Speaker 1: You're listening to a Mother and Mia podcast. Mama Mia
Speaker 1: acknowledges the traditional owners of land and waterers. This podcast
Speaker 1: was recorded on It's nine AM on a Tuesday in
Speaker 1: October two thousand and one, and a Sydney nurse has
Speaker 1: just returned home after a night shift at a nearby hospital.
Speaker 1: Her eighteen year old son emerges from the house and
Speaker 1: tackles her to the ground. She manages to break free,
Speaker 1: but pretty soon her ex husband and her fifteen year
Speaker 1: old daughter join in. They drag her into the front yard,
Speaker 1: where the two men attack her with knives. Her ex
Speaker 1: screams at her that she is satan and that she's
Speaker 1: going to die. She does in broad daylight in her
Speaker 1: front garden while horrified neighbors watch on in shock. It
Speaker 1: also horrified the first responders who were on it, and
Speaker 1: it was the final straw for one of the detectives
Speaker 1: who worked closely on the case. It was a crime
Speaker 1: so horrible, so unimaginable, that after more than a decade
Speaker 1: in the force, Luke Taylor started to think about retirement.
Speaker 1: He credits this case as the one that started the
Speaker 1: whisper in his mind. I've had enough, I'm Jemma Bath
Speaker 1: and This is True Crime Conversations a Muma mea podcast
Speaker 1: exploring the world's most notorious crimes by speaking to the
Speaker 1: people who know the most about them. For fourteen years,
Speaker 1: Luke worked across New South Wales investigating some of the
Speaker 1: most heinous crimes you can imagine, homicide, armed robbery, drugs,
Speaker 1: under cover work, child protection and sex crimes. He's done
Speaker 1: it all. As time went on, Luke's mental health began
Speaker 1: to suffer, until he eventually bowed out of the police
Speaker 1: force for good in two thousand and nine. Now he's
Speaker 1: a teacher, but he's found a way to combine his
Speaker 1: former career with his new profession in an experimental learning
Speaker 1: workshop called Crime Story, where he literally stages a crime
Speaker 1: scene for his students to solve. Luke joins us, now,
Speaker 1: Luke plunk me into your reality in the early two thousands,
Speaker 1: Where were you at in your life and career at
Speaker 1: that point.
Speaker 2: Early two thousands. I was in Cabramatta at the time,
Speaker 2: which was a very exciting place to work as a
Speaker 2: young police officer, young detective. A lot of action, a
Speaker 2: lot of drugs, a lot of violence, unfortunately, but I
Speaker 2: think that's the thing you'd drawn to initially, I know
Speaker 2: I was. It's the action you want to be working
Speaker 2: on big important cases. From there, I went a short
Speaker 2: spell at Windsor Police as a detective there and then
Speaker 2: moved to child protection sex crimes.
Speaker 1: So you'd already been in the force and particularly in
Speaker 1: detectives for quite a while by this point. Yes, Before
Speaker 1: we get into your involvement in this case, can you
Speaker 1: tell me a bit more about the family situation of
Speaker 1: a Sydney nurse who was killed outside her home in
Speaker 1: October two thousand and one.
Speaker 2: Yes, Well, we're aware that she had an AVO and
Speaker 2: there was a family breakdown. The young teenage daughter was
Speaker 2: still living at home with her and her strange husband,
Speaker 2: and her elder teenage son moved out, so they were
Speaker 2: living quite some distance away, and they were separated, and
Speaker 2: there were some ongoing interactions with them. Nothing that had
Speaker 2: really caused too much alarm at that stage. However, there
Speaker 2: was an AVO and as it turned out, another officer
Speaker 2: who I was working with, it's spoken to her probably
Speaker 2: a week or two before this incident, and she actually
Speaker 2: came into the police station and she said, look, he's
Speaker 2: going to kill me one day it's going to end
Speaker 2: like that.
Speaker 1: What can you tell us about the circumstances that led
Speaker 1: up to what happened to her, because it was quite
Speaker 1: a strange and evolving situation in the twelve hours before
Speaker 1: she died.
Speaker 2: Yes, well, the husband and the son, they lived in
Speaker 2: Katomber at the time, and look, they were heavy potsmokers.
Speaker 2: The effects that has on schizophrenia and different things like
Speaker 2: that is just absolutely incredible. So in that time they
Speaker 2: had been smoking and consumed a lot of pot, and
Speaker 2: there was a history of devil worshiping things like that.
Speaker 2: Somehow during the night they formed the belief that mum
Speaker 2: had died in a car accident or the ex wife
Speaker 2: had died in a car accident, and it was their
Speaker 2: responsibility to exercise the demon from her.
Speaker 1: It's just something you don't expect, right, like in a
Speaker 1: DV case. It's just kind of taking it to that
Speaker 1: whole other level of bizarre.
Speaker 2: We talk about, you know, once in a lifetime cases,
Speaker 2: and that's certainly one of them, and it's one that's
Speaker 2: lived with me and I know every other police officer
Speaker 2: that was involved in that particular case. It was absolutely
Speaker 2: horrendous the impact it had on them. And also, as
Speaker 2: we'll find out, the civilians who were also witnesses and
Speaker 2: involved in what actually transpired.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about that. Because the nurse, she was thirty
Speaker 1: five thirty five year old woman living in Sydney. She
Speaker 1: came home from a night shift, you know, around eight
Speaker 1: forty five nine am in the morning. What happened to her.
Speaker 2: So during the night the estrange husband and son had
Speaker 2: made their way down. They caught a train and it
Speaker 2: was quite a lengthy journey to get from Katoomba out
Speaker 2: to one of the northwestern suburbs, out past Windsor. They
Speaker 2: made their way down, arrived at the house and the
Speaker 2: daughter let them into the house. They explained the situation
Speaker 2: to her and the words that were basically used was
Speaker 2: that mum has died in a car accident and when she,
Speaker 2: or her we think might be her, comes home in
Speaker 2: the morning, it's actually not her, it's the devil and
Speaker 2: we have to exercise her. So they held some sort
Speaker 2: of cultish ritual in the house. There were glasses that
Speaker 2: were filled where wine. It was purported to be like
Speaker 2: drinking blood and things like that, and so they'd convinced
Speaker 2: her as well. So they were quite in a frenzy
Speaker 2: by this particular time. And then, like I said, about
Speaker 2: eight thirty in the morning, Mom has finished her shift
Speaker 2: at Westmeat Hospital and come home. As she's basically putting
Speaker 2: the key into the screen door or the front door
Speaker 2: to open there, they have just all three of them
Speaker 2: launched through the door, armed with kitchen knives and started
Speaker 2: stabbing and attacking her and chasing her. She was able
Speaker 2: to ring Triple O and throughout the next couple of
Speaker 2: minutes as she was chased over the road down the street,
Speaker 2: she was relaying what was actually happening. So she's run
Speaker 2: over the road. Now at the time, there's also a
Speaker 2: couple of young schoolgirls with their mum who were waiting
Speaker 2: to catch the bus to go to school. I think
Speaker 2: they were primary over daylight. It is, yeah, absolutely amazing,
Speaker 2: and they've run past her, run into the house over
Speaker 2: the road, tried to use the phone off the wall.
Speaker 2: They've chased her through into the backyard. They've ripped the
Speaker 2: phone off that wall in that house. They've chased her
Speaker 2: into the backyard. She's come around and ended up about
Speaker 2: another two houses down before they've eventually caught up with her.
Speaker 2: When we played this triple O call back. So this
Speaker 2: was going live and obviously the calls went over police radio.
Speaker 2: So we've head out there and when we played the
Speaker 2: tape back, I remember my boss at the time basically said,
Speaker 2: lock it away in the evidence cabinet. No one is
Speaker 2: to hear that tape again. It was just too intense,
Speaker 2: too intense, and obviously police, even though we're dealing with
Speaker 2: the trauma and horrible events, there is that curiosity as well,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of people they said I'd like
Speaker 2: to hear that for whatever reason. And it's not morbid,
Speaker 2: it's not black. It's more the fact that I think
Speaker 2: it's the way we're wide. We're investigators. There's an unknown
Speaker 2: element and there is that fascination and it might be
Speaker 2: hard for listeners to understand that, but it's about understanding
Speaker 2: the processes. But our boss just said, not lock it away,
Speaker 2: that will be too traumatic for people to listen to.
Speaker 1: Well, you were one of the first on the scene,
Speaker 1: won't you.
Speaker 2: Yeah. It was interesting because I'd had an operation just
Speaker 2: recently and most of my office was actually at a
Speaker 2: district court matter for a previous matter over at Penrith,
Speaker 2: and not only just arrived at the station, and I
Speaker 2: just had the foot operations. I was sitting around with
Speaker 2: my foot in the moonboot. So the uniform guys were
Speaker 2: first off, and I've jumped in one of the cars
Speaker 2: and gone out there. When we've turned up, I remember
Speaker 2: the uniform guys when girls were there, they'd spray them
Speaker 2: with capsicum spray. They were standing around the body and
Speaker 2: they were chanting and words about Mephistopheles and biel Zabar
Speaker 2: Bobbi's devil references. They wouldn't leave her, and so they
Speaker 2: basically got sprayed and then chucked in the back of
Speaker 2: the paddy wagon. And even in the back of the
Speaker 2: paddy wagon and I've got that you could still hear
Speaker 2: them carrying on with this cultish devil stuff that they
Speaker 2: were sprouting.
Speaker 1: The outpouring of grief from her death. Can you describe
Speaker 1: that and what that was like to witness.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was massive, and that's for me one of
Speaker 2: the big things that hit me. Because our coroner is
Speaker 2: at Westmead as Coiren is the aison officer, and the
Speaker 2: fact that I was on restricted duty had just made
Speaker 2: sense that I would go down for the autopsy, and
Speaker 2: because that was in the same hospital where she worked
Speaker 2: her colleagues and friends. They were gathered around and I've
Speaker 2: never felt anything like it. I have never to this
Speaker 2: day felt anything like it. And that outpouring of emotion.
Speaker 2: And then there was a service in the chapel at
Speaker 2: the hospital as well. They said, look, we're going to
Speaker 2: have a few minutes of service if you want to
Speaker 2: come up for that, and it was it was next level.
Speaker 1: This case is obviously horrible, but as a detective you
Speaker 1: were pretty used to horrible by this stage. What was
Speaker 1: it about this particular case that ultimately made you want
Speaker 1: to leave? Started that process for you of wanting to
Speaker 1: leave the job.
Speaker 2: A lot of it I actually put down to a
Speaker 2: communication barrier that in some ways I had built up.
Speaker 2: Like working in Cabramatta with Vietnamese populations, there was always
Speaker 2: a language barrier. Whilst you could see and feel grief
Speaker 2: and things, it never really had that same impact. Now
Speaker 2: I've never had anything with a family like this one right,
Speaker 2: which also played into it. But there was definitely some
Speaker 2: things where I was at a point even where I'm thinking,
Speaker 2: am I that cold? That I'm not actually feeling a
Speaker 2: lot of the stuff. I was almost robotic, And this
Speaker 2: is the cases before the cases before that, and also
Speaker 2: as coinnes Liason obviously meant oversighting, deceased murders, suicides, accidental deaths,
Speaker 2: natural deaths, overdoses, and maintaining that it was like well
Speaker 2: over one hundred a year, not all murders, and there
Speaker 2: is that coldness to it where you're putting on your
Speaker 2: hat and AKA, there's a process and you go through that,
Speaker 2: and I think that's what a lot of us do
Speaker 2: for survival. There's also a lot of gangland stuff that
Speaker 2: was going on, so there's a lot of retribution. It
Speaker 2: was all over the drugs. It was the heroin capital
Speaker 2: of basically the southern the hemisphere of the world at
Speaker 2: that stage, and there's a lot of gangland violence and
Speaker 2: didn't have that same emotional impact as when you have
Speaker 2: that family unit and kids involved, kids witnessing it, and
Speaker 2: this was just like a little suburban place where we
Speaker 2: all grow up from there.
Speaker 1: Once you'd had that big emotional reaction, did you find
Speaker 1: it harder to emotionally detach once you'd experienced that.
Speaker 2: I look back now and realize that for me, that
Speaker 2: was the start of basically the end. I started questioning myself,
Speaker 2: questioning life and purpose, and things like that and just
Speaker 2: not knowing. So yeah, I look back now, I can
Speaker 2: definitely say that was a turning point.
Speaker 1: This was a few years later that you actually ended
Speaker 1: up leaving, but you checked yourself into a mental health
Speaker 1: facility after retiring. Yeah, tell me about that decision.
Speaker 2: That actually came a bit late. So after that, I
Speaker 2: went to child protection and working with sex crimes, and
Speaker 2: again that was I got to the point where I'm
Speaker 2: looking around at so many people harming each other again, gangland, drugs,
Speaker 2: things like that, and I'm thinking, what purpose am I serving?
Speaker 2: Who am I helping? And I thought I looked around
Speaker 2: and I thought this would be cool. I went into
Speaker 2: it with such a little idea, and I remember when
Speaker 2: I went for the interview for Child Protection and the
Speaker 2: superintendent she said, what do you know about our unit?
Speaker 2: Basically said, I you investigate, you deal with kids. Do
Speaker 2: you know anymore? Nope, there's only the fact that I
Speaker 2: had a little bit of experience as a detective. And
Speaker 2: they said, okay, come on in. And I fell in
Speaker 2: love with it, particularly working with teenagers. It just loved it.
Speaker 2: I had a couple of step kids the same age,
Speaker 2: and I was just attracted to that helping these kids
Speaker 2: that you get kids who perhaps no one believes them
Speaker 2: they're victims in their home, different things and actually see
Speaker 2: you would and feel you're actually doing something, And that
Speaker 2: was good for a while. I had my daughter around
Speaker 2: about that time as well. And then you have those
Speaker 2: obvious implications where you're raising a kid and you're going
Speaker 2: to work and you're seeing abused kids and then the
Speaker 2: same age as your little girl when you're going home.
Speaker 2: So and that just kept building, I suppose, and then
Speaker 2: you reached a point where you just wake up one
Speaker 2: morning and you just can't do it.
Speaker 1: Was it taboo for you to go to a mental
Speaker 1: health facility as a detective?
Speaker 2: I think I was on the crossover when we went
Speaker 2: to child protection. We used to have quarterly psych appointments,
Speaker 2: and I was showing signs and I got to the
Speaker 2: point where I was talking very openly to the psychologist
Speaker 2: or counselor that we were sent to, showing a lot
Speaker 2: of signs. I raised this with the police Medical Officer
Speaker 2: of the PMO. Unfortunately, I still don't think they treated
Speaker 2: it as well as they perhaps do now and understand that,
Speaker 2: and they sent me back in the field. They said, nah,
Speaker 2: you're good. It's good to be angry and let you
Speaker 2: and act the way you are, and here's your gun off.
Speaker 2: You go go back to work and I think, oh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I knew something was wrong, and I had a couple
Speaker 2: of times. I took a bit of time off work,
Speaker 2: I went back a little bit more time, and in
Speaker 2: the end, it just absolutely cracked and basically couldn't even
Speaker 2: leave the house. And that took years. I think in
Speaker 2: the end, I'd had to retell my story to about
Speaker 2: eighteen different shrinks, such as the process. It's not an
Speaker 2: easy process, and that's a difficult thing, and you're constantly
Speaker 2: being put under under examination, not just by medicos but
Speaker 2: every party who's involved, and it's like they're testing you
Speaker 2: to see if you can come back or you can't
Speaker 2: come back. There's a lot of harassment as well that
Speaker 2: went on. They didn't handle it really well, and my
Speaker 2: own doctor had to basically send him a letter saying, listen,
Speaker 2: you've got to give this guy some space, just back
Speaker 2: off everything. It was probably about a month to two
Speaker 2: year process to actually get out of the police, and
Speaker 2: in that time, constantly revisiting and going through weekly, sometimes
Speaker 2: twice weekly, appointments, medication, and then I was out of
Speaker 2: the police. So once I was officially out, but it
Speaker 2: was in a couple of years later I realized there
Speaker 2: was so much stuff that I hadn't properly dealt with.
Speaker 2: Even though I'd been so studious and hard working with
Speaker 2: my sic and going through stuff, there was still some
Speaker 2: stuff that just came back, and that bit me on
Speaker 2: the backside harder what I thought, because here I'm thinking, okay,
Speaker 2: I've put that side apart, and of all things. It
Speaker 2: was a few years later I got a phone call
Speaker 2: from headquarters in town saying, I'm going through your file here.
Speaker 2: You're an ex police. I said, yep, and we've got
Speaker 2: like your ten or fifteen year service medal that we
Speaker 2: have to present to you, but as a mark on
Speaker 2: your file it says don't ever contact because of PTSD
Speaker 2: and it's triggering. I said, okay, yep, And they said,
Speaker 2: do you want to come to a ceremony and receive it?
Speaker 2: And I said, stick it in the mail.
Speaker 1: It really sounds like they didn't treat you. Because you
Speaker 1: can't be the only police officer or detective that experiences
Speaker 1: mental health struggles in this job. It is one of
Speaker 1: the hardest jobs that a person can do, and to
Speaker 1: hear what you had to do to actually get support
Speaker 1: is insane.
Speaker 2: It is. Yeah, And I don't want to bag the police.
Speaker 2: I absolutely love the police and I could see myself
Speaker 2: doing nothing else but the police from when I joined
Speaker 2: and I'm at a stage now I've come full circle
Speaker 2: and I can appreciate it. I just think that we're
Speaker 2: constantly learning and evolving. And I'm also a big believer
Speaker 2: that every single job, every single walk of life has
Speaker 2: its own pressure points. I've got a brother who's a
Speaker 2: subcontractor in the construction industry. When a job finishes, he
Speaker 2: doesn't know where his next job. Now, that's pressure as
Speaker 2: opposed to all weekly paycheck. I see mums with pressures
Speaker 2: of having a baby, holding a house together, doing things
Speaker 2: like everything has their own pressure points. As a society,
Speaker 2: we're still learning and we're going to be learning forever
Speaker 2: with this. And my old adage is, if you've got
Speaker 2: a broken leg, you go to a doctor. I've got
Speaker 2: a broken brain, I go to a doctor. It's the
Speaker 2: same thing. To look at that now, But no, we
Speaker 2: weren't good at handling it. We were coming out of
Speaker 2: the dark ages. We'd had the nineteen ninety four Royal
Speaker 2: Commission into corruption, things were changing in the police that
Speaker 2: they were realizing there were so many hardships that weren't
Speaker 2: dealt with. A lot of that was following up on
Speaker 2: a lot of the military investigations and the military research
Speaker 2: that had been done with post traumatic stress. I think
Speaker 2: for a long time, civilian peacekeeping like police was overlooked
Speaker 2: because it doesn't have perhaps it doesn't seem to have
Speaker 2: the same horrors as standing on a battlefield that the
Speaker 2: soldiers have. But what we've learned in the reality is
Speaker 2: that the police are actually in that position every day,
Speaker 2: and there's also the fear of it. Again, we talk
Speaker 2: about domestic violence a lot because to me, that's like terrorism.
Speaker 2: It's the fear of what can happen next. Policing is
Speaker 2: a lot like that military conflicts. Some people may do
Speaker 2: a career in the military not actually go to a
Speaker 2: hot zone. So we started to become a little bit
Speaker 2: more aware of that and deal with it and put
Speaker 2: those things into place, and again we're continuing to grow. Now.
Speaker 2: I know the police stations and patrols now are actually
Speaker 2: getting to the point where they're assigning a station counselor
Speaker 2: or psychologist who you can actually go to. That's great.
Speaker 2: We've got to keep putting those things, but it's going
Speaker 2: to be time before each individual can say I'm not
Speaker 2: afraid to walk through that door and have people see
Speaker 2: me do that, because that matter about the nurse that
Speaker 2: we're talking about. After that incident, the police response was
Speaker 2: we better do a welfare check and send out a
Speaker 2: counselor everyone involved. There may have been twenty or thirty
Speaker 2: police involved, basically everyone on that day. They turn around
Speaker 2: and say, are we're doing it about midday on Saturday?
Speaker 2: Once we're not working that day. We're not paying you
Speaker 2: to come in. It's voluntary, so it's minimal staffing on
Speaker 2: that Saturday. Anyway, everyone came in. We sat in this
Speaker 2: big room. Council sits in the middle. Now we've got
Speaker 2: like the toughest thirty year veterans sitting there. Everyone's got
Speaker 2: their arms crossed, you know, assuming this pose, and this
Speaker 2: lovely council sits in the middle and says, must have
Speaker 2: been traumatic. You'd like to share their feelings?
Speaker 1: Oh gosh, in a room full of your colleagues.
Speaker 2: And there's everyone there from a first year constable to
Speaker 2: a thirty year veteran, and you've still got that vibe
Speaker 2: that I'll deal with it myself and I'm not going
Speaker 2: to blurt out in front of everyone how I actually feel.
Speaker 2: It was just.
Speaker 1: So awkward, So they meant, well, they just weren't doing
Speaker 1: it in the right way.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and a lot of those measures, there's massive gaps
Speaker 2: in it, Like the quarterly appointments that I used to
Speaker 2: go to for when I was in child protection. There
Speaker 2: was one day I remember basically on my knees and
Speaker 2: I'm crying talking to this counselor, and I say, this
Speaker 2: is about the fifth appointment in a row that I've
Speaker 2: told you how I'm feeling and what's going on. I said,
Speaker 2: are they listening?
Speaker 1: Timing wise, we're talking about the mid to late two thousands,
Speaker 1: So I would hope that in twenty twenty four the
Speaker 1: processes look a bit better. I know that you haven't
Speaker 1: been in the cops for a while, but from what
Speaker 1: you've seen, is it improving?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Well, I still keep in contact with a number
Speaker 2: of colleagues, and I say, that's where I heard that
Speaker 2: they are trying to put in if they haven't already
Speaker 2: counselors or health professionals at a station basis, and that
Speaker 2: would be.
Speaker 1: Greatly one on one, not in a group.
Speaker 2: Not in a group. But again it's that stigma of
Speaker 2: like it would be almost be putting an office in
Speaker 2: the middle of the police station with this big red door.
Speaker 2: You go into that and people are all gonna be going, oh,
Speaker 2: what's wrong with him? What's wrong with her? They got
Speaker 2: head noises? That was always expression. Now you've got head noises,
Speaker 2: and you hear people talk about our billy blogs. I
Speaker 2: don't think you'll ever be back. And then someone would
Speaker 2: return from long term sick and I remember thinking it
Speaker 2: was like a disease. It was a mystery, and it
Speaker 2: was really hard, and people were awkward around them as well.
Speaker 2: It's just yeah, it was treated like we don't want
Speaker 2: to catch that. You just had to put up this
Speaker 2: absolute bullshit mucho defense. Whether you're a female or a male.
Speaker 2: It was just the machismo that had to be there,
Speaker 2: push it down.
Speaker 1: Is there anything you miss about being a detective?
Speaker 2: The intellectual engagement, the critical thinking. Very few cases, though,
Speaker 2: are as interesting as the ones we see on TV.
Speaker 2: Most of them are cut and dried, but still it's
Speaker 2: the challenge of cover all of your bases with time
Speaker 2: and money. Of course, everything is investigated to a budget.
Speaker 2: Your Alimi evidence, your other witness are just putting that
Speaker 2: type brief of evidence together, and particularly what I found
Speaker 2: in child protection, you want to put together the most
Speaker 2: perfect brief of evidence because when you first present and
Speaker 2: serve your brief of evidence on the defense, you want
Speaker 2: them to look at it and go, Okay, that's tight.
Speaker 2: You want to do everything to avoid that child going
Speaker 2: to court to give evidence. Even though it's done remotely
Speaker 2: through video through camera, they're not in the same room.
Speaker 2: There's still a massive intimidation and you don't want to
Speaker 2: put the family through that. So you don't want any
Speaker 2: gaps in your evidence. You want it's so tight that
Speaker 2: they look at and gay, yeah, we can't beat this,
Speaker 2: will plead guilty. And for me, probably ninety nine percent
Speaker 2: of my briefs ended that way. You just spend that
Speaker 2: little bit more time make sure it's airtight. I love
Speaker 2: that challenge of.
Speaker 1: It because there is that part of your job where
Speaker 1: you can do everything possible as the detective in the case,
Speaker 1: but then there's a point where you have to pass
Speaker 1: it over to the legal system and for them to
Speaker 1: actually find the conviction or the answer or the jail
Speaker 1: time is that hard watching that process. If it doesn't
Speaker 1: go the way you wanted it to go, it.
Speaker 2: Can be hard completely. And one of the things that
Speaker 2: I teach in the workshops that I do, and we
Speaker 2: talk about ethics, morality, law, where they all come together
Speaker 2: at the end of the day. Like the DPP who
Speaker 2: prosecute our matters, there is a public interest that they
Speaker 2: have to serve. And I often talk about a murder
Speaker 2: that we investigated and he was charged with murder, willing
Speaker 2: to plead guilty to manslaughter with interfere with a corpse,
Speaker 2: and the DPP had to weigh that up and they think, Okay,
Speaker 2: we know what his defense is. He's going to say
Speaker 2: it was self defense because that's what he told us
Speaker 2: in an interview. He killed a guy. But they're saying, Okay,
Speaker 2: if he pleads guilty to these we'll get eight years
Speaker 2: if we take on the murder. If he gets acquitted,
Speaker 2: if one of the jurors believes his story of self defense,
Speaker 2: then we could have spent two or three million dollars
Speaker 2: on a lengthy trial of taxpayer money and get nothing.
Speaker 1: Which civilians won't really understand when they watch it from
Speaker 1: the outside.
Speaker 2: And I watched it as they explained to the mother
Speaker 2: of this victim, and it's a bitter pill to swallow.
Speaker 2: It's like, but why, Yeah, It's a reality that can
Speaker 2: really wear you down. So I think the way to
Speaker 2: survive is to treat it like a horrible game. It
Speaker 2: really is, and you have this belief that, okay, there
Speaker 2: will be justice at some stage, something will come around
Speaker 2: where you believe in karma or things like that, but
Speaker 2: you've just got to be happy knowing that you have
Speaker 2: done everything that you can.
Speaker 1: You're listening to True Crime Conversations with me Jimmy Bath.
Speaker 1: I'm speaking with Luke Taylor about his time as a detective.
Speaker 1: Up next, tells us about what he did after he
Speaker 1: made the decision to leave policing behind. The techniques that
Speaker 1: you used as a detective, are there any I guess
Speaker 1: that listeners would be surprised by. We're used to watching
Speaker 1: TV and seeing the different techniques on the surface, But
Speaker 1: I've heard you mentioned cabbage before, the old.
Speaker 2: Luminol where they come into a crime scene and they
Speaker 2: spray luminol on the wall. They turn the lights off
Speaker 2: and it looks like a blood bath. And the beauty
Speaker 2: of that is it's a presumptive test for organic matter,
Speaker 2: so something that was once living. So as a crime
Speaker 2: scene fellow, he's tried to hey once, he said, can't
Speaker 2: rub a cabbage on the wall. He said, turn the
Speaker 2: lights off and spray. You'll get the same effect. Really,
Speaker 2: it's a presumptive test. So it's the first step we
Speaker 2: know we've got something organic. Then that will be sent
Speaker 2: away for DNA. And the other great thing that people
Speaker 2: hate to hear is that when you send a sample away,
Speaker 2: the screen doesn't split into a montage of color and
Speaker 2: a Who song play and then after ten seconds it
Speaker 2: flashes up suspect identified. A bit harder than that, and
Speaker 2: a lot longer. Yeah, bulk crime could take months, if
Speaker 2: not years for results to come back, and it's a
Speaker 2: numbers game.
Speaker 1: What's more important do you think DNA or fingerprints in
Speaker 1: a crime scene?
Speaker 2: Great question. I think everything is important. Well, that's a
Speaker 2: good political Everything is important in a crime scene. Obviously
Speaker 2: DNA you could have identical twins, but then so that's
Speaker 2: another point of elimination, whereas fingerprints are individual can be
Speaker 2: hard to get fingerprints at times as well, and even DNA.
Speaker 2: We've made a lot of advances in that stuff, but
Speaker 2: it's still not infallible and DNA, like I had a
Speaker 2: job years ago where a body was cut up and
Speaker 2: we had a head. Pulled the head out of the
Speaker 2: river and an only been in the water for about
Speaker 2: thirty six hours, but we could not get a DNA
Speaker 2: sample out of an entire head really, so we set
Speaker 2: the sample to London, of all places back then, which
Speaker 2: are a little bit more advanced to get mitochondrial DNA
Speaker 2: so we could show us the lineage of the mother.
Speaker 2: But now we've gone so far as well that even
Speaker 2: touching this table it's in front of us, is that
Speaker 2: you could pull maybe ten samples and they cross contaminated. Yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's finding that balance, but then you've got the elimination.
Speaker 2: Also fingerprints too, And one of the things I get
Speaker 2: people to do also with their mobile phone is I'd
Speaker 2: like to test with them saying would your fingerprint or
Speaker 2: DNA if you only had one shot at it, what
Speaker 2: would you do? And everyone obviously says it, well, fingerprints,
Speaker 2: and say I hold your phone up, so grab your phone?
Speaker 1: Now is holding my phone?
Speaker 2: This is great for the list. You can do it
Speaker 2: all yourself. Pick up your phone, have look at the
Speaker 2: points of contact.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now are you getting a full fingerprint?
Speaker 1: No, not a single one. Even my son which is
Speaker 1: on the side of my phone is slightly raised.
Speaker 2: Excellent. And do you have a thumb identification?
Speaker 1: No, because nowadays you do the little click. I've got
Speaker 1: an iPhone, so I do a little click on the side.
Speaker 2: Excellent. I've got a Samsung. And if I doesn't do
Speaker 2: face recognition, I can put my thumb print. But then
Speaker 2: what's the first thing I do once I open an app?
Speaker 2: I swipe?
Speaker 1: You're contaminating it.
Speaker 2: Yes, So there's so many things. So when you get
Speaker 2: an object like that, you've got to look at the physiology.
Speaker 2: How is the object held, how is it used? Do
Speaker 2: you put the phone to your ear or do you
Speaker 2: speak into the speakerphone?
Speaker 1: And that's going to be a different kind of DNA fingerprint.
Speaker 2: We don't like to admit it, but we do spit
Speaker 2: a fair bit when we talk straight into the microphone.
Speaker 1: I've heard quite a few form of detectives people we've
Speaker 1: had on the show talk about the fact that nowadays
Speaker 1: it's a lot harder to get away with, say murder,
Speaker 1: because of all of the technology that we've got. Would
Speaker 1: you agree with that?
Speaker 2: The era of ubiquitous computing, it is all around us,
Speaker 2: all those little RFIDs and things. You can track people
Speaker 2: anywhere you walk down your street now with your phone on,
Speaker 2: and civilians have the capability. But that would be picked
Speaker 2: up by so many different sources, every building, every life,
Speaker 2: I said, r if I do all that radio frequency
Speaker 2: identification things, it sends signals everywhere. Everyone has a phone,
Speaker 2: everyone records stuff. We have dash cams, we have phones.
Speaker 2: It's the era of constant surveillance, and it is we
Speaker 2: can basically pinpoint. Nobody can go cold, nobody can go
Speaker 2: off the grid. They think they can, and fortunately for us,
Speaker 2: most crimes are crimes of passion and there's not that
Speaker 2: much forethought that goes into it.
Speaker 1: So it's almost like your phone could be the thing
Speaker 1: that is your undoing. Really, like, could you solve a
Speaker 1: crime just by tapping into someone's phone?
Speaker 2: That's always the thing in any interview and things like that.
Speaker 2: We won't talk about methodology, but yeah, there are so
Speaker 2: many ways. I mean, everyone knows about cell towers, triangulation,
Speaker 2: they're the basic things, and that still works. So your
Speaker 2: phone's constantly searching for three points in cell towers. So
Speaker 2: when you do triangulation, you put a trace you out
Speaker 2: to keep trying to find that phone until it narrows
Speaker 2: and narrows down. And that can be like a ten
Speaker 2: square meter spot. So you narrow that down, it might
Speaker 2: be back out here on Williams Street somewhere like that.
Speaker 2: And then you'll pick up the other surveillance cameras you
Speaker 2: see how many people were driving in the time. It
Speaker 2: may be a traffic cam that might pick something up.
Speaker 2: The traffic cam might actually pick up a car and
Speaker 2: that car'll have a redger and you say, hey, have
Speaker 2: you got a dash cam in there? Yes? I have?
Speaker 2: If you come from this street, yes, can we check
Speaker 2: your dash cam? Businesses with surveillance ATMs that constantly take
Speaker 2: photos of the people at the ATM but also the
Speaker 2: people who are walking behind them. You go to Cole's Now.
Speaker 2: The other day, I'm putting a credit card in at
Speaker 2: the Coles tap and go section because they don't have
Speaker 2: enough staff to serve me, and it's taking photos of me.
Speaker 2: My photo comes up on the screen.
Speaker 1: There's a little video.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I do my hair, make sure it's all looking good,
Speaker 2: but it's.
Speaker 1: Everywhere after the police force. I mean, you've already alluded
Speaker 1: to it. But you did become an educator. You went
Speaker 1: and restudied. Tell me about how you landed on that
Speaker 1: as your next career, and particularly in creating this workshop,
Speaker 1: these crime stories.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I became a teacher by accident. So a few
Speaker 2: years out I just had to re engage my brain.
Speaker 2: I'd done a lot of reading and research, and so
Speaker 2: one thing I loved was literature. And then it was
Speaker 2: years later I thought, why am I trying to fit
Speaker 2: myself into someone else's box. Just do it I love,
Speaker 2: And so I'd picked up a couple of subjects. I'm
Speaker 2: literally just eighteenth century English poetry, Shakespeare and things like that.
Speaker 2: And for two years I was just doing subjects. I thought,
Speaker 2: I'm going to be a writer or a journo.
Speaker 1: Ah, there you go.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I thought I'm going to be an alcoholic journalist.
Speaker 1: There's a stereotype for it.
Speaker 2: I know. It's been like the alcoholic police, isn't it
Speaker 2: the same thing, same stereotype. Yeah, And I started doing
Speaker 2: those subjects. Did my pregnant After about two weeks of observation,
Speaker 2: I got to stand up nervously in front of these
Speaker 2: year ten kids because they're not judgmental.
Speaker 1: I love that you're nervous about year ten kids when
Speaker 1: you have come from the world of crime.
Speaker 2: I tried to say to them. Look at twenty one,
Speaker 2: I'm run around a gun on my hip, I said.
Speaker 2: And then mid thirties. Here I'm shaking like a leaf
Speaker 2: in front of these year ten kids. But it just
Speaker 2: came out of me. I started talking about literary techniques
Speaker 2: and things, and I said, now, oh, I'm not even working.
Speaker 2: This is just amazing, and I get to share my
Speaker 2: enthusiasm and just watch people respond to that, and I
Speaker 2: absolutely loved it. It was basically just glorified babysitting in
Speaker 2: a particular school. I got to work there. I signed
Speaker 2: on this school I'd never been to before, and I
Speaker 2: went and locked myself into toilets. I was soaking wet.
Speaker 2: I'm pulling handtaels off the walls, sticking them down my shirt.
Speaker 2: And it was a make or break moment. I thought,
Speaker 2: I just want to run home. I'm in tears, I'm sweating,
Speaker 2: I can't move. I was just paralyzed again. Yeah, that
Speaker 2: moment I went out. I did a lesson and luckily
Speaker 2: that was that got me through. But yeah, and you
Speaker 2: still get days like that. You still have days like that.
Speaker 2: Everything is a challenge. But I know I'm not going
Speaker 2: to die. Yeah, that's a big thing. And I know
Speaker 2: for most cases, I'm not putting myself in that position
Speaker 2: that it was that the police are doing every day.
Speaker 2: Now my heart goes out to them for they're still
Speaker 2: doing it.
Speaker 1: Well, eventually you found a way to kind of combine
Speaker 1: your two loves detective work and teaching. If I was
Speaker 1: to walk into one of your workshops crime story workshops,
Speaker 1: what would I find or what would be presented to me?
Speaker 2: Well, you wouldn't solve it. I don't think you're good enough.
Speaker 1: What I could do it? Right? Is this what the
Speaker 1: kids will say?
Speaker 2: Ah, they pick up the first piece of evidence and
Speaker 2: they're doing I got this, I've got this, And it
Speaker 2: is so convoluted and twisting and turning with exculpatry and
Speaker 2: culpatory evidence or red herrings as people like to call
Speaker 2: them in the literary world. It messes with their minds.
Speaker 1: So they literally walk into a crime scene that you
Speaker 1: set up.
Speaker 2: So we set them up, so we have these digitally
Speaker 2: printed backdrops. They're six meters long two and a half
Speaker 2: meters tall, big aluminium frame and they go over the
Speaker 2: top of that. We have one on each end of
Speaker 2: the room, so there's two crime scenes in front of that,
Speaker 2: and they're based on real crimes that I've investigated, So
Speaker 2: we've put components together of that, and all the exhibits
Speaker 2: are laid out to evidence markers, and there's about eight
Speaker 2: evidence most there's hundreds of exhibits and they've got to
Speaker 2: work their way through that, and then they'll cross over
Speaker 2: at the midway point and do the other investigation. And
Speaker 2: then if you're doing a full day one, maybe we're
Speaker 2: doing legal studies, or for the corporate workshops, we'll do
Speaker 2: conversation management. They actually get to interview a couple of witnesses.
Speaker 2: I get to play Gary the Garbo and I play hardball.
Speaker 2: What do they learn.
Speaker 1: By basically playing detective?
Speaker 2: Like?
Speaker 1: How does that help them?
Speaker 2: Mine originally was based on writing. So I went to
Speaker 2: got to Master's of writing, and while I'm sitting in class,
Speaker 2: I'm watching these kids struggle with the concepts of writing.
Speaker 2: The school I went who was big on project based learning,
Speaker 2: and we were taught to do that and I took
Speaker 2: some kids who were really low literacy, actually said to them,
Speaker 2: you want to come and make a video game, so
Speaker 2: let's make Grand Theft Auto. And what I did I
Speaker 2: used these objects this experiential learning, so we basically described
Speaker 2: our observations and what we were doing. I parked the
Speaker 2: car and the bush left the doors open. We got
Speaker 2: to it and said, right, the offenders had gone, which
Speaker 2: way did they go? And we would record our observation.
Speaker 2: So I had the course of a week, these guys
Speaker 2: put together a brilliant piece of writing for guys who
Speaker 2: could hardly write. So I then looked into experiential learning
Speaker 2: and thought, right, if we do this properly, there are
Speaker 2: better ways to teach these kids.
Speaker 1: So I'm imagining and like for someone to help them
Speaker 1: with English. It's like by sitting there and having to
Speaker 1: describe pieces of evidence, that's going to help them with
Speaker 1: the way they use their words in their writing completely.
Speaker 2: So I start the workshop with one of my stories.
Speaker 2: I then get them to become detectives. I say, okay,
Speaker 2: I was the star of the show. Now you're the
Speaker 2: star of the show. What you need to be as
Speaker 2: a writer is you need to then transfer that power
Speaker 2: to the reader. So I'm saying to them, give the
Speaker 2: power to the reader. Let them solve it. It's not
Speaker 2: about you telling him your inferences and what you think
Speaker 2: you've solved. The power of simply just recording their observations
Speaker 2: at a crime scene and leaving it. You then have
Speaker 2: the power of the reader going, oh, I think this
Speaker 2: has happened or that's happened. You don't solve it, you
Speaker 2: build it gradually. The human nature we all want to
Speaker 2: solve things. We all want to be right, and we
Speaker 2: all want to solve things. And the ability is not
Speaker 2: to tell them. You guide them. So by using your observations,
Speaker 2: even in a short piece of writing, it's powerful and engages.
Speaker 1: What has surprise the kids about the experience. What is
Speaker 1: the feedback you've been getting.
Speaker 2: Even the most hard headed teenage boy who wants to
Speaker 2: kick his football at your head and say this is lame.
Speaker 2: I don't want to do this. They come into it
Speaker 2: at the end of the workshop. They've got this book
Speaker 2: of all is writing all these observations and paragraphs, and
Speaker 2: they go, how did you get me to write? You
Speaker 2: tricked me? That's the thing. They get so immersed in
Speaker 2: this knowing that it's a true crime, and they con
Speaker 2: solve it and they're the clues that they start acting
Speaker 2: the way they always do. And that's when we can
Speaker 2: work with and work with their strengths and say, right,
Speaker 2: this is your natural ability, let's move this, let's work
Speaker 2: with that. It's a real eye happened. They just yeah,
Speaker 2: they don't know what they're actually doing and how much
Speaker 2: they're achieving. And we reflect back on that throughout the day.
Speaker 1: Do you ever hold a session with these kids and think, oh,
Speaker 1: that kid could be a detective?
Speaker 2: Oh? Yes, I'm amazed. Particularly girls, they are obsessed with
Speaker 2: true crime. They know more than me. They are amazing.
Speaker 2: The things that they tell me. I just go, wow,
Speaker 2: it's scary, but and I love it. It's the way
Speaker 2: they think. And I've got to say that eighty percent
Speaker 2: of the kids in school who can really get their
Speaker 2: teeth into that, they are females. They're amazing. We're at
Speaker 2: a school the other day at Lucas Heights. So were
Speaker 2: fantastic and the boys were really good as well, but
Speaker 2: they were all high performing kids and these guys were fantastic.
Speaker 2: But generally it's the girls and it's the way they think.
Speaker 2: They just go deep into it. As a lot, the
Speaker 2: boys can be quite shallow. I was one of them,
Speaker 2: still am, but I've grown up a bit and surface level,
Speaker 2: whereas these girls go what if, what if? What if?
Speaker 2: And they just go deeper and deeper and it's fantastic.
Speaker 1: So does it give you confidence? Obviously we do have
Speaker 1: amazing people in the police force now, but for the
Speaker 1: future of the police force, and you're hopeful that when
Speaker 1: these kids that you're teaching maybe one day become detectives,
Speaker 1: that they are going to have that support and be
Speaker 1: in that career for decades and decades and decades and
Speaker 1: be able to kind of continue that job.
Speaker 2: That would be amazing because I think the average career
Speaker 2: is down about three years now. Really it was about
Speaker 2: seven when I got out.
Speaker 1: Three years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's a similar thing to teaching what I'm
Speaker 2: seeing obviously having been in both industries. So when I joined,
Speaker 2: you had people you could have a trade or you'd
Speaker 2: have an HSC to get into the police. Then once
Speaker 2: we got out, we had to do like a Constable's
Speaker 2: Development program, which is basically to get you an advanced diploma.
Speaker 2: My detective's course was an advanced diploma and then it's
Speaker 2: now a degree level, and I think that they're going
Speaker 2: to have five six careers. They've done a lot of careers,
Speaker 2: work in skills. They're going to have five or six careers.
Speaker 1: That's a shame with police because seniority is important.
Speaker 2: It's amazing. Yes, that accumulating knowledge. You can't just buy that.
Speaker 2: You cannot read a book to get that. You've got
Speaker 2: to earn that and it takes time, and it scares
Speaker 2: me that that knowledge can just disappear.
Speaker 1: Well, hopefully all those smart girls and boys that you're teaching,
Speaker 1: well one day get there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's that critical thinking. And again it's what
Speaker 2: they also realized and we try to help them realize,
Speaker 2: which may not be good for the police, is it's
Speaker 2: they're transferable skills. They can use that anywhere. That's the
Speaker 2: essence train at anything. But if you've got communication, literacy
Speaker 2: and those transferable skills and that empathy and understanding, you
Speaker 2: could be trained to do anything.
Speaker 1: Thanks to Luke for telling us his story. True Crime
Speaker 1: Conversations is a Muma mea podcast hosted and produced by
Speaker 1: me Jamma Bath with audio design by Scott Stronik. Our
Speaker 1: executive producer is Crystal Cornielsen, thanks so much for listening.
Speaker 1: I'll be back next week with another true crime conversation.