Happy endings: Maddie Pulver and Liam Knight

Were we ready?

Does he call out and tell us or I'm wrong?

Okay, welcome to Krim City.

I'm Mark Murray and.

I'm Clementine Cuneo.

Another week without Josh. He's still playing daddy early daddy.

I messaged him yesterday and said, how's the baby going?

Week old?

Baby?

Six days? How's the baby?

Oh good?

He said, he's sleeping well, so long may it continue.

He's in for a red shock. This is the easy part.

Is the phone calls at three in the morning, saying, who's been shot?

He'll be up, He'll be up, He'll be up. We all get him back in a week me.

In the meantime, A few people probably know is that Clem and I have worked together years ago and we've covered a lot of stories together. We have and now got back again. Now after you had a little hiatus and baby. When around the world did start? I don't know, but I still think there are two stories that stand out in my mind that you and I worked on, and not just because it was you and I, but

That's right.

But I remember getting a phone call from you. I forget what day I was.

It was midweek. I'm going to say it was it Tuesday or a Thursday. I had a mid week day off and I was over in the Mossman area. I'd been for lunch and there were a lot of sirens. I just remember on Military Road it was just emergency vehicle after the next and I thought, you know, you hear one or two go past, and you think something's going on.

Three four.

When it became ten eleven, I rang you and I said, it might be nothing, but I'm just letting you know. I'm on a day off. Don't forget, but something's going on over here.

And I remember ring and getting stonewalled, which was a little bit unusual, and just I think the media unit said, well, look, there's just an operation.

And then I started to try to.

Ring higher up and people going, oh, mate, just stay away, and I said, what do you mean. They said, look, we can't tell you anything. There's actually it's a secret operation.

And then you rang back and said that there was an operation in almost the Clifton Gardens down towards the zoo, and I thought, oh, I'm here, so I better go and check it out. In the very beginning, we didn't know what it was. We thought it was some sort of hot Do we think it was hostage?

Yeah, it was siege or siege.

And then it came out that it was an eighteen year old girl and there was a bomb thing going on.

You rang someone who said, oh, look, we don't really know what it is was we've never seen a collar bomb before.

That was about seven o'clock that night, when still no one really knew what was going on. Everyone thought it was a siege. And then I've rung a bloke who I'd known for a long long time. He was in an operations room at headquarters and he goes, Jem, we've never dealt with a colobon before, said colibon.

Yes, this girl's got some sort of device around her neck. And this is early days of the internet. We didn't really know what to do.

But were twenty eleven.

Yeah, and we put it up on the internet and it went crazy.

Remember it was around HSC time, and there were all these ridiculous stories coming out about Madeline Pulva. She's doing her HSC trials.

And the Cue probably one of the richest streets in there.

Without a doubt, if not Sydney itself.

Yeah, and oh.

No, this is just a ploy to avoid having to do a HSC trials. Like there were all these really crazy stories flying around and it wasn't until you know, if.

Murdoch came out. Remember he was a very senior police officer who was in charge.

And Mark Murdoch who would come out and gave these briefings almost every hour and a half or so.

Yes, at the roadblock in her story, I'll never forget it.

And a terrific guy, a bit like Clint Eastwood.

He's kind of got that understated the way he talks, and he was giving these updates. It took a long time before it came out that literally there was a policewoman the whole time they thought this bomb was active. Remember it was a device around the neck, and this policewoman refused to leave Maddie's side.

Can you imagine terrify it?

And this device, this bomb was around her neck for ten hours before it was deaned that it wasn't explosive.

So ten hours they couldn't take it off because they thought they.

Thought it could explode.

They never dealt with a column, and that policewoman hung there next to her for ten hours, knowing that she could die with Maddie refused to leave her some of the bravest police worker I've ever heard of. It was a long time before the true story started coming out.

And the true story is that a businessman, Paul Douglas Peters, who was a similar age to Maddie's dad.

Bill Pulver, a very very successful businessman who'd been around the world Hong Kong worked in a whole lot of different areas.

And interestingly, so had this man.

And he had a business office in the same offices.

Yeah, there were really weird connections even or you know, parallels, even though the two men didn't know each other. But this guy, for whatever reason, and I don't think anyone will ever know, and I don't think he's ever said, targeted this young girl, broke into her house while she was studying and strapped a bomb to her neck and left a ransom note saying deposit you know, tens of thousands of dollars was a random note on that. It

And it turned out that it was bits of a gun safe that had been made to look like a bomb, that it was all wrong, that it was not explosive, it wasn't dangerous. By this stage, that had made headlines around the world, and then the investigation start.

It was a fascinating story.

I was.

I'm just remembering it was twenty eleven because I had met my now husband, and I remember in those early days we were so into the story. I had to cancel a few dates with him because I was so busy covering the collar bomb. And I thought, well, that's a really original excuse to give for canceling a date.

It's nott migraine or I.

Remember the stomach ache wiped out my car because I didn't leave here till about two in the morning because the story was just evolving and evolving.

It was August twenty eleven, so I think that's kind of trial.

You're at lunch. I thought you were at the hairdressers.

No, it was definitely lunch that day.

You've rung me before from the hairdressers with a.

Tip yeah, Yeah, that was a good one. Why should claim the hair never run here from the botox doctor though Botox?

Because you're on TV now I can probably claim like a hair transplant.

Well, jam I did write about it.

Anyway, I was going to say something slanderous, yes, So it became a massive, massive story. The two detectives on it eventually went to robbery and serious kind of a guy called Luke Moore because they look after kidnappings. Luke Moore was a terrific policeman who's now out of the force, and a young detective called Andrew Marx, who I got to meet is now in homicide. These guys did amazing work. They somehow tracked down via cars and computers.

It was now I remembered it was the email, yes, And it was an email address that this Paul Douglas Peters had set up saying, you know, deposit the money in my bank account. And they worked out where that email address had been set up. It was a hot mail address.

As it always was regulized.

It was a library. I don't even know if it was a library.

So they tracked very credentually, looked.

At the CCTV of the vehicles, that came about library.

It was fantastic.

They got him overseas. He'd flown back to the US. Police went over and they got him at his ex wife's.

House, brought him back.

He's done a ten year jail sentence. We're still here, still talking about it. He's done time, he's out.

And the only other but really amazing thing that I remember, and it was about a couple of years later, because he's broken in and had a balaclava.

Everyone said he had a balaclava.

Great, And then for some reason I found out there was a court document and I googled.

I'd learned to use Google by then.

I had cutting edge, and I googled the type of balaclava.

It was because it was fought from just jeans and it was quite specific the brand, and.

It ended up being a multi colored clown balaclava.

Rick show like colored neon colored stripes.

That is the ummie she had. It was just a black baklava.

Scary, but this one was freak show and that's what she was confronted with now, her father, Bill Polver.

I actually met him a few times. With the conviction and the arrest.

There was a huge drinks with all the coppers and Bill polv a lovely blow and we all go on drink and chatting. And at the time I asked about his daughter, and very very protective, he said, well, she's doing great.

We're helping her with bring her along. And I'm thinking that image twelve.

Hours, thinking you could get blown to bits, the image of a guy in this multi colored freak.

Anyway, she's now gone on to have real she finished her HS.

She's married and she's had a baby. Her family were fabulous. As far as handling the media, I mean, you get two very different extremes. You get people who detest the media won't have a bar of them and that's okay, and you get the poolvers were amazing.

They were amazing.

They'd take all our calls.

He didn't outsourced to someone to handle the median inquiries, and my good they were a lot. Yeah, it was always really facilitating. So that was a huge story. I think of it every time I drive over towards Mossman.

I think of that story and the other one I remember working on, and it's we've talked about it. It's probably when you talk crime, you're normally talking horrible stories, and this one in some ways is one of the happiest but also saddest. And this is this is the vicious assault, the gate crashing assault of a young man called Liam Knight at an eighteenth birthday party over at Francis.

Forest in twenty thirteen.

Well, there you go, and I remember I was actually a chief of staff and on the Sunday morning my phone rang. There'd been a story about Lamb Night, this gate crashing. Now this is to go back.

This was so bad.

These girls had tried to come along to a party and they had invited some guys from Balmain and Ryde and you remember they were over Francis Forest, Leafy north Shore.

As you say, they were turned back in it and somebody got a piece of the building rod I forget how it.

Was Rio Steele there.

You go, and had thrown it over the fence and it has hit Lilliam in the head. Now this was a six foot piece and the really vivid memory is that they had to sore to get him into the ambulance.

Because they couldn't It was embedded in his head so far that they couldn't remove it. He had to go to hospital to have it removed. But they couldn't fit him in the ambulance.

Because it was protruding. And I remember the next day because there was a photo then published in one of the Sunday papers that had Liam in a hood. It wasn't a nice flattering photo, and I remember thinking, Christ, if you make him it looks like it, it looks like in the.

Sunday paper was a picture of him, saying, this is the boy who was the victim of a gate crashing incident. You know he's in hospital fighting for life. But yes, the picture wasn't just look like what you choose as a parent. He had a hood on. He looked like a bit of a thug.

Very very early Sunday morning.

And I got in here without a hangover I often do sometimes, and the phone went and it was Mary. It was Liam's mother, and she was distraught about.

So ringing on the landline.

On the landline. We used to have them.

What they're called.

No, we didn't know her. She's called the landline. You've picked it up without a hangover.

Yeah, that's how we used to get stories people. And she was talking about how upset she was about the.

Photo, and she was pretty fired up memory and I.

Started talking to her and her argument.

Was, how dare you you make him look like?

And then we started talking and she said, I said, I'm sorry. Look, I'll try and rect the front. Do you have any other photos? And I think I was going to have to go over I can't remember. And we started talking and she was an amazing lady and proven to me since she said, you don't know what happened, she said, he's.

A lovely boy. Well, she said, this is at.

Like eight o'clock in the morning, and that she went through the story. She said she rang lean at about eleven thirty and a police officer answered the pharm Now, if you're a parent, god, you go to ring your eighteen year old son. I didn't know that, yeah, And then she raced to Royal North Shore was told that her son was in a critical condition and she said three times during the night they said go in and say goodbye, and she said, I'm not going to say goodbye.

Through it, came through it. He's now married with a baby. He is the most incredible, incredible survival story.

They are the most delightful family.

And who knows, but I think you could probably put it down to a lot of things, but largely the most incredible paramedics and emergency doctors at the scene. Do you remember sixty minutes did a big thing on how they had to bring.

I remember Mary ringing me up and saying, I'm sorry, I'm going to go with sixty minutes. We have to, I said, She said, we need the money, oh, the rehabilitation.

Humble, oh, beautiful family.

Yeah, and she said terrific lady, And and well as great as survival story as it is. Especially a couple of years later talking to Liam and talking to Mary and the mother.

She said, yeah, but he loved Dozsie rules. He couldn't kick a football the way he used to.

He slowly got his memory back, he went back to school and did his HSC.

So terrific, but he still feels very robbed of those years.

Of course, remember, well, tell.

You now that the guy's responsible or involved in the guy that threw that is not in jail.

You'd definitely be out. The guy that threw the spear was.

And they were young, Remember we could have.

Ever at the time he was sentenced to eight years jail. So he's out now and he probably got paroled.

Oh so well and truly out. Yes, the takeaway from it all is that Liam is fabulous. He's brought a house. I'm his Facebook friend, so I see what goes on or Instagram. He's bought a house, he's married, they've got a beautiful little boy. Like you said, the most of the stories we cover are doom and gloom, and they don't have happy happy. I didn't want to see.

They don't have into that. I know, I know for it.

I couldn't have said that anyway.

But Liam's it's a great story.

It is, really it is.

And same with Maddie. Actually we've picked two stories without knowing.

It that actually have happy endings.

People don't die, No, they don't, and you know, they go.

Through trauma and coming out through the other side and the crooks have got locked up.

There you go, we actually came up with them.

There we are happy stories. Thanks for listening to Krim City. Thanks Clem.

I'm not sure whether I prefer your Josh.

I prefer Josh doing it.

I've got to thank executive producer Dan Box and everybody else who've helped on this podcast that canna work, okay done,