Speaker 1: This episode of A Moment in Crime refers to murders,
Speaker 1: including the killing of children. It also contains descriptions of
Speaker 1: post mortem examinations and forensic evidence. This content is intended
Speaker 1: for a mature audience.
Speaker 2: Mark Lundy did it.
Speaker 1: He murdered his wife, Christine and their young daughter Amber
Speaker 1: and their Parmeston North home. A New Zealand's leading pathologist,
Speaker 1: after working on the Lundee case for years, can tell
Speaker 1: you why he's sure, without a shadow of a doubt,
Speaker 1: Lundy is a double murderer. I know there's many people
Speaker 1: out there that don't believe Lundee is responsible. They think
Speaker 1: that he's been stitched up, that someone else did it.
Speaker 1: Since the day it happened, Lundy himself has protested his innocence,
Speaker 1: but he was the only one who could have done it.
Speaker 1: That's what two High Court juries have decided at separate
Speaker 1: murder trials, and Kenrick temple Camp backs them based on
Speaker 1: the science of the case. In this episode of A
Speaker 1: Moment in Crime, you'll hear more about Kenrick's work on
Speaker 1: the Lundy case, dubbed Operation Winter by police, and you'll
Speaker 1: find out what he thinks about another infamous New Zealand
Speaker 1: double murder the polarizing case of Scott Watson, convicted of
Speaker 1: killing Ben Smart and Olivia Hope during New Year's celebrations
Speaker 1: in nineteen ninety nine. Usually, episodes of a Moment of
Speaker 1: Crime focus on old cases, cold cases, or recent cases
Speaker 1: of national and international significance involving Keiwi offenders or victims. Today,
Speaker 1: I'll take you to the other side of the cordon
Speaker 1: inside Kinrick's world. Since the nineteen eighties, he's been tasked
Speaker 1: with establishing the cause of death for countless men, women
Speaker 1: and children. He's also been called in to solve the
Speaker 1: baffling health mysteries of the living, and he spends hours
Speaker 1: in a lab each week examining various samples and swabs
Speaker 1: to diagnose everything from viruses to cancer. Kenrick has written
Speaker 1: three books on the work he does and has pa
Speaker 1: about His latest is called The Final Diagnosis and is
Speaker 1: available now with the booker. It was the perfect opportunity
Speaker 1: to talk with a man who knows more about murder
Speaker 1: than most people in New Zealand. I'll include information in
Speaker 1: the show notes about his books and a link to
Speaker 1: my story about Kenrick's vast and varied career.
Speaker 2: If there's other cases you.
Speaker 1: Want to hear about on a Moment in Crime. Email
Speaker 1: me at Anna dot leask at enzme dot co dot Nz.
Speaker 1: From the who dunnets in cold cases to the strange
Speaker 1: and quirky, crime is one of the most fascinating corners
Speaker 1: of society and the news. From the New Zealand Herald
Speaker 1: newsroom comes a Moment in Crime, a podcast delving into
Speaker 1: some of New Zealand's most high profile cases, offenses and offenders.
Speaker 1: Each month, I'll take you inside some of our most
Speaker 1: infamous incidents, notorious offenders, and behind the scenes of high
Speaker 1: profile trials and events to show you what's really happening
Speaker 1: in your backyard. Kindric temple Camp was born in Zimbabwe,
Speaker 1: emigrating to New Zealand in nineteen eighty seven and settling
Speaker 1: in Parmesan North, where he joined the local pathology practice.
Speaker 1: Pathologists are specialist doctors who diagnose and study human diseases
Speaker 1: and conditions. The job is extremely varied and can range
Speaker 1: from testing tissue and fluid samples to diagnosing diseases and
Speaker 1: investigating deaths. Those deaths might be due to an illness,
Speaker 1: something sudden or mysterious, or the result of a crime.
Speaker 1: The latter generally requires them to stand up in court
Speaker 1: and explain an intense.
Speaker 2: Detail how and why a person died.
Speaker 1: Their evidence is then considered by a jury in determining
Speaker 1: whether a person charged is guilty or not. Over the years,
Speaker 1: Kinrick has seen it all, and he's pretty much written
Speaker 1: about it all. In twenty eighteen, his first book, The
Speaker 1: Cause of Death, was published, in which he lifted the
Speaker 1: lid on the most unusual stories of death and murder
Speaker 1: had encountered during his career. The Quick in the Dead
Speaker 1: followed in twenty twenty, covering the unlikely, extraordinary, obscure, and
Speaker 1: often tragic ways humans meet their end, and in June
Speaker 1: twenty twenty four, The Final Diagnosis. He's ken rec explaining
Speaker 1: the new book how he chooses which cases of the
Speaker 1: thousands he oversees every year to write about, and why
Speaker 1: he includes living patients.
Speaker 3: It's a continuation. They're really a trilogy because they are
Speaker 3: all my memoirs of cases that I've been involved with.
Speaker 3: The first book was predominant. It was one hundred percent
Speaker 3: about autopsies and the dead. The second book, The Quick
Speaker 3: and the Dead, and this one, The Final Diagnosis. It's
Speaker 3: a mixed bag of autopsies obviously on people who have
Speaker 3: had unusual or suspicious deaths, and some murders as well,
Speaker 3: and people who've had unusual diseases, unusual presentation of diseases,
Speaker 3: or actually make a point. So there are quite a
Speaker 3: few live people in live patients in my new book
Speaker 3: in which I talk about their diseases, and that's a
Speaker 3: little bit different.
Speaker 1: And how do you select the cases for each book?
Speaker 1: I mean, you must have, I imagine, countless examples to
Speaker 1: draw upon, but how do you select? You know, how
Speaker 1: did you do it for the final diagnosis?
Speaker 3: Well, every day that I go to work is amazing.
Speaker 3: There are always new cases. They are always unbelievable things
Speaker 3: to find and are happening. I guess this is cherry
Speaker 3: picking all those that stick in my mind and are
Speaker 3: the most unusual. And as I write them, it's amazing
Speaker 3: how new ones come up. And all the time I'm
Speaker 3: thinking of ones and new ones, or thinking of ones
Speaker 3: that I've seen in the past, and I think, damn,
Speaker 3: why didn't I include that one in the book, because
Speaker 3: that's just brilliant. But of course you can't write about everything,
Speaker 3: and I can't remember them all, of course, but I
Speaker 3: have to go and research each one when I decided
Speaker 3: to write about it.
Speaker 1: As you can imagine, it takes a long time to
Speaker 1: complete all the training needed to do the job Kinric does.
Speaker 1: It's not for the fainthearted, looking at bodies and parts
Speaker 1: of bodies and slides of mysterious nasties found within bodies
Speaker 1: all day, and I'm not sure too many kids wake
Speaker 1: up one day and think I want to be a pathologist.
Speaker 1: I asked Conc how he got into this branch of medicine,
Speaker 1: what inspired him to work mostly with the dead and dying,
Speaker 1: and why he's stayed in the job for so many years.
Speaker 3: Yeah, a lot of people ask that. Of course, when
Speaker 3: you go to medical school, everybody wants to be a
Speaker 3: neurosurgeon or some sort of fancy surgeon, or deliver babies
Speaker 3: or something like that. Nobody ever says, oh, I'm going
Speaker 3: to go to medical school and be a pathology And
Speaker 3: it actually wasn't high on my horizon. But I just
Speaker 3: started in medical school and I was an Army cadet,
Speaker 3: and I had during the vacations, I had to go
Speaker 3: back into the army. And what happened was, as a
Speaker 3: nineteen year old, I was sent out with a squad
Speaker 3: to pick up three bodies from an aircraft accident, and
Speaker 3: we had to put them into a bag and take
Speaker 3: them off to the mortuary for an autopsy. And that's
Speaker 3: quite a shocking thing for a nineteen year old just
Speaker 3: I mean, the year before I'd been a prefect at school,
Speaker 3: so it was a little bit of a shock. But
Speaker 3: when I got to the moltuary, there was a pathologist there,
Speaker 3: Kevin Lee, who was outstanding, and he turned what would
Speaker 3: have been a terrible experience into something really amazing, you know,
Speaker 3: getting the bodies together again, working out what had happened,
Speaker 3: making and putting a whole context behind what we were
Speaker 3: seeing and what had happened. And I just thought, this
Speaker 3: is just brilliant, and you know, it's stuck in my
Speaker 3: mind and throughout my medical career. I just wanted to
Speaker 3: be a pathologist.
Speaker 1: Tell me about the training. How do you get to
Speaker 1: where you are?
Speaker 3: Well, you first have to get yourself through medical school
Speaker 3: and do your house job and a bit of clinical work,
Speaker 3: and then when you've done that, you have to sign
Speaker 3: up with a training a laboratory in a hospital, a
Speaker 3: teaching hospital or another hospital, and that takes another five
Speaker 3: years of training, and along the way there are a
Speaker 3: couple of pretty stiff exams that you've got to get through,
Speaker 3: and at the end of that you're ready to start.
Speaker 3: So it takes thirteen years altogether from the time you
Speaker 3: start medical school to the time that you're ready to
Speaker 3: say I'm a consultant pathologist, and then all you need
Speaker 3: is another forty years experience on top of that.
Speaker 1: I expect that the training is intense, you know, thirteen years,
Speaker 1: and then getting into what you want to do. You
Speaker 1: will never put off along the way.
Speaker 3: No, you know, there there was quite a difference in
Speaker 3: my day. I come from a generation where you left
Speaker 3: school and you went and did your career straight away
Speaker 3: and you got straight into it. So I was a
Speaker 3: consultant by the time I was thirty, whereas the world
Speaker 3: is very different today. You know, a lot of the
Speaker 3: graduates coming out of medical school are a bit older
Speaker 3: and they've done another degree and then they do a
Speaker 3: bit of overseas experience, and you know, I've got registrars
Speaker 3: that i'm training that are in their forties, and you know,
Speaker 3: I find that very interesting. But because it's you know,
Speaker 3: when I was forty, I can't imagine sitting down and
Speaker 3: trying to learn all those books and focus on all
Speaker 3: every disease of every organ. But that's what they have
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 1: And what were some of the earlier cases that you
Speaker 1: worked on as a pathologist? How do you sort of
Speaker 1: start off?
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, during your training you do, of course, you
Speaker 3: do two types of cases that we do. They're the
Speaker 3: cases on the living, the biopsies and the diagnosis of
Speaker 3: cancers and exotic diseases and not so exotic diseases in
Speaker 3: the living. And then there are of course the autopsies
Speaker 3: and the diagnoses on the dead. And during your training
Speaker 3: you do and you do both. The emphasis is of
Speaker 3: course on the living and on making diagnoses from biopsies
Speaker 3: and recognizing changes in tissues and discovering just what earth
Speaker 3: is going on with the patient and often that's a
Speaker 3: bit of a mystery.
Speaker 1: And you're now considered sort of the leading pathologists to
Speaker 1: New Zealand. Tell me about the work that you've had
Speaker 1: to do over the years to sort of rise through
Speaker 1: the ranks, because it's not just all the crime stuff
Speaker 1: that we see in the documentaries and the true crime shows,
Speaker 1: is it.
Speaker 3: No, I wouldn't really call myself a leading pathologist. I'm
Speaker 3: an old pathologist, which is perhaps if you hang around
Speaker 3: long enough, people will think you the leading pathologists. But no, no,
Speaker 3: I'm definitely an old pathologist these days, and I guess
Speaker 3: it's pathology has changed a lot in New Zealand over
Speaker 3: the last thirty years. When I started doing pathology here,
Speaker 3: we tended to do a bit of everything, so you know,
Speaker 3: you'd be in I worked in Palmerston North Hospital and
Speaker 3: we did our diagnostic biopsies and we also did all
Speaker 3: the autopsies on all the homicides, the suspicious deaths, the
Speaker 3: traffic accidents, the suicides, and these days that's all changed
Speaker 3: now there's more and more specialization in the current training.
Speaker 3: The pathologists don't even learn how to do autopsies anymore.
Speaker 3: That's gone. They do that after they've finished their fellowship,
Speaker 3: So after their five year training, after their thirteen years
Speaker 3: from the beginning to the end, they then have to
Speaker 3: go and learn how to do autopsies.
Speaker 1: And what would be some of the most high profile
Speaker 1: cases you've worked on that people would know about out there?
Speaker 3: Well, quite a few that I've written about. I guess
Speaker 3: what always comes to mind are the homicides and of course,
Speaker 3: the one that everybody always asks about is the Mark
Speaker 3: Lundy case, which I didn't actually do the autopsies on,
Speaker 3: although I've been involved in all three of Mark Lundy's trials,
Speaker 3: including going to London and listening to the sitting in
Speaker 3: on the Privy Council for three days, so that that
Speaker 3: was been a pretty interesting one that spanned a good
Speaker 3: part of my career.
Speaker 1: In February two thousand and one, Mark Lundy, then aged
Speaker 1: forty three, was arrested in charge with murdering his wife
Speaker 1: Christine and their seven year old daughter Amber. The pair
Speaker 1: were hacked to death at Palmston North home, likely with
Speaker 1: an axe or tomahawk.
Speaker 2: I've covered this.
Speaker 1: Case more extensively in an earlier episode of A Moment
Speaker 1: in Crime, so I'm only giving a brief summary of
Speaker 1: the case here. On the night of the murders, Lundy
Speaker 1: had checked into a motel in Patni, Wellington. Mobile data
Speaker 1: proved that Lundon he was at the motel at five
Speaker 1: point thirty and eight twenty eight pm. A sex worker
Speaker 1: hired by Lundy confirmed he was also there between eleven
Speaker 1: thirty pm and one am. Police say that just after
Speaker 1: five thirty pm Lundy drove at breakneck speed from his
Speaker 1: motel to Palmerston North, killed his family, and arrived back
Speaker 1: in Potoni before eight.
Speaker 2: Twenty eight pm.
Speaker 1: They contended he killed Christine for her life insurance money
Speaker 1: because of financial pressure.
Speaker 2: Four days earlier, the couple had reviewed their life.
Speaker 1: Insurance and agreed Christine's would be raised from two hundred
Speaker 1: thousand dollars to five hundred thousand dollars. Lundy killed Amber,
Speaker 1: police said because she had witnessed all or part of
Speaker 1: her mother's murder.
Speaker 2: The prosecution relied.
Speaker 1: Heavily on a particular piece of forensic evidence, a speck
Speaker 1: of body tissue found on one of Lundy's polo shirts,
Speaker 1: which was located in the back seat of his car.
Speaker 1: An international pathologist identified it as Christine Lundy brain tissue,
Speaker 1: and it was argued the only way it could have
Speaker 1: ended up on Lundy's shirt was if he himself was
Speaker 1: the murderer. Lundy gave evidence at the trial, strenuously denying
Speaker 1: he killed his wife or child. His lawyers were adamant
Speaker 1: that Lundy could not possibly have made the round trip
Speaker 1: from Wellington to palmest.
Speaker 2: North and back in just three hours.
Speaker 1: They said contamination could account for the tissue found on
Speaker 1: Lundy's shirt. After seven hours of deliberation, the jury found
Speaker 1: Lundy guilty of both murders. He was sentenced to life
Speaker 1: in prison with a minimum non parole period of seventeen years.
Speaker 1: The Court of Appeal rejected Lundy's attempt to overturn his
Speaker 1: conviction and sentence. In fact, they increased his minimum non
Speaker 1: parole period to twenty years in twenty thirteen, though the
Speaker 1: Privy Council the New Zealand's Court of Last Appeal overturned
Speaker 1: the convictions and ordered a retrial that went ahead in
Speaker 1: twenty fifteen, and the Crown expanded the window for the
Speaker 1: time of death to fourteen hours, alleging Lundy may have
Speaker 1: returned to Palmerston North early in the morning to murder
Speaker 1: his family. The second jury was also convinced beyond reasonable
Speaker 1: doubt by the Crown case and found Lundy guilty of
Speaker 1: both murders. Again, Lundy was sent back to prison, where
Speaker 1: he remains today. He still maintains his innocence and is
Speaker 1: still trying to clear his name. Kinrich speaks about his
Speaker 1: role in the Lundy case in The Final Diagnosis. This
Speaker 1: is part of his book voiced by an actor.
Speaker 4: Juries are smart. They have seven hundred plus years of
Speaker 4: collective life experience. We all live in a science based
Speaker 4: society with remote controls, microwaves, computers, and aeroplanes. We understand
Speaker 4: science and while we may not know exactly how it works,
Speaker 4: we know it does and it can be explained simply
Speaker 4: so we can follow it. It isn't witchcraft, after all.
Speaker 4: Christine's DNA was found in both flips of tissue Lundy's
Speaker 4: shirt was reported that the odds were one billion times
Speaker 4: to one more likely that the DNA was from Christine
Speaker 4: Lundy than someone else unrelated to her chosen at random
Speaker 4: from the New Zealand population. This is a massive boost
Speaker 4: to the case against Lundy, and the analytical level of
Speaker 4: certainty shows how reliable DNA matching can be. The DNA
Speaker 4: belond Christine. The Oxford pathologists first brought up the idea
Speaker 4: of sausages and hamburgers as a source of animal brain tissue,
Speaker 4: and that story gained some traction as I still get
Speaker 4: asked about it from time to time. But Mark Lundy
Speaker 4: would have to be the unluckiest man in history to
Speaker 4: have got an accidental contamination with animal brain tissue from
Speaker 4: a hamburger, and then for that tissue also to contain
Speaker 4: DNA indistinguishable from his wife's. All I can say is
Speaker 4: the DNA on his shirt is human and was of
Speaker 4: good quality. The tissue was brain, as the international experts
Speaker 4: have established, and I can say it was uncooked through
Speaker 4: microscopic histological examination. I say cooked meats and other foods
Speaker 4: histologically in my daily work, So I am confident of that.
Speaker 4: So I can say with authority that the brain tissue
Speaker 4: on the Lundy shirt had emphatically never been cooked. It
Speaker 4: was science applied to the two deposits of brain tissue
Speaker 4: on Mark Lundy's shirt that put paid to his plans
Speaker 4: of getting away with murder. Lundy realistically would have never
Speaker 4: predicted and therefore planned for, this accidental, minute but unequivital
Speaker 4: soiling of his shirt. That was his most significant mistake.
Speaker 1: I asked Kenrick Moore about Lundy and other stand up
Speaker 1: cases from his lengthy career.
Speaker 3: Well, that certainly has been tried a lot, hasn't it.
Speaker 3: I guess from a pathologists point of view, we try
Speaker 3: not to have a personal opinion that's based on just
Speaker 3: what we've heard, or we think what I look at
Speaker 3: is what does the science say. And the science certainly
Speaker 3: has produced evidence that he can has been unable to
Speaker 3: overturn in court. And it really is quite compelling, and
Speaker 3: it's very difficult to argue why you have your wife's
Speaker 3: brains on your shirt.
Speaker 1: What would be the most bizarre case you've come across
Speaker 1: over the years, in someone living or dead?
Speaker 3: Probably I wrote in my first book about a case
Speaker 3: of spontaneous combustion, which is something that pathologists talk about
Speaker 3: but which isn't greatly understood. And this is people who
Speaker 3: they thought originally just caught fire spontaneously and burnt slowly
Speaker 3: down into a puddle without actually setting fire to any
Speaker 3: of their surroundings. And the science of this has now
Speaker 3: been worked out. And the case that I was called
Speaker 3: to I went out to and it was on a
Speaker 3: provincial road out in the manner were two and it
Speaker 3: was a man who had been drinking heavily at the
Speaker 3: Shannon Pub and he had picked up a bottle of
Speaker 3: vodka and headed off back. And he pulled over to
Speaker 3: the side of the road, drank his bottle of vodka
Speaker 3: and lit up a cigarette and obviously went to sleep.
Speaker 3: The cigarette dropped onto his clothing and it started smoldering,
Speaker 3: you know, but like a candlewick, and he gradually, just
Speaker 3: without gaining consciousness, he gradually just burnt himself to death
Speaker 3: sitting inside the car. The car didn't catch fire, and
Speaker 3: there was just smoke all over the windows, and he
Speaker 3: was basically not quite a puddle of fat, but pretty
Speaker 3: close to going that way. And I just never i'd
Speaker 3: heard about the spontaneous combustion. I've never seen a case,
Speaker 3: and I think that was the closest that I've ever
Speaker 3: come to it. That was really weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I bet how do you wind down after working
Speaker 1: on something like that? Does it affect you or is
Speaker 1: it just part of the job and you just sort
Speaker 1: of carry on?
Speaker 3: Yeah. You know, whenever you open up a body, a
Speaker 3: freshly dead body or perhaps a not so freshly dead one,
Speaker 3: there's a suppression or a suspension of your norm normal
Speaker 3: physiology and emotion. You know, by physiology, I mean, you
Speaker 3: know your body function. What does it tell you to
Speaker 3: do when you open and see your body being opened?
Speaker 3: Tells you to run away? You know, you get this
Speaker 3: adrenaline rush of fear and flight, and you want to
Speaker 3: run away, and you've got to suppress that and then
Speaker 3: there's the emotional aspect. You're looking at a body being opened,
Speaker 3: and you know, I mean, this is an appalling mutilation
Speaker 3: if you're not used to it, and you've got to
Speaker 3: suppress that. As time goes on, of course, you get
Speaker 3: used to it. I suppose you get inoculated, and I've
Speaker 3: pathologists do get used to this. One of the questions
Speaker 3: that I always ask is okay, And people always ask
Speaker 3: pathologists exactly this question that you've asked. I ask, why
Speaker 3: don't general surgeons get the same thing? I mean, somebody
Speaker 3: gets brought in from a car accident and they've got
Speaker 3: a shattered body there, and they open up their abdomen
Speaker 3: and take out bits of bowel and stitch it up
Speaker 3: and so on. Surely they have exactly the same fears
Speaker 3: that that we do, which is, you know, basically this
Speaker 3: is horrific, but you've got to do something. Hm.
Speaker 1: What would be I imagine some cases are harder than others,
Speaker 1: you know, even for someone that's been in the profession
Speaker 1: as long as you is it is it the young people,
Speaker 1: the children that are hardest? Or you know, what, what
Speaker 1: is it that you sort of not struggle with but
Speaker 1: you find particularly challenging.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think young children always poignant, aren't they. And yes,
Speaker 3: I've had a number of cases where my registerrars have
Speaker 3: just been unable to carry out the autopsy. There were
Speaker 3: the three children who died in the man or two
Speaker 3: in the pang and a valley when they were swimming
Speaker 3: in a in a in the river and part of
Speaker 3: the cliff came down and the cliff killed all three
Speaker 3: of them. And it's written in my first book, and
Speaker 3: that that was three children from two families. That that
Speaker 3: was terrible. My registrars couldn't do those autopsies. I had
Speaker 3: to go and do those. And of course that that
Speaker 3: does affect you, because it's it's nobody deserves nobody deserves
Speaker 3: to die to start with. But when it's a young
Speaker 3: child like that and it's just so pointless, it's a
Speaker 3: it's not a good feel. And those are the ones
Speaker 3: that I remember, of course.
Speaker 1: I guess. So the flip side of it is, you know,
Speaker 1: to get answers and to help the families get closure,
Speaker 1: somebody has to do that job, right.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, that's right. I mean I guess one of
Speaker 3: the ways I deal with it is I don't see
Speaker 3: these as cadavers. I mean a body is not an
Speaker 3: inanimate object. It really reflects humanity. They are my patients,
Speaker 3: and I am a doctor, and I am looking after them,
Speaker 3: and I'm finding what happened, and I'm telling their story.
Speaker 3: I'm their last advocate, and I will tell the truth
Speaker 3: about them and what happened, and do it respect fully,
Speaker 3: and then they can be laid to rest, with a
Speaker 3: story known and everything tidied away. And we understand. Understanding
Speaker 3: is important part of loss and grief is of course understanding,
Speaker 3: isn't it.
Speaker 1: Professionally can Reck and I have a few things in common.
Speaker 1: We both, in our own ways, investigate and tell the
Speaker 1: stories of the dead. We see and hear gruesome details
Speaker 1: of murders. We bear witness to the unfathomable grief of
Speaker 1: people who have lost a parent, sibling, or child to
Speaker 1: a violent act. Are questioned almost daily about New Zealand's
Speaker 1: most high profile offenders and offenses. In my case, it's
Speaker 1: usually about whether I think a particular person is guilty
Speaker 1: of a crime, or if a jury got the right
Speaker 1: verdict and a murder trial I've been reporting on. Ken
Speaker 1: Rick gets that a lot too, And there's another question
Speaker 1: He's often asked.
Speaker 3: Everybody wants to talk about murder. Whenever I go to meetings,
Speaker 3: nobody ever says, have you seen any amazing diseases recently?
Speaker 3: Have you seen any amazing tumors? You know, what's the
Speaker 3: most exotic disease you've come across? Nobody ever asks that.
Speaker 3: They always ask about murder. Everybody wants to know We're
Speaker 3: fascinated by murder. And the problem is that all the
Speaker 3: murders that I've done, I've dealt with in my first
Speaker 3: two books. So I thought, what on earth can I
Speaker 3: do in the third book? And what is At a
Speaker 3: lot of the Lions and Rotary and other meeting probus
Speaker 3: meetings that I go to, people have always asked me,
Speaker 3: you know how to commit the perfect murder? And the
Speaker 3: answer is yes, I do, but I'm not going to
Speaker 3: tell you. But what I can tell you is look
Speaker 3: at a number of famous and not so famous murders
Speaker 3: in New Zealand and tell you what the murderers did wrong,
Speaker 3: and then from that you can work out what you
Speaker 3: need to do for your perfect murder.
Speaker 1: The prosecution of Scott Watson is one of the cases
Speaker 1: Kenrick delves into in his latest book, Watson was jailed
Speaker 1: for life for the minimum non parole period of seventeen
Speaker 1: years for the murders of Olivia Hope seventeen and Ben
Speaker 1: Smart twenty one. The friends disappeared after boarding a stranger's
Speaker 1: yacht early on January one, nineteen ninety nine, after marking
Speaker 1: the new year with friends at Ferno Lodge, a century
Speaker 1: old boat access only resort in the Endeavor in Let.
Speaker 2: Their bodies have never been found.
Speaker 1: Watson has always denied killing or even meeting Hope and Smart.
Speaker 1: He's repeatedly been denied parole since he became eligible, and
Speaker 1: continues to fight to clear his name. Watson's latest appeal
Speaker 1: actually began the day that I interviewed Kinrick. At the
Speaker 1: time of recording this podcast, a decision had not yet
Speaker 1: been made. I'll include a link in the show notes
Speaker 1: for the latest on this long running saga if you'd
Speaker 1: like to read more. But here is Kinrick explaining why
Speaker 1: he decided to cover the Sounds case in his book.
Speaker 3: The Scott Watson case was one that I selected to
Speaker 3: talk about, not because I have any inside knowledge or
Speaker 3: any particular views about And it's interesting to note that
Speaker 3: the Scott Watson case is going to the Court of
Speaker 3: Appeal today, Yes, which is interesting, and there were a
Speaker 3: couple of things that I wanted to a couple of
Speaker 3: points I wanted to make about Scott Watson's case. It's
Speaker 3: not what was done wrong, it was just I think
Speaker 3: how the evidence plays out, particularly eyewitness evidence, and everybody
Speaker 3: knows eyewitnesses are not terribly reliable, and that's really what
Speaker 3: I've written about in the book can Reck.
Speaker 1: Are the criminal cases that you've worked on with a
Speaker 1: forensic evidence tells you clearly one thing, but the jury
Speaker 1: decides the opposite when they come back with a verdict.
Speaker 3: You know, I personally haven't had one of those, which
Speaker 3: is interesting. Every case that I've been involved with has
Speaker 3: the evidence that we've collected at all topsy, and examination
Speaker 3: of the scene and the police investigations, it's all made sense.
Speaker 3: And every case I've been involved with has had a conviction.
Speaker 3: So I've never come across a case where the evidence
Speaker 3: has been rejected, and I'm quite proud of that because
Speaker 3: I think that means that the evidence we put forward
Speaker 3: was bust in the first instance, and in a murder case,
Speaker 3: the police and the prosecutor will look very carefully at
Speaker 3: the autopsy what the pathologist says, how it all ties
Speaker 3: together before making their decision. And I think that I'm
Speaker 3: quite proud of the fact that so far, well I'm
Speaker 3: not doing homicides at the moment anymore, that the conviction
Speaker 3: rate has been pretty well one hundred percent. There are
Speaker 3: cases I'm aware of where I think it's gone the
Speaker 3: wrong way, but I wasn't involved with those.
Speaker 1: In the final diagnosis. You talk about why circumstantial is
Speaker 1: often the most compelling and steadfast form of evidence. Tell
Speaker 1: me more about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know circumstantial evidence. A lot of people say, oh,
Speaker 3: you hear this all the time. He was found guilty,
Speaker 3: but the evidence was only circumstantial. Well, circumstantial evidence is
Speaker 3: very good. Eyewitness evidence is extremely bad, and that's well known.
Speaker 3: The psychologists know about it. There's been many tests of it,
Speaker 3: and of course I talk about it with the Sounds murder.
Speaker 3: Eyewitness evidence is not good. There is one type of
Speaker 3: eyewitness evidence that's outstanding, of course, and that is security cameras,
Speaker 3: and that's changed everything, and I write a bit about
Speaker 3: that too. But circumstantial evidence involves clues that you cannot manufacture,
Speaker 3: that are left by mistake behind, and there's nothing that
Speaker 3: you can do. You didn't intend them to be there,
Speaker 3: but added together, they form a very compelling argument. Like,
Speaker 3: for instance, in Mark Lundy's case, two specs of brain
Speaker 3: tissue on his shirt is circumstantial evidence, but it's pretty compelling.
Speaker 3: The DNA analysis of that tissue is pretty compelling. The
Speaker 3: fact that his wife and his daughter had chips of
Speaker 3: paint in their injuries in their head similar to that
Speaker 3: with which Mark Lundy's tools were painted, is circumstantial evidence.
Speaker 3: It's not gotcha evidence. But all of these things start
Speaker 3: adding up, and when you get a whole pile of
Speaker 3: circumstantial facts coming together, it becomes very hard to say, well,
Speaker 3: can there be another explanation? And the answer is usually
Speaker 3: not really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because some of our most high profile cases have
Speaker 1: been based on circumstantial evidence, haven't they. If you look
Speaker 1: at you know, David Bain and his family, there were
Speaker 1: no witnesses. We've had one in christ which recently where
Speaker 1: there's still nobody, and there's been a man convicted of murder,
Speaker 1: all on circumstantial evidence because there's nobody, And it's interesting
Speaker 1: that you are sort of explaining that that's better evidence
Speaker 1: than witnesses, because humans do make errors, don't they. I
Speaker 1: think that's what people don't really understand, is that that
Speaker 1: eyewitness stuff isn't always as reliable as you might think.
Speaker 3: No, that's right. And I talk in my book about
Speaker 3: what o' neil tyson, who's a famous astrophysicist and presenter
Speaker 3: in the United States. He talks about how he was
Speaker 3: called up for jury service in the United States. And
Speaker 3: the judge said to the jurors before they were appointed
Speaker 3: in this case, there is only one witness, and that
Speaker 3: is an eyewitness to the robbery or the event, whatever
Speaker 3: it was. Do any of you have a problem with that?
Speaker 3: And he put up his hand and he said, if
Speaker 3: you've only got one eyewitness, and I've got a problem
Speaker 3: with that, because in the court of law, eyewitness evidence
Speaker 3: may be important, but in the court of science it's
Speaker 3: worth nothing. And if you've only got one eyewitness, it
Speaker 3: doesn't prove it's not going to prove anything. And the
Speaker 3: judge then turned around and said, oh, thank you for that.
Speaker 3: You'll be dismissed. And he said to the other juris,
Speaker 3: does anybody else want two eyewitnesses? And one of the
Speaker 3: juris said, hang on, he didn't say that, and within
Speaker 3: seconds of having explained why the judge as an ear witness,
Speaker 3: if you like, had got it wrong. He didn't get
Speaker 3: it either, And that's what humans do. We actually don't
Speaker 3: get it right. We don't hear things right, we don't
Speaker 3: see things right.
Speaker 1: So I think in court cases it's always better to
Speaker 1: trust the science, isn't it.
Speaker 3: Well, the good thing about science is that it's true
Speaker 3: whether you believe it or not, and it never changes.
Speaker 3: So yes, that is correct. And of course, getting back
Speaker 3: to the circumstantial evidence, the value of that is one
Speaker 3: of the analogies is that each piece of circumstantial evidence
Speaker 3: is like a thread in a rope, but itself it's
Speaker 3: not hugely strong. You plat them all together you get
Speaker 3: something that's actually quite strong and very difficult to break.
Speaker 1: And just going back to this perfect murder concept, do
Speaker 1: you write a lot about that?
Speaker 2: Is that even possible at this.
Speaker 1: Dan and age, with all the technology out there and
Speaker 1: experts like yourself, you know, working to lock up people
Speaker 1: that murders.
Speaker 3: Well, the perfect murder, of course it's possible, and of it,
Speaker 3: by definition, it will be one that I've never seen
Speaker 3: because you won't recognize it for what it is. And
Speaker 3: you know. One of the stories I like to tell
Speaker 3: is we actually can be quite bad at recognizing that
Speaker 3: a murder has occurred, and they've sort of semi humorous
Speaker 3: example that I use as Jack and the Beanstalk, which
Speaker 3: is a story that we tell our children. I tell
Speaker 3: my twenty twenty month old daughter that frequently. She loves
Speaker 3: the story. But this is a story of a young
Speaker 3: boy who gets involved in three different home invasions, steals
Speaker 3: from the homeowner, who chases him, and then he is
Speaker 3: murdered by the young boy. And this is not recognized
Speaker 3: as it's a straightforward homicide with home invasion. This just
Speaker 3: isn't recognized as a murder. It's put out as something
Speaker 3: quite moral in fact, and if you look at it,
Speaker 3: that's the perfect murder. And what you have to do
Speaker 3: in society. If you interachieve a perfect murder, it must
Speaker 3: be something that nobody will recognize. I'll look at it
Speaker 3: and say, no, it looks all right.
Speaker 1: Crime is something that fascinates us all and in recent
Speaker 1: years has been a real influx and true crime content documentaries,
Speaker 1: television series, movies, and podcasts, and there thousands focused on
Speaker 1: specific incidents or offenders and then there's the fictional crime shows,
Speaker 1: the Law and Orders, the CSIS, the Special Victor Unit,
Speaker 1: Criminal Minds, and countless others popping up week on week.
Speaker 1: In almost every iteration, there's a rock star pathologist who
Speaker 1: manages to crack the case with an hours, tying up
Speaker 1: every loose end nicely and neatly.
Speaker 2: Before they go home for the day.
Speaker 1: But how does it work in the real world? Do
Speaker 1: can reckon as colleagues find that golden taketive evidence as
Speaker 1: quickly is it even possible? And does it create unhelpful
Speaker 1: myths about their important work?
Speaker 3: The shows do seem to be pretty well never ending.
Speaker 3: I gather silent witnesses on its twenty seventh season now,
Speaker 3: which is it's just unbelievable. You know, somebody's got it
Speaker 3: must have very fertile imagination. No, it's not like that
Speaker 3: at all. It's everything has to be done meticulously, of course,
Speaker 3: but it's always a big puzzle until the end, and
Speaker 3: it all comes together only very slowly. And I guess
Speaker 3: what The shows don't show you because they can't. They
Speaker 3: can't show you that the investigations that pathologists do have
Speaker 3: got a very liquid component to them, and the smell
Speaker 3: is missing as well. You know, it is quite different
Speaker 3: from that. They very sanitized, I guess is the term
Speaker 3: I'm looking for. The pathologists never seem very messy to me,
Speaker 3: but I seem to get splashed quite a lot.
Speaker 1: And what are the best and worst parts of your job?
Speaker 3: I guess the best part is the absolute unknown of
Speaker 3: what's coming every day. That it could be a quiet
Speaker 3: day with nothing, but most of the time something completely
Speaker 3: unknown comes up. Now a lot of people say, no,
Speaker 3: the ideal job is you work from eight to five
Speaker 3: and you know you have your lunch break, and you
Speaker 3: know every day is the same as every other. I
Speaker 3: can't imagine anything more boring than that. And the best
Speaker 3: part of the job is just the amazing cases that
Speaker 3: come up endlessly, and it really is quite fascinating. And
Speaker 3: of course there's always a patient behind it, and that
Speaker 3: is the physicianally part of it. But I feel like
Speaker 3: I've solved a crossword puzzle or a sodoku, a difficult
Speaker 3: sudoku when I reach a diagnosis and it's a sort
Speaker 3: of Eureka moment and you feel really great.
Speaker 1: Yeah, in that respect, it must be quite rewarding, even
Speaker 1: though often very grim.
Speaker 3: I imagine well, yeah, I guess we get immunized to it.
Speaker 3: In our particular group, we see thirty six thirty seven
Speaker 3: thousand biopsies on live patients every year, and probably, I
Speaker 3: don't know, twenty percent of them have got cancer. Every
Speaker 3: one of them's got a difficult story behind them. They're
Speaker 3: having the biopsy for a reason, and I guess we
Speaker 3: get used to that, and that's probably the routine part
Speaker 3: of our work. But still it's really gratifying when you
Speaker 3: know that you've got these out and you've got the
Speaker 3: answer and something can be done.
Speaker 2: And how has pathology changed over the years.
Speaker 1: You've been in this game for a very long time,
Speaker 1: and I imagine there's been a lot of changes and
Speaker 1: advancers tell me about that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, of course there have been huge advances, of course,
Speaker 3: because there's been all the change with genetics and genomics
Speaker 3: and DNA and so on, which has changed our diagnostic
Speaker 3: work hugely. But I think you know, probably what people
Speaker 3: would understand best is what's happened in murder cases. Thirty
Speaker 3: years ago, when there was a murder case, the pathologist
Speaker 3: was the first to be called to the scene was
Speaker 3: closed off, and the pathologist to be the first in
Speaker 3: there to actually look at the body, look at the
Speaker 3: way the body was lying, look at the whole scene
Speaker 3: around there, so that the injuries and the cause of
Speaker 3: death could be closely related to what happened at the scene.
Speaker 3: And that was a critical part of a murder investigation.
Speaker 3: That changed about two things thousand to two thousand and
Speaker 3: five totally and it's quite different now. Two things changed immensely.
Speaker 3: The first one was DNA and now the scientists to
Speaker 3: collect DNA off the body of the first on the scene.
Speaker 3: They go in there and they swab the body from
Speaker 3: top to bottom, and even small fragments of DNA from
Speaker 3: the perpetrator the murderer will be found. That changed it hugely.
Speaker 3: The second thing that changed with security cameras. There are
Speaker 3: security cameras everywhere, and that of course is the ultimate
Speaker 3: eyewitness evidence that so far is reliable. I'm not saying
Speaker 3: they can't be falsified, but so far they proved reliable.
Speaker 3: And when there's a homicide, I think the police go
Speaker 3: and collect security cameras from everywhere in the whole area
Speaker 3: and they all get analyzed. And we saw that, for
Speaker 3: instance with the Grace Mulane and Jesse Kempson when Jesse
Speaker 3: Kempson murdered Grace Mulane back in December twenty eighteen, he
Speaker 3: had nowhere to go. I mean it was all on
Speaker 3: security camera, you know, him meeting up with her and
Speaker 3: going in the lift up to the room and so on.
Speaker 3: It was all there, and him going to the warehouse
Speaker 3: to buy suitcases and carrying the empty suitcases up and
Speaker 3: wheeling the full suitcases down. It was all there there.
Speaker 3: You know, what can you say?
Speaker 1: You just absolutely cannot argue with you know, the science
Speaker 1: and effects, even though many do no.
Speaker 3: And of course the most amazing story wasn't here. It
Speaker 3: was to do with Sarah Everard, the young woman who
Speaker 3: disappeared near Clapham Common Brixton Hill in London back and
Speaker 3: I think it was twenty twenty one, and she disappeared
Speaker 3: walking home one night, and I think there were huge
Speaker 3: vigils held on Clapham Common. I think Princess Kate went
Speaker 3: to them as well. And what had happened is she'd
Speaker 3: been picked up in an area where there were no
Speaker 3: security cameras, and of course she had because she was
Speaker 3: picked up by a Metropolitan policeman called Wayne Cousins, and
Speaker 3: he knew that there were no security cameras in the area,
Speaker 3: but unfortunately for him, and yet he had hired a
Speaker 3: Vauxhall car to carry the deed out. Unfortunately for him.
Speaker 3: The London buses are fitted with security cameras because the
Speaker 3: drivers get attacked, and two passing buses, the first bus
Speaker 3: on their camera they caught him talking to her standing
Speaker 3: next to the Vauxhall and the next bus that went
Speaker 3: past got the Vauxhall's registration number and from that they
Speaker 3: were able to find out that he had rented the
Speaker 3: car and track the car to Hoadwood near Ashford, where
Speaker 3: the body was found. And what can you do? I mean,
Speaker 3: there are no clues to be found. He would never
Speaker 3: have been found until he did it again, which is
Speaker 3: what the serial type murders often do. He would never
Speaker 3: have been found, but there's no no where to go
Speaker 3: it he's absolutely stitched up completely. So that those are
Speaker 3: the two big changes.
Speaker 1: What would be the biggest misconception about your job and
Speaker 1: your work that people have?
Speaker 3: I think that probably again, it's around life and death.
Speaker 3: I think most people know that pathologists do autopsies and
Speaker 3: that's our signature dish if you like, and they know
Speaker 3: about us dealing with bodies that are dragged out of
Speaker 3: the river and shark attacks and all this sort of thing.
Speaker 3: But what they don't know about is the work that
Speaker 3: we do with living patients, the diagnostic work. Like the
Speaker 3: woman with breast cancers. We work out what hormones that
Speaker 3: the cancers respond to, We work out what chemotherapeutic drugs
Speaker 3: they can use, and we do this on a whole
Speaker 3: host of cancers. So we're involved with what sort of
Speaker 3: backroom technology around diagnosing people and getting them on the
Speaker 3: right treatment path. All of that is, you know, it
Speaker 3: hasn't got the glamour of investigating a murder, but I
Speaker 3: don't think many people know that pathologists do that, or
Speaker 3: if they do, it's below the visual horizon.
Speaker 1: And all that work is just so so important, isn't
Speaker 1: it to the community?
Speaker 3: And you know it is when it's your biopsy?
Speaker 1: And why did you decide to write about your career?
Speaker 1: You know, this is your third book, as you said,
Speaker 1: part of the trilogy. You're presenting your knowledge, you know,
Speaker 1: in a really deep dive sort of way.
Speaker 2: What led you to write the books?
Speaker 3: Well? I think it says I often quote Rally who said,
Speaker 3: the time takes up all that we have and shuts
Speaker 3: the story of our days in a dark and silent tomb.
Speaker 3: And that struck me as true of all the many,
Speaker 3: many hours are spent doing autopsy. So I would write
Speaker 3: out these reports send them to the coroner, and that
Speaker 3: was pretty well lit. You know, the families didn't know,
Speaker 3: nobody knew what their story were. And I thought, well,
Speaker 3: you know, I'm really I'm not an author, I'm a historian.
Speaker 3: I'll write down what I saw and how it presented
Speaker 3: to me. And I started doing this, and the families
Speaker 3: were just so grateful. You know. I'd phone them up
Speaker 3: and I'd say, look, I'm writing a story about your
Speaker 3: loved one. You know, I'm really sorry to come and
Speaker 3: raise this all up again. And they were just so supportive,
Speaker 3: and they said, no, you must tell the story, you
Speaker 3: must use their name. We want to hear it. All.
Speaker 3: We didn't know anything about any of this. And you know,
Speaker 3: once I started doing that, one thing led to another,
Speaker 3: and of course I ended up then writing more and
Speaker 3: more about the living patients too, and talking to them
Speaker 3: and writing their stories too, And about half of them
Speaker 3: are very happy for me to use their name and
Speaker 3: tell their story. And about half of them I changed
Speaker 3: the name or fictionalize the setting to protect identities.
Speaker 1: I guess that raises a good point. A lot of
Speaker 1: the work that you would have done over the years
Speaker 1: in the criminal space, if there isn't a guilty plan,
Speaker 1: it doesn't go to trial. People don't often hear, you know,
Speaker 1: the pathology expert evidence, do they, And they don't know
Speaker 1: what's gone on behind the scenes and the evidence that
Speaker 1: was there if it had gone to trial.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well that's right, And sometimes it works the other
Speaker 3: way round. I had dealt with a young child who
Speaker 3: had been murdered by his mother's boyfriend, and it was
Speaker 3: the second time that he had done carried out the
Speaker 3: same type of murder, and the evidence was being heard
Speaker 3: before the Justices of the peace who had to make
Speaker 3: a determination whether there was enough evidence for him to
Speaker 3: go to trial. The man involved had said he was
Speaker 3: not guilty, of course, and I came and gave my evidence,
Speaker 3: which he sat there and listened to, and then afterwards
Speaker 3: he said, no one to change my plea to guilty.
Speaker 3: I don't know whether that was because of what I said,
Speaker 3: but I was quite clear about what had happened, and
Speaker 3: he changed his plea and there never was a formal
Speaker 3: trial in the sense of everything being heard. So sometimes
Speaker 3: it goes that way too, you know, the story is
Speaker 3: just never told.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and what do you want people to take away
Speaker 1: from the final diagnosis.
Speaker 3: That's an interesting question. I guess death has been pretty
Speaker 3: well sanitized in the West. I mean, we've outsourced it
Speaker 3: to funeral directors, to the police, to the doctors and
Speaker 3: bodies and the dead or removed from our site. They
Speaker 3: go to a place unseen and the whole thing's dealt
Speaker 3: with in a very sanitary way. And I think it's
Speaker 3: probably not the best way to deal with it. I
Speaker 3: would rather that people see death as really part of
Speaker 3: being alive. You can't outsource your grief. Understand death, know
Speaker 3: about it. It is important to know why your loved
Speaker 3: ones died, you know. I think is a move against
Speaker 3: having all chopsysse days. I think it's very civilized to
Speaker 3: know that why people died and what happened, and occasionally
Speaker 3: you get big surprises. So I guess my message would
Speaker 3: be death is with us. It is us, it is
Speaker 3: part of us. We're all going there one day and
Speaker 3: we should accept it as part of our normal lives.
Speaker 1: Kenrick's book is available now at all of the usual retailers, libraries,
Speaker 1: and as an e book for those of you who
Speaker 1: prefer to read on your device. The work of pathologists
Speaker 1: has been crucial to many of the cases I've covered
Speaker 1: in a Moment in crime. Their analysis of evidence has
Speaker 1: led to the convictions of dozens of killers and sex offenders.
Speaker 1: They've helped so of cold cases and explain the most
Speaker 1: bizarre of crimes. They're also doing a lot of really
Speaker 1: important work for the community, helping to diagnose diseases and
Speaker 1: in some cases working hard on developing treatments and cures.
Speaker 1: Kinrick's work over the years is fascinating and compelling, and
Speaker 1: across his three books you can get a good insight
Speaker 1: into how pathologists really contribute to crime and justice.
Speaker 3: There's a saying that writing is the art of turning
Speaker 3: blood into ink, but I think in my case this
Speaker 3: probably literally is a case of turning blood into ink.
Speaker 3: It's been an easy journey for me to write. People
Speaker 3: often ask why do you write? How do you write?
Speaker 3: I just tell the story, you know, they're not it's
Speaker 3: not what I think. I could never write fiction. I
Speaker 3: just tell the story of what I saw and what
Speaker 3: I thought and what became of my patients.
Speaker 1: A Moment in Crime is an enzed Me podcast written
Speaker 1: and hosted by me analysk sandor crime and justice reporter
Speaker 1: for the New Zealand Herald. This episode was produced by myself,
Speaker 1: podcast production manager Ethan Sills and Liam McDonald from enzied
Speaker 1: me Sound and Vision.
Speaker 2: Thanks to my colleague Black Benny at Newstalalk z B for.
Speaker 1: Voicing the extract of Kinrick's book, The Final Diagnosis, and
Speaker 1: special thanks to Kinrick for sitting down to speak with
Speaker 1: me about his book and his career. The world of
Speaker 1: pathologists has always intrigued and interested me, and I really
Speaker 1: appreciated being able to speak to.
Speaker 2: Kinrick about his work.
Speaker 1: Thanks also to Hollyhart Jenkins at HarperCollins for her assistance
Speaker 1: with the interview. Episodes of A Moment in Crime are
Speaker 1: usually released monthly on insidherld dot co, dot mzed iHeartRadio
Speaker 1: and all your.
Speaker 2: Other usual podcast apps.
Speaker 1: If you've got a crimeal case you'd like me to
Speaker 1: consider covering in future, email Anna dot Least at enzdme
Speaker 1: dot co dot mzed