no one saw what happened post more
Speaker 1: than result is of the pears. She's died of a
Speaker 1: gunshot wound. This is what we know at this point
Speaker 1: in time. And then I'd go to you, Steve. You
Speaker 1: might be coordinating the CCTV footage. What have we got
Speaker 1: from the CCTV footage. There might be another person that's
Speaker 1: looking at the canvassing aspects. You've interviewed the person that
Speaker 1: found the body, what information came from that person, And
Speaker 1: you're going round the room. So everyone's input in and
Speaker 1: we're all on the same page. I do like star Trek,
Speaker 1: but I hadn't really thought of homicide investigation in the
Speaker 1: form of a ball. But I take on board what
Speaker 1: you're saying. But it is all that information. The good
Speaker 1: leaders that I saw, they would encourage everyone to have
Speaker 1: an input. And it could be some new kid that's
Speaker 1: just come into the homicide sitting in the back of
Speaker 1: the room and put his hand up nervously and say, hey, boss,
Speaker 1: if you consider such and such, invariably it was a
Speaker 1: good idea, if it was a good idea, and so
Speaker 1: of course I considered that that's not but that input
Speaker 1: and the other thing. I think those type of briefings
Speaker 1: help everyone feels like they're part of a team and
Speaker 1: everyone feels like they're contributing, because otherwise, if they're kept
Speaker 1: in isolation, that's hard to motivate people if they don't
Speaker 1: know the bigger picture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm saying, if you're a good leader, you have
Speaker 2: to create an environment that people feel comfortable to be
Speaker 2: able to speak up and say as you say. Because
Speaker 2: everyone when I was talking about that that the the
Speaker 2: the analogy of a car, where it's the it's the
Speaker 2: dyes that are directing it, and the d s's are
Speaker 2: the pedals, and the dcs are the engine. That car
Speaker 2: won't work. If it was just the dill it wouldn't move.
Speaker 2: Which a car, it won't move. The ds is will
Speaker 2: push it the pedal it would work. Everything has to
Speaker 2: work together, and a murder is not solved by on
Speaker 2: the new, on the on the On these drama dramatizations,
Speaker 2: you see the DC idea run around solving murders that
Speaker 2: they don't solve murders. The team sold the murder. No
Speaker 2: one individual detective solves the murder. Even if you come
Speaker 2: up with a really good bit of evidence, it still
Speaker 2: has to fit in with everything else, and it still
Speaker 2: has to get to a stage where it gets past
Speaker 2: the CPS. It gets it's not going to be ripped
Speaker 2: apart of court, So no one person can solve the murder.
Speaker 2: It has to be a team. And I've been in meetings.
Speaker 2: One of the most important people to having a meeting
Speaker 2: I always thought was were the typists who put all
Speaker 2: the information onto the computer because they read every single document.
Speaker 2: I didn't read every single document, and they'll be there
Speaker 2: and they'd be, oh, yeah, I remember I typed on
Speaker 2: a message from a member of the public who said
Speaker 2: I hadn't seen that, and you know what I mean,
Speaker 2: but the fact that you've seen him put it on,
Speaker 2: that could be really important. So everybody should feel comfortable
Speaker 2: enough to say to put a hand up, like you say,
Speaker 2: the new detective or anybody is.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you've had people on your team that
Speaker 1: you call the typist. We had that at one stage.
Speaker 1: They eliminated that. So police are putting it all on,
Speaker 1: which I think is a bad thing. Our skill set
Speaker 1: could be better utilized. But that's that's just the way
Speaker 1: we approach it. But some of the analysts I've worked with,
Speaker 1: they're the ones of the attention to detail. And I
Speaker 1: swear to god the crime wouldn't be solved without the
Speaker 1: analysts that just got the ability to retain this attention
Speaker 1: to detail. And I'd be talking and no, that's not
Speaker 1: what happened. This is a right, sorry correction. Like attention
Speaker 1: to detail, they're crucial to a good homicide investigation team,
Speaker 1: I believe.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So when I first joined the murder teams, it
Speaker 2: was before the our government decided to absolutely rack policing
Speaker 2: in the UK. But when I first joined, we had
Speaker 2: an embedded intelligence analyst who is not a police officer, civilian,
Speaker 2: really really highly trained in how to use different software
Speaker 2: and methods for collecting intelligence information. And one of the
Speaker 2: most important roles was a timeline. So if you've got
Speaker 2: thousands of bits of information, if you overlay them on
Speaker 2: a timeline, suddenly things become more You can see how
Speaker 2: different events relate to each other, how to build up
Speaker 2: to a murder happened, looking for an important trigger in
Speaker 2: the build up to a murder. There's all different aspects
Speaker 2: of a crime that you don't jump out of you
Speaker 2: if you don't lay them in that timeline. And that's
Speaker 2: one of the jobs of an intelligence analyst. And they
Speaker 2: were really fundamental, crucial to our investigations. And then when
Speaker 2: the budget cuts came in, they took them off of
Speaker 2: their murder teams and they centralized them, and so you
Speaker 2: would have an analyst attached to your saying that it
Speaker 2: wasn't the same. They weren't embedded with you, they weren't
Speaker 2: living and breathing the murder like we were, and our
Speaker 2: investigations one hundred percent suffered because of that decision. It
Speaker 2: all comes down some money, and that really, really, really
Speaker 2: pisses me off. Investigating a murder should not be about money,
Speaker 2: but sadly that's the world we live in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the problems you're talking about are not this similar,
Speaker 1: and I've been out for a couple of years now,
Speaker 1: but I know the situation you're talking about where people
Speaker 1: above didn't understand the value of I need this analyst
Speaker 1: working with me full time. I need this. I need that.
Speaker 1: You're not asking it for the fun of it. You're
Speaker 1: asking it because this is what's needed to solve a murder.
Speaker 1: When we talk lines of inquiry, people often say, as
Speaker 1: a detective, do you have a hunch, And I say, well,
Speaker 1: not a hunch. When you're looking at a line of inquiry,
Speaker 1: a hypothesis or you might throw out this maybe this
Speaker 1: person got murdered because he had a gambling habit or
Speaker 1: something along like that line. That's a hypothesis.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 1: It's a line of inquiry that needs to be explored.
Speaker 1: Do you want to just talk us through your mindset.
Speaker 1: We've got you. We've taken you from the crime scene.
Speaker 1: You've done the canvassinge of the crime scene, gathered all
Speaker 1: the information, you've done your briefing, you've set up your
Speaker 1: intint room or strikeforce room. But then you've got to
Speaker 1: get to a point. Okay, which direction do I take
Speaker 1: this investigation in? What's what's your mind thoughts? So what's
Speaker 1: the processes that you'd go through with investigations at that stage?
Speaker 2: Yeah, hypotheses are really important. So if you've got all
Speaker 2: these detectives running around investigating stuff, they have to investigate something.
Speaker 2: You can't. You can't ask them to go. You can't
Speaker 2: say to the CCTV officer, go and get me CCTV.
Speaker 2: You can't say to the phone's officer, go and get
Speaker 2: me phone's data. What you need to do is investigate something.
Speaker 2: That's where hypotheses come in. So so essentially what you're doing,
Speaker 2: you're you're looking at the likely scenarios of how why
Speaker 2: this murder would have happened, and you investigate them. So,
Speaker 2: if so the person was killed because they because they've
Speaker 2: got a rival drugs gang or something along those lines,
Speaker 2: because they deal dealing drugs and it could be a
Speaker 2: rival gang, or it could be a robbery or it
Speaker 2: could so if you if you come up with a
Speaker 2: likely scenarios, you can then investigate that. So you can
Speaker 2: if it is if he is a drug dealer, Well
Speaker 2: who is who else is dealing drugs in the area.
Speaker 2: Have there been any recent robberies on drug dealers? Does it?
Speaker 2: Has he had any fallings out? And so what you
Speaker 2: need to do you need to investigate a lightly scenario
Speaker 2: which will then open up potential evidence. You can't just that.
Speaker 2: There has to be a focus to investigation, and that's
Speaker 2: where hypotheses come in. And they're not made up. Then
Speaker 2: they're not thinking all like fanciful ideas of what could
Speaker 2: have happened. They're very very simple. So imagine a scenario
Speaker 2: where a dead body is found in the woods and
Speaker 2: all you know is this person has been killed in
Speaker 2: the woods, and you know, we know nothing else about
Speaker 2: them or their lifestyle or anything else. All we know
Speaker 2: is you got a dead body in the woods. So
Speaker 2: you have to investigate something. So if you set your
Speaker 2: hypotheses as broad as this, that they were killed by
Speaker 2: someone they knew, or they were killed by someone they
Speaker 2: didn't know. So if you start off your investigation but
Speaker 2: they were killed by someone they knew, you could so
Speaker 2: then you so then you investigate their life. Who is
Speaker 2: in their life? Who have they had any issues? Is
Speaker 2: there anybody in their life that's threatened them in the past,
Speaker 2: that kind of thing, or they were killed by someone
Speaker 2: they didn't know. If they're killed by someone they didn't know,
Speaker 2: then it would be someone in the area. What's been
Speaker 2: going on in the area, as there been any robberies,
Speaker 2: any for previous attacks, anyone hanging around. Then as you
Speaker 2: get more information, your hypotheses can be more more focused.
Speaker 2: But whatever happens, whatever scenario comes, it will stem from
Speaker 2: one of those two things. They were killed by someone
Speaker 2: they know, someone they didn't know. So in the meantime,
Speaker 2: you're not missing anything. You're you're not missing a line
Speaker 2: of inquiry that that you could think, oh, we didn't
Speaker 2: do that well, and now it's too late. And then
Speaker 2: there's more information comes in. Supposing this person that's there
Speaker 2: I don't know is in a volatile relationship with someone,
Speaker 2: then you can you can have a specific hypothesis around that.
Speaker 2: But in the meantime, you've not lost anything. You and
Speaker 2: and more information comes in you can develop and change hypotheses.
Speaker 2: But they're really important because I say, detectives need to
Speaker 2: be focused, they need to investigate something, and you're giving
Speaker 2: them a starting point to investigate.
Speaker 1: Okay, I think you explained it very well, Because you've
Speaker 1: got to start somewhere and point them in the direction.
Speaker 1: The confirmation bias can cloud your judgment. Let's speak hypothetically.
Speaker 1: If a woman's body is found in the woods as
Speaker 1: you described, and being in a volatile relationship with her
Speaker 1: ex partner, confirmation bias can be dangerous if that's all
Speaker 1: you're looking for. That you think, okay, that's my hypothesis.
Speaker 1: They're in a domestic situation, they've had a falling out,
Speaker 1: he's probably killed her, and you concentrate there. What's the
Speaker 1: dangers of confirmation bias in an investigation?
Speaker 2: Quite simple. If you're looking over here and the murder's
Speaker 2: over there, you'll miss them. And so in that scenario,
Speaker 2: you would run a number of hypotheses. One would be
Speaker 2: that the woman was killed by a partner, but simultaneously
Speaker 2: investigate that she wasn't. Now on the flip side of
Speaker 2: that, there's a chance is it's not the partner, So you
Speaker 2: have to investigate both. And confirmation bias, I think is
Speaker 2: the worst enemy of a detective. If you get caught
Speaker 2: in that trap, the results from that can be horrendous.
Speaker 2: So I always refer to a case we had in
Speaker 2: the UK. It was a lady by named Rachel Michel.
Speaker 2: She was nineteen years old, she had a young child.
Speaker 2: She was on a place called Wimbledon Common and she
Speaker 2: was brutally murdered in front of her front of a
Speaker 2: young child. And the police investigated at the time, this
Speaker 2: was the early nineties, brought in a criminal profiler and
Speaker 2: he came up with a profile that essentially was it's
Speaker 2: their local weirdo. And there was a local weirdo that
Speaker 2: happened to be in the park at that time, known
Speaker 2: by the name of Colin Stag, and the police went
Speaker 2: hard for him. They even introduced a female undercover officers
Speaker 2: to try and get him to confess to the murder.
Speaker 2: They went all out. They were absolutely convinced it was
Speaker 2: Colin Stag and it got to the point where they
Speaker 2: even charged him with murder. So he was going to
Speaker 2: trial and as soon as he got to call the
Speaker 2: judge through out and Colin Stagg was acquitted of the murder.
Speaker 2: And he did not commit this murder. It wasn't him,
Speaker 2: but they were absolutely convinced, and they didn't they ignored
Speaker 2: that it could have been anyone else. When in actual
Speaker 2: fact it was a man by the name of Robert Napper,
Speaker 2: and a number of a year a year or two
Speaker 2: later after he killed Rachel, he in almost a ritualistic,
Speaker 2: really brutal murder. He killed a young mum and a
Speaker 2: young five year old child. And it was only later
Speaker 2: on when some DNA came back on the Rachel and
Speaker 2: thecal murder they identified Robert Napper. Now I'm not saying
Speaker 2: that the police if they had hadn't an investigated Steak,
Speaker 2: that they would have got Napper, but by not looking
Speaker 2: for that, but they were never going to get him.
Speaker 2: And the result of that is that a young mum
Speaker 2: and a child brutally brutally murdered when there's a chance,
Speaker 2: I'm not saying it would have happened, but there's a
Speaker 2: chance if they hadn't have been so caught up in
Speaker 2: Stag they might have got to NAPA. And that's the
Speaker 2: danger that can happen when you'd convince yourself and what
Speaker 2: you end up doing confirmation bias. Essentially, what you're doing
Speaker 2: you've made up your mind and you go and go
Speaker 2: look for information to prove yourself right, rather than look
Speaker 2: for information that points to who the killer is and
Speaker 2: once you get caught up in that trap, as I say,
Speaker 2: the consequences can be as dire as thats was what
Speaker 2: happened to someone for and HASMI.
Speaker 1: That's a horrendous example, but I can see how it happens.
Speaker 1: And that's the pressure of homicide investigation. If you get
Speaker 1: it wrong, Yeah, there's consequences. If you get it wrong,
Speaker 1: someone might get away with murder you. I don't think
Speaker 1: there's any fair mind the detective that wants to see
Speaker 1: someone put a way that hasn't done the crime. I
Speaker 1: think that anyone with a fair mind would be horrified
Speaker 1: by that scenario. Sometimes we'd have someone that really looked
Speaker 1: good for it. It might be used to we're thinking, yeah,
Speaker 1: he's good for it, and they would have inquiries trying
Speaker 1: to disprove it before we move forward on it. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's where the facts take you. And I think that's
Speaker 1: an important thing as a dejective that you can't Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can have your your theories, I call them case theories.
Speaker 1: This might happen, but you've got to follow the facts
Speaker 1: and you've got to look at it objectively, and that
Speaker 1: confirmation bias is dangerous. That you've got to take a
Speaker 1: step away and just make sure that you're looking at
Speaker 1: it objectively.
Speaker 2: Yes, so what you said earlier is so important. So
Speaker 2: what you need to do is as well as trying
Speaker 2: to You're not you're not trying to prove a person
Speaker 2: committed a murder. You're gathering the evidence for someone else
Speaker 2: to make the decision. That's your job. Your your job
Speaker 2: is to gather the information to go to court for
Speaker 2: that jury to make a decision on someone's guilt. And
Speaker 2: you have to test both sides. You can't. You can't
Speaker 2: just just look for the evidence that helps you in
Speaker 2: your case. You have to look for both sides because
Speaker 2: you're not judge a jury. You're you're looking you're and
Speaker 2: what you said, they're about trying to prove that they didn't.
Speaker 2: That's a really important element. Well, what if we're wrong,
Speaker 2: And when it comes to the decision making, looking for
Speaker 2: what if I'm wrong is such an important part of
Speaker 2: that process because you might be wrong. And you told
Speaker 2: me earlier about hunches. I think they're the most dangerous
Speaker 2: thing in the world. I mean, yeah, you do get
Speaker 2: as a detective, you do start to get intuition and
Speaker 2: you get feelings for things. But you can never guarantee
Speaker 2: that's right. And if you place too much emphasis on
Speaker 2: your gut feeling and you're wrong, that's where that's where
Speaker 2: you end up going down the wrong avenue and you're
Speaker 2: chasing the wrong person.
Speaker 1: The hunches have got to be overlaid with the facts. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't have a hunch and just run
Speaker 1: on a hunch. And I've seen people do it and
Speaker 1: it can take it in the in the wrong direction.
Speaker 1: When I get complicated investigations where there's a lot of suspects,
Speaker 1: three eras I look at is opportunity, capability and motive.
Speaker 1: And to help me cut through, we might have hundreds,
Speaker 1: truly hundreds of potential suspects in a case, so opportunity
Speaker 1: capability and motive opportunity, we might be able to eliminate
Speaker 1: one hundred of these suspects because they are overseas, are
Speaker 1: in prison at the time, so they didn't have the
Speaker 1: opportunity capability. Would they be capable of committing the crime?
Speaker 1: Are they physically capable of committing the crime, has a
Speaker 1: history of it, and their motive And I put motive
Speaker 1: that is the last because sometimes you solve murders without
Speaker 1: even knowing the motive. Sometimes it's you're wishing you the
Speaker 1: motive you don't know. Sometimes the crooks don't even know
Speaker 1: the motive. I think on occasions, how do you break
Speaker 1: down when you've got a there's a whole range of suscepts.
Speaker 1: It might be a child murder, it might be a
Speaker 1: gangland murder. How do you cut through and prioritize what
Speaker 1: lines of inquiry you or who you start to look
Speaker 1: at first.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so we don't use it on all murders, but
Speaker 2: we have a method known as TIE. So they change
Speaker 2: what the TIE stands for. It used to be traced
Speaker 2: to eliminate, to tracing the eliminate. Now I think it's trace, interview, evaluate,
Speaker 2: but they change the words, but it's the same thing.
Speaker 2: So essentially, you've got a list of people, and that
Speaker 2: list could be I don't know, the last person that's
Speaker 2: sort of victim alive, people that have had issues with
Speaker 2: a victim, people in the area at the time, people
Speaker 2: last in contact, whatever it is. You come up with
Speaker 2: a criteria that you're going to form this list and
Speaker 2: then and then the important part is your elimination. How
Speaker 2: am I going to what am I going to use
Speaker 2: to eliminate them. Have I got a description of the
Speaker 2: suspect and I can use that as a basis because
Speaker 2: they clearly aren't suspectause they don't fit the description, as
Speaker 2: you say, were they imprison were they were they not
Speaker 2: in the area at the time, kind of play them elsewhere.
Speaker 2: And what that does is you can then start to
Speaker 2: prioritize who you look at. That doesn't mean your elimination
Speaker 2: regard to you has to be careful, because you don't
Speaker 2: want eliminate someone, and it is that it has to
Speaker 2: be really well thought out. And then and then because
Speaker 2: you can't you had a fewer people than we did.
Speaker 2: I mean, we had twenty five people on a murder team.
Speaker 2: If you had closer to ten, you can't. You can't
Speaker 2: investigate everyone at the same time. If you really resources
Speaker 2: of finance, you have to prioritize. So then you'd be
Speaker 2: a case of right, we look at the person at
Speaker 2: the top and go down. Then it might be that
Speaker 2: you get warrants for the houses, you interview them, you
Speaker 2: arrest them, whatever it is, but you need you need
Speaker 2: to investigate them all one at a time. Thankfully, those
Speaker 2: murders aren't. That's not the norm many many murders are
Speaker 2: much more simple to solve, but you get those ones
Speaker 2: that are really difficult.
Speaker 1: So the process of breaking it down is prioritize and
Speaker 1: then eliminate and then okay, we've got rid of the
Speaker 1: number one suspect. We'll go to the next one and
Speaker 1: work your way down. That's how when I had ones
Speaker 1: that I felt overwhelmed with, That's that's how how I
Speaker 1: approached it. Quite often a difficult stage in the homicide
Speaker 1: investigation is at what stage do you move on the suspect,
Speaker 1: Like what stays you declared that he's a he or
Speaker 1: her is a suspect? Or do you arrest a person
Speaker 1: now if it's a serial killer or the person might
Speaker 1: cause harm to someone else. Sometimes the pressures on talk
Speaker 1: us through your thoughts on the timing of the arrest
Speaker 1: of a suspect.
Speaker 2: I was always a fan of an early arrest, and
Speaker 2: in the UK I don't always like in Australia. So
Speaker 2: I know I've gone over and done talks in America
Speaker 2: and when I when I'm chatting to detectives over there,
Speaker 2: that's their their bar for arrest is much higher than
Speaker 2: us in the UK, as is quite low, So you
Speaker 2: need two things. You need to suspect a crime has
Speaker 2: been committed. We're investigating the murder, that's an easy one.
Speaker 2: And you need to suspect the person is guilty of here.
Speaker 2: And that level of suspicion is really low. I mean,
Speaker 2: it could be and it's and it's subjective anyway.
Speaker 1: So braving on the mind of the police officer exactly one.
Speaker 2: And so how did you quantify that I suspected he
Speaker 2: was guilty. I can justify it. It could be. It
Speaker 2: could be the tiniest little thing. But earlier bests quite
Speaker 2: often lead on to information and evidence that you wouldn't
Speaker 2: have got otherwise. So as an example, so we investigated
Speaker 2: there was a tragic case. It was an arson attack
Speaker 2: on a family home and it was a mum and
Speaker 2: her four children. There were two older boys who were
Speaker 2: sort of in their twenties, a girl of twenty one
Speaker 2: who is at UNI, a fifteen year old daughter who's
Speaker 2: at school. And when we were investigating what may have happened,
Speaker 2: we used hypotheses and which one of this family is
Speaker 2: likely to be and so we're looking at the family,
Speaker 2: which one of the family is likely to be targeted? Well,
Speaker 2: they were all really decent people. There was nothing in
Speaker 2: their lifestyle that would lead to that. They were all
Speaker 2: really decent people, so there was nothing in their lifestyle
Speaker 2: that would indicate why someone would attack them in this way. Basically,
Speaker 2: it's two o'clock in the morning, petrol poured through their
Speaker 2: letter box, set a light and the moment what the
Speaker 2: oldest son managed to get out the window. The two
Speaker 2: sisters got caught in the fire and the youngest son
Speaker 2: got caught and by the time we picked it up
Speaker 2: it wasn't They hadn't died, so it was it wasn't
Speaker 2: looking good, so it wasn't a murder inquiry at the beginning,
Speaker 2: but it was an attemptive murder. So we were looking
Speaker 2: at things like had they had any fall ups with people,
Speaker 2: any incidents within their life? They were Asian, so it
Speaker 2: was was it racially motivated? Was was this attack because
Speaker 2: of their color? Was it a mistaken identity? Had there
Speaker 2: been in the who lived next door to them? Could
Speaker 2: it have been that somebody else was targeted they just
Speaker 2: went to the wrong house. Is it Have there been
Speaker 2: any other incidents in the area and a nactual fact
Speaker 2: there were there have been some arsenal attacks and there
Speaker 2: was a gang, an Afghan Afghan gang that were using
Speaker 2: arsenals at all to arrested some of them, but we
Speaker 2: were really struggling to come up with any any kind
Speaker 2: of motive, and sadly, the two daughters died, so the
Speaker 2: fifteen year old girl and the twenty one year old
Speaker 2: they succumbed to their injuries. So it was now a
Speaker 2: murder inquiry, and the family aison offices say that it
Speaker 2: was so important when you build up that picture of
Speaker 2: their life. They were at the hospital with the family
Speaker 2: and the youngest girl, Malaya, she had been in this
Speaker 2: kind of school ground, school playground type relationship. It wasn't
Speaker 2: it wasn't a relationship. I think this boy had asked
Speaker 2: to go out of it. She said yes, and she
Speaker 2: said no, something something as simple as that. And because
Speaker 2: we were really struggling, we had no we had no
Speaker 2: clues that would be of any motive that we could
Speaker 2: have found. It was there only one. Was there only
Speaker 2: one that she had had just fallen out with this boy.
Speaker 2: So we took that decision to make the early arrest
Speaker 2: and I went there. I arrested him. I looked him
Speaker 2: in the eye and told him he's being arrested for murder,
Speaker 2: nothing back from him, And for me, that was a
Speaker 2: really important part of any I always tried to be
Speaker 2: there for the arrest, if I tried to do the
Speaker 2: rest myself, or if not, I tried to be there,
Speaker 2: because looking someone in the eye and giving him those
Speaker 2: words can give you such a clue as to as
Speaker 2: to am I on the right track. I've got nothing
Speaker 2: back from this kid, nothing at all. And we brought
Speaker 2: him in, interviewed him, denied any knowledge of it. It
Speaker 2: got bailed out in a process. We'd taken his phone,
Speaker 2: his laptop, et cetera. And of course so late we've
Speaker 2: got a phone call from the lab who'd been going
Speaker 2: through his stuff to say that we've got I mean,
Speaker 2: it was an excited phone call, and he said and
Speaker 2: the engineer told us that the day before the murder,
Speaker 2: he'd googled how to burn somebody's house down. So we'd
Speaker 2: gone from thinking, well, we've got nothing, well, we'll arrest
Speaker 2: him anyway, and then we'll see what evidence that turns up,
Speaker 2: and from that it just it just completely opened up.
Speaker 2: So and then from there we can build on his
Speaker 2: phone evidence and there's loads of evidence and were then
Speaker 2: we were in no doubt whatsoever. And then he was
Speaker 2: due to fly back to Pakistan, so he's blue lights
Speaker 2: asirens to get there. Rearrested him and this time wasn't
Speaker 2: going anywhere and ended up getting convicted of both murders.
Speaker 2: But so so first off on motive, so your grounds
Speaker 2: of arrest, you're not you're not looking for the evidence
Speaker 2: that we're convictim, just looking for that vision. And the
Speaker 2: early arrest can open up all sorts of avenues. When
Speaker 2: you're searching somebody's house, you take and things are just
Speaker 2: simple things like when like I said earlier on about
Speaker 2: when someone's in a friends with knife attack, they might
Speaker 2: have injuries, like injuries to the hand that will start
Speaker 2: to heal if you don't get to them early. They
Speaker 2: might have bruises on their body where they've been in
Speaker 2: a fight, which will start to go. If you don't
Speaker 2: get to them early, they've got chance to destroy evidence.
Speaker 2: So an early arrest I always I would much rather
Speaker 2: have an earlier rest and be wrong than dither. And
Speaker 2: by the time you actually get to them, that evidence
Speaker 2: is gone. You might even know it because you would
Speaker 2: never you'd never know it was there in the first place.
Speaker 2: But you've got so much more chance of missing evidence,
Speaker 2: so an early arrest and if you're wrong, all right,
Speaker 2: yeah it's not it's not. You don't you don't. You
Speaker 2: don't arrest people willy nilly because it is a big
Speaker 2: thing arresting someone for a murder, so you have to
Speaker 2: give it a lot of thought. But if the grounds
Speaker 2: are there, then then make the earli arrest and try
Speaker 2: and get hold of the evidence.
Speaker 1: And Steve, I know they're tough decisions. We've had people
Speaker 1: in the charge room with arrest to them and we're
Speaker 1: going to let them go, and we're running out of
Speaker 1: our custody time, the custody time, so yeah, it's really
Speaker 1: coming down do we arrest them or do we charge them?
Speaker 1: They're hard decisions, aren't they, and that you're making them
Speaker 1: under under pressure, and you know that those decisions that
Speaker 1: you make are going to be scrutinized. They're going to
Speaker 1: be scrutinized big time, because yeah, I have a few
Speaker 1: people that play guilty to murder, but most people will
Speaker 1: defend it at court though, and and then mail appeal
Speaker 1: it after you've convicted them, and then you know you'll
Speaker 1: be five years down the track after they've already been convicted,
Speaker 1: you'll be back in court. But sometimes you've got to
Speaker 1: make those hard decisions. We keep what's called the commander's
Speaker 1: log or an investigation log here and the tough, high
Speaker 1: profile investigations I've worked on. I'm meticulous in the way
Speaker 1: that I keep the log or the decisions I make
Speaker 1: and that and they might look back with the benefit
Speaker 1: of hindsight and say, well, that was the wrong decision,
Speaker 1: But at the time I made the decision, this was
Speaker 1: the information I had had at hand. What's your thoughts
Speaker 1: on keeping you your record? So now you talked in
Speaker 1: part one about that even at the crime soon you're
Speaker 1: keeping logs. But I would do that during the course
Speaker 1: of an investigation, yea one hundred percent.
Speaker 2: So when a murder happens, senior officer will open the
Speaker 2: decision log. We call it just exactly sounds the same thing.
Speaker 2: So it's a yes decision log. It's like a self
Speaker 2: carbonated book. You write a decision in and so when
Speaker 2: you're recording it, you're not just recording what decision you made.
Speaker 2: You need to you need to record why you're making
Speaker 2: a decision, what what what is the information I had
Speaker 2: that led me to make that decision. Because what's what's
Speaker 2: likely to happen is you're going to have to be
Speaker 2: asked to justify that decision in court, which could be
Speaker 2: a year two, it could be it could be ten
Speaker 2: years later for you know, and you're being asked to
Speaker 2: justify the decision, and you will have no idea why
Speaker 2: you made it. What did I know at that time?
Speaker 2: If you haven't written it down, you will never remember it.
Speaker 2: So I'm making this what what what do I know?
Speaker 2: So the way I the way I used to write
Speaker 2: my decisions was this, so so so what what what
Speaker 2: do I know at this stage? What do I know?
Speaker 1: So?
Speaker 2: What do I want to achieve? What is the purpose
Speaker 2: of me making this decision? So here's where I am,
Speaker 2: Here's where I want to be, and how am I
Speaker 2: going to get this? So what is my process for
Speaker 2: getting there? Making that decision? And if you record it
Speaker 2: like that, so anyone who comes back to you, well,
Speaker 2: why do you make this decisions? Well, this is what
Speaker 2: I knew at the time, this is what I was
Speaker 2: trying to achieve, and this is the decision I made
Speaker 2: to try and get there. And right, they can try
Speaker 2: me clever and say well you were wrong, So well, yeah, okay,
Speaker 2: in hindsight, six weeks later, once I had the further evidence,
Speaker 2: I probably wouldn't have made that decision, But at that time,
Speaker 2: that's the information I had, and that's the decision I
Speaker 2: came to. Yeah, I was wrong, but it's a justified decision,
Speaker 2: and that's so important, huge impact.
Speaker 1: And you can retain your integrity and credibility in a
Speaker 1: witness box, in a court situation, the inquiry situation if
Speaker 1: at the time I made this decision to arrest this
Speaker 1: personal or let this person run based on these facts.
Speaker 1: And it's a safeguard because one I think, to be
Speaker 1: a homicide detective, you've got to have thick skin because
Speaker 1: what I know with homicide, no matter what you do,
Speaker 1: someone's going to be criticizing you. It's going to be
Speaker 1: the defense barriss or it's going to be your own organization,
Speaker 1: or the victims family, the suspects family. You're going to
Speaker 1: be attacked. So you go to I see the way
Speaker 1: of you've got to have the thick skin and you
Speaker 1: get battle scarred to a point. But to have those
Speaker 1: detailed records, I don't think people appreciate how comprehensive, the
Speaker 1: records are and in decision making with homicide investigations.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and as the leader in a murder inquiry, you
Speaker 2: have to make those decisions. You have to record those decisions,
Speaker 2: and if you don't, you're going to come unstuck at court.
Speaker 2: And as I say, everything you do comes back to
Speaker 2: that courtroom. And if you're not thinking about that, there's
Speaker 2: no good later on going Actually I should have recorded
Speaker 2: this or sugar in that hand. If you don't write
Speaker 2: it down at the time, you're never going to remember.
Speaker 2: It's your integrity is gone. So well you recalled that
Speaker 2: six months later, how do you know that was so?
Speaker 2: And we timestampad decision lock, so so there's no there's
Speaker 2: no there's no debate later on about it.
Speaker 1: Contemporaneous. This was made at the time, and it doesn't
Speaker 1: cut cut very well in the witness box. I can't
Speaker 1: recall it was a long time ago like that doesn't
Speaker 1: you don't You don't have that luxury as a decision
Speaker 1: making in a homicide investigation, I look at options too,
Speaker 1: operational options. That's another thing, though I would document the
Speaker 1: reasons why. And yeah, gangland murders, organized crime type murders.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you've got someone running that you think, well, if
Speaker 1: he stays out, this person might be killed, or if
Speaker 1: we move now, this will happen, or we've got the
Speaker 1: advantage they don't know we're looking at them. I would
Speaker 1: list all the options too, I'd document it there and
Speaker 1: option one arrest well benefits he's taken off the street. Negatives,
Speaker 1: he'll probably be released the first time your peers at
Speaker 1: court because there's not sufficient evidence. Option to put the
Speaker 1: violence on them. Yeah, and you scarlet down, But there
Speaker 1: is a lot about the information the documents that you
Speaker 1: make when you're investigating homicide. Yeah.
Speaker 2: And also what it does is if you make yourself
Speaker 2: write down a decision and make yourself as you're saying,
Speaker 2: you're considering your options, you'll come to a better decision
Speaker 2: because in order to make a good decision, you have
Speaker 2: to think about what your options are. You have to
Speaker 2: think and more often than not, so when you're making decisions,
Speaker 2: it should never be a binary decision. It shouldn't be
Speaker 2: should be arresting yes or no? Well, what are my
Speaker 2: other options? And very often when you're making decisions, really
Speaker 2: important decisions, and you force yourself to think of your options.
Speaker 2: You will often come up with a compromise that is
Speaker 2: actually the best decision, that is the best way forward
Speaker 2: because you've thought about your options, you thought about what
Speaker 2: can go wrong, you thought about what you're trying to achieve,
Speaker 2: and by following that process, you come up with a
Speaker 2: better decision. And as I said before, I think decision
Speaker 2: making is such an important skill for detectives.
Speaker 1: It's crucial. And you mentioned the thing there that sort
Speaker 1: of made me think about how I'd approached some of
Speaker 1: the difficult investigations where I'm looking at Okay, Steve, I'm
Speaker 1: thinking Steve's a suspect. Do we arrest him? I quite
Speaker 1: often okay, well, what facts could I present to the court?
Speaker 1: And I can have it in my head, I can
Speaker 1: have it in all the documents, but I actually sit
Speaker 1: down and type up, Okay, how would the fact sheet look?
Speaker 1: And sometimes it looks and go okay, I think we
Speaker 1: have got enough there, Or conversely, it could look who
Speaker 1: am I kidding? We've got no evidence when it's all
Speaker 1: said and done, and just putting it in writing, and
Speaker 1: I take on board what you say. It makes you
Speaker 1: think about think about the decisions that are floating through
Speaker 1: your head. The interview room, the importance of the interview room.
Speaker 1: What's your thoughts on what goes on in an interview.
Speaker 2: I've got mixed feelings on this really, so so one
Speaker 2: one thing that I think people from the outside looking
Speaker 2: in often get confused with is that the purpose of
Speaker 2: an interview. So it's not about getting a confession. That's
Speaker 2: not that's not why you're interviewing a suspect. You're not
Speaker 2: trying to make them confess to the crime. What you
Speaker 2: want them to do is commit to a story. You
Speaker 2: don't want them to commit to even if I wasn't there,
Speaker 2: I didn't do it, I wasn't there, commit to that
Speaker 2: so then we can disprove that. If we quickly there,
Speaker 2: then then we can disprove that. So it is important,
Speaker 2: but I personally, I think it's the least important of
Speaker 2: all the things because if you're if you're having to
Speaker 2: rely on a confession to prove a murder, then you
Speaker 2: need to you need to go away and think about
Speaker 2: the rest of your evidence.
Speaker 1: You're desperate at that stage, isn't it when when it
Speaker 1: comes to I know, the confession.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you if you need a confession for murder,
Speaker 2: then then you're you're not where you need to be.
Speaker 2: I want, I want to be able to prove a
Speaker 2: murder regardless of what they say. Oh, in an ideal world,
Speaker 2: they would confess everything and tell you where their murder
Speaker 2: weapon was and tell you where they've got rid of
Speaker 2: their clothing. Brilliant, because you can all add to that, really,
Speaker 2: really really Rarely, if ever, does that ever happen. If
Speaker 2: someone's going to talk to you an interview, generally they're
Speaker 2: trying to talk their way out out of something, not
Speaker 2: confessed with it.
Speaker 1: And if you're going properly prepared, sometimes the denial can
Speaker 1: be as good as a confession, because you know you
Speaker 1: can contradict, like now I wasn't there, and well we
Speaker 1: know that you've got your DNA. You don't have to
Speaker 1: declare it straight up there. Let them deny, deny, and
Speaker 1: then hid them with that, and then they're less done.
Speaker 2: And then by the time he gets a court, the
Speaker 2: jury can see that they've lied. And once they've lied once,
Speaker 2: how can we believe them now? But the problem we
Speaker 2: have in the UK, I might say the problem, but
Speaker 2: it's a fact is a majority of our interviews go
Speaker 2: no comment because we've got a right to silence, so
Speaker 2: they'll get a solicitor and they'll literally say no comment.
Speaker 2: And and to be honest, that never bothered me. And
Speaker 2: in the UK there is a repercussion if you say
Speaker 2: no comment in an interview. At trial, the judge can
Speaker 2: direct a jury to have an influence of guilt. So,
Speaker 2: I e. If they were innocent, why did they not
Speaker 2: give the account they give you now? Back at the
Speaker 2: police station, they were doing an easy I was. I
Speaker 2: had one trial. It was uh, it was it was
Speaker 2: a GameLine shooting. It was a motorbike and pulled up
Speaker 2: next the car and shot shot the person in the
Speaker 2: car and outside the caught. One of the jury members
Speaker 2: came up to me, we've got the guilty verdict, a
Speaker 2: little old lady and she said, thank you very much
Speaker 2: for everything you've done, she said, she said, you know
Speaker 2: what I knew. I knew he was guilty as soon
Speaker 2: as I heard that he said no comment in an interview. Yes,
Speaker 2: so yeah, they might.
Speaker 1: Have How people think that legislation you talk about was
Speaker 1: introduced over here in New South Wales and does assist
Speaker 1: like an inference instead of someone making no comment when
Speaker 1: you've arrested them, no comment then turning up at the
Speaker 1: trial and going, oh, well, and they've got their alibi
Speaker 1: or created and all that, so the judge can give
Speaker 1: a warning on that or an inference can be taken.
Speaker 1: Why didn't they declare that right at the start? Homicide
Speaker 1: trials they're exhausting. I don't think people understand. Like I
Speaker 1: look back at my career, I still get a I
Speaker 1: think a physical reaction when I go into a court
Speaker 1: because I've had so many tense times in a court
Speaker 1: through murder trials, and it's an emotional rollercoaster, isn't it.
Speaker 1: You don't know which way the jury is going. They
Speaker 1: don't go over one or two days. You could be
Speaker 1: there for months and it's the pressures on constantly. Talk
Speaker 1: to us about your experience with murder trials.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I be honest, I don't miss them.
Speaker 2: The high I was talking about at a very beginning
Speaker 2: where you get your conviction is fantastic, but a build
Speaker 2: up to it, I didn't enjoy it. So just turning
Speaker 2: up on the first day is going to be You've
Speaker 2: got no idea where it's going to go. So we
Speaker 2: just simple things like in the UK we have disclosure
Speaker 2: laws where you have to disclose certain bits of information
Speaker 2: to the defense. State of trial, they'll hit you with
Speaker 2: a big list of things they want disguised that they
Speaker 2: could have asked for months ago. So you're running around there.
Speaker 2: And then for me, the most stressful part of any
Speaker 2: murder trial is the witnesses. Are they going to turn up?
Speaker 2: There's always a witness that such changes in mind. They
Speaker 2: don't want to have to get a summons through them
Speaker 2: or a warrant or something else. And then when they
Speaker 2: do turn up, what are they going to say in
Speaker 2: the box? Are they going to change their account? Are
Speaker 2: they come out with something they didn't tell you before?
Speaker 2: So that initial stage, because so the bigging the first
Speaker 2: part of any murder trial is the prosecution case and
Speaker 2: that that is the most stressful part getting through that.
Speaker 2: And in the UK, I'm sure it's the same in Australia.
Speaker 2: The start of the trial will be the prosecution with
Speaker 2: their opening and it will be outlining what the case
Speaker 2: is and the evidence and what you're hoping for. Really
Speaker 2: is by the end of the prosecution case, you're at
Speaker 2: the same level as the opening speech as you anything,
Speaker 2: you haven't lost anything. Yeah, So that's that's that's as
Speaker 2: much as you can hope for, and there's no guarantee
Speaker 2: you're going to do that, and getting through that isn't nice.
Speaker 2: I came across many decent defense barristers, but I came
Speaker 2: across equally equal number of decades. To put it.
Speaker 1: Mildly, really, I think that's fair to say, Steve. I
Speaker 1: understand they're doing the job, but some go way above
Speaker 1: and beyond, Like if it was us doing as police,
Speaker 1: going that hard, there'd be criticism. And when they do
Speaker 1: this defense you talked about requisitions that just they would
Speaker 1: do it deliberately, like it'll be a Friday afternoon, the
Speaker 1: trials do the start Monday, and you receive at three
Speaker 1: o'clock in the afternoon. You've got a weekend where you
Speaker 1: just want to clear your head and get ready for
Speaker 1: the trial. And there'll be a list of requisitions that
Speaker 1: you know, they know will take you all weekend, working
Speaker 1: through the night to get And it's just trying to
Speaker 1: rattle you before. And if I say this to defense
Speaker 1: barrisses or legal people listening to it, they oh, we
Speaker 1: wouldn't do that. That's what they're doing. They're trying to
Speaker 1: rattle the detective or detectives, the investigation team, the prosecution
Speaker 1: before the trial with these unrealistic requisitions that, as you said,
Speaker 1: they've had the brief for months, if not years, they
Speaker 1: could have asked for them, but they leave it to
Speaker 1: the last moment, and knowing that you're just going to
Speaker 1: turn up frazzled on the Monday morning before you present
Speaker 1: the court. I think I'm the same as you. I
Speaker 1: love those highs where you get the guilty and you
Speaker 1: feel like all your work's being justified. But I don't
Speaker 1: miss the court. I don't miss being in the witness box.
Speaker 1: I don't miss been in there for days, been cross
Speaker 1: examined and questioned about what you've done and the decisions.
Speaker 1: And it's a theater in part with the jury. There
Speaker 1: isn't it Like they're trying to rattle it and just
Speaker 1: trying to discredit you in front of the front of
Speaker 1: a jury. Not a pleasant place.
Speaker 2: To be, No, not time. I mean, and you've given
Speaker 2: everyone and it's a lot of pressure. I've given evidence
Speaker 2: and not come out. Why did I say that? Why
Speaker 2: didn't I say this? And it's awful and and and
Speaker 2: what you don't want to do, You don't want to
Speaker 2: get into an argument with the barristers because that always
Speaker 2: that always goes one way. But they're trying to undermine you.
Speaker 2: They're trying to make you look competent, and it's not pleasant.
Speaker 2: Nobody wants to go through it out of there.
Speaker 1: You know you don't, but you do get conditioned to it.
Speaker 1: And I defy. I think if you're not nervous before
Speaker 1: you get in the witness box, you're not properly prepared.
Speaker 1: I would be nervous before I got in the witness box,
Speaker 1: but I due diligence. I'd do as much preparation as
Speaker 1: I could before I got in there, and and do
Speaker 1: your best. And yeah, you're told not to bite back
Speaker 1: at the questions, just to answer the questions, but sometimes
Speaker 1: it's hard. And the longer you've been in this business,
Speaker 1: the barrisss know your personality, know who you are, and
Speaker 1: know how to push put push buttons. So but there
Speaker 1: is a bit of a bit of theater there. Homicide
Speaker 1: investigation generally, there's different cases and I hate it when
Speaker 1: people ask me, you know, what's your hardest case or
Speaker 1: what case was your most important or yeah, because they're
Speaker 1: all important. If you work a homicide that doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: like the bloke you turned up and there's four people
Speaker 1: at the funeral, of which you're one of them, more
Speaker 1: the one that I turned up where there were seven people.
Speaker 1: What's a homicide investigation that stayed with you, something that's
Speaker 1: sort of changed you as a personal changed you the
Speaker 1: way that you look at life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for me, it was always about children. So if
Speaker 2: I investigated the murder of a child, that was always
Speaker 2: stayed with me. And there was one in particular. So
Speaker 2: we've not mentioned this, but I've got a TV show
Speaker 2: in the UK and I sit down and I chat
Speaker 2: with investigators and the only case we feature of mine
Speaker 2: is the very first one, and it was this, and
Speaker 2: it was probably the one that will always stay with me,
Speaker 2: and it was it was quite high profile in the
Speaker 2: UK at the time. Has got a soap opria called EastEnders,
Speaker 2: and it was a woman who was actress on there,
Speaker 2: and it got it got reported as a missing missing
Speaker 2: person's case came into us, and it came into us
Speaker 2: on a Saturday, and very quickly we realized that there's this, this,
Speaker 2: this isn't right. So there's things like she she suffered
Speaker 2: from moting urine disease and she's allegedly she's gone off
Speaker 2: with her two boys and she could just look after herself,
Speaker 2: like alone or two boys. And her husband had said
Speaker 2: she's left me and he then disappeared. So straight away,
Speaker 2: I mean, you got the feeling for it and like this,
Speaker 2: this isn't good and what you're hoping for is what
Speaker 2: what we realized when we went into the house, he
Speaker 2: had done a cleanup and there was signs of a
Speaker 2: really violent attack in the kitchen, and he kind of
Speaker 2: clinging onto the hope that clearly some something's happened to
Speaker 2: to Shah saying, but what what about the kids? That
Speaker 2: could he have put them somewhere? So we're trying to
Speaker 2: find the kids, go to family members, et cetera. So
Speaker 2: you always clinging onto the hope that some something that
Speaker 2: you an ideal. Well, with three of them live, but
Speaker 2: you kind of you kind of condition to the fact
Speaker 2: that someone someone's clearly been murdered by the crime scene
Speaker 2: where are the boys? But by the by the by
Speaker 2: a few by two days in we discovered that they
Speaker 2: were all all be murdered and they were buried in
Speaker 2: the garden. And then he had fled to the fled
Speaker 2: to Africa, and just the brutal nature of those crimes,
Speaker 2: the way in which so for into one of the
Speaker 2: boys had defensive injuries, which which indicates that he knew
Speaker 2: that his dad was attacked. I mean, it's just awful.
Speaker 1: It was a biological father.
Speaker 2: Biological father. Yeah's killed his wife and two children, and
Speaker 2: it's those kinds of cases and that and that for me,
Speaker 2: just the just the brutal nature of it, the circumstances
Speaker 2: in way, the way in which we the investigation went,
Speaker 2: it was just it was just one of those ones
Speaker 2: that will always we make I'm not I'm not an
Speaker 2: emotional person normally, but on the TV show, I actually
Speaker 2: lost it at one point when I was I was.
Speaker 2: I sat with my mate, who reinvestigated it with and
Speaker 2: we were talking through It's almost as if we were
Speaker 2: we were reliving it. And I've never spoken about it before.
Speaker 2: I've spoken about it in terms of I was involved
Speaker 2: in this investigation, but never to the depth that we
Speaker 2: were going into and we were almost reliving it. And
Speaker 2: it was that moment where the phone call come through
Speaker 2: from the crime scene to us that the three of
Speaker 2: them were in the in this grave, and it hit
Speaker 2: me and I held up and I was like I
Speaker 2: couldn't speak. I couldn't speak, and you know, it's like
Speaker 2: you don't.
Speaker 1: We don't, we don't know, And it was it just
Speaker 1: shows you that deep down you're carrying these things and.
Speaker 2: When you when you when you dip down into it
Speaker 2: and you start to open up that yeah, you must
Speaker 2: be carrying so much that you just you just bury.
Speaker 2: And as I say, for me, it was always about
Speaker 2: children and a few cases I've got where where you
Speaker 2: see did their body or at the post morton for
Speaker 2: the child, and it's hard.
Speaker 1: I look, I hear what you're saying, Steve, and I
Speaker 1: know when I was in homicide there was emotional stuff
Speaker 1: like that when you step away from it and you
Speaker 1: relive it that way, if I do talks or I
Speaker 1: see the family, victims are different different things. And it's
Speaker 1: almost like you're out of the cops and you've let
Speaker 1: your guard down now like in the cops where you
Speaker 1: had to be rock solid, and I still you know,
Speaker 1: I'm a tough guy. I'm still rock solid. Just because
Speaker 1: I'm out of the cops doesn't soften me up, but
Speaker 1: it gives you a perspective what you actually saw and
Speaker 1: the emotions that you went through, and I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: I understand where you're coming from, and I know how
Speaker 1: it can hit you that way, and you think, oh,
Speaker 1: this is a strange reaction, this shouldn't be coming. But
Speaker 1: I've said about homicide investigation, each part of the investigation
Speaker 1: takes a little bit out of you and also adds
Speaker 1: a little bit to you like you can't get. Sometimes
Speaker 1: you do the just the on call response and the
Speaker 1: homicide we call it the smoking gun type homicide where
Speaker 1: you're not heavily invested in it. That's pretty obvious what's
Speaker 1: happened and solved, and the local police are dealing with it,
Speaker 1: and you have just had a superficial overview of it.
Speaker 1: But the ones that you actually pick up and run,
Speaker 1: whether you're leading the investigation or part of the investigation team,
Speaker 1: you always hold hold on to aspects of that, don't you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: What was your coping mechanism? Twelve years in homicide, that's
Speaker 1: a long stint. How did you cope with the pressures
Speaker 1: and the emotions that come with homicide investigation.
Speaker 2: I'm going to say something that probably resonates for you,
Speaker 2: and probably every murder detective is just compartmentalize. You don't
Speaker 2: actually deal with anything. You just bury it. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: you're seeing grewsome things you're dealing with. For me, the
Speaker 2: hardest thing wasn't ever the dead bodies and at apartment children.
Speaker 2: I always found it difficult, but it wasn't. It wasn't
Speaker 2: the dead bodies because you build up their resilience to
Speaker 2: that throughout your career. To me, it was always the
Speaker 2: traum the family. I found the hardest thing to deal
Speaker 2: with and dealing with their grief. But but you don't
Speaker 2: dwell on it. You just push it aside, you bury
Speaker 2: it down, and then you just focus on your investigation
Speaker 2: and your job. You've got to do and and and
Speaker 2: and and and if that's your focus, if that's what
Speaker 2: you're thinking about, you can I mean, I used to
Speaker 2: think it was actually when when I when I I
Speaker 2: wrote a book, and it was I was I was
Speaker 2: reflecting on on my career, and I I always thought
Speaker 2: I was brave in as much as I did. I
Speaker 2: just I don't deal with that. I don't think about that.
Speaker 2: I just bury it. But what I came to realize
Speaker 2: was is it's actually I think it's braver to deal
Speaker 2: with your feelings. So I did a eulogy at my
Speaker 2: dad's funeral, and it was it was basically me writing
Speaker 2: down I felt about my dad and talking about it.
Speaker 2: And I don't talk about my feelings. I don't. I don't.
Speaker 2: I don't talk about that kind of thing. And I
Speaker 2: was an absolute mess. And my sisters, who you women
Speaker 2: are much better, I think, deal and they deal with it.
Speaker 2: They had to, they had to help me through. And
Speaker 2: it's because I don't. I don't have the I was
Speaker 2: almost like, I don't have the ability to deal with
Speaker 2: feelings because I don't. I've got no I've got in
Speaker 2: my armory. I can't. I can't deal with my feelings.
Speaker 2: I just ignore them and bury them. And when I
Speaker 2: have to, that's where I get caught up. And so
Speaker 2: when I'm doing the TV show and I'm talking about
Speaker 2: that crime, I'm talking about feelings and that I can't do.
Speaker 2: I can't do with that. So so where I used
Speaker 2: to think that was the brave thing to do, I
Speaker 2: actually think the bravest and probably the most sensible thing
Speaker 2: to do is deal with them. And because all of them,
Speaker 2: as the occur, exactly because will they can they come
Speaker 2: back and bite you on the ARSEMA and I don't
Speaker 2: think I will. I don't think I've got PTSD or
Speaker 2: anything like that. But you never know, you never quite
Speaker 2: know how something's going to come out later on.
Speaker 1: Well, Steve, you've made me think about myself there on
Speaker 1: THEES and the stuff that you're confronted with as a
Speaker 1: homicide detective. And I didn't deal with anything during the
Speaker 1: course of my career. I just kept Okay, well, there's
Speaker 1: another job, and you'd throw yourself deeper and deeper and
Speaker 1: deeper in there. And I suppose we're the lucky ones
Speaker 1: that we got out there that we didn't have the
Speaker 1: you know, didn't fall apart during the career. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you step away and I do what you say resonates
Speaker 1: with me. I'm not going to make any confessions here, Steve.
Speaker 1: You'll let you make the confessions about showing emotion. How
Speaker 1: dare you? But yeah, when you step away from it,
Speaker 1: it does give you time to reflect and that those
Speaker 1: emotions can surface. What are you doing post career? It
Speaker 1: sounds like you've got some exciting stuff to do. You've
Speaker 1: two books, You've done the Murder Investigation Team, and you
Speaker 1: did another one on Jack the Ripper, yeah, so it's pure.
Speaker 2: Everything's done now planned at all in the slightest. So
Speaker 2: when I was leaving the police, you know, well stored
Speaker 2: about this you making and how that's really important as detective.
Speaker 2: What my idea was was, I when I left the police,
Speaker 2: I was going to set up a training company to
Speaker 2: go into go into businesses and help train their staff
Speaker 2: around decision making and the processes that I used and
Speaker 2: how that can be adapted to business. And everything i'd
Speaker 2: read was if you're going to position yourself as an expert,
Speaker 2: write a book. So I started to write a book
Speaker 2: that supported that, but it was, it was, it was,
Speaker 2: it was. It just wasn't working. So I ended up right,
Speaker 2: it was it was, these are how to investigate murders
Speaker 2: and this is how I can be business, and it
Speaker 2: was trying to be two different things. So I thought, well,
Speaker 2: let's just write a book about how we investigate murders
Speaker 2: and actual fact, in the UK no one had ever
Speaker 2: written a book like this, so so and what had
Speaker 2: happened since doing that. It's kind of dragged me down
Speaker 2: the true crime route, which I wasn't planning at all,
Speaker 2: and the book has led to speaking gigs the speeding
Speaker 2: gigs led to a TV show, so I did. That's
Speaker 2: just finished in the UK. We did two seasons, twenty
Speaker 2: episodes Secrets of a Murder Detective. And now to set
Speaker 2: up a business where there's a big gap in the
Speaker 2: market where you've got all these detectives over here with
Speaker 2: all these experiences and stories, etc. And you've got TV
Speaker 2: companies who want to use them on the TV shows,
Speaker 2: but there's no one in the middle introducing them. So
Speaker 2: I've set up this company to do that as kind
Speaker 2: of like a setting up a database for detectives willing
Speaker 2: to go on TV show. So that's my next project
Speaker 2: I'm quite excited about, so we'll see where that goes.
Speaker 1: I think it's great that you've found found your legs
Speaker 1: after leaving the police, because it's confronting at first. But
Speaker 1: if you've got something that you can be passionate about
Speaker 1: that you're pear to be what you're doing now, it
Speaker 1: makes moving on a lot easier. And that's interesting what
Speaker 1: you said about the book. As I was reading your book,
Speaker 1: I'm thinking I haven't read a book like this from
Speaker 1: a homicide detective talking about homicide investigations. So good on you.
Speaker 1: I think it's great to me. You look like regardless
Speaker 1: of the fact that you've lost your hair, but that
Speaker 1: happens to the best of us. You look like you've
Speaker 1: got a sense of humor. You look like you've come
Speaker 1: out relatively unscathed. But yeah, full credit to you for
Speaker 1: the work that you've you've done.
Speaker 2: Thanks Verne. No, I appreciate that we're obviously very very similar.
Speaker 2: I think our attitudes are. I don't think we disagreed
Speaker 2: on anything today. And and when when you've got something
Speaker 2: that you're so passionate about, for me, it's murder. Where'd
Speaker 2: you channel that? I mean, very difficult to There's not
Speaker 2: there's nothing. There's no direct comparison in the in the
Speaker 2: civilian world of I investigate murders, I don't want to do.
Speaker 2: I don't want to do corporate investigations. That's not that's
Speaker 2: not going to flow boat. I don't want to do security.
Speaker 2: It's like, well, what am I going to do? That?
Speaker 2: Can I can keep keep just talking for hours and
Speaker 2: hours about the subject I'm passionate about, and who's going
Speaker 2: to want to listen to that? I mean my far
Speaker 2: and out caol them to death? No one ever, no
Speaker 2: one ever wants to do it.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry. Well, well look let's take stock of us.
Speaker 1: You've you've written the book going murder investigation term and
Speaker 1: I'm sitting here in the pod car studio with signs
Speaker 1: up saying I catch killers. Yeah we've really let it, but.
Speaker 2: No, I wited to move on.
Speaker 1: Really though, I understand where you're coming from, Steve, and
Speaker 1: I've really enjoyed the chat. And yeah, I can tell
Speaker 1: the type of a cop you were and type of
Speaker 1: homicide detective, and I would have liked to work with you.
Speaker 1: It would have been would have been good and lightwise. Likewise,
Speaker 1: I share your passion for things, So all the best
Speaker 1: for the future.
Speaker 2: Thanks really appreciate mate, Thanks for having me on. Cheers.
Speaker 1: I know I say it a lot, but I do
Speaker 1: enjoy talking to real homicide detectives, and I reckon Steve
Speaker 1: Ko was a definite real homicide detective. I like the
Speaker 1: way he thinks, I like the way he goes about
Speaker 1: his business, and utmost respect for him. Twelve years in
Speaker 1: the murder investigation team in Scotland. Yard He's done the
Speaker 1: done the hard yards, and I really enjoyed speaking to him.
Speaker 1: And I'm not amazed because I always thought it was
Speaker 1: a case. How similar the way they approached their investigations
Speaker 1: after what we do over here.
Speaker 2: But it was a great chat