Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 2: Detective see aside of life.
Speaker 1: The average person is never exposed her I spent thirty
Speaker 1: four years as a cop. For twenty five of those
Speaker 1: years I was catching killers. That's what I did for
Speaker 1: a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer
Speaker 1: just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into
Speaker 1: the world in which I operated. The guests I talk
Speaker 1: to each week have amazing stories from all sides of
Speaker 1: the law. The interviews are raw and honest, just like
Speaker 1: the people I talk to. Some of the content and
Speaker 1: language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes
Speaker 1: into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now
Speaker 1: as I take you into this world. Hank is what
Speaker 1: I consider a true detective in every sense of the word,
Speaker 1: and we're not done with him yet. In part two
Speaker 1: of my chat with Hank, we talked about theorist serial
Speaker 1: killer Bruce MacArthur, who was convicted of murdering eight men
Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen. The investigation first landed on Hank's radar
Speaker 1: through allegations of cannibalism. You just can't make this stuff up.
Speaker 1: We also talk about how you manage the chaos and
Speaker 1: the weight of responsibility when a mass killing occurs on
Speaker 1: your watch. I could talk to this bloke all day.
Speaker 1: I find it fascinating discussing homicide with a real live
Speaker 1: homicide detective. Have a listen, Hank, Welcome back to I
Speaker 1: Catch Killers Part two?
Speaker 3: Still here?
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: Sometimes I feel the name of the podcast, I Catch
Speaker 1: Killers is a bit inappropriate when I'm interviewing, let's say,
Speaker 1: people that might be on the other side of the law.
Speaker 1: But it feels right eye catch Killers speaking to you.
Speaker 1: But I want to say, say up front, we talk
Speaker 1: about what we've done in our careers and all that,
Speaker 1: but the acknowledgment and I know that you would feel
Speaker 1: this way that it's such a team effort in homicide.
Speaker 1: No homicide is solved one person. It's a team effort
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of assistance that goes into it.
Speaker 1: Quite often, people like yourself or myself. We might have
Speaker 1: the profile because we've been leading the jobs, but there's
Speaker 1: people that are working just as hard or if not
Speaker 1: harder and better behind the scenes. Do you want to
Speaker 1: just tell us about the type of people that go
Speaker 1: into making up a good successful homicide investigation.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, when I started in homicide in two
Speaker 3: thousand and five, it was literally two of us that
Speaker 3: were assigned to each homicide case from the homicide squad
Speaker 3: and we would go into the division where it happened,
Speaker 3: and if we needed help, hopefully we could get a
Speaker 3: couple of officers from that division, so kind it to
Speaker 3: us for a few weeks. But if you think about
Speaker 3: when a homicide happens, let's take a shooting, for example,
Speaker 3: on the streets of Toronto or somewhere in Australia. I mean,
Speaker 3: the police are rarely the first one there. Usually it's
Speaker 3: the ambulance attendance and the fire department, so they're involved.
Speaker 3: And then you've got the first responding uniform officers, and
Speaker 3: then they're supervisors. Likely after that is the divisional investigators
Speaker 3: and they're the ones who would call homicide, and then
Speaker 3: the homicide squad comes out. And you know, the last
Speaker 3: portion of my time in homicide, we instead of operating
Speaker 3: in teams of two, we operate in teams usually five
Speaker 3: or six responding officers. So you've got your major case manager,
Speaker 3: your primary investigator, your file manager, and then your investigative
Speaker 3: support officers. Forensic identification officers usually two to every homicide.
Speaker 3: In some cases we had six or eight of them
Speaker 3: on each homicide. You know your emergency task force or
Speaker 3: your SWAT teams that are responding center of forensic science.
Speaker 3: I mean, they're so many different roles to complete a
Speaker 3: homicide investigation and put it all together, and ultimately everything
Speaker 3: flows up to the case manager and either they or
Speaker 3: the primary investigator are usually the ones who see it
Speaker 3: through the core process. So it's a lot of people involved.
Speaker 3: If you need support from different units. If it's a
Speaker 3: drug involved case, you need help from your drug squad,
Speaker 3: If it's a gang involved case, you need help from
Speaker 3: your guns and gangs units. Dozens and dozens of officers
Speaker 3: usually at the very least involved somehow in any homicide investigation.
Speaker 1: You also made a point in the Gain that resonated
Speaker 1: with me on putting it into Hank's life. Homicide hacks
Speaker 1: about with the briefings. And this was taught to me
Speaker 1: very early by some good mentals and great leaders, that
Speaker 1: you quite often have a briefing when the homicides happened,
Speaker 1: when you could step back and everyone sits around and
Speaker 1: you've got the person running the investigation. You've got the
Speaker 1: uniform officers, you've got everyone see in there for a briefing,
Speaker 1: just to so everyone can catch up with what's happened.
Speaker 1: And the point was made to me very early in
Speaker 1: my career, and I tried to continue that through that
Speaker 1: You listen to everyone in the room and it might
Speaker 1: be the most junior person sitting quietly in the corner
Speaker 1: that hasn't got much to say, and they'll just you know,
Speaker 1: you can see them tentatively put their hand up and
Speaker 1: make a suggestion, and that might be the breakthrough that
Speaker 1: the collective geniuses that were talking about it hadn't come
Speaker 1: up with. And the importance of not having that tunnel
Speaker 1: vision and listening to other people's ideas, whether they be
Speaker 1: right or wrong, and then make your decision based on that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I was very dishooning. At one point in time,
Speaker 3: one of the teams at a homicide and I wasn't
Speaker 3: the boss yet at the time, but I walked into
Speaker 3: the homicide squad at police headquarters and there are two
Speaker 3: young officers sitting off by themselves where their team has
Speaker 3: rmly set up, and I was like, whereas all your guys,
Speaker 3: And they're like they're in the briefing room having a briefing. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And I'm like, why aren't you guys in there while
Speaker 3: the detective sergeant doesn't include us in the briefings. And
Speaker 3: I thought that that should never happen. And some of
Speaker 3: the homicide cases that I was involved in, and even
Speaker 3: some of the homicide cases that people give me credit for, no,
Speaker 3: it was the youngest members on the teams who came
Speaker 3: up with that little spark of an idea or had
Speaker 3: that extra energy to go the extra mile. And it's funny.
Speaker 3: I was presenting to a book club last night and
Speaker 3: one of the attendees of the book club was a doctor,
Speaker 3: and they said, it's like you see on TV on
Speaker 3: you know, Gray's Anatomy, when they come around and do
Speaker 3: the rounds, and you've got the senior doctor and everyone
Speaker 3: in between, right down to the most junior one, and
Speaker 3: everyone's input is valued and everybody gets listened to. And yeah,
Speaker 3: sometimes you might hear a stupid idea, but you might
Speaker 3: also may hear a brilliant idea as well. And I
Speaker 3: think really the structure of the police forces these days
Speaker 3: really don't promote that tape of approach to police work.
Speaker 3: And investigations in general, and I think that that's a
Speaker 3: lot of lost opportunity there, and that's where we fall
Speaker 3: down a lot sometimes as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I picked up on the theme of people hiding
Speaker 1: behind their rank, and you made the point with Gary
Speaker 1: that you were talking about the homicide the experienced homicide detective,
Speaker 1: that he might have the rank, but he had the experience.
Speaker 1: And I think sometimes we have people in the police services,
Speaker 1: police forces that hide behind the rank because it's that
Speaker 1: para military structure, and I think things can be lost.
Speaker 1: The other point, and this was, you know, I was
Speaker 1: chuffed when I was a young detective and invited into
Speaker 1: the briefing for a homicide and yeah, the boss has said,
Speaker 1: and Gary, what do you think? I know he choked.
Speaker 1: I didn't think I had a void see it. But
Speaker 1: I made some points and what that did that motivated
Speaker 1: me as well. And I think that's an important thing
Speaker 1: that everyone because homicide investigation can be a hard slog
Speaker 1: and it's a way to make everyone feel that they're
Speaker 1: part of a team and let them have their input.
Speaker 1: There's a motivation factor that comes into it as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, if they you know, the senior homicide guy
Speaker 3: is the one being looked up to in the room
Speaker 3: and some of these some of the young officers don't
Speaker 3: get yourself. They're an absolute awe of who they're surrounded by. Right,
Speaker 3: good homicide senior, seasoned homicide investigator is going to be
Speaker 3: legendary in any police department he works in. And you're
Speaker 3: probably the first time you meet some of these young officers,
Speaker 3: they're going to be why aren't you saying anything? Right, Well,
Speaker 3: you know, why aren't you looking at me? Because they're
Speaker 3: scared shitless. So few yep, because it's very very intimidating.
Speaker 3: I remember being in those shoes is at one point
Speaker 3: in time, right. And I also remember being in one
Speaker 3: of the first office case briefings very early in my
Speaker 3: homicide career in two thousand and five and discussing a
Speaker 3: case and probably one of the most senior, well respected
Speaker 3: guys in the office came up to me afterwards he said,
Speaker 3: that was a really good idea that you came up with,
Speaker 3: and we're going to chase that down. And yeah, I'm
Speaker 3: over the moon. Right. It's huge for those young investigators
Speaker 3: to feel valued and to feel that their voice is
Speaker 3: being heard, and you know, but it also wasn't unusual
Speaker 3: to have one of them suggest something completely outlandish, but
Speaker 3: then it becomes a learning point for them as well. Right,
Speaker 3: we're not going to do that. Here's why we're not
Speaker 3: going to do that. And I'm going to try and
Speaker 3: make you understand why we're not going to do that,
Speaker 3: and that they're going to appreciate that as well. But
Speaker 3: that paramilitary structure that I talk about, and I don't
Speaker 3: know how bad it is in Australia, but the major
Speaker 3: policing reviews in Canada over the last ten years, I've said,
Speaker 3: get away from that. Get away from that. It's Stafles
Speaker 3: free thought, it's Stafles free expression, and you're really doing
Speaker 3: ato service to the younger officers as well as the
Speaker 3: taxpayers who are getting the best bang for their bucke
Speaker 3: in policing. If you're going to operate like that, sadly
Speaker 3: we still do well.
Speaker 1: My thing with the police is that, yeah, we're public servants,
Speaker 1: and those public servants, it's pretty easy to defind what
Speaker 1: our role is. We're there to serve the public, and
Speaker 1: I see so many hard working, good police officers, not
Speaker 1: just detectives, uniform officers in any different section that really
Speaker 1: joined for the right reason and doing for the right reason.
Speaker 1: But then I also see the people that are driven
Speaker 1: by what can I take from the organization? Then how
Speaker 1: far can I get promoted and just focus solely on
Speaker 1: the promotion. You made a point in part one about Yeah,
Speaker 1: if I didn't get promoted and just stayed in homicide
Speaker 1: for the rest of my career, I would have stayed happy.
Speaker 1: I was the same way. I think the best times
Speaker 1: I had probably around the detective sergeant time in homicide.
Speaker 1: We got rotated out because they bought a rotation policy
Speaker 1: in and I ended up getting because I had been
Speaker 1: there the longest as a sergeant, I was going to
Speaker 1: be the first one rotated out, and so that's when
Speaker 1: I went for promotion. But I would have happily retired
Speaker 1: as a detective sergeant if I was left alone just
Speaker 1: to do my work in homicide, because I found it
Speaker 1: fascinating and they're the type they're the type of people
Speaker 1: that you want in homicide, the ones that are just
Speaker 1: fixated with I just this is what I want to do, Let.
Speaker 2: Me do it.
Speaker 3: The number one recurring anxiety dream I had when I
Speaker 3: was in homicide was I had always had this dream
Speaker 3: that the boss came to me and said, your time's up.
Speaker 3: Back to a uniform of your goal. No, no, I can't, right,
Speaker 3: it's I don't ever want to leave here. This is
Speaker 3: what I wanted to do from day one. This is
Speaker 3: what I think I was meant to do. And you know,
Speaker 3: as you said, and I said earlier, homicide detective. Yeah,
Speaker 3: I'm right where I need to be. I don't if
Speaker 3: I never get promoted again, I'm happy. I'm fine. I'll
Speaker 3: do my time and have a blast every single day
Speaker 3: that I'm here working my butt off, right, So absolutely
Speaker 3: best job going. You know, I think best occupation going
Speaker 3: is policing, and the best job and policing is the
Speaker 3: homicide work. So don't ever forcefully take it away from me.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to be a happy man.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, when I got moved around, I many to find
Speaker 1: homicides that I could investigate anyway, and in the end
Speaker 1: they gave up and just put me back in homicide.
Speaker 2: So there's always a homicide if you look deep enough.
Speaker 1: I was working as a crime manager and many to
Speaker 1: find some homicides when I was meant to be doing
Speaker 1: sort of a semi uniform role. But they ended up
Speaker 1: leading homicide. So I understand the passion most definitely. Can
Speaker 1: we talk now about we touched on it briefly, Well,
Speaker 1: the start of the investigation is my reading of it
Speaker 1: from what I've read about it. But the Bruce MacArthur investigation,
Speaker 1: if you could tell uson why I said we touched
Speaker 1: on it briefly. I think there's some links there to
Speaker 1: the cannibal informant about in the men that had disappeared,
Speaker 1: and that was sort of the starting point. If you
Speaker 1: could just explain what the case was and how it culminated,
Speaker 1: because it's a fascinating, fascinating story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, this case evolved over eight years up
Speaker 3: here in Toronto. So Bruce MacArthur was praying on. He
Speaker 3: was a gay man. He was married earlier in life
Speaker 3: with kids, and then he came out of the closet
Speaker 3: late in the life and moved into the gay village
Speaker 3: in Toronto and killed his first victim in twenty ten.
Speaker 3: And his first victim was a follow Yam scan Ratnam,
Speaker 3: who was originally from Sri Lanka and lived in the
Speaker 3: village and disappeared in September twenty ten, and he has
Speaker 3: reported missing about two weeks after he was last seen
Speaker 3: just by a friend who thought, I haven't seen Scanda
Speaker 3: for a while, I'm going to report him missing. So
Speaker 3: the divisional investigators didn't have any luck figuring out what
Speaker 3: had happened to Scanda. But of course we get about
Speaker 3: five thousand missing persons reports every year, so the divisional
Speaker 3: detectives did some great work, but at the end of
Speaker 3: the day just didn't have any answers. And it wasn't
Speaker 3: until two late twenty twelve, and by this time MacArthur
Speaker 3: had killed two other men, so it, unbeknownst to us,
Speaker 3: his victim tally was at three when that tip came
Speaker 3: in from Switzerland about a fellow on a cannibalism fetish
Speaker 3: website on the Internet bragging about killing and eating a
Speaker 3: brown skin mail from Toronto's Gay Village. So that's when
Speaker 3: I first got involved, and I was sent to fifty
Speaker 3: one Division to oversee the investigation to the point could
Speaker 3: we include or exclude this suspect that we developed from
Speaker 3: this confession as being responsible for at least one murder,
Speaker 3: And by mid twenty thirteen we're able to exclude him
Speaker 3: and determine no, this guy's full of it. He's never
Speaker 3: killed anyone in his life. But at that point in time,
Speaker 3: we realized we've got three missing brown skinned men from
Speaker 3: Toronto's gay village. We don't know what's happened to them,
Speaker 3: So I went back to homicide. The missing person's investigation
Speaker 3: continued in the division and it wasn't until twenty and
Speaker 3: seventeen where MacArthur killed his last victim, a fellow named
Speaker 3: Andrew Kinsman, at the end of June in twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: and he made some pretty serious mistakes. He had been
Speaker 3: very very careful, especially since the twenty twelve twenty thirteen
Speaker 3: portion of the investigation. He selected his victims a lot
Speaker 3: more carefully. A couple of them were never even reported
Speaker 3: as missing to police. But he killed his eighth victim.
Speaker 3: Like I said, end of June of twenty seventeen, it
Speaker 3: was obvious that mister Kinsman, his last victim, had met
Speaker 3: with some sort of foul play, and we as homicide officers,
Speaker 3: were again sent to fifty one Division to oversee what
Speaker 3: was still a missing person's investigation, but with some pretty
Speaker 3: strong undertones of foul play. So MacArthur himself was identified
Speaker 3: because Kinsman went missing around three o'clock in the afternoon
Speaker 3: and he had written on his calendar three pm, Bruce.
Speaker 3: So the divisional investigators picked up on that and they
Speaker 3: pulled all the surveillance video from the neighborhood. And it
Speaker 3: took about a month and a half of going through
Speaker 3: that surveillance video till they found a red Dodge caravan.
Speaker 3: So we got a list of all the Dodge caravans
Speaker 3: in the Greater Toronto area that fit the profile, and
Speaker 3: then we cross referenced it to that calendar entry. How
Speaker 3: many of those Dodge caravans are registered to somebody named
Speaker 3: Bruce five, one of them being Bruce MacArthur. And one
Speaker 3: of the investigators said, Bruce MacArthur, we interviewed him back
Speaker 3: in twenty thirteen in relation to the other missing men.
Speaker 3: All right, let's take a good look at Bruce MacArthur.
Speaker 3: So we ended up grabbing his van covertly, finding some
Speaker 3: blood and semen in the back of the van, matching
Speaker 3: it through DNA to Andrew Kinsman. And then December twenty seventeen,
Speaker 3: we snuck into mister MacArthur's apartment and cloned his computer
Speaker 3: and started going through all of that data. And it
Speaker 3: wasn't until mid January of twenty and eighteen where we
Speaker 3: started finding the images of his victims. He liked to
Speaker 3: kill his victims and then dress them up and take
Speaker 3: photographs of them, so it took quite a while to
Speaker 3: find those photographs.
Speaker 1: At that stage, before you found the photos, were you
Speaker 1: of the belief you looking at the serial killer there?
Speaker 1: I know he had links to the previous investigation, so
Speaker 1: the thought must have crossed your mind. But did you
Speaker 1: have a sense of the magnitude of what you were
Speaker 1: going to uncover at that stage?
Speaker 3: Not yet, And even in twenty twelve, twenty and thirteen,
Speaker 3: they really were strictly missing persons investigations. We had that
Speaker 3: cannibal evidence, but we excluded that, and of course everyone's
Speaker 3: think King serial killer, but we had no evidence to
Speaker 3: say there was a serial killer, right. We actually had
Speaker 3: other missing men from the gay village who we eventually found,
Speaker 3: right we you know. So it really wasn't until November
Speaker 3: of two thousand and seventeen where we said, okay, now
Speaker 3: we've got some blood that belongs to Kinsman in the
Speaker 3: back of MacArthur's van. So that's some evidence that Kinsman
Speaker 3: has met with foul play, and it's some evidence that
Speaker 3: MacArthur was somehow involved. But is he dead. We don't
Speaker 3: know that yet. Probably he's falling off the face of
Speaker 3: the earth. And then it wasn't, like I said, until
Speaker 3: January till we started finding photographs. And the first photographs
Speaker 3: what we found were actually of his seventh victim, a
Speaker 3: fellow named selim Essen. And we decided then that Okay,
Speaker 3: we've got to arrest this guy. We've got to get
Speaker 3: him into custody. We don't have any bodies, We've got
Speaker 3: a pretty weak case, but the risk to the public
Speaker 3: right now is too great. So fingers crossed that we
Speaker 3: find the victims.
Speaker 1: Right those fight those you said that they would decise,
Speaker 1: Was it obvious that they would decis and were they
Speaker 1: addressed up? What would the knights for the fights?
Speaker 3: Well, they sure looked like they were deceased. But you know, interestingly,
Speaker 3: I did a presentation at a pathologist conference about a
Speaker 3: year later, and I put the photographs up on the screen,
Speaker 3: and I had about three hundred pathologists in the room,
Speaker 3: and I said, who would get up in court and
Speaker 3: testify that the people in these photographs are dead? Not
Speaker 3: a one? Right? They sure they look dead, but we
Speaker 3: can't prove that they're dead, right, So we ended up
Speaker 3: arresting MacArthur with, like I said, a pretty weak circumstantial
Speaker 3: case of two murders of Andrew Kinsman and Slim Essen,
Speaker 3: because we had found photos of both of them and
Speaker 3: both of them were missing, and we had blood of
Speaker 3: Kinsmen in the back of MacArthur's van. So it wasn't
Speaker 3: until a few days after he was arrested that we
Speaker 3: managed to start recovering the remains of victims. So we
Speaker 3: seized a bunch of properties that he was associated to,
Speaker 3: and one of the properties he was associated to, he
Speaker 3: was a landscaper and it was an elderly couple who
Speaker 3: owned this property, and so he would do their landscaping
Speaker 3: in exchange for storing his landscaping equipment in their garage.
Speaker 3: And they had a summerhouse, so they are never home
Speaker 3: in the summer. They were only home in the winter.
Speaker 3: And so what MacArthur was doing was killing these men.
Speaker 3: He was dismembering them, and then he was storing the
Speaker 3: body parts in planters in this couple's backyard. So after
Speaker 3: we arrested him, we seized the premise, the house, and
Speaker 3: we put our canine units into the backyard and one
Speaker 3: of the canine units indicated on one of the planters,
Speaker 3: but we didn't know if they were indicating on the
Speaker 3: planter or the ground beneath the planter. So we seized
Speaker 3: a few of the planters from the backyard and they
Speaker 3: ended up being taken to the morgue and it took
Speaker 3: a few days for them to actually file out so
Speaker 3: we could x ray them. And then we x rayed
Speaker 3: them and you could see the outline of our rib
Speaker 3: cage and one of the planters. So we went and
Speaker 3: got the remaining planters from the backyard and we recovered
Speaker 3: seven of the eight victims from those planters, and it
Speaker 3: wasn't until the summer of twenty eighteen where we recovered
Speaker 3: the eighth victim. He was buried in a rubber garbage
Speaker 3: container in a ravine behind the house the day MacArthur
Speaker 3: was arrested. So we found the photographs on a Wednesday.
Speaker 3: Made the decision to arrest him. But we need to
Speaker 3: get search warrants put in place, and search teams all
Speaker 3: put it in place. So I said, MacArthur is to
Speaker 3: be put on a twenty four hour surveillance. We're gonna
Speaker 3: get these search warrants so we're going to execute and
Speaker 3: arrest them on Saturday morning. The one caveat is he
Speaker 3: is not allowed to be behind a closed door with
Speaker 3: another man Murphy's law. Thursday morning, what does he do.
Speaker 3: Picks up a man that we've seen him pick up before,
Speaker 3: parks in a spot that he normally doesn't park in
Speaker 3: his apartment building, goes up the back stairwell with his
Speaker 3: other man, and goes into his apartment. So the surveillance
Speaker 3: team calls me. They call the primary investigator, a really
Speaker 3: good detective named Dave Dickinson. Here's what's going on, get
Speaker 3: in there and arrest them, and sure enough that guy
Speaker 3: would have been victim number nine. Tied to MacArthur's bed,
Speaker 3: MacArthur had put a hood over his head and he
Speaker 3: had started a file on him on his computer. So
Speaker 3: very little doubt in my mind that we saved life
Speaker 3: that day by going in there and getting MacArthur into custody.
Speaker 3: And at the end of it, there is no court proceeding.
Speaker 3: He pled guilty a year later to eight counts of
Speaker 3: first degree murder, sentenced to life in prison, no chance
Speaker 3: of parole for twenty five years, by which time I
Speaker 3: believe he'll be ninety two and he's not going to
Speaker 3: live that long and regards was I highly doubt you
Speaker 3: would ever get parole anyway. So very lengthy, long investigation,
Speaker 3: probably the highest profile investigation I was ever involved in,
Speaker 3: And my full time job in twenty eighteen was juggling
Speaker 3: the media. Really, I had minimal involvement in the actual
Speaker 3: investigative process. My detective was the one who really drove that,
Speaker 3: came to me for advice and you know, where do
Speaker 3: we go from here? That sort of thing. But twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: you know, every week we were identifying victims and laying
Speaker 3: more charges, and I was dealing with the media, and
Speaker 3: that was a full time job through all of twenty
Speaker 3: eighteen until July when I was promoted to inspector in
Speaker 3: charge of homicide.
Speaker 1: I would imagine the media, you'd have to use the
Speaker 1: media for appeal for more information coming in, even though
Speaker 1: that you've clearly got him for strong cases against him,
Speaker 1: but identifying the other victims would have played the part
Speaker 1: appealing to appealing to the media. But I can imagine
Speaker 1: the media getting hold of that any Yeah, murder gets
Speaker 1: the front page, but when you're talking a serial killer
Speaker 1: and that type of case, well, the insight you would
Speaker 1: have got from the victim or the potential victim that
Speaker 1: was saved due to the called to have him arrested.
Speaker 1: That's a handy thing to understand how we actually operated,
Speaker 1: isn't it. That's really giving an insight in the mind
Speaker 1: of a psychopath that you've got a victim that's actually
Speaker 1: lived to tell the story.
Speaker 3: We had a couple of victims. You know, that ninth victim.
Speaker 3: Nobody was happier than him when MacArthur pled guilty because
Speaker 3: he was a married man and a closeted homosexual. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and so he was never exposed to the public or
Speaker 3: to his family. There was another victim who didn't realize
Speaker 3: he was a victim. We were going through MacArthur's computer.
Speaker 3: We found photographs of an unconscious male and MacArthur liked
Speaker 3: to dress them up in a fur coat. So he
Speaker 3: had this fellow dressed up in a fur coat, and
Speaker 3: we ultimately identified him and he was still alive. So
Speaker 3: we went and talked with him and we said, you know,
Speaker 3: tell us about the time when you're having sex with
Speaker 3: MacArthur and he choked you unconscious and took these photographs
Speaker 3: and he was like what are you talking about? Right,
Speaker 3: he never realized he had been choked unconscious and that
Speaker 3: these photographs had been taken of him. So for some reason,
Speaker 3: MacArthur just chose not to kill him, so he was
Speaker 3: still alive. But yeah, just dealing with a lot. And
Speaker 3: we had one other victim who managed to fight MacArthur
Speaker 3: off in the back of his van, so he was
Speaker 3: He would have been a great witnessing court as well.
Speaker 3: But like I said, it never came to that, and
Speaker 3: the case was just way too strong. As soon as
Speaker 3: we started finding those remains and identifying the victims, you know, Dave,
Speaker 3: Dick and Sin and I had a chat and we
Speaker 3: both agreed, this is never going to trial and there's
Speaker 3: no way, Like the case is just way too strong.
Speaker 3: So and sure enough, that's that's how it ended up. Right.
Speaker 3: It's not that usual that a you get a serial
Speaker 3: killer before the courts and b he pleads guilty without
Speaker 3: having a full blown trial. Because as you say, it
Speaker 3: was psychopaths. They kind of like that attention.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, they enjoy the reliving the moment.
Speaker 1: That's the next little kick.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, we had a psychiatrist intimately involved in
Speaker 3: the investigation and making his determination, and he said, he's
Speaker 3: actually not a psychopath, he's a sexual sadist and that's
Speaker 3: what was motivating him. But definitely more your prototypical serial
Speaker 3: killer than Mark Moore was, for instance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, how was he killing the victims? Was it strangulation?
Speaker 3: It was strangulation, manual strangulation, and then I believe once
Speaker 3: they were unconscious from the manual strangulation, he would take
Speaker 3: a rope in an iron bar and winch it around
Speaker 3: their neck like a garat and suffocate them to death.
Speaker 1: Did he talk with all the participied in any interview?
Speaker 3: You know, the day he is arrested, we have two
Speaker 3: officers out of our sex crimes unit who are trained
Speaker 3: on the polygraph and they take every interviewing course imaginable.
Speaker 3: So we brought one of them in and he talked
Speaker 3: with MacArthur for about eight or ten hours. And MacArthur's
Speaker 3: biggest concern was he had a lunch date that day
Speaker 3: and would he be out in time to make his
Speaker 3: lunch date. And you know, no, you're being charged with
Speaker 3: two counts of murder today. I don't think you're going
Speaker 3: to be making your lunch date. And he was concerned
Speaker 3: because he was the one who's supposed to be driving,
Speaker 3: picking somebody up and going to this lunch date. But
Speaker 3: other than that, he gave us nothing whatsoever at the time.
Speaker 3: So once he was in prison, there's been some more
Speaker 3: conversations with him, but nothing really significant. Of course, our
Speaker 3: biggest concern for a long time was have we accounted
Speaker 3: for all of his victims? I think we can pretty
Speaker 3: safely say yeah, because he kept file folders on all
Speaker 3: his victims. He did talk to us enough after the
Speaker 3: fact to reassure us there were no other victims, and
Speaker 3: I think we certainly background investigated all of his movements
Speaker 3: through his life as closely as we could. You know,
Speaker 3: for instance, we knew through border security that he had
Speaker 3: been in England on vacation a particular point in time,
Speaker 3: so we called the authorities in England and said, we're looking.
Speaker 3: We know he was in this town on vacation. Do
Speaker 3: you have any outstanding missing persons or do you have
Speaker 3: any unsolved murders in your gay community at that point
Speaker 3: in time? No, thank you very much, right so, but
Speaker 3: we really we had quite a team that was assembled
Speaker 3: after he was arrested, and a ton of investigative work
Speaker 3: just backtracking his entire life, just to make sure we
Speaker 3: didn't miss anything. And of course the phones were ringing
Speaker 3: off the right people whose loved ones are missing and
Speaker 3: still outstanding, and they're calling and saying, is it possible
Speaker 3: he is involved in you know, my brother's disappearance or
Speaker 3: my son's disappearance, And every single one of them we
Speaker 3: looked at and we're able to say, no, it doesn't
Speaker 3: look like any of the timelines add up, and really
Speaker 3: not his thing. Right. So I had one lady who
Speaker 3: reached out to me after the fact, and she actually
Speaker 3: wrote a letter to MacArthur when he was in prison
Speaker 3: and her I believe it was her brother who is missing,
Speaker 3: and she said, did you have anything to do with
Speaker 3: my brother's disappearance? And sent him a photograph and he
Speaker 3: actually responded, he said, no, he's a handsome man, but
Speaker 3: he's not my type and I never met him before
Speaker 3: in my life, so it wasn't me who was responsible
Speaker 3: for that. So and she passed that on to me,
Speaker 3: but I was pretty surprised that he actually did respond
Speaker 3: to her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, an investigation of that profile, that nature of the
Speaker 1: horror of the investigation, did it, what impact did it have?
Speaker 1: On yourself, the team, or like those type of investigations
Speaker 1: can be life changing for people that work it.
Speaker 3: That one will I mean everybody involved. That's one of
Speaker 3: those investigations that you're going to be sitting around the
Speaker 3: retirement home in your agies still talking about. Right, It's
Speaker 3: never going to leave you. You remember such intimate details about
Speaker 3: the investigation even years later. I mean, here we are,
Speaker 3: almost ten years later, and I can rattle off all
Speaker 3: the victims' names, usually the dates that they disappeared, and
Speaker 3: certainly seeing you know, teams from across the entire police
Speaker 3: service coming together, the provincial police coming in and helping out,
Speaker 3: my cousins in Holland sending me newspaper clippings from the coverage.
Speaker 3: Right certainly made international headlines. And even in the aftermath
Speaker 3: of the book, Right, I had one podcast that wanted
Speaker 3: to interview me, or actually my publish reached out and
Speaker 3: said to them, do you want to interview hank It
Speaker 3: Singa about his book? And they're like, who's hank it Singer? Right?
Speaker 3: What's this book all about? And what cases has he done? Oh? Well,
Speaker 3: he did this case with the serial killer who dismembered
Speaker 3: the bodies and put them. Yeah, we want Hank it
Speaker 3: singa on our podcast, right. So, and that was down
Speaker 3: in the United States, so it certainly had a lot
Speaker 3: of notoriety to it and certainly I think affected absolutely
Speaker 3: everybody who's involved in it, and of course radically affected
Speaker 3: the entire community and the entire city. You know, I
Speaker 3: don't think anybody in that community in Toronto is ever
Speaker 3: going to forget about it either. Whereas if most people
Speaker 3: in front of you said to them, who's Mark Moore,
Speaker 3: they wouldn't know. Yeah, but if you say who's Bruce
Speaker 3: Bruce MacArthur, absolutely everybody would know. And the impact that
Speaker 3: he had on the community.
Speaker 1: No, it's an interesting case, and that's sort of once
Speaker 1: in a career the type case that you get to
Speaker 1: work on. We've got serial killers here in Australia, but
Speaker 1: they're few and far between, and I think with the
Speaker 1: changes of the way investigative structures and practices now, it's
Speaker 1: getting harder and harder for.
Speaker 2: Serial killers to operate.
Speaker 1: And yeah, the United States and notorious for their serial killers,
Speaker 1: but I've spoken to experts from that area and saying
Speaker 1: the appears to be a decline and a lot of
Speaker 1: it's put down to practices of police now in that
Speaker 1: we used to operate in silos. A couple of serial
Speaker 1: killers in Australia got a way of things because we're
Speaker 1: looking at individual cases, not looking at the connection between
Speaker 1: between the cases. But yeah, they're a different type of
Speaker 1: investigation for a homicide investigator too. When you're looking at
Speaker 1: the serial killer. Normally we're reactive, but you've got the
Speaker 1: added pressure of being proactive that you've got to prevent
Speaker 1: the person killing again too, So that adds the pressure
Speaker 1: as a homicide detective. Following on from that, you got
Speaker 1: a promotion and ended up heading up the Toronto Homicide Squad.
Speaker 1: How many people did you have under your command? How
Speaker 1: big was the squad at the time.
Speaker 3: Well, we had the investigative response teams, We also had
Speaker 3: a cold case units, We had a missing Persons unit
Speaker 3: that came online in twenty eighteen, and we also had
Speaker 3: our Major Case Management Unit to make sure the entire
Speaker 3: police service abided by government regulations when it came to
Speaker 3: how investigations are indexed and also investigated. So just a
Speaker 3: little bit over one hundred personnel within that umbrella. But
Speaker 3: the investigative squad we had six of them and each
Speaker 3: of those squads held onto seven officers, so forty two
Speaker 3: usually if we're fully staffed investigators ready to roll out
Speaker 3: on the homicides.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the structure seems very similar to New South Wales
Speaker 1: Police homicide. We'd have on average and just rough figures
Speaker 1: like one hundred murders a year within the state. But
Speaker 1: there'd be other jobs you called out to that you
Speaker 1: have to investigate police shootings and different things and suspicious deaths,
Speaker 1: and our teams would be set up with an inspector,
Speaker 1: two sergeants and then four constables. The ideal situation. You
Speaker 1: spoke about the pressures of working in a like a
Speaker 1: pair with a partner, and there's a lot of perception
Speaker 1: that that's, yeah, the best practice. It's great to have
Speaker 1: a partner because you can share the responsibility and if
Speaker 1: you get on with your partner, the day passes. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you have so much fun working with a partner. But
Speaker 1: in homicide, I think now, especially with all the forensic
Speaker 1: evidence that's available and I'm talking the phone records, all
Speaker 1: the data that you've got to assess, you need more
Speaker 1: than two people working a case. We try to send
Speaker 1: out in our homicide we'd send out a minimum of
Speaker 1: three a sergeant and two constables, so at least you've
Speaker 1: got three there. You might have someone at the crime
Speaker 1: scene managing that, you might have someone setting up the
Speaker 1: incident room and the other person handling the allocation of
Speaker 1: the tasks that break it up.
Speaker 2: That way.
Speaker 1: With homicide, I think, and I just want to run
Speaker 1: this past you. I think the most crucial time and
Speaker 1: it's a narrative that people say the first forty eight hours,
Speaker 1: but I think to set the homicide up in the
Speaker 1: right direction is crucial to a successful investigation. I came
Speaker 1: in a lot during reinvestigations where the initial investigation had
Speaker 1: been mucked up. But the crucial time is gathering all
Speaker 1: the evidence, going to the crime scene, making sure you're
Speaker 1: not missing, and then setting it up from there. Would
Speaker 1: you agree with that sort of approach.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The first forty eight hours is like drinking from
Speaker 3: a fire hose, right, and when you only had two
Speaker 3: responding officers, that was very, very tough to do, and
Speaker 3: you'd have to put so much of it on the
Speaker 3: back burner instead of being able to react to it
Speaker 3: right away. So as we evolved into the front end
Speaker 3: loading team concept, we got a lot more successful with
Speaker 3: our homicide investigations because that bit of information would come in, Okay,
Speaker 3: Officer so and so you go take care of that.
Speaker 3: Another bit would come in, Okay, you take care of that. Okay,
Speaker 3: this is more important. Come back, put that other thing
Speaker 3: on the back burner, Go take care of this. You
Speaker 3: need that personnel right at the outset, especially the first
Speaker 3: forty eight hours, because there's so much coming in, and
Speaker 3: there's so much that you have to react to and
Speaker 3: respond to, and you need the personnel to be able
Speaker 3: to do that. So it's certainly made homicide investigations sound
Speaker 3: much better, but you're right, the amount of information flowing
Speaker 3: those first two days is absolutely enormous, and you're the
Speaker 3: one at the top of that pyramid who has to
Speaker 3: keep up on absolutely everything. So it's a big, big task.
Speaker 1: It sounds like when you were there too, the missing
Speaker 1: persons unit got overhauled and more closely aligned with homicide
Speaker 1: and unsolved homicide. That's something that's occurred in our state
Speaker 1: too over the years, that there was sort of a
Speaker 1: disconnect between people that had disappeared and what we're doing
Speaker 1: at homicide. So we're sort of closer a line now.
Speaker 1: So these things don't happen when you were the boss
Speaker 1: of a homicide, you also had the Toronto Van of
Speaker 1: mass killing. If you could let the listener know about
Speaker 1: know about that, I'm sure they've heard about it, but
Speaker 1: just give the brief details and then the impact and
Speaker 1: how you responded to that, because that's a lot of
Speaker 1: pressure as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what. I actually was not the inspector
Speaker 3: in charge yet. I believe that happened in April of
Speaker 3: twenty and eighteen, and I became the boss in July
Speaker 3: of twenty eighteen. But I was in the office when
Speaker 3: it happened. And what happened is our main street in Toronto,
Speaker 3: Young Street, which cuts through the entire city north south.
Speaker 3: In the north part of the city, a fellow named
Speaker 3: Alex Manassian decided he was part of the in cell
Speaker 3: movement or the involuntarily celibate movement, so he obviously had
Speaker 3: some mental health issues, and he went and took a
Speaker 3: van one day and drove down the sidewalk of Young
Speaker 3: Street and struck and killed I believe fifteen people. I
Speaker 3: think it was fourteen. I might be off on the number,
Speaker 3: but eventually became fifteen. And then eventually his van, the
Speaker 3: van is driving broke down and he was taken down
Speaker 3: and arrested by responding uniform officer. So just an absolutely
Speaker 3: horrendous little chapter in Toronto's history. A mass murder as
Speaker 3: opposed to a serial killing. And you'll appreciate, as a
Speaker 3: homicide guy, a crime scene that stretched two and a
Speaker 3: half kilometers, right, And you can only have so much
Speaker 3: training and take so many courses. But when have you
Speaker 3: ever been instructed on how do we deal with this?
Speaker 3: You never have because A it used to never happen.
Speaker 3: Then yeah, b it has happened now in several parts
Speaker 3: of the world, but in midtown Toronto you would never
Speaker 3: expect that. So but you know, a great response by
Speaker 3: the team from homicide, led by a friend of mine,
Speaker 3: Graham Gibson, and they put the case together and they
Speaker 3: convicted them of all of those murders as well. But
Speaker 3: an awful lot of learning points. And still I'm sure
Speaker 3: you do the same thing. You walk down the street
Speaker 3: now on Young Street, and every single time you walk
Speaker 3: down that sidewalk you think about that, right, and all
Speaker 3: through the city. I drive my wife and my daughter
Speaker 3: crazy if we're driving through Toronto. I was like, this
Speaker 3: happened here, and this happened here, and this happened there.
Speaker 3: You know, the stories all stay with you, but that
Speaker 3: one is definitely etched into the minds I think of
Speaker 3: every Torontonian of the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sadly they're becoming more frequent and across the globe actually,
Speaker 1: And yeah, we've had recently the Bondoi massacre, a mess
Speaker 1: mess killing and yeah, place you see situations like that,
Speaker 1: and then I always admire watching the police step up
Speaker 1: at something you can't trying for that magnitude. But there's
Speaker 1: a why the place just get it done.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, if you think, you know, just throwing it
Speaker 3: out on that case, the number of survivors plus the
Speaker 3: number of victims, and they're all being brought to different
Speaker 3: hospitals all across the Greater Toronto area, and you're trying
Speaker 3: to scramble detectives to go to every single one of
Speaker 3: those hospitals to deal with every single one of those victims,
Speaker 3: all of those victims' families. You're holding down a two
Speaker 3: and a half kilometer crime scene that has fifteen murder
Speaker 3: scenes within it, trying to get your forensic personnel there,
Speaker 3: and you can't get there because the entire city is
Speaker 3: gridlocked because the main street has been shut down because
Speaker 3: of this mass killing. So just an absolute logistical nightmare
Speaker 3: from minute one of there. But at the end of
Speaker 3: the day, we got the job done and put together
Speaker 3: a great investigation and like I said, convicted them of everything.
Speaker 1: When you see it start to work that way, it
Speaker 1: makes you proud to be a part of an organization
Speaker 1: when can pick it up and you see the individuals
Speaker 1: that step up. Some might fall by the wayside, others
Speaker 1: step up and really, yeah, carry carry the weight of
Speaker 1: it and point it in the in the right direction.
Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah. And one thing that that inedability that you
Speaker 3: develop working homicide for years. Every time that phone rings,
Speaker 3: it's a crisis, right, and it's a project and you're
Speaker 3: dealing with that on a daily basis. And you look
Speaker 3: at some of these promotional processes, especially in the senior
Speaker 3: officer ranks, and what they really try and get the
Speaker 3: candidates talk about is you know, one time they handled
Speaker 3: a major project. And that's when you can take your
Speaker 3: experience as a homicide guy and say, every time that
Speaker 3: phone rang, it was a major project. Which one do
Speaker 3: you want to tell me about? Yeah, And seeing a
Speaker 3: homicide guy at the top the pyramid when it comes
Speaker 3: to a mass murder like that makes you're extremely proud.
Speaker 3: And then you have the senior officer who's never worked
Speaker 3: homicide before putting a command pullst right in the middle
Speaker 3: of the crime scene. You know, obviously you've never worked
Speaker 3: homicide before. Not one homicide guy would ever do that,
Speaker 3: So get the heck out of there. So definitely a
Speaker 3: great place to work to develop that skill set where
Speaker 3: you know what to do and when to do it.
Speaker 1: Now, I hear you, and I agree with everything you're
Speaker 1: saying there, and I the aspect of homicide investigation, whatever
Speaker 1: decision you make is going to be scrutinized in some form.
Speaker 1: It's a public's expectation through the media, at the Supreme Court,
Speaker 1: or a coroner's inquest. And that's what when I was
Speaker 1: lecturing to homicide course, all detectives courses, I'd say, I
Speaker 1: understand that if you come to homicide, everything you do
Speaker 1: is going to be scrutinized. So you've got to be
Speaker 1: got to be able to justify what you've done. You're
Speaker 1: playing high stakes, and yeah, you've got to prepare for it.
Speaker 3: And we still see it to this day. You know,
Speaker 3: even though I'm removed three years from the Toronto Police Service,
Speaker 3: and you see again some of the senior officers and
Speaker 3: the command officers getting called out on the carpet for
Speaker 3: some of the decisions they've made, and you know, erroneous decisions,
Speaker 3: and the number of times I've sat back and said, man,
Speaker 3: you should have spent five years at homicide. You wouldn't
Speaker 3: have said that, or you wouldn't have done that. It's
Speaker 3: definitely a great training ground for being able to have
Speaker 3: the foresight to see what the repercussions are of every
Speaker 3: decision that you make, and so you better make the
Speaker 3: right ones at the right times.
Speaker 1: We're probably bossed, they'll put my hand up to the
Speaker 1: boss to a homicide.
Speaker 2: I think you're going to have to join that. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I think the promotion game in policing, and I've seen
Speaker 1: it in New South Wales police it's just people cloring
Speaker 1: over themselves to get promoted them. If they just settled
Speaker 1: down and did their job and let the experience build up,
Speaker 1: it would be a better place. And that's not criticizing
Speaker 1: every senior police officer. There's some great senior police officers,
Speaker 1: but the ones that haven't got the experience. They're the
Speaker 1: ones that concern me, and the ones that think a
Speaker 1: rank or a position naturally gives them experience. When I
Speaker 1: was at homicide, I had I think it was eight
Speaker 1: or nine different bosses at homicide, and there were some
Speaker 1: great bosses and there were some others that really were problematic.
Speaker 1: But that's about as kind as I can say. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about some of your homicide life hacks. We've covered
Speaker 1: quite a few of them, but I just I was
Speaker 1: pulling them out of the book. So day and age
Speaker 1: homicide are difficult to operate in pairs. All members can
Speaker 1: have input, rankers not provide experience. Homicide detective should go
Speaker 1: to the crime scene. We haven't touched on that so much,
Speaker 1: but I love that point too, because what the hell
Speaker 1: are you doing here? Why aren't you at the crime scene?
Speaker 1: And I know that's the thoughts that were going through
Speaker 1: my mind when they'll get called out to a job
Speaker 1: and have people the detectives at the police station where
Speaker 1: they should have been at the crime scene. Talk us
Speaker 1: through your thoughts here.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what, especially in the city like Toronto,
Speaker 3: it absolutely blew me away. When I saw homicide detectives
Speaker 3: not go to their murder scenes. They would go to
Speaker 3: the local police station where the murder happened, and they
Speaker 3: would get briefed on everything, but never go to that scene.
Speaker 3: I would scratch my head. I'm like, where is your mind?
Speaker 3: Where are you even starting? If you want to see
Speaker 3: a good homicide detective, they're the guys who pull up
Speaker 3: in their cars outside the perimeter of the murder scene
Speaker 3: and they don't get out of their cars for twenty
Speaker 3: minutes thirty minutes because they're busy writing notes as to
Speaker 3: what they're taking in or what they're seeing. The number
Speaker 3: of times people have said to me, what are you doing?
Speaker 3: Because I'm usually standing in the middle of a crime scene, right,
Speaker 3: I've checked in in the perimeter, I've gone into the
Speaker 3: crime scene, and I'll usually just stand there for five
Speaker 3: or ten minutes, just kind of looking around and absorbing everything,
Speaker 3: and people would say, what are you doing? Quiet, I'm observing, right,
Speaker 3: I'm taking it all in. And I wouldn't know where
Speaker 3: to begin if I just went into the police station
Speaker 3: and relied on second hand information as to what's going
Speaker 3: on at that crime scene. And I talk about a
Speaker 3: friend of mine who's in the Ontario Provincial Police. Sometimes
Speaker 3: they take eight nine hours to get to their murder scenes.
Speaker 3: But he's still he goes to the scene first, right,
Speaker 3: And we've talked about it and we've kind of laughed
Speaker 3: about it that some people don't. And then if you're
Speaker 3: working in active murder and it's out in let's say,
Speaker 3: twenty three Division in the northwest part of Toronto Police
Speaker 3: headquarters is right downtown where the homicide squad is, if
Speaker 3: you're back at police headquarters within twenty four hours, again,
Speaker 3: I say, what are you doing right? Your murder's out
Speaker 3: half an hour that way in twenty three Division. No, yeah,
Speaker 3: but you know it's well in hand, and you know
Speaker 3: I'm just doing payperwork here. Yeah, but you've got officers
Speaker 3: working for you right now, probably canvassing processing it forensically.
Speaker 3: They're out there working, And what do you think they
Speaker 3: would say if they saw you were back here at
Speaker 3: your desk. What's motivating them to get the work done.
Speaker 3: So usually when I was the boss and a homicide
Speaker 3: team would go out to a division, I would say,
Speaker 3: I don't expect to see you again for a week. Yeah, right,
Speaker 3: as long as that investigation is active and it's out
Speaker 3: of that division. That's your home base until you get
Speaker 3: to the point where you don't need to be out
Speaker 3: there anymore. But if people are out there working on
Speaker 3: it for you, you better be out there as well, leading them.
Speaker 3: So that's I would have thought a no brainer.
Speaker 1: Homicide, Well, I know, I agree. I say there's a
Speaker 1: no brainer get to the crime scene. Obviously, the stuff
Speaker 1: that you pick up at the crime scene, going there visiting.
Speaker 1: But the other thing when you're in homicide, and I
Speaker 1: gain I learned this everything. You don't just wake up
Speaker 1: and become a homicide detective if you learn the trial
Speaker 1: and error and things. With Paul Jacob when we're working homicide,
Speaker 1: he just had this capacity to keep working and working,
Speaker 1: and yeah it was hard and I had that capacity too,
Speaker 1: but it was hard to keep up with him. But
Speaker 1: he always made the point of you know where the
Speaker 1: homicide detectives will be here longer than anyone else.
Speaker 2: The locals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the locals will watch the homicide the techniques and think,
Speaker 1: these guys don't stop, They just keep working.
Speaker 2: So it motivates.
Speaker 1: So then I come across people in homicide at various
Speaker 1: stages of my career that oh yeah, we called in
Speaker 1: and saw the locals and they said they've got it
Speaker 1: all in hand, so it's fine. And then they're sitting
Speaker 1: back having a coffee at the homicide office. No, that's
Speaker 1: not the way it works. Another point that you're brought up,
Speaker 1: and I agree with this because I've had issues in
Speaker 1: my career that sometimes a high profile investigation soon your
Speaker 1: police will want to throw staff at me. But I'm
Speaker 1: a big believer. Give me a good quality team rather
Speaker 1: than a large, poor quality team. I don't need numbers,
Speaker 1: I need quality because in homicide, if you've got someone
Speaker 1: that's not doing the work at the standard that should be,
Speaker 1: that's going to cause more problems than what it's worth.
Speaker 1: I prefer quality, smaller team rather than the large team.
Speaker 1: What's your I know what your thoughts are because it's
Speaker 1: your hack. I'm trying to steal your hack, So talk
Speaker 1: us through that.
Speaker 3: Send people back. Sometimes it didn't happen that often, but
Speaker 3: it did happen. And we got to a point in
Speaker 3: time in homicide when I was the boss and we
Speaker 3: were very shorthanded, and people would want to leave because
Speaker 3: they were getting burnt out. And I always say, you know,
Speaker 3: there's a bit of a cardinal rule amongst senior officers.
Speaker 3: You don't give up a body unless you get a
Speaker 3: body in return, And we don't have anyone to send
Speaker 3: to you in return, so keep that person there. And
Speaker 3: I was like, no, they don't want to be here.
Speaker 3: I don't want them, right, and maybe they just need
Speaker 3: a break, or they actually don't want to be here.
Speaker 3: I'd rather run short with good people than have a
Speaker 3: full team of people who don't actually want to be
Speaker 3: here and do the job. So a lot of times
Speaker 3: as well, like you allude to, you would need to
Speaker 3: bring in people from different divisions around the city, and
Speaker 3: sometimes the bosses that those divisions would take it as
Speaker 3: an opportunity to give you their dead wood, right, get
Speaker 3: rid of a problem person. That's all right, We'll send
Speaker 3: them to a homicide for a few months or a year.
Speaker 3: Sometimes you can actually make that work if you could
Speaker 3: find the buttons.
Speaker 2: Suppose you just kind of steer them in the right direction. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I'll add that, yep.
Speaker 3: And sometimes they turn into all stars. Other times they
Speaker 3: said I don't want to be here. My boss sent
Speaker 3: me here. I don't know what I'm doing here. They
Speaker 3: think I'm a problem child. I've got no interest in
Speaker 3: doing the work, then I don't want you here right, Sorry,
Speaker 3: you're going to go back so again, going back to
Speaker 3: our earlier point of give me people who want to
Speaker 3: do the work and who want to be there will
Speaker 3: be much more effective and everyone. Yeah, we might have
Speaker 3: to work a little bit harder because we're shorthanded, but
Speaker 3: I'd rather be in that position and get the job
Speaker 3: done properly than have people who don't want to do
Speaker 3: the job abruptly and don't want to be there.
Speaker 1: Most definitely, I think it needs to I see problems
Speaker 1: if you have people working homicide because of the commitment
Speaker 1: you've got to make, the sacrifices you've got to make.
Speaker 1: They've got to want to be there, they've got to
Speaker 1: have a passion for it. And it's not a criticism
Speaker 1: of the people that don't. There's plenty of other jobs
Speaker 1: you can do in the police, and you could probably
Speaker 1: do them very well, but if you're working homicide. There
Speaker 1: comes a responsibility in working homicide and you can't I
Speaker 1: can't go there half hard. That You've got to fully
Speaker 1: commit because the consequences are too high. The last hacker
Speaker 1: fairly obvious one. Don't drive when you've been awake for
Speaker 1: forty eight hours.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and try not to you. I mean, I don't
Speaker 3: think there's a driver on this planet who hasn't had
Speaker 3: a bit of a nod once in a while as
Speaker 3: they're driving. But you know, I talked about that scenario
Speaker 3: when I was an Idowa where I was full blown
Speaker 3: sound asleep in the middle of the hi way. And
Speaker 3: then there's another time. I remember we had been up
Speaker 3: for probably close to fifty hours, and where I live
Speaker 3: is about maybe three quarters of a kilometer from the
Speaker 3: main road to where my house is, and driving along
Speaker 3: that main road, I knotted off, woke up, I'm almost home,
Speaker 3: got to make home, nodded, woke up three times in
Speaker 3: that three quarters of a kilometer, and you know, I
Speaker 3: thankfully made it home safe. And there's the one time
Speaker 3: when I had that incident in Ottawa and finally got
Speaker 3: home and the phone rang and they wanted me to
Speaker 3: go back to Ottawa, and I started putting my suit on,
Speaker 3: and had it not been for my wife basically grabbing
Speaker 3: me and saying, you're not going back to Ottawa, I
Speaker 3: would have gone back to Ottawa and I probably would
Speaker 3: have died in the process. But she wouldn't. She wouldn't
Speaker 3: let me go.
Speaker 1: You need people like that because you're not only mad.
Speaker 1: The skill's gone you. Your cognitive skills are gone as well.
Speaker 1: When you and the dangerous part is you think that
Speaker 1: you're functioning well.
Speaker 3: Yeah at all?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, not at all.
Speaker 1: I also kept the pillow under my desk for some
Speaker 1: of those times where you're just not getting any sleep
Speaker 1: and just crawl under there, get the twenty minute power
Speaker 1: and happened away. You go think your career. You finished
Speaker 1: thirty four years in the police. You had a couple
Speaker 1: of issues at the end of things, and you've spoken
Speaker 1: about a few things here in your book. I've got
Speaker 1: the sense that there were certain aspects of the police
Speaker 1: that you think could have been improved. Not coming across
Speaker 1: as someone bitter, it sounds like you've enjoyed every day
Speaker 1: in the polace. What's your your thoughts on policing at
Speaker 1: the the end of your career.
Speaker 3: Oh, you know what, I don't regret a thing. Best
Speaker 3: job in the world. You know, got into the best
Speaker 3: office in the entire organization, did the work that I
Speaker 3: really think I was meant to do from a very
Speaker 3: young age, and definitely was lucky early in my career
Speaker 3: to identify that homicide was where I wanted to be
Speaker 3: and that was the work I wanted to do. And
Speaker 3: I think there's so many options, as you said earlier,
Speaker 3: in police work, it's nice to be able to identify
Speaker 3: that career goal early and get there and be able
Speaker 3: to enjoy it while you're there. So, you know, policing,
Speaker 3: I think, is having a real tough time evolving with society.
Speaker 3: And we talked about paramilitary structure and really stifling open
Speaker 3: thought and free thoughts, and people who don't necessarily do
Speaker 3: the job well, but they get promoted well end up
Speaker 3: running the organization. And there's a couple of anecdotes in
Speaker 3: the book as well where senior officers are trying to
Speaker 3: throw ideas of me for what to do next to
Speaker 3: my homicide investigation that were absolutely laughable. And I think,
Speaker 3: you know, I talk about the internal racism in the
Speaker 3: organization in the book and some of the issues I
Speaker 3: had with that, And my question at the end of
Speaker 3: it is what do we do to make sure that
Speaker 3: that doesn't happen to the next guy? Right? What is
Speaker 3: wrong with the structure and the culture of the police
Speaker 3: service that somebody who's that vile of a racist, and
Speaker 3: is that incompetent when it comes to actual police work,
Speaker 3: ends up being really near the top of the organization
Speaker 3: because of their personal relationships and because of their friendships
Speaker 3: with people who have that ability to promote them and
Speaker 3: pull them up. So I've kind of, you know, it
Speaker 3: made quite a splash here in Canada and in Toronto,
Speaker 3: some of the stuff that I put in the book,
Speaker 3: and thankfully the Police Services Board has stood up and said, yeah,
Speaker 3: we're going to look at this and we're going to
Speaker 3: figure out how we can do the better right, which
Speaker 3: has pissed off a lot of the command officers because
Speaker 3: of course they did their typical police thing, got very
Speaker 3: defensive about it, tried to try to turn it around
Speaker 3: on me, and I was like, listen, guys, this isn't
Speaker 3: a hit piece. This is my story, this is my memoir.
Speaker 3: Here's what I experienced firsthand. You want to do something
Speaker 3: about it, yes, I think you should go do something
Speaker 3: about it, but don't come back and criticize me now
Speaker 3: for saying the things that I said. So I think
Speaker 3: hopefully it helps give a bit of a voice and
Speaker 3: it helps things evolve. But the really interesting thing is
Speaker 3: the aftermath of it. The number of police offers sirs
Speaker 3: who have reached out and said thank you, thank you
Speaker 3: for saying that, thank you for saying that publicly, thank
Speaker 3: you for being our voice. Same things are happening to
Speaker 3: me in tron over across all of Canada and I'm
Speaker 3: sure in Australia, and they need to do something to
Speaker 3: make it better. So the number of female officers who
Speaker 3: have complained the number of black officers who have complained
Speaker 3: over the decades really interesting. The bulk of the messages
Speaker 3: of support and me too stories I got were from
Speaker 3: Asian officers. They're having a real tough time right now.
Speaker 3: So a lot of issues in policing and hopefully this
Speaker 3: spurs some activity and conversations to turn that very big
Speaker 3: boat around and for the better.
Speaker 1: Well well, full courage for raising the issues. And my
Speaker 1: take on and I read it in depth cover the cover,
Speaker 1: that it was balancing your views. You were saying what
Speaker 1: you thought and how improvements could be made. You're not
Speaker 1: someone that's retired, bitter and twisted that hate the place
Speaker 1: and the place should have done this place, should have
Speaker 1: done that. You're saying you love the organized It's just
Speaker 1: we could change and make things better. So good on
Speaker 1: you for standing up. I know it comes to the cost.
Speaker 1: I've spoken out about certain things in policing and it
Speaker 1: led to my career as I got charged and that
Speaker 1: was the end of my thirty four years. But I
Speaker 1: still stand by the positions that I took in policing
Speaker 1: and the organizations we should be striving to improve. It's
Speaker 1: a great job, it's something that's important. So someone like
Speaker 1: yourself that's held in such high high esteem within the
Speaker 1: community that you served, I think by having the courage
Speaker 1: to speak out is an important, important message and maybe
Speaker 1: just some of the stuff that you're talking about, there
Speaker 1: might be improvements.
Speaker 3: So yeah, I am optimistic. We'll see what they do.
Speaker 3: You know, hopefully they do something. But the very people
Speaker 3: who have the ability to do something about it are
Speaker 3: the one who have profited from the culture and the
Speaker 3: structure in the first place. So it's going to be tough.
Speaker 3: And like I said, there's no shortage of me Too
Speaker 3: stories out there. There's no shortage of books. You know.
Speaker 3: There was a high ranking officer in the jurisdiction just
Speaker 3: north of us who wrote a very similar book. He
Speaker 3: was black and brought up a lot of the racial
Speaker 3: issues that he dealt with. There's been tons of female
Speaker 3: officers who've written very similar books raising this for years,
Speaker 3: and every time you think something's going to change for
Speaker 3: the better, it never does. So we'll see if my
Speaker 3: voice is big enough that they will make some positive change.
Speaker 2: Okay, well let's say it does.
Speaker 1: I thank you, as I do with police officers coming
Speaker 1: on the podcast, thank you for the service you gave
Speaker 1: you community, because I do understand the sacrifice. Enjoyed chatting
Speaker 1: with you. I reckon we could sit and chat for
Speaker 1: days and days and days before we get tired and
Speaker 1: fall asleep about homicide. Clearly, you're a passionate homicide detective.
Speaker 1: I love that in you. I share the passion. Good
Speaker 1: luck with your book, High Road Confessions of a Homicide Cop.
Speaker 1: I've read it as an ex homicide cop, and I
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. I found it fascinating.
Speaker 2: So good luck with that and whatever endeavors you've got.
Speaker 1: And I'm sure you're spending a little bit of time
Speaker 1: with your family now that and apologizing to them for
Speaker 1: all the time that you spent away chasing your career.
Speaker 3: Yeah, semi retirement I like to call it. So It's
Speaker 3: been a busy couple of years since I retired, and
Speaker 3: the book certainly kept me busy for you know, in
Speaker 3: and around its release, and things are quieting down a
Speaker 3: little bit now, but hopefully by July will be back
Speaker 3: into vacation mode and just enjoy spending time with my
Speaker 3: wife and daughter and doing some biking and some travels.
Speaker 3: So until the next project.
Speaker 2: Okay, Well, well deserved and enjoyed having the chat. Thanks
Speaker 2: for coming on.
Speaker 3: You as well. Gary, It was a real pleasure. I
Speaker 3: really appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Jeez,