Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective sy aside of life, the average person is 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: In part two of my chat with forensic pathologists Professor
Speaker 1: of Roger by Art, we discuss the murder of twenty
Speaker 1: one year old Jasmine Kor, who is buried alive, the
Speaker 1: horrors of the Boxing Day tsunami, and the Balley bombings.
Speaker 1: We also talked about the work Roger does that prevents
Speaker 1: death and how Roger looks at the way we deal
Speaker 1: with death. Roger, You've seen so much death, and I
Speaker 1: was interested in a quote from yourself, and I'll just
Speaker 1: read it out and get you to comment on that
Speaker 1: if you could. I think that recognizing death as part
Speaker 1: of life, as a transition is really important. It's something
Speaker 1: we fail these days. We sanitize it. What do you
Speaker 1: mean by those quotes.
Speaker 2: We're frightened of death nowadays? I mean we've always been
Speaker 2: frightened to death. But in the old days, I think
Speaker 2: there was a lot more acceptance of death as part
Speaker 2: of life. A lot of children died of diseases, and
Speaker 2: the bodies weren't just whisked away and you know, cremated.
Speaker 2: You'd lay the body out and have a wake. You'd
Speaker 2: celebrate the person's existence. In the nineteenth century leads to
Speaker 2: take photographs of the you, mum and dad dressed up
Speaker 2: and the baby dead in a coffin as a memento.
Speaker 2: And that's not creepy. That is just remember, bring the
Speaker 2: person so that you've got some sort of token to
Speaker 2: take with you. Whereas we just we don't talk about it.
Speaker 2: We're more and more frightened of it. Whereas it is
Speaker 2: part of life, it's going to happen to us all.
Speaker 2: I went to a writer's Week in Adelaide, and they
Speaker 2: were talking about death and they just weren't getting it.
Speaker 2: And I just said, the last time I was in
Speaker 2: the tent as big as this, as hot as this,
Speaker 2: with as many bodies, it was Thailand, the tsunami, and
Speaker 2: they're all dead, I said. And the tires had a
Speaker 2: very The monks would wander around the bodies at night, chanting,
Speaker 2: helping them on their paths. So there was an acceptance
Speaker 2: that they could actually commemorate these people, which is something
Speaker 2: we don't do.
Speaker 1: And do you think that has a detrimental effect to
Speaker 1: the way we deal with death? And I think so.
Speaker 2: I think it's just we're becoming more and more sanitized
Speaker 2: and more and more closed off. We're closing off from
Speaker 2: human interaction with our computers and social media. Just the
Speaker 2: I see people down the beach with their dog when
Speaker 2: I take my dog for a walk, and they've got
Speaker 2: headphones on. I mean, why not stand hard? You know,
Speaker 2: what's the point of being down there? And they're not.
Speaker 2: They're just focused on what they're listening to, probably your podcast.
Speaker 1: Well, I was going to say, the one proviser there,
Speaker 1: if I catch kill this podcast, they're doing well, But yeah,
Speaker 1: I know what you're saying, and the fact that the
Speaker 1: sanitized it where we're more aware of death and now
Speaker 1: I look at it, it just gets push pushed away.
Speaker 1: So in the work that you did, do you have
Speaker 1: your colleagues that would support support the people that you
Speaker 1: worked with, because I know in the homicide world sometimes
Speaker 1: I couldn't go home and talk about what we've seen
Speaker 1: or done that your colleagues you do brief Did you
Speaker 1: have that support from colleagues.
Speaker 2: It's interesting. We were talking earlier just about how you
Speaker 2: deal with cases, and you know, I was saying, you
Speaker 2: focus on the science. I remember one case of a
Speaker 2: little boy who had been punched by the de facto boyfriend,
Speaker 2: and this fellow had actually videoed this little boy dying,
Speaker 2: that's how bad it was. But when I opened his abdomen,
Speaker 2: I got this stench of you know, rotting parisanaitis, and
Speaker 2: I brought tears in my eyes. I was just leaning
Speaker 2: over and I was sort of just I had to
Speaker 2: actually put that behind me. I was seeing the big picture.
Speaker 2: I had to focus on what I was doing. And
Speaker 2: what had happened is that he'd been punched really forcefully
Speaker 2: and his intestines had ruptured, so they'd torn, so all
Speaker 2: the contents gets into the abdominal cavity causes this really
Speaker 2: vile inflammatory action, and so that was the smell and
Speaker 2: talking to my colleagues as well. When I had Jasmine
Speaker 2: and I found all the soil and the upper airway,
Speaker 2: I called my colleagues in to have a look at it,
Speaker 2: and they still told me that they're shattered by just
Speaker 2: just seeing that. But we it's like soldiers in the trenches,
Speaker 2: like police. You know your colleagues know what you're going through,
Speaker 2: and you can talk to them. I went to see
Speaker 2: a counselor after Jasmine. The manager said, you really need
Speaker 2: to get this scene too, because I was I was
Speaker 2: going to bed at night thinking over I was waking
Speaker 2: up in the morning and at the end of the
Speaker 2: council said, I said, well, you know, I just wanted
Speaker 2: some techniques of getting this out of my head. And
Speaker 2: she said, it's very difficult, isn't it. You told me
Speaker 2: something I don't know.
Speaker 1: You've mentioned that Jazz main call and obviously it plays
Speaker 1: on you pretty heavily. Can you tell us about that case?
Speaker 1: The details of that case.
Speaker 2: I can because it's gone through the courts, And he
Speaker 2: pleaded guilty. So she was a really lovely young Punjabi
Speaker 2: woman who's working in a nursing home and she'd had
Speaker 2: a relationship with a young Indian fellow and had told
Speaker 2: him very nicely that she liked him, but he wasn't
Speaker 2: the one for her, and so he just flipped out
Speaker 2: and the day before went to Bunnings on CTV footage
Speaker 2: buying cable ties a shovel. It was so well thought out,
Speaker 2: was so stupid. He gave a mate his car with
Speaker 2: his phone in it to go south when he was
Speaker 2: kidnapping her from her workplace, tied up, put her in
Speaker 2: the boot, drove around for five hours. Yeah, and a
Speaker 2: lot of terror for her. Imagine what it was like
Speaker 2: five hours in the boot, and then took her up
Speaker 2: north and dug her grave and put her in it
Speaker 2: and buried her alive. It's most horrific thing that I've
Speaker 2: ever come across.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm just comprehending what you've.
Speaker 2: I'm outraged by it. Yeah, there were no drugs. She
Speaker 2: did never hit injury, so she was completely conscious.
Speaker 1: The examination when you examined her body, did you find
Speaker 1: this out at the time.
Speaker 2: Well, it's interesting because she had some cuts on the
Speaker 2: side of her neck that I thought, as I said,
Speaker 2: were the cause her death. But then we found the
Speaker 2: soil and yes.
Speaker 1: It was just then the soul was in her.
Speaker 2: In her right down into her, and she also swallowed
Speaker 2: some as well. It's the only time I've been to
Speaker 2: a sentencing because I didn't get a chance to see
Speaker 2: him in court because he pleaded guilty. So I wanted
Speaker 2: to actually just look at him and just see what
Speaker 2: sort of monster this was. And he looks so ordinary,
Speaker 2: He looks so bernal, you.
Speaker 1: Know, and that's funny. But that can freak you out
Speaker 1: more than if you're looking for this monster.
Speaker 2: I want to see Charles Manson, Yeah, that would have
Speaker 2: made you want to see that understandable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is it about that particular case that stuck
Speaker 1: with you so heavily.
Speaker 2: I think that she was just such a sweet, young,
Speaker 2: innocent She was over here, she only had a mum
Speaker 2: in India. She was staying with her uncles, so he
Speaker 2: would feel responsibility for it. Her mother's lost her only child.
Speaker 2: It's just there's nothing good about that story.
Speaker 1: Now I can what can you say? She had come
Speaker 1: from India, But you did some interesting work again, horrific
Speaker 1: work stemming from a conference that you attended over in
Speaker 1: India and you came into contact with someone about the
Speaker 1: acid attacks on women in India.
Speaker 2: Yeah, pret Core is a she's a PhD lawyer, academic
Speaker 2: and she co founded the Lasmi Foundation, which is a
Speaker 2: foundation for acid attack victims. And acid attacks are very
Speaker 2: common in India. Acid so furry gasid particularly is very cheap.
Speaker 2: They use it in the cleaning drains, they use it
Speaker 2: for cleaning equipment. And it's usually a spurned lover or
Speaker 2: a jealous male and to get his revenge, he throws
Speaker 2: acid on these young women's faces. Only four percent of
Speaker 2: them die, but they're completely disfigured. They often go blind
Speaker 2: because their eyes have been burnt. They can't breathe because
Speaker 2: their nose is gone. They can't hear because the ear
Speaker 2: canals are gone. They may have tremendous deformity, so they
Speaker 2: can't speak or eat properly. They look horrific. So this
Speaker 2: person has condemned them to a life of suffering pain
Speaker 2: medical procedures. Sometimes their families shun them because they can't
Speaker 2: afford to support them, or they just don't want them
Speaker 2: as part of the family.
Speaker 1: Shun the victim.
Speaker 2: I wanted to do a study with Navpret on the
Speaker 2: suicide rate in these women, but of course there's no
Speaker 2: data there. But what these organizations are doing, like the
Speaker 2: Laxmi Foundation, they've got a Shiro's Cafe in Agra. These
Speaker 2: young women actually front the cafe. They serve and they
Speaker 2: work there and they put themselves right out in front
Speaker 2: of you know, it's remarkable. I did meet the young
Speaker 2: woman need To who was the subject of a film
Speaker 2: as a director in Melbourne, who did this film called
Speaker 2: Geta because kneed To, Her sister and her mother were
Speaker 2: asset attacked by her father because there were no boys
Speaker 2: in the family and knit Too's got tremendous scarngh a
Speaker 2: very poor vision, but it's interesting. Aw for about half
Speaker 2: an hour with her, you don't see the scars.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: Resilience is a word that's abused. She is one of
Speaker 2: the most resilient people I've known. And again it comes
Speaker 2: back to why you do forensic pathology. It's such a
Speaker 2: privilege to be able to meet with these people and
Speaker 2: to try and help. So what Gravpret and I do
Speaker 2: is we've written a number of papers for the medical
Speaker 2: community on asset attacks on dowry deaths, you know, people
Speaker 2: being murdered for their dowries, on child labor, all sorts
Speaker 2: of sort of human rights abuses that occurring in India. Now,
Speaker 2: what right do I have to do to do that?
Speaker 2: Navpret's got the information and we work together very well
Speaker 2: disseminating it, letting people.
Speaker 1: Know, okay, to get that get that story out again.
Speaker 1: Preventative And how prevalent is it?
Speaker 2: Like extremely prevalent. There are thousands of cases of this
Speaker 2: in Pakistan and Bangladesh and India, and it happens all
Speaker 2: over the world. It's in the UK it's called face
Speaker 2: melting and it's often often rival gangs who do it
Speaker 2: to each other. So bloke, So it's not it doesn't
Speaker 2: have that sort of sexual element.
Speaker 1: No, it's brutal.
Speaker 2: It's it's a palling.
Speaker 1: The fact that it's happening over in India. So prevalent
Speaker 1: there is it almost a cultural thing that the education
Speaker 1: you've you've got to change the narrative.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. And what navpreta since they go around
Speaker 2: the schools and she once sent me a text and
Speaker 2: it would I like to write a paper about menstruation?
Speaker 2: So I texted back in two pico seconds. No, but
Speaker 2: then she started telling me that you eighteen percent of
Speaker 2: women in India have access to sanitary products. They're using
Speaker 2: newspapers and leaves, and so we wrote that paper to
Speaker 2: draw attention to it so that the authorities can then
Speaker 2: do thing. I mean, the boys and girls don't have
Speaker 2: separate toilets, but they are going to the schools and
Speaker 2: they're trying to educate the youth, because that's the way
Speaker 2: to go about just treating people with respect and giving
Speaker 2: people a go.
Speaker 1: Roger, where do you find the time and the passion
Speaker 1: to pursue these things?
Speaker 2: Well, I don't sleep, okay, well's yeah, no, I've worked out.
Speaker 2: Actually recently, I've worked more than sixty hours a week
Speaker 2: for four decades. I'm a bit tired.
Speaker 1: You can happen that after we've finish. Happened that. But look,
Speaker 1: if you're doing a job that you're passionate about, it's
Speaker 1: not like working.
Speaker 2: It's not working. That's what my boss is to say.
Speaker 2: If they pay you for doing stuff you like, then
Speaker 2: you know you win.
Speaker 1: Have there been any good role models that you've learned
Speaker 1: a lot from.
Speaker 2: A couple not pathologists actually, but my first mentor in
Speaker 2: Ottawa when I was training in pathology was a blow
Speaker 2: called Irving Dartik. I did research term with him and
Speaker 2: he said, you know what I want is I want
Speaker 2: my students to do better than me, and he meant that.
Speaker 2: And another fellow Grant Sutherland, he's a geneticist. He climbed
Speaker 2: the fragile extremee. I personally think he was in line
Speaker 2: for a Nobel prize. But once he had achieved what
Speaker 2: he wanted to achieve, he retired and started up a
Speaker 2: small farm. A man very happy with himself. But also
Speaker 2: just shows you you don't have to be toxic to
Speaker 2: get to the top. You know, if you treat people properly,
Speaker 2: you can still mentor people and encourage people. And that's
Speaker 2: the way, and that's those two are being great.
Speaker 1: It's good to have those type of role models or
Speaker 1: people that you can learn things from. What's the messaging
Speaker 1: you give when you're teaching people that are starting out
Speaker 1: in the field that you're worked in. What's the type
Speaker 1: of message you would pass.
Speaker 2: On give up now you've got a chance. No, I
Speaker 2: tell them that it's if you're going to do You've
Speaker 2: only got one shot at life. And so you know,
Speaker 2: you've got to do stuff that you enjoy doing, and
Speaker 2: that's important. I mean, it may be flower ranging, if
Speaker 2: it's important to you and you do it well, excellent.
Speaker 2: My boss's retired now in forensics, so he hadn't written
Speaker 2: a paper in his life, but he's a very good fisherman,
Speaker 2: and so I respected his fishing prowss.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: So it doesn't matter what you do, just as long
Speaker 2: as you do it with enjoyment.
Speaker 1: Is compassion an important part of the type of work
Speaker 1: that you do.
Speaker 2: I think, yes, you've got to have credibility and you've
Speaker 2: got to have compassion. If you don't feel the need
Speaker 2: to help people, then you should be in something else.
Speaker 2: And I think this is part of the problem with medicine.
Speaker 2: It's one of the reasons I got out of clinical medicine.
Speaker 2: It's becoming a bit of a factory, you know, to
Speaker 2: make a few extra bucks to put your kids from
Speaker 2: your third family through private school and buy another Mercedes.
Speaker 2: You well, not not using caricat.
Speaker 1: I understand exactly what you're saying, but credibility and compassion,
Speaker 1: you do need that combination. Because I think we've all
Speaker 1: gone to get medical advice and there's someone that they've
Speaker 1: got the academic skills, they've got the science, but the
Speaker 1: delivery of the message is yeah, it's not what I need.
Speaker 1: If someone's are the important part talking about their health
Speaker 1: or their future, you need someone that's got the compassion
Speaker 1: understanding then can deliver the message. Because I think the
Speaker 1: days are going where we put the same for policing,
Speaker 1: but for doctors, where they're put on the pedestal and
Speaker 1: we never question. You go see your local doctor growing
Speaker 1: up and Okay, that's what the doctor said, that's what
Speaker 1: you do. But it's readily available on the internet that
Speaker 1: doctor Google. Well, doctor Google diagnosed yourself, so they can question.
Speaker 1: But you need that communication skill.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1: I'm going to talk about the two thousand and four tsunami,
Speaker 1: which Asian tsunami. I remember it was a horrific, horrific
Speaker 1: day and hundreds of thousands of people were killed as
Speaker 1: a result of that. What was your role in responding
Speaker 1: to that.
Speaker 2: I didn't think i'd be asked to go, but I
Speaker 2: went in the second rotation, so I was there in
Speaker 2: the second week. And essentially because of the AFP's experience
Speaker 2: with Australian Federal Police experience with the balley bombings. The
Speaker 2: ties were working with them. The ties were excellent. They
Speaker 2: really did an amazing job. But essentially, teams would come
Speaker 2: over basically the body to be brought in. You would
Speaker 2: do examinations, not full autopsies, just adult male tattoo, dental examination,
Speaker 2: DNA fingerprints, and then compare it to people who are
Speaker 2: known to be in the area. Part of the problem
Speaker 2: is I wrote a paper and I called it DVII
Speaker 2: tourism because so many teams arrive around the world, around
Speaker 2: the world, and you know, they have to be accommodated,
Speaker 2: they have to be fed. Sometimes their language is not English.
Speaker 2: So you know, I always said, when I was on
Speaker 2: the state, dv I commit the first thing I would
Speaker 2: do is put signs around the state saying keep out.
Speaker 2: Take forty eight hours just to work out how we
Speaker 2: were going to do it. Processes, yeah, hasten slowly.
Speaker 1: Because I'm trying to comprehend. And if you could paint
Speaker 1: a picture, you know, when we're talking hundreds of thousands
Speaker 1: of people killed, and yeah, we all saw the images
Speaker 1: of the waves washing in the floods and the sharp
Speaker 1: metal floating around that people drowning. People have horrendous injuries.
Speaker 1: It's in the tropics, so a body is going to
Speaker 1: decompose very quickly. I would imagine what were the processes
Speaker 1: that were put in place to and the purpose of
Speaker 1: it was to identify as many people. That's correct, you
Speaker 1: weren't going there. This person died specifically that it was
Speaker 1: identifying the bodies. So what were the processes that were
Speaker 1: put in.
Speaker 2: Place identifying and repatriating. Well, in Thailand, the bodies were
Speaker 2: brought into Buddhist temples because they had space to put containers,
Speaker 2: freeze and frozen containers, and the the Thai troops volunteered
Speaker 2: to work on it, so you'd have the bodies and
Speaker 2: the containers. They'd be wheeled out. They were spraying all
Speaker 2: this stuff around to reduce decomposition and everything. And my
Speaker 2: mortuary tendant was really worried about this stuff and I said,
Speaker 2: I don't worry about it's probably water. And he said
Speaker 2: one day said look, the naggots are dead. And I said, oh,
Speaker 2: nothing kills makets. You can freeze them. And so I
Speaker 2: went out and these folks from their full suits spraying
Speaker 2: around and I said, what is this stuff? No idea,
Speaker 2: but it really works, so God knows what.
Speaker 1: We were exposed to could be the age and orange probably.
Speaker 2: So anyway, the body would come in and they would
Speaker 2: they'd be fingerprinted by police officers. They'd come to us
Speaker 2: and we would do the identification and detail what we thought.
Speaker 2: Then they would go to the dental people and we'd
Speaker 2: take specimens of DNA and so we put all that
Speaker 2: together and yeah, they'd be found in areas of tourist hotels,
Speaker 2: so we'd have a list of people. So that's the
Speaker 2: then you get the anti modern stuff from them. And
Speaker 2: we developed the system there too, which was rather than
Speaker 2: just identifying each body on its own, we started to
Speaker 2: identify children against identified parents, so that you know, you
Speaker 2: had the parents' DNA in the database and the children
Speaker 2: you can actually identify through that. But it's a lot
Speaker 2: of interesting things happened. And I wrote a paper recently
Speaker 2: called Hiding in Plane Sight, and I was just talking
Speaker 2: about how best to hide a homicide if you can
Speaker 2: put the body amongst others. And I was called out
Speaker 2: the back and there was a coffin under a whole
Speaker 2: part of other coffins full of rotting bodies and they'd
Speaker 2: taken those and there was the body of a young
Speaker 2: woman that was fresh and so clearly she didn't die
Speaker 2: in the sin, but in three days she would have
Speaker 2: been writting like the rest. So handed her over to
Speaker 2: the tire authorities. But I was talking about the blitz
Speaker 2: in London. I think the crime rate went up like
Speaker 2: forty seven percent. How easy would it be to follow
Speaker 2: somebody home from the pub, hit them on the head,
Speaker 2: chuck them into a bomb site.
Speaker 1: I'm starting the wonder about you, Roger. You've come up
Speaker 1: with you're obviously thinking too much about to get away
Speaker 1: with murder. Yeah, well this I catch Killers. That's the
Speaker 1: name of the podcast.
Speaker 2: So I'm on your radar.
Speaker 1: Yeah I've got another case. Yeah, I looking at that.
Speaker 1: With what you're saying with the body body turning up there,
Speaker 1: what a golden opportunity. You talked about the monks walking
Speaker 1: around and that, and then dealing dealing with death. What
Speaker 1: was I'm trying to get the sense of what the
Speaker 1: feeling was for everyone involved in that, because it must
Speaker 1: have been.
Speaker 2: It was er, it was horrific. What the Tie did
Speaker 2: at one stage is they had a ceremony to honor
Speaker 2: the two thousand dead at Carlak and they diverted planes
Speaker 2: around this so you had a whole stadium of monks
Speaker 2: and we're on an oval with candles, and they had
Speaker 2: these rice paper lanterns, each one representing one person that
Speaker 2: they let go into the sky. It was you can
Speaker 2: see it on the internet. It was like the Milky
Speaker 2: Way overhead. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever
Speaker 2: seen with the chanting. And yet the next day you
Speaker 2: go back to basically trucks pulling up and just decomposed
Speaker 2: bodies being being pulled out of them, hundreds and hundreds
Speaker 2: and hundreds of them.
Speaker 1: How did it impact on you?
Speaker 2: I found it really difficult the first day I got there.
Speaker 2: That the smell was extraordinary, the heat, the humidity. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I as I said, I was offered the second chance
Speaker 2: to go back the second time. Some people went back
Speaker 2: five times. I couldn't do it. And I used to
Speaker 2: get quite emotional when I saw people's presentations on Thailand
Speaker 2: showing the pictures.
Speaker 1: You know have.
Speaker 2: A family member, you know, in their bathers with their child.
Speaker 2: And I remember when one father was he knew that
Speaker 2: we had his child, but the child hadn't gone through
Speaker 2: the formal process of identifications. They couldn't be released, so
Speaker 2: he was beside himself with anger. As you can imagine,
Speaker 2: my little boy he is in there. There was one picture,
Speaker 2: because the tires got boards, you could put pictures up
Speaker 2: of your loved ones, and there was one little boy
Speaker 2: with these beautiful, big blue eyes and had his name
Speaker 2: and everything. I thought, you know, even if you get
Speaker 2: him back, he's never going to be like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yes, then the tires were I mean they had photographs
Speaker 2: of the decomposing bodies, their faces, and families were coming around.
Speaker 2: They had the seed easy you could take home and
Speaker 2: go through them. You know, maybe it was some weird
Speaker 2: shaped tooth or something that you could pick.
Speaker 1: So do you think from disaster Victim Identification DBI, where
Speaker 1: there's been multiple casualties to identify all the victims, do
Speaker 1: you think we learned things from that practices?
Speaker 2: You know we did, And there were there were some
Speaker 2: teams that came that you know, weren't practicing pathologists, and
Speaker 2: you know they were taking off the jewelry and putting
Speaker 2: under the body, or not filling out the forms correctly
Speaker 2: and taking the original forms with them. It was just
Speaker 2: you know, coordinating that was was not easy.
Speaker 1: Do you know you talk about bringing the bodies back
Speaker 1: how many Australians You got an idea of the rough
Speaker 1: figure that caught up in them.
Speaker 2: I don't. Actually, one of the important things for me
Speaker 2: was the last week I was there, there were two
Speaker 2: Australian bodies and a couple of containers that weren't refrigerated.
Speaker 2: I found them. And then one of the women came
Speaker 2: from Adelaide and so I represented forensic science going out
Speaker 2: to the plane when she came back to get the
Speaker 2: body and met the family. So I thought that was
Speaker 2: a sort of a nice finishing off. I'd been with
Speaker 2: them in Thailand and I was there, come she came back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, those things mean a lot.
Speaker 2: I think they do.
Speaker 1: Circumstances. Did you get was it mandatory for you to
Speaker 1: sit down with a psychologist and talk these things? We
Speaker 1: have that at homicide we'd have to go every six
Speaker 1: months and sit down and talk. But it was that
Speaker 1: part and parcel of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did, and the psychologist I said, what was
Speaker 2: one of the worst things? I said, We're just not
Speaker 2: being recognized and he said, yeah, that's that's what happens
Speaker 2: with me. So really, how do you deal with this?
Speaker 2: I'd drink off headmen, I said, what do you drink
Speaker 2: and whiskey. So we discussed whiskeys and then about two
Speaker 2: weeks later I got an email from him saying, what
Speaker 2: was that whiskey? You recommended Highland? So that was the
Speaker 2: extent of the psychological support.
Speaker 1: Okay, okay, you've talked and you've mentioned a couple of
Speaker 1: times in while we've been sitting down the smell and
Speaker 1: the smell of death, and unless you've smell that, you
Speaker 1: can't you can't really describe it. It's hard to describe.
Speaker 1: Does that have an impact on you, the amount of
Speaker 1: death that you would have smelled.
Speaker 2: It's something you do, you do get used to, and
Speaker 2: after a few decades inhaling formalon, your smell's not as
Speaker 2: good as it used to be. But we were down.
Speaker 2: We had a ceremony at Patong Beach and one of
Speaker 2: the mortue tenders and we walked over and there was
Speaker 2: a remnants of a Japanese restaurant, and sure enough that
Speaker 2: clearly little bodies under that. So I was thinking, you know,
Speaker 2: he'd probably be cheaper than a sniffer dog. Maybe we
Speaker 2: should use him.
Speaker 1: It's not your first first experience in these type of things,
Speaker 1: and the barley bombing, you're also had some involvement in that,
Speaker 1: and that's I look at that from a different perspective
Speaker 1: because that was an active evil murder court. Cause that
Speaker 1: what was your experience dealing with the Barley bombings.
Speaker 2: I came in later in that, so I was sort
Speaker 2: of more auditing. But I had a fair bit to
Speaker 2: do with Ikbar one of the suicide bombers at Paddy's Bar,
Speaker 2: so I was repatriating his his remain.
Speaker 1: Again, when you say you had a fair bit to
Speaker 1: do with him, you were looking at his remains, so
Speaker 1: that put all the pieces together. Basically, basically you find
Speaker 1: out what happened.
Speaker 2: The problem with Bali was interesting. I was watching it
Speaker 2: when it first happened, and you know it was chaos,
Speaker 2: but you had people trying to help, so they were
Speaker 2: sweeping up stuff, so they were destroying the crime scene.
Speaker 2: But of course, again with a DBI, the important thing
Speaker 2: is not so much the deceased. It's to get the
Speaker 2: injured and wounded out and looked after. But yes, Barlei
Speaker 2: was particularly nasty because the bomb that went off at
Speaker 2: the Sari Club was in a vehicle outside and there
Speaker 2: was cast iron grating and glass, so there were secondary
Speaker 2: projectiles that went into the nightclub, and of course there
Speaker 2: was fire, so there was monoxide inhalation as well as
Speaker 2: the injuries. People were crushed trying to get out of
Speaker 2: the doors. So there were a whole lot of different
Speaker 2: things that went on there, and the bodies were fragmented,
Speaker 2: unlike Thailand, where mostly in Thailand the bodies were intact.
Speaker 2: But you do occasionally find strange things. I was in
Speaker 2: mortuary in Thailand and colleague from Zealand and said, look
Speaker 2: at this, and it was an adult woman and her
Speaker 2: head had exploded. And I said, have you found pellets
Speaker 2: because it looked like a shotgun. Yeah, but she must
Speaker 2: have just been going through the water at such as
Speaker 2: speed and hit something. So that's the thing really you're
Speaker 2: looking for. Is this something that doesn't fit you know?
Speaker 2: And as I said, what a perfect way to hide
Speaker 2: crimes in amongst that.
Speaker 1: Put your body in there with the Bali bombings. What's
Speaker 1: the effect on the body where it's caught up in
Speaker 1: the blast.
Speaker 2: It varies, but if a body is in the blast,
Speaker 2: they'll have burns, but they also have characteristic sort of
Speaker 2: internal findings. If the body is still intact, you know
Speaker 2: where the lungs have expanded up against the chest wall.
Speaker 2: The intestines have sort of blown out, so you can
Speaker 2: see things to support it. But if it's if they're
Speaker 2: close to the epicenter, basically it'll be fragmented. So they
Speaker 2: always say that, you know, and it didn't apply in Barley,
Speaker 2: but with suicide bombers you need to look around the
Speaker 2: rus for half a kilometer because their head has gone.
Speaker 1: Are you When you're going through the bodies on a
Speaker 1: situation like that, you're also looking for the physical evidence
Speaker 1: of support the police investigation.
Speaker 2: You're going through looking for ordinance. And that's one of
Speaker 2: the dangers of dv I in the sale war zone
Speaker 2: is that the body has been booby trapped. I mean,
Speaker 2: what better way to actually cause further problems.
Speaker 1: Thinking about how to commit crimes again.
Speaker 2: Not just relating, right, I must admit though the bombings
Speaker 2: in London, I was told this by a forensic pathologist
Speaker 2: and I don't know whether it's a pock fall, but
Speaker 2: they've taken the bodies to a parade ground and they're
Speaker 2: looking for a gunshot residue, and they were getting incredible
Speaker 2: hits until I realized that a cannon had been fired
Speaker 2: at noon every day for the last hundred years in
Speaker 2: that quadrangle, so they had to peel that back.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I also said to the fellows in England, I said,
Speaker 2: why didn't they let a dirty blob GoF with anthrax
Speaker 2: or something? I mean, I said, we can talk about
Speaker 2: this because terrorist not a see. If they've done that,
Speaker 2: we couldn't have coped. I don't understand why they just
Speaker 2: do the one hit, not a couple. I'm pleased they don't,
Speaker 2: but the.
Speaker 1: Type of impact that.
Speaker 2: Do you destroy the support worker is coming and then
Speaker 2: you really cause the problem.
Speaker 1: You've been in this field for the years, changes, improvements
Speaker 1: and different things. We used to rely on facial recognition.
Speaker 1: You can see some problems with facial recognition if you
Speaker 1: reconstruct a face from a skeletal remain.
Speaker 2: I think, and this is just my personal view, that
Speaker 2: facial recognition what it does best is remind people of
Speaker 2: memories they have of the time, so that brings in
Speaker 2: and you would know this too, that brings extra information forward.
Speaker 2: But when I see a face reconstruction and the skeleton,
Speaker 2: what I have to do And apparently this has been
Speaker 2: done as people have done studies where they've taken donated
Speaker 2: bodies so they've got what the face looks like. They've
Speaker 2: then taken the skull, they've given it to facial reconstruction people,
Speaker 2: and then you compare the two. So that is something
Speaker 2: I need to look at because I'm sure that they're
Speaker 2: quite different. I mean, this is flash, you know, he
Speaker 2: is hair, all that sort of stuff. Yeah, so I
Speaker 2: think that facial recognition is sort of not as exciting
Speaker 2: as we once thought. It was a bite marks again.
Speaker 2: You know, you used to be able to tell an
Speaker 2: individual from a bite mark.
Speaker 1: Now you can't well talk about that because I've been
Speaker 1: involved in investigations where the bites have come into play.
Speaker 2: Ye, very hard to actually pin it to a particular person.
Speaker 2: If it's a small bite, it's a child with large
Speaker 2: bidet's an adult. But it really the importance of bite
Speaker 2: marks is swabbing for saliva DNA. That's the most real.
Speaker 2: So there are a lot of things that we used
Speaker 2: to think were important that you know, ant is reliable.
Speaker 2: One of the best things I find in court is
Speaker 2: to be able to say I have no idea and
Speaker 2: the jury, you know, will then make eye contact and
Speaker 2: you can see them thinking, well, he's honest. So when
Speaker 2: he does say he knows something, then we can probably trusted.
Speaker 1: Have you seen and without the specific examples, experts at
Speaker 1: sort of stray outside their lane of expertise in court.
Speaker 2: Yes, your honor, And that's one of the problems is
Speaker 2: you know people are experts because I say they are,
Speaker 2: you know, and some people will go all over the
Speaker 2: place with and I've had experts who have been accused
Speaker 2: of knowing we misleading the court and it just seems
Speaker 2: to bounce off them. I think that people like us
Speaker 2: are in no man's land because we're prepared to say
Speaker 2: that nothing's absolute, this is possible, and not half as
Speaker 2: convincing as saying clearly this is the cause of death
Speaker 2: and nothing else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if but you talk about credibility to like, if
Speaker 1: you make that comment, then that other evidence comes in
Speaker 1: that can dispel what that person's saying. Definitely happened.
Speaker 2: You need to do so, mister, they call me mister.
Speaker 2: They want to, you know, diminish my status in the court.
Speaker 2: I mean my father was mister. So they dropped the professor. Yes, mister,
Speaker 2: can you definitely exclude that?
Speaker 1: That's Have they ever got you down to Roger? Roger?
Speaker 2: What were you not as such?
Speaker 1: Well?
Speaker 2: That's outside the court. I've been called worse.
Speaker 1: But yeah, if they're talking me up, if I'm in
Speaker 1: the witness box, detective chief inspector, the very experienced, once
Speaker 1: they start to talk me up, I know I'm about
Speaker 1: to be hit, be brought down. So I imagine you
Speaker 1: the experience experience that. What's the longest time you've spent
Speaker 1: in the witness box.
Speaker 2: Well, it's not chronological. The following trial, I was only
Speaker 2: in for an afternoon, but that was a very long
Speaker 2: afternoon probably I suppose day or two.
Speaker 1: You know, Well, we've had we've had a guest on
Speaker 1: that wrote the book about Catheline Folbing and what's your
Speaker 1: take on them. It's a very complex matner. It's probably
Speaker 1: a hard question to yeah, for you to answer, but
Speaker 1: just in your area of involvement in the matter.
Speaker 2: Well, I appeared for the defense back in two thousand
Speaker 2: and three, and I've always said that I think there
Speaker 2: was reasonable doubt. I think all four kids had significan
Speaker 2: potentially significant conditions. Caleb had a soft larynx, he was
Speaker 2: having trouble breathing. Patrick was epileptic. Sarah had a very
Speaker 2: strange shape at the back of her soft Palette and
Speaker 2: Laura had my carditis. So I mean people now looking
Speaker 2: at this genetic material. For me, I don't need genetics
Speaker 2: to say there was no evidence of inflicted suffocation and
Speaker 2: that they had conditions that could potentially kill them. Could
Speaker 2: they been suffocated, yes, they could, but they also could
Speaker 2: have died of this. I think there was always reasonable doubt.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's a thing that's played out. It's a
Speaker 1: fascinating case, but.
Speaker 2: It's a tragic case.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No matter which side you're on, you've got four dead, lovely.
Speaker 1: Children, no one, no one wins. You've talked about in
Speaker 1: the views that you've done a right to mourn and
Speaker 1: talk us through that, because we're getting deep into the
Speaker 1: emotional side of the type of crime that you've done.
Speaker 1: And my observation.
Speaker 2: I've observed.
Speaker 1: Slip, So what other crimes if you've done, I'll just
Speaker 1: start cautioning you. But my observation, you've kept your sense
Speaker 1: of humor. You've seen a lot of darkness in life,
Speaker 1: and you also talk about the right to mourn, that
Speaker 1: there's nothing wrong with mourning and feeling the pain that
Speaker 1: the things you've seen. Talk us through through your thinking there.
Speaker 2: Well, I think anybody exposed the tragedy needs to mourn.
Speaker 2: He has said if you if you don't, then I
Speaker 2: think that you're knowingly or unwittingly just cutting yourself off
Speaker 2: from an important part of emotional processes. The reason I've survived,
Speaker 2: I think, is because I understand how important these deaths
Speaker 2: are the families in the community, and it's something I think.
Speaker 2: Forensic pathology is more than just dissection and report writing.
Speaker 2: It should be integrating into the community to help people.
Speaker 2: And that's It's bizarre though, the cases that get through,
Speaker 2: And I don't know how we do it in the police.
Speaker 2: I don't know how we actually we're not taught to
Speaker 2: warl ourselves off, but we do somehow. But some cases
Speaker 2: just I remember there was a case of a he
Speaker 2: was an execution of one of the biker gangs, and
Speaker 2: he committed suicide on a lonely beach and I was
Speaker 2: sitting there with my wife that night and she said,
Speaker 2: what's wrong with you? I said, really really upset about
Speaker 2: this case. But you see murdered children, you see this,
Speaker 2: this and this. I don't know. There was just something
Speaker 2: about this that got to me. It's very strange.
Speaker 1: It's interesting isn't it. Is there something particular about that,
Speaker 1: because given all the things that you've seen, I'm just
Speaker 1: wondering why that sort of jump jumped out.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I talked about it with my wife
Speaker 2: and we wonder whether it was because he was a
Speaker 2: bloke about my age and he'd gone to this isolated
Speaker 2: beach that was very like some of the beaches I
Speaker 2: used to go to as a kid in Tasmania. So
Speaker 2: they just seemed to be a lonely poignancy to it.
Speaker 2: But yeah, it may be that it was just somebody
Speaker 2: strangely I could identify with.
Speaker 1: It's interesting how different cases have different different impacts. What
Speaker 1: about your faith in society?
Speaker 2: I like dogs?
Speaker 1: Okay, what about killer dogs?
Speaker 2: Killer dogs are usually the product of killer owners. You know,
Speaker 2: if you treat a dog badly, it'll.
Speaker 1: Be well, you see the most terrifying looking dogs and
Speaker 1: they're placid them. That comes down to the owner generally.
Speaker 1: But have you seen many situations of dogs that have killed.
Speaker 2: I've seen a few. There was a fascinating case in
Speaker 2: Canada that I wasn't involved with, but the pathologist who
Speaker 2: did the autopsy said the child had been a stab
Speaker 2: with scissors and the mother went to jail and there
Speaker 2: was a pitbull in the house that actually had a
Speaker 2: bloodstained in front. Subsequently came out and it was a
Speaker 2: dog attack. He just got it completely wrong. But there
Speaker 2: are certain breeze yes, you know. I mean, I've got
Speaker 2: a golden a Trita. I don't think it's been one
Speaker 2: report of Golden A Tria licking somebody, leah.
Speaker 1: But anyway, before we got off on the dog track
Speaker 1: a society.
Speaker 2: I'm worried. I think that a couple of reasons. Methamphetamine
Speaker 2: is everywhere, as you know, that that's a toxic drug
Speaker 2: and it just destroys people. And we've done studies showing
Speaker 2: the percentage of meth with homicide victims and homicide perpetrators,
Speaker 2: and as you know, it's very high. Also, I think
Speaker 2: that the Internet trivializes violence. You have kids just watching
Speaker 2: this stuff and they think that this is normal. Some
Speaker 2: of those computer games are outrageous. You know, they train
Speaker 2: troops now on computer games when they're taking out soldiers
Speaker 2: and stuff. So it's the same process.
Speaker 1: You can embedd it in the actions and the thing.
Speaker 2: I think it just it makes quite violent horrific acts
Speaker 2: seem normal.
Speaker 1: No interesting, interesting take on that than what you've said
Speaker 1: about the drugs too, And I would imagine that you've
Speaker 1: done some post more thans and seen the results of
Speaker 1: heavy use of drugs.
Speaker 2: And I was walking past a group of houses in
Speaker 2: my neighborhood just around the corner the other night, and
Speaker 2: the fellow the allegations of myth selling there, and there
Speaker 2: was a fellow inside who'd broken down the doors and stuff.
Speaker 2: That was nine o'clock on Saturday night. By six o'clock
Speaker 2: the next morning, he had murdered the bloke in the park.
Speaker 1: No role or reason.
Speaker 2: So it's everywhere now, Okay.
Speaker 1: I think I mentioned Guardians of the Dead, a seven
Speaker 1: part podcast series that you did. How did you get
Speaker 1: involved in that.
Speaker 2: One of the media people, Lisa Black at the university,
Speaker 2: was interested in forensics and we just got chatting one
Speaker 2: day and she said, well, you know, the local paper
Speaker 2: might be interested in doing a podcast. I'd done a
Speaker 2: full podcast. We just sat down and chatted about stuff
Speaker 2: that I'd done and seen, and it was an interesting process.
Speaker 2: I find getting involved with the media and assemblitting information interesting,
Speaker 2: you know, whether it's film or whether it's radio or whatever.
Speaker 2: So it's just something different to do that I think
Speaker 2: can be useful.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that ken, then it's not glorifying, not
Speaker 1: glorifying crime. You're explaining, explaining situations in preparation for this podcast,
Speaker 1: I think I said to you before we start, I
Speaker 1: sat down to listen just to get a sense of
Speaker 1: what you're about, and I listened to all episodes.
Speaker 2: So and as I said, you need to get out,
Speaker 2: I probably shouldn't.
Speaker 1: I probably shouldn't be talking up on the podcast big
Speaker 1: sitting here here doing my own podcast, But yeah, it was.
Speaker 1: It was fascinating. And what I did like about it
Speaker 1: that you take on that because quite often you could
Speaker 1: be called an academic, but you've also got that let's.
Speaker 2: Say, how do you well?
Speaker 1: Academic can be a compliment, but it can also be
Speaker 1: said if it said with the right tone. But you're
Speaker 1: explain it in layman's terms. And I think that's important
Speaker 1: because quite often science puts itself up up there that
Speaker 1: you don't need to know. We're not going to explain
Speaker 1: it to the common person, but you've got a way
Speaker 1: of explaining what you come across.
Speaker 2: My philosophy is if you can't explain something simply to somebody,
Speaker 2: then you don't understand it yourself.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way of looking at I'll
Speaker 1: think of that next time the computer per and comes
Speaker 1: out to fix my computer. I don't care.
Speaker 2: Why just fix it and don't don't change that.
Speaker 1: What are you doing with yourself? Now?
Speaker 2: Still working halftime at Forgics. So I'm on call in
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks time, but winding back. Actually, yeah,
Speaker 2: I've I got I had a goal to get a
Speaker 2: thousand peer reviewed papers, and I got that a couple
Speaker 2: of weeks ago. Yeah, so that was I mean, it's
Speaker 2: it's like a golf handicap. Who cares except yourself, But
Speaker 2: you know it was important to me.
Speaker 1: You're you're under underplane your success and you're standing within
Speaker 1: the field that you've operated into a lot of awards
Speaker 1: and different things. So full credit to you.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: I've enjoyed. I've enjoyed the chat.
Speaker 2: I wish I could say the same.
Speaker 1: Maybe you're not that funny. I thought you were funny,
Speaker 1: but maybe maybe you're not. Maybe you are a horrible Roger. Look,
Speaker 1: I'd like to thank you for not just coming on
Speaker 1: the podcast, but also for the work that you've done,
Speaker 1: and because I know it's difficult work and doing it
Speaker 1: with compassion. I think that's so important. I saw that
Speaker 1: in the homicide, and if people didn't have that empathy
Speaker 1: and compassion, they do cause more damage to people that
Speaker 1: shouldn't be damaged any further. And you've kept your sense
Speaker 1: of humor and you seem seemed like quite a reasonable person.
Speaker 2: That's the medication, all right. Thanks Roger,