The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective see a side of life the average person is never exposed to. 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 into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world. I first met recently retired Queensland homicide cop Detective Senior Sergeant Darren Edwards when our paths crossed on one of the country's biggest murder investigations. That was the hunt for the killers of a man called Terry Falconer, who was murdered,
dismembered and had his body dumped in the river. Today, I caught up with Darren to talk about his impressive career and how he came to my aid when we were pursuing a contract killer across borders. We also spoke about how he arrested Daniel Morcamb's killer, Brett Cowen, and his involvement with Cowen years before he murdered Daniel Darren. When you were working in the Northern Territory, you arrested Brett Cowen, who was found out to be the person
responsible for the murder of Daniel Morecambe. You arrested him years before that, and you in fact were involved in the arrest of Cowen for Daniel Morkham's murder years later in Northern Territory. What was the offense that he got locked up for there? Can you tell us the circumstances of that.
He had been living out a caravan park BP Palms, just passed Barrama out towards Palmerston. He'd been living there and the young young boy he was abducted essentially by Cown, taken into because it was all bush around that area, he was sexually assaulted.
How old was the child?
He was around five, I think by memory, but he only had kind of a been able to communicate, probably more like a three year old like he didn't have any specific handicap as such, but he didn't have great communication skills for a boy of that little age. Anyway, Cowen was living there. As I said, we'd done quite an extensive investigation around every mile, looking at the characters.
Fairly isolated caravan park opposite industry area. I was one of the more junior dective senior constables there at the time, but we did a door knock of that caravan park. Some interesting characters we came across during that thing. One lady I'd interviewed there gave him a bit of an alibi about Cown having come there, and provided a video to him at this time, and the next day she contacted me and said, look, I hadn't told you the quiet truth. He told me to tell you that he'd
brought this video. There's time to try and alibi his movements up around the boy for the exactly And the boy had wandered into the caravan park days and he had badly swollen eyes, He had obvious marks around his neck, He was bleeding from his buttock, which was as a result of kaw On having choked him out, And as I said later on examination, there was smurm on his
underpants and things like that. But eventually, when the other the main investigating team interviewing team were interviewing Cown after his solicita left, Kawn did realize it wasn't looking good for him. He did provide a version and he wanted to say that he didn't mean or he wasn't trying to kill the child when he'd made that a mission. And it was early days of recording interviews and what
have you. So I so I used a digital recorder and recorded his interview, reiterated what he told the other investigators. So we had the recording which was later played or presented in the coroner's court for Daniel Walcombe. But it was just that later on where I ended up working. How it comes back to.
You, Yeah, well, how long was the offense with the abduction of the young child before Daniel's abduction?
There was eight or nine years before Daniel missing the Sunshrihine Coast. And when he went missing, I was working the homicide squad in Brisbane then and then later in twenty eleven when he was arrested, I got the position as I was for in charge of the Sunshroine Coast District cib SO. I was part of that when that unfolded and he was arrested then, So it was uncanny how.
It comes around exactly. We'll talk more about the arrests for the Daniel morcamb murder later on. But that offense described the young child. That's a pretty chilling a fence, Like you've been a cop long enough and you know that's yeah, that's an evil offense. How long did he get for that.
He didn't get that long at all. I think he only got about four years. Cowen saw a need to say something because he realized that it was evidence of him deliberately choking that boy out. And the only reason you would choke that boy out it was really the killing. And then when you throw his body into a rusty old carbody, that's not just.
You know what I mean, not expecting him to survive that. That's my take on it. You were saying with that investigation, we're talking the other day and you said you were doing a small community. You're going around getting DNA from everyone in the community.
Well, it was a caravan park. As isolated is a service station. There bp service station, the caravan barks surrounded it, but it was isolated. There's no other housing around or anything like that. So it was early days of using DNA, but the Northern Territory was quite advance in those days, and we were even advanced in electronic records of interview, we were already using them. We saw a need, we thought, well, the initial examined by the scientific officer said, there's what
they believe was sperm on those underpans. If we get DNA, we would get some evidence against the actual offender. So we started to get and most of the men in the park happily volunteered their DNA for that process. There was a couple of nutcases in there, but eventually we got it. And when I think Cown saw us doing that, he became concerned, knew.
His time was up. Did you get a sense of how evil Cowen was at that time, and.
Definitely dealt with him. And then we understood when we got his background about him having been involved in an offence on a boy in Brisbane at a child care place where he'd been working as a labor for trainers or something like that, and that was that boy. It actually had to give evidence, So that was a motive for Chan to basically shut that child up in the Northern Territory because in year there was a communication, he'd be able to at least communicate and tell somebody.
Yeah, scumbag, isn't it okay? Policingkreer the talkers through your policing Creer.
Yeah. Originally I was working in central Queensland before the police. I had some friends in Queensland Police at the time I played football with and then I got offered a job in the Northern Territory work on mine's He had a couple of mates I'd grown up with playing football up there the Territory. I owned a house in Brisbane and you got a free accommodation as part of your employment in the Northern Territory, so it was a money.
As well rent the place out.
There was rumblings about fitzgerald inquiry coming in Queensland. A few of the mate says, and I don't join here at the moment, So I took the option to join the Northern Territory Police. So I went up there. It was late eighty five. I think my course was supposed to start before Christmas eighty five, but I think there were cyclone issues or something that we end up starting after Christmas, but I went up there anyway and I started mates and then I got an accommodation. I finished
my training in June nineteen eighty six. I worked around Darwin and then Tom went on. I saw an interest in criminal investigation work in I think I started in the I did some relieving in cob. I liked it, and obviously I got along with them, the fairly old school detectives, but very good, and I went starting the branch in March. First week of March nineteen eighty nine.
Was what was working in Northern Territory like it because it's such a sparse area too. It's different to policing in the city.
It definitely was. And look, northerns area's a pretty rough place back in the eighties, you know, and pretty hard man, good footballers, so that everyone was into fishing and shooting.
And I described it as at wild West.
It was very close and if you're in the CIB and Darwin, there was only sob and Darwin, Catherine Tennant Creek and Alice Springs. So if anything happened out at the goal for out those outlying settlements, we had to go there all the time. So you had to see a lot of the countries and pretty limited resources as well. And when I started the branch and it was common we actually had a stock sport as well. There was
a detective there in a stock sport. It was only a two men show and you had lan cruisey ute covered and used to do trips out to the various stations. There was a lot of style and cattle, big cattle star.
You're catching cattle rustlers.
Well that was the start of it, but there could be you know, there might be property styling from cattle stations and things that you'd go out to it and it was a lot of I think, you know, showing the flag so to speak with the police and building a relationship with those rural property owners and I did that. There was a Bear Bentham was the guy that I started with there. He was a hard guy, very hard
guy from New South Wales. Originally he was mad, keen on shooting anything that moved, and so I started off with him and did some trips out to fitz Morris and other places in eastern side of Northern Territory, particularly in Bora Lula and so I travel exactly but I
enjoyed that I really enjoyed that. And it's funny I used to see I got a good view of seeing a lot of Aboriginal original artwork and out of the way places where tourists would never see and things, and I had developed appreciation of Aboriginal art, which it is I still have today. But it was interesting. That was my introduction to cob so to speak with Bear Bentham and then yeah, just went in the normal areas of like the serious more serious crime of cob as I progressed and.
What steered you towards going down the detective path.
I think it was just interesting. Look, I didn't really wasn't really friendly with a lot of detectives before that. Certainly some of my friends I knew their fathers might have been old detectives, or it was just an interest, you know. I developed a skill of speaking to people as well, and so I just fitted in well with that group. And yeah, they're pretty rough and ready crewe, but at the same time they are really good detectives.
Old detective sergeants I work with, and seeing they are good detectives.
It's changed. But I joined the cops around the same time, and I know the old school detective sergeant's been they had done that, seeing that you could learn a lot from them, couldn't you exactly?
And the way they spoke to people and building rapport with crooks and being able to talk to them and look at the end of the day was you're trying to get a confession out of them, and they spoke them well. It was a very good learning ground for me to listen to them and watch what they did.
It's a skill. It's changed in criminal investigation because a lot of the bruce were built on the statements you'd get from witness and the confessions you get from the suspects, because you didn't have the forensic science backing you up inbearably exactly.
And like years later, as I went on and got a bit more experience, has come more of a senior investigator. I suppose. I used to see young detectives go up and with their recorder and say, oh, do you want to take part in an interview with it? And they go no, And that was I said, that's not the way you do it. Everyone talks. Everyone talks, and when they know that there's some hurdle they've got ahead of me, then they might want to address that. And give their
version and that used to really annoy me. So that was a I think that's a habit, I think looking at younger guys and I was at homicide in Queensland. Later, I think it started to come back around. They realized you've got to put some exactly, you've got to put some effort into it, and put some effort and time into this person. You might like him, you might like what he's done, but he's got a story to tell.
Yeah. I saw that. There was a period of time where detectives go, they're not going to talk, and it was almost it was drummed into them like this person's not going to talk. But as you identified, invariably, when you sit down and have a chat with someone and spend a bit of time get to know them, information does come flowing.
And even if they had the solicitors come out and tell them they're not saying anything blah blah blah, the go out be on amand out of the jar lives to make an effort to go and see them once or twice. And sometimes I used to say, you're the only person that even come here to talk to me. And if if that's as much as you got and build a bit of rapport that way. It's strange how things later work in your favor or the victims favor, because you bother put some effort into it.
The art of communication, it's such an important thing in exactly just before we move past the Northern Terror Toory, because you talked about it being a pretty wild and ready place. I imagine working uniform in Darwin in the early days in the eighties, that would have been some wild times.
It was a Friday night and darl was a pretty wild place. There was brawling between the different pubs, and you know, there's a lot of Aboriginal camps around there, so there's a lot of Aboriginal stabbings and murders and what have you. Was you just wouldn't know what to expect.
But like sometimes on a Friday night in Cavanagh Street on Mitchell Street where the pubs were, it was mayhem out in the street and sometimes had to fight to save yourself or especially if you had young female officers with you yet to protect them because there was a lot of grubs.
No, it would have been an interesting time time policing, and it was in the wild West days. Your decision to transfer across to Queensland Police. What brought that on?
Yeah, look, I was born in Bread in Queensland. Always thought about it. Then what happened. The Queensland Police were pretty desperate to try and boost some numbers, so they started. I think it was the initial one shortened course for serving police. I took opportunity for that. At that time, I'd gone to Tenant Creek because you kind of it was a bit of like an old Victorian where you had to go back to uniform to get and do supervisors. You work to get promoted and then go back to
the branch, that type of thing. There was a couple of guys got promoted in the branch, you know, years back, but that was changing. I once again had a house in Darwen. I ran it out. This thing with Queensland was starting to happen, so I applied for that. I was in Tenant Creek. I got acting sergeants roll there. I think the whole time I went there. I went there and I think about August ninety.
Four described because we were sitting inner city Sydney suburb described Tenant Creek.
Tenant Creek was was definitely the whole west of the same thing. There was some basic town camps either side of the main strip, a couple of pubs either side and town camps. They had different different clans too, and they used to meet in the main street, and you know, we used to call it Zulu Dawn was they and the payday the mayemam fighting each other and the injuries they do to each other and the police will be
stuck in the middle type of thing. But some of the yeah, some of the injuries and what they did there was and pretty horrifying working there and getting called out or camp and in the middle of the dark and all of a sudden in a land cruiser and a star picker comes straight through the window in front of your head and things like that. You tell people they wouldn't expect it.
How Like from your experience policing, did you have what you consider good role models in those type of areas of how the police situations like that, because it's a unique situation and traditional policing doesn't always work in those type of situations.
Look at but once you hit it on the head earlier, it was communication and original people was a big Aboriginal area and there was quite a few guys married Original girls. My oldest daughter has Aboriginal heritage. And actually it was very good original they could if you treated them well, they spoke to you well. And it's the way it was. And there was pretty old school type of policing and we always acted morally, tried to do the right thing, decent and protect people. And it was the basics were
there even in the middle of nowhere. But if you, if you behave decently towards people, that was reciprocal.
When we might make this the theme of the podcast, you're about the importance of communication in policing, like your vastly experienced police officer, and they know the success you've had comes from your ability to communicate with people.
Yeah, and it looks as I said, you're building and rapport. But it's not just all your witnesses were not always above average people ere they you know, had difficult times, your witnesses over the here and you had to put as much work into them to get them on side as well. And in Northern Territory, a lot of those places still spoke a lot of Abu or die like. The English was not their first language, and that used to be a wesdy. I had to get it interpreted
in the interview some of them young people. So that was interesting.
Well, you've got a good broad experience in policing. Then, relatively early in your career in Queensland Police, you went to the National Crime Authority.
Yeah, when I came across initially I finished my short course training in ninety five. I actually went to McKay initially first for a while, I got back in the CIB there, recognized obviously the detectives designation, went back in the CIB there. I work with some really good guys there. Dennis Hansen was a scene so they're a very old school guy, very good group to work with, a good
town to work in. And then they were looking for I'd done some background training when I was in Darwen, like COVID sur allance type of training, just as initially, and then they are looking for coverts for National to do some undercover work. And because I was from the Northern Territory, I was in McKay now and knew me essentially, So that's how that started. So I went there in started ninety ninety eight, I went there and I did that undercover role for two years until two thousand.
So okay, tell everyone that's worked under cover has interesting stories. Tell us.
Most of my most of my targets were Sydney targets. Yeah, and obviously NJA looked at bigger type of targets had you know, in a way better words, you bought your briefs. You know, I was there was some targets in Queensland by getting all their gear were mostly heron. I was working on them and cocaine was starting to come in, but a lot it was still heron was the main. I did do some undercover work on some guys, you know with hashish. That guy come from a guy from
Lindsmore who was coming on in boats. Had some variety of characters, but one of them I did down here. I used to come down here quite a bit doing a role there. Ser had some interesting Carris. But I was buying multiple ounces of.
You were playing playing the drug dealer.
Great, yeah, and that was interesting.
An any hairy moments, because hairy moments. Tell us about one time I.
Was here in Sydney and the guy I was working on I was buying multiple ounce as heroin and I had to go into this like a block of units, big block of units with a security gate and things like some I'm imager and everyone can hear a bug
devices so they could hear the conversation. And everyone knew he had guns or whatever, pistols, and he used to go and do ounts or quarter around steals hero and all the time we're at the table and he started putting his hands in his mouth pulling stone and I was just going, what are you doing, what are you doing? What are you doing that for? And everyone got a bit worried about what he was doing. And I think they were waiting him to say, mate, you don't need
a gun. And I think the doors were being smashed down, but they are really worried. But all it was was he had these quarter abounds balloons in his mouth, so he used to swat. If he got pulled up, he'd swallow them all. But he was just pulling them out of his mouth. That's secreted. And it just looked a bit, that's all it was. But everyone else for them. And I was getting these phone calls, yeah are you okay,
and startling and I'm trying to shut them up. So that was, you know, that was one that was a bit. And it was scary going into a place where no one could see you what was going on, and you didn't know him. And I had a lot of money on me as well, so you know, there was obviously outcomes. It could have been worse than that.
It would have been. It would have been an exciting time. So I would imagine as scary as certain situations were, the adrenaline and be kicking in and you'd be getting getting a bit of a taste for that.
Yeah, I know. Like another guy used to get hair and off and he used to come down and sitting but he'd transport it back up and he was in a rural block off it up the back of the Sunshine Coast and I wasn't living there there, but same thing. The best we get was a friendly about a kilmet away with binoculars and I'd sit in there and I was buying also, he was buying hydropolics. He had containers up up near Bunderberg there would goate and growing hydroponics
as well. I was buying heroin off him as well. But he had like, yeah, this guy there that was used to be a bodyguard for President Saharta and he was just a massive bodybuilder there, and that used to be intimidating there with having them circle around behind you and you knew you had no one with you.
Were you getting around in your cool gear your Miami vice?
Look, No, I I was definitely. I was in footy shorts and a blue single most of the time. That was that was that that guy. When I came to Sydney, it was a bit more casual, you know, and I'd go, might meet him to have a drink somewhere or something. I'll get around, I'll shout and I remember this boss I had at the NCAA at the time in Brisbane. When I was at the bar buying champagne, He's dragging them out, telling you don't buy anything, you get them to buy you And I said, I'm trying to make
an impression here. So yeah, it was some pretty funny times.
How long were you there with?
Two years? Two years? And then I went to State Crime. I went to the arm robbery squad at State Crime?
What years was that?
Two thousand to two thousand and three? I was at the arm robbery squad.
So still stick ups were still happening.
Yeah, and we had a really good group there. They kind of reformed the our robbery squad as opposed to what it was years ago, and because we had a lot of banks getting done to abs and that's what we focused on, and we had a lot of We had about eighty six percent clear uprate for that squad. And yeah, that squad, they weren't conventional a lot of the ways they did it. There was more senior guys than me there. But I was a technive sergeant then.
But we got a lot of crooks from the jar and ryle overs and what have you, and we cleared up a lot of a lot of robbery and again some really good crooks who were killing people as well. That went a bit south for that group in a way, and then it was subject of a Triple C investigation.
Well, I was in the stick ups in the in the nineties down here in New South Wales and it went went the same way. But people are not making excuses for the ones that went off track. But it was It was a tough, tough gig, wasn't when banks were being robbed and innocent people were being shot and you had the match fire with fire exactly.
And look, look if we're getting confession, we weren't doing anything wrong. We're just trying to you know, I might get them out of the jail and let them visit their girlfriend, and you know they're entitled to gave someone to come and talk to them, you know, whatever it might have been. But there's some of the things are criticizing that group of it wasn't really fair considering the clear up we've got and the evidence got held up
in court and that that type of thing. But you know, later on, you know, one guy got sacked and he was like a fall guy. It was pretty bad. And then the other guy that was with him with part of that episode terrible outcomes say, which you know every cop ha's got stories about those type of things happening.
And there was a fine, fine time and we had it in New South Wales where yeah, the arm robberies in the pecking order of crooks, they were the sad at the top of the tree, they were the dangerous ones and taking them on was hard police work. And they'd picked people cops that were capable of matching these guys and then when it blew up, everyone's gone, oh,
how did that happen? But they virtually created squads of hard men to go after other hard men, and when it ended in tears, everyone saw the steps away and goes, how did that happen exactly?
And it looked as I said, it wasn't always conventional or by the books, so to speak about the evidence. You know, if you had evidence to use against them, like their admissions, it was going to get tested, so you had to be above board away that was obtained if you use some advantages to them and getting them out of the jail so they could see someone, so be it. But we got them out there to get interviewed, and it was to them as might be a bit
of a game. But they are looking the best deal and the best outcome run and what we're looking for. So the victims, the ladies are the subject of getting shotgun shoved in their face. They've got they convicted that guy, they did that, and that makes them feel a bit better. It does. It might be the perfect outcome. A lot of those people in the banks they never worked again after some of those two And.
I've had sitting here a lot of ex robbers, not the coparm robbers, the bad guys, the ones holding up the banks, and I don't think a lot of them really appreciate the trauma that it was carrying on. Like some of the stick up guys that I've spoken to that have done the robberies thought they were doing good things because they weren't shooting anyone. But the trauma associated with having loaded firearm pointed at you, as you would know, and I know, is quite at least a lasting impact on you.
Of course it does. And those guys, that's the last thing they're thinking of. They're just thinking they're going, they're scare, get the money and go, and no intention of pulling a trigger or anything. It was just a fear fact that they wanted to get that money and get out. Yeah, you know, and a lot of the you know, the staff will just comply and not they would be remain pretty calm sometimes. So whilst the methodologies might have been unconventional,
the outcome was really for the victims. And we reduced those banks and to ib Robbies virtually to nothing.
Yeah, that was a victory for law enforcement, wasn't it the way? And it wasn't just what the cops were doing, but the way the banks were making it harder to rob with the security screens and everything else in place.
Exactly as things change, security got better, but they used to try other things. I know. There was another couple of robbers who one's dead now Bell and the other one Row was convicted robbery. Where they what they do
They pretended I'll give you example. They pretended to be Telstra workers outside this Westpac bank, right, and when one of the tailers, one of the workers came into the foyer, they went in with their pistols and accosted that worker, who then opened the door so they could get behind the tails. So that's the way they got around that.
And that was one where we end up convicted, right because he is a tailer and he got the pistol and he managed to the tailer got a fright and hit the gun which hit the crook in the chin and he dripped blood on the tailer's shirt. We've got his DNA. And then the other one, Bell, who got shot dead. He went to do another job I think it was a post office in Brisbane and the coppers shot him dead during that and then they were mad
on disguise as they just have hair. When he did a place over, he used to steal other people's identities and then he'd make up mustaches and beards and all types of things. But we got him convicted and that was a good result on outcomers. That's just an example of what those people went through. And the tellers had to give evidence and everything.
So it was pretty You go to a bank, you're not expecting. You're not going there expecting the confrontation like that. The bank, of all places, we had one one offender get caught. I think I think he might have died from it. Got caught in a security screen, went to jump the remember it, jump the counter, and the screen's gone up and he choked, choked the death.
In there because I remember speaking to the other guy that was in the bank doing that. I remember that.
Okay, well, you've had a you should have retired to a desk job after all this. You've had the action in the Northern Territory, you've been doing the undercover work and then the stick ups. But you found your way to homicide.
Yeah, and look, as a detective, homicide, as you would know, is the epitome of where you want to go if you want to be a detective. To get to homicide squads a pretty great achievement. And that's where you I mean, that's the worst crime, isn't it? Murder? And so I went there in two thousand and three and stayed there until I went to the centralin Coast base in twenty eleven.
And what was it about the homicide that attracted you to homicide?
I think just working on murders that are interesting was an interesting investigation. You've done that many investigator and I've been involved a lot of murder investigations in the territory and we weren't a big enough squat up there to have a homicide squad yet to do everything, we had no Child Offenders team, we had to do everything. I was enjoyed working on homicides. It was interesting investigation, learn
a lot. So when I had that opportunity to go to Queens and Homicide, jumped at it and had a good time there. And as time went on we did some good motigated obviously the fresh jobs like you used to, but I also had an interest in some of the coal stuff because sometimes, as you know, some times some information will all of a sudden flow in about something that happened ten years ago and you could run with it perhaps, And eventually we did former Cold Coast team
which same as New South Wales. I don't think other locations have which you could focus more on it, and you can do a lot of success with it when there's a bit of effort and a team to put into it.
And you see the pain that the victims families carry with these unsolved murders. And yeah, as you know, you don't get closure regardless of whether someone's been charged, but it adds to the pain when the loved one's been murdered no one's been called into account.
Yeah, I don't I don't agree with I don't think there's ever closure. And there's people say, oh I got finalized, that they never get final line because they're going to keep remembering about their loved one who's been tragically murdered and whatever's happened to them. But it's the outcome result they have having that means so much to them. That's that's what it's a lot about.
I read an article that there was quite a few articles when around your retirement and you're talking about homicide investigations. Are just some of the things that you said. A lot of killings were unplanned, and killers made mistakes or careless, which created opportunities for skilled investigators to bring them down. A lot of them are not premeditated. I pulled those out, because that's my reflection on homicide too. How sometimes it's
just you wouldn't believe. Sometimes you're looking for this complicated motive for a homicide, but sometimes it's just a situation that escalated. Is that what you're referring to exactly?
And I think like a lot of the murders we see now, a lot of them are planned hits and what have you, but a lot of them back then was, especially in the territory. They're full of grog, and the fight starts and all of a sudden there's knife going around whatever, and there was guns everywhere in the Northern Territory. There's a big so there's a lot. I just pull out have it. I'm just pull out a gun and just blow blow them away. So there's a lot of and then they do their best to try and cover
it up. But even some basic murders, it might happen that might have been planned, or even if they come planned, they don't think about missus Brown down on the corner. Who know and thinks about missus Brown says, I've never seen that car before. It's a blue car because my son used to have one. And they forget those things. You know, there's a lot of simple things that can be done, especially you know, they might have gloves on and all this type of stuff. They make mistakes, they rip gloves.
It's you know, quite often when you gave a homicide scene, you see the panic not just from your reading the scene. You see the panic not just from the victim, but also the offender and the type of mistakes they make and their actions afterwards that. And there are killers out there that can be cold and callous, and we'll talk about it a few of them later on, but there's others that, regardless of who or what they think they are, if they take someone's life freaks them out, and then
they make some stupid mistakes after that. And that's what we tend to capitalize in homicide investigations.
And one of the things, as you know, they don't know what the victim's going to do. Some victims will fight back, and you know, as you know, they'll fight back because I know that they've got to. Now that's fight to flight. And then you'll have and crooks talk. They talk, They need to talk to someone. They always need to talk to somebody. I have dealt with a cook who did everything on his own and didn't tell anyone.
But there's a majority of them will talk to somebody or they've done it with somebody, or someone's in the car. So I didn't know they're going to kill him, but they're driving them backwards and forwards and what have you. Or I remember one on the Sunshine Coast where this guy had killed this girl and he went to this guy who was he was a squalified driver, but he said,
I want you to come and follow me. He didn't know what it was about, but then learned this guy had put this girl in the boot and torched this car with the girl in the boot and had to drive him back. Yeah, that guy is a bump in him. At a surf club later on, he said, O could I missed edwards, But we we end up keeping him out of jail, that guy for because he was a disqualified driver and he would have hit the bin for that drive and disqualify. But he said, I'm in fear
of that guy. You know. I didn't know how to body in him, but I thought it's a public was it the public interest here to put him in the bin for his just qualified driving? And you've got to accept he would probably not have done that if this guy hadn't to come with him in desperation. So you talk about there's one aspect they're planning, they don't do, and then they involve someone else and there is opportunity there.
Well, I always thought I'm in with a chance if there was more than one person involved in the murder, and as you said, you've come across one that doesn't talk. They're the harder ones to solve. Talk about a specific case that I think it was nineteen ninety nine, the murder of sixteen year old student Jessica.
Goudi gout jesse Gouty.
Yeah, what was the circumstances here?
Derek Sam he was convicted of her murder. She was babysitting. Basically, Derek was with a girl and had a couple of little young children. Then jess You was babysitting them. The woman had gone out. Sam knew she was there, sixteen year old at the time. He'd gone there and coached her into leaving. Leaving the kids took her. She was never seen again, never been seen again, and he was convicted of her murder. Her body's never been found. Now as they looked at that, there was also this is
ninety nine, but in late ninety eight. In ninety eight, there was also Selena Bridge as an English backpacker who was walking past. When I spoke to you early off, i'd got us well, I was get a statement off guy. There was an Aboriginal youth type property that was used least to take troublesome years there to try and get him into cattle and horses and that type of thing. Derek Sam was a very good horseman, cattle proper. He's from up in North Queensland. He was there. This backpacker
had spoken to a lady on the road. She was going to a bird watching camp. It was is Kenilworth Bloomer Creek is a national park out in the middle of nowhere, cattle properties and whatever, but thirty five thousand acres. I think of national park and old mining shaves and camping grounds. So there was a bird watching type of convention going on this English backpack was going to. And those young guys saw that English backpacker walking along the road and all I remember is Derek going out in
his vehicle and gone. She's never seen. She never gets to the park, never seen again. Then later in ninety nine There's also a Anne Glassip Sabranda and Glassip was living up on a corner house on Bloomer Creek Road. She worked at the school local school, Kenilworth, same thing. She just disappeared and Derek knew had gone there a number of times with horses and all types of stuff
with her. There was a range of stay Ovius a creek ground near their fall drive lights and wun Derek was driving a land cruise, the station wagon that was at the time. You know, there was some many coincidences that all I Derek linked to it. We got Derek Sam out of the jail, took him to this, to this area. This is after Yeah, I got that when I got my when I positioned up the coast, I wanted to pursue that with him. We got him out of jail, took him there. He was standing the raid
and the guy said he was standing there crying. So and Jessica Gowdy's remains of him found. They initiated in Queensland. Nobody no parole that was served on him by the homicide squad that ladder, but there was always a fear factor that the other bodies were around the same spot as where Jessica Gowdy's body was so they thought they might be the stumbling block. I actually wrote to Derek Sam to try and talk some sense into him. You'd be quite aware of the Levison case in New South Wales.
Yeah, I just put that in context. That was Matthew Levison, that the investigation I was involved in. That we worked out to a situation where the person that was responsible for the disposing of his body gave evidence of an inquest, perjured himself, and then through negotiations we recovered the body Section sixty one certificate. That's what you were That's what exactly you're talking about here, trying something along those lines.
And I just come from homicide and involved with a lot of solving some cold cases. There as always difficulties associated around and prison transfers, all types of things. Why not try every option. I followed that case quite closely, and I thought that why couldn't we go to Sam and say about we're not going to perhaps charge you anything because you're already doing life anyway, and that would affect your parole and you need to recover Jessk's body.
If we gave you some type of immunity about whether we charge you with the other two just so we can recover them remains. Obviously, slend Ridge was England. I'd spoken to her father, Lionel, quite often. My mum had passed away. Over that period of time. I was spoken a Linel a few times. Nina wasn't that keen on it. Like he said, I'd rather not see him get out, and I said, well, I think it would affect his parole anyway. But I said he doesn't get guaranteed parole with that
life imprisonment. And I said it's an opportunity and we could find Selena, but he was he'd come around to that way of thinking. I said, it's an opportunity to do something, you know, and why not give it a try. People are strange. The Crown was a bit balking out a little bit, and I did speak to one of
the bosses out of the Crown. I said, what about this scenario they used in New South Wales And I used to annoy me a bit that our laws around Australia, or the precedents and what have you, weren't more consistent and why the states differed. And I thought it was an opportunity and there's probably there would have been an opportunity for others. Well, I would say.
One, look, Darren, with the Matthew Levison matter, I'm very satisfied what we did was the What we did was the right thing.
Look exactly. And I remember seeing his parents interview later on about it and wanted achieved for them, So that that was really the motivation of was about what the outcome You're going to get the best, We're going to get this for this family. You know, Look, we got to stage with Sam. I thought there was enough similar fact evidence to charge him because of the similarities, and we did. There was a DP head a DPP. He is very supportive, quite honestly. Some of detectives are in
the office. One of the guys that Simon, cause he wasn't that keen on that scenario as a similar I said, what have we got to lose? And he said, well, I hate him yet found not guilty and we don't go again. And I said, we've got nobody or prole, We've got this other option, and it's about keeping the pressure up on this guy and our rape to him
as well, things like that. So you've got to try alternatives, as you say, otherwise you're not going to get an outcome for the family and they're getting old.
Yeah, good on, you're pushing it, and we've got to have people and talking about it like this. You get that resistance because people have a clear picture of what justice should be with justice needs whoever's responsible life in prison. But when the bodies not they haven't recovered the body, don't know what's happened. You've got to look outside the outside the square.
Yeah, like families are like a case. If you don't mind me bringing up when I was a homicide, I kept having this and as I've spoken before, kept having this link to the Northern Territories, like the Northern Territories follow me everywhere else Goingtory. One day, guy one of the bosses comes and says to me and things says, I, you know about this murder over in west End in ninety six, a woman named June Quinton been found body. There have been there for a few days and there's
old lot. There was an old pause factory over the west and it wasn't very developed back then. Anyway, I said, yeah, I'm aware of that one. He said, there's a guy from the territory of the Northern Territory corrections Intel, saying, this guy's talk. He's been in the territory locked up, he's got a big sentence. He's a Queensland Aboriginal guy. He doesn't want to be there. Do you want to? He said, I don't think there's anything in it. He's just trying to use the system. So I got onto
this Intel guy, and then I got onto June. Found June Quentin's daughter. He said, oh, I was you know. I said, we're going to try and do some things, but I might need to contact you. I'll try and find the old statements, but I might need to get another statement whatever. Because the mum was living a semi homeless type of lifestyle. There was a Saint Vincent de Paul near there at South Brisbane. They used to go
and stay there at night. And this, as it turned out, Eric Murray, who convicted of that murder, and June had in contact with each other in that thing where she'd been a bit rude to Eric in front of somebody, and Eric was a liner, didn't talk to Anybody'd been convicted of another murder in Bathist, New South Wales, same thing, attacking women. He had a pretty horrid upbringing a boy's home when he was young. So he was on a path to know unfortunately, and this is where he ended up.
But I got on an intel normal territory. He's actually quite a good drawer, an artist. He draw it with color pencils. A map of the river around West Ends. Was the river ran around West End underdrew bridges. It was all colored where this was happened. And then I said, I actually made some questions. I said, ask him what he actually did to her, because and only if Anna knew or someone told him exactly she had two depressions
in her skull, which he obviously not that obvious. And he said, he said, because I hit her over there. I had this little bit of steel I found in one of the old buildings there and I hit her twice over the head with that. That's pretty specific and exactly where a body was found near this old panel beating shop was there. It was to scales. I actually got a geographical like satellite map and he was drawing an end of paste. Perfect. And this guy's in middle
Alice Springs in Jile. He didn't have access to a lot of stuff, so that was pretty good. Anyway, he ended up extra dining back from there. I did an interview with him at Olk Springs police station. He came into that confess to that. When he came back, he got some influence from the legal fraternity, then wanted to go to trial. The first trial was hung or something happened there and it was aboarded, that's right. Another trial followed.
He has been saying someone told me about it and all this, and it just wasn't jailing, and there was about the barrison. I sound I found about eleven points where only their fani had no those specifics, you know, someone some o the grub telling him in jail this and they can't not the specifically where the body is and drawing maps and all this, and anyway, the barris had fourteen points. Anyway, he got convicted, and I remember June Quintin's daughter sat in that hearing every day of
that trial. Every day she was there and she was that nervous, you know. And when we got convicted, and it was funny a couple of the jurors up the back when they come back with a guilty verdict, the judge said to him, look, I know he can leave, but I'd like you to hear his history because he'd had this sexual attack and he sexually sold the girl in Darwen, he sexually sold the girl, murdered woman and murder in Bathurst, things like that. Anyway, remember these two
guys high fiving in the back. I think it was just a they knew they'd got it right, if that makes sense.
And that's juries are often mortified when they allow someone to get off a crime and then they find out about the history of the person.
And they say, why did we know about this in the first place? And I know, that's.
Life, it's life. It's funny. But I always say, we have the juries there where our peers to judge us, but they're not smart enough to take into account all the information, which I think there can be a need for some improvements in the way evidence is presented at court. Let's jump forward a bit. There's more cases I want to speak to you about, but correct me if I'm wrong. I think the first time I met you it might
have been at a bar. You were down in Sydney with Howard Hickey, and my memory of the night is that we had a few drinks. We ended up in Chinatown. That's about the last I can remember of that night.
Isn't that. Weren't we just revisiting the scenes or something for one of the investigations.
Know what caused us to drink. I don't know who had a gun to our head, but I remember the next day I was pretty pretty poor to say, but we our work cross paths when I was working on the Terry Falconer case, and this is this is my memory of it. It's going back back a while. But you guys had were looking at the murder of Michael Davies, who, if I understand, was shot in his home on the
Gold Coast, brought to the back of the head. I think it was the offender or offenders have run away, jumped the fence, set a van on light and discarded the gun and the gloves that they were wearing at the time of the murder. You had DNA from that
crime scene. We were looking at. One of the murders that were caught up in the Terry Falconer investigation or attempted murders, was the shooting of Raniera Puka Tapu, who was at JB's Bar and Grill in Chinatown when persons come up standing outside the window and shot him, shot him five times. He didn't die, but his life was
affected ever after. And the intended victim in that shooting was Felix Lyell, the president of the Hells Angels, who happened to have a ponytail at the time, and unfortunately Puka Tapu also had a ponytail. The offender from that crime ran right through Chinatown waving a gun saying get down. Police ran all the way through Chinatown, came to a van, through the gun and the gloves into a van, set that van a light in the city, and we recovered from that scene gloves with some DNA in the gloves.
We didn't know who the DNA belonged to. You didn't know who the DNA belonged to, but during the matches were done that it's the same DNA. So that's where we became in involved. Is that.
Yeah, that was how we first met and we had that connection there of those crime scenes and what was next. And then it was obviously your team that got some really good information that gave a direction after that, and obviously we kind of shadowed you guys, I suppose for a fair bit. So I think our drinking was just so I'll show you, I'll show you where this happened. I'll show you where that is, right.
So we were actually working that. Okay, I thought we just got on the piss, but clearly we had purpose to it. But that was that was a fascinating, fascinating job, and I remember the excitement. There was informants involved. That was organized crime and this crew, these people were out of control. We got DNA from a person we only knew was Redmond at the time. That was the information we've got. It had a nickname Redman, and he had a bad reputation as a contract killer. We found out
that that was Sean way Good. We got his DNA, the sneaky way of getting his DNA, managed to get that, and I remember us conferring them and we were very excited that we finally found the person responsible linked to those two jobs. But people might say, okay, burnout car murder, a tempt murder. You've got DNA on the gloves. Surely that's enough to charge the person. We've burned around long enough to know that's not enough to get a conviction, that for murder and the temp murder. So then we're
doing a lot of surveillance. You guys were coming down, We're keeping tabs on what way Good was up to. And this I've got to thank you for this because this was one of my most difficult moments in policing. We got a tip off that Waygood was going to do a hit and we had our tactical police down in Sydney. He lived at Newcastle at the time, and I was working with Glenn Brown and we're sitting waiting for him to leave Newcastle, come down the city and we're going to take him out if he was going
to do a hit or murder someone. Fortunately, instead of turning left, he turned right and started heading north. So Glenn and I jumped in the jumped in the car and we had surveillance police following him and we're on this mad track on the Friday night heading up the case and they kept calling into McDonald's restaurants, which was strange, but that was to use their WiFi in the McDonald's
restaurants because they weren't using phones. He hooked up with a bloat that we later found out had an association with the Russian mafia, and the observations from the surveillance team was he tucked something down the front. They got things out of the boot tucked it down in the front of his vants, which most likely was a gun.
We couldn't arrest them because we didn't have enough and we've been tracking them for a long time, and then we're starting to get out of the New South Wales jurisdiction. This is getting near midnight on a Friday night and I look up directory assistance to get a phone number for Queensland Police and you darn you appreciate this trying to explain I'm a cop from New South Wales. We're following a contract killer. We think he's going to cross the border, but we can't arrest him at this stage.
We just want to see what he's going to do. And you can imagine the reaction I got when I phoned police and then I was blessed you got on the end of the phone. They called you out for that job.
Yeah, And as I said, we tracked him through there and managed to get some surveillance assistants who had jumped on it straight away, and we're very interested and it was really just a tracking to see what they are going to do or who they took up with, which probably was more interesting at the end of the day. For that investigation.
Well, I think it was only you or Howard that I could have spoken to. In Queensland police would have because your bosses were saying stuff that arrest him. My bosses for the first time didn't give me directions. They said, it's your call if you want to let him run. And we think he's going to kill someone. And I remember that we were awake for a couple of days and he was going all over the place, going the hotels, even went to went to the casino and I think
you guys tipped the room over. They only stayed there for an hour, either room there, and there was some body mobile phone, the packets, pat packets there. And then that at the end of forty eight hours or even longer of fun, he met up with Anthony Perish and that's the first time we got them connected.
And really that connection to Perish was then the connection to Davies. Yeah, and that's how it started to unfold. So it showed you how holding off could develop that for the and we started to develop the reasons for both murders. Really.
Yeah, and you you got an induced statement. I'm not sure if we can we mentioned the name. Perhaps we won't mention the name, but you got an induced statement. Way Goods told us about it. Way Goods passed away, so we can talk talk freely there. He passed away in prison. But you got an induced statement from from a person that was with way Good when they murdered Michael Davies. And it was quite chilling how that played.
It's a look a very forthcoming statement obviously implicating way Good, and the guy who provided the statement implicated himself he wasn't going anywhere, and I think a lot of that was to, I guess, to paint a better picture of himself that he wasn't the main hit man. He's to go along with it. Certainly he's complicit in it, no doubt about it. But I think it just confirmed what we thought about way Good and the other connections.
Well, it was, if I remember rightly, it was quite chilling because we're trying to get a sense of what we're dealing with way Good while we got him under the microscope. And in this statement, the statement you and Howard got from the co offender in the matter said that they'd gone through the back door. Michael dave he was eating his breakfast at the kitchen bench and Way Goods walked up and put the bullet in the back of his head and turned to the other bloke and
said confirmed kill. And then they ran off, burnt the car and then went and had breakfast.
It was just like nothing for them. But if you looked, as we know from their history of what they were involved with, it was just work business for them. They had no feelings. What's the and as I say, Dave's just found slumped on his stool with his head and everything on top of the kitchen bench. Yeah, and shot in the back of the head and.
That was it. It was brutal that they when we were looking at them. They also killed Paul Elliott, which was a Melbourne drug dealer that he flew up from Melbourne to meet with this Asian crime group and he said to his girlfriend when they booked into a motel, if I'm not back in twenty minutes, I'm dead. And he was dead, and they jumped him in the ocean in the toolbox, which seems to be they way of getting rid of the bodies exactly, take them out the harbor.
But they were just chilling when you're going after people like that, because I remember we got statements from the person involved in that murder. And when they're about to throw the body in the water, someone said, do you want to say any words like a funeral? And I think one of them said they stuff it and spat on the box and kicked it.
In the I mean like day. That was the middle of the day, in the morning, just broad daylight, the pretty you know, they didn't really think about it, and they weren't scared about anybody else. If there's someone else interrupted, and they would have died as well, simple as that.
Well, it was an interesting case and I enjoyed working with you and Howard on it. And again I thank you because I did not know how I was going to explain why we're letting the contract ula frunt across borders that we thinks are and probably on his way to kill someone.
And look, at that time, we knew that way good would have been right for Davies. And as you said, we didn't have enough and there was too many other players involved we hadn't identified, and certainly the hierarchy were accept that our impression that we shouldn't interrupt them, We shouldn't do anything because it would make it a lot worse. And I think of just some sense, hold off and have that patience and you will get a result as it turned out, a New South Wales and why Good died.
But at least we knew who the players were were convicted, So anyway there's an outcome. Like Davies had family and wanted to know what had gone on. At least they knew, and when we talked about now, they talked about the series. Later on when the family realized what connection he had to that, yea, you know, they're surprising that more didn't happen or other family members were involved.
Yeah, well, you know, I think we locked up for the people all up between us on that on that case and they were convicted of some murders and all sorts of things. So it was an interesting case. But it was challenging for a lot of reasons. But it's good when you get to work with someone from a different jurisdiction than you talk the same language.
And I think I said to you, over a period of time you meet somebody of at least you know, you had confidence and you were comfortable I could contact you about anything even it was a different matter, or just get some advice. And certainly, as I said, earlier I'd spoken to brand and got him to do some and cries for another well the Derek's Ham matter, for instance, and things like that. So it's easy to pick up
a phone and try and get something done. And when you've got those connections and you think the same and you enjoy each other's company, to be honest, you haven't beer, and you talk about the same business without any problems and be honest with each other, and you developed some pretty good relationships. I certainly haven't you too over that many years, you know, I still come down here around we can go to the races, meet up with a lot of you so well as Victorian guys and lifelong friends.
Really it makes a difference, doesn't it. And you have that bond forever. We might we might take a break here, and there's yea, as our listeners would attest to, there's plenty more to talk about. We're gonna go full circle and talk about your involvement in the rest of Brett Cowen for Daniel Morcan, whole range of other things. And I'm going to put you on the spot about something and I can see the smirk on your face. You probably know what that's about. That you deserve this.
Okay,