The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.

Detective sy aside of life.

The average person is never exposed her I spent thirty four years as a cop.

For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.

That's what I did for a living.

I was a homicide detective.

I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys.

Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.

The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law.

The interviews are raw and honest, just like the people I talked to.

Some of the content and language might be confronting.

That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.

Join me now as I take you into this world.

In part two of my chat, we've recently retired police officer Gordon Drage.

We talked about more murders Gordon was involved in, including the murder of a former Russian KGB agent on the Gold Coast.

We also talked about the infamous and horrific bodies in the Barrel murder case in South Australia.

Some other tragic events Gordon was involved in, including the Dream World tragedy and the Sea World helicopter crash.

Gordon also spoke very openly about his own mental breakdown and what he's doing now helping first responders in their families.

Now, these are pretty heavy topics, but I think you'll find Gordon's perspective quite enlightened.

Gordon Drech, welcome back Part two by catch Killers.

Thank you very much.

And you've certainly seen the results of a lot of killers in your time as a crime scene officer.

I have this yeah, yeah, I don't normally see them face to face, of course, but usually in court I have to walk past the witness box.

That's another aspect of crime sceone that you spend a lot of time in the witness box.

We certainly used to, not so much of recent years because Queensland have changed the way that they do their things.

Now, if you're a defense Lizien and you want to call a witness, you've got to explain why and what sort of things you want to ask him.

And I think with DNA and that sort of stuff, in the early days, we were getting called yeah, just to stand there and say, well, I don't know, I can't explain it either.

You need to call it scientist, whereas now they would just call a scientist or they don't even try and challenge DNA evidence.

Now I think it's above out of the scope of most of our solicitors.

They just go, well, it's DNA.

They accept it, it's legitimate and valid.

Well, that's right.

They used to contest it.

But you're also the defense would hire the expert or an expert to contradict what you've said.

And I saw some there must have been a lot of preparation before you gave evidence.

As a crime scene officer.

Usually I like to be prepped.

I don't like hate that feeling of being called off guard.

And so, yeah, you stand in the witness boxing.

Oh oh, he just looks.

Silly involved, isn't that because the jury are looking at you, and.

Yeah, well, certainly this this theater bond part of some defense more than.

The defense often ask questions that they know you can't answer, and then they'll look at the jury when you go, I don't know, and then they'll roll their eyes and look at the jury.

That's the theater of the court.

That's it.

And this person's pretending to be an expert in this field, but I don't know.

The answer to these things.

Yeah, it's all about not trying to not stupid.

But like coming on podcast, really.

Hopefully we're not making me look stupid.

I always but if we can.

I'm staffed.

I do my best, but I've got my notes, so I look half in for We're going to talk about more murders.

One that I found particularly particularly interesting in the nature of the victim, and that was a Gerardi Banofsky, a former KGB agent, murder on the Gold Coast.

Do you want to tell us about that case, what your your involvement and what you did.

That He was one of my first murder more than he was my first murder on the Gold Coast.

And after I came back to friendsis, that's what we're going to put out, my first murder on the Gold case.

Just got the confession, no one else has got it.

There's a reward.

Can we share it?

Yeah?

I was.

We were stationing at Broadbeach at that stage, our office was and I just pulled into the car park at the back of the police station.

I think I think I might've been going to knock off for the night or at least have a meal, and then I heard this job come across the radio, and it was one of the few addresses I'd still learned in the short time I've been at Broadbeach, so I actually knew where it was.

I didn't have forget the map out because this is pre GPS's so I didn't have to ex physically get the map book out and look it up and do those things, so I could drive straight there.

So off I went, because they said this person has just been shot a number of times and it's not looking good.

So I'm going I think I'm probably only one of two, maybe the best, maybe three forensic people working that shift anyway, so it had to beat down to me.

So I've gone in.

I'm keeping my eyes peeled as you do, trying to race in looking for suspect vehicles or things.

Because it's a It happened in a like what do you call it, a canal a state, So there's a waterfront properties, so there's only a couple of ways in and out of a cross bridge.

He's frontage and the canal.

At the rear of the Yeah, they've got boats and stuff at the back of of them.

Mister Minovsky didn't have a boat.

He was on a dry block, but the house opposite him or had had a river frontage, so there's only a couple of roads in and out.

You've got to cross bridges so you can isolate the island really quickly, both closing those bridges down.

So I'm going in thinking I'm listening on radio.

They're getting other people to go and shut those bridges to stop and record people coming out.

So he's been putting his bins out one night and it's just just gone dusk, so he's put his bins out, and then as he's going back to put his or back into the house, he's been shot multiple times with a semi automatic weapon and he's then collapsed and died just inside the door of his house.

He'd gone through the garage and he's in front of his wife and child.

He's just fallen down and aphis he's bled to death from his injuries.

So we've gone in there, taken the photos and done the process the scene.

Then I have to then call in the senior other people, so becomes a much bigger crime scene then.

But I'm initially there to try and secure the crime scene, get it ready, to make sure no one's muck about with it too much, and we maximize their chance of getting the evidence.

During that first few hours ago, we think we think some frogmen have come from the canal across the road, the vacant block.

I said, some frogmen said like wetsuits.

You know aquial now and this is police at the scene.

This is police at the scene of It's not unusual.

For police at the scene to give you an update on what they know.

So what you're looking out for certain things.

Keep us in the loops what we say, because then some of the times we can go very quickly yes or no, that didn't happen.

Yeah, that's plausible.

But when I heard this leisurely the frogmen, I thought, crap, that's just straight out the movie.

Yeah, a couple of blakes and wet suits come out of the canal, pop him off and down we go.

And this day is I don't think I actually knew was CAZy b x CAGYB person.

So I thought, that's that's just so far affects was crazy.

But they ran with that for what I think now all these years later, that's actually now been pretty much universally debunked.

But I don't know how else they got into him.

There was no vehicles there was no not that aware of and there was no vehicles I passed, no people.

I came in through the main road, So look, maybe a frogwin.

They did come up in wet suits and snorkels, but they have then gone back and have fled back to Russia.

I believe, I think they know who that man is.

But he's gone back to Russia and he's been there ever since, and he's been probably protected a little bit by the Russians.

It's still still unsolved, but it was gets your curiosity when, yeah, even the fact with a former KGB agent and killed in circumstances, circumstances.

Like that, because he had a business partner as well, I think was a suspect for at one point he was in business with someone.

There was quite a lot of Russians on the Gold Coast back in those days.

We're talking two thousand and this one two thousand and one, maybe there was basically two thousand and he was one of a large group of Russians we had on the coast.

Not so much.

I don't think Russians are there as much anymore, but a lot of them are living in very exclusive enclaves and houses and things, so there was a lot of Russian money on the Gold Coast back in those days, So whether or not some of that was dirty money, I don't know, but he obviously upsets someone to a point where they felt he needed to be killed.

Not alluding to him being assay said with the Russian mafia, but I saw that come up a couple of times throughout my career, and yeah, don't mess with them.

No, clearly not.

But of course x KGB he had some business debts I gather, or perhaps some poor disnt business dealings.

It made it very hard for the police to follow a particular line of inquiry because there were so many variables that it could have come into play.

And when their main suspect fled back to Russia, I don't make an extra rip from Russia, but a bit challenging trying to stop a war in the Ukraine.

Well that's going really well, well, great stage the state at this point in time.

Difference between we've taken you from South Australia the Queensland the nature of the crime or the type of work, but also the culture of the police.

That's two parts a question.

But nature of the crime is there any different from what you were experiencing down in South Australia.

Not really Forensically, it was very much the same because forensics is forensic's pretty much a universal standard across the world.

Fingerprints have always been done much the same way.

It's how you process these different bits that might be slightly slight variance.

But I was fortunate when I came from South Australia because I'd had such an extensive and fortunate career there and done a lot with forensics.

When I came to Queensland, once they had found out what I had done, I got RPL for my studies.

I didn't need to go back through their training course.

They sat me down and I did some on road assessments and I did the exam a forensic exam from the previous course and past that.

So then they then signed me off with RPL, so I didn't have to go through the whole rigmarole of the three month course and all those bits and pieces had the qualify, had the runs on the board.

Did you know there's any difference in the way that police in South Australia operate compared the Queensland.

I used to.

I think initially I thought the Queensland the I think the South Astralian Police did it a little more professionally, but that's now probably been replaced with Now they're much the same.

Queensland made leaps and bounds in a lot of the areas since I came up.

Certainly friendically they were, I'm going to say, certainly a country, Australian leading with the creation of the Fringic Register that they've now sold on to other companies and other police services.

I think every police service, state and territory in Australia is using a form of the Queensland Friensic Register.

And what to what said involved that's it online?

Well, we've bought laptops in the cars.

You put your notes straight into that.

You can't bload your digital photo straight to it.

Anywhere across the state can look at it.

So I could you know you might be at the scene.

I can look at your notes and see what you've got there straight away.

Revolutionized the speed that we can get results and things like that.

Hence that I mentioned earlier about the guy at the roadside hit by car.

Twenty minutes later he's identified because I can put those notes on, send them some pictures.

This is it bring them up.

Can you fast track this one for me?

They put it through the National fingerprint system and back he came in the year's gone by.

That roll of film would have to go to usually a motorcycle policeman and he would drive it to Brisbane.

He physically run up through the traffic, get it to Brisbane.

They'd have to then develop that print off the feaders.

They need get the fever Ureau.

Then they have to We're still talking in a rush job with film.

He's still talking probably eight or ten and maybe twelve hours as a rush job.

And that was it.

And it's crucial at that early stage damnegations, if you get that information and start to be able to absolutely it's crucial for you.

All right, the bodies in the barrel case, Now you were the person that open the first barrel, do you.

I'm sure everyone listening to the podcast and people have an understanding what that was about.

I think one of the country's was cases of serial killing.

There was twelve victims all up, not all in the barrels fourteen fourteen fourteen.

Tell us the circumstances, just how it happened for you, because I think it's something that you prepare yourself in policing that you're ready to see the extraordinary, or see the horrific, or see things, but this is taking it to another level.

So tell us from your personal experience what happened that was.

It turned out to be a bizarre day, but it was just a regget every day.

I remember I started my shifting Kadeena and my opposite number in the Barossa Valley.

He was on holiday, so we didn't He was the one man unit like I was, So when he was on holiday I would go across and do some jobs in his area if they were urgently needed to be done.

So I had this lovely pleasant country drive across from the Orphans across to the Brossa Valley.

I'm on the outskirts of sort of clear, I think at that stage, and because of my experience with vehicle examinations, there was just an abandoned car Shashi just stripped down to nothing, just dumped out side of the road.

So I remember I was looking at that at the time, trying to identify it.

And I got a phone call from old bosses in Adelaide and said, look, we've got this job at Snowtown.

Is there any chance you can be there for eleven o'clock because we had we had a whole team teed up to come, but they've had another murder overnight in Adelaide.

They should do it, is what happened to Adelaide.

I think it was just a one person murder, not a series of them.

We've done the cops when South Australian Police someone's murdered.

So they'd had a murder which had blown their plans out the water.

So the crew that were supposed to be coming to Snowtown to do this job could no longer come because they've been up all night and we're still working through this.

So they said, if you're available to go to Snowtown we need, we'll send another person up who's quite junior, but we're only going to send her if you can be there, otherwise the whole job's going to go off.

I said, yeah, of course I can.

I'll go.

I can go across now.

So I said okay then, so they said it's the job still on.

So I got to Snowtown I think just before twelve, because it was.

Sort of information that they provided to you.

They just said we just needed to go over there and meet with the rest of the detectives.

They're going to take some photos and video and photograph of house.

Yeah, okay, cool, no problem.

So I've pulled up outside the Snowtown Police and there's a tow truck there and some other police cars, and so I've gone inside.

They said, what do you know at the job?

I said nothing really, I just told to meet here at eleven o'clock and sorry, I'm late.

And they handed me an a four piece of paper.

The top half of that had a list of names, about ten ten maybe names, and on the bottom half was a whole list of property things like three piece green, three piece leather lounge suitets, television, different brands and that sort of stuff.

And they said, top half are all missing, per bottom half are all properly.

We know I'm missing from their various houses and their residence.

Okay, They said, we had surveillance and followed one of the main suspects across the road.

We're going to seize the car which was his, and we're going to take some pictures and some video of the whole house inside and outside.

Just so down the track, if the family say, oh, we've noticed they're missing this, this and this, we will be able to compare the photos in the video and see if it's there.

It was easy, and in the forensic world it's just a photo job technically, And we laugh about this all the time in forensics, the amount of times we get called to things, Oh can you just come out to this particular scene or this particular job.

It's usually detectives.

So I just want I just want some photos, just some photos.

And when you get there, they want photos, they want DNA and they want everything else, and that ten minute photojog turns into a two and a half hours year.

I should be off an hour ago.

Fair Gordon that's getting you there in the first place, is.

Pretty happy to come outn't fit to us.

So yeah, so we've I've gone there for prey photo job and it was always going to be a p it truly was, because nobody knew what we were about to find.

So I've started photographing and doing video for the house.

The other lady that's come up, she's doing the notes because I've given notice I'm moving to Queensland.

My half my stuff at my house is in boxes ready to move.

I'm literally within the last two weeks at my time at the south.

Yeah, I'm going it's so I said, look, I won't be able to follow this story.

So she said, I'll do the notes and I'll just do your photos.

That was easy, and then we're probably I've done the outside of the house and part way through a couple of rooms on the inside the house and doing some photos and then the detective callsed me out in the front.

He says, we chat.

So he went out of the front said we're talking to the owner.

As you know, they just talk and what can I just think?

What are we talking about with Snowtown?

Does it describe the town?

Well, it's an old railway town, so it's literally got a railer line running right through the middle of it has trains once or twice a week or day comes through because it's the main line to port period and why Ala and it still works, so they've still got trains.

It's still an active train line.

But it used to be just a railway town.

This is a couple of silos and stuff there, so really small, really small.

I think the population was maybe including the surround the area, you're probably talking maybe nine hundred, one thousand people.

The township itself probably contains maybe a couple of hundred if that.

Okay, main street.

Yeah, it's got a main street.

The train line takes at the bulk of it.

It's got a main street.

I don't think there's any banks left anymore.

It's got a pub, a bakery.

There might be a few more businesses have coming in recent years, but back then it was pretty much there was.

It was a two man police station because they had the surrounding district to look after as well.

Okay, so that's very much.

A rural town.

Yeah, it's about an hour and a half from north of Adelaide, so you're talking fairly remote from Adelade hour and a half drive, two hours drive maybe close to the period that was to Adelacate.

Okay, so you're you're turned up there just to get photos who had explained the job and then one of the detectives had been speaking to a lady in the house and a man in the house.

Man in the house and okay, where have we gone from me?

So he said, he's just told us that John Bunting has turned up here in that car that they were going to take and one time it had it was full of barrels full of smelly stuff.

And he said, the barrels an arrow over at the bank.

And apparently when we first told me the story, they all started craning in the neck and looking across the road.

Think it was over the railway embankment because it's a big mount dirt hiding the rail line.

And the bloke said, no, no, he said, in the old bank, the old state bank.

I leased that or rented whatever term he used.

He said.

So he said, they're in the vault in there.

He said, they said, well, what was in there?

Didn't you ask him?

Oh?

Yeah, what's this?

It's not like dead cats?

And he mean, you don't want to know, since I didn't ask anymore.

Just a simple country man, and to this day he's never been charged with anything.

He was just a I guess maybe trusting of this bloke.

He'd didn't overthink it.

I didn't overthink it, definitely not.

So we've said, okay, we've been down tors for to go over there.

Then see what these barrels are.

So now I photo jobs now going to include the bank, which is fine.

So I've jumped in the vehicle.

We've gone around, originally to an old bank, and we're think the key we've got it's not working.

He gave us the key and it's not working.

The door and little old ladies come past because it's now near the main street.

Can I help you, dear, we're just looking for the State Oh this is this is the A and Z bank.

Love, Do you want to go around the corner State Banks?

Around the corner that's closed.

It's all closed.

I can't get the money.

Thank you.

That's good.

So we around the corner we go, and then we find the right bank.

So we go round to the back into the back door and like the manager's office I suppose it would have been, and we're standing there thinking like cannabis to me, because they've got previous for growing cannabis.

Yeah, so I know about the stuff.

You are one of the.

So I thought, oh, this would be drugs.

Barrels liquid, bound to be drugs.

So we were at this mindset and were half expecting to find drugs in there.

Got the key, went in and I said, okay, I've got my gloves on.

Quickly a video started videoing in the door.

We went in, went straight to the kitchen, little dining table in the middle where the bank staff would have had their lunch and things little kitchen.

It through the back door to what would have been behind the counter, and then there's just a counter and there's just lined with old computers and dv VCRs and DVD plants, things like that.

Because this fellow who lived in the house across the road, he rented that space to repair electronics and stuff.

That was his job.

He would be the local retrovision or whatever it was, the local electoral shot would send him their warranty work and he would either try and fix it or then they would just trash it.

So he had a lot of that stuff along aroundy there.

That's what he used the space for.

But he never used the vault.

So Bunting had said, can I use the vault?

So we did.

So I got in there.

The vault was closed and the handle wasn't moving.

The tumbler just felt like it was just spinning freely.

It didn't feel like it was anything there, So okay, So then there was this discussion about what are we going to do, How we going to get in a couple of detectives went off to make some phone calls and they were talking thermal lancers and those sorts of things.

When I didn't want any thermal answers, because I knew that was you know, you're talking massive heat, lots of smoke damage, and we don't know what's in there, and I just think it's just going to destroy the vault and potentially for no good reason.

So I thought, before they do all this stuff, I'm going to own fingerprinted.

And they hadn't bought a fingerprint kit, hadn't come up from Adelaide with them, so it was still in my car, which I was left across the road.

So I've walked across the railway and bank, across the tracks, gone across there and said to the local policeman, I said, well, we're into the bank, but we can't get the vault ome it's all locked.

And he's sitting with the occumen of the house at that stage, and he said, I said, no, you don't need a key, so you just need a bit of wire sitting into the keyhole.

So I'll get you up.

So he jumped out.

The police car takes inside of his house and he's got this big roll of fencing.

Wine cut me off a piece, bends it up like right now.

It was like a little divining rod, and she just put them in he said, and just just wiggle around the key.

Things inside.

He said, it a little open.

Okay, you're a safe breaker as well.

Yeah, yeah, so I save break as well, as it turns out, So I didn't know I've gone back with this little bent up like a divining rod.

It's just a little little piece of wire, a lot of coat hanger really.

So I've walked in and by this stage everyone else has lost interest.

They've gone off to make phone calls and things.

There's there's my other forensic colleague, and there's one detective there who pretty much started all who was a lad i'd work with back in my early days in Elizabeth.

So I walked in, I said, I've got the key, and they've all crowned me and I hold this bit of bent wire.

And of course the look they gave me, I can't I can't probably describe it, but it was that worse thing.

You could just see it in their head.

They're going, You're an absolute normal, You're complete normal.

Yeah, well, I have no time, nothing, no time like the present.

Bronnie was having her lounch, started to have some lunch because she brought hers with U.

I was planning to be home for lunch.

So the local snowtank copper was going to go to the bakery and get me, get me a pie or something.

So while I'm waiting, I'll just have a thing.

So I just got down on my knees and I'm looking through this keyhole, this piece of wire I put it in.

I'm fiddling around, and I've got my hand just resting on the top of the big lever on the vot on the vault door, and then suddenly it's just gone down.

I don't think anyone was more surprise than I was with the hell I'm in.

Here going to encourage a loather bank robbery.

Trust me, guys, and I wouldn't take it up as a profession.

So if this thing's opened, it's unlocked.

Oh wow.

So wait, before we opened the door, I had to go and get the little video camera was using, So okay, And then the detective opened the door, and again there's still no smell, and we're just confronted with this wall of black plastic.

There was sticky taped all the way around like big white, two inch sort of wide clear plastic tape floor ceiling all around the doors, and a slip down the middle.

It was all sticky taped up.

So the video shows that, you know, there's him peeling this off, and as soon as he peels it off, then he said, oh no, it's not it's not drugs.

Not drugs, And he could you could smell straight away as soon as he opened the seal and break the seal if you like, we could smell the human sort of well, the rotting meats makee case.

So the black plastic was sealing off an area within the safe, sealing off the whole door, right, yeah, so much opened the vault.

Yeah there's this, there's this whole thing.

Okay, And once that's been a little tapes, Paul Bear, that's when you've got a whiff of the smell.

No, or assume what it was at that point in time.

I think at that stay we realized it wasn't drugs.

When we first saw the plastic, I think on the video and him say oh it drugs.

Thought it's just be plastic lined like so many hydrophonic drug places are.

So but as soon as we break the seal, it wasn't.

It wasn't hydroponic smell.

It was there was something dead was in there.

So I said, okay, wait, we got the torch.

I think detective held the torch and I held the video and we just sort of panned around in it as we could see.

And that's when we could see on the video screen we had number of barrels.

Could see the green Lounge Street that was on that list standing up on its end in the corner of the vault, and we thought, okay, this has suddenly become a bit more sinister.

And in the.

Door because the safe, the vault door is really quite thick, so it has like a I suppose the doorframe is about eighteen inch or toil drainages thick inside that little doorframe.

But so when you close the door, before you get to the plastic there was a notebook, a wallet, and another bits and pieces.

So once we had a look at those, and that's when we learned then that somebody we'd never heard of the wallet belonged to.

Once we did some checks and that was the last victim.

Johnson was killed there the night before, I think the night before a couple of days before, and we'd sat there and had our lunch on the floor.

Thought the carp it feels a bit damp.

Lift up the carpet tile did some testing for blood negative, but it was just damp because that's where they'd hosed down the last killing on plastic.

And inside the vault was this big, big mound of the black and white plastic you see it, drug crops, all sort of scrunched up in the corner.

They were streading out.

What sort of size are we talking the vault?

Like the dimensions the vault would be.

I probably used to be able to tell you exactly what we're talking, probably like four meters by two and a half meters, and it's it's really tall.

It's a good ten feet tall probably.

And the barrels we're talking about to describe.

The barrels were they were previously used to tails olives.

Olive barrels, so they were like forty four gallon johns, but their plastics are there.

They're about one point two meters maybe one point five meters high, probably three or nearly four feet high.

In the old old measure with screw top lids, so that had a ring, a separate ring around the top that we could screw on, and then that held on like a plug that went in the top.

So once you got the ring off and you have to pull a little plug thing out of it, and you could see what's inside.

So they were if anyone's in the olive industry, they're olive barrels.

That's what they were.

Okay, you're you've come in in there.

It's still you thinking your senses.

It's something sinis maybe finding some missing people on here.

The smell is you know, you would know other police would have had that smell.

You've got how many barrels were there?

Six barrels, six barrels, And what did you decide to do?

And how long did it take you to decide, Well, we're going to have a look.

That's when we said, well, okay, we got to We've got to wrap this up now, so we have to make the phone call to you.

We retreated straight away, made the phone calls to bosses back in Adelade, said this is what's happened.

We've just discovered this.

We can see handcuffs, we can see rubber gloves, we can see some knives in there on top of these barrels.

I saw and stuff.

And now we've got these barrels, so we need to start triating this as a fairly major cr And you've got.

A list of people who assume are missing.

We've got lists of missing people yep, which is interesting how that all come aback too, But that's probably after I finish all this.

So we had to sort of then sit back and wait a little bit.

So we catching up on notes and those sorts of things, and because I'm trying to spend some time trying to calm this fellos of new friends, a girl who's really becoming quite distraught by the whole thing because she's gone from zero bodies to suddenly she's got what she thinks is six murders.

All these barrels there's a body in each one.

So to cut along story, we basically just stalled and had there was a debate about what we've got.

We could see on the top of the lounge suite there was three FIVET containers of hydroglic acid.

They look like they were empty.

I don't know whether we went in that stone you can't recall now, and whether we test they're actually empty.

But we thought, well, if there's hydrogloric acid in some of these barrels, what are those risks to police and stuff?

So ring the chemists in Adelaide, this is the situation, what's the story hydroglic acid is essentially just like pool chlorine, so it'll have a strong bleach smell that the vapors and stuff could be toxic in high concentrations.

You probably need to be a bit careful about sucking the stuf up into your lungs.

So local detectives I worked with has good relationships with a lot of the local people, even in Snowtown, so he went down.

I was because my previous fire funding experience, I had used breathing the apparatus before.

I'd been trained to use it and stuff, so I was familiar with that, and I said, well, if we're going to open them, because there was this one of the major crime detectives wanted to take the barrels out and just tip it on the lawn.

Yeah.

No, I'm not gonna do that.

Yeah, because they said we've done what we're dealing with yet, which is true.

And as you know, you really need to have a body or you need to know what you do.

I'm curious about the discussions and debates because everyone would have been Okay.

Now what do we do?

Yeah, And that's pretty much what it was.

So even the guys when they came from from adelaide.

Then when they all arrived, there was more discussion about well, where are we going to do it.

They said, well, we're going to have to open them and check.

I say, okay, So I said, look, I'm I'm trained in breathing the apparatus.

If we get some breathing apparallus, I can go in there.

I can open the barrels, open a barrel and have a look what's inside.

That might satisfy us that we've got what we're dealing with.

And said, then you guys will be outside the vault and you know you won't be as effected.

You'll be able to tell me whether or not it smells, and then you can vake it quickly and I can follow you out.

So he went down to local that My detective went down to local fire station.

Said, I can't tell you why, but I need this and this is the this is the mentality of these country but the trust that you've got in them.

I can't tell you why.

I can tell you I've got a bloke and nose how to use it.

I need a breathing kit and I'll bring him back im perfectly good Nick, but he'll probably need more rare he went, Okay, he hands.

It over love the country.

Yeah, that's so he brought it back.

I said.

So I got myself all dined up in all this gear.

And by this time we've also had the photographic section of a ride from Adelaide, so they've got a video camera runs they're filming me going in.

So I've gone in undone.

The first of the barrels took lid off.

Pop.

Now that's when I've worked out they've got this little extra lid.

So the ring comes off and then you peel a little rubber seal back and then you can see bodies in there.

A foot foot in a denim leg and the denim pair of jeans and stuff like that.

Some of those were in no liquid at all.

Others were almost full with liquid.

I think it was only one that had all the hydrochloric in.

It, so dismembered bodies or bodies that just jammed in there.

Well, I could see most of them.

The ones I could see were upside down.

At that stage, there's a body in each one.

I remember the first one I opened that I could see that like the semi membi fied foot with some soil on and the genes and whatever they were wearing.

I didn't know that this member of that stage.

I looked in the top and I thought, there's someone's just been shoved in here headfirst and their feet are sort of sticking up.

So you've opened that first body the first barrel, I should say, And you've seen the foot, you've seen you've got a body in there.

Is it lit up or did you have to bring your own light in there?

We've no, we had a we had a torch, had torch like which gives the area more eerie effect when you look at those Yeah.

So the video shows because I've looked out through the vault door and they're still standing there.

None of them are fainted or collapsed from the smell and the vapors.

Okay, this is this is a good thing.

Then the video guys come in.

He's held his breath just in case he's gone in.

He shoots the video over the top of the barrel and I'll hold him the torch and he goes back out again, and then they retreat back out into the main thing.

You go out there and discuss what you've seen.

Well, they could they could see.

I went back up.

We had the little video show what that was.

So there was definitely bodybits in that one.

So then the decision was made, will continue on and do all of them.

So we knew what we had.

So that's when I went all the way around all of them barrels and just did the same thing, and he would come quick video We'll go again.

And then we've said, well, now we've got to get him to Adelaide, and that's when Roger Bayard was contacted link and he said, we'll just bring them to me.

So we had to bring eight barrels to them, seal the barrels back up or each one I'll put the lid back on, and then just screwed it back down.

But of course this whole time, the opposite corner of where the bank is the Snowtown Hotel.

Yeah, and it's still trading.

You know, there are people there on the balcony out in the front.

They're all doing their thing on it was Wednesday whenever, not the week it was.

They're all there doing their thing at the pub.

So we're thinking, how are we going to do this without arousing a massive suspicion because they've already got their suspects in place.

Because they've had surveillance on them previously, and that's how they knew to come to Snowtown.

They had followed him with his car right well, follow him at one stage.

I don't know if they follow him the day he hit the barrels, but they followed him to this house at Snowtown, which is how they got there.

How many cops were there, Like I would imagine once it starts to pass up.

The oh, once it's got the chain, yeah, it's it's become the full on you know, it's full on, the full on police circus you've got.

It would have been basically the street being sealed off and everything else.

No, because we're still trying to keep it low keys and luckily for us, the bank had really high walls, like had a high fence at the front.

Some of the products high fence, so we could work pretty much in close.

And the front of the bank's got solid steel doors, so once they were closed, so we're coming in out through the side door and look at the front.

So very little I think was let slip to the public.

And the days getting on so that the sun's going down and the pubs people are probably less likely to see what we're doing.

And so for some reason we were really lucky there.

Nobody in Snowtown's rung the media and said, hey, what's going on.

I thought you'd had the cameras there, and yeah, that's what we were terrified of because we didn't want it getting out, because they knew they had their suspects in mind, and they needed a recourse surveillance people from their beds and things and get them in place before they broke.

That's right, you've uncovered it.

Okay, A thousand questions.

How long were you you in there opening the barrels?

How long was that process taking?

Well, I got there at I got there at five to I saw the job at five to twelve at the house at the bank.

So I think I've gone to the gone to the bank about one third in the afternoon, I think, if I recorded from my notes, and I got home at two o'clock the following morning, right, so pretty much a twelve hour shift there.

I remember ringing my wife and saying, I'll be late home for lunch.

I think it might be there.

I'm trying to be there about two.

I didn't mean too the following morning.

I went too that afternoon, but obviously it just didn't happen that way.

So, yeah, that was a big day.

Then we're back again in the morning to finish.

The bodies were gone, so we stayed there until the pub had closed.

It was about midnight when we got the barrels out.

Inside the vault was a little really old rickety, little like sack trolley thing, a little finish and moving trolley, so we used that to load the barrels on and sort wheel them out, which is probably what they did to get them in.

Yeah, so we were lucky Cadeena.

At that stage we'd had quite a large cage trailer we'd had access to.

So Daisy went back and he drove all the way, drove the hour to Cadeena, drove back again for the hour with the trailer, pulled the trailer out the front up.

The pub's closed and we've just wheeled this stuff man handle and put it all into the barrel barrels into the back of this cage trailer and he's literally driven it straight to the military in Adelaide.

I ask you a question from a professional point of view, as in the police officer, but also from a human point of view, how did you feel when you opened that first first barrel.

I think in this it was, oh, there's a foot.

I don't know what.

I don't think I had any preconceived idea what I was expected for.

I don't know.

I just opened there was his foot.

I remember being a little started initially that's that's a human foot.

And there's a pair of jeans there, I think because I just thought somebod had been shoved in head first and there was just going to be this one body in there.

And then as you move around to the others, there were bits of garbage bag and our colored garbage bags and things because we find out later they've been exhumed from other graves and things.

Some of them put in these barrels getting ready presumably to dump out at sea, because in the managers office there were six bags of concrete and six barrels, and they'd had surveillance and telephone interceptso heard one of them was talking about I think I think I might have found a boat we can use.

And they've been followed to the boat ramp at Port Wakefield, and that Port Wakefield boat ramp is sort of right on the edge of the military training and no goes on for boats because it's the military firing area and the top end of the gulf, and you can go and fish down the other side.

But if you leave the boat ramp to turn right, you were going into restricted waters.

But of course if you were going to dump some bodies, that will probably be ideal.

If you've got some barrels you drive into restricted waters, You're not only to get caught up in a net.

If they're going to get blown up, it'll be long time.

So I think that was there longer term.

The magnitude of the discovery.

I think from every working detective crime scene officer, you're always looking for this big case that everything that I've done has gone before.

This is the biggest case I've ever been on.

Six bodies, one barrel after the other.

Opening six bodies on the scale of things in Australia's huge.

Oh yeah, certainly was.

Of course, when they got into the mortuary they turned out eight bodies in there, they dismembered there was eight bodies in those six barrels, and then they linked them all to the other, the other six victims.

Whatever.

Okay, so Clinton, what Clinton.

Rece He was the one in the paddock and when he killed well, Clinton was killed in nineteen ninety two, I believe, But we found him in nineteen ninety four in a shallow grave at lower Light, So a sheep farmer had found a skull on the sheep had unearthed a skull, and when we got there and found the rest of the grave and then we exhumed that.

He was the very first Snowtown.

So that was linked to the Yeah, but we.

Didn't know at the time.

We never identified that person.

It was a skeletal remains that were just in a shallow grave and a sheep paddock at Port Wakefield on the way to Port Wakefield lower Light, and it turned out to be Clinton re Ice years later.

But back then, if we'd identified it as Clinton re Ice, Snowtime may not have happened, because the inquiries would have started, as you know, you would have started with him and his friends is a sois and we may have at least we would have been stirring a pot a lot earlier than they were after Snowtown.

How long had the bodies been in the barrel.

It varied.

David Johnson was the most recent one.

He went in the not I think the night before, within within a couple of days before he was killed, that he was lured.

He was the only one killed at Snowtown, which is the other thing.

Most of them were killed elsewhere and their bodies just turned up at Snowtown because that was convenient, I think to access the boat, which was the next step was to probably dumb on the sea.

Some of them had been killed like years before this disband well, I think was the first one, but I think we've since linked more, possibly even before Clinton d res Ice.

We did a fellow who was found hung or hanging from trees in forest North Adelaide.

He was one of the victims as well.

It was when that was a staged staged hanging wasn't suicide at all, but they had killed him or just hung him, made him hang himself for something.

It's a bizarre sick thing.

So the things is so macart and bringing all the bodies together too that I'm trying to say that like you deal with killers and get rid of the body, get rid of the body, but it's almost like collecting.

Yeah, well, I think they were.

I think they thought we've got so many.

The bodies were literally starting to pile up.

They buried some under a like under a rain what I think at Susy North where they used to live and wanted them to live there for a while.

So that was an actually vation that took place.

They got a body there and then I think they went back and had to dig again, dig deeper to get another two bodies from that.

So that was what the police did.

That was that was the additional ones to the ones we had at the eight we had at the Bank Gordon.

Just jumping in here, I think there was John Bunting, Robert Wagner, James Flasskiss, I think I'm pronouncing that right, and Mark Hayden who convicted in relation to those crimes.

And I think Mark Hayden is actually out on parole now.

And according to my records here Bunting and Robert Wagner were convicted of eleven and ten murders respectively, both given life sentences.

And from the personal point of view, you've worked till two o'clock, did you go home that night or did you sleep?

I went.

I went home because I was only like an hour away, so I went.

I went home and I remember stripping off to my Andy's outside the back door.

I wasn't going in the house because by the time I'd been in the bank so long I knew I was reeking of the smell of you just rotting death, because the text was saying, do you mind if I stand this side of you because the breeze is blowing you stink?

I said, okay, So I dropped on my clothes off out on the back porch and went in, had to shower, and went to bed and was up again, I think seven o'clock following morning.

Back there, you've married your family at the time, did you say what you'd.

They were still all asleep.

We didn't have that conversation that day.

How was your day?

You know, you'd never believe it.

I think I must.

I probably have sent a text message or something and going, oh this is this got bigger than Ben hurts.

There's several it's a murder or something now.

But yeah, I didn't communicate exactly what I was doing at that stage, because you know, it's head down but up you just working away, trying to get stuff done as quickly as possible and hoping the media don't find out, because when I've got back in the morning, the news is now broken that you know they arrested these blokes early in the morning, right, because they got the surveillance teams onto them and they I don't know whether they must have had a tip off for but they caught some of them dumping some clothes and some possessions were dumped in industrial skips like in the back of the shopping and places.

They were followed and watched seen to do that, So they must have had a bit of an inkling somehow or other.

But then it broke and then we had like world media were there.

I've never seen this huge, livid line up across the road from the bank.

So you went back to the next day.

They went back next day to continued finishing.

Yeah, because there was garbage bags of stuff inside the vault, like big garbage bags full of stuff, and there was things like you know, and the sex toys and other bits and pieces that.

The magnitude of the crime.

It was huge.

We just covered the floor.

The floor of the bank was covered in all these you know, these items that were inside being documented.

The stuff they had a lot, it was the possession for all these all these bodies and the victims, sex toys, yeah, stuff they tortured them with.

There was a thing called a variac which was a very large two forty vault sort of variable power supply just had a great big sort of button almost like the tumbler from the vault almost.

That was also in the bank manager's office, and we've we now know that was used on one of them.

He could they would look up the well.

They had an extension cord that they'd cut the end off, and they had bulldog clips, like big electoral bulldog clips on the wires on one end, so they could plug this into the variac and they could put these on your testigles, on your nipples and then just dial up the power and torture people on that.

Some of them had burn marks on them.

I think Roger Bard will talk about the the burn marks and stuff that some of them had.

Its pure, wasn't it?

Absolutely?

And it was all to get there social hugy money in the end.

Yeah, pure with dumb dumb, but clearly it's they were getting something more than just the security to commit crimes like that in the in the place, was there an eeriness about the place, and I know, you know where cops we don't say, I know it was it was creepy, But was there something if someone's been tortured.

I've been to places where people have been tortured.

You get a sense, did you.

I think one of the things and it's one of the things that has really affected the lady I was working with that day, being so new in the in the friensic world at that point in particular, we sat there on the floor and realized the carpet was damp, and we tested, so we've we sat on the floor and then later find out that that was the reason it was damp was because they have hosed down that floor after killing David Johnson the night before.

It was the night before.

We just didn't know and and we think that's and that leaves a weird feeling in you.

You think, I'm sitting on the floor exactly where this person was probably lying at one point before they put him into a barrel.

It's it's my car.

It's just it.

It's really hard to describe, but you talk about eeringus, there's still an eeriness to the bank.

I went back last year, first time I've been back into that bank in twenty six years, and I could still like it was yesterday, still visualize everything that the counters.

It's changed a bit inside a lot of the counters and stuff have gone, but the vaults still there and yeah, it's still it was bizarre thought, Wow, this is It's been a long time, but you can still remember everything.

I like it was yesterday.

It just ye sticks with.

You, sticks with you, and I suppose that when it sticks that long, it can hang there with you and you don't realize the damage.

I think even when we had Roger by Art who did the post more than on the body for days, Yeah, he said that it stuck with him.

He's seen a lot of a lot of bad things.

And yeah, it's funny how you carry it.

Amazing, amazing story.

I think in everyone's career, you're looking for that job that beats all other jobs.

Some people might be listening to us thinking that's strange, but when you're working in that field, these are the type of things you prepare for and sometimes it just happens.

And yeah, yeah, it's true.

It's what you train for.

You you train for major crime and the worst.

But you don't expect, I think ever, that you're going to get something like that.

Yeah, six or seven bodies in one go, you think it's just crazy.

Then to find it was eight in there as well.

But it's such a long process afterwards, because not only was there the scene at Snowtown, and once that was done, I was able to go back to my finished off a couple more shifts, and I think I'd finished up and was on the way to Queensland, but the rest of the team from Adelaide and they'd come up.

They were then going on for weeks later, months later, going to all these other scenes and digging up bodies and photographing pits in garages and things where bodies had been held for a short time, all the places these people have lived or their associates had lived and things.

And that was all down to the one lad that the young lad who is about to come for Paro this year.

I think I saw you speaking in the media about about that.

Yeah, they asked me, I didn't know what's happening, so just asked me for a quick, quick little grab on that.

What my take on that was.

But he was instrumentally in solving a lot of them, linking a lot of them together because he knew a lot about it, and he generally thought that he was going to be a victim and he probably would have been.

Yeah, had it gone long enough.

Well, let's see, it sticks in everyone's psyche and you must carry it with you to a degree.

Did that play any part?

And I've spoken to you before and you're comfortable talking about it.

You had a mental breakdown, or that's how it's been described.

I'll let you describe it in more.

Well, that's I kind of called a mental breakdown, falling out the tree, whatever it might be.

Yeah, friendly, well it's but yeah, it's a polite way of saying I dropped my bundle.

Yeah, what happened?

What happened there?

You comfortable talking about Yeah?

Yeah, absolutely, because I think more people needed talk about this stuff, particularly police and first responders in general.

I'm a big advocate now for people to not have to go through this, you know, because in my case, it does sneak up on you.

You don't see it coming necessarily.

But there were probably signs when I look back now that I should have probably had some morning signs, probably should have thought, no, I need to break you know, But I didn't.

So it was an afternoon shift.

I'd started work at two, just a general office shift, went into the friendship office, and there were back in those in the day we had we had all their jobs to print out on a four paper.

You take the job sheets, you put them on the clipboard, and off you go for the shift.

You pick your area, go and do your stuff.

So there were jobs there.

And if you ring someone up and they're not home or they can't not available today, come and see me tomorrow.

You make notes on the job like that.

And there were several jobs in this tray that I had seen that I had dealt with the previous day, and no one had got to them during the day, and I went, ah, why didn't we get to these today?

And one of the boys, completely innocently, just said, because we knew you knew you'd do it, Gordy, And I thought that was it.

That was all he said, because we knew you'd do it.

He wouldn't.

He didn't mean him in any man, anymo else, And he wasn't even it probably wasn't even true.

It's just that they were busy.

I suppose, I supposed, but they didn't get done.

And but when he said, because we knew you'd do it, that was it.

It just snapped.

I thought, I guess that's how I was feeling.

I'm carrying the whole thing so I just yeah, I just broke breake down tears.

I had to leave the office.

I went to the car.

I sat there and cried in my car and the car this is nuts.

And now she drove myself home.

I thought, I can't go to work with this.

I couldn't stop crying.

I didn't know and I didn't really know why.

This is just this is bizarre.

So I've gone home and my wife's then don't know.

I just I can't stop crying.

I've had I can't do this.

So I've wrung the doctors and I said, well, I need to see a doctor, and my regular doctor wasn't available.

And then I broke down in tears.

I said, come on, come in.

I said, I can't come in.

I can't come I see this.

I can't stop crying.

She went, I'll put you in a separate room.

So they made allo answers for me.

The I went straight down there.

They put me in this little side room and because I was just yeah, it was just kept crying for no reason.

It's just bizarre.

Was that unusual for you?

That like when you say you're crying, that's I'm looking at your face and it's like your shop.

Exactly.

I'm thinking, why can't I stop?

Like it's just and yeah, it was not like I was thinking the evil thoughts are and at that stage just just was overcome by the emotion and it sort of I think once I started, it was just easy to just kept going.

It was like it was just all years of just tears just coming out.

And I thought, and it was quite scary because I didn't actually know what it was.

I thought, what has happened to me?

And it happened that quick.

That quick, like just I was throwing a switch.

Just the fact he said, because we knew you'd do it, Gordy, that was that was enough.

Bang.

That was the straw that break the camel's back.

And I thought, I think I was also thinking this is this is the end of my career and that was heartbreaking, and so that was not helping my emotional state.

And I think I've just lost the plot.

I'm going to go, I'm going to be one of these do you bring wrecks?

You know it excess police now that you become I don't.

Say what year are we talking?

What stage?

And we're at two thousand and nine, I think it was thereabouts.

Yeah, two thousand and eight, two thousand and nine.

So you thought that that was it.

I thought this, this will be in my crew.

I'm done here.

This is this is nuts because and that didn't help you know, it doesn't help your emotional statement anything.

Well, I don't know what do from here.

So I saw the doctor and the doctor said to me, look, you need to see a psychologist.

You know the clearly wrong with you.

And I said, well, I've got access to them through work.

I knew that I had works would supply some And he said, oh, money even to let you go from here, if you promise me you're going to do that, So I will.

So then I went back and by then I've had a phone call from my boss.

He said, like, what's gone on?

What happened?

Where are you?

And I think I broke down with him, I said.

So then he got the psychologist to call me, and I had chat to her that night and she said, look, you know what's going on.

So then I went saw a psychologist and did some testing and stuff and they said, right, well you've got postal and extress, you've got some depression and you can need some work.

Yeah, okay, So that was me off for two or three days and remained of the week maybe, And I thought, this is no good.

And then I know I'd spoken one of my colleagues had had similar issues before, and he'd gone to a psychologist who he really rated.

He said, she's really, really good.

She does this hocus pocus fancy, weirly, weird shit she does with like a hypnotism type thing with fingers, and that technique is called em DR.

I can't tell her what it stands for now, something about eye movement, rapid decnsitization or something.

But he said it was.

He was very seapical, and he said, but he reckoned.

He rated it, he quoted.

So I made an effort to contact this woman, the same woman, and I went and had the point with her, and she had a chatted with me about different bits and pieces, and then she started doing some treatments on me.

I think I saw he probably two or three times before she did at em DR.

And I've now gone back to work.

I haven't had a week.

I'm not having a week off.

The source wasn't me.

I'm not having three or four weeks off.

This is not going to be the end of my career.

I didn't want that happen.

So I made sure I could go.

Back to work because there's an embarrassment attacked.

Absolutely, it's a shame.

And I think I've seen that with a lot of police that you're putting your hand up and police aren't meant to break down.

Line now, that's right, and.

Coming back and facing your colleagues again and.

They're on a shiels around you.

Yeah, okay, Yeah.

The guy that said, I really I should make it's not your fault.

It's fine.

Usually having to say it, he could have.

Anyone else would have said it the same sort of thing.

It's just how it was.

But yeah, so they're a bit nervous about you.

But to the credit of my boss at the time, he allowed me come back.

I said, I'll be all right.

Yeah, I just need to perhaps get back on the horse, as they say.

So I was still having this treat with her and then eventually had this EMDR and stuff, and then I had two or three says of the E M D R and I reckon.

That's that's what's helped me get back on the straight and narrow.

Got me back to work very quickly, to the point where she now I believe is where she's one of the preferred people that the news advised police send there.

Yeah, people too, certainly Northern Rivers because she's in the Gold Coast, so the Northern Rivers police I think gets sent to her if they have psych issues as well, because this emd R treatment appears to be working quite well.

Certain for me, we've had police on that talk about the where they've taken it further, where they've actually left there left the police after the breakdown, not this similar to the way you describe with the overcoming of the emotions and everything else that goes with it.

But I had one that are very much respected, and he said that the advice he got when he was getting treatment after he's left the police was if I got this during the course of the police I still could have had my career.

You're a classic.

And he was saying strongly and advising police that you know, if you're feeling it, don't if there's a red flag or an indicator, get the dress with gether the dressed and your testimony to the fact that that's what you did.

And you went on for how much telerad what to do?

Then another twelve thirty years, Yeah, yeah, until I was sixty, so yeah, until I'd still be going now if I could.

But that's the rules of queens and I said no, so absolutely, I'm a big supporter of that attitude.

If you think you're having some dramas, or even if you don't think you' having some dramas, nothing wrong with this psychological testing, go and have it done.

I mean the forensic people in Queensland, and to the credit of the QPS, they recognize that they're forensic people and the lot of the Juvenile Aid people that work with the juvenile crime and some of the argos people that do the child you know, traffic and no sorts of things, and we are the high risk groups.

So they have a voluntary system where you can do an annual psych test and I've been doing that for years and that's just about really having conversation with the psychologists and saying your results are a bit different to last year.

Are you sure things are okay?

Do you want to have a chat or anything?

And lots of people are still fearful of that.

Don't be fearful.

I used to take the mick out of it.

We used to watch as kids.

You'd see these American TV shows they were having therapy.

You Americans are having therapy, their dogs having therapy, their cats having therapy.

Yeah and you laugh.

Ye, yeah, but I actually I think they were onto something.

So they because I know I knew South Wales at least when I left working homicide.

We have to see a psychologists every twelve months or six months and it was compulsory.

It wasn't a test.

It was just sit down here you're going blah blah blah.

You're saying in Queensland that they give you the option.

You can also volunteer for a test so they can do it.

You can doubt not to do it but didn't do it, or they just okay.

But the test is not just sitting down, it's answering questions.

It's just a written test.

You know when you're at parties, and it's always to standard sort of psychological testing and then they compare your results.

They'll be named for them if there's.

A psychologists the metric type.

Yeah, that type of thing.

And when you're at parties, you know, do you sit in the corner, do you do you're a going and going?

Do you find you're sitting in a room cannying the tolls on the wall and stuff like that, those sorts of questions.

Do you get excited when you see flames?

Do you feel overriding?

Do you go kill someone?

It terms on the day the first time?

And this I suppose the culture of the police.

I remember the first time they sat us all down in homicide to do that, and they were doing the right thing.

And criticize police if I have to, but they're doing the right thing.

You've got to do these tests and we're sitting there and go, yeah, there'd be a question like that, Hey what did you put for get excited about fire?

And yeah, we're treating as a but yeah, I think people are speaking out about it and other people I've referred to that we should treat it.

Absolutely we should.

And I am living proof that if you have your little breakdown, if you fall out the tree, you do not hands to end your career if you don't want to.

Yeah, I mean some people get obviously get worse than I.

I probably had it.

Maybe I had it in a mild way, but if I got in a mild way, I really do feel first people who get it badly.

Of course.

The last I was the lady I was working with for snowtowns.

He's never come back to work.

It's broken.

And that was disappointing because I adelaide and I said, keep an eye on her because she's you know, it's been a bit much for her the last couple of days.

So what they do They center on all the other follow up scenes as well.

So, yeah, but that's a different era, you know, that's a lot a lot of years ago.

We're talking a lot a lot of change in policing in general in that sense, and their attitude to mental health and those sorts of and.

I think that's the aim because people, you know, you would hope people want to get back to work, and.

Yeah, yeah, I don't think most people want to be out of the police, certainly not still, you know, being completely messed up.

But you don't have to be and don't be afraid to speak up most police services.

It doesn't have to enj your career.

I went back to the same job I was doing, in the same office, with the same people around me.

Nobody transferred me, nobody said no, you can't work, and I went on for another thing.

They accepted you and didn't look at this freak that start.

Don't go here here well, they don't actually saw me crying.

I left probably as the tears were flying.

I can't stop this, I've got to go.

I just walked out to the car puck.

But even if I had, it wouldn't have bothered me.

You know, it wouldn't bother me now because I'm quite happy to say if you feel like having a cry, your bloody well should.

Sometimes even blokes, you know, this attitude about you know, men don't cry.

That's what's led to this.

There's dangerous situation where you've got men who are now often they'll suicide rather than go and say, hey, I'm not traveling that.

Well, put your hand up.

You know, I don't like this.

I don't feel comfortable parting long with that.

We're talking about it now, So continue on that part of the stuff that you're doing now, helping first responders and families and is it I'm just looking for it for.

Fortumn fortune and tell us about that.

What'sum Fortum room not for profit that was created?

I'm so how many years ago now they were fairly new.

I think I've been in I think they have formed about twenty twenty twenty two.

Maybe they came to Queens and maybe in twenty two, but they because I was being forced out at sixty because of the rule I had.

I had no plans to retire and put my feet up.

I could afford to because you do get access to superinneration, but I can't get age, pension or any of those benefits im sixty seven, like most Australians.

So I'm being forced out of a job I've loved for years.

It's pretty much all I've known for thirty thirty odd years of my life, thirty six and a half and there's no support from the community and police.

Nothing, no resume, riding skills workshops and nothing.

I think I'm going to put a resume together.

I've never had the rite resume in my life.

Just the application of the police was all I did.

So Fortum have what they call a transition program.

So they are targeting police and what first responders, not just police, any first responders who are transitioning from for whatever reason, who are transitioning from their career into another, into another field.

So that's when I got on board with them.

I went to it.

They come into the presentation one of our training days and I thought, I need I need your card, So I had some great support from them.

I had a great reason may put together.

In the end, they put me in touch with who turned out he was next police officer as well, but he was doing training and those sorts of things and helping with resume riding.

So I tell him what i'd done, knock up his resume.

He sent to here me go, Yeah, critique, don't like this, like going to school.

So he sent it back and forth a few times.

But then the end I resume that was was really really good.

I was really proud of it.

In fact, when I did send it off to Bunnings, they ran map said, your resume is unbelievable.

What the hell do you want to work for us for?

Oh wait, well, here's the thing.

I'm sick what most people can't believe they're not in the police.

Most people don't still don't understand in Queensland.

But you're fortuning your police out when because they turned sixty for no other.

Reason but crazy.

It goes back to the seventies when it started.

Yeah, and because sixty was a different, different thing back in the in the mid seventies, when you were sixty, sixty was a reasonably.

I'm thinking, surely they're going to have to change.

It changes got to it's it's going to change because of the fine benefit.

It's part it's all linked with superannuations.

So yeah, that's the issue.

A couple of things there on what you're talking about that the when police leave.

I like what you like what you're saying, Like I and I read something about the work they're doing and some of the comments that you've made that you go through life identifying as a police officer.

And I think there was some article I read or something about you that you're saying, well, everyone I knows that most people I know know me as a police officer except for your brother and sister or.

Yeah, was just my kids, my wife.

Every I think is I've always been Gordy for forensics.

Yeah, that is who I am.

That's your identity.

And when that's taken away, so I think that's you know, it's not about just looking after police when they're in there, it's looking after police when they leave.

And that you're talking about the CV.

My career, as everyone knows, ended very suddenly, and I was a career cop.

I wasn't going to do anything else and all of a sudden, you're out on your own, and yeah, it was.

It was a strange world and you'd lost your tribe, so to speak.

So I can see people doing it tough.

I'd landed on my feet, fortunately, but I can see people doing tough that your whole world's being cut.

Off just because you have a birthday in the case of some of these.

So yeah, I think it's important that we address that, and that's why I'm very, very happy to be associate with Forutum.

I'm actually the last year they ran a pilot program with people like myself who exited from their transition program to be mental volunteer mentors for others that are going through it as well, so you can sort of help them the same way that I got the help.

So excuse me.

I'm planning when I get home, probably tonight or tomorrow, they're they're formalizing that and they're going to start the new training course.

So I planned my hand up for that because I'll try and give something back.

Without them, I would be flanned out.

I have some pathetic little resume, I mean, because I was really looking to go and get some other jobs and I was looking at it.

It's a great networking thing.

You can go to some of the seminars and stuff like that.

I've spoken at some of their stuff, but they know they're just there and they have They've now introduced like family days and things.

They have activities just to get families see you can take the family along and go and do paddle boarding us and stand up paddle boarding stuff like that, just to try and I guess humanize the poor or first responder because we do tend to get Like I was, I had a thing.

I was diagnosed with emotional numbing, which is I think something common probably homicide detection.

To get it, where you go to work, you put up your little force field, little protective shield, and then it stays with you so long because you're dealing with all this horror and horrible things that you've got this little sort of force field around you.

But when you get home, you eventually lose the ability to drop that and you become emotionally numb at home as well, and that affects your relationship at home and things good.

And I'm not going to admit to anything, well you should.

I know exactly what you're exactly what you're traying, and so the drama that's work and you shut it down and then you go home and it doesn't fit with the rest of the world.

You're emotional response to it and.

You need to be aware of that, and I try and make people with that.

Now, don't fall for that trap, because I believe you know, I'm on my second second marriage now and it's a very good marriage, but the first one fell apart because you know, I was probably emotionally in them.

My wife found another man's company more appropriate than mine because I was working like a shift something and you miss stuff, yeah, and you know, as police, you know we all missed the kids' birthdays and bits and pieces and different things.

So emotional numbing is a big thing I think with first responders, and we're all prone to it.

So I don't fall to the trap.

I would like to see police like qualifications, and I talk about this a lot, the qualifications that if I'm in New South Wales police officer, I should be able to work in Queensland and South Australia, Western Australia, move around.

And I'd also like career breaks in policing.

I think that would be so beneficial and they would retain more police because I saw a lot of police go I'm sick of this job.

I'm out of here, and they're trying for the rest of their life trying to get back into the police and they're regretting leaving.

Yes, I took twelve months off during my time in police and it was the best thing I did.

That totally refreshed me.

I came back, I was itching to get back at work and jump back in.

We should facilitate that in policing all the police forces across the country.

I think Queensland have introduced that.

I believe it existing Queensland and a few people have got up, but because at the moment, I think the biggest challenge is getting enough support from your bosses to spare you for that time because they can't get enough police as it is, so they're going to go well.

I think I'm not sure how it's running in Queensland now, but I know career breaks were pretty much a privilege more so than it right.

Well, that's took I took twelve months leave without pay, but I had to give up my position in unsolved homicide.

They've been striving to get for a long time, and too if I wanted the twelve months leave, I lost that position that came back in.

It was a lottery that even got back into homicide.

I managed to find my way in, but that was a risk.

But you'd like to be able to see crime scene, overworked, underpaid, all that, you'd like this.

I just need a break for twelve twelve months.

I'll attend the court matters if you need me at the court twelve months.

I'm going to go working bunnies and just have a break, have a normal life and then then come back.

And some of them go off and I think they go and train, they go to now they spend their time going to union whatever, getting qualifications for a different job if they want.

And of course the police service are nervous about that.

If you go outside, you don't come back.

I don't know what that's about the culture of police.

It's almost like you're either.

With us or that's right.

Yeah.

Its it's strange, and it's it's not serving any police service or the police themselves any good really, because you're, like you said, you're forcing them to stay in a job that there may be questioning as it is, so then they're just going to leave.

They end up or they end up broken and you know, having to pay them a massive amount of money in work cover compensations and things because they're broken.

And then some of them are no good to anybody.

And we joined as a vacation.

That's that's your career path.

You're going to stay there.

That's not the generation these days don't look at this is the career I want to stay in for the rest of the life.

So if you show them you can come in, you can leave, you can come back, you retain your you do a refresher course, you come back.

And I know it's in part there, but this is the will of the the bosses, whether they know whether they're going to let you have that option.

And I think it's important that you as an employee, you're a reasonable copper too.

Yeah, if you just come in and think it's just a free ride, I mean, if you've got some runs on the board, then they're going to want want you to come back.

But you know, there's a few coppers I've met over the years.

You know they can't wait for them to leave.

Let's just get rid of it.

When turning sixty, they're the ones that get yeah, you can get that transfer.

Where do you want to go?

Yeah, I've seen a lot of bad police get promoted and transferred out because everyone just wants to.

Get rid of right and police will tell you they get promoted toys when you're.

Signing the recommendation, I thoroughly recommend this person who you or she would be great, pass out on them.

Oh bye, they're gone, They've been transferred, and.

Three weeks later you get the phone call from their new boss going, what have you done to me?

How dare you do that?

You've done that?

Don't you ever expecting from me anymore?

A couple of other things that I've been based where you were in Queensland and I know we spoke about it, but their very high profile in that captured captured the attention of people.

Was the tragedy at dream World.

You're at crime scene?

Did you have any involvement in that?

I was relaving his officer in charge of the day that happened.

I remember sitting in the office, have a radio on next to the just on loan next next to me, and the thing and there's all this chatter's come on the radio.

There's something that's happening, all this chatter about dream World and what's going on, and my acting is the guy I was relieving for was the acting inspector and I knew he'd been in Brisbane was driving back around about that time.

So I remember ringing him saying, I'm not sure what it is, but I'm hearing stuff at dream World about multiple deaths.

You might want to keep an here on the radio or even pop in.

So he's gone into dream World and he's found what's happened.

He's wrung me back and said like, this is what's happened.

When need this when you deal with these people.

So then I've gone out to people of the RIDA guys thisten up.

That's what's happened.

We've got to get some crews up here.

And that went on frndically.

I think we were there for about a week off and on because some of the Friensic people are also the disaster victim identification people part of that team, and they've been deployed to Balley in place like that for some of the bigger events.

So we were there forensically for a long time with the friendsick crash people investment what happened.

I remember looking at all the photographs because part of our role as forensicsist, you're peer reviewing each other's work, and you have to peer check the photos and things makes to their reasonab quality.

So I remember looking at every single one of those photos those poor people, some of them were really badly smashed up.

I think it touches on this all because a lot of us would have taken their kids there or gone there as kids and a fun place at place that go there to celebrate and enjoy, enjoy life.

And what happened.

The boat just the on the on the rails and flipped over.

Yeah.

I think the finding was that the water level had got a little bit low, lower than it should have been, and I think there was a broken switch.

When it drops a certain level, it should cut things off.

So it was a combination of things.

That the water level was a bit low, which allowed the boat to sort of sit lower onto the little hooky thing, and it didn't clear properly, and the second boat came down the little thing and crashed into it, and instead of the first one then moving away and floating, the water was a bit low, so it was able to tip up and it just tipped the documents out into the water.

So one went, a couple of went down into the water and were trapped down there.

Another one went through the actual sort of conveyor belt mechanism things as well and trapped on And of course the poor young person that was on I think their first day on that ride, wasn't familiar with the emergency stopping buttons and stuff like that, so it was just complete combination of things.

They had had another one up there, the Seawell helicopter crashes.

Yeah, that's happened since I leave.

You guys get cool.

Well, that's the funny thing is that happened after I'd left the police.

But that was one that named my current job.

That my colleagues I work with now went and collected all the bodies from that.

So it was one of those interesting areas where they still get involved in those things.

So even I've left the police, I still end up working a bit with the police now quite regularly.

Well, well, in terms of your employment, now you you what are you doing?

Well, I'm now a I'm now a funeral director.

Okay, I'm sure there's a comment I can make to that.

Okay, You've got to understand I was born a place called Graves End.

What hope did I have?

That was your destiny?

From birth.

I was born in a place called graves End, and yeah, so I was always going to end up doing something with envolving death.

So yeah I was.

I was at Bunnings.

I finally work at Bunnings.

And and then that mine now current big boss came, wrang me up on my previous boss, D give you a number.

So he said, I need a hand, he said, this is what's happened.

They were they were always the contract to government undertaker.

So all of my bodies on the Gold Coast, the guys from this company that I work.

For now, they're the ones.

They are the ones that come with the police when I'm we're ready that we wring them up and they send their people out and when they take the bodies back to the mortuary for us, so they do there convancing.

So I've got to know most of them quite well, even though four or five, but they were the same company I had.

And then so when he rang me he said, we've got this renewed contract.

He said, I've got the Gold Coaster gun.

And so it's great, congratulations, he said, but as you do, he said, in case you don't get the one you want, you put in for others around it.

So he put in for the scenic Rim Police District, the Logan Police District, Ipswich, and Morton Bay and a whole whole others and he got them all.

That's what I said.

So I said, you've been not more and two and he went, well, no, he said, I just need good people, he said, And I thought so.

I originally started just doing part time work after to do after hours around my bunning shifts to help them with that.

That lasted about a month and then one of their regular guys had left and then they called me in office one day.

I thought I was gonna get sack, funny because I'd been on call.

I remember going back and handing the keys in to the van i'd had at home, and they said, I, you've got a couple of minutes.

And sure, they shruck me in the office and closed the door, and I thought me and had I'm thinking, am I about to be sacked for the first time in my life?

So you sent me there?

He's left, I said, I didn't know that i'd been away and they said, I said, they said, we'd like you to stay on and take the job on four times.

Can I have a think about it?

So I went off and spoke to my wife and said, yeah, so now I'm a full time funeral director on the Gold coastomer Okay, well, and it pays rubbish.

You don't do it for the money, but it's it's an extent to what I.

Was doing, saying, all the death that you've seen in all sorts of forms of excellence, murders and what you're dealing with now, does it make you reflect on death?

Oh?

Absolutely, I've lost County Mountain in the relatively short time I've been doing it.

I've lost County Mountain.

Times I've buried and cremated people are much younger than me.

And the speed that some of these people have got sick too.

They've ignored the basic medical things, and you hear horror stories for people they were fine, they've died like in nine days they went into hospital and nine days data that they're in my office saying we need to plan a funeral.

We've got to do this.

Does it make you approach your life a little bit differently?

Absolutely differently?

What's your approach?

I think you've certainly got it, you know, every time I wake up now, But this also comes back to my I had a brain tumor removed in twenty twenty as well.

That's that changes your outlook on life when you think you're about to die and may not come out of surgery.

That was that was pretty harrowing too.

So yeah, I think you've just got to live live each day to the best of your ability, because tomorrow isn't guaranteed, as they say, And I've met plenty of people who, yeah, they have all these plans.

It can be quite heartbreaking when you see, you know, you're talking to wives or husbands and they're still working, they've got their plans to do it, and then yeah, something happens, someone passes away, and all that goes out the window.

You know, the caravan's no longer going to be used, the forward drive I don't need of this stuff is still on order.

Yeah, it's it's come that close.

They haven't even taken delivery of their holiday vehicles yet and the things.

So yeah, if you every day you wake up, be grateful that you know you've waken up every day.

There's there's at least now two or three people every day on the Gold Coasts that are not waking up.

Okay, well that's a that's a good advice and to feed to us.

And yeah, about the way you approach life, I see a good energy here.

You're not You're not this disgruntled, burnt out a cop that's angry, angry at the world, and I like to see that.

I love seeing people that have been through a career look back in their career, enjoy the highs, understand the lows, and you seem to have a good break.

I've been very fortunate, very fortunate in my career, my life in general.

It's yeah, you've got to take each each day as it comes, and I've been very fortunate in my careers.

I've had great mentors, and that's why I'm quite happy to try and give a bit back now, particularly the autumnic Fortum is an awesome organization and the way they've expanded now to trying to all first responders.

Was just police, now it's emergency services.

Think ses were involved now and can be involved.

If people want to reach out, how do they just.

Google fort them?

F IM, they're not for profit.

If anyone's not some spare money want to throw them, I'm sure they'll take your money, but yeah, they're have a look.

If you're not aware and you're already in emergency services, then you can get onto it because there's a lot there to offer, even if it's just a social day with your family.

Yeah, these things are free.

Give on it.

Yeah, let's shout out to them for sure.

Thank you so much for coming on.

I've thoroughly enjoyed the enjoyed the chat.

Yeah I know it's fall asleep, so I suspect that, and who cares if people listen.

We've enjoyed this is it.

There's all about us.

Congratulations on your career too, think thirty six years in the police and the type of work that you've done, the service to the community.

And I mean that genuinely because I know there's there's working police and there's other type than You've obviously rolled leaves up and add a game, pay the price.

But yeah, you're still got a good now look on.

So thanks very much for coming on.

I catch kills.

Thank you very much.

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