Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective sy 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 to another episode of I Catch Killers. The thing
Speaker 1: I found most fascinating as a homicide detective was delving
Speaker 1: into the psychology of the perpetrators, looking for red flags,
Speaker 1: interpreting crime scenes, and discovering motives. The difficult part of
Speaker 1: being a homicide detective was the fact that in most cases,
Speaker 1: the best you could do for the victim was to
Speaker 1: solve the crime. But what I find fascinating about today's
Speaker 1: guest is. The work she focuses on is preventing crime. Today,
Speaker 1: we're speaking to Laura Richards, who is a well renowned
Speaker 1: criminal behavioral analyst, an international expert on domestic violence, stalking,
Speaker 1: coercive controls, sexual violence, homicide, and risk assessment. She has
Speaker 1: applied her psychological degrees to analyze violent crime from a
Speaker 1: behavioral and preventative perspective. Laura has trained with the FBI
Speaker 1: and work with New Scotland Yard. She has been involved
Speaker 1: in multiple law reforms relating to the better protection for victims.
Speaker 1: Is an author and a podcaster, so clearly we've got
Speaker 1: a lot to talk about, so let's get into this.
Speaker 1: Laura Richards, welcome to I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2: Thank you, it's really good to be here.
Speaker 1: Well, I know you're busy, and I'm excited to get
Speaker 1: you on the podcast, and I've had a look at
Speaker 1: the work you've done. My background, I worked as a
Speaker 1: homicide detective for over twenty years and the frustration I
Speaker 1: had as a homicide detective was at the best what
Speaker 1: you could do for the victim was solved the crime.
Speaker 1: But a lot of your focus is about preventing crimes
Speaker 1: and the difference between reactive investigations and proactive investigations. Do
Speaker 1: you want to just talk us through a little bit
Speaker 1: about that process, break that down.
Speaker 2: Yes, Well, firstly, thank you very much for inviting me
Speaker 2: and thank you for the work that you've done, because
Speaker 2: it's not easy.
Speaker 1: For me.
Speaker 2: I spent five years at New Scotland Yard, my first
Speaker 2: five years working in a unit that was set up
Speaker 2: because we had a very prolific serial killer called Peter
Speaker 2: Suckcliffe who had abused and harmed and killed many women
Speaker 2: up in the northeast of England. And my unit was
Speaker 2: really a response to that, a sexual offensive section so
Speaker 2: that we would ensure someone like Peter Suckliffe wouldn't happen again.
Speaker 2: So the idea behind it was to link rape, murder
Speaker 2: and abduction cases and to be on the front foot.
Speaker 2: And it was a brave new world really at new
Speaker 2: Scotland Yard, and a response to what was called the
Speaker 2: Byford Report, which was all the failures of Peter Suckcliffe
Speaker 2: being in front of the detectives on fourteen occasions and
Speaker 2: they still didn't know it was him. So there was
Speaker 2: a lot of learning and that was a really good
Speaker 2: response to set up a proactive unit and it was
Speaker 2: very much based on the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, which
Speaker 2: most people have seen as portrayed in the Netflix show
Speaker 2: mind Hunter. So Robert Wrestler, Roy Hazlewood, John Douglas all
Speaker 2: of their work and my unit at New Scotland Yard
Speaker 2: was the satellite to it. So my first five years
Speaker 2: were really linking crimes and cases, so serial rape and
Speaker 2: serial murder cases. And each time I worked with the
Speaker 2: detectives on those investigations, what was interesting. I would do
Speaker 2: what we call a psychological autopsy and look at the
Speaker 2: offenders and reverse engineer their histories, and most of them
Speaker 2: were on our databases already, and that really intrigued me.
Speaker 2: Was it just the number of cases that I was
Speaker 2: exposed to or was it actually far greater than the
Speaker 2: cases that I had worked on. So when I was
Speaker 2: given an opportunity, I was headhunted to work on an
Speaker 2: Understanding and Responding to Hate crime initiative funded by the
Speaker 2: Home Office. I was asked would I profile domestic violence?
Speaker 2: I wondered, how tough could that be? And we knew
Speaker 2: who it was most oftentimes we had their names, their data, births,
Speaker 2: where they live. In terms of the offenders, and I
Speaker 2: said that I would be interested in doing that work
Speaker 2: only if I could conjoin it with sexual violence, so
Speaker 2: that I could look at sexual violence and domestic violence
Speaker 2: and reverse engineer the offenders and look at their histories.
Speaker 2: And really where the proactive work began in terms of
Speaker 2: understanding risk assessment, understanding that domestic violence offenders are actually
Speaker 2: dangerous individuals and that we should be taking them more seriously. So, really, Gary,
Speaker 2: one thing led to another of being you know, I
Speaker 2: say that the sexual Offenses section was a proactive unit,
Speaker 2: but you still had a crime. You still had something
Speaker 2: terrible happening, and then you were linking the offenses and
Speaker 2: that was tough work because you know, oftentimes people are
Speaker 2: linkage blind. So those five years were not easy. But
Speaker 2: I did have some real insight reverse engineering the cases
Speaker 2: and seeing that these offenders when we arrested them for
Speaker 2: a stranger related crime, they were on our databases. And
Speaker 2: I think that's a really important part to sort of
Speaker 2: my story as to why I kept asking questions about that.
Speaker 1: It's interesting when you say reverse engineer, I could imagine
Speaker 1: you had the crime, you assist the crime scene if
Speaker 1: it's a murder or the statement from the victim and
Speaker 1: trying to understand the crime finding the perpetrator. But when
Speaker 1: you found the perpetrator, what you're saying is you're looking
Speaker 1: back at their history and it's almost like a series
Speaker 1: of red flags that okay, if someone's stalking from a homicide.
Speaker 1: To take this point of view, I've always had concern
Speaker 1: if someone is a stalker, and to me, it just
Speaker 1: triggers red flags and concerns if I'm looking at a
Speaker 1: person of interest and there's a history of stalking. But
Speaker 1: you and being given all that data, the data that
Speaker 1: you would have had been involved with New Scotland Yard,
Speaker 1: you found a pattern. Dare say I call them red flags.
Speaker 1: I think you understand the concept of a red flag indicators.
Speaker 1: And when you're looking back, you've seen a history that
Speaker 1: you can almost see the crime building up to the
Speaker 1: crescendo that it might be, whether that be a sexual
Speaker 1: assault or a murder.
Speaker 2: Yes, exactly that. And in some cases it's textbook escalation
Speaker 2: in terms of the pattern of behavior and drip of
Speaker 2: what they can get away with, and then behavior being
Speaker 2: what it is, you then carry on pushing boundaries and
Speaker 2: do more and more. So you know, oftentimes particularly with
Speaker 2: the stranger rape related cases, and when you've got a
Speaker 2: serial rapist, they're the jobs that get resourced, right, and
Speaker 2: you know, they're the good jobs as were seen, you know,
Speaker 2: back in the culture of policing. And what was interesting
Speaker 2: was that every case I looked at, they raped their
Speaker 2: partners before they raped somebody that they didn't know outside
Speaker 2: the home. But it was domestic violence that was being
Speaker 2: written off. It's just a domestic law of people would say,
Speaker 2: and I was saying, but it's not just a domestic
Speaker 2: If you're prepared to harm and rape the person you're
Speaker 2: meant to love and care about the most, what else
Speaker 2: are you prepared to do to a stranger, to a
Speaker 2: woman that you don't know, So that poarer and control dynamic.
Speaker 2: I started making the links, but using the evidence and
Speaker 2: the cases. It wasn't something that I just came up
Speaker 2: with this concept. It was literally every case I was
Speaker 2: involved with, and I wanted to understand that better.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you know, it makes sense, and in policing at
Speaker 1: that time, when we're looking at serial offenders and the
Speaker 1: work that they did with the FBI. You mentioned the
Speaker 1: name John Douglas. Just a funny thought in my mind.
Speaker 1: I read that book When I was a young homicide
Speaker 1: detective mind Hunter that John Douglas wrote the book, and
Speaker 1: I quite often stood at the crime scene and I'd
Speaker 1: be speaking to my colleague going, what would John Douglas
Speaker 1: do in this situation? I like some of the messaging
Speaker 1: that came out from the book, But it was a
Speaker 1: very early science, wasn't It was something that we hadn't
Speaker 1: really looked into from a criminal investigation point of view
Speaker 1: law enforcement agencies across the globe. What do you think
Speaker 1: change was it that someone just finally waking up to
Speaker 1: there are patterns? We've got to look at it in
Speaker 1: more detail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I think, you know, the art versus
Speaker 2: science part has always been the challenge, and it's a
Speaker 2: bit of both. Going back in time, you know, was
Speaker 2: the culture ready for it? Probably not. Then there was
Speaker 2: a big TV show called Cracker in the UK with
Speaker 2: Robbie Coltrane where he was a psychologist being called in
Speaker 2: to cases.
Speaker 1: Remember and that kind of you remember it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it kind of mainstreamed the concept, although what
Speaker 2: we did was very different from what you saw portrayed.
Speaker 2: But if I had a pound for every time or
Speaker 2: a dollar every time a detective said to me, all right, cracker,
Speaker 2: tell us where he lives and you know what his
Speaker 2: name is, Dad, and thinking it was really funny. You know,
Speaker 2: that was literally every case that I ever worked, That's
Speaker 2: what was being said to me. And it's far more
Speaker 2: detailed the work in terms of you know, my background
Speaker 2: is in forensic and legal psychology, and you apply that
Speaker 2: to understand the offender motivation and you'll know this the
Speaker 2: important part of the why normally takes you to the who,
Speaker 2: and so you don't always have the why. You've got
Speaker 2: the who, the what, the where, the when, you don't
Speaker 2: always have the why. So that part of understanding the
Speaker 2: why done it twinned with victimology. I mean, for me,
Speaker 2: that's the most important part. Starting with the victims of
Speaker 2: you understand how they lived, you normally understand how they
Speaker 2: die too, where's the intersect? And that's painstaking work. It
Speaker 2: takes a lot of time to sort of understand really
Speaker 2: who your victim is and you've got to speak to
Speaker 2: lots of different people's you well know. But the criminal
Speaker 2: behavioral analysis component also comprises of the crime scene assessment,
Speaker 2: timeline analysis like the sequence of events in that event,
Speaker 2: but also the bigger picture of the timeline and linguistic analysis.
Speaker 2: If you've got it with rape victims, you do tend
Speaker 2: to have language between the two geographic analysis, statement analysis,
Speaker 2: interview analysis, which is what I help with, as well
Speaker 2: as understanding behavior. So there's lots of different components to
Speaker 2: criminal behavioral analysis, and it is worth just say that
Speaker 2: because a lot of people still even now don't have
Speaker 2: a true understanding of what it is. The added extra
Speaker 2: part that really was what I developed in more detail
Speaker 2: was the risk assessment component of the reverse engineering, and
Speaker 2: there wasn't really a lot known about that in policing
Speaker 2: when I started doing it in two thousand and one,
Speaker 2: and there wasn't much written in the academic literature, so
Speaker 2: it really was making it up as we went along.
Speaker 2: But I also had some great mentors from the FBI,
Speaker 2: for example, because I worked over there for a period
Speaker 2: of time. There were people that I talked with in
Speaker 2: the FBI regularly, and I had mentors at New Scotland
Speaker 2: Yard and other mentors in the academic world, so it
Speaker 2: really was a case of shaping things. I had someone
Speaker 2: called Professor Betsy Stanko who worked with me, who was
Speaker 2: an American criminologist to create a methodology of understanding the
Speaker 2: types of questions we should be asking of victims that
Speaker 2: a domestic violence call out, and that really began the
Speaker 2: whole risk assessment process.
Speaker 1: And so you got this, all this information came to
Speaker 1: helping out investigations. Then you realized, I'm just paraphrasing what
Speaker 1: you've said. To understand it. You were going back investigating stuff,
Speaker 1: seeing that there's patterns, and then realizing that the proper
Speaker 1: due concern wasn't being provided to as just a domestic situation.
Speaker 1: It's just a husband and wife. They've had a falling out.
Speaker 1: These are indicators and if we could jump on them
Speaker 1: and treat them as serious as they need to at
Speaker 1: that point in time, potentially we can prevent the crime.
Speaker 1: Because homicide investigation, I can only speak for New South Wales,
Speaker 1: but I've also worked over in England and had dealings
Speaker 1: with other homicide squads. We always look at ourselves as
Speaker 1: just a reactive way of approaching approaching policing. The murders happened,
Speaker 1: we started the crime scene victimology as you described, and
Speaker 1: we try to find the perpetrator. But there's a lot
Speaker 1: more to it, isn't it. There's so much more that
Speaker 1: we can these red flags. And I know in one
Speaker 1: of the many interviews you've done or one of the podcasts,
Speaker 1: you were talking about murder by slow motion, and I
Speaker 1: think you were referencing a specific case where there were
Speaker 1: so many red flags, so many indicators, and when the
Speaker 1: murders actually happened, everyone goes, how did that happen? Well,
Speaker 1: if we look, it was almost signposted that that was
Speaker 1: what was going to occur. Do you want to give
Speaker 1: us an example of murder by slow motion and where
Speaker 1: mistakes were made?
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean I started to call it murder and
Speaker 2: slow motion because of exactly that that pattern that happened
Speaker 2: in you know, oftentimes it was slow time. It wasn't
Speaker 2: a quick set of events. And there was one case
Speaker 2: in particular that really stood out because I talked to
Speaker 2: the detective Chief inspector, someone called Stuart Aught, and it
Speaker 2: was when I was starting the risk assessment work and
Speaker 2: Stuart came up to New Scotland Yard and he said,
Speaker 2: you should really have a look at this case, Laura,
Speaker 2: the murder of Christine Boswell, And he said you should
Speaker 2: really look at the crime reports. It was so obvious
Speaker 2: that he was going to kill her. And I said, wow,
Speaker 2: you say that was such clarity, Stuart. He said, yeah,
Speaker 2: when you look at the crime reports, you'll understand what
Speaker 2: I'm talking about. And sure enough, thirty three callouts that
Speaker 2: she had made to her home address with textbook arguing
Speaker 2: to them physical violence, to then a knife being used
Speaker 2: to shred her clothes and damage to her property, and
Speaker 2: then she was stabbed multiple times in front of her
Speaker 2: two children. And I said to Stuart, it's a really
Speaker 2: horrific case. And I'm not saying tragic because the word
Speaker 2: tragic denotes there's nothing we can do about it. This
Speaker 2: was a preventable murder where we had thirty three opportunities
Speaker 2: to actually ask a different set of questions of what
Speaker 2: was going on for Chrissy. And I believed, as did Stuart,
Speaker 2: that we failed her, and he and I started to
Speaker 2: talk about over a cup of coffee, well, what are
Speaker 2: the types of questions that could have been asked to
Speaker 2: Chrissy that would have made the difference. And that was
Speaker 2: where the notion of risk assessment came from. Because I
Speaker 2: always work with the detectives. This was never just in
Speaker 2: isolation thinking oh, this is a good idea to do.
Speaker 2: And I said to Stuart. You know the people who
Speaker 2: also said to you that this was so obvious it
Speaker 2: was going to end in murder. My question for them is, well,
Speaker 2: what did you all do about it? Why is it
Speaker 2: that you look back in hindsight and then of course
Speaker 2: you understand that there's an incident led response, and that's
Speaker 2: part of the problem that the police go out and
Speaker 2: attend the incident. That language is so problematic because with
Speaker 2: domestic abuse and coercid control and stalking, it's patterned crime.
Speaker 2: It doesn't happen in a vacuum. So the language and
Speaker 2: the structure in the way that policing was set up
Speaker 2: was also a problem. It wasn't just about what was
Speaker 2: going on in this case, it was also about this
Speaker 2: incident led response, which meant that no one was really
Speaker 2: joining up the dots of looking at the history. And
Speaker 2: that still goes on present day and it's one of
Speaker 2: my pet peeves that we still haven't got this in
Speaker 2: the frontline officers, all of those who work within the police,
Speaker 2: whether you're a call handler, whether you're frontline, whether you're
Speaker 2: a supervisor, it should be mandatory training that they know
Speaker 2: this is patterned crime and you must expect there to
Speaker 2: be a pattern, either previously or that it will continue
Speaker 2: to happen if you don't make an intervention, and that's
Speaker 2: where we can save lives, but we also save money,
Speaker 2: the two things together. So Christine Boswell's case always stood
Speaker 2: out to me because it was the start of Okay, well,
Speaker 2: let's look at Christine's case, let's review it, and let's
Speaker 2: take another five cases in the first three months of
Speaker 2: two thousand and one, and let's do a domestic homicide
Speaker 2: review of these six cases. And that's what I did,
Speaker 2: and I work with another DC I called Alan Orberlak,
Speaker 2: and he and I wrote the guidance for even how
Speaker 2: you do a domestic homicide review. But we kept coming
Speaker 2: up against people saying, well, there's no legislation to make
Speaker 2: us do this review, so we don't want to do it.
Speaker 2: And that was a continual problem. So then I worked
Speaker 2: with Harriet Harmon to create a law, which meant that
Speaker 2: it became mandatory through the statutory legislation that you must
Speaker 2: do this. So you know, one thing came after the other.
Speaker 2: But in I went on to review fifty six domestic
Speaker 2: murders and they all had very similar patterns. Before the
Speaker 2: murder event.
Speaker 1: Itself and those patterns. We're talking about an next escalation,
Speaker 1: and it could be starts off as an argument that
Speaker 1: hasn't got physical. If there's a separation, series of text messages,
Speaker 1: then specific threats in the messages, an assault, then a knife.
Speaker 1: You mentioned clothes being cut up. I always was of
Speaker 1: great concern when the family pet was murdered or killed.
Speaker 1: That type of indicator is going, Okay, this person is
Speaker 1: going to go further and further. So you reviewed fifty
Speaker 1: cases of domestic murders, so the offender has been in
Speaker 1: a relationship, was or previously been in a relationship with
Speaker 1: the victim, and you saw a pattern all the way
Speaker 1: through with those fifty fifty cases.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean I took fifty six. It was that
Speaker 2: one year's worth of domestic murders within the Metropolitan Police.
Speaker 2: But the issue, first of all, was that no one
Speaker 2: counted the domestic murders. So it wasn't as easy as saying,
Speaker 2: let's review all the domestic murders. I actually had to
Speaker 2: find them all and then create a system so that
Speaker 2: when a murder happened, that the center was flagged that
Speaker 2: this was most likely a domestic violence murder and then
Speaker 2: once someone was arrested and or charged, then we knew
Speaker 2: for sure that it was and then we would do
Speaker 2: the review. So of course it can take time to
Speaker 2: bottom out with the investigation who the offender is, so
Speaker 2: that that was an issue, but there were patterns that repeated.
Speaker 2: So separation, as you quite rightly said, separation increases the
Speaker 2: risk strangulation which increases the risk sevenfold for femicide escalation,
Speaker 2: so it happening more often and it getting worse, and
Speaker 2: the getting worse part being important. Pregnancy and new birth,
Speaker 2: so pregnancy being a high risk factor, the threats, and
Speaker 2: in particular if there's stalking, when someone makes a threat
Speaker 2: and they stalk, one in two of them would go
Speaker 2: on to kill. So that fifty percent is really important
Speaker 2: that everybody knows about it.
Speaker 1: I read that figure in researching for my chat with you.
Speaker 1: Can you just break that down again because that horrified me,
Speaker 1: that figure, that one in two. Just explain that again
Speaker 1: if you could in detail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's actually an Australian stat from the first
Speaker 2: Stalking Clinic, from Troy McEwan's work and Rachel McKenzie's work
Speaker 2: studying stalkers, and I saw it repeating I mean before
Speaker 2: they had published on it. I saw it in my
Speaker 2: domestic homicide reviews. So a threat would be articulated either
Speaker 2: in writing or verbally or even come from a you know,
Speaker 2: via a third party. We see a lot of this
Speaker 2: stuff online now, but the threat is made to harm
Speaker 2: or to kill or to take revenge. And if there
Speaker 2: is stalking and there's been an intimate relationship, and an
Speaker 2: intimate relationship can be you know, as classed in the police.
Speaker 2: It's that you have had a level of intimacy, so
Speaker 2: maybe you had a it can be one date you
Speaker 2: had sex with the person, it doesn't need to be
Speaker 2: twenty two years and that threat being made. Then in
Speaker 2: one in two cases we saw the murders then being
Speaker 2: carried out, so the victims were actually telling us that
Speaker 2: they were going to be killed and then they were.
Speaker 2: So it's such an important statistic that even with stranger
Speaker 2: related stalking, ie you don't know the stalker, one in
Speaker 2: ten of them, if they make a threat, will act
Speaker 2: on it. And that's why it's so important to take
Speaker 2: those threats seriously. Too often they're not taken seriously and
Speaker 2: they're seen as just throw away comments. But when you've
Speaker 2: got coercive control and stalking. They must be taken seriously.
Speaker 2: So you know, our knowledge now is even greater when
Speaker 2: we think about the timeline to murder and the slow
Speaker 2: motion element and these high risk clusters that co occur.
Speaker 2: And if you have a finality with separation, ie, she says,
Speaker 2: I'm never coming back to you. They may have separated
Speaker 2: five times, six times before, but this occasion she's saying,
Speaker 2: I'm never coming back. That finality element, like with Hannah
Speaker 2: Clark's case, you know, is the tipping point when the
Speaker 2: person who's coercively controlling stalking, that's when they take, you know,
Speaker 2: matters into their own hands. Of it's I'm going to
Speaker 2: win at all costs, that kind of psychopathology that I
Speaker 2: have to win at all costs, and that's when it's
Speaker 2: incredibly dangerous for women and children.
Speaker 1: So with all that you've learned to put what you're
Speaker 1: talking about in the practice, it's about educating, educating police officers.
Speaker 1: So because invariably it's not the experience detective that's taking
Speaker 1: the report of a stalking incident, it'll be the front
Speaker 1: line troops, the uniform police with maybe one or two
Speaker 1: years service. You've worked in law enforcement agencies. So you
Speaker 1: understand getting that culture out, but we've really got to
Speaker 1: get that education going so people understand when this crime
Speaker 1: that in isolation, people could look at it, well it's
Speaker 1: not the biggest crime going on, but got to understand
Speaker 1: the importance of it. Have you got any thoughts on
Speaker 1: how we need to educate law enforcement officers, agencies, police forces,
Speaker 1: not just over in US, Australia, across the world. Basically
Speaker 1: I do.
Speaker 2: And I wrote the book Policing Domestic Violence.
Speaker 1: Which was okay, well that's question press.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a very good question. Garan is right behind me.
Speaker 2: I actually wrote it with two police officers who were
Speaker 2: experts as well, and they were brilliant, Simon Letchford and
Speaker 2: Sharon Stratton. And you know why we wrote the book,
Speaker 2: because you don't make money from writing books like that.
Speaker 2: It was to put all of the good practice in
Speaker 2: one place. Because we wrote the policy for New Scotland
Speaker 2: Yard and the Metropolitan Police. I should just locate that
Speaker 2: New Scotland Yard is the headquarters for the Metropolitan Police,
Speaker 2: which is where I was based for a lot of
Speaker 2: my career for the ten years. Although I did go
Speaker 2: out and work in incident rooms there's that term again
Speaker 2: to support major inquiries at different times. But Simon and
Speaker 2: Sharon and I worked together writing the policy but also
Speaker 2: delivering training, and we became nationally recognized experts that we
Speaker 2: were being asked to go out all the time, and
Speaker 2: we just wanted to make sure that All the Good
Speaker 2: Practice was written in a police friendly way, in a
Speaker 2: practical way, that it wasn't an academic paper. It was
Speaker 2: something that a frontline officer could pick up, dip in
Speaker 2: and out of chapters and it made sense to them
Speaker 2: on a practical level, and the three of us were
Speaker 2: really invested in that. So the book still stands. It's
Speaker 2: Oxford University Press published, and All the Good Practice really
Speaker 2: is just as relevant today as when we wrote it
Speaker 2: and published it in two thousand and nine. Differences we've
Speaker 2: got new laws like the course of control law and
Speaker 2: stalking law, but in terms of the good practice of
Speaker 2: what police should be doing, from the call handler to
Speaker 2: the frontline officer, to the specialist officers, to the supervisors
Speaker 2: who are so important in this, and to expert led training.
Speaker 2: Because you have to attend expert led training. I believe
Speaker 2: it's not just a subject that a trainer can deliver
Speaker 2: road traffic collision training one morning and then they talk
Speaker 2: about domestic abuse and course of control in the afternoon.
Speaker 2: You have to know your stuff. What was interesting to
Speaker 2: me was when Sharon Stratton and I were doing frontline training.
Speaker 2: We would go get up at five am beyond the
Speaker 2: seven am parades delivering to frontline officers, and I thought
Speaker 2: they would be quite difficult and trunky, that's a very
Speaker 2: British term. But what was interesting was that when we
Speaker 2: talked to them about cases and explaining the high risk
Speaker 2: factors and why they're going to ask the questions on
Speaker 2: the risk assessment, they were so interested we couldn't get
Speaker 2: them back out the classroom. They wanted to stay and
Speaker 2: ask questions. And that was my first real lesson about
Speaker 2: don't make assumptions about frontline officers. They just want quality
Speaker 2: training and you need to invest in them and give
Speaker 2: them the right knowledge because they do a very difficult job.
Speaker 2: So you know, I've trained officers and police staff all
Speaker 2: over the world and they do do a tough job.
Speaker 2: And my mantra is always first time, right time. You know,
Speaker 2: you give them the best information and they deserve that
Speaker 2: level of investment, and it's a leadership issue that they
Speaker 2: don't get trained with experts, and it saves lives and
Speaker 2: saves money, and why wouldn't you want to do that.
Speaker 1: Look, I'm all for it. And that's why just listening
Speaker 1: to you say that, I look at the police forces
Speaker 1: that I understand the culture people join the place. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's lots of reasons when they join the place, but
Speaker 1: they want to help. And you talked about the frontline police.
Speaker 1: The supervisors are important because quite often the frontline police
Speaker 1: are seen the damage done at the crime scene or
Speaker 1: when the instance occurred, but they're under pressure from supervisors.
Speaker 1: Well to conflict, get that one done, move on to
Speaker 1: the next one. Let's keep the statistics down. But when
Speaker 1: you sell it, and you also mentioned that it's not
Speaker 1: just save lives, it has a fiscal benefit too. It
Speaker 1: saves money, and that might be how we've got to
Speaker 1: tap into some of the upper levels of policing that
Speaker 1: everyone benefits from this. I find it fascinating to have
Speaker 1: a conversation with you like this and working in homicide,
Speaker 1: and I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of
Speaker 1: my time working on investigations with doctor Sarah, your forensic psychologists.
Speaker 1: I love the insight she would bring to an investigation.
Speaker 1: I didn't require her input on the majority of investigations,
Speaker 1: but the tricky ones, just trying to get a sense
Speaker 1: on what are we dealing with here, the interpretation of
Speaker 1: the crime scene indicators that we should look for, things
Speaker 1: like that. I think there's a benefit. I think there's
Speaker 1: more need for those type of qualified people to be
Speaker 1: in those we'll call them incident rooms, in those investigations
Speaker 1: where it's a fresh idea, looking at it from a
Speaker 1: different approach, not just a policing approach. What's your thoughts
Speaker 1: on that. When you worked with Scotland Yard, did you
Speaker 1: feel like you were contributing to the quality of the investigation.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean I was a part of them, so
Speaker 2: I was running units internally, so it's slightly different from
Speaker 2: bringing people in from externally. But when I ran the
Speaker 2: homicide prevention unit, because that's what I did, mainstreaming a
Speaker 2: lot of this work at New Scotland Yard as well.
Speaker 2: I had academics as well as researchers working with police
Speaker 2: intelligence officers and intelligence analysts as well as filled intelligence
Speaker 2: officers and detectives. I had a whole intel cell full
Speaker 2: of those people, and that was a very interesting culture
Speaker 2: clash of you know, different people from different expertise, different
Speaker 2: fields all within one you know, intelligence cell. But you know,
Speaker 2: I think you do have to draw upon expertise, and
Speaker 2: I think that, you know, for my work, when we
Speaker 2: go back to nineteen ninety six, the culture was very different,
Speaker 2: and you know, did I feel I was contributing at
Speaker 2: the time, Absolutely, But and I worked some cases where
Speaker 2: you know, I got commendations for the work that I
Speaker 2: was doing, linking some very high profile serial rape cases
Speaker 2: and being part of successful operations to catch serial rapists
Speaker 2: like Richard Baker and Mark Dixie who had a connection
Speaker 2: actually to Australia. So you know, at that time I did.
Speaker 2: But I think the culture is still and I mean
Speaker 2: policing culture in the UK and Australia and America. I
Speaker 2: think that it is still very misogynistic and that's a
Speaker 2: challenge that when you're a female working within it that
Speaker 2: is invisible to most people by you the resistant that happens,
Speaker 2: and I think we have to talk about that because
Speaker 2: you can have an expertise, but if you're not really
Speaker 2: allowed at the table to have a voice, so you're
Speaker 2: seen as valuable. If it's your sex. That's holding you back,
Speaker 2: that's not okay. And I think there's a lot that
Speaker 2: we have to tackle within our police services present day
Speaker 2: that relates to that and for victims to have trust
Speaker 2: and confidence, it's very important. The Sarah Everard case is
Speaker 2: a case in point in London. You know that happened
Speaker 2: in the pandemic.
Speaker 1: Can you tell us about that case because that was
Speaker 1: a serving police officer I believe was the offender.
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean, it's a horrific case. Sarah Everard was
Speaker 2: a young woman who went out during the lockdown, went
Speaker 2: to a friend's house and she was caught on CCTV
Speaker 2: cameras talking to a man and she disappeared. So interestingly
Speaker 2: I got flyers from my neighbors to ask me would
Speaker 2: I put it the case on my podcast because she
Speaker 2: local It happened locally, So I got involved early on
Speaker 2: of just trying to help circulate information and it was
Speaker 2: the you know what has happened to her? But it
Speaker 2: didn't sound good right from the get go, and unfortunately
Speaker 2: what became clear was the man in the image was
Speaker 2: the serving police officer and he actually used his warrant
Speaker 2: card to detain her, put her in the back of
Speaker 2: a rented car and took her out of London, and
Speaker 2: we now know that he raped her and he killed her.
Speaker 2: And what followed thereafter, because it is shocking. What followed
Speaker 2: thereafter were a series of things that were said by
Speaker 2: police and people, well, if she thought she was at risk,
Speaker 2: she should flag down a bus, or you know, comments
Speaker 2: about women's safety. Because lots of women came out utterly
Speaker 2: horrified and shocked and concerned about what had happened and
Speaker 2: shared all their stories online. And then we had some
Speaker 2: you know, really ridiculous comments being made which showed just
Speaker 2: how little has really changed for women even since Peter Suckcliffe.
Speaker 2: That my neighbors were telling me the police were knocking
Speaker 2: on their doors after Sarah went missing, saying don't go out,
Speaker 2: women shouldn't go out after dark. Well that's what they
Speaker 2: said in the Peter Suckcliffe investigation. So you know, everything
Speaker 2: that was done and said just aggravated it even more.
Speaker 2: And the commissioner, unfortunately at the time, said it's one
Speaker 2: bad apple. But what we've seen is that there's been
Speaker 2: many officers who have been you know, arrested for domestic abuse,
Speaker 2: for sexual violence, for rape. I'm sure for you as
Speaker 2: a former officer. I mean, it's just so against the
Speaker 2: grain of everything that why you join the police to
Speaker 2: protect and serve and then in amongst you know, and
Speaker 2: it turns out that quite a few people understood that
Speaker 2: he was a wrongman, you know, and where does that
Speaker 2: information go? And when I ran the homicide Prevention unit,
Speaker 2: we set up a process to weed out those people
Speaker 2: internally and externally. And you know, I felt, you know,
Speaker 2: really upset seeing these things unfold for Sarah's family, but
Speaker 2: also for you know, what's going on that we're recruiting
Speaker 2: men with histories and that it wasn't even investigated even
Speaker 2: though his history was cleared.
Speaker 1: Well, Laura, I think my concern with police and when
Speaker 1: you say organizations misogynistic and that it can't be argue
Speaker 1: that's yeah, is what it is. We all talk about
Speaker 1: change and that needs change. There needs to be more change.
Speaker 1: I make the observation with police, and you know, when
Speaker 1: you talk about the one, the case that you just
Speaker 1: referred to and all the other offenses, police have extraordinary power,
Speaker 1: Like you've got that badge, You've got the authority to
Speaker 1: arrest someone, You've got the authority to take someone's life.
Speaker 1: In a certain set of circumstances, power corrupts. If you
Speaker 1: have the wrong type of personality in there, it can
Speaker 1: go really bad and taking, you know, using the warrant
Speaker 1: card to abduct the girl, to rape her, murder her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's what you've got to be on the lookout for.
Speaker 1: I know you've spent some time in law enforcement agencies.
Speaker 1: Just by the way the conversation, you understand the culture,
Speaker 1: and it's not tipping the tipping the bucket on everyone.
Speaker 1: There's some great people in policing law enforcement agencies, but
Speaker 1: we've got to police our own too, and if there's problems,
Speaker 1: there's indicators, we can't just turn the blind eye and go, well,
Speaker 1: that's all right, he's all right, he's one of us.
Speaker 1: We've got to go go hard on it. Absolutely, when
Speaker 1: you were working in those environments, did you have clashes
Speaker 1: with people over issues like you've just raised.
Speaker 2: I did. I. You know, it was something that I
Speaker 2: never thought it was related to my sex, I have
Speaker 2: to say, being a woman. But now you know, being
Speaker 2: older and wiser, I now understand that context. And I
Speaker 2: still carried on doing the work. I still was so
Speaker 2: invested in creating change, and I worked with some brilliant
Speaker 2: people and had incredible opportunities and we you know, prevented well.
Speaker 2: We reduced domestic murders by fifty eight percent over thirteen years.
Speaker 2: That's thirty three people less dead in London, which you
Speaker 2: know is incredible. And I worked with some brilliant people,
Speaker 2: but I also work with some really concerning, terrible people
Speaker 2: who caused a lot of problems, and they should have
Speaker 2: been dealt with at a far earlier stage. They were
Speaker 2: given at the benefit of the doubt far too many times,
Speaker 2: and that again is a trust and confidence issue that
Speaker 2: I guess, you know, it goes down to sort of
Speaker 2: this meme that I saw recently on social media where
Speaker 2: you know, victim says that she was raped or abused.
Speaker 2: What we need or a woman says I'm raped, I've
Speaker 2: been raped or abused or treated bad. We need fifty
Speaker 2: eight videos, thirty statements for witnesses. Man says he didn't
Speaker 2: do it. Oh okay, you know, And that's what I
Speaker 2: feel the culture within but also so outside of You
Speaker 2: only know your own lived experience, and most men will
Speaker 2: never have experience of what women deal with every day
Speaker 2: that we just put down to it just happens rather
Speaker 2: than I always wonder what life would be like if
Speaker 2: everything worked for me, if I was Lawrence and not Laura.
Speaker 2: I think my policing experience and my life experience would
Speaker 2: be wholly different. Let me put it that way.
Speaker 1: It's an interesting way way to look at it. Look,
Speaker 1: we've dived deep in and I haven't even covered off
Speaker 1: on how you got into the field of expertise that
Speaker 1: you've found. What's a little bit about yourself. How did
Speaker 1: you find your way to the career that you've got
Speaker 1: now and the expertise that you've developed in law enforcement?
Speaker 2: Yes, I mean going back in time, I guess I
Speaker 2: probably consumed a lot of TV movies and shows related
Speaker 2: to crime, but also read a lot of Nancy Drew
Speaker 2: Hardy boys. You know. Always was very interested in people
Speaker 2: and analytical work and injustice. And I did think about
Speaker 2: doing criminal law for a time and then realized that
Speaker 2: actually kept being advised you'd have to do criminal defense work. That's,
Speaker 2: you know, really where you get a lot of the
Speaker 2: good jobs and you earn money. And I just thought, no,
Speaker 2: I can't do that. And then the accused came on
Speaker 2: TV with Jodie Foster and injustice happened in my own family,
Speaker 2: and I guess those things just wedded together. And I
Speaker 2: did know a detective up at new Scotland Yard who
Speaker 2: worked in the arts and antiques unit, and I kept
Speaker 2: calling him and asking whether he felt there would be
Speaker 2: any kind of position coming up at New Scotland Yard.
Speaker 2: They were just starting this sexual offenses section and I
Speaker 2: was at university doing my psychology degree, but I had
Speaker 2: to take a year out and internship and I said,
Speaker 2: I will work, you know, I'll be the first in
Speaker 2: last out. I'll do, you know, whatever is necessary. And
Speaker 2: I just kept calling and was tenacious, and in the
Speaker 2: end they said, yup, we're just starting this unit. Come
Speaker 2: up and meet with us. And they gave me a
Speaker 2: role of what was called a college based sandwich student
Speaker 2: in the sexual offenses section. And that, of course, every
Speaker 2: detective said, oh, you make sandwiches. No, I didn't make sandwiches.
Speaker 2: I did everything bar make sandwiches. But you know, I
Speaker 2: was first in last out. I found the work absolutely fascinating.
Speaker 2: I devoured everything that I could around sexual homicide doctor
Speaker 2: Anne Burgess's work because she was instrumental in the FBI
Speaker 2: of setting up the behavioral science units, and I just
Speaker 2: found the work really intriguing and felt like, you know,
Speaker 2: I was a duck in water the place where I
Speaker 2: should be. Went back to finish my finals and the
Speaker 2: head of the unit said, we'd love you to come
Speaker 2: back if you would consider it and head up the
Speaker 2: sexual offenses section. And I was going to go traveling,
Speaker 2: but I just felt it was too good an opportunity.
Speaker 2: So you know what I'll say is that tenacity pays off.
Speaker 2: I kind of I didn't know whether that was the
Speaker 2: thing I really wanted to do, and if it didn't
Speaker 2: work out, I'd go on and do law, but the
Speaker 2: psychology aspects and setting up something part of something new
Speaker 2: that created and helped victims felt like a really good
Speaker 2: place to be.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I understand being driven by that, the interest in
Speaker 1: the type of work I've always found the psychology, as
Speaker 1: I said in the introduction, the psychology of a homicide investigation,
Speaker 1: understanding the mindset, the motive, and all the nuances that
Speaker 1: play out when you're looking at an investigation. In those
Speaker 1: early days, I referenced Sarah ul and people that have
Speaker 1: listened to the podcast, I've had her on the podcast,
Speaker 1: and I talk about it often I was in homicide
Speaker 1: for a long time and Sarah Uel was attached specifically
Speaker 1: to help with investigations, not just a homicide, but other
Speaker 1: units were in the police and it was like an
Speaker 1: untapped resource because people didn't realize what she had to offer,
Speaker 1: and we joke about it. I thought she was my
Speaker 1: own private criminal psychologists that I could call any time,
Speaker 1: because people hadn't discovered the work that she could provide.
Speaker 1: Eventually they did find out, and all of a sudden
Speaker 1: she had to work on other investigations. I was shocked.
Speaker 1: I thought, I thought that she worked exclusively for me.
Speaker 1: But the benefits that I got from that having someone
Speaker 1: look at an investigation because you've worked in law enforcement,
Speaker 1: you understand the culture and yeah, if we've got the
Speaker 1: blinkers on them, police are thinking one way. I would
Speaker 1: quite often have a view and then sound that pass,
Speaker 1: run that past Sarah, and she would change my thinking
Speaker 1: on certain things. With some crimes, like I'd be going,
Speaker 1: what's a motive? What are we looking for here? And
Speaker 1: she would point out that, well, the person that committed
Speaker 1: the crime might not even know why they've committed the crime,
Speaker 1: and this was an abduction of a child. Different things
Speaker 1: like that, and I found the input invaluable to help
Speaker 1: with the investigation. It really kept me and it was
Speaker 1: a way of me checking my thought process and steering
Speaker 1: me in the right direction. Once people understood what you
Speaker 1: could provide to them, did you find that it was
Speaker 1: more readily accepted.
Speaker 2: Well, It would depend on the senior investigating officer and
Speaker 2: the leader would set the tone right, so the you
Speaker 2: gary would set the tone as to whether I was
Speaker 2: accepted and treated well or not. And so if you're
Speaker 2: inserted into an investigation, then you're not treated particularly well.
Speaker 2: But what I found when I worked with really good dcies,
Speaker 2: it was a very positive experience that they got a
Speaker 2: lot out of it. I did, and we worked together
Speaker 2: really well. But if you've got someone who just doesn't
Speaker 2: believe in what you're doing, and they're resistant and they
Speaker 2: keep you out of meetings and they do all sorts
Speaker 2: of you know, underhand things, and it's a really negative experience.
Speaker 2: And I've had plenty of those, so, you know, and
Speaker 2: I think there's so much to offer if the seen
Speaker 2: investigating officer or whoever you're working with is open minded.
Speaker 2: You know, when I worked in the FBI for three months,
Speaker 2: when we did case consults. We'd all sit under table
Speaker 2: and everyone would just share their opinion as an expert,
Speaker 2: and it was up to the SiO to decide what
Speaker 2: they found value in that. We all had our own
Speaker 2: expertise and niches and we were there to add value
Speaker 2: to the investigation, but it was ultimately up to the SiO.
Speaker 2: But often you wouldn't even get a fair shake. And
Speaker 2: I think that that's a huge disservice because when you collaborate,
Speaker 2: you get to a far better outcome, and you know
Speaker 2: that's really you're just another tool in the toolbox that
Speaker 2: you can be called upon, you know. And I'll give
Speaker 2: you an example, And I worked on the case of
Speaker 2: Amiie de la Gronde who was hit over the back
Speaker 2: of the head on Twickenham Green And this was in
Speaker 2: two thousand and four August the nineteenth, two thousand and four,
Speaker 2: and the head of homicide called me up and told
Speaker 2: me about what had happened to Amelie and she died
Speaker 2: on the way to hospital. Really horrific case in Twickenham
Speaker 2: on a cricket pitch, so low volume crime, you know,
Speaker 2: it shocked the community. I was in America working at
Speaker 2: the time, and the head of Homicides said, I'm going
Speaker 2: to deploy you on this Category A plus murder investigation
Speaker 2: when you get back. I've already deployed some of your team.
Speaker 2: And I said, right, you know, understood, And I asked
Speaker 2: him to tell me everything that was known. And we
Speaker 2: had this whole debate about what the motive was then,
Speaker 2: and there the kind of seemingly and the SiO who
Speaker 2: was in charge of the case, you know, it kept
Speaker 2: being talked about as a motiveless crime, and I said,
Speaker 2: there's no such thing as a motiveless crime. There is
Speaker 2: always a motive to the offender, just because we don't
Speaker 2: know what it is. Because she had been hit over
Speaker 2: the back of the head, but her phone had been taken,
Speaker 2: but nothing stolen, her bag was there, so it seemingly
Speaker 2: looked like this random attack that was motiveless. And I said,
Speaker 2: it had meaning to the offender, and this looks like
Speaker 2: a mission killed whatever she represented to him. So they're
Speaker 2: the things of crimes against women that sometimes men don't
Speaker 2: really understand. There wasn't a sexual attack on her, but
Speaker 2: it was sexually motivated and it was about what she represented.
Speaker 2: But often you hear things being said like it's a
Speaker 2: motiveless crime. And even that, you know, when we understand
Speaker 2: the psychology, nothing is motiveless. It always has meaning, and
Speaker 2: our job is to discern what that meaning is, to
Speaker 2: interpret it. You know, every contact leaves a trace. Whatever
Speaker 2: that trace might be. It might be what he doesn't
Speaker 2: do at the scene, not necessarily what he does do.
Speaker 2: So you know, that's where you can really add value
Speaker 2: of finding an offender. In fact, we found him within
Speaker 2: three months. He was a serial killer. And as I
Speaker 2: said to the senior investigating officer and to the head
Speaker 2: of homicide and everyone that was involved, we knew that
Speaker 2: we had a serial killer case because my unit had
Speaker 2: found other cases that we linked him to it. But
Speaker 2: I said, appeal to the women that he knows, because
Speaker 2: he will behave in a violent, abusive, psychologically, very damaging
Speaker 2: and harmful way to those women. Let's appeal to them
Speaker 2: because he whoever he is, does not want to get caught,
Speaker 2: so don't waste your time appealing to him. And you
Speaker 2: remember the good old days where sometimes you would have
Speaker 2: an SiO appeal directly to the offender. Well understanding the
Speaker 2: psychology and motivation. I mean, of course it sounds silly now,
Speaker 2: but most don't want to be caught. And this was
Speaker 2: the guy who didn't want to be caught and did
Speaker 2: everything forensically to ensure he wouldn't be caught. So as
Speaker 2: I don't waste you know, five minutes talking to him directly,
Speaker 2: talk to the women that know him. And on day
Speaker 2: two of the investigation, a woman called Joe Collins walked
Speaker 2: into the mobile police station at Twickenham Green which had
Speaker 2: been set up, and said, the man you're looking for
Speaker 2: is called Levi Bellfield and she told us a whole
Speaker 2: load of history and her statement came to me at
Speaker 2: my unit and it literally was I said, you know,
Speaker 2: the probability is this is our guy, and he has
Speaker 2: harmed many many women. We've got to find those other cases.
Speaker 2: And he was actually charged with domestic violence rate before
Speaker 2: any of the murders.
Speaker 1: Right. So then back to what we started off talking
Speaker 1: about those indicators that, yeah, these red flags that you
Speaker 1: can see it's almost going to build up, and the
Speaker 1: murder by slow motion. I find it fascinating what you
Speaker 1: said there about appealing to the media. I in the
Speaker 1: high profile jobs that I had, that there was some
Speaker 1: media that needed to be addressed. I would consult and
Speaker 1: I'll keep referencing Sarah, consult with Sarah about the messaging
Speaker 1: I want to put out or looking at putting out.
Speaker 1: I remember one particular case I put out there, and
Speaker 1: as you were saying that, it made me think about it.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the appeal might be going to the offend of
Speaker 1: the suspect, making them feel the pressures coming down. But
Speaker 1: we put an appeal out on the high profile job here.
Speaker 1: It was William Tyrrell Investigation and basically said that the
Speaker 1: narrative that I wanted to deliver in the release to
Speaker 1: the media in the stand up was that whoever's watching this,
Speaker 1: have a look at the person beside you, because they
Speaker 1: might react strange. They might turn it off as if
Speaker 1: they're not interested in it, or they might overreact. So
Speaker 1: I was thinking, I'm trying to create an environment where
Speaker 1: the persons sitting there, maybe with his partner family, Oh,
Speaker 1: let's turn this bullshit off, or what do you mean
Speaker 1: this person. I like to try things like that when
Speaker 1: and you call it a tool or a strategy when
Speaker 1: you're having the briefings, I think it's important to have
Speaker 1: a strategy when you're talking to the media. My cringe
Speaker 1: over here when I see a police officer get up
Speaker 1: there and that's not really invested in the investigation and
Speaker 1: stand there and go, we don't know what's happened. We've
Speaker 1: got no CCTV footage, there's no witnesses, there's and it's
Speaker 1: virtually giving the offender. Okay, just keep my mouth shut
Speaker 1: and I'll get away of this. What's your thoughts on
Speaker 1: using media and investigations and different strategies that can be employed.
Speaker 2: I think it's so important you have to use media.
Speaker 2: I mean, you know, the publica your eyes and ears,
Speaker 2: and that's always been my position of what you put
Speaker 2: out really does matter, and oftentimes it does lead to
Speaker 2: an arrest when you ask people very specific things to
Speaker 2: do or be on the lookout for certain things. But
Speaker 2: you have to be quite specific. I mean, you think
Speaker 2: about Gabby Patito's case here, which I covered on Crime
Speaker 2: Analyst in twenty four episodes, and she was found because
Speaker 2: of people who were following the media coverage and saw
Speaker 2: the white van. So the public are such an important part,
Speaker 2: but you've got to give them very specific things to
Speaker 2: look for, and you know, you can't be too general.
Speaker 2: And of course, now with the rise of kind of
Speaker 2: the true crime world, where everyone's like an internet sleuth,
Speaker 2: use them in a productive way, don't try and shut
Speaker 2: them down, try and use them in the ways that
Speaker 2: are thoughtful, that can actually help you. So, you know,
Speaker 2: we've had quite a lot of those case is where
Speaker 2: there's been criticism of you know, the internet sleuth and
Speaker 2: the armchair detective. But I think it's because they haven't
Speaker 2: been given very specific direction and they go off on
Speaker 2: their own, and you know, they can be incredibly helpful,
Speaker 2: and particularly when we're thinking about post defense behavior. And
Speaker 2: a lot of my work is looking at post defense behavior,
Speaker 2: you know, and I've covered lots of cases on the
Speaker 2: podcast where I've shown how post defense behavior can be
Speaker 2: so important in understanding it but also catching the offender
Speaker 2: and you know, giving detectives that information is important. Are
Speaker 2: you having a huddle with you know, doctor was it
Speaker 2: doctor Sarah Sarah l with Sarah Yule, you know, and
Speaker 2: her giving you a very clear steer and what to
Speaker 2: look out for. Some things you want to just keep
Speaker 2: for you and other things you want to put into
Speaker 2: the public domain. And you've got to be discerning about
Speaker 2: which of those things you're going to do and to whom.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems to seeing you talked and the podcast. Now,
Speaker 1: podcasting obviously here the stay, but it's changed the dynamics
Speaker 1: in that the police can't control the narrative all the
Speaker 1: time that goes out because podcasts, and we've had some
Speaker 1: podcasts over here. Teachers Pet is one where an investigation
Speaker 1: that was basically shut down and was going though where
Speaker 1: then this Teacher's Pet podcast came on board and information
Speaker 1: started to happen. Things started to happen. And I have
Speaker 1: no doubts, being involved in homicide at the time that
Speaker 1: that case wouldn't have been solved without the attention that
Speaker 1: the Teacher's Pet bought board on it. So it's a
Speaker 1: different landscape. But yeah, the media and investigations, I know
Speaker 1: you've crossed the line, and I've crossed the line because
Speaker 1: we're working in the media now. We've worked in law enforcement.
Speaker 1: But I always saw there's a tool that could be
Speaker 1: used and used very specifically and for benefits to the investigation.
Speaker 1: And I still see now I've gone into the madia.
Speaker 1: I'm working in the media. I say, the benefits that
Speaker 1: can be done if there's cooperation, Yes.
Speaker 2: And you have to use the tool in the right
Speaker 2: way and I think Headley Thomas's investigation into Lannette's case
Speaker 2: and I know it very well because we covered it
Speaker 2: on my other podcast or a crime profile, and gave
Speaker 2: it an international lens. And actually then I work with
Speaker 2: Headley in the background because it was always a coercid
Speaker 2: control case and I think what he did was phenomenal
Speaker 2: and that's not always welcomed by the police, and I
Speaker 2: think they have to find a way to allow it
Speaker 2: to be useful and helpful and productive, and it's not
Speaker 2: always about controlling the narrative. Yes, there are certain things
Speaker 2: that you don't want to put in the public domain,
Speaker 2: but I think most people understand that if there are sensitivities,
Speaker 2: then you let media colleagues know that there are sensitivities
Speaker 2: and there's certain things that are being withheld that they
Speaker 2: don't want in the public domain. I think you've got
Speaker 2: to be grown up about that, and too often I'm
Speaker 2: not seeing that happening. But but podcasts are here to stay,
Speaker 2: they're not going away, and you can do a lot
Speaker 2: of good with direction and clarity about your requirements. And
Speaker 2: in fact, New South Wales Police did contact me with
Speaker 2: our coverage at Lynette's case and they asked because of
Speaker 2: the impending arrest and potential prosecution. They asked, could we
Speaker 2: have a meeting and I said yes, on behalf of
Speaker 2: the team. And they asked, would we be prepared to
Speaker 2: take the content down because of some judas matters, because
Speaker 2: we don't want to impact the trial, And I said,
Speaker 2: of course, I totally understand why you would want that
Speaker 2: to happen. No issue. So we took our episodes down.
Speaker 2: We're not going to try and jeopardize a case.
Speaker 1: And I think the police have got to understand that
Speaker 1: most people, I would suggest, don't want the jeopardizer case.
Speaker 1: When you're talking about the very serious murder, abduction, whatever.
Speaker 1: People don't want to jeopardize the case. But with Headley,
Speaker 1: and I know Headley will and initially the police were
Speaker 1: resistantly cooperating, and then he had a high, high level
Speaker 1: meeting with the commissioner and eventually it was agreed, okay,
Speaker 1: we can work in unison here without compromising the investigation
Speaker 1: or the integrity of the police, just working together, and yeah,
Speaker 1: they got the results. It was interesting that you said
Speaker 1: you've had people reach out to you with the work
Speaker 1: that you do as a podcaster. I have that same
Speaker 1: type of thing. I have people reach out to me
Speaker 1: that the frustrated about the crime, and I had one
Speaker 1: person get in contact with me. I'm not revealing details
Speaker 1: obviously that you do a lot on your podcast talking
Speaker 1: about crimes that have happened, and you do good there.
Speaker 1: But I'm in a domestic violence situation and I honestly
Speaker 1: feel I'm going to be killed, and I'm at wits
Speaker 1: end trying to get assistance from the police and different things.
Speaker 1: I'm dealing with that person now, and it horrifies me
Speaker 1: that it's almost like I'm seeing the red flags. The
Speaker 1: person's doing everything she can in going to law enforcement agencies,
Speaker 1: going to the police, and going through the courts and
Speaker 1: all that, but it's not stopped. And I can hear
Speaker 1: the genuine fear in her voice saying nothing's going to
Speaker 1: stop this. It's going to stop when I'm dead. Now,
Speaker 1: I get contacted by a lot of people with that.
Speaker 1: It really made me think someone's got to do something
Speaker 1: about this case. And so I've been in communication with
Speaker 1: the person trying to help, and I share her frustration,
Speaker 1: but more importantly, her fear. She is living her life
Speaker 1: in fear, thinking of the consequences of what's going to happen.
Speaker 2: Yes, and unfortunately, Gary, I hear from hundreds of it's
Speaker 2: predominantly women, not always exclusively women, but you know, this
Speaker 2: is sort of the main stay that on crime analyst,
Speaker 2: some real crime profile. We've always talked about course of
Speaker 2: control and child abuse and sexual abuse and domestic violence
Speaker 2: and stalking to educate people. And so you educate people,
Speaker 2: but then police and others still haven't caught up. And
Speaker 2: it's not just the police, it's the courts, it's the
Speaker 2: probation officers, it's the judges, it's you know, a whole
Speaker 2: system's approach that needs to change. But for me, having
Speaker 2: done this work for almost three decades, it's a leadership issue.
Speaker 2: And if the leaders don't see it as important, then
Speaker 2: they don't train the staff, they don't resource the units,
Speaker 2: they don't create real change. And I think, you know,
Speaker 2: in Australia, I've done a lot of work over there.
Speaker 2: I gave evidence regarding Queensland changing the law and course
Speaker 2: of control. I've also reviewed lots of different types of
Speaker 2: cases from Kelly Wilkinson, Marion Barter, and I've been asked
Speaker 2: to comment, you know, and give my analysis on Amy
Speaker 2: Wensley's case more recently, and the patterns are just all
Speaker 2: the same that women do try and get help, but
Speaker 2: they're not being listened to. And unfortunately that's not changing.
Speaker 2: And you know there's a political commitment now after you
Speaker 2: know what are we on sixty four women now being
Speaker 2: murdered in Australia. You're on one every four days, I
Speaker 2: think it is, or is it for a week now
Speaker 2: in Australia. Really alarming that the femicide rates increasing and
Speaker 2: women don't have six months to wait when change will
Speaker 2: come in. And part of what I see as one
Speaker 2: of the major problems is that serial offenders, serial domestic
Speaker 2: abusers and stalkers are not treated seriously at all. You
Speaker 2: don't get people joining up their histories and then treating
Speaker 2: them like terrorists. And if police applied the tactics that
Speaker 2: we used for serious and organized criminals and terrorists, we
Speaker 2: would be saving lives. And we started that a New
Speaker 2: Scotland yard, various police forces all around the country. I
Speaker 2: worked with them and they got up and running, but
Speaker 2: we still didn't have a national database of those individuals
Speaker 2: and I'm still fighting for that now. It's only just
Speaker 2: been agreed twenty three years later, would you believe that
Speaker 2: the political will the ministers in the new government have
Speaker 2: said it's going to happen, because they're the ones I
Speaker 2: was working with all along, you know, in terms of
Speaker 2: the campaign and in Parliament. And it's the same in
Speaker 2: Australia and in America. You've got really a small subgroup
Speaker 2: of offenders who are causing a huge amount of harm
Speaker 2: and damage to women and children, and they're just not
Speaker 2: being treated as the serious and very harmful individuals that
Speaker 2: they are, and they are being greenlit to escalate. And
Speaker 2: then the murders happen and people say they're sorry, and
Speaker 2: that's it.
Speaker 1: When people get away with one offense and the punishment
Speaker 1: doesn't stop them, they becoming boldened or they get away
Speaker 1: with it because it's not being treated seriously. It's a
Speaker 1: local court mather stalking Like all the time I spent
Speaker 1: as a detective, the only time I came across stalking
Speaker 1: in homicide was when after the murder had happened and
Speaker 1: then ah, yeah, this person had been stalking the victim
Speaker 1: for a long time, and that type of narrative. These
Speaker 1: are the things that we've got to get on top of.
Speaker 1: I just want to take a short break here. We
Speaker 1: have got so much to talk about and the work
Speaker 1: that you're doing. We're talking in theory about how it
Speaker 1: can be done. You've actually put things in place to
Speaker 1: prevent crimes. And we'll talk about some of the high
Speaker 1: profile investigations you're reviewed or been involved in, and if
Speaker 1: we could just take a short break and we'll be
Speaker 1: back shortly for part two.