The Security Circle

EP 110 "Mad or Bad? The Psychology of Crime: Consultant & Forensic Psychologist and Sunday Times Best Selling Author Kerry Daynes

• Kerry Danes • Season 1 • Episode 110

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Kerry Daynes is one of the UK’s best known and well-respected psychologists and, as a Registered Forensic Psychologist, worked frontline in her field for over thirty years.  Her remarkable career has involved everything from shoplifters to serial killers and has seen her stabbed, stalked and even locked in a prison cell for misogynist laughs! Her first genre-defining book, The Dark Side of the Mind, was a Sunday Times bestseller and received widespread acclaim. The sequel, What Lies Buried, was listed for the Crime Writers Association Golden Dagger Award for Non-Fiction. She currently travels the world as a seasoned and in-demand speaker. Kerry is deaf, she is also a proud Patron of the National Centre for Domestic Violence and sits on the Trustee Board of anti-stalking charity The Suzy Lamplugh Trust.


Book link: Kerry Daynes’ True Stories of Forensic Psychology (2 book series) Paperback edition


Kerry Daynes  Consultant & Forensic Psychologist


The Dark Side Of The Mind: True Stories From My Life As A Forensic Psychologist is OUT NOW  here



What Lies Buried: a forensic psychologist's true stories of madness, the bad, and the misunderstood is OUT NOW here


Speaking & Media:  Sylvia Tidy-Harris at Tidy Management 


Inspirational Woman Award winner 2023. Patron of the National Centre for Domestic Violence - Patron of Talking2Minds (treating PTSD and stress-related illness) - Anti-Stalking Campaigner and

Security Circle ⭕️ is an IFPOD production for IFPO the International Foundation of Protection Officers

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Yoyo:

Hi, this is Yolanda. Welcome. Welcome to the security circle podcast. IFPO is the International Foundation for Protection Officers, and we are dedicated to providing meaningful education, information, and certification for all levels of security personnel, and make a positive difference to our members mental health and well being. Our listeners are global, currently listening in 151 countries around the world. They are the decision makers of tomorrow and today, and we want to thank you, wherever you are, for being a part of the Security Circle journey. We are also on all podcast platforms, so don't forget to subscribe or even better, just like, comment and share the LinkedIn post. Thank you for your company today. With me today, I have a lady who is actually described as one of the UK's best known psychologists. She's an author, she's a global speaker. She's an expert witness. She's also a Sunday Times bestselling author and TV presenter and media commentator, the profiler on discoveries. Faking it. Welcome Kerry Daines to the Security Circle Podcast.

Kerry:

Hello. I'm delighted to be here.

Yoyo:

A lot of people in security have come from either a military or policing background. So we're really tapping into those security professionals who just have a naturally inquisitive and investigative mind and they want to learn too. All of our listeners want to learn. But look, you are known as a consultant forensic psychologist. What does that mean to somebody who might not understand that role very much and how did you get into it?

Kerry:

I think that we all know what a psychologist is. So I work with the human mind and I work with psychological knowledge and theories to try and explain events and also answer questions. So the forensic bit, well, literally forensic means of the court. So I am a psychologist who works with people who may end up in court for whatever reason. So either as an offender primarily, or. a victim, possibly. The vast majority of forensic psychologists, A, are women, even though I was told that it was absolutely no job for a woman. About 85 percent of us are women. And the majority work in the prison service, although I have been very, very lucky, or maybe just chaotic, I don't know, in that I've worked in the prison service, I've worked in secure mental health services. So special hospitals with people who have got mental health problems, but have also committed some really quite horrendous offences. And I've worked with the courts and with the police, and in fact, With the military so that you, you know, you mentioned that and it is a very, very similar kind of mindset. I think awful lot of overlap in terms of the mindset, how you get into forensic psychology. Well, I always say it's a little bit like the hunger games. It's very, very popular with students, but the vast majority of psychology students actually become accountants for some bizarre reason. I don't know why that is because I absolutely hated statistics, but it is quite a journey to become a forensic psychologist, and it's very, very competitive. So if you want to work in the prison service, then you go through, a selection process that they do usually about once a year, where they put you, through the motions. But even just to get onto that, they expect you to have all kinds of, you know, background, experience and have worked as a psychology assistant and the competition for those jobs is just so, so high. The number of people that I get writing to me saying, how do I get my foot in the door? The way that I did it was, when I was at university, I did voluntary work. So I worked for, it was Barnardo's at the time, and I was an appropriate adult, so I sat in on police interviews, usually at three o'clock in the morning, with somebody who was deemed a vulnerable suspect, to make sure that they understood everything, and I also did victim offender mediation, which was interesting, so getting together, the victims of people who say had burgled them, from ending up into a fight, basically, trying to make it a productive meeting. Spare, if you like, spare is not the right word, but additional, that's the word I was looking for, training in counseling and therapy techniques. Then I went to Wakefield prison when I was just over 21 years old and I worked voluntarily. I worked, I was on, employment, income support. I can't remember what it was, but I was on 38 pounds a week. I remember that. And I got a book token for working for, I think it was something like nine months at Britain's largest high security prison and the rest, as they say, is history. Well, considering

Yoyo:

you, you know, how competitive it is, you carved yourself an incredible career. But first of all, why do you think someone would say to you that this is no job for a woman? As I was listening, I was like WTF and I don't usually swear on the Security Circle podcast.

Kerry:

I know, I know. Well, that was said to me when I was at university, which is 1992. I think what it is, is what was very popular in 1992 and has never really left The public psyche is, of course, cracker with Robbie Coltrane. Yeah, huge. People thought that a forensic psychologist, A, was, you know, trampling all over crime scenes. in their shoes, which we don't do, touching suspects to the ground, drinking, womanizing, and looks like Robbie Coltrane. So the first thing that they do when they look at me is they say, Oh, but you look, and they do this weird kind of gesture with their hands, which is like a, an hourglass figure. What they're saying is, Oh, But you're a woman. How is it that a woman works with killers? And my speciality, if you want to call it a speciality, has always been extreme violence, and also extreme sexual violence. And people just don't I don't think that women are made for that. And in actual fact, it's primarily women that are working in that field.

Yoyo:

In fact, when I was in the police, and I had to, in a detective role, prepare evidence, images of child sexual abuse, it was a job that they gave to women and not to men. The men just, I don't want to be kind of mean at all. So I'm going to really think about how I phrase this, but the capacity. I don't know if you can see my cat is running up and down the stairs behind me. I love that.

Kerry:

It's

Yoyo:

all right. My dog is sitting

Kerry:

next to me.

Yoyo:

He's literally running up and down the stairs like a dog. It's his way of expressing happiness. Bless him. The men, I think really struggle to process what they're seeing. and for some reason, some people can just compartmentalize. I see those images. Yeah. I can remember some of them you never forget. Some of the things you hear and learn, you never forget. You learn to compartmentalize them. You accept, I accept that. That existed. It was for evidential purposes. Hopefully what I did was in some way, purposeful and meaningful to achieve the end goal. And that was to bang that man up inside as long as possible. So he could not ever harm a child again. In fact, you talked about the role of appropriate adult. When I was in the police, it was critical to have appropriate adults because quite often, juvenile offenders didn't have parental support. So it was a very good way of having somebody very neutral. But you know what, Kerry, I don't think I could do it. Because I would wanna get involved too much. how do you sit in that seat and support that child and not get involved? It's hard,

Kerry:

you know, it wasn't only children and actually fact, for me, primarily it was people with mental health issues and people with learning disabilities. So not so much children, and of course, it is about boundaries, and I am good at boundary setting, and I am good at compartmentalizing. Although, I did have a period of burnout in around 2013 from having worked with so many cases of men, who were downloading, making, live streaming, distributing child abuse. Images and I did find that a problem just looking at all of that material, but yes, this is it. You just have to think to yourself. Well, I'm here to do a job and you are a cog in a machine. So I'm not there to be. I'm not there to be a social worker. I'm there to make sure that this interview is done legally and correctly and that the questions that are being asked are understood and in actual fact, it served me really well because it did give me an insight. You know, there I was. in, in the interview room at the age of 20, which was phenomenal experience for me. And in actual fact, I then went on to work an awful lot of court cases that went on to collapse because the interview had not been conducted legally. And hadn't been conducted well. So, you know, cases of false confessions that had been coerced, for example, or just where, you know, just where they'd not had an appropriate adult, where it was glaringly obvious that they needed an appropriate adult. And from that work, I then actually started working with the police in planning police interviews with victims and suspects. And that, um, meant that. They were getting the advice, the case was not going to collapse, not on the back of that. And, uh, you know, and it opened, opened up a whole avenue for me. So I'm so glad that I got that early experience. It's funny, isn't it? That those, those early, those, those early moments of your career, which you think, oh, well, I'm just doing this to get a foot in the door, can go on to actually shape your career in such a huge way.

Yoyo:

Absolutely. And as the older we get, the more we look back, we realize how Very important. Those little steps are in your book. What lies buried. I can only say I can recommend it in the very first chapter. We are drawn into a dilemma. You are, um, you're involved with a high profile homicide case and your opinion here will make the difference between a killer serving a mandatory life sentence with a minimum tariff of 10, 000. Whatever years they must spend in prison before being eligible for parole, or a shorter sentence or more likely being detained indefinitely under the Mental Health Act. And the reason this is critical is because you have to be a witness to evidence, giving evidence for the mad or bad scenario. Take us through, A, how that impacts you as a human being, number one. Okay. Number two, why mad or bad is literally black or white? And why it's so important to get the right decision?

Kerry:

Well, because unfortunately, we have just two major systems of disposal. I don't like that word disposal. It sounds like they're going down a garbage chute, doesn't it? And they probably feel that way. Yeah. so disposal, when somebody has committed a serious offence, and the answer You know, the question rather is always, well, are they mad or are they bad? As though it's just, you know, a simple case is, you know, they are one or the other, they can't possibly be a mixture of both or maybe neither. So in the prison service, we have such, well, you know the state of the prison service at the moment, we've got no capacity whatsoever. So we're letting people out early.,they are overcrowded. There are usually at least three people to a cell. I've seen people sleeping on the floors of, you know, floors of cells and communal areas in prisons. You're lucky if you don't share your cell with rats and mice, and that is probably the worst possible environment that you can be in for your mental state. And yet, quite a significant majority, I would say, of people in the prison service have mental health problems, or they develop them while they're in prison. Prison or they have things like, um, you know, neurodiversity issues. So ADHD or autism, but if you are one of the lucky ones and I say lucky, your mental health problem might be diagnosed. Then of course, it's got to be argued in court. Was it relevant at the material time? does somebody have an abnormality of mind that somehow reduces? their responsibility for what they've done. And if the answer is yes, then they will go to a secure hospital. And people think that is the easy option. I don't think it's an easy option at all. And what they also don't realize is that You go into a secure hospital, no matter what crime you've committed, and you can be indefinitely detained. I've actually met people who have gone into secure hospitals having committed very, very minor crimes, and a bit like the IPP sentenced prisoners, in prison, they're in there for 20, 30 years. it's a huge question. It's a huge responsibility to be asked, you know, is this, is this person mad or bad? Of course it's not couched in those. Those words exactly, but that's exactly what it means and in order to answer that question You've got to go back in time to the time of the the offense and of course a lot of things get in the way So usually how people feel about the offense that has been committed And the person that I talk about in chapter one had committed not one, but two very, very violent offences. And there was huge pressure on the police to find the offender, bring them to justice. But there was that sense of, well, we want our pound of flesh. You know, these, these offences of, of, Hit us so, so hard as a community that, that, you know, we really want to see justice, not just justice, but, but punishment. So there was a big argument really about what, what was the state of mind of this. particular individual. Was he somebody who was suffering with a psychotic mental illness or was he a psychopath? And the answer was he was actually a bit of both. And he'd come from the military and, uh, where it's actually helpful to have some psychopathic traits. It's not necessarily helpful to label them psychopathic traits, but obviously, you know, in the military, you are expected to run headfirst into. a war zone and be able to shoot to kill if necessary. And he had encountered a huge amount of trauma also whilst in the military. And I do believe that he had, he had developed psychotic symptoms. And that his offending behaviour was very much as a result of the voices that he was hearing and the paranoia that he was experiencing. What the voices were telling him to do. I don't want to give too much away because I do want people to read the book. But, because my report wasn't black and white, well yes he's got, these symptoms that you, well I don't even want to call them symptoms, they're characteristics that you would consider psychopathic. that have actually been trained into him, but he's also having these psychotic experiences. And actually, I felt that that should really be good evidence for an abnormality of mind. I thought that he should go through the hospital route. But it wasn't felt as though my report was black or white enough. Human beings aren't black and white. We don't fall into these nice, neat categories. And so they didn't actually use my report. they used the report from a psychiatrist. So the man who was a very young man was labeled a psychopath, but a psychopath, of course, is not a mental illness. It's a personality condition, if you like, or a personality. Yeah, well, I don't even like to call it a disorder, really. It's a disorder if you're going around killing people, of course, but it's not a disorder if you're actually working very effectively in the military, and it's not a disorder if you're a CEO, and apparently it's not a disorder if you're a psychopath and you work in the Houses of Parliament, and I'm far more concerned about those, to be honest. So, I know, exactly, I'm more concerned about our leaders. So, again, you know, they're What, in what circumstances do you get the label psychopath? It's actually after you have committed some sort of offense, really. but anyway, I did meet him again, a few years later in the hospital wing of a prison where he was. self harming and he was in a secure cell and he was absolutely floridly psychotic and he was bedeviled by voices, paranoid, and he was not receiving anything even close to the proper kind of treatment. And you can say, oh, well, he's a killer. Do we care? At least he's in a cell. But these are the kind of moral questions that. really are the reasons why I write my books. Should we care? And does it matter? And actually, what does it mean for potential future victims? Because, you know, of course, I don't know, I don't know his full history, whether he's harmed anybody actually in prison. But it was just, it was just very, very tragic. It felt almost You know, kind of Dickensian, really, where you see somebody in this crumbling, secure cell who is, not quite rocking and eating flies, like, you know, like you're shown on TV, but is in a real state of distress and shouting and screaming and mumbling to himself and covered in self harm's there. scars. You just think, God, I thought we're meant to be a civilized society. So it was a distressing, a distressing time, but an interesting case, which, you know, I think we can, we can learn from. So I thought it was important to write about it.

Yoyo:

You've underscored really the importance of considering nuanced circumstances. I know certainly in the security world, certainly coming from investigations, we tend to think in black and white, but we are learning. That humans intrinsically, are very nuanced. In fact, as a former detective, I was quite glad once I submitted case work to rely on the burden of proof sometimes when even I was unable to determine guilt or not. Uh, and so, yeah, I, I, I get that, but look, you mentioned psychopaths quite a lot. I always refer people to John Ronson's, a psychopath test. Once you've write that. You kind of like, you can't not know what you know, and then you realize that most leaders are psychopaths Kerry, but you probably know that too, that they, they,

Kerry:

they need those traits. Our maddest edges, doesn't he? So I do like that. I do like that term. I really do. I mean, I don't talk. I mean, I do talk about psychopaths a little bit in my book, but they do get an awful lot of press, don't they? And I don't think it's necessarily fair press. As I say, I'm far more concerned about our leaders and our business leaders and certainly our political leaders when it comes to psychopathy.

Yoyo:

Yeah, because we're seeing a lack of empathy, which is a key psychopathic trait, a lack of empathy in how their decisions and actions affect people. A

Kerry:

coldness and a lack of, um, emotional processing, really, and a selfishness, and that is consistent over, over time and over circumstances, because we're very, very quick these days, aren't we, to say somebody's a psycho, you know, everybody, it's very, very interesting, actually, whenever I give talks, which aren't what we're here for. Anything to do with psychopaths, but on various different subjects that I talk about, I've always got a queue of people at the end. A good, a good, you know, a good number of people in the queue want to ask me, do I think their boss is a psychopath? Do I think their ex is a psychopath? Do I think their current partner's a psychopath? And I always say, well, if you do, then that's the clue. Yeah, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter what I think. I think that the red flags are there flapping in the wind. So, um, yeah, it's interesting. We overuse that term

Yoyo:

and also I think people use it I think some people are quite proud to have those tendencies when they recognize they think they do, or falsely. It's branded quite

Kerry:

cool and I really disagree with that. Again, this is an interesting thing. And I don't want to generalize, I don't want somebody to accuse me of being sexist, but I do sometimes give talks which are, Are you the psychopath in the room? And it's actually To business, you know, to, to business audiences, and I talk about actually the very successful side of psychopathy and how you can learn from psychopaths, but as usual, everything in moderation. And when you, you know, when is the right time to channel a more psychopathic, um, state of mind, if you like. And I had a great time at Christmas, um, when I was talking about how to have a psychopathic Christmas to a group of women, which was all about actually, you know, how we as women tend to put all of our own needs to one side, because we're running around trying to provide this perfect Christmas for family and children, et cetera. So, um, yeah, Yeah. So these talks I do to business people, I always say, right, then we're going to discover, and I do a little quiz, who is the psychopath in the room? But would you like to reveal yourself before? Do you simply want to own up before I'm going to unearth you? And with women, they all sit on their hands. No, no, no, no. I'm not the psychopath in the room. But if you're in a room full of male business types, I would say at least two or three people will stand up and go, yay, it's me. Hi. You know, there is that kind of, like you say, badge of honor about it. And actually it turns out not to be them. It's funny. It's funny to see how, you know, how they just, just the differences really between the, between the sexes and how they interpret these things.

Yoyo:

You can definitely come across very compassionate and already what you've said. But let's talk about compassion and understanding because you were stabbed by a patient and your immediate reaction wasn't anger but concern for the individual who had harmed you, could have fatally harmed you. You've demonstrated like a commitment to understanding root causes behind actions rather than judging them at face value. How, how, how did you process that? Thank you.

Kerry:

I was quite concerned about myself at the time as well, but I don't think I'd actually processed what had happened to me. So the circumstances were, I was in a forensic step down unit, so this is a bit like a hostel or a halfway house where I used to work. And I was there once a week. And we had a fairly new resident there who I didn't know very well. So I think that there was, I think that that was a factor in it because he didn't know me very well. So, you know, I wasn't, I was just a random member of staff to him, not somebody that he'd had a conversation with. So, who he could humanize really. Yeah. And it was after dinner and I don't know what wisdom there was in this, but everybody had had chicken on skewers for dinner and he was on washing up duty. Okay. I know, I know, but this is, this is, you know, this is, you know, This is a halfway house. You're in the community. So a skewer would not be seen as, you know, they're not using plastic knives and forks, anything like that. The big knives are locked away, but not the skewers. So he was on washing up duty in a very narrow galley kitchen. And I went in and I put my plate down as had most of the other residents, but let's bear in mind that most of the other residents were people that he knew. And they were men. I'm a 5'3 woman, who he doesn't know. And he saw me, and he ran at me, and I actually thought he'd punched me in the stomach. I couldn't feel it, and I hear this actually time and time again. A lot. And actually he'd skewered me. So I wasn't stabbed because it wasn't a big knife. It was a very slim skewer, but it did go in quite deep. I mean, I mean, this is it, this is what we're trained for, isn't it? So a lot of things rush through your mind very, very quickly. And the first thing that you always assess is the, in the environment, isn't it? There's nowhere for him to go or for me to go that far. I'm in the doorway of. You know, of a narrow, a narrow kitchen. So I stepped back out of the kitchen and I gave him an exit route because I didn't want to be trapped in that kitchen with him. And he didn't want to be trapped with me. I could tell, you know, he was very, very anxious, very, very anxious. So he's in this heightened state. I actually turn into something like a school mom in these times. And I just said, I think you should go to your room. And he did! He ran off to his room, so at least I could tell the staff where the hell he was. He couldn't, you know, he couldn't get out of the front door of the place. And I took myself off to the staff office. immediately, but it was only at that point that I realized that, you know, I've got a skewer in me and I've got blood. In the end, I had to call for my own ambulance, you know, because the staff member was fairly new, as is often the case in these places. And I don't think they knew what the hell to do. So it was just a case of, right, I've got to, get myself an ambulance and I've got to organize traffic. I've got to make sure that I know where the other residents are, where he is. I've got to make sure that no other staff are in danger, but that they are supervising and they know exactly where he is. So you just go into crisis management mode that you are trained for such a similar mindset, I think, to police and military.

Yoyo:

In the police, it's a common thing to have stabbing victims explain that they think they've been punched. And that's why a lot of them just walk around, looking for help. They don't die necessarily from the incident itself. They die from bleeding out. And, and it's, it's such the brain can't almost, fathom what's happened. You don't

Kerry:

process it. So actually it wasn't such a big deal. It wasn't such a big incident. In the grand scheme of my entire career to be honest and what did emerge afterwards was that he was being used as a I think they call them a spice pig these days. So basically other men at his probation were using him to test synthetic drugs on. No. Yeah. he was having a really bad time that, that they'd realized that this was a guy with mild learning disabilities. He was really very vulnerable, didn't have problem solving skills. So I did feel a level of compassion. I would certainly say that. At the time that it happened, I wasn't feeling anything for him. I wasn't having any kind of emotional reaction to him. I was, as I say, just in crisis management mode. It was only when I was at the A& E and I was going, Oh,, somebody's skewed me. I was really quite practical about it. Afterwards I always try and have this, rational compassion mindset. My first book, The Dark Side of the Mind, that is the, the where it ultimately leads to really is about why we need to have rational compassion about people. So I think you have to be realistic about what somebody's risks are. I certainly was after I'd been stabbed by this, this individual, but also be compassionate to what his circumstances were, which I really did feel for him. And he did end up going off to, um, a medium secure unit. I just hope that they actually worked on problem solving and communication skills because that was the root cause of it.

Yoyo:

In your book also, you talk about quite a memorable case study involving a young murderer who acted under the belief that he was being tractor controlled, you know, which led to tragic outcomes. You were quite critical, weren't you, in exploring how these beliefs were tied to untreated mental health issues. Again, it's a theme here, isn't there?

Kerry:

There is, I think that the book looks at different, different aspects of what we consider mental illness, how we ascribe responsibility to people and different, different experiences of mental illness, what that is all about. And also how we often see somebody who has got a mental health problem then think they're dangerous without any such, you know, evidence to prove it.'cause the vast majority of people who hear voices. Aren't dangerous. But yeah, there's a lot of, stories about mistakes that have been made, either mistakes that have been made by me or mistakes that I think have been made by judges and juries and just by society. So the reason why I write my books is really to break down. What goes on in these arenas, which is very hidden, we just don't, we just don't tend to know about and we don't want to know about too closely, do we? We want to watch the crime dramas and we want to see the perpetrator cause, but we don't want to see what really happens after that. And we don't necessarily want to, you know, hear things that people might think are, you know, being soft on crime. I'm not about being soft on crime, not in any way, shape or form. Anybody who knows me knows that is not the case, but I am about understanding crime. And I think that if we turn away from people's trauma and adversity, their experiences, their stories, then we don't really learn anything. So it's important to look at these mad or bad dichotomies and really break them down.

Yoyo:

Why is there such a overwhelming presence of crime dramas around right now where there seems to be this titillation of female victims? I can only tell you that obviously, like most people, I select my viewing on a number of, well known platforms, and I just see this overwhelming number of crime dramas around women's murders.

Kerry:

Yes, and what has happened over the last few years as, True crime has just grown massively as a genre, whether it's podcasts or books, is the crime fiction, I think, has lessened. People want stories that they know are true and it does add to that shock factor in a way, but sadly it can also add to titillation factor also, because the vast majority of dramas that we see, as you say, have females as victims. I think that some are done very, very well. And some really highlight the problems that victims have in, in, in gaining justice and being taken seriously, for example. But some of them, unfortunately, are what I call beautiful women being killed in interesting ways, trope. Yes. And, you know, the offender is usually played by somebody that's far more attractive than them. So, of course, Ted Bundy becomes Zac Efron. I think that was the big wake up call, wasn't it? When Yeah. the amount of furore about Ted Bundy programs. And also a little bit about the Jeffrey Dahmer program that was shown on Netflix. And of course he was shown as being far more attractive than he was. And I actually think that wasn't a bad drama at all, because I think it really did highlight the problems that his, his, Well, not, not victims, but people who suspected his behavior had in being taken seriously. And a lot of that was to do with their race. I do think that that drama did have some good aspects about it. What I find is missing from these dramas is actually showing the offenders to be what they are. And that is, inadequate. If somebody is a serial killer by definition they are inadequate. Somebody asked me at Crime Con one year after another session about serial killers, you know, if there was just one trait that all serial killers possess, what is it? Of course that's a difficult question to answer. In many ways, because they're all different, and you could obviously, you know, trot out, oh, well, the old, lack of empathy, which isn't actually necessarily true, because for some sadists, they've got an awful lot of empathy. That's what makes them sadists. You've got to be able to understand that somebody is suffering in order to enjoy suffering. I said, what all serial killers have in common is that they are grossly inadequate because you have to be grossly inadequate to need to kill somebody in order to feel a sense of power and control and mastery. over your life. I think that if we told the stories from that perspective, that would be more realistic. And maybe stop calling people the Yorkshire Ripper. By them sexy names. When they're called Lennice it is ridiculous. That is a societal thing. That's a media thing. We don't need to be giving killers these ridiculous titles that makes them, you know, make them sound, you know, physically larger and grander and more powerful than they are.

Yoyo:

There's another particularly good drama, which I think shows the opposite, is the Four Lives where, Stephen Merchant played the character who was just, you know, looked freaky, looked I thought that was a far, far better representation. He did such a good job

Kerry:

of

Yoyo:

that.

Kerry:

He really did. He played Stephen Port, who was a prolific, rapist, who drugged his victims, who he met on various, gay escort sites and gay dating sites. But it's just such a shocking story. I was actually talking to the pathologist who was involved in, in one of these cases a few months ago, who really did raise issues about this young man who had been found dead. Yeah. And it'd actually been reported by Stephen Port. He said that, oh, he'd found him dead outside his block of flats, as one does. Then later admitted, oh, well he had been in my flat. But, had nothing to do with it. The police, didn't look at any of his devices. They didn't, You know, they didn't investigate

Yoyo:

properly, despite the

Kerry:

fact that the pathologist had pointed out that this poor boy had been found with fingertip bruising around his arms, showing where he'd been dragged. His, you know, his underwear was on back to front, his trousers were unzipped. There were various indications. he died of a drug overdose and he was simply stereotyped as a young gay drug user, you know, misadventure. And then three more In almost identical circumstances, it should never have got. Should never. The first. Yeah. And that was a really good drama. What that drama did was it didn't actually center that much on Stephen Port. It was very victim focused.

Yoyo:

And process focused, I thought. Yes. In this, because we can all see now, I mean, for those that haven't been in the police can all to a degree be an armchair detective now, because we've seen so many dramas of where policing hasn't, Being right. The investigation has been very biased, around gender or any other marginalized community. The other one that I thought was a fair representation around how odd Perpetrator was, David Tennant's role in, Des, where a very true account of just how odd looking, odd the man was and how clever he was, you know, without over sensationalizing his attributes and making them look cool.

Kerry:

Well, I knew Dennis Nielsen really quite well. Wow., nobody could tell you that he was necessarily an overly pleasant man to be around because he was very belligerent. Charming. And he was a complainer, you know, very self focused and unbelievably, you know, really saw himself as, a socialist, which is just bizarre, isn't it? For a serial killer, very, very indulgent, very self indulgent and introspective. Um, but yeah, not always very pleasant at all to be around. So David Tennant did a great job of embodying him. he did. And I think that a lot of people watch that because it is that case is so bloody gory, really, and I think that is part of it. But yeah, I don't think that it glamorized deaths. that was something. Although, I don't know, that was more of a police drama, wasn't it, really? And what they were up against. So it wasn't so much about, the victims. And I think that is interesting, and it is nice to see the police prevail. But also, it is important to tell the stories of when the police don't do the right thing so that we can learn from it. Although I do feel, you know, I do feel for the police and often I'm in, in a role of telling them when they've got it wrong. it's important because we still do get things wrong, terribly wrong, but, I'm always in the spirit of learning, collaborating and learning rather than blame culture unless of course it's something so shocking that somebody has to be blamed.

Yoyo:

I swing like a pendulum with the police because I know what my own true experiences were and I think there's a very different kind of, we all know that when you're in a car accident, God forbid, the people that you want to see there to help you and support you are the police. I think we need to start dividing up our police force in the sense of the services they provide. I was that young detective, that young impressionable detective that sat in morning prayers each morning when we reviewed the cases that had come in overnight. And my DS or my DI is basically saying, Yoyo, yeah. You take that one. Just check out. It's a real rape, you know? And I'm like, Oh, you know,

Kerry:

this I've been there. Unbelievable. It's a brilliant. Yeah. Um, I think it's on Netflix. That's a brilliant, it's an American series based on a true story. You really do have to watch that. Unbelievable. Please do watch that about women not being believed, uh, when they've been the victim of a rape, I think that. Police officers are just, well, they're a subgroup of human beings and human beings, there are good ones, bad ones, most of us, some come where in between, and there are police who shouldn't be on the police force and that is due to recruitment processes and there are police that absolutely should, but they make mistakes and, they're not supported and they don't have the resources. It's complex and it's nuanced, isn't it? You can't say that.

Yoyo:

You're so understanding.

Kerry:

People must think that I'm constantly sitting on a fence with them. No. You've got to look at the whole, you've got to look at the whole package, haven't you? You've got the macro and micro, and then you've got to start to make your judgments. This is it. This is why I always come back to rational compassion and it is, it's a hard line to tread. It really is. But we must tread it if we want to be more efficient and if we want to make a difference.

Yoyo:

Before we wrap up, it's Toni Collette that's in Unbelievable. Toni Collette, that's

Kerry:

right. She's a great actress. How could I forget her name? No, she's, I mean, she's,

Yoyo:

she's wonderful, isn't she? What's next for you, Kerry? What's come, more books? I mean, are you,

Kerry:

um, busy what's coming up? Do you know what? I'm not entirely sure. I think there's got to be a podcast at some point. I've got to join the modern world, haven't I? And I've got to get a podcast of my own. And I would like to start writing crime novels. Because that gives me a bit more freedom because, of course, my two books, The Dark Side of the Mind and What Lies Buried, are my memoirs. And you can imagine what a legal nightmare they are because I don't want to betray anybody's confidence. confidence, I've got to disguise people. I would like to do crime novels that are written with purpose, that are like me, somewhat feminist, and that actually highlight really significant issues because they're based on true stories. So not novels that are, here, let me titillate you, or let me come out with yet another story. Serial killer gore story that's just like all the rest but something that is actually a blooming good read but also makes you think for a long time afterwards. That's what I always aim for and maybe something that even makes you think or feel a little bit differently about a subject after you've read it.

Yoyo:

Well, I'm looking forward to it. We'll have a chat in the new year. I'll share some podcast tips with you. Please. And, uh, well, yeah, listen to this one. Look at the expert. I'm just kidding. You're the expert. Yeah. Well, not in podcasting. It's really great. Look, for me, the hardest thing was, listening because I think listening is hard. I love expressing and I love chatting and we've had great conversations before we did this recording and we really meet on a number of different areas and, and I love the way you think, but, listening is hard and I've learned to do it and I practice doing it as well when I'm not recording podcasts. Sometimes it's just good, like from my policing training, I think comes in, when you're listening to an account from somebody who's been a victim, it's important to get that free recall. It's important to understand everything from the beginning. It's important to tune into what they're saying. And not saying how they're saying it and just be kind of receptive to that and open to that really. But your book gave me such great opportunities to ask you wonderful questions. I'm glad that you weren't harmed. I think there are still a lot of good things ahead for you.

Kerry:

I hope so. As I say, being stabbed, not the worst day I've had at work. If you want to know more about that, then read my books.

Yoyo:

Also tune in to Kerry's podcast when it comes out. What we'll do Kerry, let us know, stay in touch. We'll share your podcast link when it comes out. Absolutely. So people can find out more. I'll come back and chat to you. Take care. Great. Alright, thanks for coming. Bye.