Facial Recognition with Ray Evans

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:37):
Welcome to crime Pedia. I am your host. My name
is Morgan. It is wonderful to have you and with me,
as always is my wonderful true crime BFF. It is
a lovely Cherry. Hi Cherry, how are you hello?

Speaker 2 (00:48):
I'm really well, thank you, welcome back. It's been a
while week. You've been very very busy, as you all know,
so we've got a really really great episode for you
this week.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
We have got a very very or.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
Guest who has very kindly agreed to come on the show.
And I think you're all going to find this really
really fascinating because as far as I know, he's not
been on a podcast before. So for us, we're very
very lucky. We have a man called Ray Evans with us.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
Hello, Ray, Hi, how are you doing? Very good? Thank you?
How are you fine?

Speaker 4 (01:23):
Thank you?

Speaker 3 (01:23):
Good?

Speaker 2 (01:24):
So, Ray, you have a very interesting and not typical job.
Tell us a bit about your job.

Speaker 4 (01:32):
Well, it's.

Speaker 5 (01:34):
I'm called an expert, an expert witness Facial identification is
my general title, and it's something we do for the
courts and for the defense. So basically my expertise is
looking at imagery of usually crimes being committed and then

(01:55):
saying whether the people within that footage is the suspect
that the police have pulled in for questioning.

Speaker 2 (02:04):
So that's a really that's a really interesting job. That's
something you don't hear. There's not many, very many of
people like you, I think.

Speaker 5 (02:11):
No, No, it's a small small group of people around
the country actually, and some in the sort of Australia
and maybe one of in the US.

Speaker 4 (02:20):
Not very many.

Speaker 5 (02:23):
But yeah, we're we're a very very select band of people.
But we come from all different backgrounds, you know, people
who come from video editing, people who come from universities.
I mean I came out of university. Really in my department,
we used to do this as one of the sort

(02:45):
founders of facial comparison as a science.

Speaker 4 (02:50):
That's used in forensics.

Speaker 5 (02:52):
So I've been doing it for quite a number of
years now, over twenty odd years.

Speaker 4 (02:58):
And yeah, so's there's not very many of us.

Speaker 1 (03:02):
So Ray, how did you how did you find yourself
getting involved in facial recognition and and really line of work.

Speaker 5 (03:13):
Yeah, it's like like many people in the world, you know,
you come two things via very tortuous route. I trained
initially as a medical illustrator, so I draw things from
post mortems. I draw things from surgery, you know, all

(03:33):
that lovely glory stuff we make. We make stuff that's
very difficult to see, you know, all the photograph visible.

Speaker 4 (03:42):
You know.

Speaker 5 (03:42):
We we clean up stuff really so that people can
understand what's what's going on in the surgical people. So
I trained as a medical illustrator in Manchester at the
University or via the University of Manchester through a professional
group called the Medical Artists Associate Great Britain. So again

(04:02):
that's a very small band of people. It's been going
since I think nineteen fourteen, five forty six, and yeah,
I trained with them at the University of Manchester and
then I moved abroad for a few years. I worked
to the Middle East as my specialist hospital in road

(04:24):
in Saudi Arabia, and then when I came back to
the UK for literally a holiday after a couple of years,
my boss at the time, well he wasn't my boss,
he was the person who I trained on this I
would like a job and I'm like, yeah, now I'm
going back to to add least it's war. And then

(04:45):
he said, well, we've got a big thing.

Speaker 4 (04:46):
That we're doing.

Speaker 5 (04:47):
Need somebody that we know who we trained and you know,
take a three month contracts. So I went, yeah, okay,
then eighteen years yeah, eighteen years later. Yes, So I
was there for eighteen years. I'm still I've now left
and I've obviously got my own company called SRI Forensics

(05:08):
based in Manchester, but I'm still a member of staff.
I have an honorary research associate's post at the University
of Manchester and maybe Partners of Psychology, so I do
some research there.

Speaker 4 (05:22):
I have a research partner and.

Speaker 5 (05:24):
Then we do research on usually facial comparison or facial recognition.
She deals with more than facial recognition, and yeah, we
write the odd scientific paper together.

Speaker 2 (05:36):
And okay, so right, explain to me, like if so
it's play a typical like kind of work day for you,
what kind of what do you do on a sort
of daily basis when you've got a case?

Speaker 3 (05:47):
What kind of stuff would you be doing?

Speaker 5 (05:50):
Yeah, So we get requests from prosecution defense and that's
the police and the solicitors firms, sometimes directly from barristers
or the NCAA, the National Crime Agent Agency of the UK,
and sometimes from the US.

Speaker 4 (06:11):
So I've had a mimber of cases from the us.

Speaker 5 (06:14):
So we'll get a request in usually by email, sometimes
by phone call, and they outline what they have and
the usual scenario is we've got some video of somebody
committing a crime, somebody you know, doing something and we
think it is person X, and we'd like it to

(06:34):
go through the footage and see whether or not the features,
the facial features usually fit the suspect that we have.
And that's it really in a very simplified form. Once
you know an agreement has been made, contracted inside, et cetera,

(06:54):
then I'm usually sent the material. And the material can
be very simply, you know, two or three photographs and
then reference material of the subject, or it can be
terabytes of data that's video, sound, you know, photographs, text,

(07:18):
We get lots of lots of court bumbles that we
go through. I try not to go through anything that
is that's going to bias me in any way, but
obviously we have to look at the stuff that the.

Speaker 4 (07:33):
Police are sending through.

Speaker 5 (07:34):
So once you go through that, then you know how
long your case is going to take. And they can
take anything from you know, a day or two to
weeks and.

Speaker 4 (07:44):
Weeks and weeks wow on. Once you do that, then
you start, you know, you go, you you edit your video.

Speaker 5 (07:52):
I have a video editor who works with me, so
if there's something that's really onerous, then he will you
take out the material and require all two sort of
decent forriendsic standards, and then I will then start analyzing
the particular areas of footage. I mean I work a

(08:15):
lot using things like Photoshop and Premiere Pro to do
my sort of cropping out and just general editing of
imagery to make it look a little better, you know,
to pull out as much information as I can. There
are other ways of doing it, so there are you know,
again colleagues who are very adept at you know, understanding

(08:39):
the scripture video.

Speaker 4 (08:41):
So we're making sure that we're.

Speaker 5 (08:42):
Only using the coppies of the original footage, so we're
not adding anything taking away anything from that from that footage.
And once that's done and we've got images that I
can then analyze, then I go through checking what is
similar and what is different. The interesting thing about facial comparison,

(09:06):
specifically facial comparison, is that you know, every face is different,
and we're very good at spotting similarities between faces, but
we're really poor at spotting what makes a face different
from another face, so you'll have two faces that are
very similar. You know, everyone's got a doctor Ganda somewhere,

(09:31):
and sometimes it's really difficult to tell the difference between
the two. Well, our job is to spot the difference,
you know. I say, my job is a bit like
spot the ball, you know. So, yeah, that's that's what
we do. And you know, once we've done that, then
we start writing our analysis in the form of a

(09:53):
report with a statement.

Speaker 3 (09:57):
Wow, it's a long process, it is.

Speaker 1 (10:00):
Yeah, I'm curious about I'm curious about when you're editing
these images, especially when you're using photoshop. I think a
lot of people when they hear something like that, they
hear photoshop. They hear you're going through and you're making
adjustments to photos. I think a lot of people their
first thought is, oh, well, aren't they just manipulating the photo?

(10:22):
And my question is, how do you go through this
process with ensuring that you are keeping the integrity of
the original image so that you're not you're not making
assumptions based on what you believe something could be.

Speaker 5 (10:42):
Yes, yes, that's an excellent question. Well, first, we don't
work on the original material. We don't even work on
the working copy material that we receive, we make a
copy of that. It's a bit for bit copy, so
it's pretty much exactly the same. That's then stored, that
sits in my little safe, so we.

Speaker 4 (11:01):
Don't work on that.

Speaker 5 (11:02):
We then work on the you know, the copies that
we have and actually photoshop. It's got a bad rep
in that, you know, so many celebrities to make themselves
look better, but that's not that's not what we're trying
to do. What we're trying to do is remove any
extraneous information that.

Speaker 4 (11:24):
Will not you know, assist in our analysis.

Speaker 5 (11:30):
So we just do simple photography changes such as increasing
the brightness if it's very bright. Obviously you can only
see material that's been really that's been recorded, so it
might be recorded, you know, very dark, so we can
you know, up the contrast or up the brightness a

(11:52):
little bit and just to see what what's hidden in
that in an area. We can also use one or
two other filters that might make an edge a little
bit clearer. But certainly with my reports, and this is
something that I think we should all do. All those
work against field, as my reports always have the original

(12:15):
monadulterated image in the report next to the image.

Speaker 3 (12:21):
Oh, that's a great idea. Yeah, they can see what
you've done.

Speaker 5 (12:25):
And yeah, so everything I do, everything is repeatable by
somebody else, and they should come to exactly the same.

Speaker 2 (12:34):
Conclusion because we have so many, I mean so many
of the cases that we've covered, we've looked at like
cct I mean, CCTV is notoriously bad. It's always grainy,
you can never see things clearly. How do you work
with something like that? Because I honestly can say, in
all the time we've been doing this, I've never seen

(12:54):
crystal clear CCTV. It's never like you watch crime Watch
and things like that. It's always sh shocking quality. When
you're presented with something like that in a case, it's
really really important, there's a lot of pressure on you.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
How do you deal with that?

Speaker 5 (13:08):
M Yeah, again, it's a good question. I'm not sure
I actually do deal with it very well. But anyway, now,
so CCTV is arguably one of the sort of better
pieces of evidence that we can get. But at the
end of the day, we have to remember we're not
looking at the real thing. No, it's not equivalent to

(13:32):
a piece of your DNA a bit of your blood spatter.
It's not an equivalent to that. It's what things look
like through a lens, which might or might not throw
in its own aberrations, and you know, we have to
be aware of what those issues might be.

Speaker 4 (13:49):
So we've got to be aware of, you know, the
kind of cameray comes from. Ideally we'd like to be
aware of that.

Speaker 5 (13:55):
But you're right, we get some shocking material, if it
for below a certain standard, then we say we can't
use it, you know, to get an identification.

Speaker 2 (14:07):
Well, so you can do that. You can say, like,
this is not enough standard for us to do our job.

Speaker 5 (14:12):
Absolutely, okay, that's absolutely no, no, no, yeah. You're never
backed into a corner where you have to make an
opinion on something that can't be you know, you can't
make an opinion on So we do have the luxury
of being able to say, no, we can't do anything
that's going to give you an identification. What we can
do with poor imagery is to try and you know,

(14:32):
enhance it as best we can. Side the original so
you can see what you've done. And let's say you
have footage where somebody is way in the distance. You
know you're on a ten atp sized image, but that
person that you're looking at is a teamy.

Speaker 4 (14:51):
Speck in the distance.

Speaker 5 (14:52):
Well, you know, you've only got a certain number of
pixels to play with large, so you do the best.

Speaker 4 (14:58):
You can there, even large and zooming as best you can.

Speaker 5 (15:02):
There are pieces of software that you can use to
try and you know, enhance it to stage where you
are actually altering things, but obviously that's not allowed, so
you don't do it. So all you can do is
pull in and say, well, this can't be used for identification,
but it can be used to track somebody from camera
to camera. So that's often what poorer footage is used for.

(15:29):
And then when you get better imagery that's you know,
allowing for the time, the location, et cetera, then you
can say, well they've followed it from camera.

Speaker 4 (15:38):
Wanna you know, boogie king.

Speaker 5 (15:40):
Yeah, other places exist to somewhere else where there is
much better footage. Then at least you can track that
on a time basis. And then when you get to
the better footage, then you can start doing some analysis
to try and get to a point where you can
make some kind of identification.

Speaker 3 (15:59):
Wow, oh that's amazing.

Speaker 1 (16:02):
Ray I do have a question. So one of the
one of the probably most famous recent cases where imagery
has come into play here in the United States was
the Delphi murders, where there was obviously video taken of
the killer by one of the girls, but when police
released it it was they just released still images of

(16:25):
an actual video, and a lot of people from that
would say things like, well, you know he has a
strange gait, right, so he you buy this picture by
these series of pictures, it looks like he he has
the way he's walking, Uh, might might be atypical. How
are you able to look at imagery like that and

(16:47):
determine things like, uh, you know if if that is
a person based off of their uh, their posture, their walk,
are you able to get dive that deep into it?

Speaker 4 (17:00):
Well, well yes, and no.

Speaker 5 (17:02):
First off, you mentioned gate gate analysis is a very
specific area that I don't do because that gates true.
Gate analysis is a clinical exercise. And you have a
p dietrist, Yeah, you have a p dietriist who specializes
in looking at and assessing people's gate, how they walk,

(17:24):
what issues might be caused, you know, in their walk.
So that would then go off to somebody, you know,
a colleague that I would use to do that, and
they would prepare their own S nine report, and you
know that would be used by the by whichever side
has commissioned the report.

Speaker 4 (17:43):
So you wouldn't be assessing gate from still imagery. You
just can't. You might be able to assess posture.

Speaker 5 (17:51):
If you have enough images, you know, in sequence, you
might be able to assess you know, somebody has particularly
hunched shoulders, you know, they the head thrusts forward habitually,
So you can make assessments like that. But obviously the
best thing to see is contiguous in framed proper proper imagery,

(18:13):
movie style imagery. So that's the best way to assess
material like that. So, yeah, you are sometimes limited in
what you can say. And the important thing that people
like myself have to really remember is that staying your lane.

Speaker 4 (18:37):
You know, I have an area of specialty and then
I stick to that assiduously.

Speaker 5 (18:42):
You have to, Yeah, because the moment you are caught
making an opinion on something that is not put in
your expertise, yeah you're finished.

Speaker 3 (18:51):
Really yeah, Yeah, so you have to.

Speaker 4 (18:53):
Be very careful.

Speaker 2 (18:55):
Okay, so I've got a question before, I've got a
million questions. But so I've got a question. So if
a redhead, naturally, if I was, how does it work,
particularly with women, if you were to be given, say
a video of me naturally, and then by the time
it gets to court, I've changed my hairstyle, changed my makeup,
I've added eyelashes or something. How do you work with

(19:16):
things like that? Because it's so easy to change the
look of yourself, how do you how does your job
cope with stuff like that?

Speaker 5 (19:24):
Well, first off, you know those are all sort of
surface changes, so we understand, okay, things like that are possible.
You know, hair, hairstyle, beards, Yeah, types of makeup, et cetera.
Those are all things that you know, you understand that

(19:44):
they could be changed very quickly, and in fact, in
virtually all of my reports where there is a difference
between the imagery that you're wanting of the offense or
the offender and images of the suspect, and it could
be years between them. But things that won't change are

(20:04):
generally things like the proportions of the face. Unless you're
a child, there are there are some very specific changes.
The face gets longer, slightly broader, but you know, we
grow in that that that.

Speaker 4 (20:21):
Direction look at baby's head. It's huge relation to the body.

Speaker 5 (20:27):
Well, the head doesn't grow as much as the body,
so you know, you could you look at those and
that's where the the sort of anatomical side of the knowledge.

Speaker 4 (20:39):
That we possess comes into it comes into play.

Speaker 5 (20:43):
So when it comes onto things like where people have
deliberately tried to you know, alter their appearance.

Speaker 4 (20:52):
It can be done, and I admit it can be done.

Speaker 5 (20:55):
And there can be times when people have done that
so well, it's very difficult to well the difference between them.

Speaker 4 (21:03):
But most crimes that are committed to people do not
go to anything like those lengths.

Speaker 5 (21:09):
So you would, you know, take with the nod in
a wink that yet the hand styles change, we understand that, we'll.

Speaker 4 (21:15):
Erase that, will leave that out. That's fine.

Speaker 5 (21:19):
They're brewing a beard. We understand that they put some
tattoos on. I've had cases where there's a great case.
The footage was very good of the perpetrator. Yeah, and
the footage of the suspect was very good, but the
suspect had a tattoo very conspicuously on the side of

(21:40):
his neck. The perpetrator didn't have that, and their defense
was well he's got a tattoo, so we had to
find out when was that tattoo?

Speaker 3 (21:49):
Then, ah, yeah, footage.

Speaker 5 (21:52):
Went back, your images went back of them previously from
years before they didn't have that tattoo, so that that
defense went right out with window.

Speaker 4 (22:00):
So you know, we have to be we have.

Speaker 5 (22:02):
To understand that people will do things that in order
to try and you know, disguise themselves.

Speaker 4 (22:10):
But you know, most crimes they're done that I deal with,
they're done on the spirit of the moments off the cuff.

Speaker 5 (22:18):
Yeah yeah, so people have not had the opportunity to
really think about it.

Speaker 4 (22:24):
Yeah. Yeah, So that's that's so interesting.

Speaker 2 (22:28):
So talking about cases, So you've gotten you're involved in
a new TV show and the episode that we're going
to talk about in our show today actually comes out
on Thursday, which is the nineteenth, and you can see
that on True Crime. So we're going to talk about
it a bit today. In this we're going to talk
about a case. The victim is a guy called Jason Brockbanks.
Now he was twenty four when he was murdered. He

(22:50):
was in a relationship with a guy called Aaron Ray.
And you can google this and find out like the
full information about the case, so you can read different
Newcastle and a short version of it. The suspect, so,
Aaron and his boyfriend had gone been out for the
evening drinking. They had gone back home back to Jason's apartment.

(23:10):
He had Aaron had been looking through Jason's phone when
he fell asleep, found these messages on grinder and stabbed him,
killed him, left him, and then left the area. How
does your job help in a case like that? How
does that work?

Speaker 3 (23:26):
How are they.

Speaker 2 (23:27):
Getting you involved in something like that when it happens
sort of like in his apartment with I'm guessing no
CCTV cameras. How do you help in a case like that?

Speaker 5 (23:36):
Well, in this particular case, Jason lived in a block
of flats student flats, and obviously leading up to that,
he had been out with Aaron and they had been
seen on CCTV all around the area, so have plenty
of footage linking the two men together.

Speaker 4 (23:59):
They also have very good footage.

Speaker 5 (24:03):
Linking them coming back to Jason's apartment, his block.

Speaker 3 (24:09):
Of flats flats, yeah yeah, yeah, and.

Speaker 5 (24:11):
Then seeing him enter, and then because it's student accommodation
within that, there's very good CCTV in the public spaces,
so in the corridors leading up to the lifts and
things like that. So we're able to see that Jason
does enter with Aaron into the into the block of flats.

(24:34):
We see him going to adore that leads to his
actual his actual apartment, and then they disappear in there
for a period of time. We then have footage of
Aaron coming out loon and then making his way away

(24:56):
from the vicinity. The thing, the thing about that CCTV
is it will cause everything and everybody.

Speaker 4 (25:03):
Yeah, and we know, we know from the.

Speaker 5 (25:05):
CCTV that no one else actually went into the area
where Aaron sadly was was killed.

Speaker 4 (25:15):
So the last person to see.

Speaker 3 (25:18):
Him him, yeah, was only Aaron.

Speaker 2 (25:21):
Ra So they would then so they would bring you
into a case like that, or somebody like you yourself,
to come in to say that, yes, that is definitely
Aaron that left that apartment. It's definitely Aaron that went
in with him, because of you can tell that it's
definitely him and not someone that just looks like him.
Is that why they would bring someone such as yourself in.

Speaker 5 (25:42):
That's exactly why, I mean, you know you can see,
you know, people wanted to look at it the case,
you can see pretty.

Speaker 3 (25:50):
Clearly clear, yeah.

Speaker 4 (25:52):
That it is Aaron and going and leaving.

Speaker 5 (25:57):
What the police would do they would ask us, you know,
I don't know because of our position, I'm not quite
sure why, but they would ask us to just double
check but what they think is actually happening, and to
see if we can, you know, find any holes.

Speaker 4 (26:11):
In their argument.

Speaker 5 (26:11):
Really okay, And in this case, there were no holds
in that particular argument.

Speaker 4 (26:18):
It was him going in and it was him leaving.
So you know, we were able to confirm that. We
were able to look.

Speaker 5 (26:25):
At the details of his face, his whole body structure,
the clothes he was.

Speaker 4 (26:31):
Wearing, and all of that, and they all linked back
to Aaron.

Speaker 5 (26:37):
Ray.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
Wow, that's amazing, isn't it. Oh more than you're quiet,
you've gone quiet.

Speaker 1 (26:48):
There we go. So this is the case almost where
where Aaron would have been expected to be seen going
into the apartment. Right. They were, they had been seeing
each other, they were uh they you know, they were
working ship. So it's more like you can confirm, yeah,
that was that's him, but that but in this particular case,

(27:09):
the key is that no one else was seen entering
the black apartments. That's correct, then this is my understanding.

Speaker 5 (27:16):
Yes, yeah, okay, he was there for I think three days.

Speaker 4 (27:23):
Before he was actually found.

Speaker 5 (27:26):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (27:27):
Yeah, So you know, it's a really sad case.

Speaker 2 (27:30):
It is, and for family members, I think because we
always talk about we want to get closure for families,
and especially in cases like this where emotions are really
hard to have an expert such as yourself to come
in and to give that validation that in my expert
opinion and all the training that I've had looking at this,
there are no holes to this case.

Speaker 3 (27:50):
That must be quite for you.

Speaker 2 (27:52):
That must be lovely to actually think, do you know
what I've really helped that. It's horrible obviously for for
Aaron's family because they're not they haven't had anything to
do with this, with this murder, So it's sad for
their family. But for Jason's family, it must be so
good for them to have this validation that you it
is definitely one hundred percent this is what we found.
There is no holes in this How do you feel

(28:14):
with these cases? Like, how does that make you feel
when something comes together like that?

Speaker 4 (28:19):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (28:20):
I mean again, that's an excellent, excellent question. I've done
many cases where you know you've assisted. You know, I
don't claim to solve any cases, we don't do that, no,
but certainly your information has assisted the police to you know,
find out if somebody was that person. Also, we exonerated people,

(28:42):
so that's the other issue that very few programs actually addressed,
but with exonerated people. But certainly when it comes onto
the family and the relationship around the particular victim, I've
worked on cases where where the the family have been

(29:04):
super super grateful that you've been able to assist to
you know, may something to rest, you know, and you
know I've had many, many thank yous and all sorts
of things like that. At least three or four cases
in the last four or five years that the families

(29:27):
the victims.

Speaker 4 (29:29):
Have specifically specifically.

Speaker 5 (29:30):
Said, you know, we're in their in their when they're
dealing with the courts, where they're dealing with the police.
You know, they're so glad that people like ourselves are
around to lay these things to rest, because you know,
I've got in this case, I've got some similar age
and no way to the university if that happened. You know,

(29:51):
you you want some answers here here, and you know,
people like ourselves, well you know that that's what that's
what we're here to do.

Speaker 2 (30:00):
And I think with your job particularly, so I read
I don't know if you've ever heard of it, there's
a there's a book called The Secret Barrister, and I
think the Barrister tweets quite a lot on Twitter and
and sort of gives you an inside it look at
how being a barrister works. And what I took from
that was that you don't ever think about that line

(30:21):
of work until you need that line of work. And
it's the same you don't. We don't think about generally
your line of work until we would be in a
position where we need you and you know you're gonna,
like you say, exonerate you from So if you find
yourself in a situation where you haven't done something and
you've got this CCTV and they're saying this is you,

(30:41):
to have you on side to say, well, actually this
you know this doesn't line up and actually I don't
think it's that person again. That must be like, it
must be such a relief to have somebody like you
and your team to be there to actually say well no, okay,
yes they do look alike however there is this this
and this is a reason why this might not be
this person. So as well as doing things for victims

(31:04):
and families, you are also doing things for innocent people too.

Speaker 5 (31:08):
Yeah, I mean it's important to understand that the work
we do, it's let me say, it's not persons specific,
it's not defense or prosecution specific. We work for the
court at the end of the day. Our job is
to inform the mind that those who are going to
make the decisions. So what we do is we look

(31:29):
at the material and we give it as totally unbiased
opinion as we can. How it's used. That's not our job.
Our job is to say, well, this is the evidence.
This is what we think. The great thing about the
British justice system is because it is an adversarial system.

(31:49):
If one side, if a side does not agree, they
can get another expert to go through the same material.
Now right in our case, because it is an opinion
based well, it is opinion based at the end of
the day. Somebody can have a slightly different opinion for you,
and we have different levels of opinion, whether it's you know,

(32:12):
limited support, whether it's powerful support. So we have different
grades there and you know, sometimes there is a difference
of opinion based on what you can assess, and that's
when you do go to court. Now, I don't like
going to court, I have to, you know, I find
it very stressful. But as long as you stick to

(32:35):
what you know, and it's fine, you know. And I again,
as I say, I don't like going to court. So
I write my reports in a very lengthy manner. I don't,
you know, cut any corners. So it's it's very sometimes
overly prosaic, I think, but it allows people in words

(32:59):
that everybody understands and to understand what I'm saying and
why I'm saying it. So to be honest, I rarely
get called to court. Yes, in the first you know,
three or four years, five years, when this was a
new you know, sort of forensic discipline. Yeah, you'd be
challenged in court every ten minutes and you'd be going
to court you know, twice a month, which was quite great.

Speaker 2 (33:22):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (33:23):
Yeah, now I get caught. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (33:25):
Now, if I get called to court twice a year,
it's probably twice too many. And I mean as a
good a job as as I hope.

Speaker 4 (33:33):
I mean, there are.

Speaker 5 (33:33):
Other groups of people that their reports are far short,
so for more far more brief.

Speaker 4 (33:40):
But then they get called into court to explain.

Speaker 3 (33:43):
Yeah, you don't want to do that, and I don't.

Speaker 5 (33:45):
I don't deal with that, so you know, like that,
that's where I remind bousness A.

Speaker 2 (33:51):
Well, we can catch the episode that we talked about,
and you've got obviously at there's a whole series and
it's called Killers Caught on Camera that's going to be
that's on True Crime. So if you've got True Crime,
make sure you check that out. The episode that we
just talked about with Jason and Aaron is going to
be on Thursdays. That's this Thursday, on the nineteenth, So
make sure you have a look at that and see
and you can. You've got a whole website of looks

(34:12):
through your website and it's so interesting all the things
that you do and everything. So your business is Sri
Forensics Limited, isn't it. So you've got that's your business. See,
if you want to check that out, then definitely go
and do that. I would, I would, I would recommend
that because it's very very interesting when you look through
the website to see what Ray and his team do
and that kind of thing. And yeah, I think it's great.

(34:35):
I think I could talk to you for hours about this.

Speaker 4 (34:37):
I think I often do talk to people for hours.
Knock yourself out.

Speaker 2 (34:43):
With the future being so digital as it is and
everything's changing so much. I mean, if you just go
back in our lifetime and look at how mobile phones
have changed, what do you what do you see for
the future of your work. Do you think it's going
to become better because we're going to have better CCTV
and better digital you know? Or do you think that
people are going to be able to manipulate things more

(35:05):
to stop you or to challenge you more in your work?

Speaker 4 (35:08):
Yeah? Again, super question.

Speaker 5 (35:11):
So when I started doing this seriously in nineteen ninety
ninety one, time a long, long time ago, footage would
come in as videoahs. Yeah, and in photographs. Now, let's

(35:32):
say somebody is rubbing a bank. Banks used to have
and I've forgot the name of the system, I really
should remember it, but basically, if somebody was, you know,
exiting a bank in hurry with some cash that didn't
belong to them, they'd trigger a high resolution, high rate
photography system.

Speaker 3 (35:51):
Okay, that would get some.

Speaker 5 (35:52):
Really good photographs that we would then have to use,
we'd have to scan them and they do stuff, and.

Speaker 4 (35:59):
That was quite higher.

Speaker 5 (36:01):
Roll forward a few years and we're into sort of
the digital age where you've got sort of really low
resolution CCTV. We have five pixels square. So while that
was great for you know, saying, oh, there's somebody in
my front garden, it was terrible for seeing what that

(36:22):
person actually looked like. But as we have moved forward
with technology, the level of resolution that can be stored
easily stored has has multiplied beyond you know, almost almost comprehension.
So now we get we can get very high resolution footage,
maybe not you know, four K, but certainly very high

(36:45):
foot resolution footage that if somebody is standing relatively close by,
they don't need a person like myself. You can see,
you can see who it is, and the person has
not got a to stand on to say it's not there.
But what we what we what we don't have yet
is that universal coverage of CCTV. Now we stray into

(37:10):
the area of who's right, so he's spreading on by recording.
So there's all of that that we we have to
you know, take into account. But you know, putting that aside,
the technology has moved on a pace in the last
few years. So the level of quality that we get
is considerably better than the old digital stuff we used

(37:34):
to get. So yeah, it will make a difference. I
think with the sort of growth nescent growth of AI lets,
the ability for people to disguise themselves digitally will no
doubt occur.

Speaker 4 (37:52):
Yeah, and then we've got another thing on our hands.

Speaker 5 (37:56):
But you know, the thing about AI is if somebody
could make it do something, something can make it do
something else that's against the law, then you're in a race.

Speaker 4 (38:05):
Then, aren't you whose technology trumps who? So I think
that's where it's quite exciting. I think I think.

Speaker 5 (38:13):
That's where we're heading. Yeah, you know, we'll just see.
I think as long as we can continue to receive
footage that we can analyze in a proper forensic manner
that's you know, repeatable, and you know we know that
we're doing the right thing, then you know there's.

Speaker 4 (38:33):
Still work to be done out there, still jobs that
will be coming in.

Speaker 3 (38:37):
Wow, it's amazing.

Speaker 2 (38:39):
It's amazing when you delve into it, all the sort
of ins and outs. But it's so interesting, and I
can imagine when people say when they meet you and say, oh.

Speaker 3 (38:46):
So what do you do? You sort of think, do
I tell them or do it?

Speaker 2 (38:50):
Because I've got friends that are detectives, and a lot of
the time they'll go, I just I work in admin,
because otherwise you get this whole barrage of all these
questions and you're sitting there for the next two hours
and your partners sitting they're going hire we go again.

Speaker 5 (39:03):
Absolutely, absolutely, It's funny. Actually you mentioned my partner, my wife,
she she trained us her nurses now supermanagement kind of thing. Yeah,
but we're at a party, dinner party when we were younger,
and you know, I was medically illustrated that did some
of this, and somebody asked the question, then what do

(39:25):
you do? And I started talking. An hour later they
asked my wife what she did. She says, well, I'm
a nurse. I mean nursing in London. They were oh, yeah, okay,
that's and she said at the times that that's it.
I'm getting out of nursing.

Speaker 4 (39:45):
Far more exciting, some attle bit more exciting.

Speaker 3 (39:47):
I can imagine.

Speaker 5 (39:48):
Everybody thinks they don't know what a nurse does, but
again they are amazing.

Speaker 1 (39:53):
What they are.

Speaker 3 (39:54):
Yeah, God bless our NHS. They are amazing. The ladies
and the men that work in our NHS are absolutely
very fo to have them.

Speaker 2 (40:01):
If you've ever needed them, they've always been absolutely fantastic.

Speaker 3 (40:04):
So yeah, yeah, brilliant. I can't have enough praise for them. Well,
thank you so much. So will you be at crime Cone.

Speaker 5 (40:12):
I'm not sure I have got all the details for that,
but okay, if you know, I might pick up some
more details and see, I've got a lot of things
on between now and the end of October.

Speaker 4 (40:24):
Okay, conferences. I'm trying to squeeze a two week holiday
in oh yeah to get away, so there's quite a
lot of things on. But yeah, you get more details
of that then i'll see.

Speaker 2 (40:41):
Well, thank you so much. Thank you so much for
taking time out. I know you're really busy, so we're
not going to hold you up, but thank you so
much for joining us. And I'm sure that listeners are
going to love hearing everything that you've told us today.

Speaker 3 (40:52):
And I'm imagining there.

Speaker 2 (40:54):
Would be a lot of questions if they could ask
right now, because I've still got loads go run in
my head. So thank you, thank you for both of us.
We really really appreciate it and we'll look out for
the episode. Luckily we've seen it already, but I'm gonna
watch it again because it would be good to go
back now after speaking to you and knowing the things
that you've said.

Speaker 3 (41:09):
So thank you very very much.

Speaker 4 (41:10):
Thank you, no, thank you for inviting me. It was
really nice to speak to you.

Speaker 2 (41:17):
Wow Morgan, Oh my goodness, he was so interesting.

Speaker 1 (41:22):
Oh. I could just just watching you. I was watching
you in your face and you just were so into it,
like I don't know, like like I don't know, it's
like there's just something about like what he was saying
and what he was doing. I could just tell that
you were absolutely into it and like this was your thing.

Speaker 5 (41:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (41:41):
I mean I have this like this like panel of
people in true crime that are like this like inspiration
panel to me, and Ray has totally just made it
onto my inspiration panel. Like I have Patricia, who's the
who's the forensic botanist. She will forever be up on
my panel. Colin obviously he will ever be up on
my panel. You know Peter, you know the underwater specialist,

(42:04):
Peter fold In, he would be up there. Just people
that are just so knowledgeable and they talk about their
job like it's nothing, and like for me, I'm just like,
I just want to talk to you all day, tell
me everything, tell me everything about this.

Speaker 3 (42:21):
How cool? What a nice man.

Speaker 1 (42:23):
I'm just like so interested in Like how like one day,
I know, not one day. One day you wake up
You're like, Oh, this is what I'm going to do.
This is my life now? Yes, Like how do you
even like stop and think, oh there's something I could do,
There's something i'd be interesting.

Speaker 3 (42:39):
Yeah, it's just mad, isn't it.

Speaker 2 (42:41):
I mean it's I think this episode could have been
about five hours long, to be fair, and I don't
think I'd ask the same question twice.

Speaker 3 (42:48):
I just got so many, so many questions. I think
somebody like Ray totally needs to write a book because
I need that book on my shelf.

Speaker 1 (42:56):
I need to I need that one.

Speaker 3 (42:57):
It's yeah, so interesting. What a great guy.

Speaker 2 (43:00):
It's amazing to have him on the show. And talking
of the show, We've got a bit of an update
for you all. As you know, things have been crazy
for us and our episodes haven't been out as much
as they we usually do, and there's been a lot
of reasons for this behind the scenes going on and
some of you will know and some of you not
so much.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
So we know that I changed jobs and Morgan change jobs,
and the demand on.

Speaker 2 (43:23):
Us in those jobs has become really great to the
fact that at the moment we're struggling to sit down
together in the same sort of time period. So we
are going to be taken and this is going to
make some of you really sad and some of you
probably happy that we've shut up for a while, but
we're going to be taken an indefinite hiatus for a
while whilst we're both working out the new careers and

(43:46):
the time limits that we have on things.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
We just can't do it all, and we do not
want to do what.

Speaker 2 (43:54):
I would say is half ost episodes. We both pride
ourselves in the research that we put into episodes, and
we want to make sure that the cases that we
bring to you, we represent those victims and those families
are one hundred and ten percent in fact more, and
that we give them the best representation to you guys
and to potential people that can help in those cases

(44:16):
the best that we can, and at the moment, we
both don't have the time to do that, So we
kind of think that instead of putting out episodes that
we haven't been able to put one hundred percent into.
It's best for us to go on a break for
a while and we'll be back, but we just don't
know when at the moment.

Speaker 4 (44:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (44:34):
Yeah, And like you said, Cherry, it's important to us
that we are putting out quality right that we're just
we are putting ourselves that we are we have invested
in that we haven't invested interest in. It's not fair
to the families to put out just any old thing, right.
It doesn't do them justice, it doesn't do cases justice.

(44:56):
And also we don't want that to be reflection on us.
That's not who we are. We're not. We're not we're not.
We have never done this to make a name for ourselves.
We have never done this to become rich and famous
off of it's about us, it's not about us, right,
and so it's it's gonna allow us to kind of

(45:18):
get our situations together. We're not figure out where life
has is taken us, and it's gonna allow us to
kind of like it's it's a reset.

Speaker 3 (45:28):
If you look at it, it's a great Yeah, Yeah,
you're right, Yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (45:31):
Mean, it's doing this for so long, and honestly, I mean, yeah,
we've taken some breaks here and there, but for four
years we have put out I don't know, almost two
hundred episodes. I don't know, I don't know where're at yet. Yeah,
and after after so many episodes, I think it is
good to kind of take a break and kind of

(45:54):
reassess and to get your your mind right. Because what
we talk about, or what we have talked about on
on a weekly basis, is some hard stuff.

Speaker 5 (46:03):
Right.

Speaker 1 (46:03):
It's a subject that no one really wants to talk about,
but you have to because it's important. And so you
kind of you get to a point where I don't
want to say you become numb to it, but you
kind of become numb to it. And I think it's
I think it's important to just kind of just remember,

(46:25):
you know, why we're doing this, and yeah, this break
is gonna allow us to do that.

Speaker 3 (46:29):
I agree, And because.

Speaker 2 (46:33):
It frustrates me in True crime when the episodes just
become stories and they just become content. That's not that's
not what we're about.

Speaker 3 (46:42):
It isn't what we do.

Speaker 2 (46:43):
We don't we don't just tell stories for content creation.
We do it because families have asked us, or we've
come across a case where we think, actually somebody could
remember something, this could help this case. So for us
to I mean, we know how long we spend researching cases.
It's not just a half hour thing that we sit
down and do.

Speaker 3 (47:04):
Before we do it. It takes weeks, sometimes months.

Speaker 2 (47:06):
There are cases that I'm still working on from three
years ago, four years ago that I'm still digging into,
still going over, still finding new people to talk to.
And I want to make sure that if the person
I'm talking about was my own family member, I want
to make sure that what I'm putting out is one correct,
two research to the best of my ability, and three

(47:29):
a fair and a thorough representation of the proceedings for them.
So at the moment, with the time scale, I mean, obviously,
as you guys are aware, more than and I have
five hours difference in time, and with the time constraints
that we now have because things have changed for us
both in our own lives that we don't have we

(47:50):
cannot get together at the same time at the moment
because he is busy for certain periods and I am
busy for certain periods, and there's physically no way we
can do it and put in one hundred percent of
the work that we want to. So it's really sad
and we obviously we didn't want to do it. We
both wanted to continue doing this, but it's just physically
impossible for us to do at the moment. So unless

(48:12):
one of us moves, we can't do it. But I
would just love to say to you all, thank you
so much for all of the all of the amazing
support that you've given us, particularly the people that supported
us on Patreon, most of which have supported us from
day one of us doing a podcast together, to all

(48:34):
the other podcasters and all of the experts that have
come on our show, and all of the people that
we've met through the podcast. We will continue to do
to keep in touch with everyone. All our socials are
going to stay open and we will come back together.
We just don't have a time at the moment, but
until we do, thank you for supporting us. We really
really appreciate everything you guys have done to support us.

Speaker 1 (48:58):
Yeah, I don't think I could say any better.

Speaker 2 (49:02):
Ah, So we don't have a dumb criminal well, last
episode for a while, we don't have a dumb criminal
for you, but we don't need one. This is a
different episode. It's a great one with a great expert
and I, yeah, absolutely loved it. This is probably one
of my favorite episodes that we've ever done, to be fair, so.

Speaker 3 (49:23):
Thank you guys.

Speaker 2 (49:24):
We won't be back next week clearly, but until we
are back, be nice.

Speaker 1 (49:31):
And we will see you soon.

Speaker 5 (49:32):
Yes, I