The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective sy aside 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. Today I had a conversation. I wish it wasn't necessary, but there's something I think we need to talk about today. I sat down with Emily Olie and Douglas Smith. They both hosts of a podcast series called Diane Rose and
the authors of a book of the same name. We talked about how families of Indigenous women found to cease were routinely let down by those responsible for finding out what happened.
To them.
I thought this was a thing of the past, but it's still happening and it needs to stop.
This is a conversation.
This is a different location for an Eye Catch Killers podcast. We're on the floor of the Advertiser newspaper down here in Adelaide. Before I start, I'm just going to read out a listener warning and the podcast addresses sensitive topics, including murder and suicide, specifically of Indigenous women in Australia. We recognize that these discussions can be deeply distressing.
And may evoke strong emotions.
Okay, a police officer has told an inquest she would have now done several things differently from when she investigated the death of a mother discovered being eaten by dogs. That's an extract from a media report of an inquest that's been held as we speak into the death of Lassange.
You're done in Wilkenia.
These are the type of things that we raised when we last spoke, and you covered in your podcast series of Dime Rows and covered in your book A Dime Rows. Does it shock you that the police officer, the officer in charge is making those type of comments.
Yes and no. I guess no, because I mean as an Indigenous person myself, I kind of expect it that, you know, but at the same time it kind of tells me that the system is still flawed. You know, when we talk about, you know, what came out of Barabal years ago, and then also when we look at this and then we look at all the recommendations. You can have so many recommendations that come out of an
inquest or a parliamentary inquiry or whatever that is. But at the end of the day, if there's not a change on the ground, and you can have these recommendations, you can see that over the years, you know that nothing really does change to the extent that it should. You know, did you his voices still feel drowned out in these these cases and in these situations. As you know,
we don't have any indigenous homicide detectives. We don't have those you know, indigenous people working closely with homicide or you have those Indigenous community aison officers, and you know, we can teach you know, stuff of indigenous culture in police forces, in any organization or an institution. But at the end of the day, I think, you know, when we look at having more Indigenous people in I guess homicide itself or something like that that might make a change.
But I don't feel like they listen to us and our recommendations or any of those cranial inquest, parliamentary inquiries, whatever you'll say, said inquiries, and none of it really matters if it doesn't actually, you know, take if it's not taken seriously, because we'll continue to see what we continue to see now.
And yeah, not ticking and flicking.
I think, I mean for us, it's unsurprising because it's what Keith was telling us three years ago understad. Yeah, when we first spoke to him. His concerns were that the right questions hadn't been asked, that the right people hadn't been questioned, that the investigation felt not properly supported, that it felt rushed. So I think to hear that stuff come out more formally in court by the people who were involved is unsurprising because it is It's what he said.
And here it is a playing out in an inquest trying to find out what's happened. I'm sad and I'm sitting here speaking to you guys, and I say that with the greatest respect, but I'd like not to be
having these discussions. I'd like to think that on the back of you identifying the issues that you saw in Dying Rows and things that have happened in the past, that we've learnt, we've changed, we've evolved, and these type of things wouldn't happen, but seeing it play out in the inquest contemporary lo it just brings it back to the fact that, okay, we still still haven't got it right.
Just for the listeners, and I have had you guys on the podcast before, but just put in the perspective how you became involved in the Dime Rope Rose Project, which is a podcast series and also a recently released book.
I mean that story began an International Women's Day of All Days, which was you know, our editor Jemma Jones went to an event and Courtney Hunter Heaberman is a mother and she was speaking at the event and she said, she gave her welcome to country and she said, if you think it's hard being a white woman in Australia, try being a black woman. And I think Gemma was just really captured by that, and she approached Courtney after and you know, kind of disasked her what's that all about?
And Courtney's daughter Rose had died in twenty nineteen in what Courtney believed were circumstances that she didn't feel were properly investigated, and that sort of center on this. That was the first case, and that's what we started investigating. And as we investigated, Courtney put us in touch with another mom whose daughter had died in circumstances she didn't feel we're properly investigated, and then another one, and then another family got in touch with Doug.
For me, it started. I used to work at National Indigenous Television and a colleague of mine, Diana, she'd been talking to Keith about like, you know, shortly after his daughter passed away. So now after she was found, my colleague had been speaking to Keith and she needed someone with her to go to will Kenya, and you know, I put my hand up and I was like, let's do it. And that was back in twenty twenty two, probably in March. It was a month after that, and
that's when I first went there. It kind of felt from the start that this was, you know, a story that would you know, follow me in my career until we get some sort of answers for the family. And here we are.
Three years later, we ended up with these six cases that went hugely similar in the concerns that the families had about police not properly looking into, in their eyes, the circumstances of these really horrible, tragic deaths of their daughters.
You see that more more than the coincidence.
Like we're talking so six indigenous Indigenous women and the families all had the same concerns.
Yeah, and like some of their concerns is that the way the police behavior, I guess, responding to their situation. Whether it's a death in Indigenous communities, it's anything really, but particularly in these cases obviously it's it's death. So the way that the police had responded to these families, it's quite I don't know what to say put into
words really. In one case, you know that there was it was rules like, you know, the family were comfortable that it was a suicide, but the police got there instead of helping the family, the arrested the brother and bashed him like it was bad while while the daughter was on the ground getting resuscitated. Those you know, response to police have for our communities just terrible at times. Yeah, I think.
That's kind of what, you know, these were six cases, but we were only scratching the surface of as was shown. You know, there was a sent inquiry into missing in murdered First Nations women and children that you were part of, and you know we learned of that inquiry through our two year investigation into all of these cases. It became clearer and clearer that this wasn't just isolated incidents of police, you know, maybe one officer not looking properly into something.
It was a systemic issue that these families and the families who gave evidence to the inquiry, and huge amounts of other families that we didn't speak to, as Doug says, felt was a systemic approach from police towards Indigenous people in lots of circumstances, as you say, but particularly when it comes to death that they felt were suspicious.
Okay, let's talk about la Sonya's case. Can you give us a background to the circumstances in which Lasnya disappeared and where.
She was found.
Yeah. So Lasnya, you know, thirty one year old bark and gy woman from will Kenya in central western New South Wales.
She was on foing discovered on March twenty ninth, so yeah.
So four days before that, right, So it was a Friday, and she'd been having a few drinks with her two close cousins. They were in this place like in will Kenya, just it's called the they're called it the safe house, so it's where women are usually live for scape domestic violence or whatever. And she was there and sitting down during the day having a drink. She's taken off at about by thirty six o'clock in the afternoon. She's walked away and she said to all of her family last
years later, my mom, my family are catches tomorrow. And she says she was going home, but she went and no one saw her after that. Apparently on that night she was seen in another house in the Malley that's a part of the community where you know, mostly Indigenous people live. She was seeing at another house with someone and they were drinking and then they were there to the late hours of the night and they've taken off.
No one's seen them after that. So she's taken off Friday night, no one's seen her on Saturday, no one's seen her on Sunday, Monday, and then on Tuesday, Tuesday morning, at about ten o'clock that's when her body was discovered in the backyard of her own home. And like I said before, it was just meters away from the back door, the back kitchen window, right next to the clothesline, and
up into this yard. And this yard is it's actually where she was found, is probably two three meters away from a backway path that people just use, like they don't even live in that house. I just use that path. They like walk through to the next street so they don't got to go the whole way around. So that yard is constantly visited throughout the day. And it's loss only his grandmother's house, none of norm you know, she's a big matriarch there for the family.
People have dropping people dropped in and gave a.
Cuppa, you know, sit down, have a yarn. That's where a lot of people go. And it's just yeah, for the whole community. It's like, well, I'm pretty sure she wasn't there yesterday, and I'm pretty sure she wasn't there the day before. How is she there today?
And I asked how her body was found that.
It had an electrical cable wrapped around her neck. It was an Xbox three sixty cord like an audio visual AV cord and I think like she was. She was found with that wrapped around her neck. She was in an advanced state of decomposition. So she'd been dead for about all they said around four days, three to four
days because of the state of her body. And yeah, so she had been laying there for that long, and there were dogs chewing at her, and she'd been missing some limbs, and you know, it looks like they've been there a while. And you know when her uncle, her uncle just walked in the backyard one morning and just found her there and he was, like, he told me, he goes, I thought it was a kangaroo at first, but then I looked again and he goes, you know, don't I realize it wasn't a kangaroo. It was it
was my niece. And he was just screaming his head off.
What I can imagine how horrific it would have been before him was she reported missing, before her body was found, anyone made the inquiries, where where was she living?
Where was she.
Change she was at that house where she was found in like will Kenya, you know, and even I asked.
That question provocatively because I want you to explain that because people will be young. But yeah, if she didn't come home, but explain the community.
In will Kenya, in my community as well, if I went missing for a couple of days, like, oh, he's probably just over at cousin's house doing something, you know, like he's just staying there. Like we don't think of it in that manner, like we don't think of it like, oh, something really bad is wrong here, like something is really
wrong here. And I could see how the family didn't see that straight away, because you know, will Kenya is like, you know, she might be off at cousin's house or they went down to the river, or they were doing something like that's just normal for outback country life, you know. And so in this case, it's like, no, she wasn't reported missing, and I don't think they would have reported in missing unless well I don't think anyone in that
community would report someone missing. And I say, had a really really bad feeling that it was wrong, and then they had to go to the cots to say something. And I don't think they felt that and because to them, that's just normal living. And you know, it's just same in my community, like my brother goes missing for three or four days sometimes and I'm like, hell is he you know? Oh, he's at the mission doing something. It's the same thing.
Yeah, okay, So the first involvement or notification of the police is when Sonya's body has been found. Yeah, they've contacted the police. Found by her husband. Her husband, her uncle Merle and he's got in contact with the police. Then, as my understanding, homicide detectives of local police would.
Have come out.
I'm just surmising here, but I know from the report that homicide detectives attended that day, so they would have would have flown up.
I'm very cautious.
This matter is before an inquest and the coroner hasn't handed down findings at this point in time. So what we're talking about here is what's been reported at the inquest and reports that have come from the inquest. The inquest, my understanding, has been held at will Kenny.
Okay. Some of the things that come.
Out to have caused me concern. When you've had the officer in charge of the investigation in the witness box said that she wasn't even aware initially that she was in charge of the investigation.
Is that correct?
And she has also expressed as I read out at the start of the podcast that would have done things differently.
What's your take on that.
I mean, yeah, look, I think, as I mentioned before, flawed system when it comes to you know, historically, you know, when we look at other cases like this, you I go back to Barville again. My take is nothing is
like changed enough. You know, we're looking forward, we're fast forwarding here, and it's like what's been identified as you know, gaps and you know police have done the wrong thing or you know, like unintentionally you know, missed things in the past because either they're unconscious bias, they're like, oh it's you know, that's probably not something that we need
to look at or whatever, blah blah blah. Like that is still playing out as we've talked about, like that will bring it forward to this police officer right unaware that they were because where was the communication within the police force, or where was the organization to get a proper task force there or you know, team of detect homicide detectives to look at this properly, I mean thoroughly right. Well, I also.
Think it speaks to the difference as well. I think there's a couple of factors at play the remote community. It's massively a factor. But also you know, if a white woman's body was found decomposed being eaten by dogs in the middle of the Adelaide CBD, there would be streets blocked out, there'd be one hundred of coppers, hundreds
of cops crawling the streets. You know, I think that those concerns that she's raised about that response, the fact that you know there was a fairly junior comfortable at the scene is pretty bathelic given the circumstances that she was found.
In breaking it down and this is this is me joining joining the pieces from a next homicide detective understanding the working to New South Wales homicide squad and what's been reported in the media from the inquest into Lasagna's death. A homicide of attended if we accept how it's been reported in the media on the day. So I'm assuming they ever flew up or drove up, drove up the moment they were notified.
So that's a tick.
The first mistake you could make is we won't send homicide. There's nothing, nothing to nothing to see there and that could potentially be.
Where a problem is.
So the first step is right they've sent homicide team up there. They're treating it seriously initially, but there's also reports of the lack of CCTV footage gathered. I think it was at the club or the location she was drinking that on the Friday, but only the CCTV footage.
From that period of time was gathered.
From a homicide investigation point of view, it's crucial the last sighting. The last sighting is basically your starting point to do the investigation. There seems to be some problem problems there is that your take on.
It, I mean, it's interesting.
One of the things that was raised in the inquest is that Lasagna's ex partner was asked to provide CCTV for the four day period that she was missing, and when that cc he was handed to USB stick and he gave it back, and when that.
CCTV was handed over Friday.
Night and Saturday morning and all of Monday that we're missing. And you know, I think that the detective said that she kind of brushed up off as a technical issue or you know, there's all sorts of reasons that footage could be corrupted. But you know, having spoken to Keith, who's got so many doubts about the way that this was approached. Something like that only raises more questions because when you've got an incomplete picture, for whatever reason, it
could be completely innocent. It could you know, it could absolutely be the far was corrupted, but you then sort of opened that door to questions being asked that now can't be answered because that hasn't been provided. And I think that that's one of the things that we're now seeing play out in this inquest is all of the concerns that the family had that you know, maybe corners had been cut or things haven't been sort of properly looked into, seemed to becoming somewhat to fruition.
Well, and we're getting this because the police are actually under oath giving evidence, and this is where this information is flowing out up until that point. Correct me if I'm wrong. When you when you guys were looking at and you're making inquiries with the police, and the response you got back, well, you explained to me.
The response, I've got the same response a year year, I think it was. It was the exact same response from the cops. There was any any any questions, any assertions that we put to the police from the family, their concerns, not none of it was answered. They had a strike force there and they were looking into this death, and that they had spoken extensively with the family and that was it. There was no other nothing from the cops.
I even went to the cops shop in wil Kenya to speak to the cops and that was a bit of a tense moment itself. But yeah, that the nothing at all.
No we uh we.
Actually, at the end of the podcast process ended up dubbing at the wall of silence because each of the I we had cases across different states and territories, and each of the police institutions that we approached came back with much the same responsors, which were m no comment or you know, we're we're investigating, or we've spoken to the family, but you know, we weren't really given any sort of insight into those processes.
Yeah, and look, playing Devil's advocate, the police could say it's an ongoing investigation, we can't speak to the media. Yes, you can go down that path occasionally, but I've spoken more detail to you guys and seeing the response and it was a generic sort of blame response that gives no comfort to the family. Or to yourselves investigating it from a journalistic point of view, that things have been done.
And I've got to say, and you know, you were predicting this two years ago when you were saying that the family was saying they've got concerns, And now we've got police officers in the witness box acknowledging that things could have been done differently and getting an emotional about
the way the investigation has been done. The USB that was provided to the ex partner, and I think we need to clarify that he's not considered publicly, he's not considered a suspect in this matter, but the police thought it important enough to gather cc TV footage from from his place and the US that provided him a USB stick and that's come back and there's significant portions of the footage missing from a homicide. To take this point of view, that would cause me concern. Now there's technical
glitches that you can have in computers. What's what's your take on that?
I mean, I guess.
It's hard not to look at that and have questions. I think any person would look at that, and you know, whatever the reason you then it just creates questions. You go, well, why was that portion missing? What happened during that time? Is there something that we're missing?
Is there?
And I think that, you know, particularly for her family, you know, you will always have questions. Those sort of things are what's viiral into those questions of well, what are.
We missing, what's not being provided, what's not being said.
It's also because they're missing in specific times where like we really are looking to know what happened on those days or where she was on those days. And again like we're not saying that this person is you know, like in any way you know, the person that's done anything to her. But it's just that it raises questions, right, It just raises so many questions because the specific all the times of where that footage is missing is really concerning.
Like it's yeah, I look, yes, yeah, and you would have to get to the bottom of it. Like I wouldn't be as overly concerned if the police were in the witness box at this inquest and said, yes, there is footage missing. We've provided the USB stick and we've examined the computer and it shows that there was a technical difficulty between this period and that period. But what I'm getting and I preface that with any reports from the media, there's been no explanation on.
Why that's forgotten.
The officer in charge also made a comment I'm just looking for it here.
I haven't got the I haven't.
Got the specific quote, but it was along the lines the officer in charge was. I saw it, and this is my interpretation of it. I saw it as her saying, well, it was all a bit confusing the structure of who was leading leading the investigation. I'll say, I'll call you guys outside this. I understand the organization, the way things work. What with that type of commentary? Does that cause you concern massively?
I mean, look and again it's not and at no stage I think is anyone putting any and nor should they put any blame on this officer when you're you know, it's it's hard.
To imagine in a circumstance.
You know, allegations of murder is the worst crime, So it's it's hard as an outsider to understand why you wouldn't have a pretty solid set of systems and processes in place when you know a possible even a whiff of murder, is homicide, or suspicious circumstances is raised. How someone could walk into that scene and be like, I'm really sure who's supposed to be looking at what here? It's I find that pretty hard to fat it really.
I mean I just think that that was that they would just rock up. No, I mean as a police officer, right, I mean if it was as we say, as if it was a case here at Adelaida in Sydney, that would probably be the case, right, they'd rock up. They would know who's in charge, who's doing what? You would satis, how do you think you would run an investigation of that manner or that type? You would you would be the leader of You would be the leader I know.
And yeah, there is experience officers and inexperience officers. I know from experience how you run investigations, and there's a clear structure and things need to be set in place. So you don't want to see a police officer in the witness box acknowledging mistakes were made in an investigation where the family have been flagging. We've got concerns about the way this is going to be investigated. From the outset.
You've got you guys doing stuff in the media expressing concerns and the very concerns that you've expressed, and then fast forward we get to the inquest and the evidence that is coming out of the inquest, and we preface that with the coroner hasn't handed down the finding, so this has just been reported.
You've got all this.
Concern about the way the investigation has been conducted. I see that the homicide detective also gave evidence that the inquest, and the homicide detective said, I didn't have concerns about Broken Hill or Barrier Police District being able to carry out the investigation.
She told the court again.
Yeah, then you've got the local police saying, well, would have done things differently. So there's a failure without putting blame on the individuals, because I don't think anyone sets out to not do an investigation properly. But there's a failure there somewhere, isn't it.
I Mean it's like in a newsroom, right, if you have your big breaking story today, you're not sending your cadet out to do it. And if you are, you're making sure that you've given them all of the training, all of the advice, You're checking their work, You're making sure that someone experience is looking over that. So I think you know, it's hard to it's hard to understand how someone could look at and again it's not speaking.
To the skills or the capabilities.
Of any individual officer, but Tidler's look at that and go, well, you know, why was it just a matter of Okay, they've got it.
Seems good now, no worries.
Well, looking from the outside the investigation, this is me speaking with the Bete hindsight, but based on years of experience as a homicide detective, crucial that you would lock in the person that found the Sogna's body, details of where you were, who was around the house, or that a statement her last movements would be crucial.
In this day and age, that's quite often.
CCTV footage, so that's a high priority interviewing people and following up those type of investigations. I got to say, from looking from the outset, bearing in mind the coroner hasn't come back with the findings yet, that doesn't appear to be a peer to be the case.
I can say that I've spoken a peace that as I think about it now, because I did mention before when she left on the Friday night, no one really knew where she went, but there were actually people that reported sightings of her late into the night, and police never spoke to them as far as I'm aware, because I know cops went back a second time. It was
in twenty twenty three that they'd gone back there. They'd conducted I don't know how many interviews after it, but they'd gone back to have a second stab at this case. Right but before that, there were a few people that had seen her late in that night. All said that they'd seen her later on that night walking along the main street at the local football oval. None of them had ever Cops had never get a statement from any
of them. And I'd spoken to one of them and he was like, no, cops never came to me and ask many of these questions.
I think one of the ones that you know, I think we struggle with is Mele, her uncle who discovered her body. He says he was a question by police, And to me, that's I don't understand how the first person to discover the body could have never been asked the question.
Well, I can't be And look, people might think how we're sitting here, we're beating up on the investigation that's before the coroner. The families flagged this. You guys flagged it, you spoke to me about it. I had concerns, and that's why I say I'm sitting here wishing I wasn't sitting here talking to you because I'd liked all those concerns.
The police have done a thorough job and the family now know what happens to what happened to Lasagna, but that hasn't been the case, and that's why I want to talk about That's why I wanted to sit down with you guys and talk about it, because how many
times are we going to let this happen? And how can you have confidence in an investigation if you're the family, if you've got a family member that side, how can you have confidence in an investigation when you've got police acknowledging that they could have could have done things better. I'm all for admitting we make mistakes. We all make mistakes time and time time again. But these are pretty simple things that it should have been done and should
have been properly. Not blaming the individual offices, but what it's a structure that this is allowed to happen, given the fact that there's been warnings about this. Let's call it from the bearable time, because the bearable time should changed the landscape. We should not be making these mistakes. And that's why that's why I'm so passionate about it.
I think, well, stuff this. We identified all the problems back there, and look what's happened there, and here we are, thirty thirty five years down the track, we're still making those mistakes.
So well, we've got it's thirty years later, and we've got a book filled with we'll take out Shannaro because she the circumstances of her death, but the same thing, the response to her death thirty years later, and we've got a book filled with the stories of six families who have gone through essentially the exact same thing, those the families of the Bowerville cases.
Let's talk about the Senate inquiry, the Senate Inquiry into Missing the murdered First Nations Women and Children. Do you guys know how that came about or what generated that, how that inquiry started? I do.
It's been so long since I've covered it.
I've actually had a blank.
Not the specific individual that's initiated, but I think it was because of all the dramas. It was collectively like one situation after another that it was decided the Senate inquiry and they don't have a whole a federal Senate inquiry. Lightly Statistically, just if we look at things from a statistic point of view, have you got a focus on the statistics of murdered Indigenous women or missing Indigenous women?
Yeah, I mean the rates are I think on average it's about eight times high for Indigenous women murder rates in Western Australia. It's actually about seventeen point five times higher than non Indigenous women.
And there's also a lot of other statistics that come into play.
Four times more likely to be hospitalized due to domestic violence and six times more likely to die of family violence.
And I think a lot.
Of those figures as well, unfortunately, are the best that we can get. But the reporting around the deaths and the instances of missing persons, particularly in the cases of Indigenous women, is actually not there's no solid reporting structures around it. So that's the best that they can glaim of those stats, but there's still a lot of question marks about them.
They could be hindy just.
Say something is those statistics themselves is right? So you've got you know, you talk about the one of suicide, and then you talk about the one of family violence
domestic violence itself. So if a cop or a detective rocks up to a case, you know, and they think likes or and that it, you know, they might think, right, suicide or they had that assumption in the back of their mind that this is probably a suicide, they should also have the other statistic in their head that yeah, Indigenous women do experience domestic violence at higher rates as well.
So it's like these two statistics themselves is has she done something to yourself or has someone done something to her? They both go hand and hand in a way that they're both something that should be in the back of a detective's mind when it comes up to well.
I think the part when I gave evidence at the inquiry was talking about where assumptions have made, where misunderstanding about things and on that basis go down a path or ignore lines of inquiry. That's where problems often occur. I just the inquiry's terms of reference focused on missing the murdered First Nations women and children sought to examine the extent of the problem, comparing investigative practices between First
Nations and non First Nations cases. Examining systemic causes, the effectiveness of existing policies, and exploring actions to reduce violence and improve safety. After two years and sixteen, here in sussending inquiry into Missing the murdered First Nations Women handed down its report. While important, it's not the moment of
reckoning many of us had hopedful. So that is an extract again, and I think you guys met that while we're just sitting here talking about it, that Okay, it's one thing to have the inquiry, but are people going to react react to it?
One thing I.
Thought interesting and I think there was a flow and I haven't got the details here, but the important role that media play on it, playing this we identified here sitting talking about it, and clearly the Senate inquiry have come up with the same same view that the media play a part. We need and here we're sitting in the news office, so it's a bit embarrassing.
But we need to play a part in it.
We're working in the media that these cases are not forgotten.
These cases are focused.
When someone when someone's found in tragic circumstances, dead in the backyard just near it, near the family home, being eaten by dogs, you'd think there'd be some attention to it. So thirty one year old woman and there wasn't. You said, Doug, you're up there, and there was no one.
We were the first to report on it, I believe an ITV that was Yeah, So there were none and that's just great. I mean, we can talk about the remoteness of the community, but what's two hours away is a broken Hill, right. They should have heard about this. I don't know if they did or not, but I didn't hear anything or read anything from that from Broken Hill media.
Well.
I think a really good example of that was one that we investigated as well here in South Australia, Sharan Warrior, who was missing for nine days before her body was found, and it was only once the media got involved that really, you know, sort of kicked into gear. But I mean it was a when we looked at sort of even and I think we can. I think we have to, as you said, you have to admit your mistakes, and I think that we have to admit our mistakes as
well as a media as a whole. That we didn't pick up on that case until much later down the track, because I think that you do see I think those biases. And I think I mentioned earlier that the you know, it's not necessarily it's not just the police that have issues with biases. And I think it's we have to acknowledge that. You know, we will see police releases put out about missing women, and I think there is a tendency in an.
Unconscious bias to go, oh, well, it's.
An Indigenous woman, so it should probably.
Turn up or you know, And I think that that's that's what happens.
And I think that the media is just as complicit a lot of the time in not not really focusing on.
Those stories, with the with the book that you've got and the and the podcast series and I know you too are passionate about it and the whole team that you've worked on this.
Do you think we can make a change?
Oh man, that's a big one. A. I think only time will tell. To be honest, it's going to take an effort from everyone. And I guess the media itself to have a look at itself in the way that they report. As you know, Emily has said that admits to your in the States. I think the media do
play a big role in not covering these stories. Properly and or giving it even attention as they would a non Indigenous person or And one thing I did find is well, as socio economic status does play a big role in how much time media or police are going
to spend in someone's case, you know. So, and that's regardless of skin color, I believe as well, but it just happens that Unfortunately for Indigenous women, it's more more often, it's more common in our communities, and that we don't get that media attention, that we don't get that police response that you know, we desire, that we need that is you know, to correct it, to make things. It just doesn't happen.
So I think as well, particularly for audiences and particularly you know, as white people, I think that people can have a tendency when you have these conversations to feel like they're being attacked or they're being blamed for something, right, you know, like white people here, someone say, you know, policing is a the institution has racial biocense, right, and white.
Police officers might go, oh, but not me.
And I think that people it's really important for people and something that I hope that can happen is to be able to separate out and go, this isn't an attack on me. Think that people need to separate out and go just remove yourself. No one's having a go at you. You can acknowledge that we as a society and as Australia have made mistakes. We need to fix those mistakes. And the only way that you can fix
those mistakes is to acknowledge that they have happened. And so I think that acknowledgment and then that listening, and then that understanding, and then that change has to come right from the start of recognizing that something is wrong in the first place.
Yeah, and I think what you've said is one hundred percent correct. I think police have to also acknowledge that there has been problems in the past. I'm talking from a police point of view, and we're going to overcompensate for that. We're going to make sure we do it properly, because time and time again we've shown that we haven't done it, done it properly, and it's just not good enough.
I can tell you that sitting in that Senate inquiry the day that we did, the head of the New South Wales Police Force was there, the homicide squad. They didn't really admit to anything like wrongdoing on their side. On their part, nothing was really you know, they hadn't made that many mistakes. Or when it comes to you know, like how do you deal with this case, they always
bring up cultural sensitivity training. We do enough cultural awareness training that it's like cultural awareness training is not going to solve a murder, right, So it's like and then they even asked it the head of this somermicide squad or you know, how many Indigenous people do you have in the homicide squad? You couldn't answer that question. And it's also there was one big question I think it was, is do you think that I don't know after the
senator or in the Cox axit or not. Was there racism? Was it rife in the South Wales Police Force? And that no, Like they were just saying no, like straight up, like there's no, But there was no room for them to say that it is. But it's you know, we're trying to address like it was just no, it was they don't want to admit to it.
And that's one of.
The criticisms of the recommendations of the findings from the Senate inquiry was that they didn't go far enough During the Cox Senator during the came out and said, you know, one of the main ones was the Police Minister's Counsel to review existing police practices towards first Nations people.
Right, sure, that is important.
But you know, I think that even because even then a Senate inquiry is being held within a system, within a you know, system that was created by white Australia to cater to you know, like, I think, until there's that cross the board recognition that we have made mistakes, we have all made mistakes as a society, we are going to acknowledge them and we're going to do something
about them. Until police, you know, senior police officers can sit in front of an inquiry and say yes, we acknowledge that, you don't really see how you've moved forward in a meaningful them.
And what saddens me saddens me about that when we had the parable Parliamentary inquiry and the recommendations that came out, one of the first one of the first recommendations was
training the education of police. But they went further to say, not we all sit in the room and watch a PowerPoint presentation and we all know that like if they do the training here and the media, you just sit there and not They wanted something that was meaningful, and they created a training film with me narrating it, speaking with the passion, speaking with the anger about what happened unbearable and so people should watch that to change that culture.
And we've got to push police and not just police. If we're educating everyone, you don't just learn just sitting there and going okay, cultural competency and awareness. It's got to be lived experience, and you've got to see how this impacts so problems that occurred. What happened, Well, someone has still got a way of murdering three children in the Vowerable case. So yeah, it's definitely something that we need to need to fixed.
So it's interesting you mentioned anger as well, because I think that's something that you know, the response when journalism one one one when you want someone to you know, you don't use statistics to get someone across the line.
You could have faced a story. And that's the case study.
And I think when people saw the cases that we presented in Diagos, there was outrage. People how could this be happening under our noses? And I actually think in this instance that's what people should be feeling they should be anger and they should be outrage that these systems are still failing these people in this way.
Well, you know, I know what you're saying. It's probably not a good terminology, but you need to hit people over the head with a baseball bat to get it in. But what I say with Boarable like I can talk about Barable, you know, in day out and people go, yeah, that's terrible, And I say, okay, if the police responded properly when the first child disappeared, Colin Walker, the other two children could quite possibly still be alive to this day.
So that's the consequences if you don't do an investigation.
Probably does that bring it home hard enough? Do you understand? Now?
So that's the type of thing. And as I said, we all make mistakes, and here we are. I'm criticizing the cops and the media.
You're criticizing the media, which starts.
But it's an important thing and unless unless we push it and push it, it's.
Not going to not going to change.
And I've got to have those hard conversations, you know. And it's in all aspects of life in Australia. I believe politics when it comes to that or media or whatever it may be, having hard conversations about it and acknowledging your fuck ups, let say that, but acknowledging it and then working to fix it. That's what needs to be happening more more often.
Okay, I'm going to ask you this question, and forget I'm a former cop and homicide detective. I'm asking you, guys, why do you think this occurs?
Big question?
I mean, I guess one of you know, and I can only speak to what I learned through this process, and Doug can speak much better to know lived experience. But I think that there's a there's a series of issues in sort of entrenched biases, and it's not just within policing.
I think it's, you know, within society more broadly.
But entrenched biases towards Indigenous people on a lot of fronts, in terms of rates of suicide, murder, rates of domestic violence.
You know.
I think that there is this underlying and it's not necessarily a conscious bias. I think there's plenty of conscious racism within the police forces, but I also think there's this sort of underlying, unconscious bias in the way that a lot of police officers approach cases involving Indigenous people, and that clouds the way that they feel that they need to investigate them. And then there's the other layer that we sort of touched on as well, and that
you've spoken about previously as media interests. And you know, I think the media plays a role in putting a lot of pressure. Cleosmith in w A was a great example of when the media gets involved a little girl who went me seeing and was found. When the media gets involved in that, pressure is put on police step
up because they know they're under the spotlight. A lot of these cases don't get media interest, and so I think that there is kind of, again maybe an unconscious feeling that police go, oh, well, you know, we did our beds.
It could even and I don't disagree with what you're saying that all on that, but human nature, if you're not being pressured to do something that okay, well if I don't attend to it today, I can do it tomorrow.
Pull off.
No one's actually asking and it gets shelved in the two hard basket, or you're just touching the surface and not doing it properly. I as I said, I hoped with what happened with Boarable and the things that were said, and I thought there were some watershed moments that, you know, where the police had the commission to come up and actually apologize.
Skippy One.
Commission of Skippy One came up and apologized to the Bearable community and acknowledge that we could have done it better back when the children disappeared.
But the fact that there's still these.
Situations going on, and you said you just scratched the surface in regards to the six cases that you identified in Diane Ray's I can I can say here I get phone calls from people that are expressing the same concerns from across the country, not just New South Wales, that these matters aren't being looked at, looked that properly. Having put the effort into the podcast series, which congratulations to believe it won a Walkley Award, which is which is a prestigious award.
I've learned that in the time of the working well, I've learned a lot of them. I've hearned a lot of good journalists on the Walkley But you guys have actually got it.
I say it's almost sad in a way that a Walkley Award winning podcast series and still perhaps a message didn't get out there. Do you do you find that because I found I've found that on the Bearable Thing, where you think, okay, it's here, it's on sixty minutes, on four corners, it's on then ITV, people are going to listen, but it just sort of slips away.
I think it's it's an issue that I guess Australia itself, like as a whole, you know, we don't really identify with it completely. Like it's not something that you know, that's an issue that we need to address, Like that's something that we should be working, like we should all be collectively trying to you know, make that a better situation for families. But that's not something you know, And like your question before is what do you feel it is? Is like it's for me, it's the history of this
country as well. It's the history of policing in Australia, and it's the history of relationships between policing and Indigenous people and that's always going to be, you know, a bit of a shaky relationship no matter what. And this type of stuff is, you know, it shows that it's
still there. You know, what happens in dying roads is because there's no communication between the Indigenous community and the police to the level that I think there needs to be, especially in my community where I'm from, and you know, we see a lot of issues there as well. But it's also you know, I've grown up with police, you know, knocking on my door all the time. I've been arrested as a teen myself. You know, I've had police. I've had a police slag on me, call me a boom,
a nigger. You know, I've had that happen to me. I've had you know, I've had racist police at me since I was about ten years of age, and for no reason at all, I could tell you that, and I responded in a way whereas I hate the police now because I'm only a young Aboriginal kid and the way that they've treated me, and I've been traumatized from the cops, like believe me, and I've had to sort of fight back. And how do I fight back is
with you know, doing the wrong thing. And that's because you know, if I would have had a good copper walk up to me and treat me good as a kid, I wouldn't have saw them as you know, the enemy growing up. And I'm not saying the enemy. I'm just saying like, that's how it felt, and that's how it feels in indigit communities. Cops something there to help us, they're there to police us, and that's how it's always going to fill with us.
Yeah, and that that communication breakdown. It can go both ways, like the police will be you know, they'll have their point of view, You've got your point of view, And I think that presents part of a problem with these investigations to where that communication isn't a forthcoming between the two groups. But I say that with the fact that you're the police, you're there to serve the public, the public being everyone in the community, not selected people you
want to help. So we what we saw with diing Rose covered in the book and the podcast is this and you described as systemic type of type of situation. Doug, you're talking from a black man's point of view and the relationship between the police that all plays a part. How do you guys like and I'll talk about my thoughts on it from a homicide or ex homicide the technique point of you, how do you guys think it
should be fixed? What what would you like to see, like, when this came out, do you think the world would change?
And with all the cops to go we get it now.
I thought there'd be a few more people nodding their heads and going, yeah, that is. And I think that's the thing that was that we saw is the response was massive, the listenership, the readership, the you know, the comments, the outrage. People were outraged. They couldn't believe that this was how these families had been treated. So I think we did get quite hopeful that you know, there was this sort of rumbling that there would be a bit.
Of pressure put on and then there kind of wasn't.
And I think that there's you know a lot of ways to address that, and you know, I can't speak to the best ways for the police as an institution to address that. That's something that people fast mo other than us can you know, come up with ways. But I think you know, communication understanding at starting point. I think the media has a huge role to play in coverage of these issues, in continuing to bring them to light.
And I think particularly you know, we've got amazing services like in our TV, but it shouldn't just be up to indigenous people to tell stories of Indigenous people. It's the same as police. You know, police are there to serve all of the public. The media is here to serve all of the public. And I think we need to do a better job of being being more aware of which stories we're choosing and you know, which ones we're bringing to the fore, and you know, drawing attention to to make people realize.
To get that awareness, I think from a policing point of view too, there should be sort of you call it affirmative action or understanding that if you're investigating the death of an Indigenous person, you've got to look at things a little bit differently and treat things a little bit differently. Not you know, it's the same rule for everyone. We're not saying completely different practices, but understand that there's going to be a barrier to communecsion.
Sometimes it's going to be hard.
And I think La Sonya's father said that, you know, he was worried that because of his past history with conflict with police and the fact that they've done time, but the police were just going to go, well, who cares, it's his daughter, that type of attitude. We've got to way overcome that attitude haven't we.
And I think that also comes from putting you know, Doug, you've spoken before like you need indigenous homicide detectives. You need to have that lived experience there to understand and build those relationships.
And obviously they've got to put their hand up for it. But I don't know, you know, what the situation it is with policing, and you know, if like any original police officer I know is usually a community constable, none are really sworn in officers to fully sworn in officers, I've known a few in my time, and I don't know how the police recruit and what they do there.
You know, like maybe there needs to be a drive to push to get more Indigenous homicide detectives because you know, we know that Indigenous well there's a lot of death in our communit, you know, and this book shows it well, you know, and what we've talked about just shows it. Really, So why wouldn't they get an indigenous more Indigenous homicide detectives such trying to help with these cases? You know, Like that is one thing. I think that's only one thing.
Like there's a whole lot of like and I think what you said about the media and what, you know, making that story a lot bigger for people to like, this is serious, Like it's not just an indigenous girl from the from the outback. This is actually a person, right, So there's a lot of times where we're not really looked at as well. I feel that we're not looked at as actual people when it comes to these type
of cases. We're just another statistic. We're another statistic, you know, and because there's so many of it, or there's so much of it, we're just another statistic. Whereas you know, we're not like, we don't want to be treated that way. You know, we want to be we want the full investigation.
It made me think they're doug about more homicide, indigenous homicide detectives or different things.
There's a structure you've got to go through to get.
To that that position working in homicide. But when a homicide is set up in I'm speaking for New South Wales, but I know it's pretty similar in all the other states around the country, a strike force is formed, so you bring in, yeah, you bring in some homicide detectives,
You'll bring in some general detectives. If it involves a child, you might bring in a child sex crime detective, you bring in analysts, you bring in a whole range of people to form a strike force to investigate a death or a suspected suspected murder.
It lends itself.
We have liaison officers in New South Wales and have similar things across the country potentially, And it just made
me think, why you're talking. You could if I was heading up a murder investigation, let's say, heading up this investigation into Lasagna, we could have had someone appointed to the strike force as the liaison officer, because we appoint family liaison officers when you've got a murder investigation, someone that might be the officer in charge, the person with appropriate skills to liaise and keep the family informed because
there's a lot happening with investigations. Just made me think it's probably not a bad way that you could overcome those barriers of communication, understanding where the community's are coming from and their distrusted police, that.
Type of thing.
So that's that's something that perhaps we should should flag something.
You've got to change the perspective of young Indigenous people too, and you've got to do that by going into community, learning the dynamics of the community and working with indigenous people.
Yeah, breaking breaking, breaking those barriers down.
Well, I hold the book up if people want to dive in to what we're talking about here, Dieing Rows.
But I've read it.
Cover to cover, listen to the podcast, and everything you speak is so important that people have just got to hopefully change our ways, admit that we could do things better.
So we're not having this discussion. Going to be really pissed off if I'm here in two years talking to you guys.
But look, thanks for coming on the eye catch killers, and thanks for bringing the attention to something that is great concern to a lot of people.