How dangerous killers are murdering in slow motion: Laura Richards Pt.1

Published Nov 16, 2024, 4:00 PM

Dangerous predators are killing people in slow motion right in front of our eyes. It’s death by a thousand cuts that often goes unnoticed until it’s too late - but not to Laura Richards. The world renowned former New Scotland Yard criminal behavioural analyst has caught serial killers and violent rapists by getting inside their minds, saving lives along the way. 

 

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The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective sy a side of life the average persons never exposed her. I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty five of those years I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world. Welcome to another episode of I Catch Killers. The thing I found most fascinating as a homicide detective was delving into the psychology of the perpetrators, looking for red flags, interpreting crime scenes, and discovering motives. The difficult part of being a homicide detective was the fact that in most cases, the best you could do for the victim was to solve the crime. But what I find fascinating about today's guest is. The work she focuses on is preventing crime. Today, we're speaking to Laura Richards, who is a well renowned criminal behavioral analyst, an international expert on domestic violence, stalking, coercive controls, sexual violence, homicide, and risk assessment. She has applied her psychological degrees to analyze violent crime from a behavioral and preventative perspective. Laura has trained with the FBI and work with New Scotland Yard. She has been involved in multiple law reforms relating to the better protection for victims. Is an author and a podcaster, so clearly we've got a lot to talk about, so let's get into this. Laura Richards, welcome to I Catch Killers.

Thank you, it's really good to be here.

Well, I know you're busy, and I'm excited to get you on the podcast, and I've had a look at the work you've done. My background, I worked as a homicide detective for over twenty years and the frustration I had as a homicide detective was at the best what you could do for the victim was solved the crime. But a lot of your focus is about preventing crimes and the difference between reactive investigations and proactive investigations. Do you want to just talk us through a little bit about that process, break that down.

Yes, Well, firstly, thank you very much for inviting me and thank you for the work that you've done, because it's not easy.

For me.

I spent five years at New Scotland Yard, my first five years working in a unit that was set up because we had a very prolific serial killer called Peter Suckcliffe who had abused and harmed and killed many women up in the northeast of England. And my unit was really a response to that, a sexual offensive section so that we would ensure someone like Peter Suckliffe wouldn't happen again. So the idea behind it was to link rape, murder and abduction cases and to be on the front foot. And it was a brave new world really at new Scotland Yard, and a response to what was called the Byford Report, which was all the failures of Peter Suckcliffe being in front of the detectives on fourteen occasions and they still didn't know it was him. So there was a lot of learning and that was a really good response to set up a proactive unit and it was very much based on the FBI's Behavioral Science Unit, which most people have seen as portrayed in the Netflix show mind Hunter. So Robert Wrestler, Roy Hazlewood, John Douglas all of their work and my unit at New Scotland Yard was the satellite to it. So my first five years were really linking crimes and cases, so serial rape and serial murder cases. And each time I worked with the detectives on those investigations, what was interesting. I would do what we call a psychological autopsy and look at the offenders and reverse engineer their histories, and most of them were on our databases already, and that really intrigued me. Was it just the number of cases that I was exposed to or was it actually far greater than the cases that I had worked on. So when I was given an opportunity, I was headhunted to work on an Understanding and Responding to Hate crime initiative funded by the Home Office. I was asked would I profile domestic violence? I wondered, how tough could that be? And we knew who it was most oftentimes we had their names, their data, births, where they live. In terms of the offenders, and I said that I would be interested in doing that work only if I could conjoin it with sexual violence, so that I could look at sexual violence and domestic violence and reverse engineer the offenders and look at their histories. And really where the proactive work began in terms of understanding risk assessment, understanding that domestic violence offenders are actually dangerous individuals and that we should be taking them more seriously. So, really, Gary, one thing led to another of being you know, I say that the sexual Offenses section was a proactive unit, but you still had a crime. You still had something terrible happening, and then you were linking the offenses and that was tough work because you know, oftentimes people are linkage blind. So those five years were not easy. But I did have some real insight reverse engineering the cases and seeing that these offenders when we arrested them for a stranger related crime, they were on our databases. And I think that's a really important part to sort of my story as to why I kept asking questions about that.

It's interesting when you say reverse engineer, I could imagine you had the crime, you assist the crime scene if it's a murder or the statement from the victim and trying to understand the crime finding the perpetrator. But when you found the perpetrator, what you're saying is you're looking back at their history and it's almost like a series of red flags that okay, if someone's stalking from a homicide. To take this point of view, I've always had concern if someone is a stalker, and to me, it just triggers red flags and concerns if I'm looking at a person of interest and there's a history of stalking. But you and being given all that data, the data that you would have had been involved with New Scotland Yard, you found a pattern. Dare say I call them red flags. I think you understand the concept of a red flag indicators. And when you're looking back, you've seen a history that you can almost see the crime building up to the crescendo that it might be, whether that be a sexual assault or a murder.

Yes, exactly that. And in some cases it's textbook escalation in terms of the pattern of behavior and drip of what they can get away with, and then behavior being what it is, you then carry on pushing boundaries and do more and more. So you know, oftentimes particularly with the stranger rape related cases, and when you've got a serial rapist, they're the jobs that get resourced, right, and you know, they're the good jobs as were seen, you know, back in the culture of policing. And what was interesting was that every case I looked at, they raped their partners before they raped somebody that they didn't know outside the home. But it was domestic violence that was being written off. It's just a domestic law of people would say, and I was saying, but it's not just a domestic If you're prepared to harm and rape the person you're meant to love and care about the most, what else are you prepared to do to a stranger, to a woman that you don't know, So that poarer and control dynamic. I started making the links, but using the evidence and the cases. It wasn't something that I just came up with this concept. It was literally every case I was involved with, and I wanted to understand that better.

Yeah, you know, it makes sense, and in policing at that time, when we're looking at serial offenders and the work that they did with the FBI. You mentioned the name John Douglas. Just a funny thought in my mind. I read that book When I was a young homicide detective mind Hunter that John Douglas wrote the book, and I quite often stood at the crime scene and I'd be speaking to my colleague going, what would John Douglas do in this situation? I like some of the messaging that came out from the book, But it was a very early science, wasn't It was something that we hadn't really looked into from a criminal investigation point of view law enforcement agencies across the globe. What do you think change was it that someone just finally waking up to there are patterns? We've got to look at it in more detail.

Yeah, I mean I think, you know, the art versus science part has always been the challenge, and it's a bit of both. Going back in time, you know, was the culture ready for it? Probably not. Then there was a big TV show called Cracker in the UK with Robbie Coltrane where he was a psychologist being called in to cases.

Remember and that kind of you remember it?

Yeah, and it kind of mainstreamed the concept, although what we did was very different from what you saw portrayed. But if I had a pound for every time or a dollar every time a detective said to me, all right, cracker, tell us where he lives and you know what his name is, Dad, and thinking it was really funny. You know, that was literally every case that I ever worked, That's what was being said to me. And it's far more detailed the work in terms of you know, my background is in forensic and legal psychology, and you apply that to understand the offender motivation and you'll know this the important part of the why normally takes you to the who, and so you don't always have the why. You've got the who, the what, the where, the when, you don't always have the why. So that part of understanding the why done it twinned with victimology. I mean, for me, that's the most important part. Starting with the victims of you understand how they lived, you normally understand how they die too, where's the intersect? And that's painstaking work. It takes a lot of time to sort of understand really who your victim is and you've got to speak to lots of different people's you well know. But the criminal behavioral analysis component also comprises of the crime scene assessment, timeline analysis like the sequence of events in that event, but also the bigger picture of the timeline and linguistic analysis. If you've got it with rape victims, you do tend to have language between the two geographic analysis, statement analysis, interview analysis, which is what I help with, as well as understanding behavior. So there's lots of different components to criminal behavioral analysis, and it is worth just say that because a lot of people still even now don't have a true understanding of what it is. The added extra part that really was what I developed in more detail was the risk assessment component of the reverse engineering, and there wasn't really a lot known about that in policing when I started doing it in two thousand and one, and there wasn't much written in the academic literature, so it really was making it up as we went along. But I also had some great mentors from the FBI, for example, because I worked over there for a period of time. There were people that I talked with in the FBI regularly, and I had mentors at New Scotland Yard and other mentors in the academic world, so it really was a case of shaping things. I had someone called Professor Betsy Stanko who worked with me, who was an American criminologist to create a methodology of understanding the types of questions we should be asking of victims that a domestic violence call out, and that really began the whole risk assessment process.

And so you got this, all this information came to helping out investigations. Then you realized, I'm just paraphrasing what you've said. To understand it. You were going back investigating stuff, seeing that there's patterns, and then realizing that the proper due concern wasn't being provided to as just a domestic situation. It's just a husband and wife. They've had a falling out. These are indicators and if we could jump on them and treat them as serious as they need to at that point in time, potentially we can prevent the crime. Because homicide investigation, I can only speak for New South Wales, but I've also worked over in England and had dealings with other homicide squads. We always look at ourselves as just a reactive way of approaching approaching policing. The murders happened, we started the crime scene victimology as you described, and we try to find the perpetrator. But there's a lot more to it, isn't it. There's so much more that we can these red flags. And I know in one of the many interviews you've done or one of the podcasts, you were talking about murder by slow motion, and I think you were referencing a specific case where there were so many red flags, so many indicators, and when the murders actually happened, everyone goes, how did that happen? Well, if we look, it was almost signposted that that was what was going to occur. Do you want to give us an example of murder by slow motion and where mistakes were made?

Yes, I mean I started to call it murder and slow motion because of exactly that that pattern that happened in you know, oftentimes it was slow time. It wasn't a quick set of events. And there was one case in particular that really stood out because I talked to the detective Chief inspector, someone called Stuart Aught, and it was when I was starting the risk assessment work and Stuart came up to New Scotland Yard and he said, you should really have a look at this case, Laura, the murder of Christine Boswell, And he said you should really look at the crime reports. It was so obvious that he was going to kill her. And I said, wow, you say that was such clarity, Stuart. He said, yeah, when you look at the crime reports, you'll understand what I'm talking about. And sure enough, thirty three callouts that she had made to her home address with textbook arguing to them physical violence, to then a knife being used to shred her clothes and damage to her property, and then she was stabbed multiple times in front of her two children. And I said to Stuart, it's a really horrific case. And I'm not saying tragic because the word tragic denotes there's nothing we can do about it. This was a preventable murder where we had thirty three opportunities to actually ask a different set of questions of what was going on for Chrissy. And I believed, as did Stuart, that we failed her, and he and I started to talk about over a cup of coffee, well, what are the types of questions that could have been asked to Chrissy that would have made the difference. And that was where the notion of risk assessment came from. Because I always work with the detectives. This was never just in isolation thinking oh, this is a good idea to do. And I said to Stuart. You know the people who also said to you that this was so obvious it was going to end in murder. My question for them is, well, what did you all do about it? Why is it that you look back in hindsight and then of course you understand that there's an incident led response, and that's part of the problem that the police go out and attend the incident. That language is so problematic because with domestic abuse and coercid control and stalking, it's patterned crime. It doesn't happen in a vacuum. So the language and the structure in the way that policing was set up was also a problem. It wasn't just about what was going on in this case, it was also about this incident led response, which meant that no one was really joining up the dots of looking at the history. And that still goes on present day and it's one of my pet peeves that we still haven't got this in the frontline officers, all of those who work within the police, whether you're a call handler, whether you're frontline, whether you're a supervisor, it should be mandatory training that they know this is patterned crime and you must expect there to be a pattern, either previously or that it will continue to happen if you don't make an intervention, and that's where we can save lives, but we also save money, the two things together. So Christine Boswell's case always stood out to me because it was the start of Okay, well, let's look at Christine's case, let's review it, and let's take another five cases in the first three months of two thousand and one, and let's do a domestic homicide review of these six cases. And that's what I did, and I work with another DC I called Alan Orberlak, and he and I wrote the guidance for even how you do a domestic homicide review. But we kept coming up against people saying, well, there's no legislation to make us do this review, so we don't want to do it. And that was a continual problem. So then I worked with Harriet Harmon to create a law, which meant that it became mandatory through the statutory legislation that you must do this. So you know, one thing came after the other. But in I went on to review fifty six domestic murders and they all had very similar patterns. Before the murder event.

Itself and those patterns. We're talking about an next escalation, and it could be starts off as an argument that hasn't got physical. If there's a separation, series of text messages, then specific threats in the messages, an assault, then a knife. You mentioned clothes being cut up. I always was of great concern when the family pet was murdered or killed. That type of indicator is going, Okay, this person is going to go further and further. So you reviewed fifty cases of domestic murders, so the offender has been in a relationship, was or previously been in a relationship with the victim, and you saw a pattern all the way through with those fifty fifty cases.

Yes, I mean I took fifty six. It was that one year's worth of domestic murders within the Metropolitan Police. But the issue, first of all, was that no one counted the domestic murders. So it wasn't as easy as saying, let's review all the domestic murders. I actually had to find them all and then create a system so that when a murder happened, that the center was flagged that this was most likely a domestic violence murder and then once someone was arrested and or charged, then we knew for sure that it was and then we would do the review. So of course it can take time to bottom out with the investigation who the offender is, so that that was an issue, but there were patterns that repeated. So separation, as you quite rightly said, separation increases the risk strangulation which increases the risk sevenfold for femicide escalation, so it happening more often and it getting worse, and the getting worse part being important. Pregnancy and new birth, so pregnancy being a high risk factor, the threats, and in particular if there's stalking, when someone makes a threat and they stalk, one in two of them would go on to kill. So that fifty percent is really important that everybody knows about it.

I read that figure in researching for my chat with you. Can you just break that down again because that horrified me, that figure, that one in two. Just explain that again if you could in detail.

Yeah, And it's actually an Australian stat from the first Stalking Clinic, from Troy McEwan's work and Rachel McKenzie's work studying stalkers, and I saw it repeating I mean before they had published on it. I saw it in my domestic homicide reviews. So a threat would be articulated either in writing or verbally or even come from a you know, via a third party. We see a lot of this stuff online now, but the threat is made to harm or to kill or to take revenge. And if there is stalking and there's been an intimate relationship, and an intimate relationship can be you know, as classed in the police. It's that you have had a level of intimacy, so maybe you had a it can be one date you had sex with the person, it doesn't need to be twenty two years and that threat being made. Then in one in two cases we saw the murders then being carried out, so the victims were actually telling us that they were going to be killed and then they were. So it's such an important statistic that even with stranger related stalking, ie you don't know the stalker, one in ten of them, if they make a threat, will act on it. And that's why it's so important to take those threats seriously. Too often they're not taken seriously and they're seen as just throw away comments. But when you've got coercive control and stalking. They must be taken seriously. So you know, our knowledge now is even greater when we think about the timeline to murder and the slow motion element and these high risk clusters that co occur. And if you have a finality with separation, ie, she says, I'm never coming back to you. They may have separated five times, six times before, but this occasion she's saying, I'm never coming back. That finality element, like with Hannah Clark's case, you know, is the tipping point when the person who's coercively controlling stalking, that's when they take, you know, matters into their own hands. Of it's I'm going to win at all costs, that kind of psychopathology that I have to win at all costs, and that's when it's incredibly dangerous for women and children.

So with all that you've learned to put what you're talking about in the practice, it's about educating, educating police officers. So because invariably it's not the experience detective that's taking the report of a stalking incident, it'll be the front line troops, the uniform police with maybe one or two years service. You've worked in law enforcement agencies. So you understand getting that culture out, but we've really got to get that education going so people understand when this crime that in isolation, people could look at it, well it's not the biggest crime going on, but got to understand the importance of it. Have you got any thoughts on how we need to educate law enforcement officers, agencies, police forces, not just over in US, Australia, across the world. Basically I do.

And I wrote the book Policing Domestic Violence.

Which was okay, well that's question press.

Yeah, it's a very good question. Garan is right behind me. I actually wrote it with two police officers who were experts as well, and they were brilliant, Simon Letchford and Sharon Stratton. And you know why we wrote the book, because you don't make money from writing books like that. It was to put all of the good practice in one place. Because we wrote the policy for New Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police. I should just locate that New Scotland Yard is the headquarters for the Metropolitan Police, which is where I was based for a lot of my career for the ten years. Although I did go out and work in incident rooms there's that term again to support major inquiries at different times. But Simon and Sharon and I worked together writing the policy but also delivering training, and we became nationally recognized experts that we were being asked to go out all the time, and we just wanted to make sure that All the Good Practice was written in a police friendly way, in a practical way, that it wasn't an academic paper. It was something that a frontline officer could pick up, dip in and out of chapters and it made sense to them on a practical level, and the three of us were really invested in that. So the book still stands. It's Oxford University Press published, and All the Good Practice really is just as relevant today as when we wrote it and published it in two thousand and nine. Differences we've got new laws like the course of control law and stalking law, but in terms of the good practice of what police should be doing, from the call handler to the frontline officer, to the specialist officers, to the supervisors who are so important in this, and to expert led training. Because you have to attend expert led training. I believe it's not just a subject that a trainer can deliver road traffic collision training one morning and then they talk about domestic abuse and course of control in the afternoon. You have to know your stuff. What was interesting to me was when Sharon Stratton and I were doing frontline training. We would go get up at five am beyond the seven am parades delivering to frontline officers, and I thought they would be quite difficult and trunky, that's a very British term. But what was interesting was that when we talked to them about cases and explaining the high risk factors and why they're going to ask the questions on the risk assessment, they were so interested we couldn't get them back out the classroom. They wanted to stay and ask questions. And that was my first real lesson about don't make assumptions about frontline officers. They just want quality training and you need to invest in them and give them the right knowledge because they do a very difficult job. So you know, I've trained officers and police staff all over the world and they do do a tough job. And my mantra is always first time, right time. You know, you give them the best information and they deserve that level of investment, and it's a leadership issue that they don't get trained with experts, and it saves lives and saves money, and why wouldn't you want to do that.

Look, I'm all for it. And that's why just listening to you say that, I look at the police forces that I understand the culture people join the place. Yeah, there's lots of reasons when they join the place, but they want to help. And you talked about the frontline police. The supervisors are important because quite often the frontline police are seen the damage done at the crime scene or when the instance occurred, but they're under pressure from supervisors. Well to conflict, get that one done, move on to the next one. Let's keep the statistics down. But when you sell it, and you also mentioned that it's not just save lives, it has a fiscal benefit too. It saves money, and that might be how we've got to tap into some of the upper levels of policing that everyone benefits from this. I find it fascinating to have a conversation with you like this and working in homicide, and I was fortunate enough to spend a lot of my time working on investigations with doctor Sarah, your forensic psychologists. I love the insight she would bring to an investigation. I didn't require her input on the majority of investigations, but the tricky ones, just trying to get a sense on what are we dealing with here, the interpretation of the crime scene indicators that we should look for, things like that. I think there's a benefit. I think there's more need for those type of qualified people to be in those we'll call them incident rooms, in those investigations where it's a fresh idea, looking at it from a different approach, not just a policing approach. What's your thoughts on that. When you worked with Scotland Yard, did you feel like you were contributing to the quality of the investigation.

Yes, I mean I was a part of them, so I was running units internally, so it's slightly different from bringing people in from externally. But when I ran the homicide prevention unit, because that's what I did, mainstreaming a lot of this work at New Scotland Yard as well. I had academics as well as researchers working with police intelligence officers and intelligence analysts as well as filled intelligence officers and detectives. I had a whole intel cell full of those people, and that was a very interesting culture clash of you know, different people from different expertise, different fields all within one you know, intelligence cell. But you know, I think you do have to draw upon expertise, and I think that, you know, for my work, when we go back to nineteen ninety six, the culture was very different, and you know, did I feel I was contributing at the time, Absolutely, But and I worked some cases where you know, I got commendations for the work that I was doing, linking some very high profile serial rape cases and being part of successful operations to catch serial rapists like Richard Baker and Mark Dixie who had a connection actually to Australia. So you know, at that time I did. But I think the culture is still and I mean policing culture in the UK and Australia and America. I think that it is still very misogynistic and that's a challenge that when you're a female working within it that is invisible to most people by you the resistant that happens, and I think we have to talk about that because you can have an expertise, but if you're not really allowed at the table to have a voice, so you're seen as valuable. If it's your sex. That's holding you back, that's not okay. And I think there's a lot that we have to tackle within our police services present day that relates to that and for victims to have trust and confidence, it's very important. The Sarah Everard case is a case in point in London. You know that happened in the pandemic.

Can you tell us about that case because that was a serving police officer I believe was the offender.

Yes, I mean, it's a horrific case. Sarah Everard was a young woman who went out during the lockdown, went to a friend's house and she was caught on CCTV cameras talking to a man and she disappeared. So interestingly I got flyers from my neighbors to ask me would I put it the case on my podcast because she local It happened locally, So I got involved early on of just trying to help circulate information and it was the you know what has happened to her? But it didn't sound good right from the get go, and unfortunately what became clear was the man in the image was the serving police officer and he actually used his warrant card to detain her, put her in the back of a rented car and took her out of London, and we now know that he raped her and he killed her. And what followed thereafter, because it is shocking. What followed thereafter were a series of things that were said by police and people, well, if she thought she was at risk, she should flag down a bus, or you know, comments about women's safety. Because lots of women came out utterly horrified and shocked and concerned about what had happened and shared all their stories online. And then we had some you know, really ridiculous comments being made which showed just how little has really changed for women even since Peter Suckcliffe. That my neighbors were telling me the police were knocking on their doors after Sarah went missing, saying don't go out, women shouldn't go out after dark. Well that's what they said in the Peter Suckcliffe investigation. So you know, everything that was done and said just aggravated it even more. And the commissioner, unfortunately at the time, said it's one bad apple. But what we've seen is that there's been many officers who have been you know, arrested for domestic abuse, for sexual violence, for rape. I'm sure for you as a former officer. I mean, it's just so against the grain of everything that why you join the police to protect and serve and then in amongst you know, and it turns out that quite a few people understood that he was a wrongman, you know, and where does that information go? And when I ran the homicide Prevention unit, we set up a process to weed out those people internally and externally. And you know, I felt, you know, really upset seeing these things unfold for Sarah's family, but also for you know, what's going on that we're recruiting men with histories and that it wasn't even investigated even though his history was cleared.

Well, Laura, I think my concern with police and when you say organizations misogynistic and that it can't be argue that's yeah, is what it is. We all talk about change and that needs change. There needs to be more change. I make the observation with police, and you know, when you talk about the one, the case that you just referred to and all the other offenses, police have extraordinary power, Like you've got that badge, You've got the authority to arrest someone, You've got the authority to take someone's life. In a certain set of circumstances, power corrupts. If you have the wrong type of personality in there, it can go really bad and taking, you know, using the warrant card to abduct the girl, to rape her, murder her. Yeah, that's what you've got to be on the lookout for. I know you've spent some time in law enforcement agencies. Just by the way the conversation, you understand the culture, and it's not tipping the tipping the bucket on everyone. There's some great people in policing law enforcement agencies, but we've got to police our own too, and if there's problems, there's indicators, we can't just turn the blind eye and go, well, that's all right, he's all right, he's one of us. We've got to go go hard on it. Absolutely, when you were working in those environments, did you have clashes with people over issues like you've just raised.

I did. I. You know, it was something that I never thought it was related to my sex, I have to say, being a woman. But now you know, being older and wiser, I now understand that context. And I still carried on doing the work. I still was so invested in creating change, and I worked with some brilliant people and had incredible opportunities and we you know, prevented well. We reduced domestic murders by fifty eight percent over thirteen years. That's thirty three people less dead in London, which you know is incredible. And I worked with some brilliant people, but I also work with some really concerning, terrible people who caused a lot of problems, and they should have been dealt with at a far earlier stage. They were given at the benefit of the doubt far too many times, and that again is a trust and confidence issue that I guess, you know, it goes down to sort of this meme that I saw recently on social media where you know, victim says that she was raped or abused. What we need or a woman says I'm raped, I've been raped or abused or treated bad. We need fifty eight videos, thirty statements for witnesses. Man says he didn't do it. Oh okay, you know, And that's what I feel the culture within but also so outside of You only know your own lived experience, and most men will never have experience of what women deal with every day that we just put down to it just happens rather than I always wonder what life would be like if everything worked for me, if I was Lawrence and not Laura. I think my policing experience and my life experience would be wholly different. Let me put it that way.

It's an interesting way way to look at it. Look, we've dived deep in and I haven't even covered off on how you got into the field of expertise that you've found. What's a little bit about yourself. How did you find your way to the career that you've got now and the expertise that you've developed in law enforcement?

Yes, I mean going back in time, I guess I probably consumed a lot of TV movies and shows related to crime, but also read a lot of Nancy Drew Hardy boys. You know. Always was very interested in people and analytical work and injustice. And I did think about doing criminal law for a time and then realized that actually kept being advised you'd have to do criminal defense work. That's, you know, really where you get a lot of the good jobs and you earn money. And I just thought, no, I can't do that. And then the accused came on TV with Jodie Foster and injustice happened in my own family, and I guess those things just wedded together. And I did know a detective up at new Scotland Yard who worked in the arts and antiques unit, and I kept calling him and asking whether he felt there would be any kind of position coming up at New Scotland Yard. They were just starting this sexual offenses section and I was at university doing my psychology degree, but I had to take a year out and internship and I said, I will work, you know, I'll be the first in last out. I'll do, you know, whatever is necessary. And I just kept calling and was tenacious, and in the end they said, yup, we're just starting this unit. Come up and meet with us. And they gave me a role of what was called a college based sandwich student in the sexual offenses section. And that, of course, every detective said, oh, you make sandwiches. No, I didn't make sandwiches. I did everything bar make sandwiches. But you know, I was first in last out. I found the work absolutely fascinating. I devoured everything that I could around sexual homicide doctor Anne Burgess's work because she was instrumental in the FBI of setting up the behavioral science units, and I just found the work really intriguing and felt like, you know, I was a duck in water the place where I should be. Went back to finish my finals and the head of the unit said, we'd love you to come back if you would consider it and head up the sexual offenses section. And I was going to go traveling, but I just felt it was too good an opportunity. So you know what I'll say is that tenacity pays off. I kind of I didn't know whether that was the thing I really wanted to do, and if it didn't work out, I'd go on and do law, but the psychology aspects and setting up something part of something new that created and helped victims felt like a really good place to be.

Yeah, I understand being driven by that, the interest in the type of work I've always found the psychology, as I said in the introduction, the psychology of a homicide investigation, understanding the mindset, the motive, and all the nuances that play out when you're looking at an investigation. In those early days, I referenced Sarah ul and people that have listened to the podcast, I've had her on the podcast, and I talk about it often I was in homicide for a long time and Sarah Uel was attached specifically to help with investigations, not just a homicide, but other units were in the police and it was like an untapped resource because people didn't realize what she had to offer, and we joke about it. I thought she was my own private criminal psychologists that I could call any time, because people hadn't discovered the work that she could provide. Eventually they did find out, and all of a sudden she had to work on other investigations. I was shocked. I thought, I thought that she worked exclusively for me. But the benefits that I got from that having someone look at an investigation because you've worked in law enforcement, you understand the culture and yeah, if we've got the blinkers on them, police are thinking one way. I would quite often have a view and then sound that pass, run that past Sarah, and she would change my thinking on certain things. With some crimes, like I'd be going, what's a motive? What are we looking for here? And she would point out that, well, the person that committed the crime might not even know why they've committed the crime, and this was an abduction of a child. Different things like that, and I found the input invaluable to help with the investigation. It really kept me and it was a way of me checking my thought process and steering me in the right direction. Once people understood what you could provide to them, did you find that it was more readily accepted.

Well, It would depend on the senior investigating officer and the leader would set the tone right, so the you gary would set the tone as to whether I was accepted and treated well or not. And so if you're inserted into an investigation, then you're not treated particularly well. But what I found when I worked with really good dcies, it was a very positive experience that they got a lot out of it. I did, and we worked together really well. But if you've got someone who just doesn't believe in what you're doing, and they're resistant and they keep you out of meetings and they do all sorts of you know, underhand things, and it's a really negative experience. And I've had plenty of those, so, you know, and I think there's so much to offer if the seen investigating officer or whoever you're working with is open minded. You know, when I worked in the FBI for three months, when we did case consults. We'd all sit under table and everyone would just share their opinion as an expert, and it was up to the SiO to decide what they found value in that. We all had our own expertise and niches and we were there to add value to the investigation, but it was ultimately up to the SiO. But often you wouldn't even get a fair shake. And I think that that's a huge disservice because when you collaborate, you get to a far better outcome, and you know that's really you're just another tool in the toolbox that you can be called upon, you know. And I'll give you an example, And I worked on the case of Amiie de la Gronde who was hit over the back of the head on Twickenham Green And this was in two thousand and four August the nineteenth, two thousand and four, and the head of homicide called me up and told me about what had happened to Amelie and she died on the way to hospital. Really horrific case in Twickenham on a cricket pitch, so low volume crime, you know, it shocked the community. I was in America working at the time, and the head of Homicides said, I'm going to deploy you on this Category A plus murder investigation when you get back. I've already deployed some of your team. And I said, right, you know, understood, And I asked him to tell me everything that was known. And we had this whole debate about what the motive was then, and there the kind of seemingly and the SiO who was in charge of the case, you know, it kept being talked about as a motiveless crime, and I said, there's no such thing as a motiveless crime. There is always a motive to the offender, just because we don't know what it is. Because she had been hit over the back of the head, but her phone had been taken, but nothing stolen, her bag was there, so it seemingly looked like this random attack that was motiveless. And I said, it had meaning to the offender, and this looks like a mission killed whatever she represented to him. So they're the things of crimes against women that sometimes men don't really understand. There wasn't a sexual attack on her, but it was sexually motivated and it was about what she represented. But often you hear things being said like it's a motiveless crime. And even that, you know, when we understand the psychology, nothing is motiveless. It always has meaning, and our job is to discern what that meaning is, to interpret it. You know, every contact leaves a trace. Whatever that trace might be. It might be what he doesn't do at the scene, not necessarily what he does do. So you know, that's where you can really add value of finding an offender. In fact, we found him within three months. He was a serial killer. And as I said to the senior investigating officer and to the head of homicide and everyone that was involved, we knew that we had a serial killer case because my unit had found other cases that we linked him to it. But I said, appeal to the women that he knows, because he will behave in a violent, abusive, psychologically, very damaging and harmful way to those women. Let's appeal to them because he whoever he is, does not want to get caught, so don't waste your time appealing to him. And you remember the good old days where sometimes you would have an SiO appeal directly to the offender. Well understanding the psychology and motivation. I mean, of course it sounds silly now, but most don't want to be caught. And this was the guy who didn't want to be caught and did everything forensically to ensure he wouldn't be caught. So as I don't waste you know, five minutes talking to him directly, talk to the women that know him. And on day two of the investigation, a woman called Joe Collins walked into the mobile police station at Twickenham Green which had been set up, and said, the man you're looking for is called Levi Bellfield and she told us a whole load of history and her statement came to me at my unit and it literally was I said, you know, the probability is this is our guy, and he has harmed many many women. We've got to find those other cases. And he was actually charged with domestic violence rate before any of the murders.

Right. So then back to what we started off talking about those indicators that, yeah, these red flags that you can see it's almost going to build up, and the murder by slow motion. I find it fascinating what you said there about appealing to the media. I in the high profile jobs that I had, that there was some media that needed to be addressed. I would consult and I'll keep referencing Sarah, consult with Sarah about the messaging I want to put out or looking at putting out. I remember one particular case I put out there, and as you were saying that, it made me think about it. Sometimes the appeal might be going to the offend of the suspect, making them feel the pressures coming down. But we put an appeal out on the high profile job here. It was William Tyrrell Investigation and basically said that the narrative that I wanted to deliver in the release to the media in the stand up was that whoever's watching this, have a look at the person beside you, because they might react strange. They might turn it off as if they're not interested in it, or they might overreact. So I was thinking, I'm trying to create an environment where the persons sitting there, maybe with his partner family, Oh, let's turn this bullshit off, or what do you mean this person. I like to try things like that when and you call it a tool or a strategy when you're having the briefings, I think it's important to have a strategy when you're talking to the media. My cringe over here when I see a police officer get up there and that's not really invested in the investigation and stand there and go, we don't know what's happened. We've got no CCTV footage, there's no witnesses, there's and it's virtually giving the offender. Okay, just keep my mouth shut and I'll get away of this. What's your thoughts on using media and investigations and different strategies that can be employed.

I think it's so important you have to use media. I mean, you know, the publica your eyes and ears, and that's always been my position of what you put out really does matter, and oftentimes it does lead to an arrest when you ask people very specific things to do or be on the lookout for certain things. But you have to be quite specific. I mean, you think about Gabby Patito's case here, which I covered on Crime Analyst in twenty four episodes, and she was found because of people who were following the media coverage and saw the white van. So the public are such an important part, but you've got to give them very specific things to look for, and you know, you can't be too general. And of course, now with the rise of kind of the true crime world, where everyone's like an internet sleuth, use them in a productive way, don't try and shut them down, try and use them in the ways that are thoughtful, that can actually help you. So, you know, we've had quite a lot of those case is where there's been criticism of you know, the internet sleuth and the armchair detective. But I think it's because they haven't been given very specific direction and they go off on their own, and you know, they can be incredibly helpful, and particularly when we're thinking about post defense behavior. And a lot of my work is looking at post defense behavior, you know, and I've covered lots of cases on the podcast where I've shown how post defense behavior can be so important in understanding it but also catching the offender and you know, giving detectives that information is important. Are you having a huddle with you know, doctor was it doctor Sarah Sarah l with Sarah Yule, you know, and her giving you a very clear steer and what to look out for. Some things you want to just keep for you and other things you want to put into the public domain. And you've got to be discerning about which of those things you're going to do and to whom.

Yeah, and it seems to seeing you talked and the podcast. Now, podcasting obviously here the stay, but it's changed the dynamics in that the police can't control the narrative all the time that goes out because podcasts, and we've had some podcasts over here. Teachers Pet is one where an investigation that was basically shut down and was going though where then this Teacher's Pet podcast came on board and information started to happen. Things started to happen. And I have no doubts, being involved in homicide at the time that that case wouldn't have been solved without the attention that the Teacher's Pet bought board on it. So it's a different landscape. But yeah, the media and investigations, I know you've crossed the line, and I've crossed the line because we're working in the media now. We've worked in law enforcement. But I always saw there's a tool that could be used and used very specifically and for benefits to the investigation. And I still see now I've gone into the madia. I'm working in the media. I say, the benefits that can be done if there's cooperation, Yes.

And you have to use the tool in the right way and I think Headley Thomas's investigation into Lannette's case and I know it very well because we covered it on my other podcast or a crime profile, and gave it an international lens. And actually then I work with Headley in the background because it was always a coercid control case and I think what he did was phenomenal and that's not always welcomed by the police, and I think they have to find a way to allow it to be useful and helpful and productive, and it's not always about controlling the narrative. Yes, there are certain things that you don't want to put in the public domain, but I think most people understand that if there are sensitivities, then you let media colleagues know that there are sensitivities and there's certain things that are being withheld that they don't want in the public domain. I think you've got to be grown up about that, and too often I'm not seeing that happening. But but podcasts are here to stay, they're not going away, and you can do a lot of good with direction and clarity about your requirements. And in fact, New South Wales Police did contact me with our coverage at Lynette's case and they asked because of the impending arrest and potential prosecution. They asked, could we have a meeting and I said yes, on behalf of the team. And they asked, would we be prepared to take the content down because of some judas matters, because we don't want to impact the trial, And I said, of course, I totally understand why you would want that to happen. No issue. So we took our episodes down. We're not going to try and jeopardize a case.

And I think the police have got to understand that most people, I would suggest, don't want the jeopardizer case. When you're talking about the very serious murder, abduction, whatever. People don't want to jeopardize the case. But with Headley, and I know Headley will and initially the police were resistantly cooperating, and then he had a high, high level meeting with the commissioner and eventually it was agreed, okay, we can work in unison here without compromising the investigation or the integrity of the police, just working together, and yeah, they got the results. It was interesting that you said you've had people reach out to you with the work that you do as a podcaster. I have that same type of thing. I have people reach out to me that the frustrated about the crime, and I had one person get in contact with me. I'm not revealing details obviously that you do a lot on your podcast talking about crimes that have happened, and you do good there. But I'm in a domestic violence situation and I honestly feel I'm going to be killed, and I'm at wits end trying to get assistance from the police and different things. I'm dealing with that person now, and it horrifies me that it's almost like I'm seeing the red flags. The person's doing everything she can in going to law enforcement agencies, going to the police, and going through the courts and all that, but it's not stopped. And I can hear the genuine fear in her voice saying nothing's going to stop this. It's going to stop when I'm dead. Now, I get contacted by a lot of people with that. It really made me think someone's got to do something about this case. And so I've been in communication with the person trying to help, and I share her frustration, but more importantly, her fear. She is living her life in fear, thinking of the consequences of what's going to happen.

Yes, and unfortunately, Gary, I hear from hundreds of it's predominantly women, not always exclusively women, but you know, this is sort of the main stay that on crime analyst, some real crime profile. We've always talked about course of control and child abuse and sexual abuse and domestic violence and stalking to educate people. And so you educate people, but then police and others still haven't caught up. And it's not just the police, it's the courts, it's the probation officers, it's the judges, it's you know, a whole system's approach that needs to change. But for me, having done this work for almost three decades, it's a leadership issue. And if the leaders don't see it as important, then they don't train the staff, they don't resource the units, they don't create real change. And I think, you know, in Australia, I've done a lot of work over there. I gave evidence regarding Queensland changing the law and course of control. I've also reviewed lots of different types of cases from Kelly Wilkinson, Marion Barter, and I've been asked to comment, you know, and give my analysis on Amy Wensley's case more recently, and the patterns are just all the same that women do try and get help, but they're not being listened to. And unfortunately that's not changing. And you know there's a political commitment now after you know what are we on sixty four women now being murdered in Australia. You're on one every four days, I think it is, or is it for a week now in Australia. Really alarming that the femicide rates increasing and women don't have six months to wait when change will come in. And part of what I see as one of the major problems is that serial offenders, serial domestic abusers and stalkers are not treated seriously at all. You don't get people joining up their histories and then treating them like terrorists. And if police applied the tactics that we used for serious and organized criminals and terrorists, we would be saving lives. And we started that a New Scotland yard, various police forces all around the country. I worked with them and they got up and running, but we still didn't have a national database of those individuals and I'm still fighting for that now. It's only just been agreed twenty three years later, would you believe that the political will the ministers in the new government have said it's going to happen, because they're the ones I was working with all along, you know, in terms of the campaign and in Parliament. And it's the same in Australia and in America. You've got really a small subgroup of offenders who are causing a huge amount of harm and damage to women and children, and they're just not being treated as the serious and very harmful individuals that they are, and they are being greenlit to escalate. And then the murders happen and people say they're sorry, and that's it.

When people get away with one offense and the punishment doesn't stop them, they becoming boldened or they get away with it because it's not being treated seriously. It's a local court mather stalking Like all the time I spent as a detective, the only time I came across stalking in homicide was when after the murder had happened and then ah, yeah, this person had been stalking the victim for a long time, and that type of narrative. These are the things that we've got to get on top of. I just want to take a short break here. We have got so much to talk about and the work that you're doing. We're talking in theory about how it can be done. You've actually put things in place to prevent crimes. And we'll talk about some of the high profile investigations you're reviewed or been involved in, and if we could just take a short break and we'll be back shortly for part two.

I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin

After 25 years working in homicide, former Detective Chief Inspector Gary Jubelin is sitting down ac 
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