July 10, 2024 • 50 mins
Cynric Temple-Camp is one of New Zealand's top pathologists - and he has just published his third book about his work.
The Final Diagnosis is a collection of stranger-than-fiction stories of death, disease and murder - as well as Temple-Camp sharing new perspectives on high-profile cases, including the disappearance of Ben Smart and Olivia Hope and the trial of Mark Lundy.
A Moment In Crime host Anna Leask spoke with Temple-Camp about the book, his career and why he is sure beyond reasonable doubt that Lundy is guilty.
Episodes of A Moment In Crime - written and hosted by Leask - usually focus on old cases, cold cases or recent cases of national and international significance involving Kiwi offenders or victims.
But this episode comes from the other side of the cordon - from a person often charged with determining how and why a person died and, who is responsible.
To read more about Temple-Camp, the Lundy case and other crimes covered by Leask for the Herald, click here.
Episodes of A Moment In Crime are usually released monthly and, so far, Leask has covered more than 55 cases including the murders of Grace Millane, Scott Guy, Austin Hemmings, Carmen Thomas, Karen Aim; the deaths of the Kahui Twins, the Edgeware Rd murders, the Bain family murders, the Christchurch House of Horrors and the massacres at Raurimu and Aramoana.
Last year, a three-part special covered the case of rich lister and philanthropist James Wallace who was convicted of sexually assaulting three men and was jailed and had his knighthood stripped from him as a result.
A Moment In Crime has topped the overall and true crime charts on numerous occasions, and has listeners in more than 80 countries.
The podcast was a finalist at the 2024 NZ Radio & Podcast Awards and won a silver award in the true crime category at the inaugural New Zealand Podcast Awards in 2021.
If you have a crime or case you’d like to hear more about, email anna.leask@nzme.co.nz
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
This episode of A Moment in Crime refers to murders,
including the killing of children. It also contains descriptions of
post mortem examinations and forensic evidence. This content is intended
for a mature audience.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Mark Lundy did it.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
He murdered his wife, Christine and their young daughter Amber
and their Parmeston North home. A New Zealand's leading pathologist,
after working on the Lundee case for years, can tell
you why he's sure, without a shadow of a doubt,
Lundy is a double murderer. I know there's many people
out there that don't believe Lundee is responsible. They think
that he's been stitched up, that someone else did it.
(00:40):
Since the day it happened, Lundy himself has protested his innocence,
but he was the only one who could have done it.
That's what two High Court juries have decided at separate
murder trials, and Kenrick temple Camp backs them based on
the science of the case. In this episode of A
(01:00):
Moment in Crime, you'll hear more about Kenrick's work on
the Lundy case, dubbed Operation Winter by police, and you'll
find out what he thinks about another infamous New Zealand
double murder the polarizing case of Scott Watson, convicted of
killing Ben Smart and Olivia Hope during New Year's celebrations
in nineteen ninety nine. Usually, episodes of a Moment of
(01:21):
Crime focus on old cases, cold cases, or recent cases
of national and international significance involving Keiwi offenders or victims. Today,
I'll take you to the other side of the cordon
inside Kinrick's world. Since the nineteen eighties, he's been tasked
with establishing the cause of death for countless men, women
(01:42):
and children. He's also been called in to solve the
baffling health mysteries of the living, and he spends hours
in a lab each week examining various samples and swabs
to diagnose everything from viruses to cancer. Kenrick has written
three books on the work he does and has pa
about His latest is called The Final Diagnosis and is
(02:04):
available now with the booker. It was the perfect opportunity
to talk with a man who knows more about murder
than most people in New Zealand. I'll include information in
the show notes about his books and a link to
my story about Kenrick's vast and varied career.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
If there's other cases you.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Want to hear about on a Moment in Crime. Email
me at Anna dot leask at enzme dot co dot Nz.
From the who dunnets in cold cases to the strange
and quirky, crime is one of the most fascinating corners
of society and the news. From the New Zealand Herald
newsroom comes a Moment in Crime, a podcast delving into
(02:43):
some of New Zealand's most high profile cases, offenses and offenders.
Each month, I'll take you inside some of our most
infamous incidents, notorious offenders, and behind the scenes of high
profile trials and events to show you what's really happening
in your backyard. Kindric temple Camp was born in Zimbabwe,
(03:12):
emigrating to New Zealand in nineteen eighty seven and settling
in Parmesan North, where he joined the local pathology practice.
Pathologists are specialist doctors who diagnose and study human diseases
and conditions. The job is extremely varied and can range
from testing tissue and fluid samples to diagnosing diseases and
investigating deaths. Those deaths might be due to an illness,
(03:35):
something sudden or mysterious, or the result of a crime.
The latter generally requires them to stand up in court
and explain an intense.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Detail how and why a person died.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Their evidence is then considered by a jury in determining
whether a person charged is guilty or not. Over the years,
Kinrick has seen it all, and he's pretty much written
about it all. In twenty eighteen, his first book, The
Cause of Death, was published, in which he lifted the
lid on the most unusual stories of death and murder
had encountered during his career. The Quick in the Dead
(04:10):
followed in twenty twenty, covering the unlikely, extraordinary, obscure, and
often tragic ways humans meet their end, and in June
twenty twenty four, The Final Diagnosis. He's ken rec explaining
the new book how he chooses which cases of the
thousands he oversees every year to write about, and why
he includes living patients.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
It's a continuation. They're really a trilogy because they are
all my memoirs of cases that I've been involved with.
The first book was predominant. It was one hundred percent
about autopsies and the dead. The second book, The Quick
and the Dead, and this one, The Final Diagnosis. It's
a mixed bag of autopsies obviously on people who have
(04:56):
had unusual or suspicious deaths, and some murders as well,
and people who've had unusual diseases, unusual presentation of diseases,
or actually make a point. So there are quite a
few live people in live patients in my new book
(05:18):
in which I talk about their diseases, and that's a
little bit different.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
And how do you select the cases for each book?
I mean, you must have, I imagine, countless examples to
draw upon, but how do you select? You know, how
did you do it for the final diagnosis?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Well, every day that I go to work is amazing.
There are always new cases. They are always unbelievable things
to find and are happening. I guess this is cherry
picking all those that stick in my mind and are
the most unusual. And as I write them, it's amazing
how new ones come up. And all the time I'm
(05:54):
thinking of ones and new ones, or thinking of ones
that I've seen in the past, and I think, damn,
why didn't I include that one in the book, because
that's just brilliant. But of course you can't write about everything,
and I can't remember them all, of course, but I
have to go and research each one when I decided
to write about it.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
As you can imagine, it takes a long time to
complete all the training needed to do the job Kinric does.
It's not for the fainthearted, looking at bodies and parts
of bodies and slides of mysterious nasties found within bodies
all day, and I'm not sure too many kids wake
up one day and think I want to be a pathologist.
(06:34):
I asked Conc how he got into this branch of medicine,
what inspired him to work mostly with the dead and dying,
and why he's stayed in the job for so many years.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yeah, a lot of people ask that. Of course, when
you go to medical school, everybody wants to be a
neurosurgeon or some sort of fancy surgeon, or deliver babies
or something like that. Nobody ever says, oh, I'm going
to go to medical school and be a pathology And
it actually wasn't high on my horizon. But I just
started in medical school and I was an Army cadet,
(07:09):
and I had during the vacations, I had to go
back into the army. And what happened was, as a
nineteen year old, I was sent out with a squad
to pick up three bodies from an aircraft accident, and
we had to put them into a bag and take
them off to the mortuary for an autopsy. And that's
(07:30):
quite a shocking thing for a nineteen year old just
I mean, the year before I'd been a prefect at school,
so it was a little bit of a shock. But
when I got to the moltuary, there was a pathologist there,
Kevin Lee, who was outstanding, and he turned what would
have been a terrible experience into something really amazing, you know,
getting the bodies together again, working out what had happened,
(07:52):
making and putting a whole context behind what we were
seeing and what had happened. And I just thought, this
is just brilliant, and you know, it's stuck in my
mind and throughout my medical career. I just wanted to
be a pathologist.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Tell me about the training. How do you get to
where you are?
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Well, you first have to get yourself through medical school
and do your house job and a bit of clinical work,
and then when you've done that, you have to sign
up with a training a laboratory in a hospital, a
teaching hospital or another hospital, and that takes another five
years of training, and along the way there are a
(08:33):
couple of pretty stiff exams that you've got to get through,
and at the end of that you're ready to start.
So it takes thirteen years altogether from the time you
start medical school to the time that you're ready to
say I'm a consultant pathologist, and then all you need
is another forty years experience on top of that.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
I expect that the training is intense, you know, thirteen years,
and then getting into what you want to do. You
will never put off along the way.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
No, you know, there there was quite a difference in
my day. I come from a generation where you left
school and you went and did your career straight away
and you got straight into it. So I was a
consultant by the time I was thirty, whereas the world
is very different today. You know, a lot of the
graduates coming out of medical school are a bit older
(09:21):
and they've done another degree and then they do a
bit of overseas experience, and you know, I've got registrars
that i'm training that are in their forties, and you know,
I find that very interesting. But because it's you know,
when I was forty, I can't imagine sitting down and
trying to learn all those books and focus on all
every disease of every organ. But that's what they have
(09:41):
to do.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
And what were some of the earlier cases that you
worked on as a pathologist? How do you sort of
start off?
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah, well, during your training you do, of course, you
do two types of cases that we do. They're the
cases on the living, the biopsies and the diagnosis of
cancers and exotic diseases and not so exotic diseases in
the living. And then there are of course the autopsies
and the diagnoses on the dead. And during your training
(10:09):
you do and you do both. The emphasis is of
course on the living and on making diagnoses from biopsies
and recognizing changes in tissues and discovering just what earth
is going on with the patient and often that's a
bit of a mystery.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And you're now considered sort of the leading pathologists to
New Zealand. Tell me about the work that you've had
to do over the years to sort of rise through
the ranks, because it's not just all the crime stuff
that we see in the documentaries and the true crime shows,
is it.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
No, I wouldn't really call myself a leading pathologist. I'm
an old pathologist, which is perhaps if you hang around
long enough, people will think you the leading pathologists. But no, no,
I'm definitely an old pathologist these days, and I guess
it's pathology has changed a lot in New Zealand over
the last thirty years. When I started doing pathology here,
(11:05):
we tended to do a bit of everything, so you know,
you'd be in I worked in Palmerston North Hospital and
we did our diagnostic biopsies and we also did all
the autopsies on all the homicides, the suspicious deaths, the
traffic accidents, the suicides, and these days that's all changed
now there's more and more specialization in the current training.
(11:29):
The pathologists don't even learn how to do autopsies anymore.
That's gone. They do that after they've finished their fellowship,
So after their five year training, after their thirteen years
from the beginning to the end, they then have to
go and learn how to do autopsies.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
And what would be some of the most high profile
cases you've worked on that people would know about out there?
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Well, quite a few that I've written about. I guess
what always comes to mind are the homicides and of course,
the one that everybody always asks about is the Mark
Lundy case, which I didn't actually do the autopsies on,
although I've been involved in all three of Mark Lundy's trials,
(12:15):
including going to London and listening to the sitting in
on the Privy Council for three days, so that that
was been a pretty interesting one that spanned a good
part of my career.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
In February two thousand and one, Mark Lundy, then aged
forty three, was arrested in charge with murdering his wife
Christine and their seven year old daughter Amber. The pair
were hacked to death at Palmston North home, likely with
an axe or tomahawk.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
I've covered this.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Case more extensively in an earlier episode of A Moment
in Crime, so I'm only giving a brief summary of
the case here. On the night of the murders, Lundy
had checked into a motel in Patni, Wellington. Mobile data
proved that Lundon he was at the motel at five
point thirty and eight twenty eight pm. A sex worker
hired by Lundy confirmed he was also there between eleven
(13:08):
thirty pm and one am. Police say that just after
five thirty pm Lundy drove at breakneck speed from his
motel to Palmerston North, killed his family, and arrived back
in Potoni before eight.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Twenty eight pm.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
They contended he killed Christine for her life insurance money
because of financial pressure.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Four days earlier, the couple had reviewed their life.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Insurance and agreed Christine's would be raised from two hundred
thousand dollars to five hundred thousand dollars. Lundy killed Amber,
police said because she had witnessed all or part of
her mother's murder.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
The prosecution relied.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Heavily on a particular piece of forensic evidence, a speck
of body tissue found on one of Lundy's polo shirts,
which was located in the back seat of his car.
An international pathologist identified it as Christine Lundy brain tissue,
and it was argued the only way it could have
ended up on Lundy's shirt was if he himself was
(14:07):
the murderer. Lundy gave evidence at the trial, strenuously denying
he killed his wife or child. His lawyers were adamant
that Lundy could not possibly have made the round trip
from Wellington to palmest.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
North and back in just three hours.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
They said contamination could account for the tissue found on
Lundy's shirt. After seven hours of deliberation, the jury found
Lundy guilty of both murders. He was sentenced to life
in prison with a minimum non parole period of seventeen years.
The Court of Appeal rejected Lundy's attempt to overturn his
conviction and sentence. In fact, they increased his minimum non
(14:46):
parole period to twenty years in twenty thirteen, though the
Privy Council the New Zealand's Court of Last Appeal overturned
the convictions and ordered a retrial that went ahead in
twenty fifteen, and the Crown expanded the window for the
time of death to fourteen hours, alleging Lundy may have
(15:06):
returned to Palmerston North early in the morning to murder
his family. The second jury was also convinced beyond reasonable
doubt by the Crown case and found Lundy guilty of
both murders. Again, Lundy was sent back to prison, where
he remains today. He still maintains his innocence and is
(15:26):
still trying to clear his name. Kinrich speaks about his
role in the Lundy case in The Final Diagnosis. This
is part of his book voiced by an actor.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Juries are smart. They have seven hundred plus years of
collective life experience. We all live in a science based
society with remote controls, microwaves, computers, and aeroplanes. We understand
science and while we may not know exactly how it works,
we know it does and it can be explained simply
so we can follow it. It isn't witchcraft, after all.
Christine's DNA was found in both flips of tissue Lundy's
(16:00):
shirt was reported that the odds were one billion times
to one more likely that the DNA was from Christine
Lundy than someone else unrelated to her chosen at random
from the New Zealand population. This is a massive boost
to the case against Lundy, and the analytical level of
certainty shows how reliable DNA matching can be. The DNA
(16:20):
belond Christine. The Oxford pathologists first brought up the idea
of sausages and hamburgers as a source of animal brain tissue,
and that story gained some traction as I still get
asked about it from time to time. But Mark Lundy
would have to be the unluckiest man in history to
have got an accidental contamination with animal brain tissue from
a hamburger, and then for that tissue also to contain
(16:42):
DNA indistinguishable from his wife's. All I can say is
the DNA on his shirt is human and was of
good quality. The tissue was brain, as the international experts
have established, and I can say it was uncooked through
microscopic histological examination. I say cooked meats and other foods
histologically in my daily work, So I am confident of that.
(17:03):
So I can say with authority that the brain tissue
on the Lundy shirt had emphatically never been cooked. It
was science applied to the two deposits of brain tissue
on Mark Lundy's shirt that put paid to his plans
of getting away with murder. Lundy realistically would have never
predicted and therefore planned for, this accidental, minute but unequivital
soiling of his shirt. That was his most significant mistake.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
I asked Kenrick Moore about Lundy and other stand up
cases from his lengthy career.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Well, that certainly has been tried a lot, hasn't it.
I guess from a pathologists point of view, we try
not to have a personal opinion that's based on just
what we've heard, or we think what I look at
is what does the science say. And the science certainly
has produced evidence that he can has been unable to
(17:54):
overturn in court. And it really is quite compelling, and
it's very difficult to argue why you have your wife's
brains on your shirt.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
What would be the most bizarre case you've come across
over the years, in someone living or dead?
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Probably I wrote in my first book about a case
of spontaneous combustion, which is something that pathologists talk about
but which isn't greatly understood. And this is people who
they thought originally just caught fire spontaneously and burnt slowly
down into a puddle without actually setting fire to any
(18:35):
of their surroundings. And the science of this has now
been worked out. And the case that I was called
to I went out to and it was on a
provincial road out in the manner were two and it
was a man who had been drinking heavily at the
Shannon Pub and he had picked up a bottle of
vodka and headed off back. And he pulled over to
(18:57):
the side of the road, drank his bottle of vodka
and lit up a cigarette and obviously went to sleep.
The cigarette dropped onto his clothing and it started smoldering,
you know, but like a candlewick, and he gradually, just
without gaining consciousness, he gradually just burnt himself to death
sitting inside the car. The car didn't catch fire, and
(19:20):
there was just smoke all over the windows, and he
was basically not quite a puddle of fat, but pretty
close to going that way. And I just never i'd
heard about the spontaneous combustion. I've never seen a case,
and I think that was the closest that I've ever
come to it. That was really weird.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah, I bet how do you wind down after working
on something like that? Does it affect you or is
it just part of the job and you just sort
of carry on?
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Yeah. You know, whenever you open up a body, a
freshly dead body or perhaps a not so freshly dead one,
there's a suppression or a suspension of your norm normal
physiology and emotion. You know, by physiology, I mean, you
know your body function. What does it tell you to
do when you open and see your body being opened?
(20:09):
Tells you to run away? You know, you get this
adrenaline rush of fear and flight, and you want to
run away, and you've got to suppress that and then
there's the emotional aspect. You're looking at a body being opened,
and you know, I mean, this is an appalling mutilation
if you're not used to it, and you've got to
suppress that. As time goes on, of course, you get
(20:30):
used to it. I suppose you get inoculated, and I've
pathologists do get used to this. One of the questions
that I always ask is okay, And people always ask
pathologists exactly this question that you've asked. I ask, why
don't general surgeons get the same thing? I mean, somebody
gets brought in from a car accident and they've got
(20:50):
a shattered body there, and they open up their abdomen
and take out bits of bowel and stitch it up
and so on. Surely they have exactly the same fears
that that we do, which is, you know, basically this
is horrific, but you've got to do something. Hm.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
What would be I imagine some cases are harder than others,
you know, even for someone that's been in the profession
as long as you is it is it the young people,
the children that are hardest? Or you know, what, what
is it that you sort of not struggle with but
you find particularly challenging.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, I think young children always poignant, aren't they. And yes,
I've had a number of cases where my registerrars have
just been unable to carry out the autopsy. There were
the three children who died in the man or two
in the pang and a valley when they were swimming
(21:45):
in a in a in the river and part of
the cliff came down and the cliff killed all three
of them. And it's written in my first book, and
that that was three children from two families. That that
was terrible. My registrars couldn't do those autopsies. I had
to go and do those. And of course that that
(22:07):
does affect you, because it's it's nobody deserves nobody deserves
to die to start with. But when it's a young
child like that and it's just so pointless, it's a
it's not a good feel. And those are the ones
that I remember, of course.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
I guess. So the flip side of it is, you know,
to get answers and to help the families get closure,
somebody has to do that job, right.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Well, yeah, that's right. I mean I guess one of
the ways I deal with it is I don't see
these as cadavers. I mean a body is not an
inanimate object. It really reflects humanity. They are my patients,
and I am a doctor, and I am looking after them,
and I'm finding what happened, and I'm telling their story.
(22:52):
I'm their last advocate, and I will tell the truth
about them and what happened, and do it respect fully,
and then they can be laid to rest, with a
story known and everything tidied away. And we understand. Understanding
is important part of loss and grief is of course understanding,
(23:14):
isn't it.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Professionally can Reck and I have a few things in common.
We both, in our own ways, investigate and tell the
stories of the dead. We see and hear gruesome details
of murders. We bear witness to the unfathomable grief of
people who have lost a parent, sibling, or child to
a violent act. Are questioned almost daily about New Zealand's
(24:02):
most high profile offenders and offenses. In my case, it's
usually about whether I think a particular person is guilty
of a crime, or if a jury got the right
verdict and a murder trial I've been reporting on. Ken
Rick gets that a lot too, And there's another question
He's often asked.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Everybody wants to talk about murder. Whenever I go to meetings,
nobody ever says, have you seen any amazing diseases recently?
Have you seen any amazing tumors? You know, what's the
most exotic disease you've come across? Nobody ever asks that.
They always ask about murder. Everybody wants to know We're
fascinated by murder. And the problem is that all the
(24:41):
murders that I've done, I've dealt with in my first
two books. So I thought, what on earth can I
do in the third book? And what is At a
lot of the Lions and Rotary and other meeting probus
meetings that I go to, people have always asked me,
you know how to commit the perfect murder? And the
(25:02):
answer is yes, I do, but I'm not going to
tell you. But what I can tell you is look
at a number of famous and not so famous murders
in New Zealand and tell you what the murderers did wrong,
and then from that you can work out what you
need to do for your perfect murder.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
The prosecution of Scott Watson is one of the cases
Kenrick delves into in his latest book, Watson was jailed
for life for the minimum non parole period of seventeen
years for the murders of Olivia Hope seventeen and Ben
Smart twenty one. The friends disappeared after boarding a stranger's
yacht early on January one, nineteen ninety nine, after marking
(25:45):
the new year with friends at Ferno Lodge, a century
old boat access only resort in the Endeavor in Let.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Their bodies have never been found.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Watson has always denied killing or even meeting Hope and Smart.
He's repeatedly been denied parole since he became eligible, and
continues to fight to clear his name. Watson's latest appeal
actually began the day that I interviewed Kinrick. At the
time of recording this podcast, a decision had not yet
been made. I'll include a link in the show notes
(26:18):
for the latest on this long running saga if you'd
like to read more. But here is Kinrick explaining why
he decided to cover the Sounds case in his book.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
The Scott Watson case was one that I selected to
talk about, not because I have any inside knowledge or
any particular views about And it's interesting to note that
the Scott Watson case is going to the Court of
Appeal today, Yes, which is interesting, and there were a
couple of things that I wanted to a couple of
(26:49):
points I wanted to make about Scott Watson's case. It's
not what was done wrong, it was just I think
how the evidence plays out, particularly eyewitness evidence, and everybody
knows eyewitnesses are not terribly reliable, and that's really what
I've written about in the book can Reck.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Are the criminal cases that you've worked on with a
forensic evidence tells you clearly one thing, but the jury
decides the opposite when they come back with a verdict.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
You know, I personally haven't had one of those, which
is interesting. Every case that I've been involved with has
the evidence that we've collected at all topsy, and examination
of the scene and the police investigations, it's all made sense.
(27:41):
And every case I've been involved with has had a conviction.
So I've never come across a case where the evidence
has been rejected, and I'm quite proud of that because
I think that means that the evidence we put forward
was bust in the first instance, and in a murder case,
(28:04):
the police and the prosecutor will look very carefully at
the autopsy what the pathologist says, how it all ties
together before making their decision. And I think that I'm
quite proud of the fact that so far, well I'm
not doing homicides at the moment anymore, that the conviction
(28:25):
rate has been pretty well one hundred percent. There are
cases I'm aware of where I think it's gone the
wrong way, but I wasn't involved with those.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
In the final diagnosis. You talk about why circumstantial is
often the most compelling and steadfast form of evidence. Tell
me more about that.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Yeah, you know circumstantial evidence. A lot of people say, oh,
you hear this all the time. He was found guilty,
but the evidence was only circumstantial. Well, circumstantial evidence is
very good. Eyewitness evidence is extremely bad, and that's well known.
The psychologists know about it. There's been many tests of it,
(29:01):
and of course I talk about it with the Sounds murder.
Eyewitness evidence is not good. There is one type of
eyewitness evidence that's outstanding, of course, and that is security cameras,
and that's changed everything, and I write a bit about
that too. But circumstantial evidence involves clues that you cannot manufacture,
(29:23):
that are left by mistake behind, and there's nothing that
you can do. You didn't intend them to be there,
but added together, they form a very compelling argument. Like,
for instance, in Mark Lundy's case, two specs of brain
(29:44):
tissue on his shirt is circumstantial evidence, but it's pretty compelling.
The DNA analysis of that tissue is pretty compelling. The
fact that his wife and his daughter had chips of
paint in their injuries in their head similar to that
with which Mark Lundy's tools were painted, is circumstantial evidence.
(30:05):
It's not gotcha evidence. But all of these things start
adding up, and when you get a whole pile of
circumstantial facts coming together, it becomes very hard to say, well,
can there be another explanation? And the answer is usually
not really.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yeah, because some of our most high profile cases have
been based on circumstantial evidence, haven't they. If you look
at you know, David Bain and his family, there were
no witnesses. We've had one in christ which recently where
there's still nobody, and there's been a man convicted of murder,
all on circumstantial evidence because there's nobody, And it's interesting
(30:42):
that you are sort of explaining that that's better evidence
than witnesses, because humans do make errors, don't they. I
think that's what people don't really understand, is that that
eyewitness stuff isn't always as reliable as you might think.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
No, that's right. And I talk in my book about
what o' neil tyson, who's a famous astrophysicist and presenter
in the United States. He talks about how he was
called up for jury service in the United States. And
the judge said to the jurors before they were appointed
in this case, there is only one witness, and that
(31:19):
is an eyewitness to the robbery or the event, whatever
it was. Do any of you have a problem with that?
And he put up his hand and he said, if
you've only got one eyewitness, and I've got a problem
with that, because in the court of law, eyewitness evidence
may be important, but in the court of science it's
worth nothing. And if you've only got one eyewitness, it
(31:39):
doesn't prove it's not going to prove anything. And the
judge then turned around and said, oh, thank you for that.
You'll be dismissed. And he said to the other juris,
does anybody else want two eyewitnesses? And one of the
juris said, hang on, he didn't say that, and within
seconds of having explained why the judge as an ear witness,
if you like, had got it wrong. He didn't get
(32:01):
it either, And that's what humans do. We actually don't
get it right. We don't hear things right, we don't
see things right.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
So I think in court cases it's always better to
trust the science, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Well, the good thing about science is that it's true
whether you believe it or not, and it never changes.
So yes, that is correct. And of course, getting back
to the circumstantial evidence, the value of that is one
of the analogies is that each piece of circumstantial evidence
(32:36):
is like a thread in a rope, but itself it's
not hugely strong. You plat them all together you get
something that's actually quite strong and very difficult to break.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
And just going back to this perfect murder concept, do
you write a lot about that?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Is that even possible at this.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Dan and age, with all the technology out there and
experts like yourself, you know, working to lock up people
that murders.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Well, the perfect murder, of course it's possible, and of it,
by definition, it will be one that I've never seen
because you won't recognize it for what it is. And
you know. One of the stories I like to tell
is we actually can be quite bad at recognizing that
a murder has occurred, and they've sort of semi humorous
(33:25):
example that I use as Jack and the Beanstalk, which
is a story that we tell our children. I tell
my twenty twenty month old daughter that frequently. She loves
the story. But this is a story of a young
boy who gets involved in three different home invasions, steals
from the homeowner, who chases him, and then he is
(33:48):
murdered by the young boy. And this is not recognized
as it's a straightforward homicide with home invasion. This just
isn't recognized as a murder. It's put out as something
quite moral in fact, and if you look at it,
that's the perfect murder. And what you have to do
in society. If you interachieve a perfect murder, it must
(34:08):
be something that nobody will recognize. I'll look at it
and say, no, it looks all right.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Crime is something that fascinates us all and in recent
years has been a real influx and true crime content documentaries,
television series, movies, and podcasts, and there thousands focused on
specific incidents or offenders and then there's the fictional crime shows,
the Law and Orders, the CSIS, the Special Victor Unit,
Criminal Minds, and countless others popping up week on week.
(35:04):
In almost every iteration, there's a rock star pathologist who
manages to crack the case with an hours, tying up
every loose end nicely and neatly.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Before they go home for the day.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
But how does it work in the real world? Do
can reckon as colleagues find that golden taketive evidence as
quickly is it even possible? And does it create unhelpful
myths about their important work?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
The shows do seem to be pretty well never ending.
I gather silent witnesses on its twenty seventh season now,
which is it's just unbelievable. You know, somebody's got it
must have very fertile imagination. No, it's not like that
at all. It's everything has to be done meticulously, of course,
but it's always a big puzzle until the end, and
(35:50):
it all comes together only very slowly. And I guess
what The shows don't show you because they can't. They
can't show you that the investigations that pathologists do have
got a very liquid component to them, and the smell
is missing as well. You know, it is quite different
from that. They very sanitized, I guess is the term
(36:13):
I'm looking for. The pathologists never seem very messy to me,
but I seem to get splashed quite a lot.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
And what are the best and worst parts of your job?
Speaker 3 (36:23):
I guess the best part is the absolute unknown of
what's coming every day. That it could be a quiet
day with nothing, but most of the time something completely
unknown comes up. Now a lot of people say, no,
the ideal job is you work from eight to five
and you know you have your lunch break, and you
(36:47):
know every day is the same as every other. I
can't imagine anything more boring than that. And the best
part of the job is just the amazing cases that
come up endlessly, and it really is quite fascinating. And
of course there's always a patient behind it, and that
is the physicianally part of it. But I feel like
(37:08):
I've solved a crossword puzzle or a sodoku, a difficult
sudoku when I reach a diagnosis and it's a sort
of Eureka moment and you feel really great.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Yeah, in that respect, it must be quite rewarding, even
though often very grim.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
I imagine well, yeah, I guess we get immunized to it.
In our particular group, we see thirty six thirty seven
thousand biopsies on live patients every year, and probably, I
don't know, twenty percent of them have got cancer. Every
one of them's got a difficult story behind them. They're
(37:44):
having the biopsy for a reason, and I guess we
get used to that, and that's probably the routine part
of our work. But still it's really gratifying when you
know that you've got these out and you've got the
answer and something can be done.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
And how has pathology changed over the years.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
You've been in this game for a very long time,
and I imagine there's been a lot of changes and
advancers tell me about that.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Yeah, well, of course there have been huge advances, of course,
because there's been all the change with genetics and genomics
and DNA and so on, which has changed our diagnostic
work hugely. But I think you know, probably what people
would understand best is what's happened in murder cases. Thirty
(38:31):
years ago, when there was a murder case, the pathologist
was the first to be called to the scene was
closed off, and the pathologist to be the first in
there to actually look at the body, look at the
way the body was lying, look at the whole scene
around there, so that the injuries and the cause of
death could be closely related to what happened at the scene.
(38:54):
And that was a critical part of a murder investigation.
That changed about two things thousand to two thousand and
five totally and it's quite different now. Two things changed immensely.
The first one was DNA and now the scientists to
collect DNA off the body of the first on the scene.
They go in there and they swab the body from
(39:15):
top to bottom, and even small fragments of DNA from
the perpetrator the murderer will be found. That changed it hugely.
The second thing that changed with security cameras. There are
security cameras everywhere, and that of course is the ultimate
eyewitness evidence that so far is reliable. I'm not saying
(39:37):
they can't be falsified, but so far they proved reliable.
And when there's a homicide, I think the police go
and collect security cameras from everywhere in the whole area
and they all get analyzed. And we saw that, for
instance with the Grace Mulane and Jesse Kempson when Jesse
(39:57):
Kempson murdered Grace Mulane back in December twenty eighteen, he
had nowhere to go. I mean it was all on
security camera, you know, him meeting up with her and
going in the lift up to the room and so on.
It was all there, and him going to the warehouse
to buy suitcases and carrying the empty suitcases up and
(40:18):
wheeling the full suitcases down. It was all there there.
You know, what can you say?
Speaker 1 (40:24):
You just absolutely cannot argue with you know, the science
and effects, even though many do no.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
And of course the most amazing story wasn't here. It
was to do with Sarah Everard, the young woman who
disappeared near Clapham Common Brixton Hill in London back and
I think it was twenty twenty one, and she disappeared
walking home one night, and I think there were huge
vigils held on Clapham Common. I think Princess Kate went
(40:54):
to them as well. And what had happened is she'd
been picked up in an area where there were no
security cameras, and of course she had because she was
picked up by a Metropolitan policeman called Wayne Cousins, and
he knew that there were no security cameras in the area,
but unfortunately for him, and yet he had hired a
Vauxhall car to carry the deed out. Unfortunately for him.
(41:16):
The London buses are fitted with security cameras because the
drivers get attacked, and two passing buses, the first bus
on their camera they caught him talking to her standing
next to the Vauxhall and the next bus that went
past got the Vauxhall's registration number and from that they
were able to find out that he had rented the
(41:39):
car and track the car to Hoadwood near Ashford, where
the body was found. And what can you do? I mean,
there are no clues to be found. He would never
have been found until he did it again, which is
what the serial type murders often do. He would never
have been found, but there's no no where to go
(42:01):
it he's absolutely stitched up completely. So that those are
the two big changes.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
What would be the biggest misconception about your job and
your work that people have?
Speaker 3 (42:12):
I think that probably again, it's around life and death.
I think most people know that pathologists do autopsies and
that's our signature dish if you like, and they know
about us dealing with bodies that are dragged out of
the river and shark attacks and all this sort of thing.
But what they don't know about is the work that
(42:35):
we do with living patients, the diagnostic work. Like the
woman with breast cancers. We work out what hormones that
the cancers respond to, We work out what chemotherapeutic drugs
they can use, and we do this on a whole
host of cancers. So we're involved with what sort of
backroom technology around diagnosing people and getting them on the
(43:00):
right treatment path. All of that is, you know, it
hasn't got the glamour of investigating a murder, but I
don't think many people know that pathologists do that, or
if they do, it's below the visual horizon.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
And all that work is just so so important, isn't
it to the community?
Speaker 3 (43:18):
And you know it is when it's your biopsy?
Speaker 1 (43:22):
And why did you decide to write about your career?
You know, this is your third book, as you said,
part of the trilogy. You're presenting your knowledge, you know,
in a really deep dive sort of way.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
What led you to write the books?
Speaker 3 (43:33):
Well? I think it says I often quote Rally who said,
the time takes up all that we have and shuts
the story of our days in a dark and silent tomb.
And that struck me as true of all the many,
many hours are spent doing autopsy. So I would write
out these reports send them to the coroner, and that
(43:55):
was pretty well lit. You know, the families didn't know,
nobody knew what their story were. And I thought, well,
you know, I'm really I'm not an author, I'm a historian.
I'll write down what I saw and how it presented
to me. And I started doing this, and the families
were just so grateful. You know. I'd phone them up
(44:16):
and I'd say, look, I'm writing a story about your
loved one. You know, I'm really sorry to come and
raise this all up again. And they were just so supportive,
and they said, no, you must tell the story, you
must use their name. We want to hear it. All.
We didn't know anything about any of this. And you know,
once I started doing that, one thing led to another,
(44:38):
and of course I ended up then writing more and
more about the living patients too, and talking to them
and writing their stories too, And about half of them
are very happy for me to use their name and
tell their story. And about half of them I changed
the name or fictionalize the setting to protect identities.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
I guess that raises a good point. A lot of
the work that you would have done over the years
in the criminal space, if there isn't a guilty plan,
it doesn't go to trial. People don't often hear, you know,
the pathology expert evidence, do they, And they don't know
what's gone on behind the scenes and the evidence that
was there if it had gone to trial.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
Yeah, well that's right, And sometimes it works the other
way round. I had dealt with a young child who
had been murdered by his mother's boyfriend, and it was
the second time that he had done carried out the
same type of murder, and the evidence was being heard
before the Justices of the peace who had to make
(45:44):
a determination whether there was enough evidence for him to
go to trial. The man involved had said he was
not guilty, of course, and I came and gave my evidence,
which he sat there and listened to, and then afterwards
he said, no one to change my plea to guilty.
I don't know whether that was because of what I said,
but I was quite clear about what had happened, and
(46:05):
he changed his plea and there never was a formal
trial in the sense of everything being heard. So sometimes
it goes that way too, you know, the story is
just never told.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Yeah, and what do you want people to take away
from the final diagnosis.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
That's an interesting question. I guess death has been pretty
well sanitized in the West. I mean, we've outsourced it
to funeral directors, to the police, to the doctors and
bodies and the dead or removed from our site. They
go to a place unseen and the whole thing's dealt
(46:45):
with in a very sanitary way. And I think it's
probably not the best way to deal with it. I
would rather that people see death as really part of
being alive. You can't outsource your grief. Understand death, know
about it. It is important to know why your loved
(47:07):
ones died, you know. I think is a move against
having all chopsysse days. I think it's very civilized to
know that why people died and what happened, and occasionally
you get big surprises. So I guess my message would
be death is with us. It is us, it is
part of us. We're all going there one day and
(47:30):
we should accept it as part of our normal lives.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
Kenrick's book is available now at all of the usual retailers, libraries,
and as an e book for those of you who
prefer to read on your device. The work of pathologists
has been crucial to many of the cases I've covered
in a Moment in crime. Their analysis of evidence has
led to the convictions of dozens of killers and sex offenders.
They've helped so of cold cases and explain the most
(47:57):
bizarre of crimes. They're also doing a lot of really
important work for the community, helping to diagnose diseases and
in some cases working hard on developing treatments and cures.
Kinrick's work over the years is fascinating and compelling, and
across his three books you can get a good insight
into how pathologists really contribute to crime and justice.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
There's a saying that writing is the art of turning
blood into ink, but I think in my case this
probably literally is a case of turning blood into ink.
It's been an easy journey for me to write. People
often ask why do you write? How do you write?
I just tell the story, you know, they're not it's
(48:40):
not what I think. I could never write fiction. I
just tell the story of what I saw and what
I thought and what became of my patients.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
A Moment in Crime is an enzed Me podcast written
and hosted by me analysk sandor crime and justice reporter
for the New Zealand Herald. This episode was produced by myself,
podcast production manager Ethan Sills and Liam McDonald from enzied
me Sound and Vision.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
Thanks to my colleague Black Benny at Newstalalk z B for.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Voicing the extract of Kinrick's book, The Final Diagnosis, and
special thanks to Kinrick for sitting down to speak with
me about his book and his career. The world of
pathologists has always intrigued and interested me, and I really
appreciated being able to speak to.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
Kinrick about his work.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Thanks also to Hollyhart Jenkins at HarperCollins for her assistance
with the interview. Episodes of A Moment in Crime are
usually released monthly on insidherld dot co, dot mzed iHeartRadio
and all your.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
Other usual podcast apps.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
If you've got a crimeal case you'd like me to
consider covering in future, email Anna dot Least at enzdme
dot co dot mzed
This episode of A Moment in Crime refers to murders,
including the killing of children. It also contains descriptions of
post mortem examinations and forensic evidence. This content is intended
for a mature audience.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
Mark Lundy did it.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
He murdered his wife, Christine and their young daughter Amber
and their Parmeston North home. A New Zealand's leading pathologist,
after working on the Lundee case for years, can tell
you why he's sure, without a shadow of a doubt,
Lundy is a double murderer. I know there's many people
out there that don't believe Lundee is responsible. They think
that he's been stitched up, that someone else did it.
(00:40):
Since the day it happened, Lundy himself has protested his innocence,
but he was the only one who could have done it.
That's what two High Court juries have decided at separate
murder trials, and Kenrick temple Camp backs them based on
the science of the case. In this episode of A
(01:00):
Moment in Crime, you'll hear more about Kenrick's work on
the Lundy case, dubbed Operation Winter by police, and you'll
find out what he thinks about another infamous New Zealand
double murder the polarizing case of Scott Watson, convicted of
killing Ben Smart and Olivia Hope during New Year's celebrations
in nineteen ninety nine. Usually, episodes of a Moment of
(01:21):
Crime focus on old cases, cold cases, or recent cases
of national and international significance involving Keiwi offenders or victims. Today,
I'll take you to the other side of the cordon
inside Kinrick's world. Since the nineteen eighties, he's been tasked
with establishing the cause of death for countless men, women
(01:42):
and children. He's also been called in to solve the
baffling health mysteries of the living, and he spends hours
in a lab each week examining various samples and swabs
to diagnose everything from viruses to cancer. Kenrick has written
three books on the work he does and has pa
about His latest is called The Final Diagnosis and is
(02:04):
available now with the booker. It was the perfect opportunity
to talk with a man who knows more about murder
than most people in New Zealand. I'll include information in
the show notes about his books and a link to
my story about Kenrick's vast and varied career.
Speaker 2 (02:21):
If there's other cases you.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Want to hear about on a Moment in Crime. Email
me at Anna dot leask at enzme dot co dot Nz.
From the who dunnets in cold cases to the strange
and quirky, crime is one of the most fascinating corners
of society and the news. From the New Zealand Herald
newsroom comes a Moment in Crime, a podcast delving into
(02:43):
some of New Zealand's most high profile cases, offenses and offenders.
Each month, I'll take you inside some of our most
infamous incidents, notorious offenders, and behind the scenes of high
profile trials and events to show you what's really happening
in your backyard. Kindric temple Camp was born in Zimbabwe,
(03:12):
emigrating to New Zealand in nineteen eighty seven and settling
in Parmesan North, where he joined the local pathology practice.
Pathologists are specialist doctors who diagnose and study human diseases
and conditions. The job is extremely varied and can range
from testing tissue and fluid samples to diagnosing diseases and
investigating deaths. Those deaths might be due to an illness,
(03:35):
something sudden or mysterious, or the result of a crime.
The latter generally requires them to stand up in court
and explain an intense.
Speaker 2 (03:44):
Detail how and why a person died.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Their evidence is then considered by a jury in determining
whether a person charged is guilty or not. Over the years,
Kinrick has seen it all, and he's pretty much written
about it all. In twenty eighteen, his first book, The
Cause of Death, was published, in which he lifted the
lid on the most unusual stories of death and murder
had encountered during his career. The Quick in the Dead
(04:10):
followed in twenty twenty, covering the unlikely, extraordinary, obscure, and
often tragic ways humans meet their end, and in June
twenty twenty four, The Final Diagnosis. He's ken rec explaining
the new book how he chooses which cases of the
thousands he oversees every year to write about, and why
he includes living patients.
Speaker 3 (04:32):
It's a continuation. They're really a trilogy because they are
all my memoirs of cases that I've been involved with.
The first book was predominant. It was one hundred percent
about autopsies and the dead. The second book, The Quick
and the Dead, and this one, The Final Diagnosis. It's
a mixed bag of autopsies obviously on people who have
(04:56):
had unusual or suspicious deaths, and some murders as well,
and people who've had unusual diseases, unusual presentation of diseases,
or actually make a point. So there are quite a
few live people in live patients in my new book
(05:18):
in which I talk about their diseases, and that's a
little bit different.
Speaker 1 (05:23):
And how do you select the cases for each book?
I mean, you must have, I imagine, countless examples to
draw upon, but how do you select? You know, how
did you do it for the final diagnosis?
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Well, every day that I go to work is amazing.
There are always new cases. They are always unbelievable things
to find and are happening. I guess this is cherry
picking all those that stick in my mind and are
the most unusual. And as I write them, it's amazing
how new ones come up. And all the time I'm
(05:54):
thinking of ones and new ones, or thinking of ones
that I've seen in the past, and I think, damn,
why didn't I include that one in the book, because
that's just brilliant. But of course you can't write about everything,
and I can't remember them all, of course, but I
have to go and research each one when I decided
to write about it.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
As you can imagine, it takes a long time to
complete all the training needed to do the job Kinric does.
It's not for the fainthearted, looking at bodies and parts
of bodies and slides of mysterious nasties found within bodies
all day, and I'm not sure too many kids wake
up one day and think I want to be a pathologist.
(06:34):
I asked Conc how he got into this branch of medicine,
what inspired him to work mostly with the dead and dying,
and why he's stayed in the job for so many years.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
Yeah, a lot of people ask that. Of course, when
you go to medical school, everybody wants to be a
neurosurgeon or some sort of fancy surgeon, or deliver babies
or something like that. Nobody ever says, oh, I'm going
to go to medical school and be a pathology And
it actually wasn't high on my horizon. But I just
started in medical school and I was an Army cadet,
(07:09):
and I had during the vacations, I had to go
back into the army. And what happened was, as a
nineteen year old, I was sent out with a squad
to pick up three bodies from an aircraft accident, and
we had to put them into a bag and take
them off to the mortuary for an autopsy. And that's
(07:30):
quite a shocking thing for a nineteen year old just
I mean, the year before I'd been a prefect at school,
so it was a little bit of a shock. But
when I got to the moltuary, there was a pathologist there,
Kevin Lee, who was outstanding, and he turned what would
have been a terrible experience into something really amazing, you know,
getting the bodies together again, working out what had happened,
(07:52):
making and putting a whole context behind what we were
seeing and what had happened. And I just thought, this
is just brilliant, and you know, it's stuck in my
mind and throughout my medical career. I just wanted to
be a pathologist.
Speaker 1 (08:08):
Tell me about the training. How do you get to
where you are?
Speaker 3 (08:12):
Well, you first have to get yourself through medical school
and do your house job and a bit of clinical work,
and then when you've done that, you have to sign
up with a training a laboratory in a hospital, a
teaching hospital or another hospital, and that takes another five
years of training, and along the way there are a
(08:33):
couple of pretty stiff exams that you've got to get through,
and at the end of that you're ready to start.
So it takes thirteen years altogether from the time you
start medical school to the time that you're ready to
say I'm a consultant pathologist, and then all you need
is another forty years experience on top of that.
Speaker 1 (08:52):
I expect that the training is intense, you know, thirteen years,
and then getting into what you want to do. You
will never put off along the way.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
No, you know, there there was quite a difference in
my day. I come from a generation where you left
school and you went and did your career straight away
and you got straight into it. So I was a
consultant by the time I was thirty, whereas the world
is very different today. You know, a lot of the
graduates coming out of medical school are a bit older
(09:21):
and they've done another degree and then they do a
bit of overseas experience, and you know, I've got registrars
that i'm training that are in their forties, and you know,
I find that very interesting. But because it's you know,
when I was forty, I can't imagine sitting down and
trying to learn all those books and focus on all
every disease of every organ. But that's what they have
(09:41):
to do.
Speaker 1 (09:42):
And what were some of the earlier cases that you
worked on as a pathologist? How do you sort of
start off?
Speaker 3 (09:47):
Yeah, well, during your training you do, of course, you
do two types of cases that we do. They're the
cases on the living, the biopsies and the diagnosis of
cancers and exotic diseases and not so exotic diseases in
the living. And then there are of course the autopsies
and the diagnoses on the dead. And during your training
(10:09):
you do and you do both. The emphasis is of
course on the living and on making diagnoses from biopsies
and recognizing changes in tissues and discovering just what earth
is going on with the patient and often that's a
bit of a mystery.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And you're now considered sort of the leading pathologists to
New Zealand. Tell me about the work that you've had
to do over the years to sort of rise through
the ranks, because it's not just all the crime stuff
that we see in the documentaries and the true crime shows,
is it.
Speaker 3 (10:41):
No, I wouldn't really call myself a leading pathologist. I'm
an old pathologist, which is perhaps if you hang around
long enough, people will think you the leading pathologists. But no, no,
I'm definitely an old pathologist these days, and I guess
it's pathology has changed a lot in New Zealand over
the last thirty years. When I started doing pathology here,
(11:05):
we tended to do a bit of everything, so you know,
you'd be in I worked in Palmerston North Hospital and
we did our diagnostic biopsies and we also did all
the autopsies on all the homicides, the suspicious deaths, the
traffic accidents, the suicides, and these days that's all changed
now there's more and more specialization in the current training.
(11:29):
The pathologists don't even learn how to do autopsies anymore.
That's gone. They do that after they've finished their fellowship,
So after their five year training, after their thirteen years
from the beginning to the end, they then have to
go and learn how to do autopsies.
Speaker 1 (11:46):
And what would be some of the most high profile
cases you've worked on that people would know about out there?
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Well, quite a few that I've written about. I guess
what always comes to mind are the homicides and of course,
the one that everybody always asks about is the Mark
Lundy case, which I didn't actually do the autopsies on,
although I've been involved in all three of Mark Lundy's trials,
(12:15):
including going to London and listening to the sitting in
on the Privy Council for three days, so that that
was been a pretty interesting one that spanned a good
part of my career.
Speaker 1 (12:29):
In February two thousand and one, Mark Lundy, then aged
forty three, was arrested in charge with murdering his wife
Christine and their seven year old daughter Amber. The pair
were hacked to death at Palmston North home, likely with
an axe or tomahawk.
Speaker 2 (12:45):
I've covered this.
Speaker 1 (12:46):
Case more extensively in an earlier episode of A Moment
in Crime, so I'm only giving a brief summary of
the case here. On the night of the murders, Lundy
had checked into a motel in Patni, Wellington. Mobile data
proved that Lundon he was at the motel at five
point thirty and eight twenty eight pm. A sex worker
hired by Lundy confirmed he was also there between eleven
(13:08):
thirty pm and one am. Police say that just after
five thirty pm Lundy drove at breakneck speed from his
motel to Palmerston North, killed his family, and arrived back
in Potoni before eight.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Twenty eight pm.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
They contended he killed Christine for her life insurance money
because of financial pressure.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
Four days earlier, the couple had reviewed their life.
Speaker 1 (13:32):
Insurance and agreed Christine's would be raised from two hundred
thousand dollars to five hundred thousand dollars. Lundy killed Amber,
police said because she had witnessed all or part of
her mother's murder.
Speaker 2 (13:45):
The prosecution relied.
Speaker 1 (13:46):
Heavily on a particular piece of forensic evidence, a speck
of body tissue found on one of Lundy's polo shirts,
which was located in the back seat of his car.
An international pathologist identified it as Christine Lundy brain tissue,
and it was argued the only way it could have
ended up on Lundy's shirt was if he himself was
(14:07):
the murderer. Lundy gave evidence at the trial, strenuously denying
he killed his wife or child. His lawyers were adamant
that Lundy could not possibly have made the round trip
from Wellington to palmest.
Speaker 2 (14:19):
North and back in just three hours.
Speaker 1 (14:22):
They said contamination could account for the tissue found on
Lundy's shirt. After seven hours of deliberation, the jury found
Lundy guilty of both murders. He was sentenced to life
in prison with a minimum non parole period of seventeen years.
The Court of Appeal rejected Lundy's attempt to overturn his
conviction and sentence. In fact, they increased his minimum non
(14:46):
parole period to twenty years in twenty thirteen, though the
Privy Council the New Zealand's Court of Last Appeal overturned
the convictions and ordered a retrial that went ahead in
twenty fifteen, and the Crown expanded the window for the
time of death to fourteen hours, alleging Lundy may have
(15:06):
returned to Palmerston North early in the morning to murder
his family. The second jury was also convinced beyond reasonable
doubt by the Crown case and found Lundy guilty of
both murders. Again, Lundy was sent back to prison, where
he remains today. He still maintains his innocence and is
(15:26):
still trying to clear his name. Kinrich speaks about his
role in the Lundy case in The Final Diagnosis. This
is part of his book voiced by an actor.
Speaker 4 (15:38):
Juries are smart. They have seven hundred plus years of
collective life experience. We all live in a science based
society with remote controls, microwaves, computers, and aeroplanes. We understand
science and while we may not know exactly how it works,
we know it does and it can be explained simply
so we can follow it. It isn't witchcraft, after all.
Christine's DNA was found in both flips of tissue Lundy's
(16:00):
shirt was reported that the odds were one billion times
to one more likely that the DNA was from Christine
Lundy than someone else unrelated to her chosen at random
from the New Zealand population. This is a massive boost
to the case against Lundy, and the analytical level of
certainty shows how reliable DNA matching can be. The DNA
(16:20):
belond Christine. The Oxford pathologists first brought up the idea
of sausages and hamburgers as a source of animal brain tissue,
and that story gained some traction as I still get
asked about it from time to time. But Mark Lundy
would have to be the unluckiest man in history to
have got an accidental contamination with animal brain tissue from
a hamburger, and then for that tissue also to contain
(16:42):
DNA indistinguishable from his wife's. All I can say is
the DNA on his shirt is human and was of
good quality. The tissue was brain, as the international experts
have established, and I can say it was uncooked through
microscopic histological examination. I say cooked meats and other foods
histologically in my daily work, So I am confident of that.
(17:03):
So I can say with authority that the brain tissue
on the Lundy shirt had emphatically never been cooked. It
was science applied to the two deposits of brain tissue
on Mark Lundy's shirt that put paid to his plans
of getting away with murder. Lundy realistically would have never
predicted and therefore planned for, this accidental, minute but unequivital
soiling of his shirt. That was his most significant mistake.
Speaker 1 (17:27):
I asked Kenrick Moore about Lundy and other stand up
cases from his lengthy career.
Speaker 3 (17:32):
Well, that certainly has been tried a lot, hasn't it.
I guess from a pathologists point of view, we try
not to have a personal opinion that's based on just
what we've heard, or we think what I look at
is what does the science say. And the science certainly
has produced evidence that he can has been unable to
(17:54):
overturn in court. And it really is quite compelling, and
it's very difficult to argue why you have your wife's
brains on your shirt.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
What would be the most bizarre case you've come across
over the years, in someone living or dead?
Speaker 3 (18:13):
Probably I wrote in my first book about a case
of spontaneous combustion, which is something that pathologists talk about
but which isn't greatly understood. And this is people who
they thought originally just caught fire spontaneously and burnt slowly
down into a puddle without actually setting fire to any
(18:35):
of their surroundings. And the science of this has now
been worked out. And the case that I was called
to I went out to and it was on a
provincial road out in the manner were two and it
was a man who had been drinking heavily at the
Shannon Pub and he had picked up a bottle of
vodka and headed off back. And he pulled over to
(18:57):
the side of the road, drank his bottle of vodka
and lit up a cigarette and obviously went to sleep.
The cigarette dropped onto his clothing and it started smoldering,
you know, but like a candlewick, and he gradually, just
without gaining consciousness, he gradually just burnt himself to death
sitting inside the car. The car didn't catch fire, and
(19:20):
there was just smoke all over the windows, and he
was basically not quite a puddle of fat, but pretty
close to going that way. And I just never i'd
heard about the spontaneous combustion. I've never seen a case,
and I think that was the closest that I've ever
come to it. That was really weird.
Speaker 1 (19:39):
Yeah, I bet how do you wind down after working
on something like that? Does it affect you or is
it just part of the job and you just sort
of carry on?
Speaker 3 (19:48):
Yeah. You know, whenever you open up a body, a
freshly dead body or perhaps a not so freshly dead one,
there's a suppression or a suspension of your norm normal
physiology and emotion. You know, by physiology, I mean, you
know your body function. What does it tell you to
do when you open and see your body being opened?
(20:09):
Tells you to run away? You know, you get this
adrenaline rush of fear and flight, and you want to
run away, and you've got to suppress that and then
there's the emotional aspect. You're looking at a body being opened,
and you know, I mean, this is an appalling mutilation
if you're not used to it, and you've got to
suppress that. As time goes on, of course, you get
(20:30):
used to it. I suppose you get inoculated, and I've
pathologists do get used to this. One of the questions
that I always ask is okay, And people always ask
pathologists exactly this question that you've asked. I ask, why
don't general surgeons get the same thing? I mean, somebody
gets brought in from a car accident and they've got
(20:50):
a shattered body there, and they open up their abdomen
and take out bits of bowel and stitch it up
and so on. Surely they have exactly the same fears
that that we do, which is, you know, basically this
is horrific, but you've got to do something. Hm.
Speaker 1 (21:08):
What would be I imagine some cases are harder than others,
you know, even for someone that's been in the profession
as long as you is it is it the young people,
the children that are hardest? Or you know, what, what
is it that you sort of not struggle with but
you find particularly challenging.
Speaker 3 (21:25):
Yeah, I think young children always poignant, aren't they. And yes,
I've had a number of cases where my registerrars have
just been unable to carry out the autopsy. There were
the three children who died in the man or two
in the pang and a valley when they were swimming
(21:45):
in a in a in the river and part of
the cliff came down and the cliff killed all three
of them. And it's written in my first book, and
that that was three children from two families. That that
was terrible. My registrars couldn't do those autopsies. I had
to go and do those. And of course that that
(22:07):
does affect you, because it's it's nobody deserves nobody deserves
to die to start with. But when it's a young
child like that and it's just so pointless, it's a
it's not a good feel. And those are the ones
that I remember, of course.
Speaker 1 (22:21):
I guess. So the flip side of it is, you know,
to get answers and to help the families get closure,
somebody has to do that job, right.
Speaker 3 (22:29):
Well, yeah, that's right. I mean I guess one of
the ways I deal with it is I don't see
these as cadavers. I mean a body is not an
inanimate object. It really reflects humanity. They are my patients,
and I am a doctor, and I am looking after them,
and I'm finding what happened, and I'm telling their story.
(22:52):
I'm their last advocate, and I will tell the truth
about them and what happened, and do it respect fully,
and then they can be laid to rest, with a
story known and everything tidied away. And we understand. Understanding
is important part of loss and grief is of course understanding,
(23:14):
isn't it.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Professionally can Reck and I have a few things in common.
We both, in our own ways, investigate and tell the
stories of the dead. We see and hear gruesome details
of murders. We bear witness to the unfathomable grief of
people who have lost a parent, sibling, or child to
a violent act. Are questioned almost daily about New Zealand's
(24:02):
most high profile offenders and offenses. In my case, it's
usually about whether I think a particular person is guilty
of a crime, or if a jury got the right
verdict and a murder trial I've been reporting on. Ken
Rick gets that a lot too, And there's another question
He's often asked.
Speaker 3 (24:21):
Everybody wants to talk about murder. Whenever I go to meetings,
nobody ever says, have you seen any amazing diseases recently?
Have you seen any amazing tumors? You know, what's the
most exotic disease you've come across? Nobody ever asks that.
They always ask about murder. Everybody wants to know We're
fascinated by murder. And the problem is that all the
(24:41):
murders that I've done, I've dealt with in my first
two books. So I thought, what on earth can I
do in the third book? And what is At a
lot of the Lions and Rotary and other meeting probus
meetings that I go to, people have always asked me,
you know how to commit the perfect murder? And the
(25:02):
answer is yes, I do, but I'm not going to
tell you. But what I can tell you is look
at a number of famous and not so famous murders
in New Zealand and tell you what the murderers did wrong,
and then from that you can work out what you
need to do for your perfect murder.
Speaker 1 (25:23):
The prosecution of Scott Watson is one of the cases
Kenrick delves into in his latest book, Watson was jailed
for life for the minimum non parole period of seventeen
years for the murders of Olivia Hope seventeen and Ben
Smart twenty one. The friends disappeared after boarding a stranger's
yacht early on January one, nineteen ninety nine, after marking
(25:45):
the new year with friends at Ferno Lodge, a century
old boat access only resort in the Endeavor in Let.
Speaker 2 (25:52):
Their bodies have never been found.
Speaker 1 (25:56):
Watson has always denied killing or even meeting Hope and Smart.
He's repeatedly been denied parole since he became eligible, and
continues to fight to clear his name. Watson's latest appeal
actually began the day that I interviewed Kinrick. At the
time of recording this podcast, a decision had not yet
been made. I'll include a link in the show notes
(26:18):
for the latest on this long running saga if you'd
like to read more. But here is Kinrick explaining why
he decided to cover the Sounds case in his book.
Speaker 3 (26:27):
The Scott Watson case was one that I selected to
talk about, not because I have any inside knowledge or
any particular views about And it's interesting to note that
the Scott Watson case is going to the Court of
Appeal today, Yes, which is interesting, and there were a
couple of things that I wanted to a couple of
(26:49):
points I wanted to make about Scott Watson's case. It's
not what was done wrong, it was just I think
how the evidence plays out, particularly eyewitness evidence, and everybody
knows eyewitnesses are not terribly reliable, and that's really what
I've written about in the book can Reck.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
Are the criminal cases that you've worked on with a
forensic evidence tells you clearly one thing, but the jury
decides the opposite when they come back with a verdict.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
You know, I personally haven't had one of those, which
is interesting. Every case that I've been involved with has
the evidence that we've collected at all topsy, and examination
of the scene and the police investigations, it's all made sense.
(27:41):
And every case I've been involved with has had a conviction.
So I've never come across a case where the evidence
has been rejected, and I'm quite proud of that because
I think that means that the evidence we put forward
was bust in the first instance, and in a murder case,
(28:04):
the police and the prosecutor will look very carefully at
the autopsy what the pathologist says, how it all ties
together before making their decision. And I think that I'm
quite proud of the fact that so far, well I'm
not doing homicides at the moment anymore, that the conviction
(28:25):
rate has been pretty well one hundred percent. There are
cases I'm aware of where I think it's gone the
wrong way, but I wasn't involved with those.
Speaker 1 (28:33):
In the final diagnosis. You talk about why circumstantial is
often the most compelling and steadfast form of evidence. Tell
me more about that.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
Yeah, you know circumstantial evidence. A lot of people say, oh,
you hear this all the time. He was found guilty,
but the evidence was only circumstantial. Well, circumstantial evidence is
very good. Eyewitness evidence is extremely bad, and that's well known.
The psychologists know about it. There's been many tests of it,
(29:01):
and of course I talk about it with the Sounds murder.
Eyewitness evidence is not good. There is one type of
eyewitness evidence that's outstanding, of course, and that is security cameras,
and that's changed everything, and I write a bit about
that too. But circumstantial evidence involves clues that you cannot manufacture,
(29:23):
that are left by mistake behind, and there's nothing that
you can do. You didn't intend them to be there,
but added together, they form a very compelling argument. Like,
for instance, in Mark Lundy's case, two specs of brain
(29:44):
tissue on his shirt is circumstantial evidence, but it's pretty compelling.
The DNA analysis of that tissue is pretty compelling. The
fact that his wife and his daughter had chips of
paint in their injuries in their head similar to that
with which Mark Lundy's tools were painted, is circumstantial evidence.
(30:05):
It's not gotcha evidence. But all of these things start
adding up, and when you get a whole pile of
circumstantial facts coming together, it becomes very hard to say, well,
can there be another explanation? And the answer is usually
not really.
Speaker 1 (30:21):
Yeah, because some of our most high profile cases have
been based on circumstantial evidence, haven't they. If you look
at you know, David Bain and his family, there were
no witnesses. We've had one in christ which recently where
there's still nobody, and there's been a man convicted of murder,
all on circumstantial evidence because there's nobody, And it's interesting
(30:42):
that you are sort of explaining that that's better evidence
than witnesses, because humans do make errors, don't they. I
think that's what people don't really understand, is that that
eyewitness stuff isn't always as reliable as you might think.
Speaker 3 (30:56):
No, that's right. And I talk in my book about
what o' neil tyson, who's a famous astrophysicist and presenter
in the United States. He talks about how he was
called up for jury service in the United States. And
the judge said to the jurors before they were appointed
in this case, there is only one witness, and that
(31:19):
is an eyewitness to the robbery or the event, whatever
it was. Do any of you have a problem with that?
And he put up his hand and he said, if
you've only got one eyewitness, and I've got a problem
with that, because in the court of law, eyewitness evidence
may be important, but in the court of science it's
worth nothing. And if you've only got one eyewitness, it
(31:39):
doesn't prove it's not going to prove anything. And the
judge then turned around and said, oh, thank you for that.
You'll be dismissed. And he said to the other juris,
does anybody else want two eyewitnesses? And one of the
juris said, hang on, he didn't say that, and within
seconds of having explained why the judge as an ear witness,
if you like, had got it wrong. He didn't get
(32:01):
it either, And that's what humans do. We actually don't
get it right. We don't hear things right, we don't
see things right.
Speaker 1 (32:09):
So I think in court cases it's always better to
trust the science, isn't it.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
Well, the good thing about science is that it's true
whether you believe it or not, and it never changes.
So yes, that is correct. And of course, getting back
to the circumstantial evidence, the value of that is one
of the analogies is that each piece of circumstantial evidence
(32:36):
is like a thread in a rope, but itself it's
not hugely strong. You plat them all together you get
something that's actually quite strong and very difficult to break.
Speaker 1 (32:46):
And just going back to this perfect murder concept, do
you write a lot about that?
Speaker 2 (32:51):
Is that even possible at this.
Speaker 1 (32:52):
Dan and age, with all the technology out there and
experts like yourself, you know, working to lock up people
that murders.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
Well, the perfect murder, of course it's possible, and of it,
by definition, it will be one that I've never seen
because you won't recognize it for what it is. And
you know. One of the stories I like to tell
is we actually can be quite bad at recognizing that
a murder has occurred, and they've sort of semi humorous
(33:25):
example that I use as Jack and the Beanstalk, which
is a story that we tell our children. I tell
my twenty twenty month old daughter that frequently. She loves
the story. But this is a story of a young
boy who gets involved in three different home invasions, steals
from the homeowner, who chases him, and then he is
(33:48):
murdered by the young boy. And this is not recognized
as it's a straightforward homicide with home invasion. This just
isn't recognized as a murder. It's put out as something
quite moral in fact, and if you look at it,
that's the perfect murder. And what you have to do
in society. If you interachieve a perfect murder, it must
(34:08):
be something that nobody will recognize. I'll look at it
and say, no, it looks all right.
Speaker 1 (34:41):
Crime is something that fascinates us all and in recent
years has been a real influx and true crime content documentaries,
television series, movies, and podcasts, and there thousands focused on
specific incidents or offenders and then there's the fictional crime shows,
the Law and Orders, the CSIS, the Special Victor Unit,
Criminal Minds, and countless others popping up week on week.
(35:04):
In almost every iteration, there's a rock star pathologist who
manages to crack the case with an hours, tying up
every loose end nicely and neatly.
Speaker 2 (35:12):
Before they go home for the day.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
But how does it work in the real world? Do
can reckon as colleagues find that golden taketive evidence as
quickly is it even possible? And does it create unhelpful
myths about their important work?
Speaker 3 (35:28):
The shows do seem to be pretty well never ending.
I gather silent witnesses on its twenty seventh season now,
which is it's just unbelievable. You know, somebody's got it
must have very fertile imagination. No, it's not like that
at all. It's everything has to be done meticulously, of course,
but it's always a big puzzle until the end, and
(35:50):
it all comes together only very slowly. And I guess
what The shows don't show you because they can't. They
can't show you that the investigations that pathologists do have
got a very liquid component to them, and the smell
is missing as well. You know, it is quite different
from that. They very sanitized, I guess is the term
(36:13):
I'm looking for. The pathologists never seem very messy to me,
but I seem to get splashed quite a lot.
Speaker 1 (36:20):
And what are the best and worst parts of your job?
Speaker 3 (36:23):
I guess the best part is the absolute unknown of
what's coming every day. That it could be a quiet
day with nothing, but most of the time something completely
unknown comes up. Now a lot of people say, no,
the ideal job is you work from eight to five
and you know you have your lunch break, and you
(36:47):
know every day is the same as every other. I
can't imagine anything more boring than that. And the best
part of the job is just the amazing cases that
come up endlessly, and it really is quite fascinating. And
of course there's always a patient behind it, and that
is the physicianally part of it. But I feel like
(37:08):
I've solved a crossword puzzle or a sodoku, a difficult
sudoku when I reach a diagnosis and it's a sort
of Eureka moment and you feel really great.
Speaker 1 (37:18):
Yeah, in that respect, it must be quite rewarding, even
though often very grim.
Speaker 3 (37:23):
I imagine well, yeah, I guess we get immunized to it.
In our particular group, we see thirty six thirty seven
thousand biopsies on live patients every year, and probably, I
don't know, twenty percent of them have got cancer. Every
one of them's got a difficult story behind them. They're
(37:44):
having the biopsy for a reason, and I guess we
get used to that, and that's probably the routine part
of our work. But still it's really gratifying when you
know that you've got these out and you've got the
answer and something can be done.
Speaker 2 (38:00):
And how has pathology changed over the years.
Speaker 1 (38:03):
You've been in this game for a very long time,
and I imagine there's been a lot of changes and
advancers tell me about that.
Speaker 3 (38:10):
Yeah, well, of course there have been huge advances, of course,
because there's been all the change with genetics and genomics
and DNA and so on, which has changed our diagnostic
work hugely. But I think you know, probably what people
would understand best is what's happened in murder cases. Thirty
(38:31):
years ago, when there was a murder case, the pathologist
was the first to be called to the scene was
closed off, and the pathologist to be the first in
there to actually look at the body, look at the
way the body was lying, look at the whole scene
around there, so that the injuries and the cause of
death could be closely related to what happened at the scene.
(38:54):
And that was a critical part of a murder investigation.
That changed about two things thousand to two thousand and
five totally and it's quite different now. Two things changed immensely.
The first one was DNA and now the scientists to
collect DNA off the body of the first on the scene.
They go in there and they swab the body from
(39:15):
top to bottom, and even small fragments of DNA from
the perpetrator the murderer will be found. That changed it hugely.
The second thing that changed with security cameras. There are
security cameras everywhere, and that of course is the ultimate
eyewitness evidence that so far is reliable. I'm not saying
(39:37):
they can't be falsified, but so far they proved reliable.
And when there's a homicide, I think the police go
and collect security cameras from everywhere in the whole area
and they all get analyzed. And we saw that, for
instance with the Grace Mulane and Jesse Kempson when Jesse
(39:57):
Kempson murdered Grace Mulane back in December twenty eighteen, he
had nowhere to go. I mean it was all on
security camera, you know, him meeting up with her and
going in the lift up to the room and so on.
It was all there, and him going to the warehouse
to buy suitcases and carrying the empty suitcases up and
(40:18):
wheeling the full suitcases down. It was all there there.
You know, what can you say?
Speaker 1 (40:24):
You just absolutely cannot argue with you know, the science
and effects, even though many do no.
Speaker 3 (40:31):
And of course the most amazing story wasn't here. It
was to do with Sarah Everard, the young woman who
disappeared near Clapham Common Brixton Hill in London back and
I think it was twenty twenty one, and she disappeared
walking home one night, and I think there were huge
vigils held on Clapham Common. I think Princess Kate went
(40:54):
to them as well. And what had happened is she'd
been picked up in an area where there were no
security cameras, and of course she had because she was
picked up by a Metropolitan policeman called Wayne Cousins, and
he knew that there were no security cameras in the area,
but unfortunately for him, and yet he had hired a
Vauxhall car to carry the deed out. Unfortunately for him.
(41:16):
The London buses are fitted with security cameras because the
drivers get attacked, and two passing buses, the first bus
on their camera they caught him talking to her standing
next to the Vauxhall and the next bus that went
past got the Vauxhall's registration number and from that they
were able to find out that he had rented the
(41:39):
car and track the car to Hoadwood near Ashford, where
the body was found. And what can you do? I mean,
there are no clues to be found. He would never
have been found until he did it again, which is
what the serial type murders often do. He would never
have been found, but there's no no where to go
(42:01):
it he's absolutely stitched up completely. So that those are
the two big changes.
Speaker 1 (42:06):
What would be the biggest misconception about your job and
your work that people have?
Speaker 3 (42:12):
I think that probably again, it's around life and death.
I think most people know that pathologists do autopsies and
that's our signature dish if you like, and they know
about us dealing with bodies that are dragged out of
the river and shark attacks and all this sort of thing.
But what they don't know about is the work that
(42:35):
we do with living patients, the diagnostic work. Like the
woman with breast cancers. We work out what hormones that
the cancers respond to, We work out what chemotherapeutic drugs
they can use, and we do this on a whole
host of cancers. So we're involved with what sort of
backroom technology around diagnosing people and getting them on the
(43:00):
right treatment path. All of that is, you know, it
hasn't got the glamour of investigating a murder, but I
don't think many people know that pathologists do that, or
if they do, it's below the visual horizon.
Speaker 1 (43:15):
And all that work is just so so important, isn't
it to the community?
Speaker 3 (43:18):
And you know it is when it's your biopsy?
Speaker 1 (43:22):
And why did you decide to write about your career?
You know, this is your third book, as you said,
part of the trilogy. You're presenting your knowledge, you know,
in a really deep dive sort of way.
Speaker 2 (43:31):
What led you to write the books?
Speaker 3 (43:33):
Well? I think it says I often quote Rally who said,
the time takes up all that we have and shuts
the story of our days in a dark and silent tomb.
And that struck me as true of all the many,
many hours are spent doing autopsy. So I would write
out these reports send them to the coroner, and that
(43:55):
was pretty well lit. You know, the families didn't know,
nobody knew what their story were. And I thought, well,
you know, I'm really I'm not an author, I'm a historian.
I'll write down what I saw and how it presented
to me. And I started doing this, and the families
were just so grateful. You know. I'd phone them up
(44:16):
and I'd say, look, I'm writing a story about your
loved one. You know, I'm really sorry to come and
raise this all up again. And they were just so supportive,
and they said, no, you must tell the story, you
must use their name. We want to hear it. All.
We didn't know anything about any of this. And you know,
once I started doing that, one thing led to another,
(44:38):
and of course I ended up then writing more and
more about the living patients too, and talking to them
and writing their stories too, And about half of them
are very happy for me to use their name and
tell their story. And about half of them I changed
the name or fictionalize the setting to protect identities.
Speaker 1 (45:00):
I guess that raises a good point. A lot of
the work that you would have done over the years
in the criminal space, if there isn't a guilty plan,
it doesn't go to trial. People don't often hear, you know,
the pathology expert evidence, do they, And they don't know
what's gone on behind the scenes and the evidence that
was there if it had gone to trial.
Speaker 3 (45:22):
Yeah, well that's right, And sometimes it works the other
way round. I had dealt with a young child who
had been murdered by his mother's boyfriend, and it was
the second time that he had done carried out the
same type of murder, and the evidence was being heard
before the Justices of the peace who had to make
(45:44):
a determination whether there was enough evidence for him to
go to trial. The man involved had said he was
not guilty, of course, and I came and gave my evidence,
which he sat there and listened to, and then afterwards
he said, no one to change my plea to guilty.
I don't know whether that was because of what I said,
but I was quite clear about what had happened, and
(46:05):
he changed his plea and there never was a formal
trial in the sense of everything being heard. So sometimes
it goes that way too, you know, the story is
just never told.
Speaker 1 (46:17):
Yeah, and what do you want people to take away
from the final diagnosis.
Speaker 3 (46:23):
That's an interesting question. I guess death has been pretty
well sanitized in the West. I mean, we've outsourced it
to funeral directors, to the police, to the doctors and
bodies and the dead or removed from our site. They
go to a place unseen and the whole thing's dealt
(46:45):
with in a very sanitary way. And I think it's
probably not the best way to deal with it. I
would rather that people see death as really part of
being alive. You can't outsource your grief. Understand death, know
about it. It is important to know why your loved
(47:07):
ones died, you know. I think is a move against
having all chopsysse days. I think it's very civilized to
know that why people died and what happened, and occasionally
you get big surprises. So I guess my message would
be death is with us. It is us, it is
part of us. We're all going there one day and
(47:30):
we should accept it as part of our normal lives.
Speaker 1 (47:35):
Kenrick's book is available now at all of the usual retailers, libraries,
and as an e book for those of you who
prefer to read on your device. The work of pathologists
has been crucial to many of the cases I've covered
in a Moment in crime. Their analysis of evidence has
led to the convictions of dozens of killers and sex offenders.
They've helped so of cold cases and explain the most
(47:57):
bizarre of crimes. They're also doing a lot of really
important work for the community, helping to diagnose diseases and
in some cases working hard on developing treatments and cures.
Kinrick's work over the years is fascinating and compelling, and
across his three books you can get a good insight
into how pathologists really contribute to crime and justice.
Speaker 3 (48:19):
There's a saying that writing is the art of turning
blood into ink, but I think in my case this
probably literally is a case of turning blood into ink.
It's been an easy journey for me to write. People
often ask why do you write? How do you write?
I just tell the story, you know, they're not it's
(48:40):
not what I think. I could never write fiction. I
just tell the story of what I saw and what
I thought and what became of my patients.
Speaker 1 (48:54):
A Moment in Crime is an enzed Me podcast written
and hosted by me analysk sandor crime and justice reporter
for the New Zealand Herald. This episode was produced by myself,
podcast production manager Ethan Sills and Liam McDonald from enzied
me Sound and Vision.
Speaker 2 (49:12):
Thanks to my colleague Black Benny at Newstalalk z B for.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Voicing the extract of Kinrick's book, The Final Diagnosis, and
special thanks to Kinrick for sitting down to speak with
me about his book and his career. The world of
pathologists has always intrigued and interested me, and I really
appreciated being able to speak to.
Speaker 2 (49:30):
Kinrick about his work.
Speaker 1 (49:32):
Thanks also to Hollyhart Jenkins at HarperCollins for her assistance
with the interview. Episodes of A Moment in Crime are
usually released monthly on insidherld dot co, dot mzed iHeartRadio
and all your.
Speaker 2 (49:44):
Other usual podcast apps.
Speaker 1 (49:47):
If you've got a crimeal case you'd like me to
consider covering in future, email Anna dot Least at enzdme
dot co dot mzed
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