WA Police Confidential (Formerly Operation Podcast)
The official WA Police Force Podcast
WA Police Confidential (Formerly Operation Podcast)
Ep 08 - Solving a Murder with No Body, Bikie Wars and More! - WA POLICE FORCE PODCAST
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Episode 8 of Operation Podcast! The official WA Police Force Podcast.
On this week’s show:
- Commander Gary Saunders and Detective Senior Sergeant Greg MacDonald are back!
- We talk to legendary "crook-catcher" Detective Sergeant Paul Brunini on how he solved a murder without a body. Later on, we speak to Dawn the mother of the victim.
- The Commissioner joins the show once again, this time to interview some of the agency's best and brightest.
- A flood rescue in Carnarvon!
- And much more...
Welcome back to Operation Podcast, the Western Australia Police Force official Weekly Pod. I'm Joey Katanzaro. I'm Sergeant Nate Gilmore. And this week we will explain how you go about solving a murder when there's nobody.
SPEAKER_12We'll also hear from the mother whose son was murdered about what police did right and what they did wrong in that investigation.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Flush blood emergency in Carvon. We'll speak to one of the officers who took part in a raging river rescue.
SPEAKER_12This isn't a typical police job, Joey. Um, so we'll explain why they got involved.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Genuinely interested in that. The WA Police Commissioner and two of our best and brightest officers will reveal how police are using cutting-edge technology like AI to catch crooks faster than ever before.
SPEAKER_12Look forward to that. And uh later on, we're gonna hear about the history fact of the week revealed the third animal squad. And it's not dogs, it's not horses it's. My money is on pigeons. You have to wait and see. Um, but first up, we're gonna continue to unpack the homicide investigation into the 2020 murder of Bikey boss Nick Martin.
SPEAKER_02And this week uh in particular, we're gonna we're gonna reveal why we don't arrest suspects straight away in every instance. So stick around and find out.
SPEAKER_12You're listening to Operation Podcast.
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to Operation Podcast. We have over the past few episodes been delving into the 2020 murder of bikey boss Nick Martin. A quick recap. Last week, senior homicide detectives revealed how a tattoo on Nick Martin's back discovered during the autopsy helped firm up their suspicions uh surrounding a bitter enemy, former rebel turned Mongol bikey David Pye. David Pye was on home detention and wearing an electronic monitoring bracelet. So he had an alibi, but observation of Pye's house identified an anomaly, a clean skin. This person visiting had no criminal record, had military, did have military training, and was an experienced mercenary. Further investigation confirmed this man was at the motorplex the night of the murder. He owned a gun capable of making the 300-meter shot. His shoes matched a partial print located near the crime scene. Homicide had their suspect. But what was the motive for the murder? Where does David Pye come in? Joining us again today are senior homicide detectives Gary Saunders and Greg McDonald. Gentlemen, thanks very much for coming on. Thank you. Let's talk motive. The shooter, who I believe we can't name by order of the court, um, and I think has been referred to as Mr. XYZ. Mr. XYZ, what was his motive? Why did he shoot and murder Nick Martin?
SPEAKER_04Well, it it was essentially money. Um he was paid to do it. So um he's expressed some inform some some uh a personal reason, but um our point of view, it was principally about the money.
SPEAKER_02How much do you get paid for something like that? Keeping in mind that it's usually zero if you you can't spend it when you're in a maximum security prison. How much would he have received?
SPEAKER_04Well, he received he was offered considerably more than he received. Um Is that right? So there was a bit of a reneging on the bargain. Yeah, it was short-changed somewhat. Short-changed a little. Um but it for for Nick Martin, it was in the vicinity of 150,000.
SPEAKER_02And he received less than that, or he'd actually that's what he received. Okay. So no honor among thieves, as they say.
SPEAKER_05Yeah, and didn't um didn't work out quite the way uh he expected it to financially, and uh he certainly didn't expect to be sitting in a jail saw or serving a life sentence.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, yeah. So you now I think at this stage you've got this this suspect. You've linked the suspect, Mr. XYZ, to the motorplex. He's the shooter. How do you go from there to linking David Pye to being the one who potentially has paid him to kill Nick Martin?
SPEAKER_04Well, we had a listening device in Dave Pye's house. So we were listening to conversations between them uh for some period of time um and ascertaining exactly what the relationship was. That's how we you know we knew about um some of the money and some of the some of the um some of the interaction between them. Um but bear in mind this is all post-the shooting, so we had nothing prior to that. So we're capturing information post-the shooting. Um and that was really about establishing the relationship with between them. Um and then there was this potential progress towards um another shooting, which obviously was uh was of great concern to us.
SPEAKER_02And we'll get to that in just a moment.
SPEAKER_05There was obviously some strategies that we implemented to try and control the conversations between the two of them, you know, so they were talking about the right things uh at the right time, so to speak.
SPEAKER_02Okay. I think there's some tradecraft that unfortunately There's some methodology we don't want to go away and reveal. You'll have to join the West Australia Police Force to um to to to really get that sort of insight and and maybe you'll be lucky enough to work on one on a team run by Greg or Gary and might share a few bits of tradecraft with you. But needless to say, you you've listened to some of these conversations. Is that enough to to secure a conviction in your mind? And if so, why why didn't you arrest straight away? Is there a reason why you run these operations?
SPEAKER_04Well, the the purpose is to gather evidence sufficient to support a prosecution. So that's a high bar, you know, beyond a reasonable doubt. Um so um it's one thing to think you know something, it's another to be able to prove it. So we gather evidence to get us to that standard um to support a prosecution. That sometimes takes time, uh, which it did in this occasion. Um and once you you reach a point where you have to uh you reach a point where you're going to go to resolution and arrest, there's obviously a lot of planning that goes into that as well. Um this is someone who's considered high risk. Um you have to determine where, when, what our resources are, how we're going to go about it, what's the follow-up? Um, because it's not just about arresting someone, we then have to search houses, all sorts of things. So there's a lot of planning that goes into um the actual timing of an arrest in these circumstances.
SPEAKER_02And these are both people who were armed, even I think David Pye, um, there was some suggestion that even on home detention, uh being on bail for for other crimes committed, that he might have had access to weapons. Oh, 100%.
SPEAKER_05Yeah. So it's a so I guess it's a constant um juggling act. So you might have uh a circumstantial, you know, brief of evidence. Um we're obviously trying to firm that up. So it's like, well, what else can we do? We're heading in the right direction. We know our people are, um, but we want to build the brief. So we'll be we'll be trying to do everything as we can to corroborate everything that they're talking about, everything where we see them by trying to determine physical evidence, um, to establish that uh identity and motive and everything else that we've talked about. So when do we uh decide, well, enough's enough and we're gonna pull the trigger? That's always balanced again about community risk. You know, we have to have these people under surveillance, we're constantly monitoring them. We can't just let them run for as long as we want. We have to base it against the risk to the community because these people are still out and about.
SPEAKER_12Would it be fair to say that, you know, there are a lot of investigative strategies and things at play that you've got to collect the evidence. You only get one shot at this, isn't that right?
SPEAKER_04Yes, that's correct.
SPEAKER_12You know, and uh what people might not understand is that, you know, contrary to what you see on TV, these things can't be solved within 45 minutes with that.
SPEAKER_04No, no, no, it takes time. Um that's all so you know, there's uh the the reality is you know, this is a very complex investigation, and it takes time to gather the evidence that we need. So you can't rush it. Um but as Gary mentioned, there is a there is a risk. It's a constant balance between the risk to the community, the risk of the loss of evidence, uh, against their purpose of trying to gather evidence. So that is a constant, constant job. It's a joke project, yeah. Okay, so um you reach a point where it's okay, um things occurred during the course of the investigation that led us to believe we have to act perhaps a little bit quick quicker than we'd initially planned. Um, so that was to do with Pi's other court matters. So um, you know, we sort of reached a point where we have to act. Um, we can't allow this to continue.
SPEAKER_05So we chose to act. And you can't assume. So you might come across evidence, or you might hear something and you say that fits perfectly, okay? But you can't just assume that fits perfectly, or you can't just accept that that fits your narrative. So you have to go away and break it down, you know, and question it effectively.
SPEAKER_02That's exactly right. Yeah. So tell me then, there was a big police presence at, I think it was the salt flats down that way south of the river. What was that about? And was that connected to this particular case?
SPEAKER_05That was uh connected, it was, and it was connected to the shooter. And um it was our homicide teams um searching for uh money and possibly um a weapon that we believed had been buried at at that location, you know, and we and we would be alleging that the money that was buried at that location was the uh payment for the shooting.
SPEAKER_02So you did find money to how had they how had he concealed it, do you do we know?
SPEAKER_05I was buried in PVC pipes. Yeah, PVC pipes and buried in in numerous locations that we managed to find.
SPEAKER_02Okay. What about the uh the murder weapon? Speaking of, was there I know that he was a licensed firearms owner. You mentioned that last week. Did you did you kind of recover the weapon or any evidence prior to the arrest?
SPEAKER_05Uh yeah, do you want me to speak more? Yeah, okay. Um so we he used his own firearm uh in the shooting. So, you know, there's only a couple of pieces of a firearm will actually link that firearm um to the bullet that was found. So the firearm pin, etc., would be identified and linked to the casing. But the rifling inside the the barrel um can be linked um to the projectile that went through it, which we had as we talked about earlier. So this was a really high value to us. Um the way that it's structured in uh Western Australia with the firearms license, if you have a firearm and you put it into an armorer to have it repaired, the firearm transfers from your license to the to the license um of the armorer while he conducts the repairs. That takes a little bit while to come through because back in those days it wasn't a computer automated system. You know, they reported it at the end of each month. So we are watching that very, very carefully. Um and sure enough, um the firearm uh popped up as being transferred to an armorer. Um and when we made inquiries with that armor, it was for a barrel change. Wow. So I imagine you were pretty keen to get your hands on that barrel. Yes, well, under WA legislation, the police are the only people that authorised to destroy a part of a firearm. So these armorers were changed to barrels, but they're not authorized to dispose of them. So we weren't able to recover that exact barrel.
SPEAKER_02We would you call that a bit of a tactical error then, potentially, on the part of the the shooter, Mr. XYZ?
SPEAKER_04I just don't think he probably didn't understand the licensing process. So which was uh you know fortunate for us, obviously.
SPEAKER_02It's always in the fine print. That's what it Yep, okay. Uh fascinating. Okay. Pie. He paid for the hit. He paid the shooter. Did did you hear anything or uh you know, was there anything in the conversations that then formed part of the the the prosecution, the court case as to why he'd paid?
SPEAKER_04Oh look, it was uh well there's a lot of of conversation that was recorded. Okay, so uh what was played in the court was a relatively small portion of it. Yes. Um but those that which uh which the prosecution considered most relevant. So and during that, it's it's pretty obvious when you listen to the conversation that Pye had a strong dislike to Nick Martin. Um and that was a strong motivation for him.
SPEAKER_05Um he's a highly aggressive individual, Pye, isn't he? You know, uh anyone he perceives as a threat or anyone believes who've done him wrong, um, he is that uh type of individual that won't stop until he's settled the score, so to speak.
SPEAKER_02Wow, and in this case, that's murder.
SPEAKER_04Yeah, in this case he was quite prepared to go as far as he found someone who was prepared to do it for him. Yeah. So um that was, you know, for him from his point of view, it was about getting something done. He had to pay for it. That's what he did. So he found someone who could carry this out for him, who was happy to do it. He paid the money, got it done. Post that there was a lot of other discussions, and then there was subsequent talk about moving on to another target.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Let's let's talk about that because you've alluded to it a few times. And I think when you're talking about the tussle between the needs for the investigation for your prosecution and the needs of community safety, I think this is all converging on this next one point. Did Pai want somebody else killed? And was the shooter in the process of planning that hit?
SPEAKER_05Yes. So Yeah, she wanted a couple of other people killed. And it came out throughout the investigation, this was the problem that once the the shooter had executed um the first murder, uh shooting uh Nick Martin, uh Pye sort of believed, okay, well, now I've got my own assassin and I can I can deploy him and can use him however I wish. So I'm gonna start settling some scores around town.
SPEAKER_02Who was in the firing line?
SPEAKER_04Uh well the target um that we were primarily aware of was uh Ray Chile, who was uh a uh senior RMCG member uh living overseas. Thailand, I think, at that time. Or Laos. So the shooter, given his previous history with Shadows of Hope, had contacts in that part of the world. Um and his plan was to use those contacts to carry that out. So he would potentially fly to Oh no, no, no, COVID, he couldn't move. Oh. So he was gonna outsource it to outsource it to others.
SPEAKER_02Jeez, okay. Ray Chile is, from my understanding or was the president of the Comicheros here in Western Australia at some one one point in time. He um he and David Pye had some history because Pye had been a member of the Comicheros after he left the rebels. He was. Presumably there was a falling out there. Do they they all fall out with each other?
SPEAKER_04Uh look, we don't know exactly what that was about and the extent of that. So there's a lot of things we don't know about the relationship between those two and how it got to this point. Um, but there was clearly planning being undertaken to have Rachelli shot. Um so we reached a point where we, you know, we we can't allow that to occur. Um, so we have to act anyway. And so there's a there's a culmination of a series of different events reaching the point where we we have to take action. We can't allow this to occur. Um so we chose to do that.
SPEAKER_05So we actually recovered evidence uh during the investigation of his planning um for how the shooting of Ray Chile was going to go down and actually um a video of how it was going to be undertaken. Can you describe that for us, what it was, the video? Uh yeah, it was a bushland area, and it was just a shooter making uh a long-range hit um from the rear of a vehicle um to someone that would be, say, in a uh a seated position, um, like say sitting at a a cafe or or something like that, just to show that you know you could just pull up in a car and yeah, with it in a vehicle um to hit your target and then drive away.
SPEAKER_04What was he using as a target? It was a grapefruit on the video that we've got.
SPEAKER_02Anything on the grapefruit?
SPEAKER_03Just a drawing.
SPEAKER_05So there was some music playing as you'd expect, you know, like uh if you're in places like Bali, you walk in the street. Street sound. Yeah, street sound, like from an Asian busy Asian street. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Wowza. Okay. All right. Thank you very much, gentlemen. Next week we'll talk about the takedown, the arrest.
SPEAKER_12This is Operation Podcast.
SPEAKER_02Welcome back to Operation Podcast. Now, the Western Australia Police Force has a bit of reputation for being uh innovative and very forward-thinking and forward-leaning in the technology space. Uh, including on podcasts, we're going to try something we've never tried before. And instead of asking the commissioner questions from the community, we're going to get the commissioner to have a chat and maybe ask a few questions of our young, uh, two very young and very bright officers. Uh, Constable Christian DeCosta from Jundal Up and Constable Carl and Schutz from Perth. Uh and it's really about how we're using technology, things like AI or quasi-IO or graph analytics, I don't even know what that is, but you're about to explain it, I think, to catch crooks faster than we ever have before. Oss, just to maybe set the scene, how important is technology now in modern policing?
SPEAKER_08Well, it does require a bit of scene setting. I came into this agency in 2018 from a Commonwealth agency that was primarily focused on intelligence and using data. And it was evident that we needed to head in that direction. And I think, you know, the world does and the world has. And certainly most people that were born in the early 2000s have grown up as digital natives. They're very familiar with technology and data. And as a police commissioner, uh, which I became in 2022, it's easy for me to focus my job on getting uh funding and buying capability, but that only gets you so far. You need pretty amazing people to use that capability so we can do our job properly. And in my view, policing has a critical role in solving crime for our community. We can't always stop it. Uh, we can certainly give that a good crack by being present and visible in our community. But sadly, crime will still occur and there are bad people in this community that will commit crime. So our objective has to be how quickly can we solve it? Because we want to give our assurance to our community and the victims of those crimes that we're on our business. We know our business and we're using every lever that we can, particularly in a technology landscape, to solve crime. And I can't do that from the commissioner's office. Uh, but what I do know is that we have amazing people like Christian and Carl and many others in our agency who embrace technology, embrace data analytics, and really just blow people away when they tell others what they're doing.
SPEAKER_02Well, I and I'll look, I think you should jump in and ask some question pointed questions at again, boss, if you want to. But what exactly is data analytics and how's it got anything to do with crime? Can can one of you guys maybe explain?
SPEAKER_11Yeah, I um I'd say my understanding of data analytics, or even I suppose more with what with our use of the day today, kind of falls in the technology realm of things that they're developing and trying to help us can do things a little bit more effectively and quickly. Um, with what Christian does with um power automation than what I do with um Iris, or I can't remember the other umbrella that it's under.
SPEAKER_02So these are block computer programs, if you will. Yeah. What's what what sort of data? When we talk about data, we always in policing this we talk about data. What is it?
SPEAKER_08Look, the simple answer is there's that we collect so much more data today than we did last year, than we did five years ago. But what is it? Um and and I'm going to say that the first point is whatever we collect, and we'll talk about what we do collect in a minute, no human can uh analyse that amount of data. Yeah, we're talking millions and millions and millions of lines of data in a week from a range of sources. And that can be number plates, it can be CCTV. Images, it can be a body worn police uh images, it it can be um correspondence that comes into the agency, phone calls that come into the agency, it can be telecommunications data, and data sets on their own can tell a story, but when data sets are combined with each other, it tells the real story. And I think that's where the skills of um Carl and Christian come into play is that they use their brains and their human skills combined with being able to use the data and the analytics to solve those crimes. And you've got to be both. You can't just have data tools because that they don't operate independently. You've got to have a police brain, uh a data brain, an analyst's brain. And when they all work as a team, that's when the magic happens.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So this is where I'm hoping to get some examples if I could. I'll go over to you, Christian. So what program do you use and how can you give me an example of how you might use it to solve a crime?
SPEAKER_09Um, there's quite a few programs. I'll say we use Carla probably touch on the same one that we use probably on a day-to-day basis that can look at the data sets from a range of things that we enter into, which is called Iris. And so let's say when we let's say place someone under arrest and enter them on a system, that goes on one system. When we then enter the information from an incident, that goes on another system. Um, when we get dispatched to a job, that's on another system. And so for one human being to go through all these data sets, it's an absolute mission of a job and have so much time. The program called Iris plugs into, I suppose, all of our systems that you can kind of create queries and run searches to pull information from everything. So if I was looking for a name that was mentioned in the narrative of, let's say, all incident reports from last year, I can just put that into Iris, or if it was a running sheet entry on it somewhere, um, we can put that into that system and it'll look across the whole thing. Or if I have two suspects and I want to know if they know each other, I can put both their names in and say, do these two people know each other? And it'll find me a link between them.
SPEAKER_02How? But how, how would how look the data informs the, I guess, the program to say that this is a known associate?
SPEAKER_11Yeah, it looks for things in common. Um, so an example with what Christian said about two people um looking for two names. You you could type in um looking through one of our programs for this particular name and then looking for another particular name. And then it looks for those two keywords and shows you the result that has those two keywords within. Um, so then it would show these people being listed on a report that didn't develop to an incident report that maybe happened three years ago, but it's maybe put them in a car together.
SPEAKER_02Okay. All right. So this is we're talking about very potentially obscure bits of data that are suddenly relevant but weren't relevant at the time that would take boss, how how long would it have taken before we had these sorts of tools to find that sort of link between two people?
SPEAKER_08Anyone that's been in the police force for three decades or more, and remember when these two guys joined the job, body worn cameras were already in the job, I think, when you joined. Yeah. You know, I joined when there's typewriters, and there's police that have been in longer than me. Now, they've got very different skills and really good and valuable skills, the the longer um officers who have been in this job. But these skills now that are being developed, you can't replicate that in our history. We never had those abilities, we never had those tools. We we couldn't work out another file. They were hard copy files, literally. You could not know that there was another incident report related to that person. You know, from probably 1990 and earlier, there is no way you could join those dots unless the investigation was of such magnitude that you had hundreds of police officers looking manually through files. So this wasn't achievable before. I've got to say, it's a strong warning to people who are making conscious decisions to commit crime. These guys are gonna catch you.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Yeah, that these two and so many others out there, they know how to use the tools. And I think that's the question I would have for them. You must have a fairly good heads up early on when you start a case, you know, with the CCTV, with phones, with number plate recognition, with um, yeah, other witnesses coming forward. It puts you in a pretty good position to start at least getting good leads so you can start using your policing skills to go hunt them down.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, I think for me, especially with using the tool Iris, I um I'm more surprised now when I don't identify a suspect than before. Before it was, before we could use this tool, before I could use this tool, it was, oh, CCTV, no one knows who they are. Their internal, internal um intelligence platform can't nominate who that person is. Whereas now I can find them and then run them through, and it's probably 90% of the time I'm able to identify them, whereas before it was, you know, that figure was maybe a little bit different. Because we've got 90%. We've got this tool that can if you if you just give it little bits of information that you know or you can be sure of, it can help you repaint a really good picture as to a way to find this person.
SPEAKER_02So you guys, you guys would absolutely just ruin a game of Pluto, wouldn't you?
SPEAKER_08I mean look, I I sit up, I sit up on the sixth floor extremely proud of our offices when they uh solve crime.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_08But I'm assuming, you know, Christian, for you and and Carl, it's a it's an exciting time when you solve a crime, isn't it?
SPEAKER_09Oh, absolutely. Like I I think I said it before, I view it like a puzzle. Like I genuinely sometimes take it personally if I think like, oh, I can't solve this one. Like they beat me. Like I've got all these things available to me. Like I'll be able to find this out if I just give it enough time. Like I will figure it out. Um, and I get like quite excited about it and have such a passion for it of just figuring it out. Um, so like Carl said, it's nowadays, when we don't find out who it is, it's quite a rarity. If we have any sort of line of inquiry, we're probably going to find out who you are.
SPEAKER_02Can you give us an example of, say, a job?
SPEAKER_11Carl has a really good idea. I've got I've got a different one. Um so there was a point where I was attached to um a team in Perth where we just looked for people breaking into cars and and stealing bits and bobs. And that was um that was pretty it's pretty prevalent in Perth. Um I had a file where a uh young male was depicted on CC TV walking through the basement car park of the complex. Um I, through using Iris, went through um countless different searches, putting different things in. One thing um that did separate this fella from a lot of other people was that he had a pretty prominent rat's tail that started at the top of his head. And he also had a particular shape to his face, which kind of separated him a bit. The query that I submitted um was looking for someone with his particular details that had been involved in any incident that had occurred in Perth within the last week. And that gave me a list of um people that were involved in police interactions in the last week. And the reason that that search was submitted, because it's quite common when people um break into cars, it's generally something they do quite a bit. So I know that it's likely he might have been involved in something else. From that, I found footage of him the following night wearing, I think he had the same bike and stuck him out by the particular rat's tail. And then that was the the crumb that got it started. Without using Iris, there's not really a way that I could have found that information because it's hard to, it can be hard to, I guess, look for someone that's had an involvement into something that's completely unrelated. He was involved in a traffic incident, completely unrelated to what I was looking at. But that little um shred being his age, what he looked like, hair, colour, height, that sort of thing, that was put into the query and generated me a list of people that look like that.
SPEAKER_02Wow. So not only are you solving crime quicker, I'm gonna I'm gonna go out on a limp here and ask all three of you, are you able to detect trends? So that say crimes that actually do affect mum and dads and working people and young people in our community by, you know, it's a real hassle when someone smashes your car window and steals something from your car, but it's not someone calling for help because they're being faced with an active arm offender, someone with a knife trying to stab them. So down the list, the pecking order, it goes. However, this is a crime, and it obviously does hurt people in our community. By using these tools, finding these patterns, are you able to identify those people who are doing large volumes of petty crime that's hurting our community?
SPEAKER_08Well, what these two guys do, and what everyone else does that's using these tools, they're actually breaking the cycle of recidivism for a short time because recidivism, and for our community, it's important to know that 99.5% of our community are good law-abiding people who aren't committing crime. The ones that do at a high rate, recidivus, volume crime, recidivus, are always doing it. And they can do it in large numbers. They can do 50 Bergs or 50 car uh thefts from car in a week. Because they have these tools and these guys use them so effectively, they break that cycle. Again, just through the justice process. They might be bailed very rapidly and out again doing it. And that's why we rely heavily on our own data, because we can see who's continued to do it. But they because they break the cycle, we have numbers of burglaries down in the 16,000s. 20 years ago it was 60,000 or about sorry, it was about 40,000. So we've had significant reductions in these numbers because these guys know how to break the cycle of crime. And the type of teams that they work in are specifically focused on recidivist offenders and hunting those who are committing that volume crime. These guys are experts in that. And again, it's it's a privilege to watch because the way they sift through the data is unprecedented in policing.
SPEAKER_02How um how would you catch a burglar? Like somebody who's how would you use Iris or one of those tools to catch someone who's knocking over houses?
SPEAKER_09My like the team I work at, the Jundle Up Rapid High Harm Offender Response Team, is almost entirely burglaries that I deal with, um, or my team deal with. And it is always just based on those like simple line of inquiry things. So whether it's CCTV, whether it's forensic data, whether it's just an eyewitness who can give a description of a person, um, you can then go through iris, because once again, most burglaries are done by volume crime offenders. So people who've done it before and continue to do it quite frequently. Um, so it's just putting the little bits of information you do have, whether it's a description, um, whether it's clothing, anything like that, um, and then just linking it to previous ones and then corroborating it with whether it's body warm footage that's been or other data sets as well. So like CCTV and things like that. Um, but with it being like 2026 and the fact that everyone has CCTV, the fact that forensic opportunities are always going to be there, the fact that cars have dash camps, everything like that. And we have access to look across every data set we have in seconds from the time that police have started recording information, it's it's hard to not be able to identify something that's going to give you further information.
SPEAKER_02That's pretty incredible. And uh burglaries are, I in my opinion, I mean, they're just one of those ones that really hit you hard. Because they'll steal stuff that doesn't have a monetary value and throw it away that you just can't replace.
SPEAKER_08Just to uh double down on how difficult it is to get away with crime these days, Carl, uh, I listened to you at the capability forum. In fact, I listened to both of you. Um tell us about the query that you run that says what they what people aren't. You spoke about criminals. You might you might put a query in that says what you think they are, but you certainly know what they aren't. And sometimes that can provide results for you because you exclude things that you definitely know they're not.
SPEAKER_11Yeah, yeah. Um based off um CCTV, you'll submit a query with what you think the person looks like. And you can have some assumed ideas about what you think they may be and height and and whatnot, but once that may not produce a successful result, now we can change things. So let's just say um just trying to think a better way to put this. A great one would be the person I'm looking for is overweight. Now we have maybe four or five things that we can enter. I think it's slim, average, fat, athletic, muscular, and then I think that's pretty much it. So you can submit it with just that one being fat. That's that's in the system, that's not my word. So um, but that might not produce a result. So I can say they're not slim, they're not athletic. And then it kind of opens up the searches for these three other things that they could be, um, giving me more potential options because people's weight can change. Yeah.
SPEAKER_08Now there is no real specific training course for these guys at the academy. I want to point out something. These guys have developed working in teams, bouncing off each other, talking to intelligence analysts, knowing what data scientists and and uh analysts in our agency do, and being technology natives. They are, they are pioneers, they are driving the agency forward. And I know people that watched uh their presentations at the Capability Forum. There was plenty of police, myself included, that went, wow, that's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_02I've got um another question, if I may, just because I think this is really interesting. And boss, if you've got anything else, by all means. Um we're talking about volume crime, we're talking about finding those patterns, making those connections using these programs and knowing how to use these programs, which you guys are basically, you know, you're you're writing the book on it, really. Um what about really serious crimes and the you know, uh a serious sexual assault or serious assault, is it the same? Is it is it again, is it about patterns? Is that how you solve these things quickly?
SPEAKER_08Well, the first thing I would say is um the whole reason we have developed these tools is to be agnostic to crime. That doesn't mean one crime isn't more serious than another. And obviously, sex offences and homicides and and serious violence uh based assaults, uh violence assaults are critical to our solving rapidly. But we use the same tools. But what we normally do is apply more human resources to it to do the human side of policing. There always will be. There's the door knocks, there's the taking of statements, there's the working with the victims of the crime and the families. There's a lot of that work that goes into it. When these guys work on volume crimes, you just don't have the time for that. There's there's too many to do, and they are rolling through them, and it's about stopping the recidivism. But the technique is the same, and the use of data tools and the access to data is the same. They just don't have the time. They're time poor. I think that's right, guys. Is that fair to say?
SPEAKER_11Yeah. Yeah, I think um, and why this technology with the data analytics is so good because it allows us to condense that time down so we can be more effective with the searches that we make and the actions that we do, rather than coming across multiple systems. We can be very quick and direct with what we want and get an immediate result rather than something that when I started, maybe the same queries that I look for would have taken a couple of hours. Well, now it's 15 minutes.
SPEAKER_02And there there was a method that to the madness when I asked that question, actually, gentlemen. Um you're solving volume crime with with, I guess, let's just say in some respects it's it's passively, because the information's there, you're pulling that information together, or Iris is pulling it together for you to help you find those patterns to help you identify who the person might be. If it's a serious, serious offense, where it's a homicide or a sex assault, is all of that real-time work that's going out there from the detectives, from officers in uniform, going, knocking on doors, body worn camera, are they just increasing that data that you can use to pull together to solve the crime even faster?
SPEAKER_09Absolutely, definitely. And that is it, like the more data we have, at one point before things like Iris came about, it you would get flooded by data that it's just you'd have too many videos to look through. Like, let's say it's body worn, you've got 10,000 to look through. Someone's just not going to do it because it's too difficult. But these things coming out where we can have like upload all that body worn into something and then just say, search through it all and look for somebody that's wearing a black everlast t-shirt, and then it'll spit me out the five videos that officers, no matter where they were, spoke to somebody wearing a black everlast t-shirt. Once again, it's information we may have never come across because it's just it's impossible to allocate the amount of time that we needed to that task. But something to do that for us in minutes is phenomenal.
SPEAKER_11I can share the um example pretty much with with what I spoke about at the forum, if you'd like. About um Wayne, I won't I won't say his name, obviously, but um I um was looking at a an incident that happened out in West Perth. It was a very kind of low-level um steal from motor vehicle offence. A guy had walked up the street, broken into a car, stole something out of it, broke, walked up to another car and then stole something else. From that day, I was able to get CCTV footage um which showed a um a male walking up the road with a black singlet, blue shoes, and yellow short. I don't think he had yellow shorts at the time. Um, but yeah, yep. So I ran him through all my systems, all my searches. I couldn't, I didn't really find anything that really stuck out. Generally, um, even when you change these filters, you can end up with 50 to 100 people, which still might be a big, a big search that you need to run. So I've submitted his um image out in our internal um be on the lookout group and didn't have any results. The following day I come in and I was contacted by one of the detectives from Sex Assault Squad, who she she sent me an image of the um what looked to be the same person, being that he had the same shoes, um, physical appearance and shirt. But that report was that he had now been involved in quite a major um sexual offense against a minor that following night. Um, from that information, and this is where um, like you've said, Cole, having the police brain really kind of works, is that my thought process changed to after reading the incident report, that um something like that, from what I saw in the narrative, is not going to be carried out by someone who probably has never had a conviction for a sexual-related offence before. They from what I've seen, they usually start quite low, and then it's something as serious as what I've read. Yeah. Yeah. So I submitted a new search um just looking for people within the Perth area that had any involvements at all with police that had um uh criminal convictions for um sexual-related offences, which gave me five results. Out of those five results, one person in particular looked identical to this suspect that both the sex assault squad and I were looking at. Um I pulled the body-worn footage that was recorded from the most recent interaction being um, I think it was a week prior to, which showed a male wearing the identical singlet, yellow shorts and blue shoes, which was identical to the person we were both looking for, and then it was he was now identified. As a result from that, the statewide Bolo or be on the lookout was issued, sorry. And from the time offence to the time he was arrested was about 15 to 16 hours. With I think he was arrested that following morning. So he wasn't able to be out that night to commit another offense against maybe someone else or carry on what he was doing, or in my case, break into cars. But it produced having that system that you you wouldn't have found it because it's it's it's a completely different offense as to why he was being spoken to by police. And it's unlikely that I mean, until DNA came through, it might have been you know a few more days or a week or something like that.
SPEAKER_02That's incredible. That is absolutely incredible. If you are a crook and you are listening to this, take note. Um I just want to ask very last question from me. Blue yellow shorts, blue shoes, everlastinglets, rat's tails. Do you ever put in uh as a search questionable fashion and hair choices, hair style choices?
SPEAKER_08You might come up as the time, shall we?
SPEAKER_11Yeah, if there was a rat tail criteria we could search, it might cut things down a little bit, but Okay. Rat's tail mullets.
SPEAKER_08One last question. Yep. Um You're clearly in the pioneering seat of solving crime, but it's fair to say it's still the pioneer days of technology and particularly uh artificial intelligence. Uh I'll make a statement first, and that is our community. We're very fortunate to have a community here in Western Australia that supports us in our policing overwhelmingly. And we've got to bring them along on this on this journey with us, and it's always important. That's why we do podcasts, we talk about our technology, we don't hide from it. We want our community to know how we're solving crime. Where do you see it heading? In a policing sense.
SPEAKER_11Can we take the floor on that one? Christian.
SPEAKER_09Yep, I'd love to. Um the direction I suppose that I see it heading is for policing and the community um that are doing the right thing, only a positive like direction is that I I think that we're we're collecting all this data anyway. I think all the technology we're having is just helping us sift through it and find better results to make sure that we're targeting the right people and we're doing that quicker. Um, and so I think with AI obviously becoming a Much bigger thing. Um, I think once again it's just gonna take leaps and bounds for us policing wise from how quickly we can streamline things, how quickly we can sift through all of our data and yeah, target the right people quicker.
SPEAKER_11What are you carrying on a view? I I think the we get to a point where you just have to run away from every copy that you saw because every interaction that you are gonna have with police is is is gonna be something that we can see, and especially people that have a lot of interactions with police. It it's it's not gonna be easy to disappear in hide anymore.
SPEAKER_02Wow. Take note.
SPEAKER_08Big warning, big warning for crooks. I mean, I I'll be honest, knowing what these two are doing and what many others are doing today, I'm not sure the occupation of criminal is a good plan for anyone.
SPEAKER_02I think maybe uh consider getting out of the game. I think is probably uh probably a wise, wise bit of advice. Uh gentlemen, thank you so much uh for what you're doing. And boss, thank you very much. There's some good questions there. Some good questions, boss.
SPEAKER_08I'm very proud of them both. I'm I'm proud of our whole agency. I can see uh what they do uh across all of our districts are being done by super keen, not always young, you know. There's plenty of old adopters of technology as well out there, but the way they combine it with their police, policing skills and police brains and the multidisciplinary approach to it, meaning different different backgrounds, different types of people, different skill sets, it really does make the difference. And we never had that in our history, you know. This is the the pioneering times of that.
SPEAKER_02Oh absolutely. And uh stay tuned, um, because as you said, boss, uh we do have people who have different skill sets, and we're going to hear from one of them, Paul Brunini, who is a uh legendary crook catcher with 40 years of experience, and you'll never guess you'll never guess how he how he managed to disguise an entire murder scene. Uh Operation Podcast. Thanks for listening. Welcome back to Operation Podcast. There are many fine officers within the Western Australia Police Force, but we do value those who have spent decades serving and protecting our community, particularly those who hit the 40-year mark and maybe even go a little bit further. And even within that cohort, whilst we have some fantastic people, there's often a few people within the agency that get the reputation for being what's called a good crook catcher. We're joined today by one of them. He's a bloke named Detective Sergeant Paul Brunini. And he is regrettably retiring after 41 and a half years of dedicated service with style, I would add. Paul, thanks very much for coming on the podcast. Uh thank you for having me. Paul, you do have this reputation as a crook catcher. And there are quite a few people in the agency. So if there's any crooks out there who think that they're gonna, you know, get a get a get a free pass with you uh riding off into the sunset, I think they're wrong. Um is there anything in your mind in terms of cases that you've worked over the 40 years period? Is there one that stands out for you?
SPEAKER_06Um yeah, well, look, as said uh, thanks very much, uh Joey. But um, yeah, after 40 years, there's been uh a lot of memories and a lot of good crooks caught. Um, but yeah, probably one of them that uh brings back uh when you mentioned that uh one of the best and most challenging, I would say. Challenging, rewarding? Yep, correct. Would probably be uh when I was at Homicide Squad. Um and that was uh Operation Altus. Okay. Tell us about Operation Altus. So Operation Altus was in regards to the uh death of Jason Edge.
SPEAKER_07Yeah, so just before we get into what actually happened to Jason, are you able to give us a little bit of a backstory on who he was?
SPEAKER_06Yeah, Jason was um, uh as far as I know, a good kid. Um even though you know he was 29 when he passed away. But um unfortunately, uh like the injuries he sustained, he um unfortunately became addicted to morphine. So that sort of led down a little bit of a bad path for him in relation to drugs. So so really good sportsman when he was younger, had a good job. Yeah, but uh as I said, there was just a bit of a a tragedy that you know he was severely injured and uh led to a bit of a drug addiction, and that's what you know led to ultimately his death. Um he uh basically went missing. When was this, by the way? Uh that was in 2015. Okay. Yeah. Um so yeah, look, um He's gone missing in 2015.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And I think maybe there his his mother was the one who raised the alarm. And she finally ended up sitting down with your good self, I think.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, correct. Yeah, we had um basically uh some information that he'd uh uh something untoward happened to him. Um so uh I went out to see uh mum and dad um one day, and I sat down with him and she basically said that, you know, he uh used to come home, you know, once a week, twice a week, or whatever. Uh contact definitely for her birthday. Um and she hadn't heard from him for um about four months. So um, yeah, she said it was definitely uh out of character. Um yeah, and uh once I sat down with her for about three to four hours and um went through it, I just basically thought to myself, well, um, yeah, the jigsaw's not adding up here. And, you know, very unusual for, you know, someone, you know, who has good loving parents not not to contact him in some way, either, you know, come to home and stay or have dinner or you know, even contact him by phone. So um went back to the office and sat down with the team and my um SIO, um, senior investigating officer, and but explained um uh everything to them. And um, yeah, basically the the investigation commenced from there.
SPEAKER_02So where do you go? Because I mean, obviously, missing missing people, missing persons. Yeah. Um, and by the way, we we're gonna be doing a um a segment on cold case missing persons in in uh coming episodes soon. Um and there are a whole host of reasons why people can be reported missing. Some are uh though genuinely missing. And um where do you start when with an investigation like this? Obviously, nothing, no one stumbled across a body or or anything in that in that five-month period.
SPEAKER_06Correct. Um yeah, so we basically um by some special projects, we found out that um his last location was in the northern suburbs. And um we s sort of identified a couple of addresses where he may have gone to. And um we were quite lucky. Um one of the addresses was in Clarkson, and um it was it was empty at the time. So we we we contacted the real estate agent and we uh went to look at the house, uh, of course, with consent from them. We found one of the back rooms, um, basically some traces of blood on very minute uh particles um on the wall behind the door. So um we contacted our forensics and they uh came along and um yeah uh um examined those samples and confirmed. Yeah, DNA analysis confirmed that it was basically Jason Edge's DNA um by blood. So um, yeah, from there we we we knew something untoward probably happened in that room at that that stage. So um as the investigation was progressing, we were going through again through special projects, and the most challenging bit was like who we'd been in contact with or you know, had seen the last few days where um, you know, it was alleged that he'd gone missing. But we didn't know if those people were friends of his or the actual, I could say, you know, killers. So to to go speak to them, like that could have been one of the, you know, the people that were actually probably one of our suspects. So we had to really um do some groundwork, do some groundwork, correct? Go right into it as to, you know, not uh tipping off that um we were on to this case. We sat down with our forensics because like we didn't want um, you know, for the people in that suburb to know that, you know, um we were examining that house.
SPEAKER_02Okay.
SPEAKER_06And um, yeah, look, and forensics basically said, because it was unknown as to any suspects, forensics basically told us we're gonna be there for weeks because, you know, to DNA everything. We we uh sat down for hours and basically we came up with a strategy that um, yeah, we would put fencing around the place and um, you know, a couple of signs, you know, asbestos removal, um, yeah, do not enter. And um, yeah, so um, yeah, instead of them wearing, you know, the police blue overalls with police are forensic, they'd, you know, they'd actually purchase some um, you know, some white overalls and stuff like that. So undercover forensic officers. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_12So it's kind of like a breaking down episode.
SPEAKER_06That is correct. Yeah. So um and then we had after hours, we had to have scene guards, you know, because we didn't want anyone coming after hours. So we'd actually uh lined up staff um to sit off uh the premises um in an unmarked car, plain clothes after hours. So it wouldn't be um, you know, contaminated in any way or um so yeah, so forensics went right through um that that premises. Um a number of really good exhibits were located. So they actually ripped up the floorboards um and we found uh actually blood uh embedded in the concrete underneath. Wow.
SPEAKER_02So um so they have they has there been an effort to clean that up? It was behind the door and underneath the floorboards kind of my uh my powers of deduction are uh thinking someone's got got got in there and given it a clean. Yeah, yeah.
SPEAKER_06Oh definitely, yeah. There was an attempt to clean clean that room. Um so then uh we uh through the ri real estate, um we actually identified who some of the occupants were, and it was a bit of a halfway house as well. So um we started like you know, we could I could say chipping off each of those people. And some gave us uh a little bit of info, so and some didn't want to, basically. Uh this this had taken over a month or so. Of course. So then we started narrowing down some suspects. Um so uh yeah, we put some telephone intercepts on on some of them. Um and uh yeah, we just started listening to um their phone calls. Um and then also we put out a basically a media broadcast to say that we're looking, you know, for Jason Edge. We had a little bit of um yeah, uh feedback from that.
SPEAKER_02Um so we love it when members of the public help, and that's part of the reason we have this podcast as well. Because people out there we're actively hoping will help us solve crimes.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, yeah, correct. So um yeah, so then look, very resource intensive. As I said, you know, we're still at that stage that we didn't want to tip anyone off, because if we had to go see some of the suspects friends, of course they'd go, well, the police have just been around, and guess what? You know, they were they'll maybe looking at you. Look, it came to the stage that the uh investigation had progressed that much, and we we had a um a bit of evidence through um some listening devices and and telephone intercepts that um yeah, we were basically in a good position to go into what we call the arrest phase. So um, yeah, so we arrested um four people, three males and a female. Um yeah, none of them uh basically admitted to anything. Um but we were very confident that at that stage we had a prime and phasey case.
SPEAKER_02So the blood, the the fact they were there, DNA, all that sort of stuff suggested this was this is yeah, okay.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, correct. So um, yeah, the main offender uh or suspect um I was actually speaking to him outside uh the interview room and uh basically wanted a cigarette. So um, you know, of course it wasn't talking about the investigation, but he basically looked at me straight in the eye and said, Paul, you know, you've got no body, you've got nothing on me. So um, yeah, Joey, very hard to convict without a uh deceased or body to prove the uh actual cause of death. So I actually replied to him, I said, Well, you watch me, you know. So so that uh yeah, basically um yeah, made it a real good mission of mine and my team. Um and I I must mention that I had a really good team on this as well, very knowledgeable, uh, very experienced, um, very competent investigators. Um so yeah, so basically uh they were charged um with murder. Um one was charged with accessory after the fact he wasn't there at the time, but um he actually uh later was uh proven and convicted that he'd acquired a dinghy and um helped assist the main um uh suspect or offender take the body out to sea. Wow. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02So what do you think what what was it that I mean, obviously there's you know, in terms of what transpired that in that room, that back room with those with those people.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, so Jason uh was basically lured to that room by um lady by the name of Jody Abbott. Um, yeah, where it was over apparent drug debt. Um now uh the main offender wanted to uh r retrieve some money, and an argument developed in that room, and then uh there was a I could say a bit of a a scuffle. During that scuffle, Jason actually apparently um the evidence is it got the better of um the main offender, Jonathan Pohima. Um and it was at that stage that um Jonathan yelled out, you know, for help. So another gentleman by the name of Chris Moyer um came into the room and basically uh choked him unconscious. It was at that stage, it is alleged that Jonathan Bohemer lost his temper and basically kicked him to death. So um, yeah, he was then wrapped up in a tarpole and and taken out to the back shed overnight. Um and then, yeah, next day, Maddie Howarth and Jonathan's Bohemia, the evidence is that yeah, they um acquired a dinghy um from a gentleman who was a friend of theirs. Um and yeah, that uh body was then taken um up Yanship to Rocksway. We can tell that by telephone data, and then that body was taken out to sea. So yeah, so um, yeah, so basically they were charged with that, and then during the court process, Jodie Abbott, who was actually in remand, um contacted through her lawyer that basically she wanted to make a plea as to um what happened. So I flew to Derby Regional Prison. Um basically flew to Broome and then drove to Derby and I took a um long-winded, you could say, uh statement of her as to her um her uh knowledge and um her part in that. Um so yeah, so she uh basically gave evidence for the prosecution and pleaded guilty to manslaughter. So, which was really good for the case as well. Um yeah, look, uh so yeah, during the uh the trial, it was a two-month trial, very good prosecutors, Laura Christian, um, very knowledgeable um senior prosecutor. Um and uh yeah, so throughout the trial, um yeah, look, it was very again, uh defense through everything. Yes. Basically uh three defense lawyers, very good, very good defense lawyers. They threw everything out or at the witnesses to try and um yeah, basically uh uh attack their credibility. Sure. Um we had witnesses from who had been threatened. Some had taken off over East. So I actually had to send staff over to Sydney to interview them um prior to the court um proceedings. Um yeah, so after a a long-winded sort of two-month trial, um yeah, the main offender, he was convicted of murder. Uh Chris Moyer was convicted of manslaughter, and uh Maddie Howard was convicted of accessory after the fact. Um and at that time, Joey uh John Quigley um uh was basically trying to push through Parliament the nobody, no parole um issue. Yes. Now of course there's nobody in this investigation, was there? So John Quigley being the former attorney general of Western Australia. That's correct, yeah, correct. So um at after I gave evidence, which was just right up to the end of uh prior to the prosecution completing its case, um his lawyer, um Tony Elliott, approached me uh after and basically said, Paul, we want to show you where the body is. And um, like I was, you know, taken back because all the evidence was during this case that his body had been taken out to sea. So uh my immediate impression was, you know, this this new legislation, nobody, no parole. So I went back to uh my inspector and told him that, you know, look, this is the story. The main offender wants to show us, you know, where the body is. Anyway, his first words, well, it's an escape attempt, so it's not gonna it's not gonna happen. Anyway, so I sat down with him and basically uh came up with a plan. I said, Well, you know, we can't um knock this back. This is, you know, this has been put to us. So um we actually uh came up uh that weekend on the weekend. I had like 15 members of our tactical response group and uh a whole team of us and forensics. Uh we um pulled him out of prison. And again, very hard when someone's in prison prison, you've got to get um written approval from the um prisons uh like commissioner or whoever he was. Um Shane Maines, corrections, Shane Maines at the time. So um, yeah, so we had this uh it was quite interesting, this long convoy going up the freeway, and then um so yeah, the main offender he took us, um stopped, walked through these sand dunes, and then came up to like a uh a divot or whatever in the sand dunes, and he goes, that's where the body is, or last seen. So um, yeah, and being one step ahead, I had our forensics guys uh thoroughly examine that um that sand sand dune, and they would have said, look, if there was a body there, we we'd know about it. Bearing in mind, this is two years after he's gone missing. So if he had left there, of course there'd be bones or you know, some type of material that he you know might have been wrapped in or clothing. But there was absolutely nothing. So um yeah. Uh sounds would it be fair to say, just speculatively? Yep.
SPEAKER_02That potentially he's trying to mitigate the nobody, no problem thing by I told you we're The body was, you just couldn't find it. Yeah, correct.
SPEAKER_06So, Joey, reading between the lines in 27 years' time, or wherever he when he was due to come out, he could go to the parole board and said, Well, that's the last time you know I saw that body, and that was in that sand dune. So, so but that's something you know that will is way down the track. Of course. Progressing from there, um, look, we sort of roughly knew which area in the ocean he was, um, and to um assist the family, the family of the nicest people you've ever met. Tragedy, definitely, you know, one of the one of the worst tragedies is my career to someone to lose their one and only son. Yes. And um in a tragic way, and then to never retrieve or you know, know exactly where he is is is is just uncomprehendable to me. Um yeah, so I actually after the um the trial um went to the water police and um put the the the case to them and I said, Well, look, from our records, we believe he's in this patch of ocean. Speaking with senior uh water police divers, um they basically said, Well, that dinghy, I showed him a picture of that dinghy, we knew where that dinghy had come from. And the dinghy came back to the owner without uh the anchor and anchor chain. So it's alleged that, you know, basically that's what the body was wrapped in. So um, yeah, speaking to the water police, you know, told them the whole uh investigation. Um and yeah, they actually, you know, were quite upset to what happened, you know, to Jason and his family. So they actually said, look, Paul, if that anchor and anchor chain is still out there, it wouldn't be past the reef, it'd be in that kilometer sort of area from the the shoreline to the reef. And then from the uh uh the telephone data, we believe that um I can say lengthways of the ocean or that reef would be within a kilometre. So they actually said, well, we have some uh like radar detecting devices that could probably you know pick up that anchor and anchor chain. Yeah, for two days, the water police they were so good, what they put two divers down and they would um the boat or the water police boat would drag those two divers very, very slow speed, and they just did a grid pattern up and down for two days. So I took um the parents there, we set up gazebo, put some chairs, and they um you know uh sat there and watched. It was um, yeah, to them, it was just I know amazing how they appreciated the work that you know myself and the team and the WA police had put in. They couldn't believe that we'd you know we're going this extra step to find him. So unfortunately, after two days, um, yeah, there was no luck.
SPEAKER_02Um if um if someone out there is you know a diver or fisherman in there in that area, I mean look, it might not be a bad thing to keep keep uh keep a look on the on the on the on the ocean floor there for an anchor and anchor chain.
SPEAKER_06Yeah, in between uh chip and two rocks. There you go. Yeah if you do know something.
SPEAKER_12Yeah, look, if you do see something, uh call police on one through one triple four or crime stoppers online or through the one-eight hundred number.
SPEAKER_02Yep. We'd love to be able to get some closure, that final closure for the family. Yeah. Um and you're still in contact with them as well.
SPEAKER_06Yes. So unfortunately, um father passed away a few years ago, but um uh what we call the flow row or the family liaison officer. I'm still in contact with mum. She is one of the nicest and strongest ladies I've ever met. Um, yeah, and look, she just is so appreciative of what we did. And um, yeah, and she was, as I said, so happy with the day of the um when they got convicted, the jury convicted him, like the whole courtroom basically exploded in, you know, uh clapping and the the the judge actually had to, you know, sort of say, Young, please, you know, just settle down a bit. Um yeah, and then when mum gave her victim impact statement, um the judge actually, and there's newspaper articles on it, actually has shed a tear in her eyes too.
SPEAKER_02So um thank you for your work and for you and the whole team. I mean, that's an incredible result to bring them something which is justice done, yeah, and also potentially, I mean, that sound like some pretty nasty characters, maybe stop some other harm for befalling other people in the community as well. Correct. Yeah um did you ever have a moment with old mate who said, you know, you haven't got a but body, you got nothing on me. Was there a moment of uh, I guess I don't know, wrapping wrapping that up?
SPEAKER_06After he was um yeah, convicted, and I actually went to the sentencing date, which was soon after, as he was um let out after being sentenced. I actually nodded my head to him and uh Yeah, so You don't even have to say anything. Yeah, I didn't have to say anything, but um yeah, so he tried to appeal, um and as far as I'm aware, there were several lawyers wouldn't even touch it. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02Well we're gonna we're definitely gonna miss you here at the Western Australia Police Force. Yeah. Have you got any advice for any young people who think about joining or any young police officers who are in the job?
SPEAKER_06Um yeah, look, uh I actually had coffee with the commissioner a week and a bit ago, and I said to him, if I could do it again, I'd definitely do it. Um it's one of those jobs, every day is challenging. You meet good people uh through work and the community. It's so satisfying that when you solve a case, you know, to go tell the victim or whatever that, you know, we've actually, you know, charged someone. Um, you know, there's nothing more beneficial than, you know, going home at the end of the day when you know that, you know, some person has aggrieved, you know, some other person in the community in some way, the you know, stealing or robbery or car theft, that you've actually caught caught them and charged them. As I said, when we walk in the door every morning or every shift, every shift is different.
SPEAKER_02Sometimes you you've just got to put up some removal of asbestos signs and make your forensic officers go undercover. Well, thank you very much, mate, for your service. Enjoy your retirement. Hopefully, um it is a damn good one because you've you've earned it.
SPEAKER_06No, thanks, Joey. Okay, thanks everyone.
SPEAKER_07We've actually had a a chat with Jason Edge's mother, Dawn, and she spoke about her experience with Paul during the investigation.
SPEAKER_02In those four or five, I think, months after Jason had, and we know now that he would had been murdered, but at at the time he was thought to be missing.
SPEAKER_10Although you knew that something had I knew deep down, I knew deep down that that something awful had happened, and I kept going to the Jun Dellock police station because no matter, no matter what he was, he it was always, he always rang me and let me know where he was. And I knew I knew that something was you know gone astray. I knew that something was wrong, but nobody would believe me. Until he late. And then and then one day Paul and Jeff Ball came to my door, and and within what probably a week or something, I can't remember what it was, but it wasn't too far along the track that um we want to come around and speak to you. And and they told us then that you know that Jason was possibly dead and didn't let us on to too much at that time. But yeah, we knew from the word go that something awful had happened to him.
SPEAKER_02So for you, the day of the conviction, yeah. How how did you how did you feel on that particular day?
SPEAKER_10Oh my god, it was well, Paul said no matter what, we're gonna we're gonna make sure that he goes down. And it was just oh, I can't tell you, you know, the relief of it all knowing that that then four had been put down, you know, because they were so smart as well, you know, thought they'd gonna get away with it and they obviously didn't. But Paul said all along, uh, you know, if I do anything, I'm gonna make sure they go down, and they did. So I'm gonna get upset now.
SPEAKER_02No, no, that's okay, and that's absolutely understandable, Don. The day that that you were sitting on the beach uh while the water police were were looking for your son. I mean, did did that mean quite a bit to you?
SPEAKER_10Oh my gosh, yeah. It it certainly did. I mean, they they couldn't help us enough. They took us all around the boat, they described, you know, what they were gonna do, they were communicating with Paul and I can't remember the other fella that took us down there in the four-wheel drive and we sat there while they were, you know, skimming the ocean trying to find because he thought that then he explained to us because of the the time frame and everything that the sand had probably buried whatever, you know, that they could have retrieved. But yeah, it was well, Paul was there again. I mean, Paul was everywhere. He was everywhere. He even came to Jason's funeral. He's been with us doing our little thing of pip and joinney, you know, he's been there all the time.
SPEAKER_02Many of our listeners are people who are considering a career in the Western Australia Police Force, or maybe they're, you know, they're just open to the idea, the the possibility. What would you say to them, knowing now having had so much to do with Paul and and and police officers throughout this investigation?
SPEAKER_10Oh, it's well, it'd be a rewarding job knowing that you've solved a a case for somebody who's in in dire straits, you know, and and worried sick about, you know, their siblings, their loved one, you know, and they're just there to help you in every way, follow, swallow the whole thing.
SPEAKER_02Dawn, thank you so much for chatting with us. It really actually makes a big difference. And you know, I guess the thing is that somebody listening right now might get now go on to to help another family, uh other victims of crime, because of your powerful words. Thank you so much, Dawn. It's really thank you.
SPEAKER_10Thank you for doing the podcast, too. It means a lot to me.
SPEAKER_00All units, the WA police force is looking for people who are big on community and solving true crime, not just watching it, you know. Ordinary people up for doing extraordinary things.
SPEAKER_09Sound like you? Sir, let's join forces.
SPEAKER_12You're listening to Operation Podcast. An emergency rescue in Carnarvon earlier this week saw local police plunge into dangerous flood waters as torrential rain from Cyclone Norrel left a man stranded. Body worn camera vision captured the moment officers put their own lives on the line. Constable Alex Jones was there, and he joins us now on the podcast to explain exactly what happened and why police were the ones who had to act. Alex, thanks for joining us. Alex, can you tell us about the moment?
SPEAKER_02Um, can you tell us about the moment when you know you you arrive at uh well it's the Gascoigne River and it's overflowing, it's it's raging. You can see the vision on our socials that the water is rising incredibly quickly. Tell us what did you think? You saw this bloke out there on a tree stump. How did you figure out what happens next and how to save him?
SPEAKER_13Yeah, okay, guys. Um, yeah, it was a crazy situation. We'd um obviously river slide for the first time in quite some time, and we'd been going back and forth earlier on in the day and seeing it slowly rise. But it had been um about five hours since I'd last been down there, and and it was actually quite a shock to the system to see just how high it had come up onto the roads. Um so to see this guy, yeah, standing there uh climbing onto a hanging onto a tree stump with his car almost completely submerged right next to him, uh, it was definitely a shock to the system, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_02And did you did you call, I mean, obviously the experts in in this sort of rescue, I would imagine, the people with the gear is the SES and D Fez. Did you give them a call?
SPEAKER_13Yeah, uh, they were definitely called. We had a couple of other officers as well. Uh there's about five of us there all together. Um, so it was a good team effort. And the other guys were calling SES and DFES trying to uh come up, get some advice or get a crew there. But uh I had heard that they'd had up to about 20 rescues themselves uh over the last 24 hours amongst the cyclone too. So we just asked to sort of come up with a plan and do the best we could.
SPEAKER_02Okay. So normally uh the DFES guys in SES, they're great. They work really closely with you, but obviously, yes, they're dealing with the aftermath of a cyclone that damage everywhere, flooding everywhere, that sort of thing. Um so okay, you are now it's you're looking at the water rising. What are you thinking?
SPEAKER_13Um, yeah, well, we're trying to make sure that it's as safe as possible, pretty much. Um we've getting to the point where we know we have to do we're probably gonna have to do something ourselves because there isn't much more help coming. Um so it's just a matter of how can we best execute this? Let's make sure it doesn't turn into a two or three person rescue.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Did someone make the call? Did you sort of turn to each other and sort of go, guys, that water's rising fast where someone's gonna have to go in?
SPEAKER_13Yeah, pretty much. Um my colleague was pretty keen um to get involved straight away. Um he's a bit of an action man and he's he's always ready to go. And I think before we even got to the job, he would he would have been prepping himself to get into the water. Um and he's the officer you can see in the footage that does go does make his way into the water. But there was definitely a few moments where we sort of looked at each other and said, Okay, well, we're gonna have to do something because the water's rising. And if he was to separate from that tree, well, I don't think we'd be seeing him again.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I mean again, the the the vision is available on our socials, uh, and it is pretty extraordinary. The force of the water, um, everything else that the the driver who's the civilian who's clinging to that tree stump, if you will. Um, I imagine if he went in, geez, it may not have been a a happy ending.
SPEAKER_13Yeah, definitely. Uh and and that was sort of I remember pulling my phone out and looking at maps and saying if there was somewhere we could go further down downstream to intercept him if that was the case, but it just it wasn't gonna be possible. So that's when um we we were able to get some members of the community uh to go and gather some make do uh ways to assist us. So they came back with some life jackets, uh some ropes, some floats, um, and we managed to come up with a plan that we just had to do before it got too dangerous.
SPEAKER_02So what how what what did you land on when we talk talking about, you know, ropes, life jackets, or floats, all that sort of the arrangement that you kind of landed on to get Brad out there to the the stranded individual to help them out.
SPEAKER_13Yeah, so um we as I say we're lucky enough that there was uh a lot of plantation owners that uh live on the riverbank. They came down with some rope, uh, some floats, life vests. Uh we decided to throw out a sort of uh tender line to the to the person at risk on the tree and he secured that to the tree. Uh and my colleague wrapped a uh wraps it strap, sort of webbing around himself, and he waded out into the water, which was about waist deep, uh, but flowing at quite a rate. Um he managed to get over to the to the gentleman and he gave the gentleman a life vest as well um before instructing him to get under his back. Um and he literally carried him from the tree back across the water. And a few of us managed to give him a bit of assistance to get back to shore when when the water was getting pretty strong.
SPEAKER_02I think uh looking at the vision, it almost looked like Brad might have taken a bit of a trip or stumbled a bit. Was that a bit hairy, that moment?
SPEAKER_13Yeah, and that was sort of a concern we had at the start was what what sort of submerged objects are under the water. Um, but it was we had myself, my colleague, um, and a few of the other locals jumped in and we all managed to pull the pull the two of them back across and helped him find his feet again. So uh, but it was a hairy moment for a second, yeah, that's for sure.
SPEAKER_12Yeah. Alex, how long was the gentleman uh stuck out there for?
SPEAKER_13Uh we arrived just just around midnight um because it came on as quite a priority job, of course. Um, and I think from memory it was about 45 minutes to an hour. Um, and we saw, I think when we got there, the I could see the bottom of the vehicle's windows, and by the time we got him off successfully, it was the you couldn't see the windows anymore. So the water was definitely rising.
SPEAKER_12And time was running out, definitely. And what sort of car was it, mate?
SPEAKER_13Uh it looked like a um uh Navarra or a Ute of some sort, yeah.
SPEAKER_02Okay, all right. Definitely um considering the force of the water, uh that there was no way that I would imagine anything was going through that safely. Was the road actually closed?
SPEAKER_13Yeah, it was closed. Um I think it it was partially closed, I suppose. He came down to a point where some other people were gathering as well to watch it. Um, and I think it just caught him off guard. He was a little bit elderly, and I think maybe just uh didn't give himself enough time to leave safely and might have just taken the vehicle, yeah.
SPEAKER_12Look, it sounds like an obvious question, Alex, but what what's the one message and the key takeaway for the community uh from this rescue?
SPEAKER_13Yeah, I'll just um tell people to to stay up to date on their emergency WA app and that. And if you are going down um to watch the river flow, as it is obviously a rare event, just to stay safe and stay back, and it can it can take you quickly and you can end up in a really hairy situation really quickly. So just make sure you've been as safe as you can.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, that sounds sounds like very good advice. Can I just ask the the elderly gentleman, did he did he uh have anything to say after you rescued him?
SPEAKER_13Yeah, he was he was quite um disoriented to be honest, um, but he was he was very grateful and we ran him up to hospital and they checked him over. Uh he was he was all good and very grateful and we got him back to where he was aiming.
SPEAKER_02That's wonderful, mate. Um regional WA policing out there is a little bit different. Do you find that you often have to improvise uh much like you did during this rescue? Is it sometimes the case that you the that there's just no one else working where you are at the time when you're working?
SPEAKER_13Yeah, it can feel like that. It can be um definitely quite isolating, you know. Uh it's from Carnarvon, the next 24-hour station is about five hours away. So uh you've just gotta make do with what you can and you you rely heavily upon your colleagues, um, and you do become a really strong tight net unit and you have trust in each other. And like you say, you we you try and do things as as safe as you can, and you just gotta bite the bullet and go for it.
SPEAKER_02Well, um look, in honor of you and all of your colleagues, especially Brad, who jumped into the water, uh, we we've had the uh the pipe band uh weighed in on this. And uh I I don't know if you're familiar with a uh little song from the 80s called Danger Zone.
SPEAKER_03I have heard it.
SPEAKER_02Well, this one's for you. The WA Police Pipe Band playing their very own version of I Went to the Danger Zone.
SPEAKER_12This is Operation Podcast.
SPEAKER_02Thank you very much for listening to another episode of Operation Podcast. I have to say, it's been it's been pretty interesting this week. We've learned how you can solve a murder even without a body. We we've definitely had a bit of, you know, old school, good old-fashioned detective work and some really cutting-edge use of technology to solve crime. And we're just about to get our history fact. Yes. Which I almost forgot about. So what was the question again?
SPEAKER_12Last week uh I asked, have you heard of our mount you've heard of our mounted section and canine unit. Um, but did you know that the WA police once had another animal squad? Can you guess what it was? I said pigeons. Yep. And the answer is it's camels. Camels. Yes, camels. Uh from around 1890, camels were pro proving vital to policing in the goldfields and in the northern regions. Transporting food, water, and equipment to remote stations and police posts. Camel Squad. The camel squad.
SPEAKER_02You might have to bring that back if fuel prices don't come down. Yes. Uh so we also had, and look, I think we just need to quickly address this every week. We've been really lucky. To have some fantastic music provided to us by our wonderful WA police pipe band. I'm not sure that this week's song was my favourite, the uh the rendition of Danger Zone. I think it was um that was a tough one. We we set them a tough task, to be fair. To be fair. Yeah. Look, they they delivered. They delivered. They delivered, sorry. Yeah. They went into the danger zone and they came back with something. Sorry guys, we love you. We love you. Uh and uh look, uh I think maybe just a quick preview um into uh well, first our history fact for next week.
SPEAKER_12Yes. They say that police take pride in a sharp uniform. So, how did a perfectly ironed shirt save a life?
SPEAKER_09Ooh.
SPEAKER_12We're gonna discover how a heavily starched uniform helped Commissioner Fred Hare survive an assassination attempt.
SPEAKER_02What? Yes. That is wild.
SPEAKER_12It definitely is. So we'll hear about that in next week's episode of Operation Podcast.
SPEAKER_02And we're also going to speak with uh an officer, an absolute legend. His name's Greg McDougall, uh, great bloke, fantastic police officer who uh was actually run over on the job about two years ago and and almost died, broke so many bones in his body. And well, I don't want to spoil it, but this is a good news story, and it's the good news story that we all need. Thank you very much for listening.
SPEAKER_12If you've got any questions for the commissioner, you can send them to operation.podcast at police.wa.gov.au. And if you're thinking about joining us, let'sjoinforces.wa.gov.au.
SPEAKER_02Thanks very much. This is operationpodcast.
SPEAKER_01Sound editing by Joe and Danny, cover song by the WA Police Piper Band, and Cheesy Podcast They Music by Joey Catanzaro. By the way, why just listen to a podcast about policing when you could actually be doing it? Let's join forces.wa.gov.au
