The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective see a side of life the average persons never exposed her. I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty five of those years I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I 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 back to part two of my chat. We've retired
Scotland yard detective Steve Kere. If you miss part one, Steve has given us a good understanding of the processes that go into place after his murder investigation team is called to a deceased talked about what happens at the crime scene, the importance of the crime scene information management, notifying the families, and all other aspects of homicide investigation. I really like Steve talking about standing still and just taking in the crime scene and getting a feel of it.
And that's the thing that you can't teach. It something that you learn through years of experience and probably be shown by others that came before you. Let's get past the crime scene. Now where do you guys run your investigation from?
So there are different police bases, so we call us. We don't call ourselves really, but the press tend to call the Scotland Dart Detectives. But nobody works out of Scotland Old anymore. Is shrunk.
It does sound cool, but yeah, yeah, I wouldn't like Scotland Yard coming after.
That's shrunk down to a really small building. Budget cuts everything got smaller, even the buildings, so we work out a different basis. I worked out a place called Lewisham Lusian Police Station in southeast London and we would have a section of the police station that was set aside for homicide and all that teams would be there. So you nominally you work at a police station, but that you're not connected to the police station in terms of local policing. It's just the building your workout.
And we refer to them as a strikeforce room or an incident room that when things are going well, each police station has a room allocated that should be under lock and seal in case a murder or a serious investigation comes through, and they've got computers in there and it's all right to go and ready to set up.
But I found running homicide investigations, it's crucial to have a good functioning strikeforce room or investigation room, a place where you've got all your team together, a place where you've got your computers, you've got all your paperwork set up. Would you agree with that?
Yeah, Well, as is permanent. So we have as the MII. So it's the major instant room, and it's where all the homes computers are and you have permanent staff there. They're not police officers, they're civilians whose job it is to maintain all the information that goes on to homes. And yeah, that's central, that's central to it. So and then you'd have a different office called the squad office
where the detectives would work out of. And a really important element is that at some point at the beginning of a murder, every day as a murder goes on, maybe not as regular, but everybody comes together. Everybody from the typists to all the detectives come together and share in information, and that's really important.
I learned very early in my career as a homicide detective. I could tell and even when I was a senior detective running investigation, so I could almost tell the quality of investigation by the manner in which briefings were done, briefings in that incident room, detective's room, squad room.
Whatever you want to call it.
And I had some people and who I looked up to as just great detective and they had an ability to put all the information in a briefing, so everyone felt like they were contributing to what's gone on, summarizing what we know at this point in time, and explaining the lines of inquiry and information and having not a free for all, like someone was running the briefing, but
inviting everyone to have some form of input. What's your thoughts on the importance of briefings, because I think they're crucial.
No, one hundred percent. So if you've got twenty five detectives all running off in different directions, they need to know what everybody else is doing and just as importantly, how what they're doing fits in with everyone else. So just as example, if you've got someone who's doing the CCTV and then you've got if they understand what the witnesses, officers the information they're coming back with, what the witnesses are saying, what they've seen, the description of the suspect,
et cetera. Makes their job much easier. And there may be something on the CCTV that wouldn't on its own, wouldn't make sense, but when you fit in with everything else. I'm a bit of a sci fi geek, and in Star Trek they've got at this alien race called the Borg and they're like a high mind where everybody knows what everyone else is thinking. And that's a stage where you want to try and reach. You want to be able to get to a stage where everybody knows what
everybody else is doing. So that so it all does fit in, because if you're all pulling off in different directions, it's going to be much harder to solve the crime. And the only way, really, you know what cops a like area if you put something in a document, they ain't going to read it. So if you've got them in a room and they're all talking to each other.
They're much more likely to digest what's going on, and they crucial and if you don't hold those meetings, you don't have that cohesion and you make it much more difficult for yourself to solve the crime.
One hundred percent. I think bringing everyone into that room, and obviously it was sometimes that people couldn't make it, but you'd have someone that they're working with that could make the briefing, and I would go around the room like if I was running the briefing. Okay, this is what we know at this point in time. A lady's body has been found in Parkland. We've got witnesses, have been interviewed, but no one saw what happened post more than result is of the pears. She's died of a
gunshot wound. This is what we know at this point in time. And then I'd go to you, Steve. You might be coordinating the CCTV footage. What have we got from the CCTV footage. There might be another person that's looking at the canvassing aspects. You've interviewed the person that found the body, what information came from that person, And you're going round the room. So everyone's input in and
we're all on the same page. I do like star Trek, but I hadn't really thought of homicide investigation in the form of a ball. But I take on board what you're saying. But it is all that information. The good leaders that I saw, they would encourage everyone to have
an input. And it could be some new kid that's just come into the homicide sitting in the back of the room and put his hand up nervously and say, hey, boss, if you consider such and such, invariably it was a good idea, if it was a good idea, and so of course I considered that that's not but that input
and the other thing. I think those type of briefings help everyone feels like they're part of a team and everyone feels like they're contributing, because otherwise, if they're kept in isolation, that's hard to motivate people if they don't know the bigger picture.
Yeah, I'm saying, if you're a good leader, you have to create an environment that people feel comfortable to be able to speak up and say as you say. Because everyone when I was talking about that that the the the analogy of a car, where it's the it's the dyes that are directing it, and the d s's are the pedals, and the dcs are the engine. That car won't work. If it was just the dill it wouldn't move. Which a car, it won't move. The ds is will
push it the pedal it would work. Everything has to work together, and a murder is not solved by on the new, on the on the On these drama dramatizations, you see the DC idea run around solving murders that they don't solve murders. The team sold the murder. No one individual detective solves the murder. Even if you come up with a really good bit of evidence, it still has to fit in with everything else, and it still has to get to a stage where it gets past
the CPS. It gets it's not going to be ripped apart of court, So no one person can solve the murder. It has to be a team. And I've been in meetings. One of the most important people to having a meeting I always thought was were the typists who put all the information onto the computer because they read every single document.
I didn't read every single document, and they'll be there and they'd be, oh, yeah, I remember I typed on a message from a member of the public who said I hadn't seen that, and you know what I mean, but the fact that you've seen him put it on, that could be really important. So everybody should feel comfortable enough to say to put a hand up, like you say, the new detective or anybody is.
And I'm sure you've had people on your team that you call the typist. We had that at one stage. They eliminated that. So police are putting it all on, which I think is a bad thing. Our skill set could be better utilized. But that's that's just the way we approach it. But some of the analysts I've worked with, they're the ones of the attention to detail. And I swear to god the crime wouldn't be solved without the analysts that just got the ability to retain this attention
to detail. And I'd be talking and no, that's not what happened. This is a right, sorry correction. Like attention to detail, they're crucial to a good homicide investigation team, I believe.
Yeah. So when I first joined the murder teams, it was before the our government decided to absolutely rack policing in the UK. But when I first joined, we had an embedded intelligence analyst who is not a police officer, civilian, really really highly trained in how to use different software and methods for collecting intelligence information. And one of the
most important roles was a timeline. So if you've got thousands of bits of information, if you overlay them on a timeline, suddenly things become more You can see how different events relate to each other, how to build up to a murder happened, looking for an important trigger in the build up to a murder. There's all different aspects of a crime that you don't jump out of you if you don't lay them in that timeline. And that's one of the jobs of an intelligence analyst. And they
were really fundamental, crucial to our investigations. And then when the budget cuts came in, they took them off of their murder teams and they centralized them, and so you would have an analyst attached to your saying that it wasn't the same. They weren't embedded with you, they weren't living and breathing the murder like we were, and our investigations one hundred percent suffered because of that decision. It all comes down some money, and that really, really, really
pisses me off. Investigating a murder should not be about money, but sadly that's the world we live in.
Yeah, the problems you're talking about are not this similar, and I've been out for a couple of years now, but I know the situation you're talking about where people above didn't understand the value of I need this analyst working with me full time. I need this. I need that. You're not asking it for the fun of it. You're asking it because this is what's needed to solve a murder. When we talk lines of inquiry, people often say, as a detective, do you have a hunch, And I say, well,
not a hunch. When you're looking at a line of inquiry, a hypothesis or you might throw out this maybe this person got murdered because he had a gambling habit or something along like that line. That's a hypothesis.
It's not.
It's a line of inquiry that needs to be explored. Do you want to just talk us through your mindset. We've got you. We've taken you from the crime scene. You've done the canvassinge of the crime scene, gathered all the information, you've done your briefing, you've set up your intint room or strikeforce room. But then you've got to get to a point. Okay, which direction do I take
this investigation in? What's what's your mind thoughts? So what's the processes that you'd go through with investigations at that stage?
Yeah, hypotheses are really important. So if you've got all these detectives running around investigating stuff, they have to investigate something. You can't. You can't ask them to go. You can't say to the CCTV officer, go and get me CCTV. You can't say to the phone's officer, go and get me phone's data. What you need to do is investigate something. That's where hypotheses come in. So so essentially what you're doing, you're you're looking at the likely scenarios of how why
this murder would have happened, and you investigate them. So, if so the person was killed because they because they've got a rival drugs gang or something along those lines, because they deal dealing drugs and it could be a rival gang, or it could be a robbery or it could so if you if you come up with a likely scenarios, you can then investigate that. So you can if it is if he is a drug dealer, Well who is who else is dealing drugs in the area.
Have there been any recent robberies on drug dealers? Does it? Has he had any fallings out? And so what you need to do you need to investigate a lightly scenario which will then open up potential evidence. You can't just that. There has to be a focus to investigation, and that's where hypotheses come in. And they're not made up. Then they're not thinking all like fanciful ideas of what could
have happened. They're very very simple. So imagine a scenario where a dead body is found in the woods and all you know is this person has been killed in the woods, and you know, we know nothing else about them or their lifestyle or anything else. All we know is you got a dead body in the woods. So you have to investigate something. So if you set your hypotheses as broad as this, that they were killed by someone they knew, or they were killed by someone they
didn't know. So if you start off your investigation but they were killed by someone they knew, you could so then you so then you investigate their life. Who is in their life? Who have they had any issues? Is there anybody in their life that's threatened them in the past, that kind of thing, or they were killed by someone they didn't know. If they're killed by someone they didn't know, then it would be someone in the area. What's been going on in the area, as there been any robberies,
any for previous attacks, anyone hanging around. Then as you get more information, your hypotheses can be more more focused. But whatever happens, whatever scenario comes, it will stem from one of those two things. They were killed by someone they know, someone they didn't know. So in the meantime, you're not missing anything. You're you're not missing a line of inquiry that that you could think, oh, we didn't do that well, and now it's too late. And then
there's more information comes in. Supposing this person that's there I don't know is in a volatile relationship with someone, then you can you can have a specific hypothesis around that. But in the meantime, you've not lost anything. You and and more information comes in you can develop and change hypotheses. But they're really important because I say, detectives need to be focused, they need to investigate something, and you're giving them a starting point to investigate.
Okay, I think you explained it very well, Because you've got to start somewhere and point them in the direction. The confirmation bias can cloud your judgment. Let's speak hypothetically. If a woman's body is found in the woods as you described, and being in a volatile relationship with her ex partner, confirmation bias can be dangerous if that's all you're looking for. That you think, okay, that's my hypothesis. They're in a domestic situation, they've had a falling out,
he's probably killed her, and you concentrate there. What's the dangers of confirmation bias in an investigation?
Quite simple. If you're looking over here and the murder's over there, you'll miss them. And so in that scenario, you would run a number of hypotheses. One would be that the woman was killed by a partner, but simultaneously investigate that she wasn't. Now on the flip side of that, there's a chance is it's not the partner, So you have to investigate both. And confirmation bias, I think is the worst enemy of a detective. If you get caught in that trap, the results from that can be horrendous.
So I always refer to a case we had in the UK. It was a lady by named Rachel Michel. She was nineteen years old, she had a young child. She was on a place called Wimbledon Common and she was brutally murdered in front of her front of a young child. And the police investigated at the time, this was the early nineties, brought in a criminal profiler and he came up with a profile that essentially was it's
their local weirdo. And there was a local weirdo that happened to be in the park at that time, known by the name of Colin Stag, and the police went hard for him. They even introduced a female undercover officers to try and get him to confess to the murder. They went all out. They were absolutely convinced it was Colin Stag and it got to the point where they
even charged him with murder. So he was going to trial and as soon as he got to call the judge through out and Colin Stagg was acquitted of the murder. And he did not commit this murder. It wasn't him, but they were absolutely convinced, and they didn't they ignored that it could have been anyone else. When in actual fact it was a man by the name of Robert Napper, and a number of a year a year or two later after he killed Rachel, he in almost a ritualistic,
really brutal murder. He killed a young mum and a young five year old child. And it was only later on when some DNA came back on the Rachel and thecal murder they identified Robert Napper. Now I'm not saying that the police if they had hadn't an investigated Steak, that they would have got Napper, but by not looking for that, but they were never going to get him.
And the result of that is that a young mum and a child brutally brutally murdered when there's a chance, I'm not saying it would have happened, but there's a chance if they hadn't have been so caught up in Stag they might have got to NAPA. And that's the danger that can happen when you'd convince yourself and what
you end up doing confirmation bias. Essentially, what you're doing you've made up your mind and you go and go look for information to prove yourself right, rather than look for information that points to who the killer is and once you get caught up in that trap, as I say, the consequences can be as dire as thats was what happened to someone for and HASMI.
That's a horrendous example, but I can see how it happens. And that's the pressure of homicide investigation. If you get it wrong, Yeah, there's consequences. If you get it wrong, someone might get away with murder you. I don't think there's any fair mind the detective that wants to see someone put a way that hasn't done the crime. I think that anyone with a fair mind would be horrified by that scenario. Sometimes we'd have someone that really looked
good for it. It might be used to we're thinking, yeah, he's good for it, and they would have inquiries trying to disprove it before we move forward on it. So, yeah, it's where the facts take you. And I think that's an important thing as a dejective that you can't Yeah, you can have your your theories, I call them case theories. This might happen, but you've got to follow the facts and you've got to look at it objectively, and that
confirmation bias is dangerous. That you've got to take a step away and just make sure that you're looking at it objectively.
Yes, so what you said earlier is so important. So what you need to do is as well as trying to You're not you're not trying to prove a person committed a murder. You're gathering the evidence for someone else to make the decision. That's your job. Your your job is to gather the information to go to court for that jury to make a decision on someone's guilt. And you have to test both sides. You can't. You can't just just look for the evidence that helps you in
your case. You have to look for both sides because you're not judge a jury. You're you're looking you're and what you said, they're about trying to prove that they didn't. That's a really important element. Well, what if we're wrong, And when it comes to the decision making, looking for what if I'm wrong is such an important part of that process because you might be wrong. And you told me earlier about hunches. I think they're the most dangerous
thing in the world. I mean, yeah, you do get as a detective, you do start to get intuition and you get feelings for things. But you can never guarantee that's right. And if you place too much emphasis on your gut feeling and you're wrong, that's where that's where you end up going down the wrong avenue and you're chasing the wrong person.
The hunches have got to be overlaid with the facts. Yeah, you can't. You can't have a hunch and just run on a hunch. And I've seen people do it and it can take it in the in the wrong direction. When I get complicated investigations where there's a lot of suspects, three eras I look at is opportunity, capability and motive.
And to help me cut through, we might have hundreds, truly hundreds of potential suspects in a case, so opportunity capability and motive opportunity, we might be able to eliminate one hundred of these suspects because they are overseas, are in prison at the time, so they didn't have the opportunity capability. Would they be capable of committing the crime?
Are they physically capable of committing the crime, has a history of it, and their motive And I put motive that is the last because sometimes you solve murders without even knowing the motive. Sometimes it's you're wishing you the motive you don't know. Sometimes the crooks don't even know the motive. I think on occasions, how do you break down when you've got a there's a whole range of suscepts. It might be a child murder, it might be a
gangland murder. How do you cut through and prioritize what lines of inquiry you or who you start to look at first.
Yeah, so we don't use it on all murders, but we have a method known as TIE. So they change what the TIE stands for. It used to be traced to eliminate, to tracing the eliminate. Now I think it's trace, interview, evaluate, but they change the words, but it's the same thing. So essentially, you've got a list of people, and that list could be I don't know, the last person that's sort of victim alive, people that have had issues with a victim, people in the area at the time, people
last in contact, whatever it is. You come up with a criteria that you're going to form this list and then and then the important part is your elimination. How am I going to what am I going to use to eliminate them. Have I got a description of the suspect and I can use that as a basis because they clearly aren't suspectause they don't fit the description, as you say, were they imprison were they were they not in the area at the time, kind of play them elsewhere.
And what that does is you can then start to prioritize who you look at. That doesn't mean your elimination regard to you has to be careful, because you don't want eliminate someone, and it is that it has to be really well thought out. And then and then because you can't you had a fewer people than we did. I mean, we had twenty five people on a murder team. If you had closer to ten, you can't. You can't investigate everyone at the same time. If you really resources
of finance, you have to prioritize. So then you'd be a case of right, we look at the person at the top and go down. Then it might be that you get warrants for the houses, you interview them, you arrest them, whatever it is, but you need you need to investigate them all one at a time. Thankfully, those murders aren't. That's not the norm many many murders are much more simple to solve, but you get those ones that are really difficult.
So the process of breaking it down is prioritize and then eliminate and then okay, we've got rid of the number one suspect. We'll go to the next one and work your way down. That's how when I had ones that I felt overwhelmed with, That's that's how how I approached it. Quite often a difficult stage in the homicide investigation is at what stage do you move on the suspect, Like what stays you declared that he's a he or
her is a suspect? Or do you arrest a person now if it's a serial killer or the person might cause harm to someone else. Sometimes the pressures on talk us through your thoughts on the timing of the arrest of a suspect.
I was always a fan of an early arrest, and in the UK I don't always like in Australia. So I know I've gone over and done talks in America and when I when I'm chatting to detectives over there, that's their their bar for arrest is much higher than us in the UK, as is quite low, So you need two things. You need to suspect a crime has been committed. We're investigating the murder, that's an easy one. And you need to suspect the person is guilty of here.
And that level of suspicion is really low. I mean, it could be and it's and it's subjective anyway.
So braving on the mind of the police officer exactly one.
And so how did you quantify that I suspected he was guilty. I can justify it. It could be. It could be the tiniest little thing. But earlier bests quite often lead on to information and evidence that you wouldn't have got otherwise. So as an example, so we investigated there was a tragic case. It was an arson attack on a family home and it was a mum and
her four children. There were two older boys who were sort of in their twenties, a girl of twenty one who is at UNI, a fifteen year old daughter who's at school. And when we were investigating what may have happened, we used hypotheses and which one of this family is likely to be and so we're looking at the family, which one of the family is likely to be targeted? Well, they were all really decent people. There was nothing in
their lifestyle that would lead to that. They were all really decent people, so there was nothing in their lifestyle that would indicate why someone would attack them in this way. Basically, it's two o'clock in the morning, petrol poured through their letter box, set a light and the moment what the
oldest son managed to get out the window. The two sisters got caught in the fire and the youngest son got caught and by the time we picked it up it wasn't They hadn't died, so it was it wasn't looking good, so it wasn't a murder inquiry at the beginning, but it was an attemptive murder. So we were looking at things like had they had any fall ups with people, any incidents within their life? They were Asian, so it was was it racially motivated? Was was this attack because
of their color? Was it a mistaken identity? Had there been in the who lived next door to them? Could it have been that somebody else was targeted they just
went to the wrong house. Is it Have there been any other incidents in the area and a nactual fact there were there have been some arsenal attacks and there was a gang, an Afghan Afghan gang that were using arsenals at all to arrested some of them, but we were really struggling to come up with any any kind of motive, and sadly, the two daughters died, so the fifteen year old girl and the twenty one year old
they succumbed to their injuries. So it was now a murder inquiry, and the family aison offices say that it was so important when you build up that picture of their life. They were at the hospital with the family and the youngest girl, Malaya, she had been in this kind of school ground, school playground type relationship. It wasn't it wasn't a relationship. I think this boy had asked to go out of it. She said yes, and she
said no, something something as simple as that. And because we were really struggling, we had no we had no clues that would be of any motive that we could have found. It was there only one. Was there only one that she had had just fallen out with this boy. So we took that decision to make the early arrest
and I went there. I arrested him. I looked him in the eye and told him he's being arrested for murder, nothing back from him, And for me, that was a really important part of any I always tried to be there for the arrest, if I tried to do the rest myself, or if not, I tried to be there, because looking someone in the eye and giving him those words can give you such a clue as to as to am I on the right track. I've got nothing back from this kid, nothing at all. And we brought
him in, interviewed him, denied any knowledge of it. It got bailed out in a process. We'd taken his phone, his laptop, et cetera. And of course so late we've got a phone call from the lab who'd been going through his stuff to say that we've got I mean, it was an excited phone call, and he said and the engineer told us that the day before the murder,
he'd googled how to burn somebody's house down. So we'd gone from thinking, well, we've got nothing, well, we'll arrest him anyway, and then we'll see what evidence that turns up, and from that it just it just completely opened up. So and then from there we can build on his phone evidence and there's loads of evidence and were then we were in no doubt whatsoever. And then he was due to fly back to Pakistan, so he's blue lights
asirens to get there. Rearrested him and this time wasn't going anywhere and ended up getting convicted of both murders. But so so first off on motive, so your grounds of arrest, you're not you're not looking for the evidence that we're convictim, just looking for that vision. And the
early arrest can open up all sorts of avenues. When you're searching somebody's house, you take and things are just simple things like when like I said earlier on about when someone's in a friends with knife attack, they might have injuries, like injuries to the hand that will start to heal if you don't get to them early. They might have bruises on their body where they've been in a fight, which will start to go. If you don't get to them early, they've got chance to destroy evidence.
So an early arrest I always I would much rather have an earlier rest and be wrong than dither. And by the time you actually get to them, that evidence is gone. You might even know it because you would never you'd never know it was there in the first place. But you've got so much more chance of missing evidence, so an early arrest and if you're wrong, all right,
yeah it's not it's not. You don't you don't. You don't arrest people willy nilly because it is a big thing arresting someone for a murder, so you have to give it a lot of thought. But if the grounds are there, then then make the earli arrest and try and get hold of the evidence.
And Steve, I know they're tough decisions. We've had people in the charge room with arrest to them and we're going to let them go, and we're running out of our custody time, the custody time, so yeah, it's really coming down do we arrest them or do we charge them? They're hard decisions, aren't they, and that you're making them under under pressure, and you know that those decisions that
you make are going to be scrutinized. They're going to be scrutinized big time, because yeah, I have a few people that play guilty to murder, but most people will defend it at court though, and and then mail appeal it after you've convicted them, and then you know you'll be five years down the track after they've already been convicted, you'll be back in court. But sometimes you've got to
make those hard decisions. We keep what's called the commander's log or an investigation log here and the tough, high profile investigations I've worked on. I'm meticulous in the way that I keep the log or the decisions I make and that and they might look back with the benefit of hindsight and say, well, that was the wrong decision, But at the time I made the decision, this was the information I had had at hand. What's your thoughts
on keeping you your record? So now you talked in part one about that even at the crime soon you're keeping logs. But I would do that during the course of an investigation, yea one hundred percent.
So when a murder happens, senior officer will open the decision log. We call it just exactly sounds the same thing. So it's a yes decision log. It's like a self carbonated book. You write a decision in and so when you're recording it, you're not just recording what decision you made. You need to you need to record why you're making a decision, what what what is the information I had
that led me to make that decision. Because what's what's likely to happen is you're going to have to be asked to justify that decision in court, which could be a year two, it could be it could be ten years later for you know, and you're being asked to justify the decision, and you will have no idea why you made it. What did I know at that time? If you haven't written it down, you will never remember it. So I'm making this what what what do I know?
So the way I the way I used to write my decisions was this, so so so what what what do I know at this stage? What do I know?
So?
What do I want to achieve? What is the purpose of me making this decision? So here's where I am, Here's where I want to be, and how am I going to get this? So what is my process for getting there? Making that decision? And if you record it like that, so anyone who comes back to you, well, why do you make this decisions? Well, this is what I knew at the time, this is what I was trying to achieve, and this is the decision I made
to try and get there. And right, they can try me clever and say well you were wrong, So well, yeah, okay, in hindsight, six weeks later, once I had the further evidence, I probably wouldn't have made that decision, But at that time, that's the information I had, and that's the decision I came to. Yeah, I was wrong, but it's a justified decision, and that's so important, huge impact.
And you can retain your integrity and credibility in a witness box, in a court situation, the inquiry situation if at the time I made this decision to arrest this personal or let this person run based on these facts. And it's a safeguard because one I think, to be a homicide detective, you've got to have thick skin because what I know with homicide, no matter what you do, someone's going to be criticizing you. It's going to be the defense barriss or it's going to be your own organization,
or the victims family, the suspects family. You're going to be attacked. So you go to I see the way of you've got to have the thick skin and you get battle scarred to a point. But to have those detailed records, I don't think people appreciate how comprehensive, the records are and in decision making with homicide investigations.
Yeah, and as the leader in a murder inquiry, you have to make those decisions. You have to record those decisions, and if you don't, you're going to come unstuck at court. And as I say, everything you do comes back to that courtroom. And if you're not thinking about that, there's no good later on going Actually I should have recorded this or sugar in that hand. If you don't write it down at the time, you're never going to remember.
It's your integrity is gone. So well you recalled that six months later, how do you know that was so? And we timestampad decision lock, so so there's no there's no there's no debate later on about it.
Contemporaneous. This was made at the time, and it doesn't cut cut very well in the witness box. I can't recall it was a long time ago like that doesn't you don't You don't have that luxury as a decision making in a homicide investigation, I look at options too, operational options. That's another thing, though I would document the reasons why. And yeah, gangland murders, organized crime type murders.
Sometimes you've got someone running that you think, well, if he stays out, this person might be killed, or if we move now, this will happen, or we've got the advantage they don't know we're looking at them. I would list all the options too, I'd document it there and option one arrest well benefits he's taken off the street. Negatives, he'll probably be released the first time your peers at court because there's not sufficient evidence. Option to put the
violence on them. Yeah, and you scarlet down, But there is a lot about the information the documents that you make when you're investigating homicide. Yeah.
And also what it does is if you make yourself write down a decision and make yourself as you're saying, you're considering your options, you'll come to a better decision because in order to make a good decision, you have to think about what your options are. You have to think and more often than not, so when you're making decisions, it should never be a binary decision. It shouldn't be should be arresting yes or no? Well, what are my
other options? And very often when you're making decisions, really important decisions, and you force yourself to think of your options. You will often come up with a compromise that is actually the best decision, that is the best way forward because you've thought about your options, you thought about what can go wrong, you thought about what you're trying to achieve, and by following that process, you come up with a
better decision. And as I said before, I think decision making is such an important skill for detectives.
It's crucial. And you mentioned the thing there that sort of made me think about how I'd approached some of the difficult investigations where I'm looking at Okay, Steve, I'm thinking Steve's a suspect. Do we arrest him? I quite often okay, well, what facts could I present to the court? And I can have it in my head, I can have it in all the documents, but I actually sit down and type up, Okay, how would the fact sheet look?
And sometimes it looks and go okay, I think we have got enough there, Or conversely, it could look who am I kidding? We've got no evidence when it's all said and done, and just putting it in writing, and I take on board what you say. It makes you think about think about the decisions that are floating through your head. The interview room, the importance of the interview room. What's your thoughts on what goes on in an interview.
I've got mixed feelings on this really, so so one one thing that I think people from the outside looking in often get confused with is that the purpose of an interview. So it's not about getting a confession. That's not that's not why you're interviewing a suspect. You're not trying to make them confess to the crime. What you want them to do is commit to a story. You don't want them to commit to even if I wasn't there, I didn't do it, I wasn't there, commit to that
so then we can disprove that. If we quickly there, then then we can disprove that. So it is important, but I personally, I think it's the least important of all the things because if you're if you're having to rely on a confession to prove a murder, then you need to you need to go away and think about the rest of your evidence.
You're desperate at that stage, isn't it when when it comes to I know, the confession.
Yeah, if you if you need a confession for murder, then then you're you're not where you need to be. I want, I want to be able to prove a murder regardless of what they say. Oh, in an ideal world, they would confess everything and tell you where their murder weapon was and tell you where they've got rid of their clothing. Brilliant, because you can all add to that, really,
really really Rarely, if ever, does that ever happen. If someone's going to talk to you an interview, generally they're trying to talk their way out out of something, not confessed with it.
And if you're going properly prepared, sometimes the denial can be as good as a confession, because you know you can contradict, like now I wasn't there, and well we know that you've got your DNA. You don't have to declare it straight up there. Let them deny, deny, and then hid them with that, and then they're less done.
And then by the time he gets a court, the jury can see that they've lied. And once they've lied once, how can we believe them now? But the problem we have in the UK, I might say the problem, but it's a fact is a majority of our interviews go no comment because we've got a right to silence, so they'll get a solicitor and they'll literally say no comment. And and to be honest, that never bothered me. And in the UK there is a repercussion if you say
no comment in an interview. At trial, the judge can direct a jury to have an influence of guilt. So, I e. If they were innocent, why did they not give the account they give you now? Back at the police station, they were doing an easy I was. I had one trial. It was uh, it was it was a GameLine shooting. It was a motorbike and pulled up next the car and shot shot the person in the
car and outside the caught. One of the jury members came up to me, we've got the guilty verdict, a little old lady and she said, thank you very much for everything you've done, she said, she said, you know what I knew. I knew he was guilty as soon as I heard that he said no comment in an interview. Yes, so yeah, they might.
Have How people think that legislation you talk about was introduced over here in New South Wales and does assist like an inference instead of someone making no comment when you've arrested them, no comment then turning up at the trial and going, oh, well, and they've got their alibi or created and all that, so the judge can give a warning on that or an inference can be taken. Why didn't they declare that right at the start? Homicide
trials they're exhausting. I don't think people understand. Like I look back at my career, I still get a I think a physical reaction when I go into a court because I've had so many tense times in a court through murder trials, and it's an emotional rollercoaster, isn't it. You don't know which way the jury is going. They don't go over one or two days. You could be there for months and it's the pressures on constantly. Talk to us about your experience with murder trials.
Yeah, I mean, I be honest, I don't miss them. The high I was talking about at a very beginning where you get your conviction is fantastic, but a build up to it, I didn't enjoy it. So just turning up on the first day is going to be You've got no idea where it's going to go. So we just simple things like in the UK we have disclosure laws where you have to disclose certain bits of information to the defense. State of trial, they'll hit you with a big list of things they want disguised that they
could have asked for months ago. So you're running around there. And then for me, the most stressful part of any murder trial is the witnesses. Are they going to turn up? There's always a witness that such changes in mind. They don't want to have to get a summons through them or a warrant or something else. And then when they do turn up, what are they going to say in the box? Are they going to change their account? Are they come out with something they didn't tell you before?
So that initial stage, because so the bigging the first part of any murder trial is the prosecution case and that that is the most stressful part getting through that. And in the UK, I'm sure it's the same in Australia. The start of the trial will be the prosecution with their opening and it will be outlining what the case is and the evidence and what you're hoping for. Really is by the end of the prosecution case, you're at the same level as the opening speech as you anything,
you haven't lost anything. Yeah, So that's that's that's as much as you can hope for, and there's no guarantee you're going to do that, and getting through that isn't nice. I came across many decent defense barristers, but I came across equally equal number of decades. To put it.
Mildly, really, I think that's fair to say, Steve. I understand they're doing the job, but some go way above and beyond, Like if it was us doing as police, going that hard, there'd be criticism. And when they do this defense you talked about requisitions that just they would do it deliberately, like it'll be a Friday afternoon, the trials do the start Monday, and you receive at three o'clock in the afternoon. You've got a weekend where you just want to clear your head and get ready for
the trial. And there'll be a list of requisitions that you know, they know will take you all weekend, working through the night to get And it's just trying to rattle you before. And if I say this to defense barrisses or legal people listening to it, they oh, we
wouldn't do that. That's what they're doing. They're trying to rattle the detective or detectives, the investigation team, the prosecution before the trial with these unrealistic requisitions that, as you said, they've had the brief for months, if not years, they could have asked for them, but they leave it to the last moment, and knowing that you're just going to turn up frazzled on the Monday morning before you present
the court. I think I'm the same as you. I love those highs where you get the guilty and you feel like all your work's being justified. But I don't miss the court. I don't miss being in the witness box. I don't miss been in there for days, been cross examined and questioned about what you've done and the decisions. And it's a theater in part with the jury. There isn't it Like they're trying to rattle it and just trying to discredit you in front of the front of a jury. Not a pleasant place.
To be, No, not time. I mean, and you've given everyone and it's a lot of pressure. I've given evidence and not come out. Why did I say that? Why didn't I say this? And it's awful and and and what you don't want to do, You don't want to get into an argument with the barristers because that always that always goes one way. But they're trying to undermine you. They're trying to make you look competent, and it's not pleasant. Nobody wants to go through it out of there.
You know you don't, but you do get conditioned to it. And I defy. I think if you're not nervous before you get in the witness box, you're not properly prepared. I would be nervous before I got in the witness box, but I due diligence. I'd do as much preparation as I could before I got in there, and and do your best. And yeah, you're told not to bite back at the questions, just to answer the questions, but sometimes
it's hard. And the longer you've been in this business, the barrisss know your personality, know who you are, and know how to push put push buttons. So but there is a bit of a bit of theater there. Homicide investigation generally, there's different cases and I hate it when people ask me, you know, what's your hardest case or what case was your most important or yeah, because they're
all important. If you work a homicide that doesn't matter, like the bloke you turned up and there's four people at the funeral, of which you're one of them, more the one that I turned up where there were seven people. What's a homicide investigation that stayed with you, something that's sort of changed you as a personal changed you the way that you look at life.
Yeah, for me, it was always about children. So if I investigated the murder of a child, that was always stayed with me. And there was one in particular. So we've not mentioned this, but I've got a TV show in the UK and I sit down and I chat with investigators and the only case we feature of mine is the very first one, and it was this, and it was probably the one that will always stay with me, and it was it was quite high profile in the
UK at the time. Has got a soap opria called EastEnders, and it was a woman who was actress on there, and it got it got reported as a missing missing person's case came into us, and it came into us on a Saturday, and very quickly we realized that there's this, this, this isn't right. So there's things like she she suffered from moting urine disease and she's allegedly she's gone off with her two boys and she could just look after herself, like alone or two boys. And her husband had said
she's left me and he then disappeared. So straight away, I mean, you got the feeling for it and like this, this isn't good and what you're hoping for is what what we realized when we went into the house, he had done a cleanup and there was signs of a really violent attack in the kitchen, and he kind of clinging onto the hope that clearly some something's happened to to Shah saying, but what what about the kids? That could he have put them somewhere? So we're trying to
find the kids, go to family members, et cetera. So you always clinging onto the hope that some something that you an ideal. Well, with three of them live, but you kind of you kind of condition to the fact that someone someone's clearly been murdered by the crime scene where are the boys? But by the by the by a few by two days in we discovered that they were all all be murdered and they were buried in
the garden. And then he had fled to the fled to Africa, and just the brutal nature of those crimes, the way in which so for into one of the boys had defensive injuries, which which indicates that he knew that his dad was attacked. I mean, it's just awful.
It was a biological father.
Biological father. Yeah's killed his wife and two children, and it's those kinds of cases and that and that for me, just the just the brutal nature of it, the circumstances in way, the way in which we the investigation went, it was just it was just one of those ones that will always we make I'm not I'm not an emotional person normally, but on the TV show, I actually lost it at one point when I was I was.
I sat with my mate, who reinvestigated it with and we were talking through It's almost as if we were we were reliving it. And I've never spoken about it before. I've spoken about it in terms of I was involved in this investigation, but never to the depth that we were going into and we were almost reliving it. And it was that moment where the phone call come through from the crime scene to us that the three of them were in the in this grave, and it hit me and I held up and I was like I
couldn't speak. I couldn't speak, and you know, it's like you don't.
We don't, we don't know, And it was it just shows you that deep down you're carrying these things and.
When you when you when you dip down into it and you start to open up that yeah, you must be carrying so much that you just you just bury. And as I say, for me, it was always about children and a few cases I've got where where you see did their body or at the post morton for the child, and it's hard.
I look, I hear what you're saying, Steve, and I know when I was in homicide there was emotional stuff like that when you step away from it and you relive it that way, if I do talks or I see the family, victims are different different things. And it's almost like you're out of the cops and you've let your guard down now like in the cops where you had to be rock solid, and I still you know,
I'm a tough guy. I'm still rock solid. Just because I'm out of the cops doesn't soften me up, but it gives you a perspective what you actually saw and the emotions that you went through, and I think, yeah, I understand where you're coming from, and I know how it can hit you that way, and you think, oh, this is a strange reaction, this shouldn't be coming. But I've said about homicide investigation, each part of the investigation takes a little bit out of you and also adds
a little bit to you like you can't get. Sometimes you do the just the on call response and the homicide we call it the smoking gun type homicide where you're not heavily invested in it. That's pretty obvious what's happened and solved, and the local police are dealing with it, and you have just had a superficial overview of it.
But the ones that you actually pick up and run, whether you're leading the investigation or part of the investigation team, you always hold hold on to aspects of that, don't you.
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
What was your coping mechanism? Twelve years in homicide, that's a long stint. How did you cope with the pressures and the emotions that come with homicide investigation.
I'm going to say something that probably resonates for you, and probably every murder detective is just compartmentalize. You don't actually deal with anything. You just bury it. So, yeah, you're seeing grewsome things you're dealing with. For me, the hardest thing wasn't ever the dead bodies and at apartment children. I always found it difficult, but it wasn't. It wasn't the dead bodies because you build up their resilience to that throughout your career. To me, it was always the
traum the family. I found the hardest thing to deal with and dealing with their grief. But but you don't dwell on it. You just push it aside, you bury it down, and then you just focus on your investigation and your job. You've got to do and and and and and and if that's your focus, if that's what you're thinking about, you can I mean, I used to think it was actually when when I when I I wrote a book, and it was I was I was reflecting on on my career, and I I always thought
I was brave in as much as I did. I just I don't deal with that. I don't think about that. I just bury it. But what I came to realize was is it's actually I think it's braver to deal with your feelings. So I did a eulogy at my dad's funeral, and it was it was basically me writing down I felt about my dad and talking about it. And I don't talk about my feelings. I don't. I don't. I don't talk about that kind of thing. And I
was an absolute mess. And my sisters, who you women are much better, I think, deal and they deal with it. They had to, they had to help me through. And it's because I don't. I don't have the I was almost like, I don't have the ability to deal with feelings because I don't. I've got no I've got in my armory. I can't. I can't deal with my feelings. I just ignore them and bury them. And when I
have to, that's where I get caught up. And so when I'm doing the TV show and I'm talking about that crime, I'm talking about feelings and that I can't do. I can't do with that. So so where I used to think that was the brave thing to do, I actually think the bravest and probably the most sensible thing to do is deal with them. And because all of them, as the occur, exactly because will they can they come back and bite you on the ARSEMA and I don't think I will. I don't think I've got PTSD or
anything like that. But you never know, you never quite know how something's going to come out later on.
Well, Steve, you've made me think about myself there on THEES and the stuff that you're confronted with as a homicide detective. And I didn't deal with anything during the course of my career. I just kept Okay, well, there's another job, and you'd throw yourself deeper and deeper and deeper in there. And I suppose we're the lucky ones that we got out there that we didn't have the you know, didn't fall apart during the career. But yeah, you step away and I do what you say resonates
with me. I'm not going to make any confessions here, Steve. You'll let you make the confessions about showing emotion. How dare you? But yeah, when you step away from it, it does give you time to reflect and that those emotions can surface. What are you doing post career? It sounds like you've got some exciting stuff to do. You've two books, You've done the Murder Investigation Team, and you did another one on Jack the Ripper, yeah, so it's pure.
Everything's done now planned at all in the slightest. So when I was leaving the police, you know, well stored about this you making and how that's really important as detective. What my idea was was, I when I left the police, I was going to set up a training company to go into go into businesses and help train their staff around decision making and the processes that I used and how that can be adapted to business. And everything i'd read was if you're going to position yourself as an expert,
write a book. So I started to write a book that supported that, but it was, it was, it was, it was. It just wasn't working. So I ended up right, it was it was, these are how to investigate murders and this is how I can be business, and it was trying to be two different things. So I thought, well, let's just write a book about how we investigate murders and actual fact, in the UK no one had ever written a book like this, so so and what had
happened since doing that. It's kind of dragged me down the true crime route, which I wasn't planning at all, and the book has led to speaking gigs the speeding gigs led to a TV show, so I did. That's just finished in the UK. We did two seasons, twenty
episodes Secrets of a Murder Detective. And now to set up a business where there's a big gap in the market where you've got all these detectives over here with all these experiences and stories, etc. And you've got TV companies who want to use them on the TV shows, but there's no one in the middle introducing them. So I've set up this company to do that as kind of like a setting up a database for detectives willing
to go on TV show. So that's my next project I'm quite excited about, so we'll see where that goes.
I think it's great that you've found found your legs after leaving the police, because it's confronting at first. But if you've got something that you can be passionate about that you're pear to be what you're doing now, it makes moving on a lot easier. And that's interesting what you said about the book. As I was reading your book, I'm thinking I haven't read a book like this from a homicide detective talking about homicide investigations. So good on you.
I think it's great to me. You look like regardless of the fact that you've lost your hair, but that happens to the best of us. You look like you've got a sense of humor. You look like you've come out relatively unscathed. But yeah, full credit to you for the work that you've you've done.
Thanks Verne. No, I appreciate that we're obviously very very similar. I think our attitudes are. I don't think we disagreed on anything today. And and when when you've got something that you're so passionate about, for me, it's murder. Where'd you channel that? I mean, very difficult to There's not there's nothing. There's no direct comparison in the in the civilian world of I investigate murders, I don't want to do. I don't want to do corporate investigations. That's not that's
not going to flow boat. I don't want to do security. It's like, well, what am I going to do? That? Can I can keep keep just talking for hours and hours about the subject I'm passionate about, and who's going to want to listen to that? I mean my far and out caol them to death? No one ever, no one ever wants to do it.
I'm sorry. Well, well look let's take stock of us. You've you've written the book going murder investigation term and I'm sitting here in the pod car studio with signs up saying I catch killers. Yeah we've really let it, but.
No, I wited to move on.
Really though, I understand where you're coming from, Steve, and I've really enjoyed the chat. And yeah, I can tell the type of a cop you were and type of homicide detective, and I would have liked to work with you. It would have been would have been good and lightwise. Likewise, I share your passion for things, So all the best for the future.
Thanks really appreciate mate, Thanks for having me on. Cheers.
I know I say it a lot, but I do enjoy talking to real homicide detectives, and I reckon Steve Ko was a definite real homicide detective. I like the way he thinks, I like the way he goes about his business, and utmost respect for him. Twelve years in the murder investigation team in Scotland. Yard He's done the done the hard yards, and I really enjoyed speaking to him. And I'm not amazed because I always thought it was
a case. How similar the way they approached their investigations after what we do over here.
But it was a great chat