Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Speaker 1: Detective see a side of life the average person is
Speaker 1: never exposed to. 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: Recently retired homicide Inspector Hank Hinsinger is exactly the kind
Speaker 1: of detective I would have wanted working alongside me. Hank
Speaker 1: spent thirty four years on the job, a large portion
Speaker 1: of that in homicide. He rose through the ranks from
Speaker 1: detective sergeant to inspector, eventually taking charge of Toronto's homicide squad,
Speaker 1: one of the most demanding roles in Canadian law enforcement.
Speaker 1: Over the course of his career, Hank worked virtually every
Speaker 1: type of case you can imagine, going head to head
Speaker 1: with some of the most dangerous in calculating criminals the
Speaker 1: city has ever seen. I could talk to Hank all day.
Speaker 1: Have a listen to what he's got to say. You'll
Speaker 1: find it fascinating. Hank It Singer, thanks very much for
Speaker 1: coming on I Catch Killers.
Speaker 2: Thanks for having me Gary. Amazing that we can chat
Speaker 2: like this from oppostin ends of the planet. So I'm
Speaker 2: really happy to be here.
Speaker 1: How the world has changed. I spent the weekend reading
Speaker 1: your book The High Road, and I've got to say
Speaker 1: I got lost in the pages. I as a former
Speaker 1: homicide detective myself. There was so much in that book
Speaker 1: that I could resonate with and I enjoyed it. Really.
Speaker 1: It had a behind the scenes look at the costs
Speaker 1: that comes with investigating homicide and all the other bits
Speaker 1: and pieces that go with it.
Speaker 2: You know what, and our careers, I think, time wise,
Speaker 2: were very similar. I spent thirty four years with the
Speaker 2: Toronto Police Service, joined in nineteen eighty nine, and I
Speaker 2: spent eighteen years in homicide. I first started in homicide
Speaker 2: in two thousand and five and I never left. I
Speaker 2: started as a detective, made my way up to detective sergeant,
Speaker 2: and then ultimately the last five years spent as the
Speaker 2: unit commander of the homicide squad until my retirement in
Speaker 2: late twenty twenty three early twenty twenty four. And no
Speaker 2: doubt about it, lots of stories in the book about
Speaker 2: people we lost along the way, whether through to murder
Speaker 2: or suicide or even natural death because of the stress
Speaker 2: and the physical and mental demands of the job. It's
Speaker 2: a tough job and it's a very even tougher job
Speaker 2: to do it well. So I'm grateful to have made
Speaker 2: it to retirement and enjoying a fairly healthy lifestyle here
Speaker 2: in the retirement, and it was a great opportunity to
Speaker 2: read the book as well. Well.
Speaker 1: I like someone that I know that you're at the
Speaker 1: sharp end and spending that much time in homicide and
Speaker 1: that much time in the police, it does come at
Speaker 1: a cost, and it's good to see people walk out
Speaker 1: the other end in relatively one piece and got the
Speaker 1: future after at please, so congratulations on that.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 1: As to form a homicide detectives, we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about homicide, and I think it's appropriate that we just
Speaker 1: pay homage to the victims, because I know, if you've
Speaker 1: worked the cases as long as you have, it leaves
Speaker 1: an indelible impression on you and the victims. And the
Speaker 1: thing about homicide, it's not just one life that's taken.
Speaker 1: There's a ripple effect. There's so many other lives impacted
Speaker 1: upon in a negative way. So yeah, I think it's
Speaker 1: just important we give acknowledgment to all the victims that
Speaker 1: the cases that you worked and the lives that were destroyed.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely. You know, eighty homicide cases, eighty victims whose
Speaker 2: deaths I investigated over the years, and every single one
Speaker 2: of them definitely embedded in my memory. But not just them,
Speaker 2: but their family members left behind as well, and their
Speaker 2: loved ones left behind, and even the family members and
Speaker 2: loved ones of the suspects and the accused. You know,
Speaker 2: they go to prison for the rest of their lives,
Speaker 2: usually for making one really bad decision at a really
Speaker 2: bad time, and their families end up being devastated as well.
Speaker 2: So it's almost like a double pronged sword, both having
Speaker 2: the victims' families and the accused families they're going to
Speaker 2: suffer for the rest of their lives. As well as
Speaker 2: the community at large. Right, the entire city I think
Speaker 2: really suffers whenever somebody needlessly gets killed on the streets.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's interesting you make the point because I
Speaker 1: think a lot of people miss that and that the
Speaker 1: families of the suspects quite often, as you said, and
Speaker 1: we know in homicide and we meet some despicable people,
Speaker 1: but there is also people that have made that one
Speaker 1: mistake and a terrible mistake, but their lives have taken
Speaker 1: away virtually as well.
Speaker 2: So yeah, yeah, absolutely, And you know a lot of times,
Speaker 2: I mean, you're right, some of them are absolute monsters,
Speaker 2: and you know, I don't want to have any sort
Speaker 2: of compassion or relationship with them. But even then, sometimes
Speaker 2: the family members who really can't control what the suspects
Speaker 2: are doing yet they still get caught up in the aftermath,
Speaker 2: always had a sast spot there for them. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Do you stay in contact with any of the families
Speaker 1: of the homicide victims, so the people that still reach
Speaker 1: out to you and you have that connection with.
Speaker 2: Them, Yeah, absolutely, Especially with the press and the media
Speaker 2: surrounding the book. I had a few of them reach
Speaker 2: out to me. One particular person that I still have
Speaker 2: a relationship with are the homeowners of fifty three Mallory
Speaker 2: Crescent in Toronto where the serial killer Bruce MacArthur disposed
Speaker 2: of victims in the backyard, and they actually came to
Speaker 2: my book launch, so it was great to see them.
Speaker 2: But for the years after that case was resolved, I
Speaker 2: quite regularly go and sit and have coffee with them
Speaker 2: in their backyard and chat about things, and still have
Speaker 2: a really good relationship with them. So the victims of
Speaker 2: the murders as well, much like the MacArthur case, usually email,
Speaker 2: text message, definitely have a good relationship. I talk about
Speaker 2: the Don Johnson case in the book. Still in regular
Speaker 2: contact with the victims mother and stepfather, and I relay
Speaker 2: that in the book. So not all of them, but
Speaker 2: certainly there are some who had really good relationships with
Speaker 2: and maintain those relationships to this day.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, that's that's sort of a reflection of your career,
Speaker 1: and it's rewarding that that part of your policing career.
Speaker 1: You can get accolades for different different reasons and different things,
Speaker 1: but when you've got the respect and gratitude from families
Speaker 1: of people that you've probably met at the worst time
Speaker 1: in their life, you've come into their life and the
Speaker 1: fact that you've still got a relationship that reflects well
Speaker 1: on you. So yeah, it's interesting. I found stepping away
Speaker 1: from homicide that was the that was the most rewarding
Speaker 1: part that you could speak to these the families of
Speaker 1: the victims that you've met over the years, and you
Speaker 1: have a good relationship with them, and they become friends
Speaker 1: or almost like family some of them because it's so
Speaker 1: intense what you've what you've been through. I was speaking
Speaker 1: to a former Scotland Yard homicide cop and he may
Speaker 1: made a point to me that when he left and
Speaker 1: he worked homicide about as long as you and I did,
Speaker 1: so he was in the thick of it. And he
Speaker 1: said when he left the police and of his choosing
Speaker 1: and he decided he had enough, he said that's when
Speaker 1: he felt the weight of the emotion from the cases.
Speaker 1: And he said that when he was running the cases
Speaker 1: or working the cases, he wasn't sitting with the heavy emotion.
Speaker 1: You feel it, but not carrying it. And we discussed
Speaker 1: that a bit and he said we both came to
Speaker 1: the sort of conclusion. I think when you're involved in homicide,
Speaker 1: you haven't got time to dwell on the emotional impact
Speaker 1: and you move forward. You've got a job to do,
Speaker 1: and you work. Then you step away from it, and
Speaker 1: then you think, ah, that was pretty heavy what I
Speaker 1: saw and what happened. You've only recently been retired. After
Speaker 1: he raised that with me, I reflected and thought, yeah,
Speaker 1: I understand where you're coming from. Have you felt any
Speaker 1: of that now that you've stepped away from the pressure
Speaker 1: of being a homicide detective.
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely, And I think you both nail it is.
Speaker 2: When you're in the moment, you have to be so
Speaker 2: focused on doing the job and getting the job done,
Speaker 2: and getting it done properly to the highest standards because
Speaker 2: that's what the court's demand, So there's not a lot
Speaker 2: of time for emotion. Sometimes you get a little bit
Speaker 2: emotional there in the court process, which is a year
Speaker 2: and a half two years after the fact, especially dealing
Speaker 2: with the victims' families through the court process, but really
Speaker 2: leaving the job and sometimes being brought back to some
Speaker 2: of those stories, especially when going through the book and
Speaker 2: you writing about the child murders, for instance, and thinking
Speaker 2: back and wondering, wow, how did I keep that going
Speaker 2: for months and months and months on end? Without really
Speaker 2: breaking down. And some officers do break down, and a
Speaker 2: lot of officers that type of work, they're not cut
Speaker 2: out for it, and if they dip their toe into it,
Speaker 2: sometimes they check out. But it's a very very heavy
Speaker 2: job emotionally and physically that you have to do to
Speaker 2: do homicide work, and you have to have that addiction
Speaker 2: to that homicide work to keep yourself going. Yeah, And
Speaker 2: you know, it's always surreal at the end of the
Speaker 2: court case of that jury comes back and they say guilty,
Speaker 2: and you don't get a big way. I never got
Speaker 2: a big wave of emotion or happiness or anything like that.
Speaker 2: It's like, Okay, I'm done, onto the next one, right
Speaker 2: and away you go. So but definitely, you know, two
Speaker 2: and a half years, almost three years out now from
Speaker 2: the job, definitely going through some of those stories and
Speaker 2: discussing some of those stories that are in the book
Speaker 2: brings on some emotions that you just didn't have while
Speaker 2: you were actually going through the cases.
Speaker 1: You mentioned the murder of a child, I think and
Speaker 1: correct me if I'm wrong. I'm just going from memory
Speaker 1: from reading the book. But Kathleen or a young girl, Caitlin,
Speaker 1: and you found a note and maybe you could explain
Speaker 1: that a noting there that I must remember to wash
Speaker 1: my dishes. It's because I'm awful. That's why no one
Speaker 1: wants me. This is a young girl that was murdered,
Speaker 1: but these are the type of things that she was
Speaker 1: living with in the home. Can you just tell us
Speaker 1: a little bit about that, because I read that and
Speaker 1: you talked about the emotion you feel just talking about it.
Speaker 1: I read that and it sort of hit me on
Speaker 1: some of the cases i'd seen where what happened to
Speaker 1: kids in yeah, not being cared for by the right people.
Speaker 2: Kids absolutely are the toughest pieces to deal with. And
Speaker 2: you know, Keitlan Samson was only seven years old and
Speaker 2: living with some pretty horrible abuse from her caregivers. She
Speaker 2: was given up by her biological mother. Her biologe father
Speaker 2: was in jail for some drug offenses, and the mother
Speaker 2: gave Caitlin to her friends, Warren Johnson and Donna Irving,
Speaker 2: and they were bringing her up and she was with
Speaker 2: them for a little over a year before succumbing to
Speaker 2: her injuries that were inflicted upon her. And it was
Speaker 2: August of two thousand and eight when she died. So
Speaker 2: spent months on that investigation, and one really interesting thing
Speaker 2: is the entire family kept very careful notes, you know,
Speaker 2: the Irving and Johnson both kept journals and diaries, and Caitlyn,
Speaker 2: you know, only being grade two in school, made a
Speaker 2: lot of notes, but for punishment, they would make her
Speaker 2: write out lines. And we found all those documents in
Speaker 2: the apartment and one of the examples that you touched
Speaker 2: upon was I have to learn to wash my day.
Speaker 2: So we recovered the sheet of paper and at the top,
Speaker 2: through handwriting analysis, we could see it was one of
Speaker 2: the caregivers writing the first line and then she had
Speaker 2: to copy it all out. And then one of the
Speaker 2: documents that we found was I am an awful girl.
Speaker 2: That's why no one wants me. And just the thought
Speaker 2: of making a seven year old girl write that out
Speaker 2: forty or fifty times as a form of punishment just absolutely,
Speaker 2: to this day astounds me that somebody could be that
Speaker 2: evil to do that to a little girl. And it's
Speaker 2: interesting when you talk about emotion, because I regularly do
Speaker 2: a presentation on pediatric death investigations up here, and this
Speaker 2: is one of the cases that I talk about, and
Speaker 2: I always put a picture of those lines up on
Speaker 2: the screen for the class, and for about a year
Speaker 2: or two when I first started presenting it, I couldn't
Speaker 2: read that out without getting choked up about it, and
Speaker 2: that took a long time to get over. And then
Speaker 2: I also talk about in the book when that case happened,
Speaker 2: myself and the fellow who initially came on board to
Speaker 2: work the case with me, Our boss called us in.
Speaker 2: He says, you know, you guys got to sit down
Speaker 2: and talk with one of the senior guys in the
Speaker 2: office because we were both still pretty young, and the
Speaker 2: senior officer had investigated several child murders and he wants
Speaker 2: to chat with you or just kind of debrief And
Speaker 2: we all went and sat with one of these with
Speaker 2: his senior officer in an interview room, and you know,
Speaker 2: he was ostensibly there to support us and debrief us,
Speaker 2: but he within a minute or so broke down himself
Speaker 2: because suddenly all the child murders that he had investigated
Speaker 2: came flowing back and it turned into it. It was still
Speaker 2: a good support session for the three of us, but
Speaker 2: even more so for him than us at the time. Yeah,
Speaker 2: so they're very emotional, they're very, very difficult to deal with.
Speaker 2: And thankfully most homicide investigators in their careers don't actually
Speaker 2: end up investigating a child death or a child murder,
Speaker 2: and I was involved in a couple of them, and
Speaker 2: both of them are detailed in the book as well.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know our homicide at one stage that any
Speaker 1: suspicious death of a child was passed on the homicide
Speaker 1: and some were natural causes. But we were in undated
Speaker 1: at one stage with investigating children's death. Sometimes it was homicide,
Speaker 1: sometimes it was natural causes. But it took a toll
Speaker 1: on a lot of people in the office at the
Speaker 1: time that we were just getting in undated investigating child
Speaker 1: deaths because they're never nice.
Speaker 2: Now they're very difficult.
Speaker 1: I was going to ask you you enjoy homicide, but
Speaker 1: I think it could probably be best summed up. And
Speaker 1: this is another thing from your book, the interview when
Speaker 1: you went for a panel to become a member of
Speaker 1: the homicide squad, and the first question that this panel
Speaker 1: of senior police officers asked you was why do you
Speaker 1: want to work in the homicide squad? And you answered,
Speaker 1: you're kidding me, right? I mean, this is it, isn't it?
Speaker 1: This is a pinnacle. Anyone who takes pride and investigative
Speaker 1: work wants to work here. Okay, So I think that
Speaker 1: gives us a sense of your thoughts of getting the homicide.
Speaker 1: Is that a proper representation?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Absolutely. I mean it was nineteen ninety one when
Speaker 2: as a young uniform asser I found myself at a
Speaker 2: murder scene and I was so impressed by the homicide
Speaker 2: officers who showed up. I said, that's what I want
Speaker 2: to do, and always focused my policing in down the
Speaker 2: investigative field and through the investigative branches, and ultimately in
Speaker 2: two thousand and it was actually two thousand and four
Speaker 2: when I interviewed for the homicide squad. I started there
Speaker 2: in early two thousand and five. And you know, the
Speaker 2: interesting thing about that interview is had we had standard
Speaker 2: interview questions for the homicide Squad, and when I became
Speaker 2: Munich commander, I use that same question for people who
Speaker 2: wanted to come into homicide. And I think maybe out
Speaker 2: of the probably twenty twenty five people that I interviewed
Speaker 2: over five years, maybe one of them gave a similar answer. Right.
Speaker 2: But they're being true to themselves, right. They weren't giving
Speaker 2: that expected, boiler plate, politically correct answer, that that most
Speaker 2: candidates would give, but they gave that honest answer where
Speaker 2: it was like, you're kidding me, right, Like what investigator
Speaker 2: doesn't want to work here? This is absolutely the cream
Speaker 2: of the crop of investigators. It's the pinnacle of investigative work.
Speaker 2: And nothing is held to a higher standard in our
Speaker 2: courts than homicide cases. So if you want to be
Speaker 2: a great investigator, this is where you do it right.
Speaker 2: And as not to besmirch the guys who are working
Speaker 2: hold ups and the guys who are working the sex
Speaker 2: crimes investigations, but the best defense lawyers and the best
Speaker 2: judges and the toughest judges in the city, they're overseeing
Speaker 2: that homicide case. And I always said, until you push
Speaker 2: a homicide investigation that you've been in charge with and
Speaker 2: it's contested in court through that court system, win or
Speaker 2: losing court, you really don't have an appreciation as to
Speaker 2: what we do and why we do it. And that's
Speaker 2: the ultimate judge right there is take one of those cases,
Speaker 2: which of course takes years from the day you start homicide,
Speaker 2: usually two or three years before you're in that situation
Speaker 2: where you've controlled the keys from the beginning right to
Speaker 2: the end. And now you can say, okay, now I
Speaker 2: get so. To me, it was always the pinnacle.
Speaker 1: Look, I agree, and that you paid tribute to the
Speaker 1: other specialist police, whether it's drugs or the mhold up squad,
Speaker 1: sex crimes. And there's people in those squads and units
Speaker 1: just as passionate as we are as homicide. I would
Speaker 1: often joke there's homicide detectives and then there's people that
Speaker 1: want to be homicide detectives. That went over reasonably well
Speaker 1: when I was lecturing on detectives courses another and it's
Speaker 1: interesting you talk about the interview panel for homicide. As
Speaker 1: I got more soon you're in the police. I started
Speaker 1: to sit on the panels for homicide, and there was
Speaker 1: a structure where you know, what are the proofs of homicide?
Speaker 1: This and that? And I decided to mix it up
Speaker 1: a little bit on the interview panel and just said,
Speaker 1: you know, tell me a job you've bled for. And
Speaker 1: so people are coming in there prepared, they've done all
Speaker 1: the study, the need for explaining what homicide is about,
Speaker 1: understanding the law. I get that, but anyone can learn that,
Speaker 1: and you I just dropped it on them, Well, tell
Speaker 1: me a job that you've actually bled for because they're
Speaker 1: the type of detectives I wanted to working with in homicide,
Speaker 1: ones that you know, when it gets tough, that's when
Speaker 1: they really roll up their sleeves. And I got some
Speaker 1: interesting responses from that, but it helped me assess the
Speaker 1: people that were coming into homicide.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I mean same. I really really focused.
Speaker 2: A lot of people wanted to come to homicide so
Speaker 2: they could tick that checkbox yeah right, and say Okay,
Speaker 2: I've done it. They'll do it for a few years
Speaker 2: and then they'll move on because it's a great little
Speaker 2: bit of experience for future promotional considerations. And I really
Speaker 2: tried to stay away from people like that. I want
Speaker 2: you to be here because this is what you want
Speaker 2: to do, you know. I want those ten to fifteen
Speaker 2: twenty year homicide guys. I don't want the three or
Speaker 2: four year hormone side guys. You have to have that
Speaker 2: addiction to the work and this is all you want
Speaker 2: to do. And if you've got twenty years left in
Speaker 2: your career and this is it for promotions, but you're
Speaker 2: doing homicide work, that's the type of person I want.
Speaker 2: And we ended up with a fantastic team of people
Speaker 2: in homicide and we broke some records for clearing homicides.
Speaker 2: I think as a result of that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I saw your clear upright, that was outstanding some
Speaker 1: of the times of the percentage of clear up rates.
Speaker 1: But you're quite right. And I would see people go
Speaker 1: through the New South Wales Police and I'm sure other
Speaker 1: police forces the same. They spend twelve months in homicide
Speaker 1: and for the rest of their career they're telling everyone
Speaker 1: they're a homicide detective. And I really think I worked
Speaker 1: homicide for twenty years and I learned every single day
Speaker 1: I came there was something else that I learned that
Speaker 1: I just was a build up of experience. And I
Speaker 1: don't think you're a real homicide detective until you spent
Speaker 1: about five years in there, starting at the bottom, taking
Speaker 1: those matters through court, because there is so much, so
Speaker 1: much to learn. I was fortunate I had some great
Speaker 1: mentals and I acknowledge them any chance I get that
Speaker 1: they taught me the trade. I felt like I was
Speaker 1: doing an apprenticeship learning the skill of a homicide detective.
Speaker 1: Who were your mentals. I'm sure you had some people
Speaker 1: that you looked up to and guided you in your
Speaker 1: career In homicide.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and you know, I do my best to
Speaker 2: acknowledge them in the book. The very first one I
Speaker 2: acknowledged was a fellow named Mike Hambell, who was the
Speaker 2: homicide detective who showed up at that first murder that
Speaker 2: I was at in nineteen ninety one as a young
Speaker 2: uniform officer, and I bumped into him on another murder
Speaker 2: case a couple of years after that, and he was
Speaker 2: just so impressive. Like I said, I kind of said,
Speaker 2: that's who I want to be. And then when I
Speaker 2: started a homicide you know, sixteen years after I joined
Speaker 2: the police service, and I had done a ton of
Speaker 2: investigative work in the divisions, and you know, I was
Speaker 2: king of the castle in the detective office in the
Speaker 2: division that I worked at, and I thought I knew
Speaker 2: it all, and then I started in homicide and learned
Speaker 2: very quickly that I didn't know squat right. The fellow
Speaker 2: that I was paired up with was named Mark Saunders,
Speaker 2: and eventually Mark went on to become the chief of
Speaker 2: police up here in Toronto. But he was just absolutely
Speaker 2: brilliant and an absolutely brilliant investigator. And you know, I
Speaker 2: used the there's a famous analogy up here in Canada,
Speaker 2: and you probably probably don't know it down in Australia,
Speaker 2: but Wayne Gretzky, the great hockey player from Canada.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, yeah, I know why Yeah yeah.
Speaker 2: I think most people on this planet know who Wayne
Speaker 2: Gretzky is. And what they always said about Wayne Gretzky
Speaker 2: is if he was on the ice and they turned
Speaker 2: out the lights to know where everybody on the ice was,
Speaker 2: right even though it was dark, and even know where
Speaker 2: the puck was. He just had that sight and that sense.
Speaker 2: And I used to say the same thing about Mark Sanders, Right,
Speaker 2: He's like Dwayne Gretzky of homicide, and he just from
Speaker 2: the minute that phone rang in the middle of the
Speaker 2: night to let you know there's been a murder, he
Speaker 2: would already be thinking about the crown's closing address in
Speaker 2: court two years down the road, and everything in between,
Speaker 2: and he could just see it all very very clearly.
Speaker 2: So he was very fortunate to be to be partnered
Speaker 2: with Mark for the first couple of years of my career,
Speaker 2: and I learned so much from him, and I always
Speaker 2: tried to glean a lot from different homicide officers that
Speaker 2: I worked with, much like even street level policing, right,
Speaker 2: there's those senior officers that you learn a lot from.
Speaker 2: And sometimes there's those senior officers who give you a
Speaker 2: bit of advice on yeah, I don't think so, right,
Speaker 2: And you get the same thing in homicide. And you know,
Speaker 2: the unit commanders that I worked for over the years
Speaker 2: in homicide really shaped me into the unit commander I
Speaker 2: eventually became a homicide Take all the good points that
Speaker 2: they passed on to you and some you know, discard
Speaker 2: some of the bad points and just learn a lot
Speaker 2: from it. But I also learned a ton from not
Speaker 2: only prosecutors and crown attorneys, but defense lawyers as well. Yes,
Speaker 2: defense lawyers were absolutely phenomenal. Just to sit and watch
Speaker 2: them and try and sit down and have a coffee
Speaker 2: and chat with them and try and learn as much
Speaker 2: as you can from them about the tactics they're using,
Speaker 2: the weaknesses that they see in the case after they've
Speaker 2: gone through it, any advice that they had. And some
Speaker 2: of my enduring friends after my police career are lawyers
Speaker 2: and defense lawyers, right, And which is ironic because you
Speaker 2: start your policing career and everybody hates defense lawyers because yeah,
Speaker 2: nobody likes a defense lawyer. But at that level, I
Speaker 2: think you'd be a foolish not to sit back once
Speaker 2: in a while and listen to them and learn a
Speaker 2: lot from them. Matter. I described a couple of them
Speaker 2: in the book as well, and what I learned from them.
Speaker 1: You've obviously paid your jews and you've you've been beat
Speaker 1: up in the witness box, no doubt by these good
Speaker 1: defense defense lawyers. And some of them I bump into
Speaker 1: and stay in contact with, some of them that I
Speaker 1: went up against that throughout my career, and I thank
Speaker 1: them because they made me a better detective because I
Speaker 1: thought I had thought I had cases rock solid, water tight.
Speaker 1: I'd step in the court with a bit of swagger
Speaker 1: and arrogance, and they just cut me down and Okay, okay,
Speaker 1: you've got to you've got to improve. And but that's
Speaker 1: that's what it's all about, isn't it. And you know,
Speaker 1: the the mentors that you talk about, I had one
Speaker 1: that was my meeting supervisor for probably ten years, so
Speaker 1: I've sat the two levels above where I started in homicide.
Speaker 1: But Paul Mega, and he'd been in homicide for years,
Speaker 1: and you know, I think over twenty years he'd spent
Speaker 1: in homicide by the time he retired. But he could
Speaker 1: be sitting there, he could be reading the newspaper at
Speaker 1: his desk, and we could be talking about a case
Speaker 1: that we've thought that, we've had the whiteboards out, we're
Speaker 1: doing this, we're doing that, and then we'd go speak
Speaker 1: to Paul and he'd put the paper down and have
Speaker 1: you considered doing this? And yeah, Again, that's where experience.
Speaker 1: You can't beat the experience that you get from homicide
Speaker 1: because he had been there, done that sceneate still had
Speaker 1: the passion, still had the energy for it, and just
Speaker 1: a wealth of knowledge.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Absolutely, And it was a lot of fun sometimes
Speaker 2: to be that guy mentoring the younger folks. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 2: I really another story about, you know, a homicide sitting
Speaker 2: in my office and the homicide team that was on
Speaker 2: Kyle was sitting right outside my happy to be sitting
Speaker 2: right right outside my office door, and I hear the
Speaker 2: phone ring, and the detective sergeant is on the phone
Speaker 2: and I hear her chatting away for a few minutes,
Speaker 2: and then she pokes her head into my office and
Speaker 2: she says, we've got one. And I said, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: what is it? And she says, Oh, guy at the
Speaker 2: bottom of the stairwell. He's got a bag over his
Speaker 2: head and he's handcuffed. And I just looked at her.
Speaker 2: I said, ash, suicide, right, and what are you talking about?
Speaker 2: How can that be a suicide? No, it is suicide.
Speaker 2: He's handcuffed, bying, he's back and I'm like, go do
Speaker 2: your investigation, let me know. And sure enough a few
Speaker 2: hours later, Yeah, how did you know that?
Speaker 1: It's just experience you've said that.
Speaker 2: I've seen it not uncommon for guys who want to
Speaker 2: suffocate themselves to train themselves behind the back so they
Speaker 2: can't take the mechanism off their head, right, So little
Speaker 2: things like that, it was always good to pass on
Speaker 2: some of that knowledge and some of that experience. That's
Speaker 2: just years of learning and experience.
Speaker 1: It definitely is. And I just and it jumped out
Speaker 1: in your book that you can't can't bypass that experience.
Speaker 1: Another thing that came out in your book. And I
Speaker 1: think there's this perception, but from all the interest in
Speaker 1: true crime, whether it's true crime documentaries or whether it's
Speaker 1: a scripted TV series, that they think the homicide detective
Speaker 1: is on this case and that's the only case they got,
Speaker 1: but it brought back and you made me feel tired
Speaker 1: just reading the times that you're on call. And when
Speaker 1: I stepped away from the cops that I'd been on
Speaker 1: call for over twenty years, and I didn't realize the
Speaker 1: impact it had on you. Like any moment you crawled
Speaker 1: into bed, you were thinking the phone's going to ring,
Speaker 1: I'm going to get dragged out into a crime scene
Speaker 1: or whatever. Explain from your point of view how many
Speaker 1: cases you actually juggle, and like when you're hot on
Speaker 1: a case, it might be the biggest case you've got,
Speaker 1: but you've still got on call respond onsibilities, and so
Speaker 1: you can be working a case all day, get home,
Speaker 1: about to put yourself to bed, and then you get
Speaker 1: a call and you're at a fresh homicide. Tell us
Speaker 1: about your experiences being on call.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know what, there is absolutely nothing worse than
Speaker 2: getting that homicide on a Friday evening. It was great
Speaker 2: for overtime, but you'd be working all week, you know.
Speaker 2: And I usually used to get up a quarter after
Speaker 2: four every morning and go into work, and you'd be
Speaker 2: putting in your ten twelve hour days all week. You'd
Speaker 2: get home Friday evening, have some dinner, I think going
Speaker 2: to go to bed and the phone, the phone rings,
Speaker 2: and you're exhausted already, and now you've got to go
Speaker 2: and you know you're gonna be going twenty four hours
Speaker 2: probably thirty six hours minimum without any more sleep. So
Speaker 2: that takes a real toll on the body having to
Speaker 2: do that. But another thing I absolutely hated was you
Speaker 2: pick up a fresh homicide and you'd be there six
Speaker 2: eight hours and you're right in the thick of it,
Speaker 2: and all the information is flying at you from every direction,
Speaker 2: and if you've got some momentum and things are going
Speaker 2: really well, and then the phone rings and it's a
Speaker 2: tip from the last case that you did. Yes, right,
Speaker 2: that has to be action right now, and you're like,
Speaker 2: oh my god, Like, I've got so much on my
Speaker 2: plate right now, I've still got to deal with that
Speaker 2: as well. So you'd end up with two or three
Speaker 2: cases simultaneously that you're working on on zero sleep whatsoever.
Speaker 2: So that was always tough. As I got along in years,
Speaker 2: I always appreciated that Monday morning murder. Yeah right. The
Speaker 2: younger guys didn't like it because of the lack of overtime,
Speaker 2: but I was like, no, thank you, I'll take any Monday,
Speaker 2: murder any times. So you be on call constantly, going
Speaker 2: thirty six forty eight hours without any sleep. It's absolutely
Speaker 2: exhausting work, but that's really what you have to do,
Speaker 2: because you know, one of the phrases I always use
Speaker 2: was what did you know? When did you know it?
Speaker 2: And what did you do about it? And can you
Speaker 2: imagine ever standing up in court and saying, yeah, I
Speaker 2: got this piece of information that was crucial, What did
Speaker 2: you do about it? I went home and had an
Speaker 2: app Right, it just doesn't fly. It has to be
Speaker 2: action right away. So a lot of long hours, and
Speaker 2: it wasn't unusual for the homicide detectives in Toronto to
Speaker 2: be juggling about twelve thirteen cases a year, which is
Speaker 2: well above what the studies say you should be doing,
Speaker 2: which is about six or seven cases a year. So
Speaker 2: we were very well equipped to handle about seventy homits
Speaker 2: a year in Toronto personnel wise, but we regularly got
Speaker 2: quite a bit more than seventy. And that's when you
Speaker 2: would really see the burnout because you'd always be shorthanded
Speaker 2: as well and being on call. We ended up getting
Speaker 2: to a formal rotation business. But before when I first started,
Speaker 2: it was best team available. Yeah, so of course everyone
Speaker 2: would be scarce on Friday afternoon when the boss would
Speaker 2: be walking around saying who's available, who's ready to go? Right?
Speaker 2: But I don't think unless you doubled the size of
Speaker 2: the homicide squad that you'd be adequately staffed to run
Speaker 2: at a pick at a pace of six or seventy year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's always juggling resources. And I'd pick up on
Speaker 1: what you said, and it came out in the book too,
Speaker 1: about the on call and the structure of on call.
Speaker 1: We actually, at one point in time, got the junior
Speaker 1: sergeants and constables together to speak to the bosses above
Speaker 1: that we wanted some structure to the on call because
Speaker 1: it got down to whoever was in the office, or
Speaker 1: it was let to get to whoever's in the office.
Speaker 1: My team, we were working a case from the homicide office,
Speaker 1: so whenever a fresh murder came in, people look around
Speaker 1: and you, oh, you guys, and we were just carrying
Speaker 1: so many cases. So we put in a structure so
Speaker 1: every six weeks, and it had to vary depending on
Speaker 1: what happened, every six weeks you'd be on call. And
Speaker 1: it gave you a little bit of control that you
Speaker 1: knew you could concentrate on a job for the next
Speaker 1: couple of weeks before before you were back on call.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it brought back memories. And I did have
Speaker 1: a laugh about you falling to sleep while driving. And
Speaker 1: we shouldn't laugh about this, and we should warn people
Speaker 1: not to do this at home. When you talk staying
Speaker 1: awake twenty four hours, thirty six hours, even forty eight hours,
Speaker 1: that does sometimes happen, and it's not happening because you're
Speaker 1: just trying to drag it on or you're being slow.
Speaker 1: If a job can be done. Homicides can be very
Speaker 1: dynamic in the way the way that you've got to respond,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you just can't step away from it because
Speaker 1: you're going to miss miss opportunities. But yeah, hearing about
Speaker 1: you nearly falling to sleep or nodding off as you're driving.
Speaker 1: I got called out on a Sunday night, I remember,
Speaker 1: up to the north coast of New South Wales, probably
Speaker 1: about six hours away from Sydney, and I went with
Speaker 1: another person on call. The person that was nominated to
Speaker 1: go with me he hadn't slept, I hadn't slept. Were
Speaker 1: both tied. I said, okay, I got this. I can
Speaker 1: drive for the first two hours, driving along, I'm starting
Speaker 1: the not off like that, and then Wayne I can
Speaker 1: mention his name, Wayne Hayes. He said, it's all right,
Speaker 1: I'll drive. You have arrest. So I'm in the passenger
Speaker 1: seat falling asleep. I wake up about ten or fifteen
Speaker 1: minutes later. He's driving, and it's in the middle of winter.
Speaker 1: He's got his head out the door, out the window, driving,
Speaker 1: trying to stay away while he's driving. And we made it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I'm sure Hahaw wouldn't allow that type of
Speaker 1: thing anymore. But yeah, it was crazy.
Speaker 2: Toms know, we did the same thing and then literally
Speaker 2: head out the window in the middle of winter by
Speaker 2: Ottawa one time, just trying to stay awake and make
Speaker 2: it home. And you know, we had been going three
Speaker 2: and a half weeks solid on this murder case, you know,
Speaker 2: getting two or three hours sleep a night maybe, and
Speaker 2: then having to drive five hours up to Ottawa to
Speaker 2: do a search warrant and thinking, Okay, this will be fine,
Speaker 2: you know, we'll be we'll be heading back home again
Speaker 2: by nine or ten o'clock. But then our bad guy
Speaker 2: decided that was the one night he was going to
Speaker 2: stay out till two in the morning, so we had
Speaker 2: to wait till he came home before we did the warrant.
Speaker 2: And we weren't expecting to find anything. We just wanted
Speaker 2: to grab cell phones and stuff and head home. But
Speaker 2: sure enough, we found a gun in his house, so
Speaker 2: he had to be arrested brought in and it wasn't
Speaker 2: until five point thirty in the morning we started heading
Speaker 2: back to Toronto. And yeah, it was a horrible drive.
Speaker 2: It was cold, it was snowy, and there's a highway
Speaker 2: stretch that goes on for about an hour and a
Speaker 2: half before you hit the really big highway and I
Speaker 2: just woke up in the middle of that highway at
Speaker 2: a forty five degree angle and I said, okay, that's it.
Speaker 2: Roll down the window. Drive like that for the rest
Speaker 2: of the way until my partner woke up and took
Speaker 2: over the driving. But yeah, there are a few scary
Speaker 2: incidents in the car on the way home. Because Murphy
Speaker 2: Murphy's law, right, you think, okay, it's two in the morning,
Speaker 2: I'm going to head home and traffic should be awesome.
Speaker 2: I should be able to fly home. And yeah, there's
Speaker 2: been a big accident on the highway and you're sitting
Speaker 2: in the car try and stay awake in a traffic
Speaker 2: jam at two or three o'clock in the morning. That
Speaker 2: always happened.
Speaker 1: No, Well, it bought back to me the chaos and
Speaker 1: the yeah, the things that happen in homicide and sometimes
Speaker 1: you say you can't make this stuff up. That's the
Speaker 1: reality of the chaos that the world of homicide could be.
Speaker 1: I'd like to talk about some of your cases cases now,
Speaker 1: if that's it's all right, And each homicide is unique
Speaker 1: in their own way. You can have organized crime, or
Speaker 1: you could have a serial killer, domestic type murders, and
Speaker 1: they're all different in the way that you approach them.
Speaker 1: I'd like to talk about one of the cases. As
Speaker 1: you've got so many to talk about, I'll just pick
Speaker 1: a few. Mark Moore, I call him a serial killer,
Speaker 1: gangster convicted of for murders. Do you want to tell
Speaker 1: us a story about your involvement in that and what
Speaker 1: happened with Mark Moore?
Speaker 2: Now, Mark Moore was a fellow who shot and killed
Speaker 2: four different people during a seventy sixty period. In twenty ten,
Speaker 2: so he shot and killed a fellow named Jamiel Spent
Speaker 2: in a laneway in Toronto September fifteenth, twenty ten, and
Speaker 2: then a couple of weeks later he shot and killed
Speaker 2: two young fellows, Courtney Facy and Mike James again in
Speaker 2: a laneway in Toronto, and those two cases were actually
Speaker 2: handled by other homicide investigators, And it wasn't until November
Speaker 2: twenty fourth of twenty ten when he shot and killed
Speaker 2: a fellow named Carl Cole, and I ended up picking
Speaker 2: up that case and the rationale behind him killing these fellows.
Speaker 2: Jamille Spence was walking down a laneway in a neighborhood
Speaker 2: that mister Moore didn't like because some guys from that
Speaker 2: neighborhood had beat up his younger brother about a month earlier,
Speaker 2: so he just went into the neighborhood. First p he saw,
Speaker 2: he shot and killed them, and then Courtney Facing and
Speaker 2: Mike James, the double murderer again. He was in a
Speaker 2: bad mood. One night, he's driving around with some buddies.
Speaker 2: They happened to be across the street from an apartment
Speaker 2: building where Moore himself had previously been shot. So he
Speaker 2: drives up to them, rolls down his window and shoots
Speaker 2: and kills both of them, and then Carl Cole, you know,
Speaker 2: a month and a half later, again back in that
Speaker 2: same neighborhood where Jamille Spence was killed. We think there
Speaker 2: was some previous interactions between Moore and Cole, but again
Speaker 2: he just in the back parking lot of an apartment building.
Speaker 2: He shot him twenty three times, ended up hitting him
Speaker 2: actually seventeen or nineteen times, but he used two different
Speaker 2: guns to do it. And because there was this very
Speaker 2: minor previous relationship between the two of them, when we
Speaker 2: got moore cellular phone, we got Carl Cole's cellul the
Speaker 2: phone records, we found Moore's number on there and he
Speaker 2: had been in contact with them the day of the murder.
Speaker 2: So we started trying to figure out why he was
Speaker 2: in contact with him, and it wasn't until a couple
Speaker 2: of months later where forensics came to us and said
Speaker 2: all four of these murders same handgun, okay. So that
Speaker 2: really started the ball rolling and we focused in on
Speaker 2: Moore and it was March tenth of two thousand and
Speaker 2: eleven and we were really starting to take a good
Speaker 2: hard look at him, and he decided to shoot up
Speaker 2: a nightclub in downtown Toronto. So he got arrested for that,
Speaker 2: and he was actually in custody for most of twenty
Speaker 2: eleven awaiting trial on that. And we had wire taps up.
Speaker 1: There was that gun that he shut up the nightclub.
Speaker 1: Was that link ballistically to the murders.
Speaker 2: It was linked ballistically to the last murder. His two
Speaker 2: guns of the last right, So he ran out of
Speaker 2: ammal on the nine millimeter he used for all four murders.
Speaker 2: So he pulled out his forty five and finished off
Speaker 2: Carl Cole and then he used the same forty five.
Speaker 2: So I said to the bosses, we'll take all four
Speaker 2: of the homicides. We'll work all four of the homicides.
Speaker 2: And then an analyst came to me and she said, well,
Speaker 2: it looks like in the summer of twenty ten he
Speaker 2: did all these other shootings, but none of them became murders.
Speaker 2: One was a armed robbery of a Drewy store. One
Speaker 2: was a shot fired into his girlfriend's front door. Another
Speaker 2: one was shots fired into one of his drug clients
Speaker 2: front door. Another one was shots fired into the back
Speaker 2: door of a residence where his daughter and her mother lived.
Speaker 2: There were long since strange but he had a domestic
Speaker 2: with his daughter's mother and then went back that night
Speaker 2: and shot the place up knowing his daughter was inside. Right, So,
Speaker 2: just an absolute animal, and we had a pretty good
Speaker 2: circumstantial case on him, but we put wire taps up
Speaker 2: because we had a lot of uncooperative witnesses and we
Speaker 2: really wanted to get them talking on the phones because
Speaker 2: they knew who had done the shootings and whatnot. So
Speaker 2: we got all that on the phones. We got a
Speaker 2: lot of gravy as well from him and chatting on
Speaker 2: the phones from the jailhouse, and finally in October of
Speaker 2: twenty eleven, we arrested and charged him with the murders.
Speaker 2: We arrested and charged his gun supplier with trafficking the firearms.
Speaker 2: We arrested and charged the fellow who was supplying the
Speaker 2: gun supplier. We arrested and charged Moore's girlfriend for some
Speaker 2: accessory charges and obstruct charges, his mother for accessory and
Speaker 2: obstruct charges. One of his buddies that he did the
Speaker 2: jury store robbery with, we rested and charged him, And
Speaker 2: we rested and charged that buddy's girlfriend with being the
Speaker 2: getaway driver for that armed robbery. So it was a
Speaker 2: huge investigation and ended up playing fifty four charges on Moore,
Speaker 2: including those four first degree murder charges, and then all
Speaker 2: the charges on everybody else, and we convicted everybody of everything.
Speaker 1: Well done.
Speaker 2: There was no fluff there in any of those charges.
Speaker 2: And it was a great, great case and very interesting
Speaker 2: in court because of course you go to court and
Speaker 2: you're having a trial for a fellow charging with four
Speaker 2: counts of murder. So you see the look on the
Speaker 2: faces of the jury members, very stressful for them. They're like,
Speaker 2: oh my gosh, this is a huge case, like we've
Speaker 2: got this man's life in our hands. And that lasted
Speaker 2: about two or th three days.
Speaker 1: They got a sense into a trial.
Speaker 2: Before they're like, yeah, okay, he did it right. This
Speaker 2: is actually not going to be that difficult. So we
Speaker 2: still ran that trial. I believe it was well five
Speaker 2: weeks of running that trial, and like you said earlier,
Speaker 2: me in the witness box for days on end, having
Speaker 2: a very good defense lawyer go at me. But at
Speaker 2: the end of the day it just became a real
Speaker 2: no brain or anythink for the jury. And I guess
Speaker 2: it convicted everybody of everything, so that's good.
Speaker 1: And I also what I find in organized crime murders
Speaker 1: like that, and you rattled off all the people on
Speaker 1: the proof of of the crime that you charge. When
Speaker 1: you start investigating a serious crime like four first degree
Speaker 1: murders and then you look at the criminality surrounding that.
Speaker 1: I always think it's a good strategy to go hard
Speaker 1: on everyone involved in it, and that puts pressure on
Speaker 1: And I'm not sure in your case, but I've had
Speaker 1: cases where doing that people will end up rolling over
Speaker 1: giving evidence for the crown because of the nature of
Speaker 1: the charges they've got. It also came out in what
Speaker 1: I read about that in the book and other cases,
Speaker 1: because you've got so many, so many cases. When you
Speaker 1: do have the wire taps, we call them telephone in
Speaker 1: the steps or listening devices here, but we're talking wire taps,
Speaker 1: covet electronic surveillance. When you're looking at organized crime, that
Speaker 1: can be a pain too, because they're always up to
Speaker 1: something else. They're going to do a hit, they're going
Speaker 1: to bash someone, and you get a call at two
Speaker 1: am in the morning and it's come over the phone
Speaker 1: that's been monitoring live. Hey, your target's going out to
Speaker 1: bash someone, or your target wants the informant to go
Speaker 1: bash someone what you want us to do. You've got
Speaker 1: to make a lot of judgment calls on that. Did
Speaker 1: you encounter that throughout your career, even this case or
Speaker 1: other cases where you had to make hard calls when
Speaker 1: you were listening to covertly what the crooks were planning.
Speaker 2: All the time. And that was one of the things
Speaker 2: about that moor Keys was he was in jail, but
Speaker 2: we're listening to so many other criminals who were involved
Speaker 2: in that gang lifestyle that it was NonStop. We had
Speaker 2: to have assets in place ready to go at the
Speaker 2: drop of a hat. And there was one incident where
Speaker 2: his gun dealer was going to traffic a firearm and
Speaker 2: we called up our Guns and Gangs unit and they
Speaker 2: were like, yeah, you know, sorry, we're too busy tonight.
Speaker 2: We can't help out. And so we lost that gun
Speaker 2: and the deputy chief found out about it and he
Speaker 2: just lost his mind on the guns and gangs guys,
Speaker 2: and he said, well, guess what, guys, drop everything and
Speaker 2: you go get that gun back. And it took them
Speaker 2: a couple of weeks. They had to chase where that
Speaker 2: gun had gone after they lost it, and they eventually
Speaker 2: did get it back, but a few people who aren't
Speaker 2: police officers have commented to me after reading the book that, Wow,
Speaker 2: I can't believe how labor intensive those wire taps are
Speaker 2: and how much liability there is. That you can't let
Speaker 2: anything go. I said, no to compromises public safety. Even
Speaker 2: if it blows your wire tap, you've got to do
Speaker 2: something about it. Right, So we've gotten very good at
Speaker 2: mitigating a lot of the risks, and you know, doing
Speaker 2: some unique investigative tactics. You know, to get a gun,
Speaker 2: but not let them know that you've gotten that gun. Right,
Speaker 2: if they've stashed it somewhere, you know where it is, Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to go get it, but they're not going
Speaker 2: to know that it was a police who were going
Speaker 2: to go get it. So that happened all the time.
Speaker 2: And wire taps, you know, up here, they're usually good
Speaker 2: for sixty days. And I always said to my wife,
Speaker 2: don't make any plans for the next sixty days. And
Speaker 2: usually you would get an extension and they'd run one
Speaker 2: hundred and twenty days. But you knew, don't make any
Speaker 2: plans for the next one hundred and twenty days because
Speaker 2: it's NonStop from the minute you flip those switches and
Speaker 2: start listening. It's a huge, huge undertaking.
Speaker 1: And it's something that you pointed out. The public don't
Speaker 1: appreciate what goes on behind there. But I know what
Speaker 1: you're talking about and how creative you have to be
Speaker 1: to mitigate the risk and to the satisfaction of everyone.
Speaker 1: I had one operation running where I already briefed the
Speaker 1: what's the equivalent of your swat team, our technical operations unit,
Speaker 1: so they knew the target. So at two o'clock in
Speaker 1: the morning, I didn't have to do a full briefing again.
Speaker 1: I briefed everyone this is likely to happen, and yeah,
Speaker 1: things happened, and we were physical surveillance looking at them,
Speaker 1: planning contract killings, and there was one that one that
Speaker 1: was missed, and I get dragged into the boss's office
Speaker 1: and go, well, how has this happened? And I said, well,
Speaker 1: you know, a couple of months ago, I was telling
Speaker 1: you we're targeting a contract killer. I need more resources
Speaker 1: because we believe he is going to kill someone. And surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: the person did kill someone. But you know, I always
Speaker 1: believed in keeping good records so you can justify your
Speaker 1: decisions because you don't want to three years down the
Speaker 1: track be explaining, oh, why did you let this happen?
Speaker 1: Why did you let that happen? And yeah, it could
Speaker 1: be justifiable what we did, but it brought back the pressures.
Speaker 1: The other things in those type of crimes, the organized
Speaker 1: crime ones, dealing with informants and have you had some
Speaker 1: interesting informant times dealing with informants because I think their
Speaker 1: credibility starts at ground zero. That's the way I've dealt
Speaker 1: with informants, and the exchange of information is one way.
Speaker 1: I don't give them information. I want information from them
Speaker 1: and I try to find out their motive because they
Speaker 1: can bring you unstuck. As much as they can help you,
Speaker 1: they can also bring you unstuck in in the court.
Speaker 2: Yeah, always very tricky deally with informants. And you know
Speaker 2: the subtle differences and sometimes not so subtle differences between
Speaker 2: informants and agents. You probably have the same issues down there,
Speaker 2: and the number of time police officers, without that knowledge,
Speaker 2: extend confidentiality and informer privilege to people who are actually
Speaker 2: witnesses who you can't give them confidentiality, and that bites
Speaker 2: us in the butt every single time. So I dealt
Speaker 2: with that constantly in homicide work and trying to correct
Speaker 2: some of that in homicide work. But you know, I
Speaker 2: think the interesting informant story in the book is the
Speaker 2: informant in Switzerland who passed on information about a cannibal
Speaker 2: ring being responsible for or one of the missing men
Speaker 2: in Toronto's Gay village. And you know, you get that
Speaker 2: call and you shake your head and you think, yeah, right,
Speaker 2: and then the Swiss authorities say, well, the last time
Speaker 2: this guy gave a similar information, it was for a
Speaker 2: cannibal in Slovakia and he ended up getting killed in
Speaker 2: a shootout with the responding officers, and they found two
Speaker 2: partially consumed corpses on his property and link him to
Speaker 2: twenty four more people. And you're like, oh, okay, sounds
Speaker 2: pretty promising then, But the problem being you've got somebody
Speaker 2: who's classified by Swiss authorities as an informant, but he's
Speaker 2: actually privy to a confession from a suspect. So in
Speaker 2: Canada there's no way he would be given informant privilege.
Speaker 2: So trying to iron that out through our different government
Speaker 2: agencies to the point where we could go to Switzerland
Speaker 2: and interview him as a witness. Yeah, and still try
Speaker 2: and keep him confident until there's a court proceeding, and
Speaker 2: thankfully from that perspective, there wasn't, and he ended up
Speaker 2: outing himself and writing a book and doing a news
Speaker 2: special on himself. But it's really that was a unique
Speaker 2: situation where Okay, he wouldn't be an informant in Canada,
Speaker 2: but he apparently is an informant in Switzerland. What do
Speaker 2: we do here? Nobody knows because nobody had dealt with
Speaker 2: it before it, right, So we bottled our way through that.
Speaker 1: And they're time consuming and on that informant, I want
Speaker 1: to talk more about that case or how it flowed
Speaker 1: on from the start of the Cannibal information, which is, yeah,
Speaker 1: you think you've seen everything in police and then you
Speaker 1: get that and you think, okay, this is taking a
Speaker 1: bit further. But yeah, dealing with informants, I had some
Speaker 1: success on some big organized crime murders and the strength
Speaker 1: of the informants. A lot of the cases were built
Speaker 1: on the informants at the time, and this was over
Speaker 1: a ten year period. I was getting frustrated about the
Speaker 1: amount of accountability for the informant. Every time I spoke
Speaker 1: to the informant who might find me three or four
Speaker 1: times a night in the middle of the night and
Speaker 1: have to document that that's contact. But I saw the
Speaker 1: benefits of it, and I was thankful that I was
Speaker 1: pushed to keep such thorough records and that the people
Speaker 1: I was working with keept such thorough records because when
Speaker 1: it came to court, the barristers and very experienced barristers,
Speaker 1: thought they were going to have a field day. This
Speaker 1: blait was a criminal, he'd done time in prison, he'd
Speaker 1: done everything wrong and in organized crime, bicky gangs, that
Speaker 1: type of stuff, and the defense barristers thought that they
Speaker 1: would carve him apart and then delve into the relationship
Speaker 1: between this person and the police, and you know, was
Speaker 1: he being paid money? Did you give him a help
Speaker 1: in a court matter that he came up? And we
Speaker 1: could justify every single thing we did in dealing with
Speaker 1: that informant, and it was over years, so we had
Speaker 1: to be meticular in the way that we kept the records.
Speaker 1: But it was so worth it when we got to court,
Speaker 1: because the defense strategy was to discredit the informant and
Speaker 1: then the case will fall apart, but they couldn't because
Speaker 1: of the records that were kept and the way we
Speaker 1: manage it. But it was a lesson and yeah, we
Speaker 1: had a lot of trouble in New South Wales Police.
Speaker 1: There was a raw commission into the corruption in New
Speaker 1: South Wales Police in the I think it was the
Speaker 1: early early nineties, and a lot of that was about
Speaker 1: the relationship between detectives and informants, how the areas were
Speaker 1: blurred and that if you want to get into trouble,
Speaker 1: that was the way to get into trouble as a detective,
Speaker 1: when you drop your guard down dealing with informants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, the same thing here. We've got a very
Speaker 2: very good system that was developed probably in the mid
Speaker 2: nineteen nineties as well, and all the informants are handled
Speaker 2: by a central office and it's usually the young coppers
Speaker 2: on the street who end up getting themselves in trouble
Speaker 2: because they are on all the proper way to hand
Speaker 2: unal informants and very high risk area to be involved in.
Speaker 2: It's always nice, isn't it when you walk into court
Speaker 2: and you know it's going to be a battle, but
Speaker 2: you've dotted the eyes and you've crossed the t's and yeah,
Speaker 2: you're not perfect, but you can justify everything you've done
Speaker 2: and why you've done it and have at it. You know.
Speaker 2: The most experienced homicide detective in Toronto a fellow named
Speaker 2: Gary Drew, who worked homicide, I believe for twenty two
Speaker 2: years and loved court. He loved running trials in court. Right.
Speaker 2: A lot of people get tired of it, including me
Speaker 2: after a ten or twelve years of doing it, but
Speaker 2: Gary just loved doing it and highly respected and he
Speaker 2: knew every time he went to court and he'd be
Speaker 2: getting in the witness box, he was going to get
Speaker 2: grilled and defense lawyers are going to go after him
Speaker 2: with everything they got. But he was like, yeah, that
Speaker 2: kind of goes with the territory. And you know, if
Speaker 2: they find I've made a mistake somewhere. They found I
Speaker 2: made a mistake somewhere, that's that's their job. But I've
Speaker 2: done everything to the best of my ability, and I
Speaker 2: think I've done everything completely properly, and even after twenty
Speaker 2: two years, they're still going to go after me. So
Speaker 2: it's kind of part of the whole job and the
Speaker 2: whole game.
Speaker 1: And again that takes experience. And with the experience you've
Speaker 1: gotten that Gary's got that, you understand that because I
Speaker 1: had and I was probably the same when you've done
Speaker 1: nothing wrong, you've done everything that you should do, and
Speaker 1: you go to court and you just get ripped apart
Speaker 1: and accused of this and accused of that. And I've
Speaker 1: had young detectives get out of the witness box and
Speaker 1: that's not fair, that's outrageous, and take it very personally,
Speaker 1: and I try to explain as it was explained to me.
Speaker 1: It doesn't matter if you do everything right, you're still
Speaker 1: going to get attacked. That's what happens in court. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the experience that comes through. And with the informants
Speaker 1: just finishing up dealing with informants, they can be very
Speaker 1: charismatic to like some of the informants I've dealt with,
Speaker 1: like people are starstruck by them. And you know, you've
Speaker 1: got hardened, experienced detectives and this person's holding telling the
Speaker 1: story and it's very easy to get called into called
Speaker 1: into the charisma of the life that they've lived, and
Speaker 1: you've got to be careful, careful about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, especially jail house informants, Right, they've always got an
Speaker 2: ulterior motive. They've been through this probably more times than
Speaker 2: you have, and they're going to try and play you
Speaker 2: almost every single time. So using jailhouse informants up here
Speaker 2: is very, very strictly controlled. And you know, I tell
Speaker 2: the story in the book about the one jailhouse informant
Speaker 2: and he was trying to play two different police services
Speaker 2: at the same time on different bases to get himself
Speaker 2: some consideration. And then, you know, and I learned a
Speaker 2: lot from Mark Saunders about dealing with somebody like that.
Speaker 2: And when it came my and where I was a
Speaker 2: senior guy and had a young detective and he's like,
Speaker 2: I've got this guy calling from jail and he wants
Speaker 2: to tell us about this murder case. And I was like, okay,
Speaker 2: I know it sounds great. I know you want to
Speaker 2: run down there right now and take that statement. But
Speaker 2: let's just cool it here. And he's going to get
Speaker 2: out in three weeks anyway, if his intentions are really good,
Speaker 2: tell him to call us in three weeks. And sure enough,
Speaker 2: that's what he did. He got released, and he still
Speaker 2: came to us three weeks later. He said, Okay, I'm
Speaker 2: no longer a jail house informant. I'm a witness and
Speaker 2: there's not asking for any favors, any considerations, anything like
Speaker 2: that I'll still tell you what this guy told me
Speaker 2: in the jail cell, right so, and there was no
Speaker 2: question at all. We still had to run it through
Speaker 2: the jailhouse Informant committee at court, but they put it
Speaker 2: right through and he was a terrific witness for us.
Speaker 2: So you have to be really careful with these guys.
Speaker 1: Like I said, very careful. And that's where I look
Speaker 1: at the motive in that I had a jile house
Speaker 1: informant that came forward because of the nature it was
Speaker 1: a child murder, nature of the murder, and that's why
Speaker 1: he was giving evidence. And I made a point and
Speaker 1: dealt with in four years. Your any credibility here is
Speaker 1: if you're genuine in what you're saying. So when you
Speaker 1: get yourself into trouble and you will get yourself into
Speaker 1: trouble again, I'm not coming there to help you, because
Speaker 1: if we do go to court on this matter, I
Speaker 1: want to be able to say, hand on heart, I
Speaker 1: haven't helped you at all. You've done this from the
Speaker 1: reason you told me right at the start, And there
Speaker 1: was pushing and shoving because he was getting into trouble constantly,
Speaker 1: and I just said, no, I told you the information
Speaker 1: you provided. I'm not going to give you assistance if
Speaker 1: you choose not to give evidence for this case. Now, fine,
Speaker 1: but that's the way and it carried through and it
Speaker 1: was worth doing it. Let's have a break now we will. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to talk about and yeah, you do come
Speaker 1: up with some heavy story. Is the serial killer Bruce McArthur.
Speaker 1: Will let you tell the story of that, because I
Speaker 1: think that's fascinating. He was just a sadistic grub that
Speaker 1: ended up. Was there eight people that were convicted of
Speaker 1: eight murders and I found it fascinating. I'll let you
Speaker 1: tell our listeners of the potential last victim, how close
Speaker 1: that the last victim came to being another victim. I'll
Speaker 1: get your thoughts on other things homicide, and I've because
Speaker 1: I enjoyed reading your book so much, I've got a
Speaker 1: little section here just making a note that the Hank's
Speaker 1: homicide life hacks some of the thoughts that you talked
Speaker 1: about in the way homicide. Just to let you in
Speaker 1: on the importance of turning up of the crime scene.
Speaker 1: I want to discuss some of those things because I
Speaker 1: like the way you look at homicide and approach it.
Speaker 1: So how about we take a short break, and when
Speaker 1: we come back, we'll delve more into the world of homicide.
Speaker 2: Town's good. Thanks Gary, cheers, N The Land Could Die