Speaker 1: Kyoda, I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page,
Speaker 1: a daily podcast presented by The New Zealand Herald. In
Speaker 1: twenty eleven, ends at Herald journalist David Fisher became aware
Speaker 1: that a woman had been caught catfishing dozens of teenage
Speaker 1: boys and young men across New Zealand. Catfishing is a
Speaker 1: term used for people who use stolen photos to pretend
Speaker 1: to be someone else online, usually to form.
Speaker 2: Relationships with real people across social media.
Speaker 1: Fisher would go on to expose the woman behind the
Speaker 1: false online accounts as Natalia Burger's.
Speaker 2: She referred to herself as the Puppeteer.
Speaker 1: Fisher interviewed her on several occasions before she went to
Speaker 1: jail for charges related to her online activity. He thought
Speaker 1: she would have learnt her lesson, but two years ago
Speaker 1: he received an email from a woman who had her
Speaker 1: photos stolen by Burgess and it was ruining her life.
Speaker 1: Fisher explored Burgess's actions in the true crime podcast Chasing
Speaker 1: Ghosts the Puppeteer, and he joins us today on the
Speaker 1: Front Page.
Speaker 2: To discuss what he learned. Fish.
Speaker 1: When you first reported on Natalia Burgess in twenty eleven,
Speaker 1: did you think you would still be talking about her
Speaker 1: thirteen years later?
Speaker 3: Back in twenty eleven, this story, the Facebook predator story,
Speaker 3: as it was known at the time, it seemed to
Speaker 3: me that it was going to exist like most stories do,
Speaker 3: that it unfolds with in a fairly confined space and
Speaker 3: then becomes consigned to our cultural memory, consigned to history.
Speaker 3: It wasn't something that I thought I was going to
Speaker 3: come back to. Her being sent to president twenty thirteen
Speaker 3: seemed to draw a line under it. And it's perhaps
Speaker 3: the naive side of me that I can't scrub out
Speaker 3: that thought, Well, she'll learn a lesson and move on
Speaker 3: with life, and that will be that fish.
Speaker 1: Can you sum up in your own words what Natalia
Speaker 1: Bird just did back when you first investigated this case
Speaker 1: and when she went to jail.
Speaker 3: So the thing that was striking about this case from
Speaker 3: the outset was police had said that they were seeking
Speaker 3: or investigating an individual who had catfished or formed online relationships,
Speaker 3: was how police phrased it at the time, with around
Speaker 3: forty boys that were out of high school in christ Church,
Speaker 3: and that kind of set the tone for the investigation
Speaker 3: that followed. It seemed most of Natalia's online interactions were
Speaker 3: very much focused on teenage boys and forming romantic relationships
Speaker 3: with them.
Speaker 4: There was another stream.
Speaker 3: Of style of offending us supposed, which was forming almost
Speaker 3: high school clique girly type groups with others that she
Speaker 3: had encountered on social media. And it was also fascinating
Speaker 3: that she created her own clique of half a dozen
Speaker 3: false characters that would travel as a pack. So that
Speaker 3: was really the main focus was forming romantic relationships with
Speaker 3: teenage boys.
Speaker 1: And then you got the email from Crystal Jenner in
Speaker 1: twenty twenty two.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry to bother you, but the article you recently
Speaker 5: published and the above subject was sent to me by
Speaker 5: a friend, as Natalia Burgess has been using my images
Speaker 5: since twenty fourteen till current catfish multiple people, both men
Speaker 5: and women. I've had four men and one woman contact
Speaker 5: me in the last four months.
Speaker 1: What was your first reaction to learning Entalia was doing
Speaker 1: it all over again.
Speaker 3: It was almost deflating, actually, in the sense that I'd
Speaker 3: read Crystal's email and I thought, really, is she really
Speaker 3: still doing that? We're almost ten years down the track,
Speaker 3: or in fact, we were beyond ten years down the
Speaker 3: track at that stage, and she seemed to be bagging
Speaker 3: the same drum. It was intriguing, but plainly I felt
Speaker 3: somewhat deflated. I felt that I was going to be
Speaker 3: writing about the same person doing the same thing in
Speaker 3: the same way, and that didn't initially hold a huge appeal.
Speaker 1: You've investigated this case across five episodes of the latest
Speaker 1: Chasing Ghosts season The Puppeteer. You spoke to a number
Speaker 1: of people who had dealings with Natalia, but I understand
Speaker 1: that you contacted many, many more people about this. Why
Speaker 1: didn't they want to talk?
Speaker 3: Almost universally from those people that didn't want to come
Speaker 3: forward was the pain that they were left with, the
Speaker 3: trauma that they had experienced as a result of their
Speaker 3: interactions with Natalia. And this was part of broadening my
Speaker 3: knowledge as well as to the nature of her offending
Speaker 3: because it had shifted since she had come out of prison.
Speaker 3: She wasn't targeting teenage boys quite so much, and there
Speaker 3: was also the discovery that there was another pool of
Speaker 3: victims that she deliberately and relentlessly targeted, and that was
Speaker 3: teenage girls and their mums, who she went on to
Speaker 3: form very long and very meaningful relationships with through her
Speaker 3: false characters, and so it had evolved quite a bit
Speaker 3: in the nature of the story, and as I spoke
Speaker 3: to them, the drawball was plain to see. But the
Speaker 3: thing that really struck me was how deep those relationships
Speaker 3: have been. The previous encounter with her back in twenty eleven.
Speaker 3: The boys that she was forming a relationship with online,
Speaker 3: and a lot of them were boys as young as thirteen.
Speaker 3: Those relationships might be a matter of months, perhaps six months,
Speaker 3: even stretched out to a year or so, but when
Speaker 3: it came to those more familiar, less romantic relationships, they
Speaker 3: would stretch on for years. There was a mom and
Speaker 3: daughter in Australia who feature on the podcast. They've been
Speaker 3: involved with Natalia's false character for six years and for
Speaker 3: them discovering that the person they thought existed, this character Kaylee,
Speaker 3: was fake, was incredibly painful.
Speaker 4: It's so so damaging, really hurtful.
Speaker 1: I thought, well, how can this person do this for
Speaker 1: so long, tending to be someone else? Why would they
Speaker 1: do it?
Speaker 3: You know, because it's she treated us like her mom
Speaker 3: and her sister, and it's her.
Speaker 1: And annoying that she's done all this for what what
Speaker 1: reason would she get out of doing this?
Speaker 4: So upsets me the most.
Speaker 3: You know, and that was a feature with many of
Speaker 3: the people that I'd encountered. There was one woman who
Speaker 3: had agreed to an interview because her and her son
Speaker 3: had been instead by Natalia Goodness fifteen years ago or
Speaker 3: more perhaps, and she was initially keen to speak to me,
Speaker 3: but when she checked it with her son, it created
Speaker 3: a spiral of mood, a downward spiral of mood, and
Speaker 3: someone that's now man fifteen years on and was just
Speaker 3: too painful, too difficult for him to contemplate his mum
Speaker 3: speaking about it.
Speaker 1: It is incredible to learn about the web that Natalia
Speaker 1: weaved over so long a period, and it's obviously traumatized
Speaker 1: a lot of people still, even like you said, over
Speaker 1: a decade later.
Speaker 2: We should take a moment here.
Speaker 1: To specify as well that Burgess herself has her own
Speaker 1: mental health issues in a pretty rough past as well.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, that's correct.
Speaker 3: Natalia really went through a very very difficult time as
Speaker 3: a girl and a teenager, and as I partly learned
Speaker 3: and have discovered much more with this recent round of reporting,
Speaker 3: she has serious mental health issues with which she's wrestling
Speaker 3: borderline personality disorder and more recently diagnosed schizophrenia really complicate
Speaker 3: the way that she sees the world or the way
Speaker 3: that she interacts with the world.
Speaker 1: How difficult was that in making the series, balancing her
Speaker 1: victims stories and Natalia's issues.
Speaker 3: I think it was really just about listening to Natalia
Speaker 3: and listening to the victims and understanding the direction from
Speaker 3: their respective positions. It would have been very easy to
Speaker 3: have listened only to the victims who had such compelling stories,
Speaker 3: whose pain was so close to the surface that it
Speaker 3: was impossible to miss, to listen only to those victims
Speaker 3: and to be close ed to Natalia.
Speaker 4: But you can't do that. In journalism.
Speaker 3: It's all sides of the story there for the investigating,
Speaker 3: and we have an obligation, I think, to approach all
Speaker 3: sides of those stories in the same even handed, empathetic way.
Speaker 3: And so the more that was learned about Natalia, and
Speaker 3: the better picture that developed of how she saw the
Speaker 3: world and how she interacted with the world, it became
Speaker 3: I think evident as we work through the podcast that
Speaker 3: she had a very compelling story to share in terms
Speaker 3: of how the offending that she committed came to be.
Speaker 3: It didn't invalidate it doesn't date any of the victim's stories.
Speaker 3: Speaking to the offender, and most of all, listening to
Speaker 3: an offender when you write about crime stories does not
Speaker 3: invalidate the victims of crime or the stories that they
Speaker 3: have to tell. I think what it does is it
Speaker 3: informs our understanding of how that crime happened in the
Speaker 3: first place, and one would hope provides our communities at
Speaker 3: a wider society the tools that they need to stop
Speaker 3: that kind of offending from happening again, or at least
Speaker 3: finding a way to deal with it better than we
Speaker 3: have before.
Speaker 6: I understand that I've hurt people, and I've understand that
Speaker 6: I don't have any empathy. I'm sorry, but I don't.
Speaker 6: There's one thing I don't have. I had it when
Speaker 6: I was young, but then I just stopped caring about people.
Speaker 1: These stories develop over time while you're making them right.
Speaker 1: I understand you explored online safety a bit more in depth,
Speaker 1: and if the laws we have in New Zealand are working,
Speaker 1: what did that safe tell you about the state of
Speaker 1: internet safety in our country.
Speaker 4: There were some real big picture issues that came into.
Speaker 3: Focus through the course of investigating this, and that was
Speaker 3: about the environment in which Natalia and the victims of
Speaker 3: her behavior were existing that online environment. I wanted to
Speaker 3: get a really good understanding of the state of our
Speaker 3: laws in New Zealand and also global perspective of whether
Speaker 3: these social media giants were good community citizens. Did their
Speaker 3: business help our world function better and help our communities
Speaker 3: be better than they were before. And so yes, net
Speaker 3: Safe and police and others were interviewed as part of this,
Speaker 3: And where we got to was that the introduction of
Speaker 3: the Harmful Digital Communications Act in twenty fifteen really provided
Speaker 3: a good pathway in New Zealand for people who had
Speaker 3: been on the end of behaviors such as Natalias, to
Speaker 3: raise with authorities the issues that they had and try
Speaker 3: and find some sort of a resolution. So net safe
Speaker 3: provides a mediated resolution, Police provide a criminal pathway, and
Speaker 3: so those tools are there and they're available for authorities
Speaker 3: to use. They're available for those that have suffered at
Speaker 3: the sharp end to take advantage of. What I did
Speaker 3: discover is that the problem here is volume and also
Speaker 3: I suppose the pyramid of online offending.
Speaker 4: So when I talk about the pyramid.
Speaker 3: I talked to police over the years, spoken to our
Speaker 3: intelligence agencies about national security style issues, and at the
Speaker 3: top of the pyramid are really big, really complicated issues
Speaker 3: that our enforcement agencies and intelligence agencies are very much
Speaker 3: focused on because of the devastating impact they could have
Speaker 3: to a wide number of US And so I'm talking
Speaker 3: about national security, terrorism type issues, transnational organized crime, the
Speaker 3: extraordinary financial crime reporting that my colleague Lane Nichols has
Speaker 3: done such.
Speaker 4: Remarkable work on.
Speaker 3: And when you get down to the bottom of the pyramid,
Speaker 3: those things that happen lots, but they happen to individuals.
Speaker 3: There's this type of thing that Natali was doing, I mean,
Speaker 3: her mode of behavior and what she's doing really as
Speaker 3: well out of the box. It'll be hard to find
Speaker 3: I think anyone in New Zealand and possibly even wider
Speaker 3: afield that has done what she's done at the scale
Speaker 3: she's done it for the time she's done it, goodness,
Speaker 3: twenty three years. But that volume crime, it's kind of
Speaker 3: like burglary if you moved it into the real world,
Speaker 3: the sort of crime that happens at a really really
Speaker 3: high rate and it affects a very large volume of people,
Speaker 3: some of whom will be really badly affected, but broadly
Speaker 3: it's an awful invasion and one that people find a
Speaker 3: way to incorporate in their life and move on.
Speaker 4: Very very large numbers of victims.
Speaker 3: And for police, they have to investigate this investigated the
Speaker 3: same way that they would have very serious crime if
Speaker 3: they're going to do it to the fullest of their abilities.
Speaker 3: It requires large numbers of officers to do canvassing of
Speaker 3: the neighborhood. It requires a scene of crime forensic technicians
Speaker 3: to dust down and look for fingerprints and other signs.
Speaker 3: It requires police to use an expertise in matching up
Speaker 3: with other crimes that are of a similar nature. So
Speaker 3: it can be incredibly, incredibly time consuming and it's a
Speaker 3: very difficult area for police to perform effectively in because
Speaker 3: of the share volume of it. And I think it
Speaker 3: sits in the same space, but with it sitting in
Speaker 3: the same space, there's a further complication too. And police
Speaker 3: acknowledge this that their transition from policing in our physical
Speaker 3: world to policing our online world is a work in progress.
Speaker 3: Across the nation, we have more than ten thousand police
Speaker 3: within the cyber crime or high tech crime unit. There's
Speaker 3: two hundred and that's number that's going to have to grow.
Speaker 3: Significantly over time, along with building capability so that you
Speaker 3: don't get fresh comfortable sitting down at a computer wanting it,
Speaker 3: trying to work out how to turn it on. So
Speaker 3: you've got this vastly growing volume crime that's happening, not
Speaker 3: a huge amount of policing resource that's focused on it,
Speaker 3: although that's growing and there's an awareness that it needs
Speaker 3: to grow further, and it makes it difficult from a
Speaker 3: domestic enforcement perspective to really get a.
Speaker 4: Grip on him.
Speaker 1: And you also put cybercrime and these laws to the
Speaker 1: relevant ministers.
Speaker 2: Hey, what did they have to say?
Speaker 3: I approached Justice Minister Paul Goldsmith's office and Police Minister
Speaker 3: Mark Mitchell and their response was largely, we're doing things
Speaker 3: and look at the things that we're doing, which were
Speaker 3: these really big picture stuff, the stuff that's at the
Speaker 3: top of the pyramid. And so that very much has
Speaker 3: New Zealand keeping in pace with partner agencies offshore and
Speaker 3: when it comes to the top of the pyramid, it
Speaker 3: does put us in a better position as far as
Speaker 3: information sharing with foreign partners goes, as far as addressing
Speaker 3: those top of the pyramid types of crime, not so
Speaker 3: much down the bottom end.
Speaker 4: Of the volume crime area, and Mark.
Speaker 3: Mitchell did have some acknowledgment that there were changes that
Speaker 3: were taking place that did need to and.
Speaker 4: Were happening there.
Speaker 3: I think perhaps the speed at which those things are
Speaker 3: happening is an issue that police should be talking about
Speaker 3: and talking with wider communities about. But yeah, it's not
Speaker 3: something that's off the government's radar. But again, it's the
Speaker 3: burglary thing. There's plenty of big, nasty, angry beasts out
Speaker 3: there before you start dealing with rats and mice.
Speaker 1: One thing I saw in the Facebook comments on the
Speaker 1: stories of Natalia was people think she just must be
Speaker 1: enjoying the attention the series is given her.
Speaker 2: Is that a relevant concern to you?
Speaker 3: Well, I can say that she's not enjoying it. Natalia
Speaker 3: is discomfort with her activities being inquired into again, and
Speaker 3: she's made playing to me on a number of occasions,
Speaker 3: and there's a number of reasons for that. Some of
Speaker 3: that self preservation in terms of concern about what may
Speaker 3: happen to her. She's also deeply concerned about the impact
Speaker 3: on her parents that she doesn't want them to see
Speaker 3: her in the public sphere having her behavior talked about again. Yeah,
Speaker 3: so I do have some concern that people would assume.
Speaker 4: That she's getting out of this things that she is not.
Speaker 3: And for those that do think that this is all
Speaker 3: fun and games for her, it's certainly not the case.
Speaker 1: She told you when you interviewed her again in this
Speaker 1: year for Chasing Ghosts, that she's stopped.
Speaker 4: And you're here telling me now that you've.
Speaker 2: Stopped about a year ago.
Speaker 4: Yeah, how can I know that's true?
Speaker 2: You can't.
Speaker 6: It's my word against your word and every other girl
Speaker 6: that I've ever stolen pictures from.
Speaker 2: But she told you that before.
Speaker 1: Hey, And speaking to colleagues around the office, because we've
Speaker 1: all been listening, the consensus is that people don't believe
Speaker 1: her at all. What's your final takeaway? Do you believe her?
Speaker 3: I think there's a lot of things that Natalia says
Speaker 3: that are difficult to believe, and I don't necessarily think
Speaker 3: that she has a total control over those things because
Speaker 3: of the various mental health issues that she's wrestling with.
Speaker 4: I will wait.
Speaker 3: And see whether I get another email a year down
Speaker 3: the track or ten years down the track that tells
Speaker 3: me that she's doing it again. I think it'll be
Speaker 3: overly bold to think that that is going to be
Speaker 3: the case right now, right this minute. I do think, though,
Speaker 3: that it's highly likely that she will not be using
Speaker 3: the images that belong to Crystal Jenna, the young New
Speaker 3: Zealand woman who's living and see if his paradise in Australia.
Speaker 3: She was the face for many of Natalia's recent false
Speaker 3: personas that she created online. I don't think that Crystal's
Speaker 3: image is going to be used by Natalia again, and
Speaker 3: I think that's because of self preservation. I think that
Speaker 3: Natalia will consider Crystal to be too hot to handle
Speaker 3: and leave her be.
Speaker 1: I think something I really struggled with listening to Chasing
Speaker 1: Ghosts the Puppeteer is I've got empathy obviously for the
Speaker 1: victims and the trauma that they've experienced at the hands
Speaker 1: of Natalia, but also you see the other side as well,
Speaker 1: with Natalia and you, and you kind of I felt
Speaker 1: guilty for empathizing with her.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering how you felt doing this.
Speaker 3: I when reporting on these stories, I find that, and
Speaker 3: I've long found this, that my feelings don't come into it,
Speaker 3: and it's possible to box those up and put them
Speaker 3: to one side. My obligation is to the audience and
Speaker 3: to journalism, and that might sound a bit idealist, but
Speaker 3: I am and I've.
Speaker 4: Got to live up to that responsibility.
Speaker 3: It would be letting down journalism, which I love and
Speaker 3: our audience for whom I have a huge amount of
Speaker 3: thanks and respect for to inject my personal feelings into.
Speaker 4: Something like this.
Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us, David, and you can listen to
Speaker 1: Chasing Ghosts the Puppeteer.
Speaker 2: Now wherever you get your podcasts.
Speaker 1: That said, for this episode of the Front Page, you
Speaker 1: can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
Speaker 1: at zat herold dot co dot z. The Front Page
Speaker 1: is produced by Ethan Sells with sound engineer Patty Fox.
Speaker 2: I'm Chelsea Daniels.
Speaker 1: Subscribe to The Front Page on iHeartRadio or wherever you
Speaker 1: get your podcasts, and tune in tomorrow for another look
Speaker 1: behind the headlines.