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 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. Today's guest Professor Roger Bayard is a forensic pathologist. One of the many cases he was involved in was examining the remains of eleven murdered victims, eight of which were stilled in barrels in the South Australian Snowtown murders case.
He has seen more death than anyone should, but still manages to have what I found to be a practical and compassionate view about life. And death. He has conducted thousands of posts, more than examinations examining the remains of people who have died of unnatural causes, been murdered, victims of terrorist attacks, natural disasters, or even killed by animals.
We spoke about his career spanning more than forty years, including some of the truly bizarre cases that he has seen and the work that he does to prevent death. It's probably appropriate to give a content warning up front. What we talk about here is quite confronting. Roger. You are the pathologists on the Snowtown murders. That's one of Australia's most horrific cases. We'll talk more about that later, but first help me understand what is the role of a forensic pathologist.
Well, as you know, it's variable. Sometimes it's really critical, other times it's not. If somebody is shot on the head in front of thirty witnesses, you don't need a forensic pathologist to tell you what's happened. But other times we act as a team, so we're working together. So the police have worked the scene and we have a body and they want to know what's a likely cause of death? What do I think has happened, what are non possibilities, so it guides them so they're looking for
a samurai saw, not a pistol sort of thing. Time of death is always a very difficult issue, and we're often called in the past for that, but that's become I think we've become more aware that it's not as accurate as we used to think it was. You know, we had those incredibly interesting scientific charts and you'd plot this and that and they died at two minutes past midnight and as I say, poss and minus a week.
But from a to take this point of view, crucial to an investigation if you can get the time of time death for when the incident occurred.
Yeah, I mean, if they're warm, the body temperatures of thirty seven degrees, that means has happened very recently, which means that the perpetrator may be in the area. If you can give them a time frame, then it cuts down on the number of people that may be evolved. And I think that's the importance of it as well. You know, the police come to the autopsy as well, so that we can chat about stuff and work our way through. People have said we should record all of
our conversations. Well, I disagree with that because it's a work in progress. You know, we're coming up with all sorts of theories, and we're bouncing off each other and using each other's experience saying no, I don't think that's likely all.
Yes, I think that's possible, and that's appropriate from a policing point of view. If we've got well, this person was last sight that we know for a fact that this person was at the shopping center at nine am in the morning, that type of information could be helpful for you.
Yes, indeed, But strange things happened. I remember I went to a stabbing and those have been stabbed multiple times. But he had drops of blood on his back. So I was very excited by this. I said, look, I mean the only way he could get that is if it had dropped from a height. Must be the perpetrator blood. So I worked up for about forty five minutes, and then one of the crime scene cops came in and said, I'll actually passed the bloody T shirt over the back
of the body. But the usefulness of that is getting information from each other so we don't make mistakes.
Yeah, have you got any case, Well, you've done over six thousand posts more than so when I say have you got any cases, I assume that there's a lot in that memory of yours, ones that your initial thoughts on it changed to be completely different to what the final analysis was. Well.
I think probably one of the most recent ones was Jasmine Korr, a young Punjabi woman who was buried alive by her ex boyfriend. He had a story that they had a suicide packed and she had cuts on the side of her neck. So the initial assumption was that he'd cut her neck and then buried the body. But the cuts are very superficial and so the assessment of the crime scene was inaccurate. It wasn't cuts. She had
actually inhaled soil. She'd be buried alive. So that was completely different from what we originally thought and horrific.
Of course, Yeah, I want to talk further about that case because that is quite quite horrific. And in your role as a forensic pathologist, did you go out to the crime scenes or it was on a need basis When you attended the crime scenes, you do.
When you don't, For example, Snowtown, which we're going to talk about, I didn't go to the crime scene there because that was a bank fault for me. The crime scene was in the barrels, and so we'll talk about that, how the evidence was inside the barrel So he brought those down to Adelaide with Jasmine. I went to the crime scene and assisted with the exhumation, just to see
the process. Also to be able to tell the court, yes, I was there, I saw these injuries or not, because if you're not at the crime scene sometimes it can be put you. Well, clearly these injuries occurred post mortem when the body was being moved. But if I could say, no, I was there and this is what I saw, and I document what I saw.
Yeah, And the crime scenes can be misleading. I recall one where I've turned up the crime scene, called out to it on a Friday afternoon. Going to the crime scene. There's a person naked with a cord wrapped around their neck and blood all over the walls, with finger marks and all that looked like there'd been a violent struggle. We set that up as a murder investigation that was running for twelve hours until we could get the forensic
pathologist to examine the situation. This person had a ruptured a orta really and was making a phone call. The called around his neck was a cord to the telephone and was writhing around in agony with a ruptured a order, coughing up blood and the blood was hitting the wall. So that taught me, and that was very early in my career, the importance of getting the opinion of a forensic pathologist because we'd still be looking for the murderer on that case. What led you to this.
Field, basically laziness.
I liked your on the sensors.
I was going back to Canada. I trained in Tasmania, and I've been going to Canada and I've done family practice training there. But I was going back to emergency medicine and I was in Belize and having great time snorkling, and spent so much time snorkling. By the time I got back to Canada, all the emergency jobs were taken, so all I had left was pathology.
And you didn't get a career as a snoggl.
No, So then I went from general pathology to pediatric pathology to forensic pathology. So it's fascinating. I mean, it covers so many areas of medicine and life and law. There's nothing quite like it.
Well, I see that you're passionate about it, and you've been working in it for a very very long long time. From it the impact it has on you. You're looking at death, causes of death. What's the toll it's taken on you.
Well, I'm only twenty eight.
I was gonna say you're doing well for thirty.
That's right. Okay. It's an interesting question, and it's one that I've for considered, as you know, and I've called it the right to mourn and say that nobody talks about post traumatic stress with forensic pathologists, and yet every month of every year we go out to scenes. We see dismembered bodies, incinerated bodies, we see children that have been staffed to death, vehicle accidents, dreadful scenes, and we have to not only immerse ourselves in it, we have
to then describe it in great detail, understand it. Then we have to present it sometimes to a jury, and be attacked, have our credibility attack while we're doing it. So we are so close to this. I think one of the things that saves us is the science of it. We're focusing on the science, We're not focusing on the horror of the situation. But I'm nearing the end of my career now, in fact, I'm nearly dead.
Probably well, actually, if you died on the podcast.
That would be a spectacular finish.
We could do something with it. It wouldn't be forgotten.
But that going sort of television bloopers.
Or look, we'll find the place for this social media. Well, I'm starting to come to terms of it. We'll find the place fore you'll go viral.
I feel comfortable there, okay, But as I get to the end of my career, I've been thinking more and more about the toll and what I've seen, and it doesn't get easier. You know, my area's children pediatric forensics. When I first started, I knew I was going to find courses of these deaths and gung ho. And then as I got further and further into my career, I realized that, no, I'm not going to finances all the time, and I'm going to have to sit down with families
and say I have no idea. All I can say to them is it was nothing that you did. And also a lot of the times they just want to meet the person that looked after their baby between the time when they saw the baby last, and when they saw the baby at the funeral home, and to know that the it wasn't just a case. And of course I always refer to the babies by their name and just so this was not just a case for me
or for the mortuary stuff. You know, a baby who has died, or a little child has died is a tragedy and there's no getting around it.
And that commit because they're very sensitive at that stage and you say the wrong word or forget the child's name or.
Call the child. I've seen people do that. Yeah, I mean just terrible things.
And that they're real triggering for a person grieving. So I think I can see what you're saying, and we'd have a great benefit to the people knowing that the person handling their child or that loved one is someone that's compassionate.
Well, I remember the first pediatric autopsy I did, a little French Canadian girl called Genevieve, and that was back in ninety eighty four. I think, and I often wonder whether because I use her case for teaching, I've often thought, should I get in contact with the parents and let them know that you know, somebody remembers Genevieve, but I don't know. I mean, it's it's so long ago, and maybe it's better just to let it let it go.
The perception of what is involved in the post mortem can Yeah, you've done over six thousand post mortems. Can you just describe to our listeners what is involved in the post mortem?
Yeah, it's a basically, it's a scientific medical examination of the body. So if it's a suspicious death, it'll involve the clothing and the surroundings. But if it's just a natural death somebody's just sort of fallen over in the street, we bring them in. We video the bodies with the clothing and possessions so that there's a record of that. We take the body into the mortuary and then we
do a really detailed external examination. So essentially we're looking for any signs of injury, because that's what we want to exclude, you know, it's something that's unexpected that shouldn't be there. And we're looking for signs of disease as well. Sometimes you can identify disease from external examinations. And then we do a three cavity dissection, and this is a traditional autopsy. We've moved away from that now with radiological investigations.
But in the traditional form you would open the head and examine the brain, you'd open the chest and examine the lungs and heart and the admin, liver, intestines, all the orbits are taken out in wighe they're carefully dissected, looking for tumors, looking for inflammation, looking for some sort
of disease. We've moved on now we have CT examinations, So all of our cases, most fronsic mortars around the world get a CT which is just a very sophisticated X ray that gives us very good imaging, the same as the clinical cts and hospitals. So we can see if there's a ruptured order blood around the heart, we can see if there's a florid in pneumonia, we can see if there's a brain hemorrhage. So in those cases we will then say, okay, we've got a cause of death.
We'll do an external to make sure we don't see anything untoward, and then the families don't have to go through the whole process of having the autopsy done. We have the information we need, so it's I think, in a way kind of to families. Some families want autopsies, families don't, and if they don't, this is a way of sort of getting their loved ones back to them as soon as possible.
Yeah, do you find now that's progressed into getting CT scans and the science has improved along lads lines. The findings that you had prior to T scans were correct, because quite often I'd be standing there at the post more than and we'd be looking at the say it was a bullet wound. What was the direction of the bullet stab wound? That type of thing looks like it's come from the left. Did that change the thinking on determining what the nature of the injuries were?
Yeah, CET's been excellent. It's interesting, as you know, with stab wounds, you will the knife will be taken out and then you'll do a careful lad dis section and you can say this is the way it was going. A friend of mine in Sweden a number of years ago did a CT on a stab wound with the knife in place. And what the knife had done is had come in from the left side and pushed all of the organs to the right. But when you took
the knife out, everything came back to the midline. So the careful dissection was say, knife was coming from the front. The CT told us a different story. And sometimes cts will tell you something that's not at all obvious. I had a poor detective. He'd had a body and this fellow had cut his wrists and arms and bled to death in the bath. And so I was looking at the CT and lo and behold there was a collapse lung and there was a stab wound in the chest
which this bloke had missed. And so I presented it to Major Crime and I said, fancy missing that, I said, and look at the body. I missed it too, because what had happened is that the wound had closed over, so you couldn't looking at the body externally. Very hard to see CT two seconds.
Wow, well there's a science, said. Were you a believer in having the investigator at the post more than absolutely?
Yes, yeah, all the time. I mean it's with OCKH health and safety rules. Now, sometimes the police have to stand on the other side of the observation screen. I prefer to have the police in there so that we're talking about the case, working our way through it. When I find something, you know, if I show you through a glass window. It's not the same as pointing out to you directly.
No, I always found it beneficial to be at the post more than if I was on a particular investigation. I tell this story and that probably dates me. But the first post, more than I went to, and I'm not going to name the hospital, and I'm sure the pathologist is long gone, was smoking, standing there smoking, Yes, no gloves on. And I walk in as this young copy shook my hand and then I look where his hands had been with no gloves and standing over the body smoking. We've come a long way.
Well, i wear a full protective suit, so I've got a respirator, you know, I've gloves, sleeves, food smoking, nothing like that in the mortuary. No, it's a much more. It's a process that could be videoed and used to show people that it's done scientifically now and with respect, with respect.
Well, that's the important thing. And I think that's a fear that the victim or the deceased families have, is what's going to happen. Who's caring for our loved one, regardless of the fact that they're now deceased. I want to talk on this is. I think it's played prominently in your career. Not the only case, obviously, but that's the bodies in the barrel case. We talk about the Snowtown murders. Eleven people I believe were murdered. Where the
bodies were disposed. I think there was eight bodies disposed in a disused bank in a small country town. I'd call them forty four gallon drum type barrels. You had just started as a forensic pathologist, yep, down in South Australia.
My first week on call.
Actually, I don't know what it is about South Australia, but whenever South Australia police I find me, it was never good news. There's something about South Australia, but it's a special place. Your second week and you get a call, do you want to talk us through the process of that case? It was a horrific and what you uncovered and the role that you played in that case.
Well, when I started, my colleagues in Eastern States, we're talking about adelaide As being the city of churches and serial killers, and there's there's a certain truth to that. There's Snowtown. I was called by head a major crime one night I think it was a Thursday night, and I was so green. I didn't realize that when the head of major crime calls you, it's pretty serious.
Yeah.
He said he was in a little place called Snowtown and he described the barrels and they said, do you want to come up? And so you know the evidence is in there, you know, why don't you just bring them? Bring them down to Adelaide. So I didn't go to the crime scene because for me, the crime scene was actually within the barrels. So they were brought down and the next day we had to work out the mechanics
of how to handle this because they're very heavy. We'd been told our full of acids, so it could be toxic, so we had to test the fluid. Then we had to work out how to empty the barrels and not lose evidence because you know, you could be bullets are inn in there. So there are eight bodies partially dismembered in the barrels.
What did you know at that stage?
Well, I tried to convince Paul Schram that was probably hydroponic, and he said what should he do? And I said, We'll take a lit off and if you find remains, give me be a call, and you know, ten minutes later said yes, there were feet poking out. So I said, dear, how many barrels? Eight barrels, and I said, let's bring them down. But there were two bodies buried at Waterloo Corner. Clinton's recise had been murdered. He was the first one
buried up at lower Light. And there was a case that was a hanging that originally thought to be a suicide, but they'd actually forced their spoke to hang himself. So there were a number of them. But the mechanics of taking the bodies out was extraordinary.
So okay, and I hadn't even thought about the logistics, but yeah, moving the barrels and all sorts of potential issues. You don't know what's in them. So you work out the mechanics to get the barrels to your laboratory or and then how did you what was the process?
Well, we took the lid off, had to look inside, got some idea what was going on, and they were in various states of decomposition. Some are actually quite well preserved. Then we put the lid bag on, turned them on the side on a bench and used sieves, you know, the sieves were archaeological and just sieved all the fluid as it came out. We found well, we found thumb locks and gags and all sorts of things. So we didn't we didn't want that material to be lost because
it was very important. So then when all the floor was out, we brought the bodies out and we just gave them letters f and then put them on taps and then just matched up. We did DNA testing, which didn't work. Which is interesting is that, well, that's what people said, you know you can get you can do DNA testing on dinosaurs. Why not this because of the nature of how it was the bodies were stored. They're in an oxygen deprived environment, which was originally a and
DNA just doesn't survive that. We got a foot in a gumbot that came up in a fishing net in the bit. We could do DNA on that, and it was from a fisherman who had overboard ten years before. But the condition was obviously much better for preserving DNA than in these barrels.
Had the bodies that had the flesh decomposed in.
The yes, No, some hadn't, some had, Some were very well preserved and we could. We could see tattoos you could use to identify, We could do dental records. And also the police had a fair idea who they were, which is obviously important because if you have no idea who somebody is, how can you actually then you know, do dental records, you know, how can we.
Where these stay? Yeah, that's right, you've called out identification, but also the cause and manner of death.
Yes, indeed, what did you find? It was difficult because of the or preservation. The bodies had broken down. We were looking for natural diseases, but sometimes the augments were missing because that decomposed. We found gags and things put in their mouths, you know, suffocation was was likely. As I said, they had handcuffs and thumb locks, so we didn't find any evidence of torture, probably because of the
state of preservation. There's been stories about they've been inserting sparkles into their penises, and we could find OVID into that, which doesn't mean it didn't happen. Happen. And the cannibalism, you know, the last victim, apparently forgotten which perpetrator might have been Bunting, took a slab of thigh and cooked it up for his mates.
Where where did where did that information come from?
Jimmy of Thesarkus was one of the perpetrators Bunting Wagner of the circus, and he gave the police a lot of evidence. He gave that story.
Yeah, how did that impact on you?
Again? You hide behind the science. You know, people generally are just terrible dealing with death now. But because we do it all the time, and because my aim was to see if I could find physical evidence of this to corroborate or disprove the story, then I'm focusing on that. You sort of remove yourself. It's like surgeons in the operating room sometimes leaning on a chest and then takes a breath. They realized it it's actually a patient, not just an appendix. You know, you focus.
I understand and that one of the interviews that you did, you talked about it didn't impact because you had a job to do. You're looking at this person is okay, this is my role, this is a job.
I think that's true. I mean with Thailand, with the tsunami, when I was in body identifications, I was offered a chance to go back a second time. I couldn't do it. There were so many dead children, and you know, these piles of bodies, truckloads of bodies. That was and you're just seeing the whole scene. You're not focusing on a knife wound and the horror of it all.
How long were you involved in the Snowtown investigation? Did you give evidence at court? Yes?
I did. Snowtown went on for years actually, but initially we were asked about the state of the bodies and you know how they putrefy, what sort of does this do to the evidence? And then the case that I went to caught with. I mean, I assisted getting all the bodies out of the barrels, but then I was overseas for a couple of weeks. So the one that I was involved when was a body, a skeletonized body
found at Waterloo Corner. Two bodies found there. Again, could I exclude the fact that she had died of a heart attack and they just hidden the body? No, I couldn't, because I don't have the heart. You know, if you don't have the organs. And that's I've done a study on concealment of homicides and quite a significant percentage, as you know, are concealed hoping they won't be found, or if they are found, I'd be so decomposed that a lot of the evidence will have gone.
Yeah, I find that then. I don't want to say too much. You don't want to give people idea is but the amount of bodies that go into the water, that surface come to the surface, and that gives us something to something to start the investigation with.
Time and time again, I think we can talk about it because I think that the people who do this sort of thing are so into the internet. I did a study a few years ago. They do surgical studies on pigs, and I got the carcasses and I took a broken wine glass, I took a quantus plastic knife that i'd bitten, and I took a Stateler pen and I could stab straight into the carotids. So what I was saying with that is that all the security measures at the airports, you know, if you really want to
do it, you can do it. And I wasn't informing terrorists they know that.
Yeah, yeah, obviously, why do we use pigs?
They're quite like us. I mean, the most similar, of course, would be primates. But that's no go territory.
I'm not going.
Not at all. So that is not done anymore. There have been some horrific experiments in the past, but with pigs they can be anesthetized. Their tissues are pretty similar to humans. We did a pig study with the series I did with Lawless, looking at the Canniff brothers up
in Queensland. You know the classic story. The two bush rangers had killed a station owner and a cop and then the dismembered remains were found in saddle bags and they'd been put on a fire, and so the prosecution turned it around from being shot to actually these horrific creatures dismembered these poor men and then burnt them. So we got a whole pig carcass and a dismembered pig
carcass put on the fire. The dismember pig carcass disappeared, the whole carcass turned into what we had seen with the Caniff, so we could show using the bodies there that their story was actually correct. They hadn't dismembered them. And that's that's historical forensics. It's not important nowadays, but it's interesting.
No, it is odd experience. How often would you find yourself in court?
Ah, it's interesting. I never kept a record. I mean, sometimes you know, you know what it's like. You get three in a week. Other times you get nothing for months, so.
You never won the see the inside of a cord.
Again, that's right. Other times, you know, it can be a breeze. I mean the last one I went to, I think it was a shooting, and both prosecution and defense agreed that yes, it was a shooting. And they said, well, what did you find? I said, A gunshot wound? What did they die of? Gunshot wound? Thank you very much?
You know that. I like that when and it happens more with experienced lawyers, when they're not trying to make points or you know, pursue some odd story, you know, taking what's obvious and then moving on.
We talked before we started recording about being involved in trials where there's a lot of medical evidence and how confusing it is for myself that I have an understanding of what's occurred and you've got the jury there and people like yourself, eminently qualified people are coming in and giving them very scientific explanation. Do you get a sense how difficult it would be for juras on some cases, not cidely any particular case, but some case to absorb all the information that's put for lock.
Absolutely, and it's interesting.
You know.
Sometimes I'm giving the most interesting information in my career and the juries asleep and the judges gone to sleep.
They realize how long I studied.
Other times I'm almost sleep myself and they're writing it all down. So yeah, it's fascinating, and I think it's particularly difficult with experts. You're an expert if you say your life. Sometimes you don't have to have a background in it, and so you can get somebody being diametrically opposed to you and they look like, you know, an old guy that's been on the traps for one hundred years. You know, who do you believe? Also, now part of
the problem is in publishing. There are these journals called predatory journals, and they look absolutely kosher. But you pay to get your stuff.
Published, Okay, so I can get ability.
Yeah, I can give two thousand US and I can get a paper published on my theory and that can be produced in court and it looks.
And then you represented as have been published. You find these zoo impact.
I had a friend in a colleague in Malaysia that happened to in the middle of the trial, I said, what about this? It goes completely against what you said. So the way I handle that is, you're on I haven't had a chance to read this. Could I have a ten minute recess? And then I go out and I frantically google is this a predatory journal? And if it comes up as one, then I go in and say, well it's not worth the papers. Predial Okay, interesting, but yeah,
thank god for Google. I don't know how we survived up until when you talk about strange steps, different things that you've come across with the examinations. If you've done animals killing people. I heard you talk on the podcast Guardians of the Death and talking about animals that kill. What's your experience with animals because some of the stuff that you were saying was quite bizarre that I never expected. Yeah,
I've been collecting animal deaths. I mean your death from dogs, snakes, sharks, roosters, mackerel, bloke fishing in the dar And Harbor, and sharks from nearby. So this twenty five kilogram mackel jumped out of the water and sideswiped him.
Yeah, wrong place, wrong time.
Absolutely, you can't be unlucky. And the rooster death.
Yeah, please tell me about the roosters.
It's just a little old lady out the back collecting eggs and roosters. I understand, the nasty creatures. It went for her and she had Varica's veins and pecked her leg. And I've had a number of deaths of people with Varka's veins who have just had minor trauma. There was one. There's a cat scratch and people don't realize. And this is the reason that I actually publicized this this stuff.
It's not because it's bizarre and weird. It's to let people know that if you've got Varka's veins and you get a small hole, lie down and put your finger over it and elevate it, right, you will survive. What they tend to do is wander around panicking and they bleed to death, completely unnecessary deaths. Okay, but you never trust a rooster.
Okay, Well, take some advice there. Part of the stuff that you do too. And I found that interesting because people often look at forensic pathologists where you're only looking at death, but part of your attraction to the work that you do is that you can also prevent death. Now you've given us all a warning about watching out for roosters. If you've got Barricker's fanes, we'll take that,
take that on board. What what are some of the things that you've looked at And I know that you had a high level of expertise in Sid's death, and how has that what you've learned helped prevent those deaths down the track.
What's interesting My clinical colleagues call me doctor Death because they don't understand forensic pathology. So I've they don't understand all that much.
Really the area we won't delete that, we'll stand stand by you.
But it's an area called preventive pathology. And so I was taking cases from the mortuary and examining them and seeing what went wrong and what you can do to prevent it. And this is one of the joys I find of pediatric forensic pathology. People say, how can you do it so well? If I can actually find something that caused this death and then let people know about it, Like unsafe cots, unsafe costs. Years ago, they were all over the place and kids were hanging themselves and getting
stuck in them and wedging. So I work with Kids Safe and we lobbied the federal government and now there's a standard. All cots in the secondhand ones have to follow the Australian standard, so you cannot sell an unsafe cut and that's safe lives. Can't remember the last unsafe cut I've seen, so that's really heartening. The SIDS story
is interesting. I've been involved with SIDS groups for decades and we did a collaborative study with Harvard and we showed that the SIDS babies have a deficiency and a chemical in the back of the brain that controls they head and neck movement substance P. So we've always said, why do they you know, why are they dying face down? Why don't they just lift their heads? They don't lift their heads because they can't. So we're looking at genetic markers of that. So maybe we can have a diagnostic
market to show kids at increase risk. So that sort of thing I think makes this job really rewarding.
Yeah, well, you talk about the cots and wasn't the old school thinking about laying children I'm talking young infants laying them on their stomach and that that changed with.
The medicine is an interesting area and if you look at the history of babies sleeping patterns. Babies used to be put to sleep on their backs, and then people said no, no, no, well I'll vomit. No last break, Let's put them face down, and so there was a really strong push to have babies sleeping face down. There was a pediatrician Abrams in New York, so don't do this, I'll suffocate. And there was a study that showed that by putting babies face down, probably sixty thousand babies died.
Don't hear that very often that medicine is responsible for that because it was a health initiative that didn't have evidence and they saw you put them on their back, they're going to vomit and inhale that they don't. So it was just well intentioned but wrong.
I understand now what you're saying about the work of forensic pathologists. It's not all about Okay, the death's happened, there's nothing we can do, move on to the next step. There is things that you can pick up in the science and the medical science that can assist.
And that's why talking to you like I think is important because it gets it. It tells people what forensics is about. So it means that you know when I retire, I'm not going to get you know, leather bound seat of my autopsy reports. You know, I've put another notch on the wall. I've actually done something to have an impact in medicine. It may be because I am qualified
general practitioner. I qualified in general practice in Canada before it started forensics, and so that maybe has given me an idea of what the community deserves.
So you're looking at prevention, a couple of other little side I won't say site hustles, that's not the right words. Careful, careful, Okay. You had an interest in going back and look at the historical cases involving bush Rangers, and I thought that was that was quite interesting. Do you want to talk us through that and what inspired you to have a look.
Well, the two areas that I findancially bush rangers and respute. And I don't know whether you've seen my paper on the death of rescue. You can you can take us through you like that one? Yeah, I know the bush Rangers. I got involved with a Foxtail series, Lawless, and we looked at Ned Kelly, Captain Moonlight, Ben Hall and the Kenniff brothers and basically trying to see what the what
evidence there was for the historical story. If you look at Ben Hall, the popular theory is that basically the police snuck up on him and shot him in his swag. The police version some things don't change. Be careful, it's a bit different. They said they were waiting for him, They called him to stop, he didn't, and then consortable hip Kiss shot him through and through with a point five six went through his gun belt. So we had the gun belt at the Powerhouse Museum. Nobody had ever
looked at it properly. I put it together and it's extraordinary. The bullet hole, it was a bullet hole shelving and the only place you could have shot him to do that would have been standing behind him, to the left where hip Kiss was. Then we did scanning electro microscopy which looks at sort of particles, and we found accelerant and part of the bullet that killed Ben Hall, which got lost in the cutting room floor. Because I thought it was the most fascinating part.
Of the story and your interpretation from that that the police story was absolutely correct, supporting supporting the place. Another one that you looked at, Ned Kelly that's been put up there as this folk here, you've got different in views.
I'm amazed. I mean, you know, we had a stamp issued on the one hundredth anniversary of his death. You know, he was the Sydney Olympics, and yet he was a bloke who very proudly stole cattle and horses from sharecroppers. He wasn't stealing always from squatters, so people whose livelihood depended on it he was taking.
So it wasn't a Robin Hood.
As I say, Robin Hood did not steal from the poor and keep it fro himself. Yes, you only have to look at the Drillery letter where he says he wants the blood of the brains and the police to rain down, where he wants to tie people who oppose him over ant heaps and pour their fat boiling down their throats. If the glen Rowan train crash it occurred, it would have been the biggest killing of police to date, set up to kembush twenty eight police by derailing the train.
I don't think killing serving police officers is a good thing, and I don't think the person who has done it should be treated as a hero. People will say to me meetings and stuff, Well, you know the Americans do it. Billy the Kid didn't see Billy the Kid at the LA Olympics.
Yeah, true, true, it's funny.
And we named so many things after Nick Kelly. He was as sociopath and the thug.
Well part of our history, isn't it? And yeah, what other things about Ned Kelly did you learn looking into the history?
Well, it was interesting when we were filming Lawless up at Stringy Bark Creek. Stringy Bark Have you been a Stringy Bar It's actually quite an eerie place because of the history of it. Yeah, and it's just kind of presence. But what they wanted to do is they wanted to have relatives of people on both sides. So Leo Kennedy, who was the great grandson of Sergeant Kennedy who was executed by Ned Kelly, he actually initiated the whole project by saying how terrible it is to go to his relatives'
graves to find kelly memorabilia. You know, we're more yea giving a memorial to the killers, but not to the serving police officers. But one of Kelly's relatives was there and I was asked what I thought of the killing of Sergeant Kennedy, and I said, well, when you shoot an unarmed maned point blank in the chest with the shotgun, it's an execution. And this fellows. Oh, I don't know
about that. You know, none of us were there. I said, well, Sergeant Kennedy was there, and Kelly came out with a shotgun, so he could have put him on a horse and send him back.
Because the the narrative that's been fed is that he was dying and he put him out of his misery, so it was a noble action. But you're you're suggesting otherwise.
Well, I wouldn't trust things that Ned said.
Yes, you're so judgmental, right, yeah, I am.
I just this is what.
Robert Robert a couple of banks and chewed a couple of people. And what about his arm or what's your take on that from would that that protect him from a forensic pathologist point of view?
Yeah, Well, it's interesting because if he'd actually successfully killed the those police with the train, would have been the biggest killing of police officers to date in Australia. But I thought it was just a somewhat irish approach to armor, that he'd only had the upper part of his body protected, but it was actually well thought out. He that's probably a racist slurtion. Yeah, my great grandmother was Irish.
Okay, you can balance that out then.
But the plan was that the carriage would go over the bank and he would be protected by the embankments so his legs wouldn't have to be covered. And of course it was made out of plowshares. It was very heavy, so if you could reduce as much as weight. Yeah. The other thing too, is you know, such his life. He didn't say that really. Yeah, no, it's just myth.
So with all those people that have such a life, it was you, wasn't it that identified if you've got ned Kelly tattoos? Yes, to talk us through that, that's another obscure fact that came from well so obscure.
But no, I just noticed that a lot of the people coming into the watary with ned Kelly tattoos that died violent death. So I did a retrospective study, and then I did a ten year prospective study, and sure enough, something like eighty percent of them have died of accidents or suicides or homicides or all sorts of strange things. That's in a forensic context that doesn't mean if you're in the community and you've got a Ned Kelly tattoo,
you're marked. But it's just it's a I think a mark for sometimes drug associated lifestyles or risk breaking.
Risk taking. It's interesting. But I remember when I looked at or heard you say that, I thought.
You're a Kelly tattoo taken off.
Now I'm taking off straight away. I had had an informant that was pretty hard to hide, and he's passed away now so I can talk about him. But he had a bald head and the tattoo of ned Kelly on the back of his head, with the helmet and the two guns, he was hard to hide. Needless to say, Oh interesting Respute, Oh yes, please do.
I've always been fascinated by Respute. And the story is that he was invited around to Prince Yusupov's house. He was given enough sign not to kill a horse. They bludgeoned him and then they shot him, and then they threw him into the Neva River, and the autopsy showed that it actually drowned. So I thought this sound was not plausible. So there's one crime scene shot and there's a contact gunshot wound in his head. You don't get that underwater. You don't get that running across the courtyard
yelling out, I'm going to tell Zarina. You get that when you walk into the place and the toxicology was negative for the sin ard as well. You get that walking into the place they want to get rid of in. What do they do. They put a gun to his head and shooting. I mean, you know, they want to get it over with quickly. So just that one photograph on the historical record could show that all of the mythology around resputants death was wrong. It's an interesting applying modern techniques to that.
Well, it is interesting. And look, eye catch skills. Here we are on the podcast and we're solving something unraveling. There was another and I think it was a recent article that you did about again, it's just the bizarre world that you look at that your observations of the world that mummified males dying in their house in South Australia tell us about that.
I was sitting one Sunday night and there was an SBS program on this thing called kotakushi in Japan, elderly folk without family or social contacts being found dead after months or years in their huh, And so I thought that's interesting. I wonder where that happens here. So I did a study looking at elderly twenty years ago elderly now and the percentage of cases that had decomposition and increased markedly. The major group is sixty to sixty nine
year old. This is in Salustralia, sixty to sixty nine year old males. And it makes sense because they're the ones whose relationships have fallen apart, their kids have moved out, their friends have all gone, they're getting into alcohol abuse and they're lonely. So when they die, nobody knows.
You're getting or they've been referred to examinations. People are being called and or coming across an abandoned place and finding these bodies.
Well we see them the news all the time, don't you know. Somebody has found they had been seen for three years and nobody cared. The way around this is to have communities. And where I live in North Adelaide, there's a coffee shop that will go to and about two years ago one of the old fellows used to come every morning didn't turn up, so people went around. He'd had a stroke and he was in his bed. He hadn't had that contact, he'd be yet another statistic.
So we've just got to get back to understanding importance of community very much.
The way life can live these days, you can not have contact and those little things like you're not going down to the local newsagent to buy the paper in the morning. Yeah, that could be a simple thing, but we've lost all that, and we can sit on their phones or on their computers and not have that human contact. But it's interesting that you identified identified that. What's the most bizarre case you've come across.
There was a sharer talking about animal deaths who basically got his throat cut because the electric shears and the sheep kicked the shears. You know, something you wouldn't expect. I remember one fellow had I think thirty cats in his house of cause animals, when you're dead get hungry and they feed on you. So these cats are just stripped this body. Of course, I don't know how he
died because there are no organs left. If you have a suspected homicide by shooting, say dogs have been at the body, you need to get the youngest probationary constable to go around and pick up all the dog scouts in the dog dropping Yeah, to X ray and look for bullets, and you need to look at the dogs to see those bullets inside there. I suppose the worst would have been Jazzmine Core. The most bizarre probably would have been Snowtown.
Okay, with the Snowtown, I know that you've made a comment that that stuck with you for a bit, that you were getting the dreams.
About a week. Yeah, okay, coming back alive.
Yeah, talk us through that, because not many people talk talk about that.
No, it's just it's only happened to me twice once. It was with Snowtown, and I just was having these nightmares that the bodies were all coming back alive. The tsunami. I had nightmares after that, only for a short time. And Jasmine I didn't have nightmares. I just couldn't get her death out of my head. It really weighed heavily on me because it was so horrific.
Another said case that the murder of Samanthro Riley, that she was too thousand and three, schoolgirl, fifteen year old. What was the circumstances surrounding that case? And this sort of demonstrates why the forensic pathologists can bring to an investigation.
Yes, I mean I can talk about this as you know, because I've been through the courts and everybody knows what happened, and the perpetrator has been convicted. Her body was found semi clad beside a road north of Adelaide, Humbug scrub. It was, it was, it's a strange scene. Her underwear had been obviously taken off and put on again. So we don't undress bodies at the scene because you'll lose things.
So it took her into the mortuary and she'd been strangled, and underneath her underpants I found a tuft of green carpet and all these brown flakes. It turned out to be paint flakes. I also took a lot of DNA swaps. I will swab anything because if I get a negative result, who cares. If I get a positive result, great, And I did get a positive result the DNA from the outside of her genitalia, and so the police announced they were going to test all the men in the district.
He perpetrator. He tried to kill himself but failed and turned himself in. If we hadn't had the DNA. The carpet came from the back of his car and the pain flakes came from his backstep. It shows you that we've got modern scientific techniques, but we could have also had something to fall back on, and just shows you just a tiny tuft of carpet is one of the
most important parts of the autopsy. You know, my mother could tell that she had been strangled, but she might understand the significance of the carpet.
Did you feel the pressure when you're doing autopsies on cases like that, in a very sad case of fifteen year old girl, did you feel the pressure that when you're looking at this doing the autopsy, making sure that you're not missing missingthing.
Well, that's why I think the police help. Actually, you know when they're in the autopsy room, because we're working through it together. So and the police have never put pressure on me to be the case through or to come up with a particular conclusion. They've always been incredibly reasonable and I do appreciate that. But it was it was very sad because at the end of the autops he was about three in the morning. The mortue tender said, if you noticed something about her, I said, yeah, she
doesn't have her ears pierced. She was quite a naive little girl, and she used to go up to the bride shop at the shopping center and look at bridle gowns and imagine being married in BALI.
Yeah, that's just in your take on that situation that sort of brings at home. What we're talking about.
Is does and I feel sad twenty years later.
Still it's horrible.
And if you don't feel sad, then I don't think you should be doing the job.
Actually, yeah, look you say that. I agree. I've been surprised when working homicides that some people just seem to have a disconnect. And I'm thinking that you actually understanding what we're doing here, the importance of it and the impact it should have on you, and something I'd think chip's missing if you don't pick up on.
I do too. And one other thing that I just we can do that it's useful as forensic pathologists, you know, if you're in court and the family are there. And I remember going through a horrific assault this young woman and her father was. She was Irish and her father was he'd come out and I went out to him afterwards, and I said, you realize, of course that she had quite a significant head injury. So it's quite likely she
was unconscious right at the beginning and felt nothing. I don't know that, but it's possible, and at least that's something he can hold something to hold on to, rather than listening to all of my description of the horror.
I've found families want to be informed, and there's a time and place when they can be informed if the investigation's ongoing. Sometimes you've got to protect the integrity of it. But I in my dealings, and I'm not saying that it's across the board, but in my dealings, at some point in time, I say I'll sit down and I'll tell you everything that I know, and they appreciate it, because otherwise, as you said, it's just circling around in there. He had one under A lot took place, get.
The wrong end of the stick sometimes and so easy just to correct it. And I've had I've had a woman contact me twenty five years after I autopsy her daughter really just to go over it again. Yeah, it was lovely actual because she sent me a poem this little girl had written with a photograph of her afterwards. So that that's what makes it worthwhile.
It must mean a lot to you, little things like that, we might we might take a break here when we get back. We've got we've got so much, so much to talk about. I want to talk about the tsunami and the process and what your involvement there in disaster, victim identification, also balley bombing, and a couple of other cases that you've lent your expertise to get into the
bottom of it. I also want to talk about your thoughts on life and death, because I find it fascinating someone like yourself that has seen so much death, what your your take on the whole? Are these our purpose here, so we might delve a little bit deep into that, if you don't mind that, h
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