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: Welcome back to Part two of my chat with Detective
Speaker 1: Senior Sergeant Chris Blake. Chris is a serving police officer
Speaker 1: with New Zealand Police and is the manager of the
Speaker 1: Behavioral Science Unit. Chris and his team of psychologists and
Speaker 1: analysts provide operational support to major criminal investigations. In part one,
Speaker 1: we got the general sense of the type of support
Speaker 1: his team provides. In Part two, we talk in depth
Speaker 1: about how difficult complex investigations are approached. There is a
Speaker 1: science in the way cops go after the bad guys,
Speaker 1: and anyone interested in true crime will enjoy this conversation.
Speaker 1: Chris Blake, Welcome back to Part two off I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2: Thanks, it's great still be here.
Speaker 1: Got to admit I do enjoy speaking to the cops
Speaker 1: or ex cops or whatever it's. When you've been involved
Speaker 1: in the world for a long time, it's nice to
Speaker 1: chat to someone that understands that.
Speaker 2: Will, Yeah, for sure. And because it's one of those
Speaker 2: things until you actually do it, it's really to articulate
Speaker 2: the exactly what goes on.
Speaker 1: Now, I'll hit you up with a hard one right
Speaker 1: at the start. You are a bit of a crime
Speaker 1: nerd because you're also an author of a couple of
Speaker 1: fictional crime novels, The Sound of a Voice and the
Speaker 1: recently released Softly Calls the Devil, which I might add
Speaker 1: the New zeal And. Harold stated about the book harrowing,
Speaker 1: compelling and quite brilliant.
Speaker 3: That's not bad.
Speaker 2: Rap, it's not too bad.
Speaker 3: Yeah, how did you fall into that space? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Funny story that I didn't read a lot growing up.
Speaker 2: I think Biggles and Tinton were my favorites, and they're
Speaker 2: very much of a type, right, But wasn't a big reader,
Speaker 2: terrible at writing. I didn't understand English. Yeah, all didn't
Speaker 2: get it. And it wasn't until I was in the
Speaker 2: police and I worked with this guy called Simon Wyatt
Speaker 2: and he's a good maid of mine. Out of the blue,
Speaker 2: he just says to me, I've written this fiction book.
Speaker 2: And I sort of looked at him and went in
Speaker 2: the back of my head, I'm like, that's your bucket
Speaker 2: list thing you do when you're sixty eight, and we
Speaker 2: try and put your novel together and hope it makes
Speaker 2: your grand kids some money or something.
Speaker 3: Setting that that weekend, there were overlooking the lake and
Speaker 3: the mess as you're working away on your typewriter. Yeah,
Speaker 3: that's right, with.
Speaker 2: The knitted jumper on. And so I look at go oh, like,
Speaker 2: what's it about? And he goes, oh, it's just a
Speaker 2: crime fiction novel, because hey, like we're cops. You know,
Speaker 2: we've got a lot of stories, and you know, you
Speaker 2: can come up with a fiction plot and then so
Speaker 2: much to them. And I thought he was nuts. I
Speaker 2: just thought, no way, how could you compete with all
Speaker 2: of the crime fiction that's on the shelves, and he goes, Oh,
Speaker 2: the point of difference is we actually do it, so
Speaker 2: we can inject a little bit of that police procedure
Speaker 2: or stuff to the book without sort of bogging it
Speaker 2: down too much. The idea just sort of filtered away,
Speaker 2: and I went, all right, well, he's giving it a go.
Speaker 2: He's far more intelligent and better looking than I'll ever be,
Speaker 2: but I'll give it a crack. So that was the
Speaker 2: first book was over several years. I just sort of
Speaker 2: pieced together a story and it was very much entrenched
Speaker 2: in meth manufacture and that organized crime sort of stuff.
Speaker 2: And I just watched season one of True Detective with
Speaker 2: Matthew McConaughey.
Speaker 3: And fantastic was its.
Speaker 2: Brilliant piece of scene, and that sort of inspired it completely.
Speaker 2: And that was one of the first shows i'd seen
Speaker 2: that everything about it was just bleak and dark and sinister,
Speaker 2: and it made me go, there's not a lot of
Speaker 2: stuff out there like that. So that first book was
Speaker 2: very very dark and got viewed and criticized for exactly that.
Speaker 3: Too dark.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very dark, and there's not a lot of light
Speaker 2: moments in it. So that was sort of an early
Speaker 2: four way into it, and then when I got round
Speaker 2: to writing the second one, I wanted to sort of
Speaker 2: make it a bit more marketable and yeah, a bit simpler,
Speaker 2: and inject a lot of a bit more light and
Speaker 2: humor into it than that first one, certainly, but so
Speaker 2: it would start off as a hobby, I guess someone
Speaker 2: else's idea. Now that it's turned into this, I still
Speaker 2: still really believe it. I've only seen that. I've gone
Speaker 2: into the book shop yesterday and I can't believe there's
Speaker 2: a book bear with it, because I'm just an idiot
Speaker 2: who grew up in Glenfield and Auckland.
Speaker 3: Did you find it relaxing? Was it something that you
Speaker 3: could relax?
Speaker 1: It wasn't sort of bringing your work home and there's
Speaker 1: your sitting there writing this book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, it is. It is good, right, and like
Speaker 2: it's it's escapist fiction, so there is authenticity and the
Speaker 2: police work, but the plot is you know, it's it's
Speaker 2: it's something people will hopefully want to read, so I
Speaker 2: do enjoy you can sit there and write the story
Speaker 2: you want to write, rather than the real world, where
Speaker 2: things often work out the way that anybody wants them
Speaker 2: working out. So it is really good like that, and
Speaker 2: I think being crime fiction, you know, you if you
Speaker 2: also work in the police, to come up with the
Speaker 2: story or two, you know, whereas I could never write
Speaker 2: science fiction or anything like that, and to write what
Speaker 2: you know. So like my wife would tell you that
Speaker 2: I certainly shouldn't write near romance, but stick with what
Speaker 2: you know and like crime fiction.
Speaker 3: I hope you dedicated the book to your wife.
Speaker 1: The front the Counterbalance. I had one opportunity. I was
Speaker 1: invited to write a chapter and the fictional crime book,
Speaker 1: and that was just a lot of different writers and
Speaker 1: I've done nonfiction writing and played with my mind. I'm
Speaker 1: sitting there and thinking, Okay, I've got to make this
Speaker 1: really sick, and I'm almost like had the whiteboard out
Speaker 1: trying to work the crime out, and then who stupid,
Speaker 1: This is fiction.
Speaker 3: You can take it wherever you want it.
Speaker 1: And yeah, but I always ask, I'm always interested with
Speaker 1: people that write that fictional crime novel. Do you know
Speaker 1: the ending or do you just start writing and take
Speaker 1: it where it goes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm all over the place, like I don't have
Speaker 2: a myth at at all, because you know, I'm not
Speaker 2: a writer by trade, so looking up the rough idea,
Speaker 2: and for this one, it was I'm going to sit
Speaker 2: in Hearst to New Zealand there's going to be a
Speaker 2: murder and maybe a colt involved, and that I now
Speaker 2: have to just start writing and I go, okay, what
Speaker 2: would the cop do next? So I write what they
Speaker 2: do next in real life? And then that's really boring,
Speaker 2: so then I just have to tweak it slightly and
Speaker 2: then it sort of goes that way now, which is
Speaker 2: quite good. And now I've got this character. I just
Speaker 2: kind of sit there and I go, okay, I know
Speaker 2: what I would do, and I know what the police
Speaker 2: should do, but what would Matt Bukennan do? And you
Speaker 2: can kind of take me on those more fictional plot
Speaker 2: lines that the real police wouldn't actually.
Speaker 3: Do, wouldn't wouldn't do.
Speaker 1: And I suppose you had to become more descriptive in
Speaker 1: your writing because the writing I've done, the feedback I
Speaker 1: got initially was that would be a good fact sheet Gary,
Speaker 1: but we're trying to give people something a little bit
Speaker 1: more descriptive. Not I arrived at seven am on the
Speaker 1: twenty seventh of November.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that type of thing.
Speaker 2: My gloves and I put another pair on and yeah,
Speaker 2: I struggle with that too, and I probably the one
Speaker 2: thing I try and put a lot of into my
Speaker 2: as a realistic dialogue between between people. Yeah, that's where
Speaker 2: policing background comes and really handy is not so much
Speaker 2: the plot itself, but how people actually talk to each
Speaker 2: other and how cops and people are dealt with and
Speaker 2: spoken to. So it's rich in dialogue, which actually helps
Speaker 2: with not being able to describe the rest of it
Speaker 2: because it comes out in the conversations people are having.
Speaker 2: And that's how I kind of deal with that with
Speaker 2: no creative running background, and probably learn the most from
Speaker 2: reading books that I didn't like and going, h, that
Speaker 2: was a terrible way to tell that story, or people
Speaker 2: don't talk like that to each other, and going well,
Speaker 2: I'll never do that, and then just trying to do it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I understand. You mentioned the first season of
Speaker 1: True Detectives. What I liked about that was the conversations
Speaker 1: between the two partners that had that sense of reality
Speaker 1: about it. Yeah, you're just trying to when you get
Speaker 1: paired up as a detective and people, unless you've worked
Speaker 1: at least you don't fully understand you can be not
Speaker 1: even know the person, and then within you meet them,
Speaker 1: and then you're away of that person on the most
Speaker 1: intense experience you possibly could have. And the conversations that
Speaker 1: flow in the police car when you're driving across the
Speaker 1: state or wherever leading into the jobs are quite intense.
Speaker 1: But I like the subtlety of the way they delivered
Speaker 1: that because it was very real to me.
Speaker 2: Oh, it was incredibly well done right. And when I
Speaker 2: think back now on that show, and I've watched that
Speaker 2: season so many times, but still the memory that crops
Speaker 2: up is them both just sitting in a car driving somewhere.
Speaker 2: It's so realistic to portray it that at the start
Speaker 2: they both just hate each other, you know, and do
Speaker 2: some horrible things to each other throughout the court thing.
Speaker 2: And I hope, I don't want to blow this for
Speaker 2: anyone that's going to watch this and then watch the show.
Speaker 2: But there's that beautiful moment where they i'd say beautiful
Speaker 2: from a fictional TV perspective, where Matthew McConaughey really covers
Speaker 2: what he Harrelson's ass and despite everything that's happened between
Speaker 2: the two of them, you know, he's still there when
Speaker 2: it counts. And then their relationship in the aftermath. And
Speaker 2: I think that's the most realistic part is if you
Speaker 2: work alongside someone, you go to some pretty tragic, horrific things,
Speaker 2: and that just instantly builds a bond that you know,
Speaker 2: you know you can bring that person years from now.
Speaker 2: And I still do it around the country. People have
Speaker 2: worked with work in different areas and it's like you're
Speaker 2: just you're sitting having a beer with them, like and
Speaker 2: you might not have seen them for ten years. It's incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it captured the intensity but also the subtlety
Speaker 1: of what happens in that police car when two people
Speaker 1: are put together that might be pole or opposites, but
Speaker 1: they've got to work together for a common good.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's quite interesting.
Speaker 1: Okay, off the fiction, let's get back into your unit.
Speaker 1: And I think it's fair to say that the way
Speaker 1: that we approach criminal investigations talking criminal investigations, there's a
Speaker 1: tepic approach and breaking that down, we're looking at deductive
Speaker 1: reasoning that comes into an investigation. These are the type
Speaker 1: of things that detectives come to you to sort of
Speaker 1: when I say deductive reasoning, is that something that you
Speaker 1: can offer investigators like advice that you give them on
Speaker 1: the way to approach it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, so the psychologists on the team can do that.
Speaker 2: They so that unknown offender profiling, which I guess is
Speaker 2: original criminal profiling that all units do. There isn't a
Speaker 2: lot of that these days because we often catch our
Speaker 2: murderers pretty quickly twenty century CCTV, telephones, cell phones, polling,
Speaker 2: dash cans, all sorts of stuff going on for end,
Speaker 2: not to mention forensics. So there's a murder and usually
Speaker 2: within within hours, the majority of murders are solved and
Speaker 2: someone's been arrested. Those cases from the sixties, seventies, and
Speaker 2: eighties that fueled a lot of what the FBI did.
Speaker 2: Those serial killers that got away with it for so long.
Speaker 2: That drove that unknown offender profiling, which is the genesis
Speaker 2: of some of our units. Not a lot of it
Speaker 2: these days, but they still do do it, usually for
Speaker 2: cold cases, for unsolved historical homicides. And Yeah, so they'll
Speaker 2: do a crime analysis, which sounds very similar to like
Speaker 2: a crime scene examination, except they're very much looking at
Speaker 2: it from that offender behavior perspective. So rather than going, okay,
Speaker 2: he broken through that window, he went over there, he
Speaker 2: opened the drawer, left his fingerprints. He tossed that over here.
Speaker 2: He took that because it's missing, because we've usked the
Speaker 2: owner of what's missing, and he's walked over there. They
Speaker 2: do have that in there, but they're going, why did
Speaker 2: he break him through that window? Where had he been
Speaker 2: before that? How did he know that windows even there?
Speaker 2: That means he must have been watching from somewhere. Where
Speaker 2: would he be watching from? Is that high risk or
Speaker 2: is that low rist behavior? If it's somewhere where it'll
Speaker 2: be incredibly high risk to watch that window, then this
Speaker 2: is the kind of person or personality we're looking at.
Speaker 2: Versus if it's a low risk thing, you're probably looking
Speaker 2: somewhere else. And we can see when I see the
Speaker 2: sites on the team do this, you know you're blown
Speaker 2: away by how how logical it is. Yeah, at the
Speaker 2: same time something I could never do. Ye, And it's
Speaker 2: all based on their both academic and practical experience as
Speaker 2: psychologists before they came into the team.
Speaker 3: That's an interesting way to put it.
Speaker 1: It's got that combination, hasn't it That that's what a
Speaker 1: good criminal psychologist, That the type that I was fascinated
Speaker 1: and speaking to Nathan from your team. But that's they've
Speaker 1: got the practical experience with the academic qualifications, and yeah,
Speaker 1: I would you've just thrown yourself on the sword there,
Speaker 1: I frow myself on the sword. Sometimes I'd be sitting
Speaker 1: there and thinking, yeah, of course it's fairly obvious, and
Speaker 1: I'd be walking way making notes going why didn't I
Speaker 1: think of that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's you know, the FBI and the eighties, they're
Speaker 2: talking to offenders and it was Pooperter's witchcraft for so long,
Speaker 2: but so much research and science done since that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: is an academic discipline and yeah, just the knowledge that
Speaker 2: they have is incredible.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and a good psychologist also draws on the experience
Speaker 1: of an experienced police officer.
Speaker 3: So that's a combination of skills that they have.
Speaker 1: So I've just got a list of the type of
Speaker 1: things that your unit, how they support the investigators, and
Speaker 1: I just work through a few of them that I
Speaker 1: want to want to talk about. Suspect prioritization. Now, from
Speaker 1: a detective's point of view, that's always a hard thing
Speaker 1: to do. Where do you start when a crime has happened.
Speaker 1: Depending on the crime, you might have hundreds of suspects
Speaker 1: and how do you prioritize which suspect?
Speaker 3: What does your you that bring to detectives that turn
Speaker 3: up there.
Speaker 1: And I'll use examples of you know, when the child disappears,
Speaker 1: who's in the area at the time, who was known
Speaker 1: to the child, when was the child last scene alive?
Speaker 1: Who becomes a suspect? How do you work through the prioritization.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so we do mainly in the sexual space.
Speaker 2: And yeah, this example is going to be really it's
Speaker 2: going to sound like it's one oh one, but it
Speaker 2: obviously far more complicated than this. But you know, if
Speaker 2: you have a case where an intruder is disturbed at
Speaker 2: the foot of someone's bed, you know, and then they
Speaker 2: leg it, and that's what you're facing. You know, when
Speaker 2: you look at that from an evidential perspective, you go, well,
Speaker 2: he broke and he stood at the bed and then
Speaker 2: he left. He didn't take anything, But we've got a burglary.
Speaker 2: That's the way it'll be coded, and that's the way
Speaker 2: it'll be treated, and they'll be looking for a burglar
Speaker 2: and then if it comes to us, we'll go we'll
Speaker 2: hang on a minute, or why didn't he take anything?
Speaker 2: And why was he standing at the foot of the bed,
Speaker 2: and we're going to say that this is a sexually
Speaker 2: motivated crime, So we need to be looking for a
Speaker 2: sexual offender or at least somebody who has that sexual
Speaker 2: fantasy element to what they've done. And so we're looking
Speaker 2: at a history of sexual offending. Maybe some burglary, but
Speaker 2: that sexual part is far more important. So our suspect
Speaker 2: priority list would be very geared towards you know, devancies,
Speaker 2: you know, voyeurism, stealing clothes, off lines, that stuff would
Speaker 2: be way more important than someone who's got a massive
Speaker 2: history of breaking into houses and taking money. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: know what I mean. So that would be Yeah, that's
Speaker 2: how they sort of go about that is what have
Speaker 2: we actually got, What does that mean for the offender?
Speaker 2: And therefore, what does their background look like, because that's
Speaker 2: going to help inform that priority suspect list, is their
Speaker 2: background and who they were before this moment in time.
Speaker 1: And giving that perspective on it allows because then you've
Speaker 1: got to prioritize who you're targeting first, like from the police,
Speaker 1: who you're targeting, like eliminating that suspect list, the smaller
Speaker 1: suspect list. If you're on the right track is better
Speaker 1: than having a large one. So I understand what you're
Speaker 1: saying there. And for the experience, that would okay, it's
Speaker 1: just a break in that could have been anyone. But
Speaker 1: the breaking where someone wakes up and someone's standing the
Speaker 1: end of the bed in the bedroom at night, that's
Speaker 1: to an experienced person I suppose saying, well, there's a
Speaker 1: warning there that person was what was he's doing in there?
Speaker 3: What was motivating?
Speaker 2: That's right exactly. And you know even where the houses, right,
Speaker 2: so you know that happens, and a lot of people
Speaker 2: will go, well, it could have been anyone. You go,
Speaker 2: hang on, that's the third house back down the driveway
Speaker 2: you can't driving past. So no, this isn't just anyone.
Speaker 2: This would have been incredibly high risk for somebody to
Speaker 2: just be wandering around doing this like that's not what
Speaker 2: these types of offenders do. So it's got to be
Speaker 2: somebody local who or lives in the area or frequently
Speaker 2: in that area to actually even know there's a house
Speaker 2: down there with someone in it. That then is the
Speaker 2: genesis for this crime. So that shrinks your geographical search
Speaker 2: as well, right, and so all of that comes into
Speaker 2: it as well. And there are things that at first
Speaker 2: glance you just go, this is need on the haystack.
Speaker 2: We're you ever going to get anywhere.
Speaker 1: But it's a way of way of trimming things down
Speaker 1: the crime scene. In that analyst at the crime scene,
Speaker 1: do you look at the crime scene if a murder's happened,
Speaker 1: do your psychologists have a look and go, okay, what
Speaker 1: have we got here? The obvious one is if someone
Speaker 1: has been their face has been attacked, the general consensus
Speaker 1: is okay, well it was something personal. It's not always
Speaker 1: a case in my experience, as I say it, but
Speaker 1: there's things that you can tell from a crime scene.
Speaker 1: From a detect this point of view, I'd look at
Speaker 1: the crime scene and think, okay, well the weapon had
Speaker 1: been available at the location, so perhaps they didn't turn
Speaker 1: up with the intent to murder. If a weapon's been introduced,
Speaker 1: they've come there with the intent to murder. Little things
Speaker 1: like that give me some examples of what your team
Speaker 1: might provide when the cops or the detectives turn up
Speaker 1: and go, this is what we found at the crime scene.
Speaker 3: How do they break that down?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I mean, and they do go out when they can.
Speaker 2: We're based in Auckland, so unfortunately Auckland gets a lot
Speaker 2: of use out of us. Yeah, it doesn't cost any
Speaker 2: money to walk out the door. The rest of the
Speaker 2: country sort of messes out on that.
Speaker 3: I can tell you're still in the place.
Speaker 2: So as much as they can, Yeah, and Serena, the
Speaker 2: two psychologists on the team, will get out on the
Speaker 2: ground if there's an unsolved case, and even the solved ones,
Speaker 2: they'll get out and look at the scenes. And to
Speaker 2: be fair, they're probably not doing it so much from
Speaker 2: a It's not like some of the shows on TV
Speaker 2: where they walk in and they're like aha, and all
Speaker 2: the detectives have no idea, So help frame it in
Speaker 2: their heads so that then when they write the report
Speaker 2: they have actually they've seen how far away A is
Speaker 2: from B. All that kind of good stuff. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that real basic level, it's understanding what drives whatever the
Speaker 2: particular offenses and then being able to go, well, this
Speaker 2: is this kind of offense. So that example you just
Speaker 2: gave Gary, you know, about a violent homicide. If you
Speaker 2: walk into a house and there's just blood and bits
Speaker 2: and pieces absolutely everywhere in six different rooms, you know,
Speaker 2: like that is that's if we're not talking some sort
Speaker 2: of major mental struggle or psychosis or nations or something.
Speaker 2: You know, that is that's anger, and that is emotion,
Speaker 2: you know, so that is unlikely to be a complete
Speaker 2: stranger because an emotion of personal things so huge sweeping
Speaker 2: generalization for those really violent scenes, if that's not organized
Speaker 2: crime related for a purpose, generally somebody that's known to
Speaker 2: the whereas the other end of the spectrum is more
Speaker 2: the other way. So when it's I don't like to
Speaker 2: use the word cleaner, but less frenzied, less all over
Speaker 2: the place, less anger involved in it, you know, that
Speaker 2: would be more along that sort of serial offender, fantasy driven,
Speaker 2: purpose driven offending where the offenders are getting something out
Speaker 2: of it. So that's that whole organized verse. Disorganized offender,
Speaker 2: cleaner crime scene, organized planned, thought about blood everywhere, disorganized,
Speaker 2: didn't plan it got out, three things got out of hand,
Speaker 2: and now we have this all out of it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And those type of things are what generate the
Speaker 1: discussion in the briefing room when you're looking at trying
Speaker 1: to work out what's happened, and it's create case theories
Speaker 1: or directions of the people you're looking for. I always
Speaker 1: found a lot I could tell by the way the
Speaker 1: body was disposed of that that's always a good indicator.
Speaker 1: What's your thoughts on that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally right. Again, unless you're suffering under some major
Speaker 2: mental illness, no matter what's just gone down, disposing of
Speaker 2: a body has got to be it's something I can't
Speaker 2: wrap my head around. Like what we're going through your
Speaker 2: head at the time. I'm imagining a lot of panic,
Speaker 2: a lot of stress, and a lot of anxiety. And yeah,
Speaker 2: the whole time. If you're trying to avoid law enforcement
Speaker 2: is going to guide you a lot. But if you
Speaker 2: had a close relationship with this person you've just killed,
Speaker 2: that's going to dictate a lot of how you go
Speaker 2: about things, too right. And that's where you know, if
Speaker 2: it was a close ex partner and then there's a dismemberment,
Speaker 2: for example, all those things go into it too right.
Speaker 2: The panic and stress has obviously overtaken the other emotions
Speaker 2: through that. But if the body's just left where it is,
Speaker 2: that's more like a well, I just fucked up in
Speaker 2: a major way, But the police are going to come
Speaker 2: and get me, and I'm going to leave them there
Speaker 2: because they need to be dealt with properly, you know,
Speaker 2: So we and usually we haven't had the serial killer thing,
Speaker 2: unlike Ossie and the States. And I don't know whether
Speaker 2: that's geographically because we're small jurisdiction. We certainly have people
Speaker 2: in prison. I'm sure that may well have gone on
Speaker 2: and killed again, but they get picked up after their
Speaker 2: first murder. So we don't have a lot of experience
Speaker 2: in that serial murderer space where you'd start to see
Speaker 2: staging of bodies and all that kind of stuff, or
Speaker 2: a pattern to the disposal.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you see, I see a lot of panic
Speaker 1: in the way the bodies are disposed of, and that
Speaker 1: quite often tells tells me a lot. You know, where
Speaker 1: the body has been half buried, and that people clearly
Speaker 1: didn't have the have the intent for the murder to happen,
Speaker 1: that something's happened, and they're panic because you talked about
Speaker 1: the trauma of disposing of a body. So many people
Speaker 1: that I've come across during the time as a homicide
Speaker 1: detective that it's just it's horrifies them that they've killed
Speaker 1: or kill the person, and quite often that it wasn't
Speaker 1: their intent, but it's just evolved or a moment lapse
Speaker 1: of and it's confronting for people, and they quite often
Speaker 1: panic in the way they respond immediately after.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and people are I mean, everyone's inherently lazy, right,
Speaker 2: Like everyone by design is looking for the path of
Speaker 2: least resistance. What's the easiest way to achieve the aim here?
Speaker 2: And body disposal? Is that? Right? All the research that
Speaker 2: up as I've got to get rid of this, what's
Speaker 2: the easiest way to do that. I'm not going to
Speaker 2: take any risks and drive thousands of miles with a
Speaker 2: body in my car. I'm going to go somewhere I
Speaker 2: know that's secluded. How am I going to do this?
Speaker 2: I'm not going to spend eight hours, yeah, digging twelve
Speaker 2: meters down. I'm going to do this in the simplest
Speaker 2: way possible to try and sort it out. And so
Speaker 2: that guides a lot of that body disposal stuff that
Speaker 2: the psychologist st is that the path of least resistance,
Speaker 2: where's the obvious secluded location. Whereas the you know, you're
Speaker 2: not going to drag a body through a heavy jungle
Speaker 2: for a kilometer that's too hard. You're not going to
Speaker 2: drag it up hill that's too hard. You're going to
Speaker 2: go downhill less trees places like that because people are
Speaker 2: generally lazy.
Speaker 1: Well, I had someone that we're searching for a body
Speaker 1: that he disposed of, and he indicated he'd gone that
Speaker 1: far into the bush. And this was years later when
Speaker 1: we're trying to recover the body. And where he first
Speaker 1: showed this, where he believed he buried the body. It
Speaker 1: was in the National Park. It was a long way
Speaker 1: into the bush. And two I should take credit, but
Speaker 1: I can't. It was Sarah's idea. We put a manequin
Speaker 1: body in the back in the boot of a car,
Speaker 1: drove down to the location in the middle of the
Speaker 1: night at the same time that he disposed of the body.
Speaker 1: And when we got there, we hadn't told him we
Speaker 1: had this. It was what the rescue squad used to
Speaker 1: train the carry people out of fires and different things.
Speaker 1: So it weighed about eighty kilos, had the composure of
Speaker 1: a body, had it in the boot of the car,
Speaker 1: and said, okay, we popped the boot.
Speaker 3: Look in the boot of the car.
Speaker 1: We want you to demonstrate how you drag that drag
Speaker 1: the body that far. He was surprised by that, and
Speaker 1: on that basis he sort of wound back and thought, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe I didn't go one hundred and fifty meters in
Speaker 1: the bush. Maybe it was only thirty meters that changed
Speaker 1: the area where we were searching. But that's the panic
Speaker 1: of people trying to dispose of the body. Another thing
Speaker 1: that I see you do, and this is a big
Speaker 1: issue in criminal investigation in homicide, is the equivocal death review,
Speaker 1: determining whether this death is misadventure, if it's an accident,
Speaker 1: or is it murder. Do your people help out on
Speaker 1: that as.
Speaker 2: Well, Yeah, for sure, And more and more lately, there
Speaker 2: have been a couple of high profile cases in the
Speaker 2: meat recently, and so that's generating a bit of interest there.
Speaker 2: So we are getting more and more requests when there's
Speaker 2: you know, when it appears to be a suicide, they
Speaker 2: will reach out to us. And that's one of those
Speaker 2: areas where I'm so glad that it's the psychologist doing
Speaker 2: that stuff, because you know, and you'll be the same
Speaker 2: garrier you go to. So many tragic suicides in the police.
Speaker 2: So many of them are in ambiguous circumstances or you go, man,
Speaker 2: that's so tragic that that person had to decide that
Speaker 2: that was the way out for them. And there are
Speaker 2: so many variations of it that I can't even a
Speaker 2: picture of being able to be academically experienced enough to say, well,
Speaker 2: actually this is indicative of this, that or the other thing.
Speaker 2: But there is so much research and it's all just
Speaker 2: based on the research overseas, right is things found in
Speaker 2: this way indicators that maybe a few more questions should
Speaker 2: be asked or a few more conducted, and so it's
Speaker 2: all it's very academic based on research of similar cases
Speaker 2: with similar things. And yeah, there was the recent case
Speaker 2: here in New Zealand Pauline Hannah died and her husband
Speaker 2: was acquitted at trial, and that's progressing through the coronial stage,
Speaker 2: as happens with everything like that, and so that's raised
Speaker 2: the interest in that equivocal death space. So Nathan Nathan's
Speaker 2: doing a lot of work in that space for us.
Speaker 2: But it's a really hard one. It's just so you know,
Speaker 2: it's one of those cases you don't know what, you
Speaker 2: don't know, how do you know where you're going with that?
Speaker 1: And if it's broken down and not talking specific cases,
Speaker 1: but if it's broken down that okay, death's happened, that
Speaker 1: it's unnatural, but was it suicide or wasn't a suicide,
Speaker 1: they were the most difficult ones. I was called out
Speaker 1: to his homicide whether when I was on the teams, Yeah,
Speaker 1: called out that I prefer I know this is a murder.
Speaker 1: I'm going to put the effort into it. It's simpler
Speaker 1: to solve when the first part of it are we
Speaker 1: even dealing with a murder here, That can be very,
Speaker 1: very difficult. So that type of input I think we
Speaker 1: used to seek on the rare occasions, I think, and
Speaker 1: I might be using the wrong terminology, but it was
Speaker 1: a psychological autopsy in dissecting, dissecting the person, did they
Speaker 1: have that predisposition for committing suicide? Where they indicators that
Speaker 1: type of thing that I found helpful. Invariably they were
Speaker 1: used more so at the coronial inquests and the murder trials.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, And yeah, that's the right terminology. So the
Speaker 2: psychological is the syches will do those often for our
Speaker 2: critical incidents, which is usually when somebody's died during a
Speaker 2: police during police and they'll do those, and again it's
Speaker 2: to inform the coronial side of things, is to stitch
Speaker 2: together the behavior of the person and the lead up
Speaker 2: to that event to hopefully try and figure a few
Speaker 2: things out and maybe prevent a few things in the future,
Speaker 2: but that an equivocal depth, pretty much the same, same,
Speaker 2: very similar, trying to work out the steps leading up
Speaker 2: to it. And does this look the way it looks? Yeah,
Speaker 2: for a reason that's strange or just because crazy things happen,
Speaker 2: and people of.
Speaker 3: People linking crimes, do they help help with that?
Speaker 1: Like again with and we we don't have had the
Speaker 1: backpack of Ivan Malatt murders. We had the granny killers,
Speaker 1: We've had a few others, but we don't have a
Speaker 1: whole spate of serial killers. But I've worked on matters
Speaker 1: where we're trying to link crimes and what I what
Speaker 1: I struggled with this crime has three children that were murdered,
Speaker 1: that what was a motivation and the different ages in
Speaker 1: the in the children, different sexes in the in the children.
Speaker 1: And I was looking at it from a we got
Speaker 1: we've got a serial killer. Here is this person motivated
Speaker 1: because he wants to kill people, whether the age of
Speaker 1: the child or the sex of the child. And what
Speaker 1: again with Sarah, she came, she did a report on
Speaker 1: it that the person was driven by sexually motivated in
Speaker 1: that he wasn't killing the people for the sake of
Speaker 1: killing the people. He was driven by a sexual motivation
Speaker 1: to if I kill this person, I can have sex
Speaker 1: with that person. There was a sexual motivation to it.
Speaker 1: For years, I worked on that, and I always struggled
Speaker 1: when I was having high level meetings with legal people
Speaker 1: in the game. But yeah, what are we saying here?
Speaker 1: What was the motivation for these three crimes being linked?
Speaker 1: And then it became very apparent when Sarah broke it
Speaker 1: down that Hobot the motivation wasn't to murder people. The
Speaker 1: motivation was sexual gratification, and he was prepared to kill
Speaker 1: for that sexual gratification. And I thought that was interesting
Speaker 1: how the crimes were linked that way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, very much. So. Yeah, so that's what they add
Speaker 2: to it, is that victimology stuff is so such a
Speaker 2: massive chunk of it to working out the motivations of
Speaker 2: the offender. And often, you know, as detectives, we don't
Speaker 2: look at that as much as perhaps we should. But yeah,
Speaker 2: if you've got three people dead, Yeah, it's not necessarily
Speaker 2: someone just loves killing. There might be a specific reason
Speaker 2: why each one of the three are killed. This one
Speaker 2: was a sexual motivation, but then the other two you know,
Speaker 2: you're talking about destroying evidence or getting rid of witnesses.
Speaker 2: You know, that's a differentation that can completely color the investigation.
Speaker 2: But most of the linkage for us is that lower
Speaker 2: level sexual offending, so the indecent assaults, the touching people
Speaker 2: on buses, assaulting, assaulting people in parks. And it is
Speaker 2: amazing to see the behavioral analysts because that's their gam
Speaker 2: rather than the psychologists. You know, if we have a
Speaker 2: stranger sexually offend and a park and Towering a they
Speaker 2: can look through their but behavioral database. They know exactly
Speaker 2: what they're looking for and based on how the offender
Speaker 2: went about this crime yesterday, they can pull out all
Speaker 2: these cases from years gone by and go, actually, you're
Speaker 2: looking for this guy because he did the same thing
Speaker 2: in Dunedin two years ago. And they can nominate a
Speaker 2: suspect straight away, and then tower will go, well, that's
Speaker 2: Manny actually lives in Towering and now and we'll go, whoa,
Speaker 2: that's a surprise, and then they'll go through the evidential
Speaker 2: identification process with the victim to get there. So it's
Speaker 2: incredible to see them and the rest of our police
Speaker 2: systems can't do it. They don't search behavior the same
Speaker 2: way that our unit can with our database.
Speaker 3: Do they use by class?
Speaker 2: Is that that's exactly what they use.
Speaker 3: Okay, so that's what we've got over here as well.
Speaker 3: So yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: So Canadian system and yeah, it's incredible. I'm still figuring
Speaker 2: out how to use it. It would be quite bright to
Speaker 2: use it. Yeah, so they can.
Speaker 1: It's great to be the manager of this unit. By
Speaker 1: the sounds of it, they can. They can surround yourself
Speaker 1: with good people. Chris, you'll be fine. One will no
Speaker 1: one will realize you're the fake.
Speaker 2: The terrible thing is they all know. But they can
Speaker 2: link the Yeah, if there's an offender that's you know,
Speaker 2: if he's in the system before for doing it and
Speaker 2: he's been convicted, then they can nominate the suspect. Often
Speaker 2: they're link crimes together. And this is where it would
Speaker 2: come in handy for Thompson and Rewa. The districts might
Speaker 2: not know who the offender is, but the unit can
Speaker 2: go Actually, you've got a serial offender here. You've got
Speaker 2: a guy that's done this nine times in the last
Speaker 2: two years in the same park, and you guys haven't
Speaker 2: picked it up because there's enough space between each one
Speaker 2: that people just forget or they don't look back. I
Speaker 2: don't think they're connected, but it's the same person. And
Speaker 2: then we can generate a little bit of resource by
Speaker 2: going to the district commander and saying you've actually got
Speaker 2: a serial offender. Might want to inject some resource there
Speaker 2: when they can pile a team on it to actually
Speaker 2: look at it, which can often be all you need
Speaker 2: to uncover an offender when no one else was previously
Speaker 2: looking at it and giving those timing windows and all
Speaker 2: that sort of stuff. So even when they don't can't
Speaker 2: nominate an offender, it's really helpful to link those things
Speaker 2: together and hey, Wellington, you might want to paw some
Speaker 2: resources into.
Speaker 1: This well, And that's the thing we haven't touched on here.
Speaker 1: With cerial offenders, the fact is you're trying to be
Speaker 1: proactively prevent further crimes from occurring. So the mention just
Speaker 1: your unit being able to carry the weight that yeah,
Speaker 1: you're looking at the potential cereal offender here. That's going
Speaker 1: to attract more resources because the people in position to
Speaker 1: allocate the resources can't ignore the fact that more crimes
Speaker 1: might be committed unless proper resources are put on the case.
Speaker 2: That's right, and that's risk, isn't It's like they're going
Speaker 2: to keep doing this, Yeah, find them and stop them there, right,
Speaker 2: there is the motivation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Okay.
Speaker 1: Interviewing approaches we talked in part one about whether they
Speaker 1: kick the door in at six am with the sledgehammer
Speaker 1: and start yelling, or whether you pick up the phone
Speaker 1: and invite the person to come in. What sort of
Speaker 1: help do you guys provide with interview plants or the
Speaker 1: way they approach And is it the stick or the carrot?
Speaker 1: Which which way is going to best suit the circumstances.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean overwhelmingly it's that rapport based approach as
Speaker 2: most of the advice we give, and then that's that's
Speaker 2: tailored to the individual based on their life experiences and
Speaker 2: things like that. The psychologists do advise on those ones
Speaker 2: where there is a mental health issue there, you know,
Speaker 2: if it's got something going on. Yeah, they'll give that
Speaker 2: advice because they'll say, well, this personality needs maybe a
Speaker 2: little bit more direct questioning because they're not going to
Speaker 2: understand it otherwise, all that sort of safeguard stuff they'll do.
Speaker 2: And then myself and then will just give the general advice.
Speaker 2: But it's overwhelmingly or based an empathetic For most cases,
Speaker 2: I've never I've never known a really harsh adversarial interview
Speaker 2: approach to result in an admission of truth. That happens, right,
Speaker 2: but there's always probably another reason behind it. Either the
Speaker 2: suspect was always going to admit it, or the weight
Speaker 2: of the evidence was so overwhelming that they decide to
Speaker 2: admit it. But it's generally not because if the police
Speaker 2: interview as being a real dick, they're probably not going
Speaker 2: to sit there and go, man, I really appreciate the
Speaker 2: way you're treating me. I'm going to tell you the
Speaker 2: truth is not a lot cool thought process for anybody,
Speaker 2: So that empathetic approach is far more likely to not
Speaker 2: resulting in admission. It's about keeping them in the room,
Speaker 2: happy to be there talking to you, and the more
Speaker 2: conversation you can have with them, the far more likely
Speaker 2: it is that you're going to end up trusting each
Speaker 2: other enough to actually start talking about something even remotely
Speaker 2: close to what the truth is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you have a fender leakage too.
Speaker 1: If you have a conversation long enough, invariably something is
Speaker 1: something that slips out that they were trying to trying
Speaker 1: to keep away and just in the conversation they lose
Speaker 1: it because spinning a lie or a yarm or denying
Speaker 1: something that you've done is hard. If the conversation is
Speaker 1: going for a long time.
Speaker 2: That's right, and you know, want to shoot yourself in
Speaker 2: the foot too. If the person sitting across from you
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with it, well, you don't want
Speaker 2: to create the next generation of people who are going
Speaker 2: to hate the police, because if you're treating them that
Speaker 2: way and they've got nothing to do with it, or
Speaker 2: even if they do, well, I'd walk away hating the
Speaker 2: police as well. So no matter no matter what the circumstance,
Speaker 2: just being normal and treating them with a bit of respect,
Speaker 2: you can't really go wrong. And if they're always going
Speaker 2: to deny it, well then they probably always would and
Speaker 2: there's not much the bat approaches.
Speaker 1: Quite often I have discussions or had discussions who's the
Speaker 1: best person to be in the interview room with and
Speaker 1: you look at the person. Do they respect authority or
Speaker 1: someone experience or you're better off sending a junior police
Speaker 1: officer in male female is often a different combination. Sometimes
Speaker 1: it's much better to send the female detect event to
Speaker 1: do the interviewing. Is that sort of thing discussed with
Speaker 1: the unit with the interview planning, Yeah, a little bit.
Speaker 2: The psychologists get pretty heavy on that, and they can
Speaker 2: give some pretty good steers to an investigation team. But
Speaker 2: I try and temper that a little bit, because yeah,
Speaker 2: I'm a passionate believer in that. You know, anybody should
Speaker 2: be able to do an interview, and if all you're
Speaker 2: trying to do is generate that rapport, well, if you're
Speaker 2: a detective, you should be able to step into an
Speaker 2: interview room and have a conversation with someone. So often
Speaker 2: it's as nuanced as who's the type of person that
Speaker 2: can probably has the closest life journey to this person
Speaker 2: that we're actually trying to You know, if somebody, if
Speaker 2: the person you're interviewing has got kids, well let's make
Speaker 2: sure the detective that's interviewing them has kids, because they
Speaker 2: talk of children, they can genuinely talk about their own
Speaker 2: if they're comfortable doing that to whatever detailed level they're comfortable, right,
Speaker 2: because then building that common ground, So trying to find
Speaker 2: the interviewer that can have that natural common ground rather
Speaker 2: than trying to make it up or or pretend. It's
Speaker 2: probably the most useful thing. So totally depends on the
Speaker 2: suspect what they've done. But yeah, just someone in the
Speaker 2: room that can actually sit there and have a conversation
Speaker 2: about similar type things that they might be interested in
Speaker 2: or can relate in some way.
Speaker 3: Do you are the detectives buying into this? More and more?
Speaker 1: Still resistance because some of the old school why do
Speaker 1: we need these doctors in I'm not going to have
Speaker 1: a psychologist or whatever you call them in the interview
Speaker 1: room or advising mate get out of here.
Speaker 3: There was that resistance.
Speaker 1: I would imagine that it's changing and people are seeing
Speaker 1: the benefits of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely, And I think part of that's down to
Speaker 2: the approach, right if you know, if you didn't come
Speaker 2: there and say, you know, this is how you should
Speaker 2: do it, or what you know, what you do is
Speaker 2: bad and this is good, and I'm going to teach
Speaker 2: you how to do this differently, totally the wrong way
Speaker 2: to get by in anything. Yeah, so we more sort
Speaker 2: of go you know, there's always been great interviewers, you
Speaker 2: know history, They've been fantastic interviewers. No one's and no
Speaker 2: one's created anything new by saying interviews should be report based,
Speaker 2: all that is is putting a label on all.
Speaker 3: Of the good interviewers we're doing all that time.
Speaker 2: That's right. So that's how we frame it as we say,
Speaker 2: you've done plenty of good work. Here's a word for
Speaker 2: the good stuff you've done. This is why it works,
Speaker 2: and so do that and that you're giving yourself the
Speaker 2: best opportunity. And they'll go, Okay, that makes sense because
Speaker 2: everyone's had conversations either inside the police or out inside
Speaker 2: to relate it to that and say that is how
Speaker 2: you need to be talking to this person. You know
Speaker 2: how to do it, you're great at it. That's what
Speaker 2: this is called. And do that in there, rather than
Speaker 2: saying here's a whole new style of interviewing, which no
Speaker 2: one's doing, because that's just not the case. People have
Speaker 2: been still and are doing it.
Speaker 1: I think that where I've seen some interviews fail is
Speaker 1: where people try to do something then it's not natural
Speaker 1: for them to Like I've seen people get stuck, and
Speaker 1: it's not through lack of effort that they're trying. They've
Speaker 1: seen someone that's got an interview style like this and
Speaker 1: they want to adopt that, but it doesn't come across
Speaker 1: the same way. If Joe's doing it instead of Peter's
Speaker 1: doing it, you know.
Speaker 3: It's completely different. So mistakes made there.
Speaker 1: But again and clearly your guys are on song with it,
Speaker 1: not coming in and telling this grumpy old detective, look,
Speaker 1: you've got to ask him this. They're not writing out
Speaker 1: the questions. They're just suggesting an approach.
Speaker 2: It's entirely Yeah, we're not doing the interview plan or
Speaker 2: any of that. We're just saying this is how I
Speaker 2: go about doing this.
Speaker 1: Yet well, and people are starting to become more aware
Speaker 1: because I remember very early with our psychologists that we're
Speaker 1: using at work. Initially they thought, oh that must be
Speaker 1: for people who are suffering post traumatic stress. Didn't comprehend
Speaker 1: us to enhance investigations.
Speaker 3: And they are approached, do you want to interview this suspect,
Speaker 3: as in they've got this miracle, like the psychologists is
Speaker 3: just going to walk in and oh, yeah, leave it
Speaker 3: with me, I'll interview the suspect. So I think we
Speaker 3: are becoming more more aware of it.
Speaker 1: Another thing that you do, which is I think this
Speaker 1: is a pressure a part risk assessment of offenders. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm assuming that might be on bail issues and different
Speaker 1: things like that. Is that come into play reports for.
Speaker 2: The Yeah, mainly around so a lot of those gray
Speaker 2: zones like stalking and things like that, but definitely sexual offenders.
Speaker 2: So investigators and the courts all want to know, is
Speaker 2: this person going to do it again? You know, can
Speaker 2: we release them on bail or is that a risk
Speaker 2: to the public or was this a one off that
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with the wider public. So the
Speaker 2: psychologists will support those and just give their independent opinion,
Speaker 2: so it can go one way or the other. So
Speaker 2: definitely or in the sexual space. Sometimes in the family
Speaker 2: violence space, well, very similar stuff. You know, is this
Speaker 2: person at risk if the offender is out on bail
Speaker 2: or is this not something that's going to carry on?
Speaker 2: But then yeah, Ever since christ Church in twenty nineteen,
Speaker 2: the national security environment, yeah, has really overtaken a lot
Speaker 2: of the work that the unit does. So a lot
Speaker 2: of risk assessments in that counter terrorism grievance fueled violence
Speaker 2: space to be able to help the investigation teams go,
Speaker 2: is this person that's saying all the stuff actually going
Speaker 2: to come through all that stuff?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Well, and that is an area of concern as
Speaker 1: we I think we touched on in part one about ideology,
Speaker 1: when does the ideology become put into practice their thoughts.
Speaker 1: That's concerning We've talked about victimology and the important of victimology,
Speaker 1: just to explain to people what that's about. If someone's
Speaker 1: been murdered, what what are we looking at with victimology? Like,
Speaker 1: I know how important it is, and that's probably the
Speaker 1: first thing we're looking at when we attended a murder scene.
Speaker 1: What's your your your take on victimology and the importance
Speaker 1: of that to a criminal investigation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I means particularly when the offender is a stranger, right,
Speaker 2: that's when that's when that really comes into it because
Speaker 2: and you've got to be really careful talking about not
Speaker 2: confusing it with victim blaming. Completely different, And it's a
Speaker 2: shame because when sometimes we talk about victimology, it can
Speaker 2: come across that way, which is completely not the way
Speaker 2: it's intended. It's about trying to work out what brought
Speaker 2: the two together is because they're right, there is their
Speaker 2: answer to everything, right, So what brought the offender into
Speaker 2: the path of the victim, and the victimology is looking
Speaker 2: at it from the victim's perspective, So who were they,
Speaker 2: what did their life look like, where did they go
Speaker 2: on every single day, what were they doing on that day,
Speaker 2: and why where were they when they cross paths with
Speaker 2: the offender because that really informs your idea on who
Speaker 2: the offender might be. Because, for example, if they've got a
Speaker 2: routine every single week, and during one of those routine,
Speaker 2: things they've cross passed with the offender, will potentially the
Speaker 2: offender's been watching them for a long time. If they
Speaker 2: did something that's completely out of their routine and cross
Speaker 2: paths with the offender, it's unlikely that it's anything other
Speaker 2: than an opportunistic offender that's taken advantage. So two very
Speaker 2: different avenues for an investigation team to go down. So
Speaker 2: victimology is just learning everything that you can about the victim.
Speaker 1: And then invariably learning about the victim, it opens the
Speaker 1: line of inquiry that you're looking for. We're always behind
Speaker 1: the eight ball when we haven't identified the victim. That
Speaker 1: makes a murder investigation very hard from the outset when
Speaker 1: you haven't identified the victim, because it doesn't really give
Speaker 1: you a starting point. Personality profiles do you get into that,
Speaker 1: like what's motivating the person that type of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like, we do do them, and the unit used
Speaker 2: to do them quite a lot, and they're quite academic,
Speaker 2: and they're sort of saying, this is who the person is,
Speaker 2: and they're not massively different too, like and you've got
Speaker 2: your intel profiles with all and all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: But they're adding a whole lot of richness into personality
Speaker 2: and their relationships with people and why they have those relationships,
Speaker 2: any mental illnesses or behaviors that might But we've found
Speaker 2: with those profiles in and of themselves, they're not actually
Speaker 2: useful operationally in the form that they're in, but they're
Speaker 2: really useful to inform something else. So they're really helpful
Speaker 2: to inform a suspect interview, for example. So what we
Speaker 2: sort of do now is if someone comes to us saying,
Speaker 2: can you do a personality profile, we'll say, but what
Speaker 2: would you like it for? And we'll try and wait
Speaker 2: it towards whatever they want it for. So if they say, oh, well,
Speaker 2: wouldn't like as much as we know about them so
Speaker 2: we can interview them, we'll go cool, how about we
Speaker 2: give you some interview advice and there'll be a lot
Speaker 2: of that personality stuff in there too, just trying to
Speaker 2: help the investigation teams rather than just doing our thing
Speaker 2: and giving it to them and going there.
Speaker 3: You go, I'm I'm poor to take these as the
Speaker 3: city there? What does it mean? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Pronounce it? Which is still me trying to read them
Speaker 2: so very much, trying to target what they're trying to
Speaker 2: achieve and then working backwards. And there may be elements
Speaker 2: of a personality profile in it.
Speaker 1: And that could be as simple, I suppose as yeah,
Speaker 1: this person responds well to authority or this person who
Speaker 1: doesn't respect authority. It could be little triggers like that
Speaker 1: that help the way that you might approach the interview.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. And it's looking through every little record and
Speaker 2: you know about them because I don't know if the
Speaker 2: AUSSI police systems are the same as ours, but they're
Speaker 2: really skewed to all that safety information that you need
Speaker 2: to know. When you have a real quick glance at it,
Speaker 2: someone can look really really violent or really scary, But
Speaker 2: then you look deeper and you go, well, actually, traffic
Speaker 2: cop pulled them over last week and they were nice
Speaker 2: as pie and complemented the police officer on their nice haircut,
Speaker 2: and you go that is worth so much more to
Speaker 2: if you're gonna have to go and interview this person
Speaker 2: then at quick.
Speaker 1: Glance, yeah, yeah, those details. Do your team go out
Speaker 1: and involve themselves in the briefings, like is it all
Speaker 1: done one on one or do they actually attend the
Speaker 1: briefing and explain to the investigative team.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've done a little bit of that. And you
Speaker 2: get sort of put on the spot. You're getting pulled
Speaker 2: into a major crime investigation and everyone's in there, and
Speaker 2: I really have to just back up the truck when
Speaker 2: I'm asked and I go, you know, you guys have
Speaker 2: lived and breathed this investigation since it began. You know
Speaker 2: that people far better than anyone on my team could
Speaker 2: just by reading about them. So you've got to go
Speaker 2: with your knowledge, and all will try and do is
Speaker 2: add a few nuggets. The psychologists try and get out
Speaker 2: when they can. They'll certainly monitor interviews and things like that,
Speaker 2: but we're sort of just hamstrung by the fact we
Speaker 2: get so many requests. We're really stuck in the office
Speaker 2: just trying to deal with them all, and we'd love
Speaker 2: to be able to get out on the ground more,
Speaker 2: but really hard being a National team stuck in Auckland.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to put yourself on the spot
Speaker 1: here because you're still employed by the police, But do
Speaker 1: you see this as a growing area? Do you think
Speaker 1: police forces across the board, because I'm sure you're communicating
Speaker 1: with other police forces, do you think everyone's buying into
Speaker 1: what a unit like yours can can provide?
Speaker 2: Yeah? I think so, And I don't you know, because
Speaker 2: law enforcement is about people and psychology is people, so
Speaker 2: that just makes perfect sense, right, Yeah, But I don't
Speaker 2: know where that goes in the future because it cops
Speaker 2: these days are far more psychologically aware than they were
Speaker 2: when I started nineteen years ago. Yeah, your insines and
Speaker 2: it's fantastic, and it's getting the knowledge out there and
Speaker 2: seeding it amongst the organization and as much as we can,
Speaker 2: we try and put out, you know, generic advice that's
Speaker 2: helpful going forward, so that we're not getting asked the
Speaker 2: same thing over and over again. It's like, here's this
Speaker 2: piece of research, you can read it, and you've got
Speaker 2: it now, so now you're armed with it. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of that going on, So I think they'll be
Speaker 2: buy in and that will result in a massive uptake
Speaker 2: and just the general knowledge of investigators around human behavior
Speaker 2: and psychology. We're seeing an increase in that anyway, and
Speaker 2: you're getting interested in it and reading books and all
Speaker 2: that kind of stuff's going on. So I don't think
Speaker 2: that will result in our unit getting bigger, but it
Speaker 2: will result in a general knowledge increase across the board.
Speaker 1: Yeah, approach to it. Okay, Well, look, I think it's
Speaker 1: fascinating the work that the work that you're doing. I
Speaker 1: get the sense I'm saying this lightheartedly. You're hanging out
Speaker 1: with psychologists enough because I can then never pin them
Speaker 1: down to a director like a specific answer like could
Speaker 1: be maybe yeah, maybe so, but that but that is
Speaker 1: that is their science, isn't it.
Speaker 3: It's not an absolute no, and.
Speaker 2: There's exceptions for everything. So they have to they have
Speaker 2: to look at all the research and all the experience
Speaker 2: and put it together. And so you're never going to
Speaker 2: get one hundred percent anything. And then that's where the
Speaker 2: detectives come in and they go, well, it's sixty one percent.
Speaker 2: That's so that's the one that it probably is, and
Speaker 2: they'll go, you can't look at it like that, and
Speaker 2: you know, so it's good to have that balance.
Speaker 1: Is a good balance, so I think it changes it
Speaker 1: changes dynamics having access to that sort of experience. I
Speaker 1: want to get your thoughts on crime, and you touched
Speaker 1: on it. But one of the things that from something
Speaker 1: that you've written that I just want to read back
Speaker 1: to you and then get your thoughts to expand on that,
Speaker 1: and I put it under the heading of your thoughts
Speaker 1: on crime From you, I've developed an institutionally frowned upon
Speaker 1: empathy with offenders, not empathy necessarily with their actions, but
Speaker 1: with them as people. How we can truly understand if
Speaker 1: we haven't walked in those shoes. Judgment is for the courts.
Speaker 1: Police can do their job right without being dicks and
Speaker 1: starting a new cycle of prejudice already and defending. I
Speaker 1: pulled that out because I think it says a lot
Speaker 1: about your approach, and certainly, sitting down having this chat
Speaker 1: with you, I see where it's coming from.
Speaker 3: Do you want to just expand on what you meant
Speaker 3: by that paragraph?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean nineteen years and my career hasn't been
Speaker 2: colored by what I'd say a lot of evil. Right,
Speaker 2: So you read about some cases and Ossie's had them.
Speaker 2: Where you go, man, that really is just some next
Speaker 2: level darkness happening there. But I've never I've never experienced
Speaker 2: that myself, Like I've never sat across an interview table
Speaker 2: from someone and gone, you are just one hundred percent. Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's far more. You're a human being and you've made
Speaker 2: some mistakes, and your toolbox for dealing with hard things
Speaker 2: is not the same as my toolbox, and whose fault
Speaker 2: that is? Who knows? You know, you could argue it
Speaker 2: in one research paper and argue a different thing in another,
Speaker 2: but by and large, you know, if someone commits a murder,
Speaker 2: they didn't wake up that morning unless they're a contract killer.
Speaker 2: I'm going to kill somebody this afternoon. But it ends
Speaker 2: up that way. And that's not at all taken away
Speaker 2: from the fact that they've made a decision to take
Speaker 2: a life and they should face the consequences of that.
Speaker 2: But there's so much more to their life and background
Speaker 2: than that one moment, So understanding that, recognizing it and
Speaker 2: putting yourself there and going if I'd live their life
Speaker 2: and whatever that is. And let's go down the cliche one,
Speaker 2: which is a really difficult childhood, really difficult adolescence, victim
Speaker 2: of all sorts, of abuse, drugs funneled into a gang
Speaker 2: because there's nowhere else that will take care, and you
Speaker 2: find a little sense of camaraderie there, not similar to
Speaker 2: joining the army or the police or a sports team.
Speaker 2: And then once you're there, there's that social validation aspect.
Speaker 2: You know everyone's doing this, so I'm going to do
Speaker 2: it too, And so you end up in a place
Speaker 2: where you're not as well equipped as a lot of
Speaker 2: people to deal with terrible situations. Maybe running away isn't
Speaker 2: your default setting and someone ends up dead. Now I
Speaker 2: can very much understand that for some people when they
Speaker 2: take a life for them in that moment, for whatever reason,
Speaker 2: they thought it was the right thing to do for themselves,
Speaker 2: and wrapping our heads around that and going how is
Speaker 2: that even possible? How could they have ever thought that
Speaker 2: that was the right thing to do. That's the key
Speaker 2: to it, because if you can understand that and empathize,
Speaker 2: that makes that interview room such a more positive place
Speaker 2: to be than the adversarial place it has been for decades.
Speaker 2: So I guess it comes from a place of suspect
Speaker 2: inter viewing, but trying to recognize that you know, I'm
Speaker 2: sitting across the table from a murderer nine years old.
Speaker 2: They weren't out killing people, so there's some element of
Speaker 2: there's got to be some element of humanity to that, right,
Speaker 2: and understanding that journey they've been on is crucial to
Speaker 2: perhaps keeping that door open so you can keep the
Speaker 2: conversation going.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Look, I highlighted Chrispy because I wanted you to explain
Speaker 1: that in your words. But it reinforces something that I
Speaker 1: think I was aware of during the police but certainly
Speaker 1: outside the police and sitting in the position I am
Speaker 1: now speaking to people. I respect the in law enforcement,
Speaker 1: and one of the things that carried all the way
Speaker 1: through with all the good detectives, I knew if I
Speaker 1: had to describe, and people think it's so strange, what's
Speaker 1: the characteristics of the best detectives.
Speaker 3: You've worked with?
Speaker 1: Empathy? They all carry a heavy carry a lot of
Speaker 1: empathy for people. They understand and when they crack the
Speaker 1: case and people don't know what goes on in the
Speaker 1: interview room and they think it's been aggressive, violent, it's
Speaker 1: quite often, as you've described here, sitting down just talking
Speaker 1: to people. And I agree very much with what you
Speaker 1: say about just because someone does a bad thing doesn't
Speaker 1: make them a bad person. I have seen people, and
Speaker 1: it's a small percentage of people that I think are
Speaker 1: pure arrovial and I've confronted them. But ninety nine percent
Speaker 1: of the people that you deal with, yeah, they've made
Speaker 1: a mistake, but they've got some goodness in them. And
Speaker 1: I think it was very interesting you say here without
Speaker 1: being dix and starting a new cycle of prejudice, disparity
Speaker 1: and offending. Policing works best when the public like the police,
Speaker 1: and the public support the police, and the police are
Speaker 1: representing them. So I think things like that are important
Speaker 1: messages to get across.
Speaker 2: Yeah, totally. Who are to decide that this person should
Speaker 2: bear the brunt of my aggression just because they've done
Speaker 2: something wrong, right, Like, that's not your job. Your job
Speaker 2: is to a fact find for a court to make
Speaker 2: a decision. And so we can take all that emotion
Speaker 2: out of it. That's just us getting a motive going,
Speaker 2: you know, I'm right, You're I'm good, You're bad like Matilda,
Speaker 2: and and that all comes out in the interview room
Speaker 2: because we think that's what we're supposed to do, and
Speaker 2: it's just like, that's not why we're here. We can
Speaker 2: parkle that and atally be okay, sitting in a room
Speaker 2: with someone that's done this and yeah they're not they're
Speaker 2: not the most evil person that ever walked the earth,
Speaker 2: and recognize them.
Speaker 3: Well, good, good advice. We might wrap up here.
Speaker 1: I want to thank you for the chat, and yeah,
Speaker 1: thanks for the service that you're given to the community
Speaker 1: over there in New Zealand, and a shout out to
Speaker 1: people that want to join the New Zealand place, because
Speaker 1: I really appreciate we're struggling, as I said, over here
Speaker 1: in Australia with people joining the police and I think
Speaker 1: exposing people to listening to someone like you, it sounds
Speaker 1: like you've had a great, great time in your career
Speaker 1: and you're still enjoying it.
Speaker 3: Oh.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, What an organization to be a part of, right,
Speaker 2: And what a privilege to actually be put in the
Speaker 2: shoes that you are as a cop and interact with
Speaker 2: the types of people that we do right, whereas you
Speaker 2: choose any other profession you don't get that. And I
Speaker 2: think the word privilege genuinely right. It gives you such
Speaker 2: a good perspective on life, and we need people, we
Speaker 2: need good people from everywhere. Yeah, so yeah, I'm glad
Speaker 2: that our recruitment is going through a positive stage because
Speaker 2: that's exactly what we want.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you want the best of the best. Apply
Speaker 1: and then it's a job that you should be striving
Speaker 1: for and.
Speaker 3: It is a privilege.
Speaker 1: So it's always it puts a smile on my face
Speaker 1: speaking to a cop that enjoys doing their job and
Speaker 1: doing good work.
Speaker 3: So thanks so much for coming on.
Speaker 2: I catch gillers, no cheers, Gary, Absolute pleasure. Thanks very much,
Speaker 2: m HM.