The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective see 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. Welcome back to part two of my chat with forensic psychologists Nathan Brooks. In part one, we talked about Nathan's work, the difference between serial killers and mass murderers, and the emerging trend of loan actors who go on killing sprees.
In part two, Nathan talks about the christ Church massacre, where the actions of one man led to the death of fifty one people. Nathan breaks down how and why this crime occurred and how we can try and prevent these types of killings in the future. It was a fascinating and informative chat. Have a listened to what Nathan has to say, Nathan Brooks or doctor Nathan Brooks, I should say, welcome back to part two of I Catch Killers.
Thanks Gary.
I've got to say I am finding this conversation fascinating and was working as a homicide detective. I found this inside the mind of killers or all the type of things that you're examining absolutely fascinating. I'm sure you're getting this all the time, but is that people are fascinating?
I think unpacking what makes troubling and sometimes very violent people tick is it is it's fascinating because most of us can't understand it. And when we think about psychopaths, for instance, Yeah, they are the ones that think different and make different decisions, and we're often caught up in
our own emotions. But for some folks, like psychopathic folks, that they're cool and calm under pressure, that they're not burdened by the anxiety that we have, and that's hard for everyday people to understand.
Yeah, yeah, I want to talk about the christ Church massacre which is you know, I'm sure most people know it. I'll just read out a summary of it, just so people that haven't been aware of it they are aware of what happened. So two consecutive mass shootings took place in christ Church, New Zealand, on the fifteenth of March
twenty nineteen. They were committed during Friday prayer, first at the Elnora Mosque at Rickiton at one forty pm, and almost immediately after at Limbwood Islamic Center at one point fifty two. Altogether, fifty one people were killed and eighty nine others were injured, including forty by gunfire. The perpetrator was an Australian man, Brenton Tarrant, then age twenty eight. Tarrant was arrested after his vehicles ran by a police car as he was driving to a third mosque, nash Burton.
He live streamed the first shooting on Facebook, making the first successful live stream far right terror attack, and had published a manifesto online before the attack that just sort of sets the saying. I think anyone that recalls that incident knows how horrifying it was. You've looked at it in depth, what's your take on what caused the lead up to it and why did it get that dramatic And we touched on small parts of it in part one. If we could just deep dive into it now.
Yeah, So before we get into it, my caveat that I'm obviously with the New Zealand Police and this is certainly my view on the situation. It's not at all reflective of theirs. But it is a really complex case. I think when anyone carries out such a horrific mass act of violence, there are many many layers and what we saw in that incident and that tragic attack was that several years of build up went into it. It
wasn't something that just happened overnight. We know that Tarrent moved to New Zealand with the intention of carrying out a mass casualty attack, and that was his reason for moving over there. I believe he cited the fact that it was partly the ability to access the firearms that was one of the primary factors, and shortly after getting there he commenced training with firearms and acquiring tactical capabilities.
But to understand him, we probably need to trace things back to his childhood and he had in many ways, probably something that hasn't garnered a lot of attention. Quite a traumatic childhood we focused a lot, particularly, I think the media courage has been a lot around his ideology. But there are a lot of puzzle pieces that were there early on for him in his early years.
What type of things were they.
So one of the things that we look at for childhood is whether people experience trauma and the influence that that can have on them as they develop and grow into adults. And adverse childhood experiences is often a marker that we use to look at how bad that trauma is or how much adversity your child has had in their upbringing, And a lot of research would say around four or five adverse experiences can have quite significant impact on someone as they age and really shape who they become.
And we know Arran had a troubled upbringing. So his parents separated, which I'll just run through some of it. So some of the adverse experiences are parental separation, parental mental health, criminality, unstable housing, financial issues, drug use. So
the tip things that we that we might expect. Yeah, and so so Terence's parents obviously split up, so we had the separation his mother then started dating a new individual I believe it was an aboriginal fellow, and he was reportedly violent towards Tarrant and his sister, and that abuse continued over several years. Then we also had his father who suffered from mental health difficulties and then also developed cancer I believe for Mary and ultimately then committed
suicide as well. So there were some quite notable things there. Drama, yeah, and he also Terrant himself was struggled to fit in socially, as we which touched on before. He was often bullied. He was considered to be quite overweight as well, and then in his late teens he had a big transformation and became quite fixated and about the gym and lost quite a lot of weight.
I think it was in your book it was something like forty or fifty years huge, Yeah.
Quite remarkable. And also during that adolescence we see that some early racist remarks were coming out in his school years, which suggests there's certainly, you know, some difficulties with how we're seeing the world and people and maybe even seeing that there's certain people that are to blame or that are causing hardships for him, and that might have been reflective of what things were like on the home front, with you know, with the physical abuse that was happening
at home, and from there as he aged. I think he has spent a period being a personal trainer after high school, and then he inherited a large sum of money once his father passed away, and that basically funded him to go and travel overseas for quite a few years. And unfortunately, rather than taking inspiration from the the cultures and the different people, he became very cynical, and if we look at the various accounts and things that have been covered on the topic, his views were shaped in
a very negative manner. It did coincide with while he was in Europe with some Islamic based attacks occurring, so in Islamic most terrorist attacks at the time, and that all sort of seemed to come together along with his strong reliance on online groups in four chan and eight chan and some of these other forums where he was really fueling his beliefs about the world and having those reciprocad back to him, and the classic sort of echo
chamber effects started to happen from there, where the ideology really became perpetuated and continued to get reinforced.
Out the time. I suppose what he's exposing himself too is only going to people people that share the same ideology, and that becomes that cycle. Yes, it reinforces his belief Yeah.
And I think the further down that rabbit hole that you go, the more you find things that support those views. And you know, we get that the classic distortion aspect happen where you look for things that are what you want, you look for things that reinforce your beliefs, and then
you ignore anything that's contradictory. And that's what we find with a lot of ideological aspects is people cherry pick what they focus on and they ignore the things that are contradictory to that, and that of course can very easily then start to lead to quite extreme beliefs when you're only looking at a small fragment of an issue.
So the build up would you describe as a perfect storm in terms of what the build up before he carried out this horrible act.
Well, there certainly, I think the cycle, logical makeup, the psychological foundation was a big factor. So he had a lot of vulnerabilities. There clearly a lot of unresolved anger that was never addressed, and then we had the Internet peace on top of that, where he's engaging in various ideological, extreme right wing views that are being perpetuated and fueled.
He's then quite financially well off as well, which gave him access and capability factors, and then develops the plan or the intent to carry out some sort of violence to avenge or seek justice for the injustice which he's
perceiving in the world. And then starts to begin planning and moves to New Zealand with the intention of carrying out a mass casualty attack, And a bit like with Anders Bravic in Norway, we see the culmination of factors come together, along with the secrecy and the willingness to dedicate a couple of years of your life to carrying
out such a horrific active violence. I mean that itself is nearly unheard of and so remarkable that someone could be so dedicated over that obsession to give their life to that.
Yeah, there were a number of inquiries that flowed on from the event. Did anything jump out in the part where it could have been I won't say prevented, because as I keep saying that it's easy in hindsight, But is there any indicators or ways that it could have been diffused? Do you think how could you approach it if you look back with the benefit of hindsight. Okay, when he got to this point, there should have been some intervention.
Yeah, that's again in hindsight. So there was a Royal commission in New Zealand into Royal Commission of Inquiry into the attack and it's a nearly nine hundred page document which reviewed it. Now, some of the interesting findings were more around systems and processes rather than terror himself, so it looked at, you know things. So he had a gunshot wound in the months prior to the attack, and at the time there were no mandatory reporting practices for
gunshot wounds. So that has since changed so that if someone presents to hospital with a gunshot wound, that is then passed on to police and then followed up. Firearm register was something that wasn't strong and that's been completely revamped to make access to firearms much more difficult and mental health checks and interviews and those sorts of processes.
So again another positive step that has been put in place. Yeah, and of course the access to guns has been reduced as well, So some of those capability and incident reporting systems have been improved, been a lot more funding as well. That's gone into violent extremism, and I think as well that improved police practic and that's not being critical at all of the police practices, but unfortunately when we have incidents, of course that reviews, that leads.
To change and the improvements. Of course, when when it gets that way not well, I suppose it's the magnitude of the crime that he created there required that review lesser type of crimes. But one you and I spoke off camera about it, and you are, you're over here and you're going to deliver a lecture on it. Stalking. Stalking to me is a major concern. What message have you got or what have you learned about stalking people
that are prepared to stalk? And over here in Australia and not just New South Wales, across the across the country, we've got a lot of domestic violence where unfortunately it's male partners invariably murdering female partners. And you look at it and I can virtually guarantee they'll be stalking involved and not accepting the relationship being over and different things like that. What's your your assessment of stalking?
Oh, look, it's so it's so troubling. And one of the challenges we're stalking is that it exists on such a spectrum from small unwanted acts, repeated contact that's unwanted, all the way through to very predatory and concerning behaviors, you know, such as breaking into a house and going through a person's underwear drawer and moving things around. So it is a type of offending that is so broad, but we need to think about it, I think from a from a couple of different lenses, and one is
how persistent is it? And then also how likely is it to become severe and escalating nature. So stalking can be very broad in motivation. So sometimes it's targeted because of you resentment towards an ex partner. Sometimes it's revenge towards a workplace. Other times it might be because the person's mentally unwell and they are constantly making unwanted contact because of quite a distortion about the person of the targeting.
And then other times it's very predatory and that can often end up being quite significant violence or even sexual offending towards a person so it's multifaceted and it exists on a spectrum.
Have you in your work with New Zealand Plece some have been involved in stalking cases and how they play that You don't have to identify the specific case, but stalking cases are the vscalated. Yeah.
Look as both a consultant forensic psychologist and also working in the police and a lot of the times it's looking at it from a threat lens and how concerned do we need to be about the case. And sometimes it's about understanding the motivation and the functionality of the stalking So what is it that the person's trying to achieve here and why is it that they are failing to understand that that behavior is unwanted and not reciprocated.
Often there's an educational component and then sometimes it's looking at as well, is this going to persist or is this going to escalate with the stalking case. Intimate partner violence is another one that we sometimes become very concerned about.
Often stalking will exist amongst a range of other forms of intimate partner violence, particularly coercive control, and we know that across cases of fatal intimate partner violence that around about seventy five percent of those cases have stalking in them.
And often when a partner is killed or an ext partner is killed, it's where there's been a high level of coercive control and the victim has tried to regain a level of independence and autonomy and that has been the final tipping point for the offender and they have killed that person as that sort of final active trying to have dominance and control over their lives, which is really quite horrific.
Well, the scary part is a dangerous period is in those domestic violent situations when the partner is trying to leave, that's when they're at the greatest, greatest risk.
Absolutely. Yeah, ed is concerning and again education is quite important, but the flip side of that is it's hard to have that conversation with people as well, and should people really have to be that well educated and informed? You know, everyone has a right to safety in many ways, and unfortunately we still have huge concerns with people willing to take matters into their own hands and become violent.
Do you think and I'm talking New South Wales or Australia may be relevant to New Zealand whether the courts fully appreciate the nature of it. If someone even the public's perception that's almost a joke, like I've got a stalker and we saw the laugh. Yeah, but I've had so many people contact me when I was in the police as police, but people contact me post police, reaching out and they've got a stalker and no one seems
to take it seriously and they're terrified. Do you think the courts take it and the police take it seriously enough for stalking.
It's hard to give a blanket answer to that. But with what you're saying, there are of course many cases where people just go it's unwanted contact, they'll stop, or they just dismiss it. And that's where stalking becomes a problem, because when we dismiss it, it keeps going, and we need to make sure that we're putting the right level of response to a situation. And the temptation is unfortunately to water down the seriousness of it, and that of course allows it to keep going, and then before you
know it, it's three months, then it's six months. We've hit a year, and that's a really reinforced and ingrained pattern and the person may or the offender may have had quite a bit of feedback that this is a successful way to keep that person in their life. By that stage, well.
I think, and this is when I'm giving people advice. If they've got a stalk with if they make contact that does end up in court, their concern is that brings this person back into my life. And so the stalkers achieved what they want to achieve. So it's a hard thing to police, but it's something that I've always thought. They were red flags to me when I saw it
in any capacity of an investigation. If someone was stalking someone, the being told we don't want to speak to you, stay away from us, and they ignore that, that is a warning sign of I on the right track there, Like it's.
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. You look at things like approach behavior. You know, how much are they prepared to or toward extent are they prepared to approach the victim, to be intrusive towards the victim? Are they engaging inst surveillance like behaviors, are they entering the person's residence, And also factors such as mental illness can play a role, personality disorders, and we look at as well, you know, are they deterred
by things such as court orders. If it keeps going after court orders again, that's very troubling.
Well, I've had people that the victims of the stalking that have come back to me when the courts haven't gone hard on the stalker, the stalker comes back to them just laughing, going, look the courts don't even care and empowers them on coercive control. Relatively recently had that start to come into a play, legislation that come into play. I haven't seen it actually play out in court, so I think a big part of it is going to be how the police uses as a tool. I think
it's a powerful tool. Is coercive control legislative over in New Zealand? Is that something that's come into play over there?
No, it's not legislated over there yet. And remarkably, we don't actually have a stalking law or a stalking chargers yet. So there's been talk that shouldn't say talk, it's probably a loose word for that, but there's been political movement that legislation is going to be proposed quite soon and then we will have a stalking law, but no coercive control. Over in Australia, here is a reasonably new charge in a couple of states, so it'd be really interesting to
monitor how that goes. But the research on intimate partner violence has certainly been the big reason that we're seeing that law come in because it's been so prevalent but also relevant to fatal cases.
Yeah, yeah, there's been to many of them in this country, that's for sure. The interview room, Yes, you're working for New Zealand Police. Is that part of the role that you do help investigators prepare for an interview, to sit down in the interview room.
Yeah. We've been doing quite a bit of work in that space of late over the last two years or so, and it is one of the main things that we're doing currently around how do we under stand the person in front of us and how do we tailor our response to ensure that we're meeting them at their level.
Yeah, yeah, I look, I find the interview room fascinating. That was that was my happy place in policing. I found it very stimulating to be in the interview room. A lot of pressure, a lot of build up and all that, but the way that you approach and the investigation. I'll throw a couple of things out just for a point of discussion I learned from people that I looked up to as interviewers, and I've sort of tried to adopt the aspects of the way they approached the interview.
But I also learned that you've got to be You've got to be legitimate, like you've got to be yourself in the interview room. I've seen people try to I've tried to mimic people the way they interview someone doesn't work. I've got to be myself. I've had other people try to mimic me the way I interview. It doesn't work. So I think there's something that you've got to build, that rapport with someone in the interview room. Would you agree agree with that?
Yes, spot on. I member poor has become arguably the most crucial ingredient in an interview now, and we have come a long way. It's hard to talk about what current police practices are, but I dare say that across Australia and New Zealand there's an improved understanding that rapport really is a cornerstone of the interview. So it's very hard to have a serious major crime interview without rapport.
We can't just get the person in now and go straight into the offending straight into the issues that there's got to be a build up to that because we can't we can't expect someone to want to talk to us if we're not establishing rapport with them.
Yeah, I agree with that, and I people have said characteristics of a good detective empathy empathy in the interview room that you're sitting down and trying to understand where this person's coming from. It might discuss me where they're coming from. I might agree with it, but I won't show that on my face. That will be very much a poker face in what they're telling me, So there's not judgment there to go with people. Again, I'll just throw in some of my thoughts on the interview room
because I'm interested in getting getting your thoughts. Some people are going to the interview room and I would be very professional. I'd deliberately present professionally because I thought that was the best way to communicate. Otherwise I'd get in there and be very relaxed when we talk about rapport. That's the type of thing I'm assessing the person in
the way that I want to approach. Sarah Ure, the forensic psychologists I work with a talk about the carrot or the stick, whether you're dangling something to them that they want or they're feeling. And we can't threaten people in an interview room obviously stick figuratively, we don't go in there with a stick. What's your thoughts on different approaches for different offenders, Like, there's not a one model fits all, is there?
No? No, there's not, But I think there's some rules of thumb that do hold up really well with with rapport. So firstly, we need to foster commonality. So first principle is if you're going in to interview someone, what is it about you that's going to allow you to relate to that person? What have you got in common? So everyone should be able to find those things. Secondly, wein look at our ability to compliment the person. And I think when we say compliments, people think, oh, you know,
what are you on about? You're just basically trying to praise them unnecessarily. But there's always things when we step back and look at someone's life that we can acknowledge and validate, and that is quite crucial that we still do that we recognize them as individuals and as small as that achievement may be, it may be significant for them, So where is this scope to compliment and validate that person? And then the other one is humor, and that probably
sounds like it doesn't belong in an interview room. But how can we find moments of lightheartednessnst a really heavy and serious conversation.
Yeah, okay, I get where you're coming from. And that's very much creating that relaxed environment where the conversation will be for flowing. I think the way I approach interviews, some people are very specific, word orientated. Listening to your answer, what you exactly you said? I know, I've got that's what comes down because the transcripts only reflects what you said.
But if I'm interviewing you in an interview room, in a tense interview, and this is one where it's not a lay down, as you haven't got all the evidence, A lot's going to depend on what the person of interest that you're interviewing talks about. It's about creating that, creating that environment where they feel comfortable to talk. But I'm watching their body language like I might throw something out a little bit left field, a little bit strange.
See how you react, Which way do you lean to within interviewing or is this coming down to I said at the start that it's individual styles.
Look, I think of these individual styles and some people naturally have a really good style and some can learn it. There's the intrusiveness peace to an interview as well. So when do you become intrusive about the content of that conversation. And when I say intrusiveness, what I'm really talking about
is topics that are uncomfortable and maybe more confronting. So you would want to start low and soft and easier conversation piece topics in the early stages of the interview, and as the rapport develops, then you can become more intrusive because there's a level of trust and respect understanding developed between the interviewer and the interview we so you can't go in too hot or too intrusive too early, because you put yourself on the back foot and you
risk upsetting the person. So I think with the peace model, which is widely used, you know, really in some ways it's a bit like a five set tennis match where we're looking at the cumulative momentum over several hours and it's going back and forth, and if you do enough, thing's the right way, it tips in your favor.
And a lot of the public's perception is that we've got the right to interview people too, as in you're obliged to answer questions. That's very much not the case,
so they're well within their rights. I've also found, and talk to me about the characteristics of the people that would buy into this, that I've sat down with people that have an arrogance about them and that's the very thing I'm going to exploit that, Like, they're dumb to sit down and have an interview with me, but they're so arrogant they think they're going to it doesn't have to be me outsmart the police. I'm smarter than you, and that's why they can't resist themselves sitting down having
an interview. Do you see that type of personality.
Yeah, there's the tendency of people that believe that they can control the situation and that they can talk their way out of it, although they are the smartest person in the room and that can sometimes bring them undone. You A case over in New Zealand which has been quite public and there's been a Netflix documentary on it is Jesse Kimson and the Grace Malayan case and.
Your assessment on that.
Yeah, there's been a lot published and segments of the interview that have been publicly put out there of Kimsen during his interview, and we certainly saw that he started off very calm and believed that he could talk his way out of it during the first interview that ended up bringing him undone during the second interview, where a lot of those stories were then able to be corroborated and that worked against him in the end. Yeah.
Yeah, but it is interesting what may devates people to sit down and participate in the interview. What about crime scenes? Your interpretation of crime scenes? And I think a discussion initially when you came in here before on camera talking about psychopaths how they can commit a horrendous crime and not be rattled by it than leave. I would see crime scenes where I would call it like a panic
crime scene. I don't think the person planned this, that shocked them, that they've killed a person, and the crime scene represents that. What's you're taken? What can you learn from going to a crime scene?
Crime scenes are so valuable from anyone in the operational spaces. You nearly need to see the crime scene or at least have incredibly good photos of it to be able to form any conclusions around it. But look, you look for contradictions ultimately in the crime scene, don't you. And sometimes chaotic crime scenes are stage crime scenes as well, and then the absence of things that crime scenes can
also be very telling. So it's sometimes it's what's not there that's important, and then the disarray as well can also be quite telling. So I know that you know, FBI would say that you study the work of the artists, which is their crime scene, to try and understand them. But I think the crime scene gives us very good insights into one how the crime has occurred, and then why things may or may not be there that should
be there or have been removed from a scene. So it really looks at, you know, three stages before the crime, during the crime, and then after the crime, and that can give us valuable information across those three and then together you form whether it's a profile or a working theory around the offender and how.
They breakdown in an example or give examples for those three breakdowns all.
So we go back to the Jesse Kimson case. So it's been quite well publicized that he met Grace mulane and then they went out for dinner, and then they went back to his hotel room. Something transpired there which resulted in Grace's death. It certainly seems like it was probably unlikely that there was any intention to kill her. But then when we look at post crime, we see that he was very methodical after the offense, and there was a lot of clean up. There was a lot
of stages, it's been well documented around him. He moved her body, went and buried the body, cleaned the scene, and there was quite a calmness in the chaos at the time. And that's rather unusual. You know, we think about someone trying to recover from a horrific event. There's a lot of anxiety and panic and concern. It's unusual to be quite methodical and calm.
Very much so, and that was something I always look to exploit that mistakes made after that the murders occurred or the crime has occurred. Little things like if a murder weapon has been introduced to the crime soon, if someone's bought, if it's a murder's happened in the house and it's the kitchen knife from the kitchen bench that's
been used as a murder weapon. That tells me it wasn't intent at the time they're going there, something escalated, something has happened at the time, so not the planning. These are the type of things you look for as a forensic psychologist.
Yeah, definitely, you know, how prepared and planned was someone prior to the crime And going back to is there evidence of cleanup and have items been taken away from the scene, whether it's weapons or belongings of the victim. Has the body been moved? If the body is there, you know, is there a quite a bit of forensic evidence it still remains. You know, often we think loosely as a rule of thumb, you know, the less evidence that's at the scene and the more that has been removed.
We're talking about a plan and prepared offender. Go back to the classic FBI organized disorganized profile, which looked at that the organized fellows tend to come to the scene prepared and take things away and leave limited forensic evidence. That disorganized Often there's a lot of forensic evidence. Things are in disarray. There can be a scrambled a tempt to cover the crime up and make it look like something else.
Well, I take a lot away from the way the bodies are disposed of to and you can almost see the panic in the way some bodies are disposed of, or you can see the planning and the time. So that's all very telling, isn't it.
Yes, so some of them are quite superficially disposed of essentially it's the first opportunity, or they're buried very.
Basically get this body.
Away from me here, and then others are you know, take much longer and much more time.
Without going into methodology, is this the type of thing you sit down with police New Zealand Police like, they'll come to you, there's been a crime, the body has been found, they contact you and this is how you work work with the police.
Yes, yeah, absolutely so. It could be in avariety of stages. It could be the homicides just happened and we're trying to understand the crime scene and the behavior that's happened and insights into the offender. It could be that we're four weeks on and things have hit a wall and leads have run dry, and will review the crime and look at trying to generate new lines of inquiry.
Right, we spoke in part one about serial killers or the demise of serial killers, which is a pretty good way of saying that that's good that they're reducing that serial sex offenders, but yeah, I've worked serial sex crimes. Have they reduced serial killing? So the same things that are reducing serial murderers reducing serial sex offenders or is it still Yeah?
The big one would be our intrue to rapists and it is rare for us to get a series of those these days. I think that's true across Australia and New Zealand. We still get lots of touch based offenses towards strangers, bus stops, those sorts of public public areas, but you know, the rapist that's targeting strangers or going in to homes is it's much less common. That doesn't mean that they don't happen those offenses, but it's rare
that they are a series. Now they are often caught much quicker, and again that's because of all the improvements in technology that we.
Have and just a sharing of information too. I think that's a big part because before we would often be looking for an offender that's got a certain type of characteristic about characteristics about the way he commits a crime. Someone else in the neighboring lac might be doing the same thing. In the old days, it wasn't a case that would be sharing the information, But we've to waken up to that.
Now and see New Zealand runs by Class which catalogs all the stranger sex offenses across the country. So our behavioral science unit is keeping a data lot of over a decade and more of all the stranger six crimes. So if we do have something that comes up, we're able to draw on more than eight to nine thousand cases and look at what we know about something of a similar nature with a similar type of offending pattern.
And of course if we do get something, we could also look back at whether it is linked to any other crimes as well.
Okay, again, excuse me from jumping from point to point, but I'm finding the whole chat very interesting. Mental health what part does that play? And I've got some stats here that I pulled out of your book, so I'm hoping they're correct that seventeen and fifty percent of loane actors are suffering from a mental illness at the time of offending. Two thirds of perpetrators experiencing mental health concerns
in the period leading up to their attack. So look, regardless of the specifics of the stats, it's saying that mental health is a big thing in loan actors. What type of mental health issues are we looking at them?
Yeah, I mean it's the catch twenty two, isn't it? In many ways of mental health, because again it's on a spectrum, and it can be all the way from psychotic based presentations where someone has completely lost touch with reality and they are unaware and they don't have sound mind with what they're doing. And it seems as though that is a good example of the bond dijunction with attack with Joel Kuchi, that he was schizophrenic for a long period of time and psychotic at the time.
How much did you know about that particular case.
Well, I think it's still emerging. I know there was the recent inquiry and the results haven't been published, but the psychotic aspect and his long term schizophrenic diagnosis seems to be quite central.
And I think it's already been mentioned in the public and would have been mentioned that the inquest. But the parents had concerns about him with his fascination with knives and different things.
Yeah, and that's where where mental health is tricky because there are so many people with mental health difficulties or mental illness or psychosis or schizophrenia that aren't ever violent, So that is quite important to put into context. But you have to add layers to the mental health that then add to the potential then to be violent. So yeah, the various issues with grievances in life, very very very much violent interests or things like that can then be
exacerbators for the mental illness. But then we can also have things like depression that can be a catalyst for then developing a grievance and affixation, and that can then perpetuate and grow from there. So I think mental health can be a causal factor or an indirect factor as well, and sometimes as well. We also say that there's subclinical things that are not really at the diagnostic threshold which
drive behavior. It might be that someone the struggles with shame and envy of others, and it's very likely to get quite jealous, and they've got a personality that makes them prone to collecting grievances or feeling like they've been wronged, and that then walks them down that path to violence.
That's sitting here talking to you, I'm getting an appreciation of how complicated it is. If you see Sarah you're at the conference, apologize to her. I expected too much from her. There are so many layers and variables, isn't it. So I can see why you try to structure things as best you can. It's not foolproof, but yeah, here's some indicators. This might be the way we prevent this.
Yeah, I think we need to be careful that as psychologists, we're not always trying to come up with an explanation. So it's over complicated, but loosely, I always go how dyed up? Or are the dials for the persons or how intense are things? Then we can also think about how frequent is the symptoms or the traits, and then what's the severity of it as well, So we need to look at it through frameworks that make it understandable.
And a framework makes it as understandable as best you can hope for. Leading into the use of AI, do you see that as something that's going to be very much in the forefront of criminal investigation.
It's hard. I mean, in terms of the mass casualty space we've already seen over in the US that people have had AI right plans around how to carry out a mass casualty attack.
For I was thinking from the good guys, you're looking from the bad guys.
Offender capability enhancement aspect, and we know that that's happening already. What it means for police investigations, it's really hard to say. It'll make some of them more boring tasks of writing up things easier, but you know, facial recognition and those sorts of things I think will transform as well, So it's hard to anticipate where it will go.
I'm thinking like by class you talk about like if you had an AI component of assessing all the information, that might make it even more readily about I think.
The ability to analyze mass amounts of data or information will greatly improve, but it will still require the human analysts to develop the right meaning and interpretation of that.
I'm looking at getting back to and prevention is the key of hopefully what you're achieving. And I've got a couple of headings here, but fixated thread assessments, fixated persons, unit, need for information sharing. So three main points. So if we're talking about preventing these type of loan actor attacks. Breaking down those three headings like fixated threat assessments, how do they play a part? And I know we've touched on it, but just breaking it down again.
So, fixated threat assessments really are police and mental health specialists working together to make decisions about a person of concern, and that starts by information coming in about a person and then doing a screening judgment to look at, Okay, do we need to be concerned about this based on the information? Do we need to dig more? We might find that once we dig that it is concerning, then you would go through the process of doing a more
rigorous assessment. Then you might look to engage with the person to understand things further, and then if you're still concern then it would be going, okay, let's put some wrap around support towards the person, and then you'd monitor, you'd review, and if it's still not improving, that might be then when there's more targeted responses that could emerge.
It's a multi agency, isn't it. It's very much. It's not just the police, it's mental health, the health system, all sorts of things.
Yeah, and in this space we've realized that it is multi agency that we need to be very careful of silos of information being held and locked down and not being shared. Man around Monus was probably a good example of that. That information needs to flow to the right people, and then those reviews and those assessments then need to go back to other people in return, so we can't
be locking down on things. We need to be very mindful of gaps in practice where we don't have knowledge disconnects between agencies as well, And I'd probably also say that a couple of other things around bunkers. So not just doing an assessment on someone and going, oh, you know, look that low concern. We'll just put the paperwork in the file and we're done with that, and two weeks
later there's an incident. So we can't necessarily be reassured by the fact that we've done an assessment and go okay, we can wash our hands of that. And then the last one really is myopia, where we simply lose focus because we're looking at this too much, or we're not getting an outside perspective, so too much group think, well, whatever it might be, where it causes us just to
not to see that this has changed. And probably I think in the lone actor space that the myopia aspect is where we may come undone again in the future because we're seeing more and more young people now presenting with risk factors and concerning behaviors that if someone had said that to you a decade ago, you would have been horrified and you would have hit the panic button. Now that our tolerance.
For that we've become desensitizes.
So you know, people with very violent ideations and purchasing of weapons and engagement in quite extreme goal and extremist material that are very young. It's become commonplace is not the right word, but in the work that we do, it's a little bit more commonplace now that that is
the type of person of concerned that you're seeing. And the worry then is that we go, Okay, well, we're so used to that now and we've seen so many of them that don't do anything, but we need to be very rigorous and understand that that could change and that could escalate.
I could see people dropping their guard down because we've seen this and there's one hundred people that are like that, Why are we worried about this person? But that could be the one person.
Yes, And I think in Australia as well. You know, we had a good probably wake up call last last year in twenty twenty four. So obviously we had the Bondi Junction attack, which was sort of separate in some ways, but then there was the good chaper Church. A couple of weeks later, there was a young sixteen year old over in Western Australia that stabbed someone at Bunnings and then was killed by police. And then about six or seven weeks later it was either was it Paramatter or Newcastle,
I can't remember. Young person with a go pro tactical vest walked in with a couple of knives into politician's office and fortunately they didn't go through with the attack. But you know, within that space of two months, that potentially could have been four very serious mass casualty attacks.
Young males involved in it too. What there's a reason so many young males seem to be the ones that do these things that can be influenced.
Yes, it's it is very concerning, and I think there's been a lot spoken about men and masculinity and where men at at the at the moment, a lot of them are searching for identity and their their place in society and for me, when they are struggling and can't find a way to connect, or can't have an intimate relationship, or are unsure how to cope with their mental health, they're not they don't know how to communicate, can take
a troubling turn. And there's a lot of work I think for men to do and to find pro social outlets to express their challenges in the right way, because it's easy to turn to blame and frustration and also believe that you know others are others are responsible for what's happening to you, for your shortcomings and difficulties. So I think there's so much that we need to be doing with men to help them improve how they handle stresses and problems in their life.
Well, I think it's in the nature of men that they internalize too and not creating an environment where they can express their feelings. And yeah, I think most men understand this. If you're going through an issue and your mate says how you go, and you say good, and that's oh, that's good, mate, I was worried about you. And then you move on from the conversation where if it's and this is probably been too harsh a comparison, and then with females it might be they talk. I
can put my hand up. I know my partners know more about my friendships and life than I do. Like your best mates just had a baby? Did he? Who've told you that? Oh, Susan told me that or something like that. So we need to communicate a little bit better, don't we.
Males? Unfortunately, they disproportionately make up the statistics for suicide, yeah, and disproportionately make up the statistics for violent offenses. Yeah.
It's not good with the work that you're doing with New Zealand Police. Can you see down the track where more attention will be given to the type of work that you do, because quite frankly, listening to you talk about your risk assessments and different things, there is so much.
Work to do.
Are we probably? I think policing. Then you don't have to comment because you're still employed by police. But I thought we fell behind the forensic science field in that with DNA and all that, we didn't have the capability of properly examining a crime scene. We didn't properly resource it with INTEL. Probably not properly resourced in your field, forensic psychology do you think police are starting to understand the benefits as a whole.
Well, look, I've got very complimentary things to say about New Zealand place.
So you're clever that your employees.
Yeah, of course they're my employer. But look, I think New Zealand's running a really good model which is very positive for bringing expertise in. So they have a fixated Threat Assessment Center over there as well, which but that's purely for politicians, so politicians that are subject to threats and being targeted. But we have our Behavioral Science Unit which is very much bring specialists in for operational support.
So the model over there is really strong and there's a recognition that for major crimes, the input or experts or specialists is really one of the tools that we need to solve in these. In Australia, unfortunately it has fawned by the way. So we had that, but many of the units have closed down.
Fixated Persons unit that in my experience notoriously under resource, but it was something a need that we just didn't have it. We had intel officers attached to major crime squads and that, but we really needed someone with the expertise for specifically fixated persons and being able to assess them properly.
Yeah. Yeah, and I think it will come back again because sometimes, as in policing, its money and resources that dictate where things go. And look Victoria, New South Wales, I think Western Australia, they all had specialist operational psychology arms to them. It's only Queensland Police now that still have it that I'm aware of.
How do we go backwards in a progressive field?
It is, yeah, because I look over in the UK they have behavioral investigative advisors over there, so they've got specialists that are recognized and they've done some great work. Over in the Canada, Royal Canadian amount of Police they've got a specialist behavioral unit as well. It's a mixture
of psychologists and psychiatrists providing operational support. FBI have four dedicated units towards bringing specialty expertise in and then you look across all the different US states they've got specialized threat teams and things. So look, it is the model for dealing with challenging and difficult cases in policing.
And UK and Canada. I've worked in both those eras in policing. Inquiries from New South Wales and they're set up very similar to what we've got here in Australia. New Zealand's are same and they're all moving forward with it and we're moving backwards. Yeah.
One of the things that's interesting with New Zealand is it is a small place, but there's one police service for the country, so it's just one national unit. And obviously Australia has some of the challenges on a smaller scale to the US with the states at the federal level, and when it's one unit or one force for the country, then you can be a little bit more focused with what you're doing.
And we're not too bad in this country compared to America. We had someone I forget who it was, that his first assignment as a police officer, there was twelve people in the police forces is in America and he had to buy his own gun. But that was I remember who it was. It was Steve Murphy from the Netflix Nacos series that took down Pablo Escobart and that was his first star first police force. One of the other points and we talked on fixated Persons Unit, the fixated
threat assessments, need for information sharing. We talked about within organizations, government organizations, law enforcement agencies. But what about the public. What part can the public play in the role of making sure we identify these loan actors?
Yeah, it's some ways. It's the bystander challenges that we have with crime, that people are aware of something happening, but for whatever reason, it might be their own self doubt, it might be that they minimize it, but they don't always report really valuable information. And ultimately preventing loan actor attacks or mass casualty events is it's about information flowing from members of the community through to police or that police are then able to look over it, assess it,
and make sense of that information. And a lot of policing is about information gathering and the public are a crucial part of that. So whether it is anything from unusual activities such as suddenly being into in firearms or trying to collect knives, and also at the same time, they might be saying that they're very angry with someone or they've got a particular problem with this person or an organization, all the way through to knowing maybe that
your child is viewing some problematic and unhealthy content. So may not be always going to the police, But of course it's important that that information is shared with someone it might be a school counselor, but sharing the information so that it's not siloed and not pocketed and allowing some other eyeballs to get across that to make more informed judgments about that, and then if it needs to be escalated and passed on, then hopefully it does get to the police.
Well, we do need to share that because quite often when you hear of an incident and men, yeah, the media have done their a bit and everyone's talking about, oh, that person was always strange, it was strange ever since that he went to kindergarten. All these people come out and identify with that. That's the type of information that we're going who has got to get across absolutely because
it's sharing that information. We touched on the media and the copycat type situation and also about the media giving too high a profile to the people that carry out these crimes. I've thought for a long time, and it's
hard because there's an inquiry in mind. People want to find out and there's a benefit by putting the name out because if it's someone man Mimus, other people might come forward and say, well he did this and did that, so you find out more information about it, but you don't want them to be put up there on a pedestal. What way do you think the media should treat someone like what happened in christ Church.
I think uniform policies would be ideal.
So they're not competing against each other.
Especially across the trans Tasmin. I think we could get uniform policies that would be achievable. Where we need to make a decision around what we will and won't publish. Now, New Zealand made a really interesting decision to not publish Terrence's name was he is and will be forever known as the terrorist, so he wasn't named in New Zealand.
Obviously it's very different within Australia. But that certainly I think took the sting out of it and the power of his actions and that he didn't receive the notoriety and it was very much victim lens focus and that is important the narratives and the survival stories of victims is it's probably what we want to come out of
these attacks rather than it being about the perpetrator. Now that's chicky because talking about the perpetrator does as you say, serve some purposes where there's an understanding that we do need and it generates more information. But we don't want to sensationalize that. And that's a tricky point. But I think if we make it heavily victim focused, with basic details about the person rather than writing at length about their motivations or their ideology, then that's a nice balance.
Point we might finish up here. I reckon we could talk all day. I just you're a wealth of knowledge and you've taken me back into a world that make me appreciate how complicated it is what you're doing. You're over here in Australia. Are you talking at some conferences?
Yes, I'm at the New South Wales Correction Conference which is on and also we're also running a stalking symposium with a host of guests in Melbourne as well.
Right, you work with corrective services. I haven't really touched on that. But what can you learn from people in prison?
Oh? An enormous amount. I mean, we have individuals that are there for lengthy stints in custody and there's always the temptation to go, let's just lock them up, forget about them and not go and talk to them. And by talking to them and in engaging with them, first of all, we gain a rich amount of insight from their stories and their motivations and their reasons and their pathways to carrying out their active violence. We think can then improve our responses by learning about that. Now, the
other side, of course, is rehabilitating them as well. Do we want to put the time and resources into them? And I think it's somewhat negligent if we don't go through the process of at least trying, and certainly in the lone active space, we've seen where some things have gone wrong for various reasons, that people have been held on remand for long periods and they haven't had treatment, and then they've come out and they've committed a mass attack.
So that's a whole different landscape. But probably my key takeaway is that we shouldn't just lock people up and forget that they're there. There's a lot of value for various reasons to engage with them.
That makes sense. Can we do radicalized people like young people? That doesn't have to be age based, but can you deradicalize someone with the proper proper work.
You think de radicalization is an interesting one. It's topical and controversial. The UK has probably had the most challenging implications of that. So there was big efforts to deradicalize people in the UK and a lot of the de radicalization programs were emerged from there and they made their way over to Australia and New Zealand and we've kind
of learned that de radicalization programs don't work right. But part of that is they were brought out during a time when it was all Islamic inspired violence or Gihardi inspired violence. A couple of years later it had evolved and then it was right wing violence, and then it
was grievance based violence. So the fundamentals of a lot of the de radicalization process assume that it was just ideology that was causing violence, when actually maybe ideology was only the top layer of the problem and it didn't get to the core reasons that the person was becoming violent. So I think we need to take a few steps back and ask the questions of really around you know, why was violence a solution for this person? How did
they start on the pathway to violence? So try and get to some of the core things rather than going okay, they just need to deradicalize and change these unhealthy and problematic beliefs.
Well, you haven't disappointed me, because like every psychologist I speak to, there's always an if or but or maybe but yeah, that's I bring it back to Sarah. She would always yeah, that might be the case, but it could be this, and just can you give me a yes or not? No, I can't give you a yes or note. But I like the way you mind thinks and the work you're doing, and I think it's important work. And I thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to come into the studio and
talk to us today. And I thoroughly recommend your book mass Casually The Rise of Loan Actors so interesting. Really, where can people get it if they want it?
So? It's available obviously on Amazon and online bookstores. It'll be Barnes and Noble overseas and shortly in bookstores here and also on the publisher's website, Groundproof Forensics dot com.
Very good if people want to get in contact with you, and you don't have to answer this because you might get inundated, But if people wanted to reach out to how could they reach out?
There? So I do private consulting works so doctor Nathan Brooks dot com as well.
Okay, thanks very much for coming on. I've enjoyed the chat.
Thanks for having me Gary. Cheers