When former detective Ted Bassingthwaighte met mass murderer Malcolm Baker, he saw the psychopathically cold look in his eyes. Years earlier, Baker - who was married three times, met 16 year old Kerryann Gannon. He was obsessed, wanting complete control. So when she ended the relationship, he was filled with jealous rage. Armed with his gun, he violently rampaged the small Australian town, killing anyone in his sight.
This episode of I Catch Killers discusses family violence. If this raises any issues or concerns, you can reach out to White Ribbon Australia on 1800RESPECT.
To buy a copy of the book, Bloody Odyssey, email Ted Bassingthwaighte directly at bassingthwaighte@bigpond.com, or find one here.
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The public has had a long held fascination with detectives. Detective sy a side of life. The average person is 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 that I Catch Killers. What drives a person to brutally murder six innocent people? How can one man's obsession and pathetic sense of self entitlement lead to mass murder? Today we're going to talk to form a new South Wales detective and a colleague of mine, Ted Bassingwaite, who was a young detective, worked on the Central massacre case in which a complete lay life Malcolm George Baker killed six innocent people, including his ex girlfriend and son. The controlled rage and brutality of that night had a lasting impact on Ted and the people whose loved ones were murdered in cold blood. He has written a book titled Bloody Odyssey about the events leading up to that massacre, what took place on the night, and the aftermath. It's a harrowing account of mass murder on a scale rarely seen in this country. Ted carries with him the attention to detail which is part of being a good detective. We're going to talk about the murder of six people, and I think it's appropriate this stage to mention the names of the six victims. Kerry Gannon, Lisa Gannon, who is also eight months pregnant, Thomas Gannon, David Baker, Ross Smith, Leslie Bred. They are all murdered on the evening the twenty seventh of October nineteen ninety two. Ted Bethnon. Wait, welcome to I Catch Killers.
Thank you very much, Gary. I appreciate the chance to talk about my book, Bloody Odyssey.
Well, it's been been a long time, hasn't it.
It has, mate, Yeah, it has. It's as I mentioned before, when I met you. You haven't changed, and hopefully I haven't changed.
Yeah, we haven't aged a bit.
We have an aged a bit.
I've got the same hairstyle.
You've got the same hairstyle. Yeah.
I think it was the early nineties when we started working together in North Region crimes.
It was it was nineteen ninety five, I believe. And I came up from a Newcastle where I was working in the North Region office in Newcastle in the child Protection unit and I had a personal issue where a marriage failed basically and I had to I chose to leave Newcastle and it was very fortunate to get a job firstly in the Gosford drugs, good place I didn't want to be. And a friend of mine, Phil Vickery, who was a sergeant at the Child Protection in Chatswood, spoke to the at the time Ron Smith, and they gave me a chance and I joined the team there in major crime. Chatswould right next to your office.
Some of the I in my memory and recollection of the cops. It was some of the best years in my time. I enjoyed that so much. And when we reconnected a month or so ago and we're talking and I didn't realize well, I realized that you and Peter Harkness had got together. But love's found the way and you're still together.
Love. Love did find a way. It certainly didn't bloom immediately in that office. Peter was she's twelve years younger than me and saw me as damage goods probably, But we worked together very closely in that office. And then it's so funny the course of events. And during that time we did a lot of work in your office with you guys, and we had the workload of the child protection there was immense And the Royal Commission happened in ninety five ninety six, and the impetus on the second phase of the Royal Comision, the peder segment. They were keen to change the way police were doing child sexual assault investigations. And Peter and I were basically taken out of that office after the Royal Commission and forced transferred into an office in Redfern. But we had to travel back to the Northern Beaches to do our job because in essence, the Royal Commission created a situation where we weren't trusted. We needed this big command of control over us, which happened with all the crime squads at the time, as you remember, with the organizational structure and changes that happened. And when we moved to Redfern, we became really close and over time we realized we were falling in love. And then I got a job at the academy, teaching on the detectives on the investigator's course at the Academy, and Peter went to the fraud squad and then we thought we love each other, and then both and I said to her one day, after twelve months at the academy, I said, there's two jobs going in the country, one a detective at Noarandra and a detective at Griffith. Do you want to come? At that time we're just boyfriend and girlfriend said yes, So we ended up going time.
I'm going to have to change the name to catch killers? Do I find love of recent times? All the police I get on the found relationships. Maybe we should have spent more time, more time concentrating on the work than looking for love.
Well for sure, But Garry on reflection, you know, when you're in those intense work for places that we're in and you're working so closely with somebody, it's not it's hard to have a normal life and your partner in the work sense. Peter and I just became partners in a work sense. It just grew into that relationship. You know, later on down the year, psychiatrists have said we're co dependent on each other, which I don't see that as a bad thing because we survived together and we're still together.
No, it's beneficial to have someone that understands the work that you're going through. And yeah, there were some pretty intense times. I think I started first working with Peter when she was working on the North Shore rapist case with Jaco and Andy Waterman. Who ya at your stage of your career, my stage all looked up to those guys that was working with the legends.
Absolutely absolutely, And I know Peter from memory. Peter was picked for that job because of her interviewing skills and her high level detective skills. And she didn't realize at the time, but she was quite privileged to be in that position. I mean a lot of a lot of others around her would would have envied her that position.
Yeah, we're working working with legends like Paul Jacob and Andy Andy Wardoman. That's where I attribute those two for teaching me my trade. Absolutely detective, but they were good years and I think the culture that we had, and yeah, there was shame that came to all major crime detectives when the Royal Commission came through. But I've got to say the respect I had for the people that were our bosses at the time at North Region that I haven't found something like that in the cops since at that time.
No definitely changed. It was more about there was a more collegiate approach in the crime squad with the bosses that we had. I mean, you could have had bosses who really just treated us as numbers. But I think Ron Smith and the bosses that I met with the crime squad, John Heslop, even when I went over to Redfern to the new sex crime Squad, that they had your back in a lot of sense. But then eventually over time bureaucracy kind of got on top of them.
I often think about leadership in the police and I remember, like Ron as a boss and I was fortunate enough to also have Nick Cowdos as a boss as well.
He trained Peter as a UC. Well, she.
Is blessed she's be trained by the masters. But you did the right thing and you worked for those people. And I think the difference with what I see with some of the leadership now and even before I left left the police, is that the people that were leading you had done the work. And I think in an organization like the police, that counts for so much. Absolutely, Yeah, if Ron Smith tells me to do something, I do it because I know he's done it before. And like I worked under Paul Mager and then Paul Jacob and Andy Warterman getting advice about homicide, well they'd been there, done that, and they were people that you wanted to do the right thing by because the respect that you had.
And they're not pretending and that and obviously that all changed after the Royal Commission and they increased the layers of accountability with inspectors and you had people being promoted way above beyond their experience. Then it just become too bure Greek. They wanted to break up the bureaucracy which they saw has potentially corrupt or inert, and created a bigger bureaucracy that made it more inert.
And we lost lost the focus. And I think when I look back speaking to you and Peter, who was with the catch up before we started the podcast that at those those times we were allowed to concentrate on being detective. That's right, that was the sole focus. It wasn't about all these management and filling out these forms. And you know, we're running the business as a profit. Well it's not a business. It's a police now, and accountability is important. But accountability at the cost of proficiency, you know, and outcomes is not good. And that's what's happened subsequently. I wonder why, in part that's the reason we're having trouble attracting people to the police across across the country because something that saddens me that all the police, all the state police forces, federal police force, all seemed to be struggling with resourcing the police. And I think back at the times that we had it was the world's greatest job.
There was the world's greatest job. And you know, there's multiple issues. I think that the increase of social media, the increase of accountability, hasn't been matched by an increase in income or end or support or end or career development. And so I think police in the field now may very well feel a bit more isolated. I never felt isolated wherever I was, whatever job I was. Even when I worked in the as a country detective down in Arrange, out by myself in the middle of the night, I just knew that someone was going to be there from a bus down to colleague was. Now I get the sense that that's not the same. I actually had an experience recently where I had a conversation with a young constable and he was his counter skills were very non existent. There wasn't any person any service approach at the counter. And then I got to talk to him about it, Toddy, I was retired, and then I'm talking about my environment with the Police Association and all that sort of stuff, and he was just so negative about everything that's going on in the job. And I could see it on his face and I could feel it in the room. And I thought to himself like, and I said, how much service have you got? He said two and a half years, And I thought, you know, I don't know how it's got to that.
I think there's a lot of pressure on junior police because yeah, and again if I reference it to what we met in major crime, yes, that you find yourself in tough pressure positions on investigations. You know, do I go left? I do go right. What I could go to people like Paul Jacob, Paul mager Ronson and say, okay, this is the lemma I've got, and they would give me good sage advice on how to deal with the situation because they've been there and done that. I worry, and I'm looking from the outside as you are. I'm worried that sort of experience has been lost and so the young people. It's a blind leading the blind. Then they gave you a boss to ask for advice on the homicide, and that boss may have never worked a homicide.
In this case. Yeah, exactly, You're exactly right. You know I had the same situation with Phil Vickery, my sergeant in the child protection there at Chatswood. You know that you just felt like you could make a mistake and then own up to it and then get the right guidance and then just get.
And like Phil had all that experience, like he was from the under the expert in that era. All right, well, we've got slightly distracted, but happened.
Don't get me started worry about the police.
When old colleagues catch up. Why did you join the cops?
Well I had I was saying, before to your producer. I did an apprenticeship as a pastry cook when I was a young man because I surfed and pastry cooks could work all night and surf all day. And I was quite unsettled throughout my life. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. I know, when I was a young man, I had a conversation once with my mother that I wanted to be a policeman, and she said, that's not going to happen. She's a Bankstown girl, and she said, I hate coppers. And I never really went down that path. So I did the pastry cooking and then went back to school and was kind of like I was lost in a sense. And it was only after I started a nursing or became a psych nurse.
That's right, I forgot.
Yeah, yeah, I did a psych nasing. Well, I did. Before that, I did some journalism or surf journalism. I wrote. I wrote for a surf magazine and did so I had an interest in writing. But then I did the pych nursing and I really loved it. And in hindsight reflect on it, my three sisters and nurses, and my grandmother was a nurse, so it was kind of the way I was going to go. But I really loved the psych nursing because it was intense, but it was a helping profession and I learned a lot, a lot of skills. But when I turned thirty thirty one the New South I was police force in those days, recruited really heavily in Newcastle and they took a lot of tradees, a lot of people with life experience. So at thirty two I just applied and got in. So on that seventh of May I started at the Police Academy at Goldben and I knew the moment I walked in the gate at Gobin on that day, this is what I want to do. It just felt right, garyt. You know, like I never I never had a moment's reflection of this is a shit job. Even though I'd been over the years, had been in some really difficult situations. I always felt that this is what I wanted to do. And I was asked before by your producer, how do I feel about And I said if they rang me and asked me to come back tomorrow, I probably would because you know, I feel that was my vocation, that was my mission in life.
Yeah, you're fortunately in life, aren't you if you find something that you're passionate about and you're getting paid to do it. That's how I felt with the cops too, and exactly as you relate. At the moment I walked in the academy, I thought, Yep, this is what I want to do. They're yelling at you, screaming at you, and you're having a bit of fun and they're paying you, and I'm thinking, how good is this?
Yeah? That was. We had two hundred plus and mostly men and actually the police commissioners current police commissions out of my class, Karen web we had had. It was just a great environment of people from all around the place, mostly young. I was thirty two, so I was one.
Of the old one.
There's a couple older than me, but not many. And then my first station at WI, straight up, it was just like it felt like people I'd known all my life. It felt no strangers, and it felt like that everywhere I went.
Basically, and what drew you to becoming a detective.
Well, oddly enough, once I got into the police station and I was in uniform work, I just didn't I just wasn't stimulated by being in uniform, whether I had an inquiring mind, or I had a bigger ego or whatever, and I was very fortunate. Why the detective sergeant there was a Bill Erickson, and I had a meal room conversation with him one day he said I'd like to have a go, and he rolled his eyes and thought everyone asked me that. And then I just persisted, and eventually, after twelve or eighty months in uniform, I was given an a list spot. While it just happened that one came up. It's about opportunity. One came up, and I was given an aily spot and then went through the process of the investigator's course and then eventually the d's course, mentored by some really good police like Dave Darcy. He was a mentor there. Peter Ryan. You probably don't know George Adrian Ducker, Peter Donaldson.
I know Blue Ducker, Blue Daker. Yeah.
Felt great for me. And because I came to that role as a mature thirty to thirty two year old, I never had any I kind of fitted in with the crew.
Yeah, you know, and you had that life experience and way to navigate through large characters. Yeah, that's right, and navigate your way through ted We got you on here talking about crime that I don't think for some reason. I think it happened so suddenly, but people don't fully appreciate it. But murder of six people on one night on the Central Coast is the Central Coast massacre. And yeah, it doesn't get spoken about a lot, but it was such a horrendous crime. And I've spent the past week reading your book and it sort of brought back all the things that happened on that crime. Yeah, you were you were a young detective at the time.
Yeah, well I was designated. I got designated around about that time, so yeah, I was relatively green.
Yes, And we're working on the Central Cast.
Working at a while attached to the wildlof as Wines detectives.
On did you ever think? And I want to break just so we know and say the listeners know how we're going to do this. I want you to tell us a full story, but before do just an overview of it. That's a serious crime. Did that shock you the magnitude of the crime and the.
Nightly did on the night? I mean the apprehension that me and Steve Potter, the young a lister that attended one of the crime scenes with a three separate crime scenes across the whole. So every detective on the central coast, across three l a c. What do they call patrols or l A C's, whatever they were called in those days, was involved and and it was quite shocking, but it was it was very exciting as well in a sense because it was the biggest thing that I that i'd been involved.
Well, reading the book, I the adrenaline was kicking in. I'm thinking, yeah, the chaos that the surrounds an event like that, yes, and not an adrenaline then that you're looking for the blood or no, no, no, the excitement that's just okay, this is this is as real as it gets.
A big career tests and I wanted to do it properly, and Steve and I, you know, we were given the responsibility of that crime scene and doing and doing statements, knowing full well that everything you said and did eventually could end up in a in a high court situation.
Basically, you basically got a gunman on the rage going around just killing killing people. So I want to I want to break it down in the chronology of it and not dissimilar in the way that you've you've set out the book, but let's talk about the offend. The first up, Malcolm Baker, who is who is a person?
Malcolm Baker was born into a family a mother, father, two sisters. His father was a returned soldier from the Second World War, but he came back from the war completely damaged. Came back from the war with a lot of souvenirs like spears and whatever, and came back completely addicted to guns. So in the sixties and whatever, he had this family situation with his wife, son and two daughters, and I think Malcolm was the second born, and it was just fear. It was one of those situations where he was a drunk. They lived their life in fear. So Backer grew up in a house where it was just constant fear, constant violence from his father in the initial sense. His father did things like threatening them with threatened the family with firearms. He'd let a firearm off at at his wife and friend, talking over the fence, and accuser of infidelity and punching his wife. A hell of a lots a lot of domestic violence. And he saw all this. At the times he tried to intervene, he was knocked unconscious on one occasion, and he was beaten on other occasions by his father. And I don't want to make an excuse for the guy, because you've got to be responsible for your actions in life. And he had a shit start really in that context, and then he actually subsumed some of his father's personality traits cruelty like vanity, uncontrollable rage, all those sort of things that he saw on his father. Baker wasn't a drinker and didn't have a drug problem. He didn't come to that is a petty criminal as he's growing up doing stealing cars last knear. He's a bit of a fraudster as well. So he's so everasually became a minime of his dad in a sense if you can read what the evidence, which is scant, the evidence that we have about his dad from psychological reports that I researched, and in doing that, he developed this hate for the opposite sex when he was quite capable of having women in his life. He had three wives or four wives, nine children before he got to the point of carry Anne Kerrian Gannon. But in all those previous relationships that all the reporting is that he was violent, he was abusive, He was coercive control. He used coercive control, He was jealous, all those things which I think he's bringing to his adult life from his dad.
It was like reading the book on how it came out. It was like a sense of entitlement and ownership of a woman that he's with.
Yeah. True, Gary, It's not something that I can understand as a mar I'm a heterosexual male, and at no point have I ever wanted to do what it's reported, Baker, did you know punching women in the face, for instance, you know, ruling their life that they can't go out, won't letting them, won't let them work, won't let them have a social life, accusing them of infidelity, and all those sorts of things. That the horror that the women that were in his life, some of them didn't hang around for very long. The horror that he inflicted on those women would be unmatched in a sense. And it's quite typical of what we see is going on around society today.
Well, and happily that we're starting to use the term coercive control. And I think that's something that we're becoming aware of. We know the patterns, you see the patterns, but we didn't really have a word to place on it, but the word, Yeah, we're starting to talk about that and understanding the impact. So he not only had the controlling aspect in the coercive control, it was also the physical abuse.
Physical abuse as well. Yeah, in the case of carry, and he obviously didn't want it to work, didn't want to have any finances, didn't want her to see anybody, didn't want it to have any friends. It was only, as I say reporting the book, that once she got away from his grip, his psychological grip or coercive grip, that things improved for her, but unfortunately turned really pair shape.
For the just blind obsession and jealousy that ye him to come about.
Yeah, absolutely absolutely, But getting to know the man through the research, we actually met him in the first instance at a fraud doing a fraud investigation, which has talked about in the book, So I had first hand knowledge of who he was in his presence. But yeah, the jealousy thing was just all consuming, and I just don't understand how that is when it was actually to his detriment that he the way he behaved and the things that he did because he was just leaving a trail of human wreckage behind him happened.
Did they ever get called into account for the previous relationships and the domestic violence.
There's no record of that, so that that was just the day that women report it. Yeah, you know, and that's part of the reason that it was so endemic in those days, and probably part of the reason that's still a big problem.
And without being psychologist, probably emboldens him to think, well, I've got the way of it before. That's right, I can get away over it again.
That's right. Well, they had some of the women that have interviewed in the book, they're in the book ex Wives. They relied on him because he became the breadwinner or whatever. There might have been a case where they were getting sendling benefits or whatever. But in those days, and I reflect on my mother's and father and my young family. You know, my mom and dad weren't in a very happy relationship, but they stayed together out of necessity for each other, out of necessity the state, for the family and whatever. And this is what happened with some of the women, some of the previous wives.
They hung in there longer.
Hung in there, longer than they should have, until he got to the point where where they feared for their life.
Well, there weren't. There weren't many options and still there's not enough options now for women to escape from them.
No refugees, no DV services, the police, you know, we know what the police. How the police reacted to DV matters in the nineties and the early eighties, you know, a completely different approach.
Yeah, so when what was the circumstances in which he met Kerry. Well they were a Gannon.
Kerry and Gannon. They were in the western suburbs of Sydney and apparently Baker was married at the time, and over time he just convinced her because she was sixteen years of age at the time, nineteen eighty five, and he was twenty plus years older than her. And you can imagine this man who has this skill of this coercive control skill or this the influence he had on this sixteen year old girl and she just fell into his spell.
Well it's a real power imbalance that, Like, you've got the significant age difference, but you're looking at the sixteen year old's life experience and then a man in his late late thirties.
Yeah, that's right, that's right, A powerful man in the sense that the psychological tools that he had to manipulate and to trick people. Oh, they were at their apex then, and she was an easy.
Catch, sixteen year old girl. So they ended up in the relationship.
They ended up in a relationship and it was a sexual relationship, and they were living together. And he burned a lot of bridges because he not only was he a misogynist, whatever, when he the relationships he had with people that he did business with or friends or mates or whatever. He burned a lot of bridges. And eventually he thought he'd get out of the Sydney and he moved up the Terrygel moved up to Terygol in nineteen eighty eight.
Okay, so for people that you know, not Sydney base, you've got the western suburbs of Sydney basically then moving up to the central case Terrile, so you're looking at the sort of an hour and a half two hours north of Sydney.
Yeah, and Tarrgoll in eighty eight would would have been quite It was a holiday area for Sydney people and whatever, but it still had the opportunity for people that didn't have a lot of money to go there. And find a spot, and he found a spot on Scenic Drive where it was basically just a small property off the Scenic Drive and he had the capacity to have two caravans, so he brought two cheap caravans and he used that. He found again young women and young people who were homeless or at their wits end, and he put them into these caravans and charged them rent and whatever. Potentially he was prostituting some of the women out of there. There's evidence that he was a driver for an escort agency in Gosford, so he's doing all sorts of devious things to make money around the Central Coast and eventually carry Anne decided to come up to live with. He invited her up to live so hic co worster up there, yeah okay, yeah, completely to the complete resistance from her mother and her.
Family, so her family could see them.
From the outset. From the outset. Her mother and her family a father and sister Lisa, and a brother, young brother Tom. They were all very resistant to the move, but it happened.
How old was she when she moved up there.
She's I met in eighty eight, so she would have been eighteen.
Okay, yep, all right, so he's probably forty.
Yeah, probably, well he's about twenty two years old, yeah.
Yeah, okay, and moved up. There was how long were they together? Was there any stable time in the relationship?
Okay, so they moved up in eighty eight disaster from day one disaster from day one, she tried. She realized after time there was a catalyst. Her sister Lisa wanted to younger sister Lisa wanted to leave the western Sydney, so she decided to come up to the central coast, Carrie Anne's younger, younger sister Lisa, and she had nowhere to live, and then Baker invited her to come and live in the caravan in the house with the caravans and whatever. Within days of her being there, Baker, when Carrie is not at the house, Bakers has tried to coax her into the bedroom for sex. And she's resisted this, and she kept that from herself. She she didn't tell carry In about that till later.
And says so much about him, doesn't it. Just when in the book when it said the younger sister, I was thinking, well, we know what's going to happen there.
And exactly exactly what happened, so and that Kerrian didn't know about that at the time. Lisa and he told about that some time later. But Krrian realized when she's there, she saw a different well, she saw a world that wasn't western suburbs. He saw opportunity, the beautiful beaches. She kind of had slight interactions with other people that weren't in Baker's So.
I suppose at that age bosoming like seeing the world what the world's got the offer.
Absolutely, absolutely, and she decided that she's going to figure out a way to leave him, and that took her two or three years to do that.
That's when when he's controlling aspect really came into the fall absolutely and he fought the tooth and nail, and yeah, tell us through that. So we've got the situation that we've got carrying. Moved up, left family against the family's wishes, moved up to the Central Coast, living with Baker. Younger sisters come up. She's living there and she's thinking I want a different life and starting to move away. Talk about the efforts that she made to move away and the efforts that he made to keep control over.
So eventually she wanted to get a job. She wanted some independence. Turning a twenty year old woman twenty plasses, she wanted some independence, and she badgered him. She wanted a job. Eventually he relented, and I'm not quite unsure why he did that, but he did. He relented and let her get a job at the Evocan nursing Home. And it was at the Evocan nursing Home where she met two beautiful women who mentioned in the book Sylvia and Maureen, and that these women basically mentored her, and she saw a different life. She had a job, she had an income, she had women that were normal, She had people that were normal, saw people living lives that were normal. At night, she was going back to that claustrophobic relationship she had with Baker. But she grew, she developed some sort of energy or some sort of courage in that sense to say, well, I want more, I want more, want more. Baker did everything he could to spoil the job and whatever. So from out of that experience in the nursing home, she decided to tell Baker, I want to leave, I want my own flat. He relented, He resisted, and resisted and resisted. I'm unclear of what sort of domestic violence he inflicted on her that period. There was a circumstance where he did basher during that period, and eventually he relented and found for her a flat at Wombrel, which is just a neighboring suburb of Terregol in the central case. But in finding her the flat, he organized the flat, He set up the bonds. He actually made a spare key for himself. He made a spare key for a car, and she went and let her go to the flat. She thought she was getting away from him. She thought that she was having a new life, but he was watching her, stalking her. Had access to the flat all over this time and got to the point she started working in nursing home in nineteen ninety one, So that was in nineteen ninety two that he set her up in the flat at one Brill. But he he just wouldn't give her any space. He demanded that she drove from one Brell to the nursing home, which she had to go past his place, that he stopped every day and saw and all that sort of stuff.
It was fake independence, wasn't it that?
It was contrived independence that he contrived. He contrived, so she realized over time that nothing had changed. She was sleeping in a house by herself. I'm sure he was turning up and pressuring her for sex while she was at wm Brill as well, but yeah, over time she just realized that this is this is not working. Until that till that fateful night he started.
He started turning up with the work at the nursing home.
He started to turn up with the work all the time, particularly when she was moving to the point where she didn't want to have a bar of him.
The narrative that he would deliver to is to everyone he's speaking to, whether it be her family, her work, colleagues, or whatever, I just want to be friends, Yeah, just like I get frustrated and angry when you see you see people like that, and you know, and maybe it's because of a life experience or just the work that we've done. You know this is not going to end well.
No, it's that control. I just want to be friends. But he still wanted to have sex with her. You know, he had those conversations with friends that I should be safe for having sex with me because I'm cleaner, rather than having sex with someone else. So the sex thing was quite quite a prominent thing, and he's thinking about that, about the relationship. But yeah, but the overriding of the umbrella of it or was his control. You just want to complete control.
And the had some of the ladies that you mentioned in the nursing home that would actually stand up to him, and.
They stood up to him. He'd come to the nursing home and demand to see Kerry in whatever they protect her, which is quite brave in hindsight when you think about the capacity that he demonstrated, you know some months later when he went and did what he did, but they stood up to him, and oddly enough, on reflection, he demonstrated a type of cowardice. And for me, the cowardice was, yes, he turned up, he bullied these women and he stood at the door, but he never had the courage to do any more. And when they said no and gave him that cold face no, he always turned.
And went awake away.
But he come back. He would always come back.
And when did his son land on the scene, so his son to his So just because it gets a little complicated, So we've got Malcolm Baker, we got carry Anne living separated, but the son, his son David from a previous relationship.
From his second wife, I believe, wanted.
To reconnect with the father.
Well, he was living on the coast earlier, some years earlier to that, so he reconnected shortly after the Baker moved to the coast and that's where he met carry Ann and then so they had quite a ordinary father's son relationship. David wanted to be in his father's life, but he found it really hard because his father was so obsessive and so demanding. But he persisted with his dad to have got to the point where he eventually had enough of his father's bullying and badgering that he left the Central Coast and his father started to accuse him David of having an affair with Kerry An. Oddly enough, they were becoming intimate during that time. Cary Ane was reaching out to David because he was the closest thing to Baker at that time, reaching out to him for some sort of guidance and support, and they did end up in some sort of relationship during that time, and Baker was suspicious.
Of that that would have seen his anger and that.
Was the Green Eye Dragon. The jealousy thing happened, and it was only near the murders, which we're talking about later that David disclosed to his dad after many many months or eighteen months of deny, that he'd actually had a relationship with Karen because he thought it would be best to tell his dad the truth, and his dad would go, Okay, now you've told me the truth. Everything's all right. But it didn't work.
That was the wrong call with other people that he had fallen out with Ross Smith was that the business transaction. So this is we're just what I'm trying to do here is just getting the sense of it. And I look at a lot of this stuff as sort of the red flags. You're thinking, this Blake is a ticking time bomb. Absolutely, and so what was he's falling out there? But that even led into him controlling Kerry Anne, wasn't it because he would use her name for his business ventures.
And so that's when I first met Malcolm Baker and Kerriyanne at one describe that to me, Well, they came to the police station. Baker had this idea that he would get a house up on the coal fields. That says noock at Millfielder says not, and he'll take Carryann away from everything that was happening because he's took her away from Sydney and the family pressures whatever was there and her father Tom was visiting, and a brother was there and Anne and a mother was visiting. She He saw that that that and David Baker was becoming involved. He saw that that people was losing controls control, basically losing controler. So he had this idea of building a house, of moving to a house up in Millfield. And Ross Warren Smith was a not a very good house mover on the Central Coast. He was basically a fraudster and a crook, but he had he had this business of moving houses. And Ross had a capacity to move a house somewhere.
And he's like, we're talking literally picking pick up house up, crying on the back of the truck.
And he had the capacity. Then he would sell his skills. I can move the house, but I can also renovate it to the point of getting to be livable. And so Baker had had acquired some land up there somehow and the house was on the property. The house was moved to the property and the girl with Smith was to move the house to the renovations or whatever, and Baker would Carry Ann was the person who was on the contract to do it, not Baker. So I first met him when they came to the police station in nineteen ninety and carry Anne wanted to complain about Ross Smith taking all this money and not doing the house smooth because he didn't actually do it. He actually did. Ross Smith actually sold the same house to two other couples to get the money. He's a good crook, well not a good crook, he was a crook anyway. So Carry Anne was at the counter on this particular that's when I first met her, and I saw Baker outside the door, hiding behind the screen. And as I spoke to carry And she told me this story about I want to complain about this man, Ross Smith, who I gave all this money to perform these jobs that he didn't do so basically obtained benefit by deception or something of fraud. And as I was speaking to carry And I said, well, you'll need to give me a police statement. You're happy to come upstairs, and carry Anne turned on a heel and I I thought she was going to leave the police station. Baker walked into the police station and stood in front of us and that's when I spoke to Baker and he basically stopped her from walking out.
What was your first impressions of him?
But he was just like cold, like psychopathically cold, like he had no He had the aviator glasses on and his uniform of a flannel at shirt and his blue jeans and his blue blue singlet underneath, but he just had no effect. Coming from a psych nursing background, you can tell some people have no effect, and he had no effect. He was just cold. And she just said, okay, let's go up to the office. So we went up to my office at while Saturday, down in the office and he stood in the doorway and listen. He wouldn't take a seat in the office, he wouldn't participate, to the point where I had to ask him, you know, what are you doing? Are you all right? Mate? And eventually we got through the statement an a list in the office. Scottie Haynes, he and I did the investigation. Smith was charged eighty months down the track and Smith was found guilty on some of the offenses, and unfortunately the magistrate didn't order any compensation, so Baker Baker lost the money. But it was Baker that put carry up just on the protest that she's the one that was doing the deal. It's her money that she paid.
Again, it's that manipulation. Then control was well, he.
Wanted to cover up the fact that he had money because he was routing centerin and he wanted to cover up the fact that he had the capacity to do this and just wanted wanted her to be the front.
And the fact he'd been ripped off by Ross Smith. He became obsessed with him.
Completely obsessed with it, and that ber lit a flame for revenge that obviously was extinguished on that night in nineteen ninety two.
What was the circumstances that led to his guns being taken off him? Was that carry Anne reporting the domestic violence? What stage did that come in and what was the nature of that.
Good So, a week or say before the seventh of October nineteen ninety two, Baker went into the flat at Carrins, broke into the flat in the middle of the night and wake her up and had a conversation with her. She told him to leave, pushed him, then he punched her in the face. So he had he kept and the flat. Okay, he had access to the place all the time, so he just let himself in, broke in with the key and had a conversation. She told him to get out, leave her alone, hit her with her right punched her in the face, give her a bit black eye. She had a week off work, went back to work. Sylvia and Moore in at the house at work said what happened, and she eventually told them and they encouraged her to go to Terryko Police to apply for an avare.
And this is, if my reading of it too, this is how the downtrodden victims of domestic violence and that become She was embarrassed about having the having the black eye.
She was she wanted to hide it for a week from the friends.
And it's sad, isn't it. Yeah, you get to that point that they're victims, they've been assaulted and they're embarrassed.
Yeah, But if you think about it, it's the pinnacle of control of the offender, like the fact that he knows he can go and bash carry out and the consequences he thought at the time are negligent.
What she going to do?
What she going to do? It was only through the encouragement of her friends at the Evoca nursing home.
They gave her the strength.
They gave her the strength and the advice and she she went with a sister to to to Gospeld local Quarter a couple of days later, got the a v O two days later with the matter was to be heard. So the police acted very quickly. And in those days the legislation allowed the police to go into the house not under a search rank, but to be invited into the house and to search for weapons. Baker had possibly ten weapons. They found five or seven of the weapons, but he had two hidden had one hidden in the in his shed down.
So those were firearms that he had. So yeah, he's.
A license firearm holder. He had In those days, you didn't have to register how many firearms you were, which was a flaw in the legislation. I mean, this is all post Port Arthur and the like. The New South Wales government was kind of wrangling with the notion about how we can deal with the firearms issue. But he didn't have to have them identified in a registration.
Of okay, so registered the firearm license holder have as many fi.
As many as his firearms as his one, you know, and they just did regular checks and the like, and he obviously didn't hand over all his firearms. But that moment that the police came, Teriger police came and took took the weapons was for me, was the straw that breake the camel's back in his sense, because he loved the guns, and he loved the power and the effect that it had and people knowing he had the guns more than anything.
And the psychology of it. Do you think, how dare she calls this drama?
Absolutely? Absolutely what did I do? All I did was punch in a face. Later in his interview, I punched her a number of times, so you know she deserved it.
So it's like she's betrayed him by going to the police. Absolutely, when the firearms were seized, that was how long before the actual neither of them murder?
Two weeks?
Right, Okay, So it was all all brilliing, wasn't it. Did he appear at court? Did he get charred?
He turned up at court for the A v O and didn't contest, which is on reflection, you would have thought that he was a type of bully that would stand up and fight tooth and nail to oppose those things. But he agreed to the conditions on the AVO, but knowing full well that subsequent with subsequent days following that, he breached it two or three times. He chased it one day when she's going to work and stopped her in a car and jumped into a car and took her keys and threatened her or whatever. He turned up at the house, he rang, or he demanded other people ringer. So he was constantly breaching the AVO during that period, right up until the night of the murders.
There was a couple of people that he spoke to after the firearms were seized, and he went in the great detail to say, I don't care because I've got some more that. So he was blaming the fact that he's still got the firearms.
So advertising the fact that he had the fight.
And who were the people who was a consulted speaking to.
But oddly enough, he went back to a mate associates that he had through through He didn't have a lot of good mates. He just had people that knew through business and whatever. And he went back there and basically cried on the shoulder and he did that whole wow is me, you know, look how poorly I've been treated? This is wrong? How can they do this to me? I did nothing wrong, you know. And then June, the course of the evening, he would talk about, well, you know, I'm gonna get them. I'm going to kill them. I've got they didn't take all my firearms, you know, I've got some in the car. His wife, one of his wives from his previous wives, talks about the fact that he always drove around with firearms in the back of his car. So this has been a lifelong thing, and he started to just it's an interesting thing that he did because there's two ways to you can look at it. He either was a cry for help. I want people to help me. This woman has done me bad. I'm losing the plot. Come and someone helped. Alternatively, he was just verbalizing what he was thinking in his private moments about what he was planning to do.
There was some part where he went down and cried on the shoulder of his ex wife, and his ex wife worried about having him there and flicked him onto the daughter.
The daughter yes, yeah, yeah, because she didn't want him in the house because she knew that he'd had had would have guns in the car.
And he and he would talk about his obsession like the conversation seemed to steer towards Kerry Anne. The hatred of a family.
Hatred of a family.
We would be perfect, And those women at the nursing home if they all just stayed away with perfect.
Yep, yep, all the women, and the increased bile and hatred that he had for his son once he realized that David had been involved.
So at what stage prior to the shooting spree did he become aware that David had, in fact had a relationship with Kerry Anne.
It was pretty close to the shooting spree, wasn't It wasn't that far along, he always thought it happened there was an incident where when Kerry and David some six or twelve months before, Kerriyen and David wanted to meet and David was going to babysit a friend at a friend's house and carry Anne. She invited Carrien to come that night he was babysitting, and he wrote wrote the friend's address on a piece of paper, and Carrie Ane wrote it on a piece of paper and that's what she used to get to the address. And they spent the night there at that address and went to the pub and whatever. On one of the evenings subsequent to that, when Baker was snooping through Carrie Anne's wonderl flat, he found the note with a piece of paper on it which had the address on it, and he started ringing the owner of the house, accusing him of an infidelity towards Kerriyen. And it was only laid down the track that he realized that the David told him that that the truth about this is oh yeah, carry and came around we've just been friends and whatever. But that increased his motivation to hassle David to tell him the truth about about the relationship.
I look at the build up there ted and it was virtually a full time job. He was completely just so it was just obsessed. All the conversations for twelve months leading up to the murder.
He completely obsessed because he didn't work. He just sold second end parts. He's ran. You know, he's taking money off the poor kids in the caravan. The caravans that he rented is on settling health benefits. You know. So you had had a lot of time to do.
This and you look at those those periods of time, like we've all got friends that have got an issue with something. It might be a relationship, it might be a work issue, or where it becomes an obsession and obsession and the conversation starts so straight into it. It's not how are you, It's virtually there. I've probably burned the same, You've burned the same. We all get things that are stuck stuck in your head. But this, I look at it and I just can't help him. With the benefit of the hindsight, that's always great, But there was just so many red flags and warning.
And some of the people that he spoke to were fully aware that it was a red flag, and I'm I'm amused at the lack of foresight to act on it. Now, whether that was in the context of because they are on the Western Sydney, whether there was in the context of their attitude towards police, or their attitude towards domestic violence. They were victims of his power and coercive control. You know, these women in particular, weren't going to rise up and speak out when they know what he was like, because he did it to them for years, and so there was that fear thing some of the individual friends or business associates that that he revealed that he spoke to and said that he was angry and was going to kill everybody. Why they didn't raise their hand, I don't know, that's up to them to speak to. But again, you put it in the context of the society and the culture at the time. Put it in the context of his power over people, in terms of the way he manipulated people and the fear that he created in people. Everyone might have just been really shit scared of him.
Yeah, there's so many reasons why it didn't come up, because there was so many opportunities to nip it in the bud before the massacre occurred. But there there's this thing that's us sitting here, know, like judging today and with the standards today, and it makes me feel good about the fact that we've really woken up to the concerns with domestic violence and the amount of people that we see killed as a result of relationship breakups. And that's right.
Yeah, absolutely, it would be completely different. An individual like this would hopefully think it's christ and I believe true, would soon be cut down very quickly if did this sort of behavior. With a lot of the domestic violence laws that we've got now and the attitude to policing and the community attitude to domestic violence. And now that we've got this legislation in New South Wales about coercive control, hopefully it never happens again. I'm sure it will, but on a scale of this.
Well, I think people listening to this because when we go into what actually happened on the night, the brutality and the callousness of what's happened, but people listening to this, I hope it's an indicator of warning that if someone's verbalizing continuously that I'm going to kill this person or I'm going to do this, and just this vent and hate and then saying yeah, I don't the cops of Susana firearms, but don't worry, I've kept some firearms. I'm going to kill these people. Yes, so fairly clear plans.
There's a lot of lot of raised on debtra there.
Yeah, so okay, tick tick tick. So just before we take a break, what was a catalyst on the day to the seventh, twenty seventh of Octavier. What day of the week.
Was it was Tuesday?
Tuesday? What was a catalyst that day? What was his movements on that day? Because you've been on the investigation, the research for your book. You get a clear sense of what these movements were on the day. So just talk us through that day, what the things happened that day.
I get the sense on that day that he was at the height of his brooding, at the height of his anger and frustration about what about the failure of his relationship with Carry. And there's a circumstance on the day or in the recent days, earlier days where he had a conversation with Carrianne's mother down in Terarigo where he badgered her in Terarigel stuck up behind her while she's walking down the street in his Volvo Sedan and demanded to see her and she told him to get lost and whatever. He followed her up the hill to Barnhill Drive and badgering her, I want to see Cary, I want to see Cary, and she just told him to get lost. That resistance, that powerful resistance by Kerrian's mother, I think would would have started the fire for over the next few days where he would just get to the point where I want to do something. So on the night on the evening of the murders, on the twenty seventh of October, he's arrived at that. I found out subsequent to the publication of the book that he'd actually been seen cruising up and down Barnhill Drive on the Sunday Sunday before the Tuesday. Nobody reported that Carry Anne didn't know about that. That was another member of the family.
It was another person that so cruising past her place.
Yeah, Barnhill Drive doing what he did to the flat at one brill just just their intimidation or whatever, just seeing who's there, seen with us, she's with a fuller or whatever. But on the afternoon of the twenty seventh, he parked down the graven the street which was a tea inter section at Barnhill Drive, hid his car and then he went over to the to the house on the pretense. And he talks about that in his interviews of having a talk with carry and he just wanted to talk to her. And as he's walking up the stairs, he hears Carry Anne in the bedroom. She subsequently moved to Barnhill Drive. Here's Carry Anne in the bedroom talking to a mile. At that point a switch has flicked and then he's then left the house, gone back to his house. The shotgun that he'd had always had the Bentley twelve gage. He sawn the butt off that and got a full fill that full of ammunition, got a bandalia full of ammunition and returned to the house.
Okay, so that that that was the day of the day of the moon. He's gone gone the house after cruising up and down and just obsessed. So the Carrie Anne's mother has not bowed down to him when he's demanding to see a few days before.
Earlier that night, I'm sorry I forgot to mention he'd actually had a conversation with young Tom, carri Anne's brother, who lived at Barnhill Drive down in Terriicle, asking the same questions, harassing him about carry Anne and telling him it's all her fault and it's not my fault and whatever, making excuses for it, and to the point where Tom was quite terrified of him. Tom, Tom made him fit, very fearful. Was in the past. Tom was only a teenage kid and he had scant regard for that.
You feel for the families, don't you like? What could could have or could not have been done, like having having him front all the family members, And I'm sure he didn't hide the emotion or the anger and that when he was speaking to them and they're just keeping their fingers crossed at nothing terrible, terrible happens.
Well, they report, you know, they report that whenever they had these connections with him, he had that really cold, dead eyed stare that I saw at the police station two years earlier when he when he pushed carry in and the door to do the fraud. He just had no he had He was never diagnosed as a schizophrenic and never diagnosed as a as A as A as a serious psychotropic illness. He was diagnosed later as a personality disorder gets affective personality disorder. But he had that cold.
You were you were the scener as a psychist, Oh.
You did, yeah, yeah, Well I kind of that radar went up straight away when I first met him, because he just he just knew that what he was presenting to the outside was not what was going on behind his eyes. And he was always like that, you know, always like that. And that's but on that particular night and the week leading up to it, whenever he had those interactions with particularly family members, they were quite fearful.
Okay, well we might might take a break there. So we've got the situation where you've you've articulated very clearly the obsession and the type of person that he was and the build up to what was going to be just a horrendous, violent night. And the catalyst appears to be that he's seen carry Anne, the woman he's trying to control, and refuses to let go. Hears her in the bedroom with another man, and that would have kicked off all the insecurities and everything else that goes on in his mind. Then he's gone back to his house to collect the firearm.
Yeah, just saw the butt of it, lay it up with ammunition, Okay, and go on his on his bloody odyssey. All right.
Well, look we'll take a break there and warning the listeners that are the second part when we talk about what carries on on that night, it's something that thankfully we don't see very often in this this country.
True.
Yeah, Okay, we'll be back for part two.