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 talk 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. Welcome to another episode that I Catch Killers. I think it's fairly obvious homicide investigation is where my true passion lies. So I'm really looking forward to today's episode because we're going to have a deep dive into the world of
homicide investigation. So if you want to find out what really happens when someone gets murdered, I think you're going to.
Enjoy today's guest.
Today, I'm talking to recently retired Detective Inspector Steve Ko, who had a decorated thirty year career in London's Metropolitan Police, including time in New Scotland Yard's elite anti terrorism branch. However, for the last twelve years of his career they were spent in Scotland Yards Murder Investigation Team. He has extensive knowledge of what it takes to catch killers and how to bring him to justice, and that's exactly what he
and I are going to be talking about today. Steve Kay, Welcome to I Catch Killers, Gary.
Thank you very much for having me on. A real pleasure to be invited on.
Well.
I always enjoy talking to x or current homicide detectives. I read your book Murder Investigation Team and How Killers Are Really Caught, and what jumped out at me reading the book was the similarities between the work that you guys do over there in the UK and what we do in New South Wales. Very similar.
Yeah, I mean, I suppose procedurally things might change, but catching a killer is catching a killer, isn't it. You're looking for the same type of evidence, you're looking for the same time of motives. The what's inside the killer's brain doesn't change if they're in America or Australia. So what's going to change is a nuances around procedure, but actually going after someone who's murdered somebody and catching them it's going to be similar across all sorts of territories.
Yeah, most definitely. It certainly certainly comes across in the book. The other thing that comes across in the book and having the conversations I've had with you, is that I think you it's fear to say being a police officer, you share the passion I share for homicide investigation.
Yeah, one hundred percent. So I came into it quite late. I mean you started a lot earlier, mean in your career. I was about eighteen years in when I first started it, and I think for me it was that first time we were at court and you're noticed, like you could. Solving murders isn't easy, getting through all the see the the through the lawyers first off, to get a charge
isn't easy. Then you're having to prepare for court. Then you get to court and the defense, I mean they try every trick under the sun right now to try and get their client off. So it's a horrible journey for you, it's an even worse journey for the family. But when you're that first time, when I was at court and that jury came back with that guilty verdict, I mean, I honestly, I know you've been there, and
you know what this feels like. It was it was a feeling I'd never had in the police before, and I thought, I can't that moment, I thought, I can't do anything else that that feeling of getting that justice for that victim, forgetting that, And you go outside and the family give you a cuddle and they're like, more often than not they say something on the lines of thank you so much. We feel like we can start to move on now, because they're stuck in a limbo
whilst all this stuff is going on. Because losing someone that your love is bad enough for anybody losing it, losing someone through a there is even worse. I mean, it's unimaginable. And just to feel that you can give them that, I call it a gift, that gift of being able to move on and once you once you're done now, I thought, mate, I can't. There's nothing else I could do in the police it's going to replicate that. So I stay for the rest of my career.
Yeah, I think it's a nice, nice way of putting it. Helping those people, and it has to be the worst situation, absolute worse situation, when someone's been taken away like that, murdered and quite often senseless murder, and you're trying to find some peace. I don't think the families ever get closure when someone's been murdered, but it helps in a
way that you can get justice for the families. And once I found homicide in my career, I found it very difficult to find the passion in other areas of policing. And I'm not putting homicide detecteves better than other detectives or the general duties police, the uniform police, but from my point of view, it was a pinnacle of what I wanted to do. That was what I wanted to do, and I spent as long as I could could doing that because of the rewards that came, the personal rewards.
But you felt like you were doing something worthwhile.
Yeah, and the point you just made are completely one hundred percent agree with you. I never use the word closure because that that you often hear people say that they can have closure. There is no closure when you've lost someone through murder. But it's that being able to allow them to start to grieve like we would normally grieve. But you can't really agrieve when you know you've got
this court case hanging over you. And yeah again, yeah, I'm not saying murder detectives are better than anybody else, but for once you're doing it, job satisfaction is huge, isn't it, Especially when you're doing a job where you're you're committed to it so much that you sacrifice your personal life. You sacrifice time, your family use, the long hours and lack of sleep, losing your hair, well we both had here before we started, Yeah exactly, yeah, folowing locks.
But you do that because of that feeling that you get and you go for all that, all that crack. But by the end of it, when you sat there in court and you get that girl, we've verdict everything, everything is worthwhile. The sacrifices you've made and your family essentially have made. You've done it because because of it always haunds up a bit of a bit of a cliche. But I feel like I've found my call it. When I started investigating murders, it was like I've found what
I should be doing in my life. And as I say, and since I can't let it go, everything I do without talking about murder because it just becomes part of you, isn't it. You are a murder detective.
Yeah, I understand exactly what you're saying. I don't think we're on our own. You speak to other the true homicide detectives that the passionate ones, and we all feel the same. It was important worker and rewarding work. And people would often say, was it worth the sacrifices that you made in your personal life and your own well been I supposed to a degree. But the satisfaction you get and the reward you get back from the families,
and I'm sure you're the same as I am. I say, in touch with some of the families that I I work cases for, and they like family to me. Now, it's just the nature of the beast. When you work a homicide investigation, you've got to put yourself in there one hundred percent. That's not a nine to five job, is it.
Yeah? And it states so true when we were chatting before and you said you were doing it for twenty odd years. I've got so much respect for that garer because I did it for the last twelve years of my career and it's changed now. But when I joined you, you signed up for thirty years. At the end of that you walk away your pension. It's changed slightly now, And so I was psychologically prepared that I knew I'd be doing it for a maximum of twelve years and
I could give my all one hundred percent. And I always said if I couldn't do that, I wouldn't would go and do something else because I think, I think for those families and that big team, you have to be able to give one hundred percent. But I would say, by the end of my end of my career, I think I was spent. I think I'd given so much of myself and so much energy and so many sacrifices. Personally, If they sit to me, you got to do another three I think it may have broken Huck actually, and
it wouldn't be It wouldn't be fair for anybody. It wouldn't be fair for the victims, it wouldn't be fair for anyway. If I can't give on hundred percent, then I shouldn't be investigating murder. Sometimes not everybody who investigates murders has the same attitude, and that was what some of the biggest frustrations I've ever come across, where I was working with people that didn't have that commitment and couldn't see that bigger picture of what you're doing it for,
and that used to really wind me up. And I didn't want to be that person. I wanted to be the one that gave it all, and if I couldn't, then I had to find something else.
Yeah, you bought up some interesting points there, and I know what you say. There were some points in time in my career, especially doing the homicide, where I thought I don't know if I can do this anymore. I just yeah, it was hard. I took twelve months leave away from the police, which was was good. That sort of very invigorated me, and I think that extended my stay in the police. But I got to the point where you became so accustomed to it where it didn't
challenge me or excite me. I thought that was the time to leave. But as my career played out, I ended up with investigations were a little bit different to the ones I'd done before, and it sparked my interests and I could find the passion, But I wholeheartedly agree with you that if you haven't got that passion for the work, you shouldn't be in homicide. And my saying was, we're not conscripts here. You don't have to be in homicide.
It's not for everyone. And I fully respect and understand people that don't want to invest so much of themselves into a job if homicide is not their path.
Yeah, no, hundred percent. There's lots you can do in the police, lots lots of different roles. And I'll say one of the things as well, we've murdered quite often you find yourself in a situation where it almost feels like you're the only one there for a victim. A lot of when you watch crime dramas and true crime
will cost a lot of things. People make get this warped idea of what your average MURDERY know, there's not there's no average murder, but more often than not, it's it's crime related in some way, there's some way that the victim's victim's lifestyle has lent itself to the reason why they've been killed, and very often they're in their circle around them. It felt I'm sure it wasn't but it felt like they didn't care as much as we did. And quite often you felt like you were the voice
for that victim, like they're not here anymore. You might have I've had family members that were with them when they're murdered and don't help us. Best friends apparently don't help us. And you feel like you're the only one
fighting for that victim. And yeah, it felt like a weird situation, but it was like I always found, I don't want to overplay what's it feels like you're some kind of mission for that victim, and it sometimes it literally feels like you're the only one that's fighting for them that, regardless of how they lived their life, that they didn't deserve to die, and that's what you're doing it for.
Well, I think there was something in your book, Steve, where you went to a funeral and there was only four people there and that was you and your partner and I've earned your funeral where there was seven of us and three of us were police officers working the case, and yeah, someone's got to look out for these people.
I mean, in that situation that because said to me, you're not saying words. I was like, well, I mean I literally, I literally never met a person in a life. I felt like a new room. Because when there's there's a saying investigation, to understand our person diet, you have to understand how they lived. So it's about building up a picture of someone's life in order because generally there's some someone or something in their life that would be
the reason why they were murdered. So you do although you never meet these people, you don't, you delve so far into their lives. It was almost like you do know that they almost become like this sort of pseudo friend because because you know so much of their life, you probably know more about their life than than most people do. I've ever done. But that was a weird situation. Yeah, being there just us, it was quite sad. Really, it was really quite sad.
Yeah, you're like.
To think a life carried more, but yeah, it's just the circumstances people find themselves in. Before we break down homicide investigation, because as I said at the start, I want to take a deep dive into the nuances of homicide investigation and get your thoughts on things that I think people will find fascinating.
But let's just a little bit about yourself.
Your career, where you worked, and your background a little bit about yourself.
Yeah, so I joined really young. I was twenty and I grew up on We couldn't counsel the states in the UK, like social housing type places. I've always lived on those as a kid, so mymies tended to go the other way rather than the police. And no one in my family had ever joined the police, so it
was a bit left field and I did it. But when I left school, I did an a level in accountancy and I thought, coming from a poor background, I was like, well this, this could be a bit of money in this, so I'll go and do some accountancye oh Gary. It was so boring. It was so boring, and we had offices at the back of the Old Bailey, the main court in London, and I used to see the comings and goings of the police. They bring the terrorists in with blue lights and sirens and convoys and everything.
That looks so much more exciting what I'm doing. So I ended up I ended up applying for the police, got in about two weeks after my twentieth birthday, and then I got posted to where I grew up and I went quite a rough school, So I did nicking people I went to school with, and so it was a bit of a test of but I've I strongly, strongly believed this right. So I one of my bosses said, I took it to I con ductor water. And the only reason I'm saying it is because I was basically
policing the people I grew up with. So I could spot a criminal a mile off, like of from my from my demographic, from my area, I could spot on my mile off because I knew them. I grew up with them, I played with them at school, you know what I mean. We all grew up to if not that person, then someone liked them. And it allowed me to sort of I hit the ground running in terms of a knew the area or I knew the people, so I can then concentrate on targeting. And I just
found this passion for chasing a criminal. So even when I was in uniform, when I came on, it was about going out and trying to find a criminal. And I literally just pick up some car keys go out and it was it was a bit like a game. I was out there hunting, hunting criminals. And I think when you do that, it sort of pulls you down the route of being a detective because you then want to chase the more serious criminals. You want your Yeah, I might nick someone for burglary, but what about fucking
nick and with an arm robbery? Or what about a fucking murder or what? And you always trying to You're always trying to up your game in terms of who you're chasing. So that's what dragged me. I ended up in terrorism and murder. And that's so every everything I did from the first time I came out in uniform. So when I was when I was at the Old Bailey convicted murderers, it was it was all the same thing for me. It was all about catching that catching that criminal. And as I say, you just sort of
you end up on the path. And I'm sure it's very similar for you going and how you ended up in normicide and what was motivating you aread imagine.
Well, I like the use of the word hunting. People might say, oh, that's a bit strong, you're talking humans, But you were hunting in homicide. I was hunting the killer. And that's the type of and I don't think it's too strong a word. That's what you're actually doing so, I do understand where you're coming from and in your book, and that's why I thought, Okay, I know what this blokes about when you talk about hunting, and that was a thrill of the chase and finding out what's happened.
Now people can probably put it in more noble terms than that, you know, finding truth and justice and all that. But when it all comes down to it, and a lot of detectives that I know, detectives I've had on the podcast I haven't worked with, I've had quite a few of them refer to it was the thrill of a hunt. That's what That's what we're doing. And I think that does drive you, and you've got to have that. I believe that competitive edge. And I know the common
PC thing is I don't let it get personal. And I get told you too passionate, but I deliberately made it personal when I was on the case. It was personal to me, and I think it helps you and drives you as a detective.
I used to I used to do some of my best detective work in bed, which which sounds weird, Okay, Well, yeah, I literally never switched off. So what you said something about do you say it as a competitive so I've a very competitive person. I hate losing, and that's what it felt like. If I didn't if I didn't solve a murder, I'd lost, and I hate losing. So I was you come home and even though you finish work,
it's you're still thinking about it. And when I was in bed and sort of all the other noise has gone and you can just concentrate. So many times I'd be laying in and something would spark in my mind about a line of inquiry that we could follow, or something we could do, or someone someone we could speak to, or some tactic we could use. And quieter coming in the next morning and I'd be like, right, this is this is what we're going to do. To the team.
We're doing this, And it's because my brain was able to just really fully concentrate on it. And you don't switch off. It's a constant. Once you've picked up a murder, all right, you don't just investigate one. So you'll get
one and you get another and toge another. So it's difficult to always put your concentration on that one murder, but it'd always be one that's the focus on your mind, and it does kind of take over your life, and I think, I mean, I think that's what makes us better homicide detectives than someone who's just going to come along and think, as you say, you could do a nine to five. You can't do that.
You can't do that.
And I look, I'm not saying that would make you a great partner or a person to live with, but I understand understand what you're saying. You would carry it home. It was twenty four to seven. You're on the job and you're thinking about it, and sometimes you'd come up with an idea you hadn't thought about and you couldn't wait to get up and get to work the next day. Or you go in on your day off and start following that line of inquiry. It takes a bit out
of you. But if it's your passion, that doesn't feel like work, and that's what I would say to people, that was my passion, so it didn't feel like work, and that will wire you in on your day off, well, this is what I do, this is what I've signed up for, and yeah, it's an extraordinary job. I always thought the crooks were in more trouble, the bad guys were in more trouble when my relationship was in a bad position or it wasn't in a relationship, because that's
when I had nothing to distract me and just concentrate on. Okay, let's crack this case. The murder investigation team, just can you break it down? In New South Wales we have our major crime squad and that sits over the top of it, and then we have our breakup of squads. We have the hold up squad, the sexual assault squad, the homicide squad, the fraud squad, that type of thing. Explain the role of the murder investigation team in the New Scotland yard that you were part of.
Yeah, So in the UK, there's a system where we use. They always have different aims. We call a murder investigation team. That could be a major crime team, but the structure is the same because we follow a manual across the country and essentially it's a team that will investigate murders. It wouldn't be individual detectives and they would be made
up something along the lines of this. So you know, have a detective chief inspector, a couple of detective inspectors, about four detective sergeants and roughly eighteen to twenty detective constables, and so in that all of those will have different kinds of responsibilities. And I use an analogy of a car, so if you think of how a car works, So the detective constables are the engine. They drive it. So they're the people that are doing what would we consider
the police work. So they're doing they're taking the statements, arresting people, looking for CCTV, becoming a family aising officer. So the detective work, and that's the engine. That's the engine that drives it. And then the sergeants are like the pedals. They regulate the engine, make sure it's make sure it's working proper, make sure it's not going too fast,
make sure it's not stopping. And then the d I and the d C I is like steering wheel on the top and they're directing the car in which the direction, directing investigation, which which way we headed. So that that's the kind of roles it is. So if you're a d d c I, it's about sitting up top and
looking at which direction that it's going in. The d S is sort of straddle both and I've got to be honest, that was my favorite role as a DS because I could, I could get my hands dirty, and I had that overall sort of control because when it was my job, it was me that would take it to court as a DS and then the dcs would do that work. And it does work really really well. So everybody when a murder breaks, everybody will have their
own roles and responsibilities. So you will have an officer that's designated as the exhibit officer, so it would be those that would go into the crime scene and take out the evidence. From there, you'd have a CCTV officer.
We use family liais and officers really important role where they're the earlier wh When I was talking on about build up a picture of a victim's life to try and solve the crime, the family laser officer is pivotal to that because they're going into those that are closest to the family sorry, closest to the victim to try and build up that picture. So every single role, every strand and investigation is separated off to an individual officer and it does work really well. It works really well.
Obviously important thing of that is team meeting so that everybody got twenty five detectives or running off in different directions they need to come back, and you know, regular team meeting, so everybody knows what everybody else is doing and how their strand fits.
In with the over the murder investigation team, your sole responsibility was responding to murders and investigating murders. That's the makeup of the term.
Yeah. Yeah, we also had responsibility for a couple of other things, so high risk missing person so if someone has gone missing and there's a real fear that some harmer come to them, then we'd take on those and
also link series rapes. So the idea being that normally the deficers that investigate rate normally would be singular officers on their own, and if you've got a link series a serial rapist across boundaries and various primes, it would come to us because we would have the sort that the resources to properly investigate it.
Okay, well again, not this similar to what we had here. At one point in time, we were called homicide and serial violin offenders, and that was for serial rapists that we would target. On the homicide team, we've sort of separated a little bit and our main focus is homicide. Do you have an on call response over here in New South Wales, we're on call every six weeks. So your team, which was detective inspector, two or three sergeants
and six constables, that was a team. So every six weeks you'd be responsible for responding to any murder that happened with suspicious disappearance. Is that the similar type of role that the murder investigation teams had been on call?
Percent So there are twenty in London than there are twenty of these murder teams, and geographically the split so London split into four four quarters and mine was southeast, so people would have heard of Greenwich, so we covered Greenwich and that side of London, and you would so there were five teams at each base, so four times five to twenty and then so every five weeks you'd be on call and you provide twenty four to seven cover and you'd separate your team and any murders that
came in in your area, you would be the ones that would have to respond to them.
Right again, I picked up something in your book and I think it's funny because it's very much the police humor and logic in our thinking too. We're on call, we'd start on a Monday or sometimes start midweek. They shifted it a round sometimes, but as you got towards the end of the on call period, because it was sort of the phone could bring at any time at night, you never slept really well, you couldn't get on the drink.
You're virtually just waiting for the call the happen. And then if we look like we got through the weekend, some idiot would say, Jesus, it's been a quiet on call period, and that was that was a CHINX. And I saw in your book someone mentioned that I can't believe how quiet it is, and you're all in the office, looked at the person and going, we call it.
The Q words. You don't use the Q word.
I didn't realize.
Out of all the things that I didn't realize impacted on me as much when I was in homicide, was the joy of not being on call. So every six weeks or more you'd have a week out of your life where you had to make sure you're ready to respond and go anywhere. When I started the first day of on call, I wanted something to happen, to get it out of the way, because it was almost just
hanging there waiting for it. I don't want to get through five nights sleep and then almost at the end and then you get the case.
Did you feel that when.
You're on call, the pressure of being on call and you don't realize how heavy it is until you've step away from it.
Unupset? Yeah, everything your same resonates with me so much. Yeah, all the funny alto you basically have to write your life off. You can't. You can't plan anything, do anything because SOBS law says if you if you were viewed to have a family party, something was going to come along and you're not going to be able to make it.
One of the things I really appreciate now about not being in the police is I feel like I've got my life back in terms of so I love football, soccer, and so when a World Cup was on, I could I could never guarantee I could watch the games. If my mates were going out having a drink, I could
kind of commit to it. But there's always that off chance, even when I wasn't on care, there's a good chance I'm gonna have to cancel family parties, theater tickets, New's Eve parties, so much of my life if I had to counsel, and it's quite it's quite a nice feeling now to when I say I'm going to do something, I can commit to it and I'm not going to let people down. And I felt like throughout basically my
because I was a detective quite early. I think being a detective more than in uniform you have this is I was continually letting people down, continue missing birthday parts for the kids and all that kind of stuff. So it's nice now that i'd say, if someone says I've got a wedding, I can go, Yeah, I can RSVP. You say, yeah, I'm going to be there, which is a nice feeling.
Yeah, I understand. I understand because you couldn't commit, and it felt like you tempted faith. If you decide, oh yeah, i'll try, hopefully it'll stay quiet, and you virtually guarantee that something was going to come in. Let's talk about murders, like you get a call, a response to a body being found to solve a murder, these questions and a game from your book. But I'll just break it down
and then we'll talk about what actually happens. You're looking at things, who is a victim, what happened where did it happen, When did it happen, why did it happen, and how did it happen? When you break it down there, it seems very simple, but it's far from a simple process. But sometimes it's easy to put a structure and trying to work out what's happened. So what your response is when you're on call, you get a call and there's
been a situation that you've got to respond to. What type of thing are you likely to be confronted with?
Yeah, so first off, it's a really important time because if you don't get it right at the beginning of a murder, those first hour, two hours, three hours, whether it is, you can't get that time back. So you know there's a lot of pressure on you. And one of the things that you also know is that every decision you make and everything you do now at this early stage is going to be poured over by clever lawyers later on who are going to have months and
months to second guess what you've had. Decisions you've had to make in seconds. So there is a lot of pressure on you. So you go in and and knowing you've got to get it right. So and what we do in the UK detectives don't use blue lights and sirens generally, but on a homicide team we do. So you need to get there as quickly as possible, So you get in the car, blue lights and sirens to get there, and we call it the golden hour, that time immediately after a murder, and it's when the evidence
is most abundantly there. There's going to be there's going to be chances to the case there that if you don't get it right, you're going to lose. It's really important, so you've got all that pressure on you and also as well, like you know, it's like when you're driving blue lights and sirens, your adrenaline is going anyway, so your adrenaline is through the roof by the time you
get there. More often not, you're going to get there and it's and it's chaos and there's going to be there's going to be so much going on, and the moment you turn up, the local officers are going to be looking at you. You get this look, I'm sure you've seen it, where they're so relieved that you're there
because you can now take the pressure. If anything's going to get wrong, it's down to you exactly exactly so you get that and what we do in the UK we train our detectives to use a system that because you've got all that adrenaline going through your system, because you know that pressure is on you, you don't want to make mistakes. We use a system known as the five Building Blocks and it's just a simple, simple steps you can go through when you're at a crime scene
when you've got all that pressure on you. And it needs to be simple because if you're if you're working in pressure, you can't be trying to think of some complicated, convoluted way investigating the murder. You need to break it down into something very very simple. So we use these five steps and it's preservation of life, preservation of scene, securing of evidence, identify victim, identify and the rest suspects. So there are five steps you go through. So the
first one preservation of life. Obviously the major thing in
any police officer's role is that preservation of life. We're there to protect people and that may sound well, they're dead, you've been called there a homicide, but you have to think about things like so if you were to go to a house and there was a dead body in the living room, Well, have you checked upstairs, do we know for a fact there aren't any other victims, because you do end up at scenes where are multiple victims, and the last thing you want is to have someone
bleeding out upstairs because the police have just seen a dead body downstairs and haven't thought about So you're thinking about that. Then the preservation of scene, and that's where we use Cordon's and we're trying to make it a situation where nobody's going to be interfering with evidence or trampling over DNA that kind of thing. They're securing of evidence. So I'm not talking about fingerprints and DNA. I'm talking about evidence that would be there that would be lost.
So for instance, witnesses there might be quick when CCTVs. If you check CCDV quickly, it might give you the suspect. It could be a weapon's been discarded or some clothing has been discarded, but things that you've got to think about getting hold of quickly. Then identification of victim because as I said I said before, if you understand a victim in their life, you got much better chance of solving a murder.
Just on the preservation of the crime scene. I understand the preservation of life, that's an obvious thing. And there's also the potential threat if there's a dead body, there is a killer still around. Who knows like there's been circumstances where that the killer has been found there and
it could have inflicted more dammage on people. But the preservation of the crime scene is crucial we and I'm sure it's similar to you in and out a perimela, a crime scene log who goes in there, keep everyone out? No one needs to go in there unless they need to be in there. But the chaos that you've just described it is that way. And quite often that's two o'clock in the morning or lack a sleep and you've
turned up there and people are running around. There's a lot of emotion, and it is just breaking it down, doing the simple things, but doing them properly, Isn't it making sure that you've set up all the steps, Yeah, one hundred percent.
I mean there are certain skills I think you need to be a detective, and one of them is to be able to make good decisions. And you're being asked to make decisions on the flight. You've got to make them. Now, you can't you can't go home and think about it for an hour. You've got to make a decision there
and then. So I always had a system in my mind of how I came to making decisions, because you're not always going to get it right, but you need to have thought it through to a point where you can at least justify yourself in court because it's very easy months later. So we should have done that, well, yeah, I should have done on the information I had. That was what I felt was the right decision. And what we do is so what I would do when I would turn up at a murder scene is I would
have I'd call it my scribe. I'd have a DC with me writing down. So if I'm one of the first things I'll do and I turn up to the murder scene, is I need to identify which officer there can give me the information I need to go about investigating this crime. And that might be the senior officer, it might be the first on scene, but I need to get information from them. So I'm going to want to know from them what has happened and what have you done? And then I'm going to be starting to
ask questions. I'm going to be starting to make decisions telling them to do things, and I would have a DC writing down what I was saying. And that's really important because later on when you're asked, well, why did you do why did you do that? What did you tell them to do? That kind of thing, You can't write and talk and record everything and remember everything, and
it all comes down. So one of the things that you have to at point where you get in the car and you drive to the murder scene, whether consciously or subconsciously, you're thinking about court because everything you do is about what plays out in the trial. Everything the decisions you make now in the first ten minutes are going to impact what happens at the trial. So you
always have to have that on your mind. So, yeah, I've only just got here, I might have only been here five minutes, but this decision I'm making now could well I could be in the box justifying it a year later. So recording everything you do is so important when it comes to that all the way for remote investigation, but definitely at the beginning.
I understand what you're saying because there is so much accountability in when you're investigating the homicide. I was taught by people that taught me, and when we talk about what I do or that, and I know you acknowledge it. It's such a team effort, and we'll talk about the components of the team. It's not one individual. But we're always taught that you're a homicide on call. Once you've been notified, you're going to have to make decisions from there.
You're going to have to contact the person that scene and make sure the scenes preserve. You're responsible for it from the time that you've been notified about it, say the decisions. You've got to be able to justify having ascribe.
I know, and it seems like a thankless task, but when I was in that position where I needed someone that could make notes of all the decisions I'm making, I would pick someone that I relied upon heavily, someone that I could trust, Because you knew how crucial it was that you had those records that you could be able to produce and justify your decisions when you come to court. So you've preserved the crime scene, you've made
the decisions. You talk CCTV footage, which is it's grown exponentially the type of electronic data you can get, canvassing of the area, interviewing witnesses. What's your thought on canvassing, because again, that's something that was drummed into me very early in my homicide career, and it's something I like to think I passed on the importance of speaking to people right at the time when this incidents occurred, finding out who was in the area, that type of thing.
Yeah, one hundred percent. So we have two different ways of doing that. We have what's known as directed local inquiries. So that's where you are there at the very beginning, and you're saying, right, these these are the houses that overlook the murder scene. Let's go knock on the doors, speak to the people there and see if anybody saw or heard anything of One of the things that those five steps I was talking about, and one of the
fifth one is arresting the suspect. I don't don't want to jump here, but it's it's so important that if you can get hold of a suspect and the rest and the sooner you do it, the better chance you've got a convicted them, because you've got more chance of getting their DNA fingerprint, DNA from the from the victim, blood from the victim, the murder weapon, any property and
stolen in their telephone. There's so much you can get and if you go knocking on the door, all you need is that nosy neighbor to say, actually, yeah, I was looking at a window and actually here's a registration number of a car. And if you don't go knocking on the doors, you're not you're not going to find that.
So that's directed local inquiries. And then we then we have what we call house to house and that's the more strategic, long term thing, where's it might be the days that follow, and it's all it's all really thought out about where you're going to knock, what questions are going to ask, are you going to take descriptions of the people you're speaking to, where are you going to
do it? So this is those two stages, but those more often than not, there's those directed local inquiries initial ones where you're not going on the door, where you're going to get that really important information that's going to that's going to push your investigation of.
So often there's so much that can be gained by being methodical in the way that you gather that information.
Yeah, hundred percent. I mean, this old of the murder is about just trying to get those little bits of information, and you're pulling them all together and somehow you've you've been at Gary where you're at the beginning of a murder inquiry and you think, Ada, how are we going to solve this one? I mean, this looks like we call them a sticker. This looks like it's going to
be a sticker. Where are we going with this? And then's just one tiny little bit of information from the old lady potentially that was that was just walking past or something like that can can completely andly change everything because you do you get that red car, and then when you look at the red car, you're looking at the CCTV AMPR. You can look at intelligence as a huge rivers of red and I mean it can just it can change an investigation just one tiny little piece of information.
Let's delve into the importance of finding out about the victim. Now, victimology, we refer to it over here. I think you probably use the same terminology. But invariably, the answer to finding out who killed this person comes from who this person was, who this person associated with. You do get random murders, but they they're rarer the person in the wrong place, at the wrong time, invariably at someone connected to that person or the lifestyle of that person that might potentially
lead to them becoming a victim. How much weight do you place on victimology and how do you approach it? I found until we found out who the victim was, I was always because part of the role when you're running the investigation was identifying lines of inquiry, and quite often when you hadn't found out who the victim was, it was hard to find where do we start up with it? As you said, you get overwhelmed with This is going to be a tough one.
Mate, Yeah, completely, completely, completely. I mean you can't overemphasize the importance of victimology. In the UK, the government published figures every year. They really I love stats, so I geek out on these stats every year when they publish them.
But they're really interesting that they break it down into the relationship between a suspect and a victim, and it's really off the top of my head, it's something like less than ten percent of women are killed by strangers, so that shows that in the vast majority of murders, there is a link between the victim and the killer, and it's your job to try and identify that link.
So you're looking into their life for any kind of motive that is there someone within their life that is an obvious suspect, or is there an aspect of their life that would lend itself to a motive, or what could somebody gain from killing from murdering them as there been some kind of event that's triggered this. So looking into their life you got and building up that picture,
you've got much better chance of solving a crime. And as you say, if you don't know who the victim is, then you then just reliant on what evidence is there at the scene. Has someone seen something is sectv is the forensics.
That was always gave the kick along to an investigation once you identified who the victim is too, or if you didn't know who the victim was, if you didn't have a starting point for their lifestyle, so that would open up all sorts of lines of inquiry and double triple the workload at that particular point in time in a good way. Post mortem examinations the importance of that
again can't be underestimated. People I think wondered, Well, you've got the forensic pathologists going there to examine the body. Why are you sending detectives there? But I've always found that it was a crucial part of the investigation to have a detective there. Why the post more examination was going on, so you could find out more about how the crime was committed and what actually took place. What's your thought on the attendance at past mortems.
It's crucial, It's crucial. I could come up with an example. So we had this crime. It was quite a brutal one, really. It was two men in the flat and one of them had been stabbed off the top of my head and there it was something like sixty seventy times and he had his face really basically caved in with an eye and I mean, it's a really brutal one. And then his flatmate was in the front room. He had twenty seven stab wounds to his back and stuff. So
it was really really brutal crime. So imagine there's lots of blood. And it wasn't actually a detective. It was the crime scene manager. And the crime see manager a really important role in the UK. They're a civilian, they're not a detective, but they are almost like the CSI promoted so that they started off as as scenes of crime off service and then they're proed and so we were there. There was detectives there, crime scene manager and
the forensic pathologist. And part of the job is obviously the pathologies looking to identify how a person diet and the circumstances around it, but also looking to retrieve samples from the body that can be tested for DNA et cetera. And he was doing this and the CSM pointed, so you imagine a body that's that's got a lot of blood on it, but on his toe there was a drop of blood, so like someone had done a nose bleed.
The blood looked like it had dropped onto his toe and he was laying in bed, so how how could this blood have got there? And the pathologists was like, well, there's lots of blood, and the CSM was really strong, and it was like, no, look that that just doesn't look right. That drop of blood on his toe doesn't fit with the rest of it. So essentially made the cs that made the pathologists sample his blood on the
toe and it came back as the suspect. The one bit of DNA we had, the one bit of evidence we had that can link him to the crime scene, because when you stabbing someone in a frenzy, there's a good chance you're going to cut your own hand because knives don't have hilts, and that's why in the old day's swords had hilts. Let's stop your hand traveling up the sword and slipping. But when someone's stabbing in a frenzy, is a good chance they're going to cut their hand.
And that it was essentially that bit of evidence that completely artly blueed case open. And although we were looking at this person, we couldn't put them in the crime sceing and this blood did it. And if we just left it to mythologist to just crack on and do that, that would have been missed. And there's a good chance that that person would now be walking free as opposed to having thirty seven years in prison, which which they got.
So it's crucial again that attention to detail, and you talk about the crime saying officers, and we had some great ones here, and they were a wealth of experience that comes from years and years and years of turning up at these crime scenes and just being able to look at things a little bit differently and a little
bit clearer. I saw in your book you talked about you'd like to stand still in the crime scene when when all the chaos is set, and then put yourself in the crime scene and try to visualize, not in a fanciful way, but just get a sense of, Okay, what took place here. Talk us about that, because I'm a big believer in that too. I think you can learn a lot if you're going to be investigating a crime getting in the real sense by just standing and getting the feel of what's gone on.
It sounds, it sounds so simple, but it's such an important I wouldn't say it's even a skill. It's just something that a detective should do, is just stand still. And so many sexes don't do that. And a lot of it comes down to when I was talking earlier
about that adrenaline. When you're turning up at a crime scene and you've got all that chaos, sometimes it's very difficult to sent to yourself and say, right, I need to just slow myself down and just standing still and just looking around, looking up, looking down, and trying to take in what you're seeing, not just not just not just looking around, but trying to interpret what you're seeing.
Trying if there's I don't know, if there might be something out of place within a bedroom, and if you're if you're not, if you're not looking out for that, you won't see it because you just you're just looking at around the room and then you're trying to interpret it. So so for instance, that that that crime scene I was talking about, on the bed, there were there were a pair of trousers and the pockets were turned out.
So when you're looking at that, you think, right, okay, so why would somebody be going through is robbery or motive? So just just tiny little things like that, and it's so easy to miss if you do get caught up in that I'm running around and I need to solve this crime and I'm under pressure that had just stop, slow down outside the crime scene. Just have a look around, look at look look look at look at everything around
this crime scene. And another thing I used to do as well is because of that chaos, go back to that crime scene and do that exercise when everything everyone else is gone, because you get a very different feel for a crime scene once all the police officers gone, the blue light have gone, that the crowds that are there taking pictures. Once all that chaos has gone, you get a much different feel for a crime scene and what it would have been like at the time a
murder took place. And that was that always found that a really valuable exercise for me to understand that crime scene and not what I was presented with that night when when it was chaos. And another thing as well, I always used to do is you go back and just just just mingle with the people that are there. And children were a great one. So I grew up on these states I grew up on. I knew what was going on as police officers didn't. They didn't live there.
I was hanging around on the street corners. I knew what was going on. So just just just wonder and just have a really relaxed chat with some of the kids that are hanging around, and you'll be shocked what they tell you because they know what's going on. So it's just little things like that that that's not written down in a book. You don't get a menual on
how to how to solve these crimes. But as you're saying, you you got handed down in for for people to have been there before, and I did, and you just pick up on these little things that just that can nine times out of tain. It might not lead anywhere, but it's just that one time you might speak to a kid and say, oh, yeah, I saw him another day having an argument with Joe Blogs and actually, yeah, when you look at Joe Blogs and you suddenly you can then put him at the Sime scene with his
phones or whatever. So yeah, there's little a nuances like that and an investigation that can be so important.
The other thing about homicide they don't think people appreciate is the sheer volume of information that can come in very early. You can sometimes be overwhelmed by the information. And again I pay homage to the people that passed on their skill set to me, and it's almost like a lineage that gets passed down. But people would often So what happens when you go to a homicide and from our point of view and what I was shown, just make sure you've got the information system set up properly.
And that might be as simple as having an intray where pieces of information that coming in set up your computer system. You've got homes over here in New South Wales we had a system called cops. Not this similar to what you have with homes, but the importance of getting on top of the chaos of the information that comes in so you can gather, assess, collate and then
allocate task flowing from that. Do you want to talk on that management of information in a homicide investigation because it's not the sexy topic, it's not the topic that gets shown shown on the TV shows, but it's crucial.
Yeah, lookka, I'll be honest. Homes be brutally honest. I was sort of I wanted to be out and about. I didn't want to be in an office dener with homes. But it's so important, as you say, you're getting thousands of bits of information coming in and you've got to
be able to collate that, cross reference it. And so what happened in the UK is we in the nineteen seventies, I want to say, Now, yeah, it was a seventies We had the Yorkshire Ripper and Peter Sutcliffe killed thirteen women in Yorkshire in this cross It was but so
many lessons have been learned from that. So one of the what went wrong is they didn't have a computer system, they had a paper system, and he was committing murders across multiple policing areas, and so when he was eventually identified as the killer, he appeared in all their different various bits of paperwork in that he had been interviewed by the police nine times and there was no way of cross reference in those so unless you had an
officer that happened across his name, remembered it and whatever. But the problem was you had so much paperwork in different police forces, none of it was being married up out of that you think how many time And there was a note at the end from a friend of his saying I think Peter Suckcliffe is the Yorkshire Ripper and they found this note. So that was a turning point brilliant and homicide investigations in the UK well, we can't. This cannot happen again. So HOMES was introduced. HOMES stands
for Home Office Large Major Inquiry System. I mean they really shoehorn that they get, but they're really they come up with that and it is really really important. And as I say, it's not the sexy side of police in and it wasn't. It wasn't for me, didn't I didn't enjoy it, but I understood the importance of it to your investigation.
And again when you're putting together or bringing together an investigation team. There were some people that bought into that type of stuff. They loved that, the computer geeks. That was their era of expertise. When I would put a team together for a murder investigation, you can't always get the ones you want. Sometimes it's whatever's available. But I would try to get a cross section of skills across on a team because you need that mix in a team.
You don't want everyone like you or me running out the door chasing chasing crooks with no one's doing the information management. But it's crucial to build that up. And when you talk about being in the witness box at court, you feel good when you know you've set your information management system up properly. Yes, we received two thousand calls from crime stoppers, we filed them and you know where
all the information's gone and things weren't missed. It's funny you talk about the Yorkshire Ripper, because I think our skill set in homicide investigation was vastly improved by the Ivan Malatt, the backpack of murderer, and also we had he murdered seven seven people and a granny killer which was another one that was operating around the north shore
of Sydney and killed six people. And it was that type of pressure where information where investigations were operating in let's say silos, and the information wasn't being passed on and lessons were learnt from that. So it is an improved system. We'll go now to when you've identified the victim, because I think this is at the heart and soul of homicide investigations too, because when we talk about people's lives being impacted upon, it has an impact on families.
It's not just one person. It's like a ripple effect and it's a generational impact. But I just want to read something that and I think if you've been in homicide long enough, for a police officer long enough, you've had to deliver the horrible messages and how hard that is to knock on someone's door and know that you're going to destroy their lives by the information you've got. And this is what you said talking about not deifying
the families. When you've identified who the victim is, the family mightn't be aware and you've gone to inform them, you know, the next words that come out of your mouth will change their lives forever, and they are unlikely to ever forget what you say. That makes choosing the right words so important. There is no easy way and no right way, but there can be a wrong way.
For me, it was always a balance, a balance between leaving them in no doubt but being as sympathetic as possible your words talking about informing families of their loved ones being murdered. Do you want to talk us through your thoughts on that.
Yeah, I mean you've been there, Gary like it's you feel I don't know what the word would be, but you feel like it is so important on on for the rest of their lives. Well, the words that are going to come out of your mouth now, and if I say you there is no right there's no there's nobody can say to you. These are the words you
have to say, So there's no right way. But if you mess it up, you know that that's what they're going to remember that and that's that This this scenario now for you is this is your job, this is their life and and and they're going to replay this over and over again for the rest of their life. And you feel that pressure, You feel like I need
I need to get this messages across. I need to make it clear so there is no There's different stages of grief and one of those is NIW and quite often that that's that's the first thing you'll get when you when you tell someone that their loved one's dead, they will be in denial. They'll be like that, it can't be them. I just spoke. I just spoke to them to find that it can't be there. So you need it's almost cruel to sort of deliver it in a way where there's almost hope in there. So you
have to be definitive. You have to make it clear to them that no, you loved one's dead. But you don't want to deliver it in a blunt way. You need to deliver it. You need to sugarcoat in a way that isn't isn't going to completely destroy me. It's such an odd things I did fowl that pressure because even now I think back to when I've done that to me, I have to really try and think about it. But to them, I imagine in my face, is one of those things that they will always remember because of
that message I delivered to them. And it's hard, isn't it.
It is hard and it stays with you.
And I've got images of you know, walking up the driveway or knocking on the door and the moment the door's open, they know something's up, or they might have reported their child missing or something like that, and you carry it for a long time. And I think with the families too, like the relationship that you have the families and you talk about the family liaison officer and
people that keep the families informed. I think, the worst possible news, the worst possible event of their life, and you remind them of it because you're the one that bought the book the news to it. It's very very heavy, heavy stuff, but I read that out because it is important what you said, because I know you can't hedge your bets. You can't go, look, we think it is
this person. You're not telling them it's a person unless you know it's a person, so you can't heage your bets, and it just it feels so cruel, but there's no good way of saying it, and you don't know how the people are going to react. I've had people react in every way you could imagine, complete denial, aggression.
Or just collapse on the floor.
You just don't know, but you do carry it with you, and those type of things I think for a homicide detective also carry you give your strength to make sure you do everything humanly possible to find out what's happened to their loved one.
Just a section of my book and I write about our all murders treated equally and in terms of like do you differentiate in how how you investigate one murder to another? The simple answer is no, you give you give your all two to every murder investigate, but there is no doubt that you become emotionally invested in others. More For me, it was always about children. If I'm investigating the murder of a child, I've become emotionally invested
in it. And and you do get you do. You're on that journey with the family, that journey through the initial stages where they've just found out it could could have been you that told them about it, trying to trying it. That that what the most number one question I always got when it found is that initial stage was why, why why did this happen? Why why is my loved one dead? And so you're you're there trying
to find the answer to them. For that. You go on that journey through investigation, get through the charge, going through the trial, and you do become you do you do get close to them. You're you're you're in the worst that their worst nightmare stage of their life. You're with them through that and you can't help but become emotionally attached to them. Only you'd have to be a robot.
Not too Yeah, the double edged part of it too.
But sometimes the family members are the suspect and you've got to play that role of the sympathetic, caring cop that's delivered this horrendous news, then looking at the way they react and keeping an eye open are they involved. So yeah, it's a difficult thing.
I have one.
I'm not sure if you have a similar one. But there was a certain person that he was an uncle of the victim, and at the time that we were notifying the family, we were not one hundred percent sure, but had some good red flags indicating that he might have been the person responsible for it. It was a horrific, sexually motivated murder. It was a horrendous one. We've knocked on the door and the famili's answered door and said, you know, with the empathy that is required for this
gone in and said, look, got some bad news. Do you want to sit down? Is there anyone else here? And they sat on the lounge and said, look, we've identified this body that were found at such and such, and there was genuine grief in the room. Our suspect was doing his best to cry, like, had his head down, hands in his hands, in his face, and I remember he looked up at me and pretend why he's trying to cry and said do you think do you think they'll solve it? And I said, I'm one hundred percent
certain will solve it. And he should have seen the look on his face. I still remember that, and that still brings a smile to my face that, yeah, he knew that at that point in time, he was stuffed and we didn't have enough to arrest him at that stage, but we certainly we fired the first shot and the look on his face was, Yeah, something I'll never forget.
Yeah, as you're talking, so we've mentioned a family lais and officer. I think even in the police, certainly in the UK, people don't understand the role of the family laiser officer. They think it's some sort of pink and fluffy I'm going to it's like there for tea and sympathy type thinks it's not they're a detective, they're an investigator. And I mean in those type of investigations it comes
to the fore. It's like you're putting somebody into that family situation and what you're talking about, they're looking for the clues. Picking up on what they're saying, how they're reacting is so important. And say that that they're an investigator and they're building up that picture the victim's life and they're central to that. So he is in those situations that crucial.
They are crucial. Steven and I learned a bit because quite often families that you come into contact with haven't had dealings with police before, and it breaks my heart sometimes. And we have appointed family liaison.
Officers as well.
It's a it's a role that we used to do organically. You do it naturally, but sometimes it'd be forgotten when you get caught up in the speed of the investigation. And family spoke to me that they haven't had dealings with police and had my number to contact me if they wanted to contact me, and we're busy with the investigation and They contacted me months later and they were livid that hadn't been in contact with them. And I was shocked because I said, any questions, you've got, here's number,
anytime the day or night. But they are of the view they are laura by any citizens, and they thought, we can't disrupt the detective inspector. He's busy doing work. We can't just phone him up. And it broke my heart that they felt that way. But yeah, it is an important role and it's not the fluffy cake eating type role. There's an investigative aspect to it as well.
So yeah, and as well as I mean, they are so the duel roll really, so first and foremost it's about being an investigator, but they're also there for the family. So when you've lost someone through murder, certain procedures are going to have to go through the coronial procedures we have over here, So identifying the body, there'll be an inquest, releasing the body for the funeral, keeping them updated to
progress the investigation. They'll be there at court with them so that they can lead, they can help them through the trial, explaining things, et cetera, so that they they they do have that it's not a counseling role, but they're they're they're almost like a crutch for the family,
and that they're they're a port of call. So you're right, I mean calling the detective inspector it probably isn't something that's going to be easy to do, whereas having your family aisen off so you can just drop a WhatsApp to whatever is is a much easier way of if you've got a question, you can ask it. So as when I was one of the senior officers, I would always at a very early stage meet with the family, introduce themselves, let them know of any if they've got
any questions, do you ask me? What for questions you've got, but go forward, John and Sarah, they are your poets, are contact. If you've got any questions of me, to go via them. That was an important part.
That makes sense. Well, Steve, we could talk all day, day and night. We're going to take a break now and when we get back we're going to take the next step forward in terms of homicide investigation, lines of inquiry, interview room, time of arrest, when do you arrest someone, when do you move on someone, and a whole range of aspects that come out with homicide.
We're back for part too shortly, all right,