The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective see a side of life. The average person is never exposed her I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty five of those years I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talked to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes in the contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world. Today, I had a fascinating chat with Mike Amore. Mike was a foreign correspondent for eighten years and in that role witness some of the worst moments in recent
world history. And we talked about those moments today in New York when the planes hit the World Trade Center during the September eleventh terrorist attack, reporting from scenes of countless mass shootings in America and even Australia's own port Arthur massacre. He takes us on the ground following Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath when the people of New Orleans
seem to be forgotten by their own country. We also discuss the Haiti earthquake and what it was like being involved in the rescue of an infant child who was trapped in the rubble with the dead parents for up to four days. Mike has had countless stories and adventures, and he talks about them today. Some are shocking, others
are remarkable. But what I got from the conversation more than the stories, was an understanding of the importance of accurate, timely reporting and the personal cost of witnessing these events. Let's have a listen, Mike Amore, Welcome to I Catch Killers.
Oh it's a pleasure. Thank you. Gary.
Well, as I was saying the other day, I was walking through the airport waiting for my flight, and I found myself where I usually do at an airport, in the bookstore, and news cowboys jumped out at me. Your book and I picked that up, and I was hooked right from the start. But let you in on a little secret. My fantasy is if I ever came back
to this world, i'd be a foreign correspondent. I think that stems from watching George Nigas back in the sixty minutes stays on the back of a jeep going through the war zones with a scarf around his neck, that type of thing, but fascinating life, the life of a foreign correspondent.
Well, I've been very lucky. Gary. I don't think I've ever been as charismatic as George was, but yeah, I too grew up watching him, and I think that was part of the spur to being wanting to be a foreign correspondent. For me. That's the tip of the sword as far as journalism is concerned. It's what I always wanted to do, and I'm so grateful that I had the opportunity for eighteen years.
It's a long time, and I think we've journalists by nature, they're curious and then ares a foreign correspondent. You find yourself in some of the most history making situations.
Yeah, and sometimes by accident. Sometimes you don't mean to be there. Case in Points September eleven. You know, I'm a boyfriend Bendigo. So I've traveled to I've forgotten how many countries, sixty plus countries around the world, and I've seen places that most people don't get to see, in circumstances that most people don't want to see. So I'm grateful for that.
How did you find yourself as a journalist? First of all, they didn't just say, hey, pluck you from the street and we want you as a foreign correspondent. How did you get into journalism and then the work that you did as a foreign correspondent.
I think if my old English teacher tuned into this, if they're still alive, be saying that bloke is the last guy that we thought would be a journalist and b write a book about journalism. I almost failed Year twelve English. I sucked in Year twelve. I almost failed Year twelve completely. But my father was a newspaper printer for all of his career forty years at the local Bendigo Advertiser. So I'm the original Nepo baby. Nepotism ruled
for me. I played that card and Dad got me in and I was able to become a copy person at the Bendigo Advertiser, the local paper, which was kind of part of the family for me because Dad had been there for so long. So the person out the back was not Bob the compositor. He was Uncle Bob. So yeah, nepotism. I had no right to be a journalist.
We'll use it if you can.
Well, yeah, exactly. It doesn't matter how you get in, I tell my son, doesn't matter how you get in, son, it's what you do when you get there, get the foot in the door to start with me, exactly.
So you started out the print journalism.
Yeah, and it was a great foundation, and it was, you know, it's a unity paper, very proud paper, the Benigo Advertiser, Goldfield's paper, and it was chock full of very experienced journalists that had come back from metropolitan newspapers for a quieter life. But with them they brought this
wealth of experience. So cranky, big drinking, very you know, they'd start the day off kind of grumpy and my job, my first job was to deliver them coffees to them and I'd kind of took me a while to work out while they were grumpy in the morning and then very charismatic in the afternoon. And it quickly dawned on me that they were tipping in a couple of additives to my horrible coffee.
Right, your coffee was just a cover.
It was definitely a cover. And back in those days, you know, about four o'clock the smoke would start hanging off the ceiling and it was a very colorful day, a colorful period of journalism. Perhaps that last generation of those colorful journals that were really heavy drinkers. They'd go down to the pub and I'd watch in aw as they down twelve pots. But they are very good at what they did, and they were hard task masters. They taught me the foundations of journalism and that's stuck with me.
So I was very lucky.
Yeah, there's a skill set that practical on the job learning that you get and starting at the bottom of the run and working your way through. At first you might appreciate it, but when you look back now, it is the grounding that helps you throughout your career. I would imagine.
Yeah, absolutely, And you know they were tough, tough love. Probably in today's terms, maybe they might have been accused of bullying. But I really appreciate it because I think that journalism is a discipline as much as it is anything. You have to adhere to the fundamentals of journalism, and that's something that's stuck with me throughout my career. I struggle when I first started, I don't get me wrong. I thought about leaving maybe a year into the job,
but they encouraged me to stick at it. So I'm not a natural to this business journalism in general, and certainly not television. I've had to work really hard to get to where I am now.
The move to television, how did that occur? Was that by chance or is it something that you were aiming towards.
No, I took it when I was in school. I actually did a work experience period at the local television station in Bendigo as a cameraman. By the way, because I never imagined i'd be a journalist, so in the back of my mind I was fascinated by because the difference in journalism in a local newspaper is you'll be on the phone predominantly, whereas in TV you have to go out. So that kind of always appealed to me,
being out and about seeing things. And I got a job offer down in Gippsland in Country Victoria after about three years, and I went down there and spend a year. They got homesick, came back to Bendigo, back to the Benni Graddy and I bounced around regional newspapers and television until I was about twenty six when I got the job at Channel seven.
And how was your first experiences live in front of the camera, Because it is daunting, like if ever you're going to make a fool of yourself, it's at that point.
I've made full of myself plenty of times, and I still do my first live because we didn't do live very much back when I started, because you needed a truck and it was a lot more complicated than it is today where they use a backpack to go live.
I was actually in Port Arthur when I did one of my first live hits, that terrible massacre, and I had feedback come into my ear so you could hear yourself, but because of the delay, it was like two three seconds delayed, and I thought it was someone talking to me and I froze and that scarred me for a
long period of time. In fact, when I initially said to my then news director, I wanted to become a foreign correst responded he said, mate, you'd be a bloody good foreign correspondent, but you can't do a live cross to just swear you can't do a live cross to save yourself, So I can't. I can't help you.
Yeah, okay, so a bit of a slap down. Well i'll go, but I know what you're talking about with that feedback, And I in my early days in the cops. If I was doing a live live cross and you've got something in your ear and it's a delay and the echoing and or you can't hear it all and you're trying to read someone's lips to anticipate what they've just asked you then to respond, yeah, it is is daunting. So I am making a living out of it. That you ended up doing it must be something. Okay, I
can get better at this. I will achieve this. Were you're practicing home in front of the mirror or.
Not quite not quite that. I just had to stick with it, and you know, just put those horrible voices in your head, you know, to the to the back of the room kind of thing. You know, you just have to ignore those negative kind of feelings. And we all go through that in one way or another in life. And that's just a learning experience, isn't it.
Yeah, it's a challenge, but it's worth it.
In the end.
This is a true crime podcast. We're going to talk about some of the crimes that you've covered in your eighteen years as a foreign correspondent. But I just want to go through some of the things that you've done which is not necessarily crime related, but as a foreign correspondent, I think if I read this out, people might get a sense of why I consider it potentially a dream job. Okay,
so you've traveled to over sixty countries. You're in Hong Kong for the handover of the British rule, the aftermath of the Swiss Canyoning disaster, in which twenty one adventure of tourists died, including fourteen Australians. I'd forgotten about that. That was a horrendous situation. Hasn't You've headed towards hurricanes and earthquakes, been to war zones, ask the American president's questions. You're probably glad you're not asking the current American president questions.
I have an own question, but I have it. Okay, Well, we'll touch on that. You've covered funerals of Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Fidel Castro, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, whole range of things attended five Olympic Games, two Football World Cups, wrestled with wild Ana Condas who were taking over the Everglades being detained in China deport them from an African nation, invited to play basketball with Lebron James, and you hung
out with Andy Thomas, Australia's first astronaut. And what's the space shuttle? That is? If that wasn't your job, and you just these are the things I want to see and do and you put that on a bucket list. They're the type of things that you want to experience in life. What's your memories of those type of events that you've seen and witnessed?
Oh, well, to see four space shuttles take off Gary, including the last one. People pay to see that, And I got paid to go and do that. So that's kind of one of the benefits of the jobs. There's a lot of drawbacks. I saw a lot of horrible things, but I also got to do a lot of things that people dream about, like yourself. You know, just a space shuttle that feel that rumble and hear that roar and you kind of reminds you of the power of humanity.
Then on the flip side of that you see the power of Mother Nature which kind of overwhelms the power of humanity no matter how strong we become. With earthquakes and Haiti and hurricanes like Katrina. Yeah, these are things that they stick with you.
Yeah, the power of nature. In your book, you talked about the volcano eruption in Hawaii. Tell us about that, because that would be fascinating. That's saying nature. It's urorus.
So Kilaway is on the Big Island of Hawaii and in twenty eighteen, these big fisures started breaking up into neighborhoods and it was an eruption, but literally fountains of molten lava would break up into suburban streets and just swallow up these homes. And we went along and we're told we weren't going to get anywhere near these molten
lava fountains because it was just too dangerous. But we happened upon a group of people who are gathering in this shopping center and they were talking to some National guard and we just pulled up and it turned out they were local media about to get an organized tour into these neighborhoods that were being swallowed up by the lava and using my Australian accent, which I often relied upon. Could we tag along, mate, and the National Guard had
served with Australians in the Middle East. Oh you know, it normally takes twenty four hours for you to get to prove but you auses we love you would jump in the back. So we found ourselves like that card. Yeah, so we did it a lot in the back of this National Guard hum v going into these neighborhoods. Just
again talking about the power of mother nature. We were maybe one hundred meters from this fountain of molten lava and we're told by the National Guard troops, if we tell you to run, drop your equipment and run, because they had these meters that measured the sulfur in the air, and he said, if it wind swings around and pushes it in our direction, we've got to go or we'll be dead in seconds. So that was the That was kind of the background, but it was I was just
in awe of seeing this in person. It was unbelievable.
Yeah, it's incredible what you see. And the title of the book news Cowboys. You've got to have a little bit of risk taking, calculate the risks, but things like that, to get close, to get the shot, to experience what you're reporting on, you would have come across a couple of dodgy situations, I would imagine, or risky situations.
Oh well, I mean we called ourselves news cowboys. It was the kind of the tongue in cheek kind of reference to what we felt like. We're always riding into a new adventure, underprepared and not really knowing what we're doing, and somehow, more often than not, we pulled it off. I mean, we went into Libya during the Arab spring and in the back of smuggled ourselves basically in the back of ambulances that were being taken to the to
the front line. We've chased cartel members in Mexico. It didn't actually make the book, but these small towns in deep Mexico had run the cartel out of their villages and use their weapons and against them, and they were hunting them, and we went on the hunt with them, and they told us we're going to get into a fire fight, and yeah, so yeah, I mean we took we took risks. Sometimes I'd like to say they were calculated.
Perhaps we're not that smart, and we weren't that calculator, but we, thankfully we're still here to tell the story.
Do you get do you get conditioned to it? Like is it become like an adrenaline? And it's horrible to say, but I do understand that, like, Okay, well that was good, let's push it a little bit further. Do you get conditioned to it? But then also you get attracted to it too.
And that's the danger. You do get conditioned to it. I can see having covered the Arab spring in Libya and being on the front line and we had a wallplane drop a bomb near us and they shot the warplane down. And we're in Israel overlooking Gaza during the two thousand and eight war and a hill overlooking Gaza and a bomb I don't know if it was a mortar or a rocket landed on the hill beside us, you know, a couple hundred meters away. You know, common
sense would tell you to take cover. We didn't because we were conditioned to it. I can see how some journals get addicted to this stuff because you know, your adrenaline is pumping and you walk away from it thinking, wow, that was thrilling.
Yeah, it's funny and I suppose a lot of people don't talk about it, but it's almost like getting that fix, that adrenaline that is, and you've got to check yourself, step away from it. And I suppose now you look back and go, hmm, maybe that wasn't the wisest thing to do, but.
Yeah, and they're much smarter now, Gary, and they have experts, you know, security teams with these journalists now who are conditioned to know when you're pushing it too far. We didn't really have that, so we were kind of green, naive and that's dangerous and we push the limits. Luckily we got away with it, but you know, so many people don't get away with it. So many journals do pay the price for it. And it's not just being killed in a war. I mean things like a lot
of journo's foreign correspondents get killed in car accidents. That's some of the most dangerous parts of the job. Because you're driving across the Sahara Desert a one hundred and eighty meters an hour.
You know, well, you even hear the military types talk about that. They can quite often the dangers getting to the location because of absolute the vehicles.
You're traveling in so absolutely.
You mentioned the Port Arthur and that was in your early days. So when we talked the Port Arthur massacre, thirty five people murdered. Martin Bryant was the offender. You got called down a couple of days after the event, but quite strangely, you were actually at the what was it the Broad Arrow Cafe a couple of weeks before Martin Bryant went in there and killed twelve people.
Yeah. I was with my then girlfriend and we'd been to Tasmania for the first time two weeks two weekends before the Port Arthur massacre happened, so we'd had lunch in the Broad Arrow Cafe. The memory of the ladies who were working in there was still very real to me, so when it happened, I could picture everything, really, the ticket booth on the way in the car park, where Martin Bryant chased so many people. So it was very real to me. And you're right, I wasn't the first
wave of journalists to go down. I think I was twenty six, so I was still very young and green. But I got sent down two or three days later, and that's a story that really hit me very hard. I've covered a lot of stories massacres since, but that one was kind of personal to me because it was Australians. I kind of was able to distance myself a little bit in other massacres by saying, this is happening to another country. If that sounds callous, but the way I
protected myself, but Port Arthur was very personal. And to be in Hobart at that time, you know, people were just they were destroyed. They were destroyed, and you know, if you didn't know somebody involved, you knew of somebody who knew somebody. It was a shocking crime. And you know, I ended up covering Martin Bryant pleading guilty in the Supreme Court and I sat probably I don't know five meters away from him as he laughed.
Tell me about that, because it's quite chilling when the charges have been read out and he's asked to enter a plea and he was treating that as a comedy.
Yeah. I never forget the look of him, a big shock of curly blonde hair and these piercing, staring eyes like something out of a horror movie. It really was. And the prosecutor was going through the charges. You know, you have been charged with killing this person on this day, how do you plead? And he he pleaded guilty, but he seemed to find some amusement in the fact that it was repeated, you know, on this day again and
again and started laughing hysterically. It was and you know, the poor family members that were in the court, and to the point that his lawyer ended up telling him to shut up. Basically, that was just pure evil, pure evil, pure madness.
Upfront, what was he sentenced after convicted of those thirty five murders and all the other offenses.
He was sentenced to thirty five life sentences, So here he'll die in prison. Rotten.
How I say, I'm with you. You said you're twenty six at the time, probably the biggest story you've been involved in. And did it change your view or did it is something shift in you after you were involved in a story like that.
Yes, in that I think I think I carried it very heavily on myself. The impact that journalists can have when covering a story like that. Quickly a lot of the community anger turned against us. You know, we're being spat on in reads. And I understand and I've seen I have seen it since that people are looking to point their anger at somebody, and these journals are still there asking questions. I found that really confronting and conflicting, and you know, are we doing the right thing here? Yeah?
And again I've seen it another, you know, in other massacres in other places.
It's an interesting conundrum, isn't it with the journalists Because I saw a lot when I was as a police officer in homicide, A lot of people, because I wasn't a journalist, would often make disparaging remarks about the media. Oh they're covering this and covering that. But it was ironic because when they didn't cover it, people would be winging, well, why don't they cover this crime? Because what no one's interested. There's a real difficulty in what the role is the
media and an understanding of what the media is. But these things have to be reported. If they're not reported, they get swept under the carpet. What's your views on the morality of what you do with covering stories like that?
Gary? I don't want to live in a world where something like Port Alpha can happen and then two three days later we all move on and forget about it. Something of that significance needs we need to remain focused on it. And I've seen it in America when they've had gun violence, shocking massacres, where they quickly move on
and they don't learn the lessons. And it sounds cliche, but we are the first draft of history, and what we are reporting at the time often becomes historical we look back at it, and without that then it's not really you know, it doesn't become part of history. You're right. The worst thing in the world is something horrific happened and no one took any notice of it. I don't want to live in a world like that.
No, I think it's an important role. I'm not saying that now because I'm working in the media of journalism, but I thought it was bad. Things are more prone to happen when the spotlight's not put on them, and I honestly believe you need that transparency so people understand what's actually going on, and that evokes a reaction. The Port Arthur massacre, if we just sort of shut that down.
I'm not saying it was the media coverage that resulted in it, but the crackdown on firearms in Australia, that was public outrage that made the government, and full credit to John Howard on what he did bringing in the bands and the gun buyback scheme. I think there was six hundred and fifty thousand firearms turned in.
Again, what we saw out of the result, there was some good to come out of something horrific. And again I keep seeing what's happened in America and continues to happen. They don't, they don't change course. There is never anything good to come out of something so bad, and it keeps happening and keeps repeating itself. I don't get it. Are we always perfect in the way we handle our coverage of massacres and people's grief. No, we're not. We're not.
We're imperfect in that respect. But by continuing to stay focused on things that are important, we do put political pressure on people to make changes, like John Howard did, so there is perhaps a lesson learned or a change made.
It's a fine line because you're dealing with people that are highly emotional understanding because of what's occurred. So it's sort of been a no win situation. But I try to look at it objectively, and I think that there's better good in spotlight being put on situations rather than just sweeping under carpet. You talked about America. Now, you were the US correspondent for Channel seven, and you might
have forgotten the amount of mass shootings you attended. Can you just run us through some of them and the impact. I want to get your thoughts on what's the difference some of the things. Every time, not every time, but I hear of these mass shootings, I think, Okay, this is going to be what tips America into We're going to do something about it. But then you hear the powerful gun lobby and different things and just the mentality
of what's over in America. First of all, tell me about some of the ones that you've covered and the ones that have impacted on the most in the US.
I've covered so many, and writing the book, I'd forgotten about a lot of the ones that I had covered. The one that stuck with me was the school massacre of twenty six and seven year olds just outside of New York elementary school. Gunman went in and shot dead those children and I think eight adults as well, But they became so many. I mean the Charleston church massacre where the gunman prayed with the African American church goers for an hour before turning around and massacring in them,
all except one to leave a message behind. I went to another at a college in America where the same number as Port Arthur which struck me, which was thirty five dead and kids were still going to school while in another part of the campus this guy was on a rampage killing people. Because authorities couldn't get the message out. It became commonplace, and it became this dreadful you know,
the Orlando nightclub massacre. I'm sitting here thinking of them as they came, you know, the Las Vegas music festival. I covered Norway massacre in Oslo, again, a country that doesn't have great gun control. They just keep flooding back to me. It just kept happening and happening, happy, and we ended up having this awful kind of calculation about what is worth going to now, What is going to
attract Australia's attention to these massacres. But they're coming so often that people go, there's just another massacre in America. That's where it got right.
Okay, So from the news point of view, is it of interest?
What's the number?
Is it? Ten?
Fifteen, twenty? I mean that's how And I got very
angry about it because I could. I could having been in Port Arthur and seeing what John Howard did, and away from politics, seeing what John Howard did, and then seeing America being and then they'd be hashtag pray for you, pray for this city, or hashtag pray for Orlando, and then the politicians would get up and go, now's not the time to talk about gun control, Now is the time to well, they just forget about it and move on the next couple of couple of days and nothing
would happen. You know. And the kid that died in the Sandy Hook school massacre I mentioned before, they were the same age as my son at the time, and it was a very affluent society. You're not dissimilar to where I was living in California, And to me, it was nowhere was safe. And if a country would allow twenty six and seven year olds to be killed in their school and not do anything about it, then what
kind of country is it? Even you had the President of the United States, Barack Obama, come out and say we need to do something, but America's lover of guns is just so unexplainable and so addictive to them, and the gun lobby there just so powerful that any politician that tried to make significant change was voted out. I saw it after the cinema massacre in Colorado. Some Republican politicians tried to change the gun law and they got voted out.
It's incomprehensible for someone that lived in a country like Australia to understand the logic behind it. There was one that you talked about, and I think it was a school where thousands of kids and the shooter in this particular one, he killed himself, but the person that sold him the gun was arguing, well, it wouldn't have happened. There was thirty three five hundred people that if they are armed, that wouldn't have happened. That was the logic.
And I remember hearing headlines put the guns in schools and these things won't happen. Like I for all intents and purposes, you look at these people and think they're sane, but how do they come across with that? And you touched on the gun lobby and they understand. Politicians sadly, are often driven about how they stay in power. They
don't want to turn against them. But I would have thought something was done with some of those extreme ones, especially when you talked of the kindergarten one like ho that that touches everyone. We can't dismiss that these are kids six and seven year olds going the kindergarten and they're shot and killed.
And I think most fair minded Americans would agree that you don't need weapons of war on the streets of America. You don't need an AR fifteen that belongs, that belongs in a war zone, that's not a hunting rifle. Their mindset towards weapons is different to ours. You're never going to get rid of weapons, like John Howard did. I
think most fair minded Americans would agree with that. But the gun lobby, the NRA is powerful, even though their membership is no one knows their membership to be honest. It might be two million people, but two million people are holding a country of what three hundred and fifty million at ransom. But this notion that if you the general public that's going to stop massacres, well it doesn't work because they keep happening, and there are more guns
in America than anywhere else. And I used to say that I evenue of an instance where a massacre was stopped by somebody else who was There's since been a couple of those, but they're very rare.
Very rare. Did you get the amount of times you were called to those type of massacres? Did you lose faith in humanity there? Like what happened to you there? Like reading it when you're afar on the other side of the world, it sort of sends a shockwave. But you're going there, You've seeing the grief of the families, You're seeing the pain of a community.
I was angry, and you could probably tell by my response. I'm still angry about it. I mean, and you've got to remember, Gary, that I was. I was part of the community. I'm an American citizen, my wife's American, my son's American. So I felt became this became personal to me because this was a society that I was living in and part of that. I could see having seen again what happened out of Port Arthur, what could happen and what wasn't happening, and again and again, and it's
still going on again and again. You know, communities being torn apart, and just the outright refusal to do anything about it.
Do you know, because you went the Oslo and that was the shooting at a festival seventy There was two attacks, but I think on the island where there was a festival seventy so people killed by the offender in this case had dressed up as a security guard or whatever had gone over there. Did you know this a difference in the way that nation responded as compared to America with these type of things, or is pretty much the same.
I can't, in all honesty tell you the aftermath, the long term aftermath of what happened, but certainly the level of shock was greater because they had an experienced But I mean it was I think seventy odd people, young kids got killed. They were basically caught on an island by this government and had nowhere where to go. He'd also had detonated some explosive devices in downtown Oslo. The absolute devastation really shocked me because America, you know, there's
a level of mourning that's natural. But America moved on very quickly. Oslo Norway didn't. I can't tell you with any certainty whether there is any gun reform out of that.
But yeah, you talked about interviewing American presidents and seeing the elections, you would have covered a few when you over there, just off the crime aspect, just to lighten it up a bit. What are the elections like? Are they as crazy as what we see over here?
I love American politics. I fell in love very quickly. In fact, I left straight straight out of the Sydney Olympics, and I was in America about two weeks later, and it quickly dawned on me that there was a US election a couple of weeks away, and I may be in the excitement of the Olympics and going there, I hadn't really thought about it. And I said to my boss. I said, shit, mate, there's an election coming up in two weeks. I know nothing about US politics. He said,
don't worry about it, mate, We'll be right. It'll be over in a couple of days. Well that was George Bush versus Gore. I don't know if you remember. That was the county that was the hanging chads. So you know, on the night and I'm sitting there Green having just arrived from Australia, thinking of this, I'll just need to get just need to fudge it through this night and I'll be all right. All of a sudden, Al Gore conceded and then took back his concession just as George
Bush was about to deliver his victory speech. And they did the recount in Florida, and they had the hanging chads. You know, there's people with a cross eye. They're looking at the ballots and seeing whether it was punched through or not. And this so much for it only lasting a couple of days. I think it was decided by the US Supreme Court in December. Dragged on and on and on, but that was my initiation to US politics. And it's just so much theater in it, the pomp
and ceremony and tradition, the conventions, the election night. I loved it. I still love it. I'm kind of horrified to see what's happening over there, to be honest. I was there for the first part of Donald Trump's first term. I covered five US elections, so I was there for both the Bush, both of Obama, and the first one of Trump. Yeah, I think we're in an interesting slash dangerous period of time in American politics, so it'll be interesting to see how we get out of it. But I love US politics.
Well, it would be entertaining, and sometimes it goes on here and I'm thinking of it, is this a reality TV show? Or what am I watching? When Obama was elected, that was a significant moment. What was the feeling like in the country at that time.
Well, he's one of his themes was hope. You could feel it. You could feel it was there was a period of great hope for America that were just coming out of the war in Iraq and Afghanistan. You know, the shocking attacks of September eleventh. Americans were beaten down, and we remember the economy turned just as Obama came in. So he swept on this wave of love and hope,
and you know, first African American to be elected. You know, it's great enthusiasm, and he's such a great speaker, such a great orator, it's hard not to get swept up in that, regardless of his politics. Now, it seems that politics has been taken over by hate and division, no matter what side you're on, you know, and it's kind of creeping in here as well.
Yeah, there's no unity.
You can't disagree with somebody, you know, if you don't have the same belief as me, you're a dickhead or a dumbass. That's not the way. We all have the right to have a different opinion. And name calling or worse, political violences, there's just no, there's no place for it.
There's a real adversarial approach, yes, combative, and it doesn't seem to serve anyone.
Well, no, in America. What I loved about America because we always talk don't talk about politics, you know, religion. That's not the same. In America. You would have a debate like debating a football team, you know, and it would be generally well taken, but a dangerous conversation to have.
Now, Hey, guys, it's Gary jubilin here. Want to get more out of I Catch Killers, then you should head over to our new video feed on Spotify where you can watch every episode of I Catch Killers. Just search for I Catch Killers video in your Spotify app and start watching.
Today.
You're in New York for September eleventh, and yeah, that's life changing for everyone. That doesn't mean you have to be there at the time. Every on the world changed from that moment. You're actually in New York and I think you're about to leave, and the first Tower was hit by a plane talk us through the events of that Todd.
We said, at the start, I accidentally found myself in major stories, and that was the biggest of them. I'd been there covering Leighton Hewitt had won the US Open tennis that weekend as a twenty year old. We are been following around it. To be honest, he was a little difficult to follow around. So he left and we
all went out and celebrated that night. Next morning, I woke up, I was pretty dusty, and we're heading to the airport and this driver picked us up and he was Israeli and he thought we were tourists, and so he was giving us a tour as we were leaving, not the typical grumpy New York taxi driver. And he said, we're driving down and he said, that's the Israeli consulate, and there's always a police car there guarding it. And almost on que the police guard lit up its lights
and tore off, and he goes, that's unusual. And the next left turn down into the one of the tunnels leading out of Manhattan, and we're in the traffic for a little while. Emerged at the other side and the world had changed almost immediately. You could see every emergency vehicle, fire brigade, ambulance, police card just pouring back into the tunnel going into Manhattan. And my phone started rattling off with messages. Remember we had flip phones, so they're pretty basic,
and I was trying to go through them. Got a call and it was someone from the newsroom. It was late at night in Sydney. This plane is just hit the World Trades and I'm like, that can't be true. It was beautiful, blue sky, it was a beautiful day. Look through the taxi window and almost frame perfectly is the first tower on fire, big hole and it just been hit. I I didn't know what was going on.
Our taxi driver started wailing and banging the wheel of the cut cab, saying, they've got us here, they've got us here, obviously referring to terrorism might come down. We need to go back the other way, and we were going to do a phone interview back to the Sydney studio, and I heard a cry in the studio come out and it was the moment the second plane had hit, and sure enough I could see it through the back of the taxi window. So we were trying to get
back into Manhattan. They were closing all the bridges and tunnels, fearing that this was the start of something bigger, which it was. And we eventually got back through Harlem. If anyone knows, Manhattan's kind of the top northern part. So we had to drive all the way back. And as we and we were listening on the radio. We were listening to you know, there's a plane gone into the Pentagon, a plane gone down in Pennsylvania, another one going towards
the White House. There was a car bomb exploded at the US Supreme Court. Some of it wasn't true, but too much of it was. But it was like I always say, it's like War of the World, you know, the radio show in the maintain. Yeah, and everyone thought it was true. Well, this this was like that, and you know, my head's spinning. I think I quickly forgot
my hangover. We didn't. I didn't see the towels come down, but we got there just after they came down, and we're listening to it on the radio, and you could see people starting to emerge on the streets, just covered caked in gray dust, horrified, just just sheer terror on their face. Yeah, we went in and we spent three or four nights sleeping in the streets of Lower Manhattan because the police had cooded it off, so if you left,
you weren't going to get back in. So we had to slept in a Cameron's car the first night, in the alcove of a building, the second on the floor of a satellite truck the third and yeah, the world had changed, and you know, I was my head was spinning. I was overwhelmed by it. I was at the scene, found myself boy friend Bendigo, at the scene of certainly the biggest story of my career and perhaps my lifetime.
Yeah, and how like I would imagine the logistical side of even filing your stories must have been. You're saying you're sleeping on the floor of a van, and different things, the chaos that would u surrounded what went on.
And again, primitive mobile phones. The mobile phone towers were on top of the World Trade centers, so mobile phones were not working. We had to rely upon satellite trucks to get our material out. The Americans would promise we'd sit next to a satellite truck hoping to get ten twenty minutes out of the airtime out of the satellite truck and we kept getting bumped because they were going wall to wall to wall to wall. These were the logistical challenges that we kept facing being able to talk
to Sydney. I didn't even see the vision of the towels come down because I was in the street. We saw the firefighters emerge after the towers come down, just again caked in dust, and my phone for some reason came to life for a couple of minutes and he one of the firefighters said can I use it? I said sure, and I guess I was eavesdropping, but he phoned a loved one and started crying and said, you know, I've lost so many mates. I'm alive, but I've got so many friends and hung up and went back in.
I mean, those guys were incredibly brave. But yeah, I think as a journalist, you go into journalism mode. You try to just kick into well, I've got to I've got to cover this. Yeah, I'm overwhelmed by it, scared even but I've got to do this. I've got to get this story. I've got to try to go live. We think we were the first Australian TV network to go live from the scene and one of the challenges, especially early on being a foreign correspondence, is the logistics.
You know, food, cars, petrol, power. Covering the story is just part of the part of the challenge.
It's interesting what you say there might that you go into journalists mode when it's happening. I understand that, and I think that's the way a lot of us got through homicide work. That you're a horrendous scene. But people would say, well, how did you feel when you're actually working. You don't have time to process how you feel. Like when your job at a crime scene was making sure we catch a person that's done this. So that was my focus, and I would imagine in your situation that
would be very much the same. My job here is to cover this. That's what I'm focusing on, and you don't get time to sort of step away until you've finished your job. Did you did it hit you at some point in time? You said, four days you're on the ground. Did you ever have time to just reflect what you had seen and been involved in.
Yeah, we were on the ground for three or four weeks, but camped in the streets for three or four days before we were able to get accommodation. Yeah, There was one point a few days in where people started coming up to us, and initially it was just a couple of people with a photo have you seen this person? And initially I'm like, why are you asking me? You know, and it kind of didn't dawn on me, It didn't,
you know, what was going on. And then then it became a flood of people, dozens of people coming up to us with photos of loved ones. So just so desperate to find people, their loved ones who disappeared in the World Trade Center, that they'd come to journos you know, have you seen them? You know, I mean it was inconceivable, but to them, they were so desperate. And then I just kind of, you know, it kind of hit me, like, wow, these poor people have They've got nothing, They've just disappeared.
They didn't pull anybody out of there. They had gurney's waiting at hospitals. And the other thing Gary that also hit me, and I still struggle with it when I see documentaries, is the chirping. The firefighters wore alarms, personal alarms so to help them be found in the case of something happening, and all through those first certainly the first night, maybe the first couple of nights, all you could hear was the chirping from the World Trade Center ruined.
It was those personal fire alarm going off. They if they found anything, it wasn't. They weren't pulling out bodies, that was. You know, these just kept going off until the batteries ran out.
Horrendous And it changed the world too, didn't It changed a lot about your world. You would have found yourself in different places because of that particular day.
It dictated the next decade or more of what we did. You know, we went into two World War two wars, rather one of which you know, didn't finish until after I left the US. There were terrorist attacks that's kind of spawned out of it, even in Sydney. I went to cover them. In Paris and other parts of America. You know, I think people who perhaps not old enough
to remember the differences. It was kind of one of those moments before nine to eleven and after nine eleven it's certainly changed, and even you know, predominantly in America they went into deep mourning.
Yeah. Well, it certainly must have had an impact when you see and at the time, and that's interesting you say that with all the reports. If you're under attack and you didn't know when it was going to end, reference war of the world, So I understand what you're saying there. It would have been a surreal situation.
Well, they shut down the the air space really quickly, but a couple of times passenger planes flew over, obviously going being told they had to land again, and everyone's like, you know, it's just another one. Yeah. And and that first flight when I eventually I went down to Washington a few weeks after because George Bush made an addressed to Congress, and that flight home was a nerve wracking flight, you know, and all those security measures they brought in
take you two hours to get through security in American airports. Yeah, it changed remarkably.
Well, you know, these are some of the heavy things you've you've done. I'm going to lighten it up a little bit before we take a break for the part one. But why were you wrestling wild anacondas.
Well? Ana Condas?
I've seen the movie a documentary.
Oh what happened? This thing had a head on it like this, Yeah, it was it was I think it was twenty feet long and thick. And so this was a guy that was picking up these anacondas and people's swimming pools. So it was in the Everglades. The story, the folk lore, and I don't know how true it was that a breeder had anacondas during one of the hurricanes in Florida and it hid his house, destroyed his
collection of anacondas. They all escaped into the Everglades and they started breeding so big that they would they would eat the alligators, and it became started becoming a huge problem down there, probably still is. So I love the thought of going on air boats and seeing alligators and trying to fight. We didn't see one in the while, but we found this guy that was collecting it, and he encouraged us to pick this bloody thing up. A couple of times in my life that I was scared
that was one of them. This thing would have.
Yeah, I've handled snakes and I know how strong they feel, just the small snakes. So it's just pure muscle.
Just yeah, it wrapped around my arm and they're like, oh my, you can get him off now. Yeah.
Well see some of the amazing experiences did I I think it was in your book writing around the Pyramids at some stage.
Yeah, that was after we came back from Libya, so we'd had three weeks I think in Libya covering the war there, and it was after the uprising in Egypt, so there were no tourists there. OK, it was still
very tense there. I know you've spoken Peter Grestor before, so and John and my camera and I maybe one of maybe half a dozen tourists, and we got we're able to get a camera ride around the the pyramids and virtually just us, which is unheard of because you go there now will be thousands and thousands and thousands of people.
What an experience. These are the things that balance it out, isn't it. Yeah? It is.
We took some time sometimes we didn't always blow in and blow out. Sometimes you take a day just to enjoy where you're at. That was one of those times.
Yeah, now, and I do. I've seen and I've been involved in the industry enough to see how hard you work when it's on. And I've been away with film crews, and I thought we pushed hard in the Cops, and we did, but I was always impressed by you know, you could be going for twenty hours, forget the meal. We've got to get this shot. We've got to do this so that you do do work when it's on.
Well, I mean in case of you flying to Libya. We flew into Egypt, jumped in a car and drove straight into Libya. We were asleep because we're still jet lagged. And you just go twenty hours our days, doesn't matter. You get the job done.
Well, let's have a break and when we come back, we're going to talk about There's one that you work very closely on and it was covered over here, but that was the senseless murder of Chris Lane, the young aussy guy that was over there on a baseball scholarship. Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath of that and what you saw in there, David Hicks in Guadamart Bay. I think that's interesting that you've been there and so a whole
range of things. And I'm sure I've got a couple of other little things I might pull out here and I can have a chat. But let's let's do that in part two.
Cheers, Cheers,