May 19, 2025 • 41 mins
Jasmeen Kaur was kidnapped, bound and buried alive in a shallow grave by a spurned lover. Jasmeen had rejected the murderer weeks before he abducted her and horrifically abandoned her in a shallow grave. Forensic pathologist Roger Byard has performed more than 6000 post-mortems, but this is the worst case he’s ever seen.
Get episodes of I Catch Killers a week early and ad-free, as well as bonus content, by subscribing to Crime X+ today.
Like the show? Get more at icatchkillers.com.au
Advertising enquiries: newspodcastssold@news.com.au
Questions for Gary: icatchkillers@news.com.au
Get in touch with the show by joining our Facebook group, and visiting us on Instagram or Tiktok.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective sy aside of life, the average person is never
exposed her I spent thirty four years as a cop.
For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
That's what I did for a living. I was a
homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world.
(00:46):
In part two of my chat with forensic pathologists Professor
of Roger by Art, we discuss the murder of twenty
one year old Jasmine Kor, who is buried alive, the
horrors of the Boxing Day tsunami, and the Balley bombings.
We also talked about the work Roger does that prevents
death and how Roger looks at the way we deal
with death. Roger, You've seen so much death, and I
(01:10):
was interested in a quote from yourself, and I'll just
read it out and get you to comment on that
if you could. I think that recognizing death as part
of life, as a transition is really important. It's something
we fail these days. We sanitize it. What do you
mean by those quotes.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
We're frightened of death nowadays? I mean we've always been
frightened to death. But in the old days, I think
there was a lot more acceptance of death as part
of life. A lot of children died of diseases, and
the bodies weren't just whisked away and you know, cremated.
You'd lay the body out and have a wake. You'd
(01:46):
celebrate the person's existence. In the nineteenth century leads to
take photographs of the you, mum and dad dressed up
and the baby dead in a coffin as a memento.
And that's not creepy. That is just remember, bring the
person so that you've got some sort of token to
take with you. Whereas we just we don't talk about it.
(02:08):
We're more and more frightened of it. Whereas it is
part of life, it's going to happen to us all.
I went to a writer's Week in Adelaide, and they
were talking about death and they just weren't getting it.
And I just said, the last time I was in
the tent as big as this, as hot as this,
with as many bodies, it was Thailand, the tsunami, and
they're all dead, I said. And the tires had a
(02:29):
very The monks would wander around the bodies at night, chanting,
helping them on their paths. So there was an acceptance
that they could actually commemorate these people, which is something
we don't do.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
And do you think that has a detrimental effect to
the way we deal with death? And I think so.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I think it's just we're becoming more and more sanitized
and more and more closed off. We're closing off from
human interaction with our computers and social media. Just the
I see people down the beach with their dog when
I take my dog for a walk, and they've got
headphones on. I mean, why not stand hard? You know,
what's the point of being down there? And they're not.
(03:10):
They're just focused on what they're listening to, probably your podcast.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Well, I was going to say, the one proviser there,
if I catch kill this podcast, they're doing well, But yeah,
I know what you're saying, and the fact that the
sanitized it where we're more aware of death and now
I look at it, it just gets push pushed away.
So in the work that you did, do you have
your colleagues that would support support the people that you
(03:36):
worked with, because I know in the homicide world sometimes
I couldn't go home and talk about what we've seen
or done that your colleagues you do brief Did you
have that support from colleagues.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
It's interesting. We were talking earlier just about how you
deal with cases, and you know, I was saying, you
focus on the science. I remember one case of a
little boy who had been punched by the de facto boyfriend,
and this fellow had actually videoed this little boy dying,
that's how bad it was. But when I opened his abdomen,
I got this stench of you know, rotting parisanaitis, and
(04:10):
I brought tears in my eyes. I was just leaning
over and I was sort of just I had to
actually put that behind me. I was seeing the big picture.
I had to focus on what I was doing. And
what had happened is that he'd been punched really forcefully
and his intestines had ruptured, so they'd torn, so all
the contents gets into the abdominal cavity causes this really
(04:30):
vile inflammatory action, and so that was the smell and
talking to my colleagues as well. When I had Jasmine
and I found all the soil and the upper airway,
I called my colleagues in to have a look at it,
and they still told me that they're shattered by just
just seeing that. But we it's like soldiers in the trenches,
(04:51):
like police. You know your colleagues know what you're going through,
and you can talk to them. I went to see
a counselor after Jasmine. The manager said, you really need
to get this scene too, because I was I was
going to bed at night thinking over I was waking
up in the morning and at the end of the
council said, I said, well, you know, I just wanted
some techniques of getting this out of my head. And
(05:12):
she said, it's very difficult, isn't it. You told me
something I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
You've mentioned that Jazz main call and obviously it plays
on you pretty heavily. Can you tell us about that case?
The details of that case.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
I can because it's gone through the courts, And he
pleaded guilty. So she was a really lovely young Punjabi
woman who's working in a nursing home and she'd had
a relationship with a young Indian fellow and had told
him very nicely that she liked him, but he wasn't
the one for her, and so he just flipped out
and the day before went to Bunnings on CTV footage
(05:49):
buying cable ties a shovel. It was so well thought out,
was so stupid. He gave a mate his car with
his phone in it to go south when he was
kidnapping her from her workplace, tied up, put her in
the boot, drove around for five hours. Yeah, and a
lot of terror for her. Imagine what it was like
five hours in the boot, and then took her up
north and dug her grave and put her in it
(06:13):
and buried her alive. It's most horrific thing that I've
ever come across.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, I'm just comprehending what you've.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I'm outraged by it. Yeah, there were no drugs. She
did never hit injury, so she was completely conscious.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
The examination when you examined her body, did you find
this out at the time.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Well, it's interesting because she had some cuts on the
side of her neck that I thought, as I said,
were the cause her death. But then we found the
soil and yes.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
It was just then the soul was in her.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
In her right down into her, and she also swallowed
some as well. It's the only time I've been to
a sentencing because I didn't get a chance to see
him in court because he pleaded guilty. So I wanted
to actually just look at him and just see what
sort of monster this was. And he looks so ordinary,
(07:05):
He looks so bernal, you.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Know, and that's funny. But that can freak you out
more than if you're looking for this monster.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
I want to see Charles Manson, Yeah, that would have
made you want to see that understandable.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, what is it about that particular case that stuck
with you so heavily.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
I think that she was just such a sweet, young,
innocent She was over here, she only had a mum
in India. She was staying with her uncles, so he
would feel responsibility for it. Her mother's lost her only child.
It's just there's nothing good about that story.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Now I can what can you say? She had come
from India, But you did some interesting work again, horrific
work stemming from a conference that you attended over in
India and you came into contact with someone about the
acid attacks on women in India.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, pret Core is a she's a PhD lawyer, academic
and she co founded the Lasmi Foundation, which is a
foundation for acid attack victims. And acid attacks are very
common in India. Acid so furry gasid particularly is very cheap.
They use it in the cleaning drains, they use it
for cleaning equipment. And it's usually a spurned lover or
(08:21):
a jealous male and to get his revenge, he throws
acid on these young women's faces. Only four percent of
them die, but they're completely disfigured. They often go blind
because their eyes have been burnt. They can't breathe because
their nose is gone. They can't hear because the ear
canals are gone. They may have tremendous deformity, so they
(08:41):
can't speak or eat properly. They look horrific. So this
person has condemned them to a life of suffering pain
medical procedures. Sometimes their families shun them because they can't
afford to support them, or they just don't want them
as part of the family.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Shun the victim.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I wanted to do a study with Navpret on the
suicide rate in these women, but of course there's no
data there. But what these organizations are doing, like the
Laxmi Foundation, they've got a Shiro's Cafe in Agra. These
young women actually front the cafe. They serve and they
work there and they put themselves right out in front
of you know, it's remarkable. I did meet the young
(09:23):
woman need To who was the subject of a film
as a director in Melbourne, who did this film called
Geta because kneed To, Her sister and her mother were
asset attacked by her father because there were no boys
in the family and knit Too's got tremendous scarngh a
very poor vision, but it's interesting. Aw for about half
(09:44):
an hour with her, you don't see the scars.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
You know.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Resilience is a word that's abused. She is one of
the most resilient people I've known. And again it comes
back to why you do forensic pathology. It's such a
privilege to be able to meet with these people and
to try and help. So what Gravpret and I do
is we've written a number of papers for the medical
community on asset attacks on dowry deaths, you know, people
(10:07):
being murdered for their dowries, on child labor, all sorts
of sort of human rights abuses that occurring in India. Now,
what right do I have to do to do that?
Navpret's got the information and we work together very well
disseminating it, letting people.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Know, okay, to get that get that story out again.
Preventative And how prevalent is it?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Like extremely prevalent. There are thousands of cases of this
in Pakistan and Bangladesh and India, and it happens all
over the world. It's in the UK it's called face
melting and it's often often rival gangs who do it
to each other. So bloke, So it's not it doesn't
have that sort of sexual element.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
No, it's brutal.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
It's it's a palling.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
The fact that it's happening over in India. So prevalent
there is it almost a cultural thing that the education
you've you've got to change the narrative.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
That's exactly right. And what navpreta since they go around
the schools and she once sent me a text and
it would I like to write a paper about menstruation?
So I texted back in two pico seconds. No, but
then she started telling me that you eighteen percent of
women in India have access to sanitary products. They're using
newspapers and leaves, and so we wrote that paper to
(11:21):
draw attention to it so that the authorities can then
do thing. I mean, the boys and girls don't have
separate toilets, but they are going to the schools and
they're trying to educate the youth, because that's the way
to go about just treating people with respect and giving
people a go.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Roger, where do you find the time and the passion
to pursue these things?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Well, I don't sleep, okay, well's yeah, no, I've worked out.
Actually recently, I've worked more than sixty hours a week
for four decades. I'm a bit tired.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
You can happen that after we've finish. Happened that. But look,
if you're doing a job that you're passionate about, it's
not like working.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
It's not working. That's what my boss is to say.
If they pay you for doing stuff you like, then
you know you win.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Have there been any good role models that you've learned
a lot from.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
A couple not pathologists actually, but my first mentor in
Ottawa when I was training in pathology was a blow
called Irving Dartik. I did research term with him and
he said, you know what I want is I want
my students to do better than me, and he meant that.
And another fellow Grant Sutherland, he's a geneticist. He climbed
(12:30):
the fragile extremee. I personally think he was in line
for a Nobel prize. But once he had achieved what
he wanted to achieve, he retired and started up a
small farm. A man very happy with himself. But also
just shows you you don't have to be toxic to
get to the top. You know, if you treat people properly,
(12:52):
you can still mentor people and encourage people. And that's
the way, and that's those two are being great.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
It's good to have those type of role models or
people that you can learn things from. What's the messaging
you give when you're teaching people that are starting out
in the field that you're worked in. What's the type
of message you would pass.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
On give up now you've got a chance. No, I
tell them that it's if you're going to do You've
only got one shot at life. And so you know,
you've got to do stuff that you enjoy doing, and
that's important. I mean, it may be flower ranging, if
it's important to you and you do it well, excellent.
(13:30):
My boss's retired now in forensics, so he hadn't written
a paper in his life, but he's a very good fisherman,
and so I respected his fishing prowss.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
So it doesn't matter what you do, just as long
as you do it with enjoyment.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Is compassion an important part of the type of work
that you do.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
I think, yes, you've got to have credibility and you've
got to have compassion. If you don't feel the need
to help people, then you should be in something else.
And I think this is part of the problem with medicine.
It's one of the reasons I got out of clinical medicine.
It's becoming a bit of a factory, you know, to
make a few extra bucks to put your kids from
(14:08):
your third family through private school and buy another Mercedes.
You well, not not using caricat.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
I understand exactly what you're saying, but credibility and compassion,
you do need that combination. Because I think we've all
gone to get medical advice and there's someone that they've
got the academic skills, they've got the science, but the
delivery of the message is yeah, it's not what I need.
If someone's are the important part talking about their health
(14:35):
or their future, you need someone that's got the compassion
understanding then can deliver the message. Because I think the
days are going where we put the same for policing,
but for doctors, where they're put on the pedestal and
we never question. You go see your local doctor growing
up and Okay, that's what the doctor said, that's what
you do. But it's readily available on the internet that
(14:57):
doctor Google. Well, doctor Google diagnosed yourself, so they can question.
But you need that communication skill.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
I'm going to talk about the two thousand and four tsunami,
which Asian tsunami. I remember it was a horrific, horrific
day and hundreds of thousands of people were killed as
a result of that. What was your role in responding
to that.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
I didn't think i'd be asked to go, but I
went in the second rotation, so I was there in
the second week. And essentially because of the AFP's experience
with Australian Federal Police experience with the balley bombings. The
ties were working with them. The ties were excellent. They
really did an amazing job. But essentially, teams would come
(15:45):
over basically the body to be brought in. You would
do examinations, not full autopsies, just adult male tattoo, dental examination,
DNA fingerprints, and then compare it to people who are
known to be in the area. Part of the problem
is I wrote a paper and I called it DVII
tourism because so many teams arrive around the world, around
(16:08):
the world, and you know, they have to be accommodated,
they have to be fed. Sometimes their language is not English.
So you know, I always said, when I was on
the state, dv I commit the first thing I would
do is put signs around the state saying keep out.
Take forty eight hours just to work out how we
were going to do it. Processes, yeah, hasten slowly.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Because I'm trying to comprehend. And if you could paint
a picture, you know, when we're talking hundreds of thousands
of people killed, and yeah, we all saw the images
of the waves washing in the floods and the sharp
metal floating around that people drowning. People have horrendous injuries.
It's in the tropics, so a body is going to
decompose very quickly. I would imagine what were the processes
(16:53):
that were put in place to and the purpose of
it was to identify as many people. That's correct, you
weren't going there. This person died specifically that it was
identifying the bodies. So what were the processes that were
put in.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Place identifying and repatriating. Well, in Thailand, the bodies were
brought into Buddhist temples because they had space to put containers,
freeze and frozen containers, and the the Thai troops volunteered
to work on it, so you'd have the bodies and
the containers. They'd be wheeled out. They were spraying all
(17:30):
this stuff around to reduce decomposition and everything. And my
mortuary tendant was really worried about this stuff and I said,
I don't worry about it's probably water. And he said
one day said look, the naggots are dead. And I said, oh,
nothing kills makets. You can freeze them. And so I
went out and these folks from their full suits spraying
around and I said, what is this stuff? No idea,
(17:52):
but it really works, so God knows what.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
We were exposed to could be the age and orange probably.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
So anyway, the body would come in and they would
they'd be fingerprinted by police officers. They'd come to us
and we would do the identification and detail what we thought.
Then they would go to the dental people and we'd
take specimens of DNA and so we put all that
together and yeah, they'd be found in areas of tourist hotels,
so we'd have a list of people. So that's the
(18:23):
then you get the anti modern stuff from them. And
we developed the system there too, which was rather than
just identifying each body on its own, we started to
identify children against identified parents, so that you know, you
had the parents' DNA in the database and the children
you can actually identify through that. But it's a lot
of interesting things happened. And I wrote a paper recently
(18:44):
called Hiding in Plane Sight, and I was just talking
about how best to hide a homicide if you can
put the body amongst others. And I was called out
the back and there was a coffin under a whole
part of other coffins full of rotting bodies and they'd
taken those and there was the body of a young
woman that was fresh and so clearly she didn't die
(19:05):
in the sin, but in three days she would have
been writting like the rest. So handed her over to
the tire authorities. But I was talking about the blitz
in London. I think the crime rate went up like
forty seven percent. How easy would it be to follow
somebody home from the pub, hit them on the head,
chuck them into a bomb site.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
I'm starting the wonder about you, Roger. You've come up
with you're obviously thinking too much about to get away
with murder. Yeah, well this I catch Killers. That's the
name of the podcast.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
So I'm on your radar.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah I've got another case. Yeah, I looking at that.
With what you're saying with the body body turning up there,
what a golden opportunity. You talked about the monks walking
around and that, and then dealing dealing with death. What
was I'm trying to get the sense of what the
feeling was for everyone involved in that, because it must
have been.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
It was er, it was horrific. What the Tie did
at one stage is they had a ceremony to honor
the two thousand dead at Carlak and they diverted planes
around this so you had a whole stadium of monks
and we're on an oval with candles, and they had
these rice paper lanterns, each one representing one person that
(20:16):
they let go into the sky. It was you can
see it on the internet. It was like the Milky
Way overhead. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever
seen with the chanting. And yet the next day you
go back to basically trucks pulling up and just decomposed
bodies being being pulled out of them, hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of them.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
How did it impact on you?
Speaker 2 (20:39):
I found it really difficult the first day I got there.
That the smell was extraordinary, the heat, the humidity. Yeah,
I as I said, I was offered the second chance
to go back the second time. Some people went back
five times. I couldn't do it. And I used to
get quite emotional when I saw people's presentations on Thailand
showing the pictures.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
You know have.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
A family member, you know, in their bathers with their child.
And I remember when one father was he knew that
we had his child, but the child hadn't gone through
the formal process of identifications. They couldn't be released, so
he was beside himself with anger. As you can imagine,
my little boy he is in there. There was one picture,
(21:25):
because the tires got boards, you could put pictures up
of your loved ones, and there was one little boy
with these beautiful, big blue eyes and had his name
and everything. I thought, you know, even if you get
him back, he's never going to be like that.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yes, then the tires were I mean they had photographs
of the decomposing bodies, their faces, and families were coming around.
They had the seed easy you could take home and
go through them. You know, maybe it was some weird
shaped tooth or something that you could pick.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
So do you think from disaster Victim Identification DBI, where
there's been multiple casualties to identify all the victims, do
you think we learned things from that practices?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
You know we did, And there were there were some
teams that came that you know, weren't practicing pathologists, and
you know they were taking off the jewelry and putting
under the body, or not filling out the forms correctly
and taking the original forms with them. It was just
you know, coordinating that was was not easy.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Do you know you talk about bringing the bodies back
how many Australians You got an idea of the rough
figure that caught up in them.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I don't. Actually, one of the important things for me
was the last week I was there, there were two
Australian bodies and a couple of containers that weren't refrigerated.
I found them. And then one of the women came
from Adelaide and so I represented forensic science going out
to the plane when she came back to get the
(22:52):
body and met the family. So I thought that was
a sort of a nice finishing off. I'd been with
them in Thailand and I was there, come she came back.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, those things mean a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I think they do.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Circumstances. Did you get was it mandatory for you to
sit down with a psychologist and talk these things? We
have that at homicide we'd have to go every six
months and sit down and talk. But it was that
part and parcel of it.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, I did, and the psychologist I said, what was
one of the worst things? I said, We're just not
being recognized and he said, yeah, that's that's what happens
with me. So really, how do you deal with this?
I'd drink off headmen, I said, what do you drink
and whiskey. So we discussed whiskeys and then about two
weeks later I got an email from him saying, what
was that whiskey? You recommended Highland? So that was the
extent of the psychological support.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Okay, okay, you've talked and you've mentioned a couple of
times in while we've been sitting down the smell and
the smell of death, and unless you've smell that, you
can't you can't really describe it. It's hard to describe.
Does that have an impact on you, the amount of
death that you would have smelled.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
It's something you do, you do get used to, and
after a few decades inhaling formalon, your smell's not as
good as it used to be. But we were down.
We had a ceremony at Patong Beach and one of
the mortue tenders and we walked over and there was
a remnants of a Japanese restaurant, and sure enough that
(24:20):
clearly little bodies under that. So I was thinking, you know,
he'd probably be cheaper than a sniffer dog. Maybe we
should use him.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
It's not your first first experience in these type of things,
and the barley bombing, you're also had some involvement in that,
and that's I look at that from a different perspective
because that was an active evil murder court. Cause that
what was your experience dealing with the Barley bombings.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
I came in later in that, so I was sort
of more auditing. But I had a fair bit to
do with Ikbar one of the suicide bombers at Paddy's Bar,
so I was repatriating his his remain.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Again, when you say you had a fair bit to
do with him, you were looking at his remains, so
that put all the pieces together. Basically, basically you find
out what happened.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
The problem with Bali was interesting. I was watching it
when it first happened, and you know it was chaos,
but you had people trying to help, so they were
sweeping up stuff, so they were destroying the crime scene.
But of course, again with a DBI, the important thing
is not so much the deceased. It's to get the
injured and wounded out and looked after. But yes, Barlei
(25:32):
was particularly nasty because the bomb that went off at
the Sari Club was in a vehicle outside and there
was cast iron grating and glass, so there were secondary
projectiles that went into the nightclub, and of course there
was fire, so there was monoxide inhalation as well as
the injuries. People were crushed trying to get out of
(25:54):
the doors. So there were a whole lot of different
things that went on there, and the bodies were fragmented,
unlike Thailand, where mostly in Thailand the bodies were intact.
But you do occasionally find strange things. I was in
mortuary in Thailand and colleague from Zealand and said, look
at this, and it was an adult woman and her
(26:15):
head had exploded. And I said, have you found pellets
because it looked like a shotgun. Yeah, but she must
have just been going through the water at such as
speed and hit something. So that's the thing really you're
looking for. Is this something that doesn't fit you know?
And as I said, what a perfect way to hide
crimes in amongst that.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Put your body in there with the Bali bombings. What's
the effect on the body where it's caught up in
the blast.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
It varies, but if a body is in the blast,
they'll have burns, but they also have characteristic sort of
internal findings. If the body is still intact, you know
where the lungs have expanded up against the chest wall.
The intestines have sort of blown out, so you can
see things to support it. But if it's if they're
close to the epicenter, basically it'll be fragmented. So they
(27:07):
always say that, you know, and it didn't apply in Barley,
but with suicide bombers you need to look around the
rus for half a kilometer because their head has gone.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Are you When you're going through the bodies on a
situation like that, you're also looking for the physical evidence
of support the police investigation.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
You're going through looking for ordinance. And that's one of
the dangers of dv I in the sale war zone
is that the body has been booby trapped. I mean,
what better way to actually cause further problems.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Thinking about how to commit crimes again.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Not just relating, right, I must admit though the bombings
in London, I was told this by a forensic pathologist
and I don't know whether it's a pock fall, but
they've taken the bodies to a parade ground and they're
looking for a gunshot residue, and they were getting incredible
hits until I realized that a cannon had been fired
(28:01):
at noon every day for the last hundred years in
that quadrangle, so they had to peel that back.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah. I also said to the fellows in England, I said,
why didn't they let a dirty blob GoF with anthrax
or something? I mean, I said, we can talk about
this because terrorist not a see. If they've done that,
we couldn't have coped. I don't understand why they just
do the one hit, not a couple. I'm pleased they don't,
but the.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Type of impact that.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Do you destroy the support worker is coming and then
you really cause the problem.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
You've been in this field for the years, changes, improvements
and different things. We used to rely on facial recognition.
You can see some problems with facial recognition if you
reconstruct a face from a skeletal remain.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
I think, and this is just my personal view, that
facial recognition what it does best is remind people of
memories they have of the time, so that brings in
and you would know this too, that brings extra information forward.
But when I see a face reconstruction and the skeleton,
(29:07):
what I have to do And apparently this has been
done as people have done studies where they've taken donated
bodies so they've got what the face looks like. They've
then taken the skull, they've given it to facial reconstruction people,
and then you compare the two. So that is something
I need to look at because I'm sure that they're
quite different. I mean, this is flash, you know, he
is hair, all that sort of stuff. Yeah, so I
(29:29):
think that facial recognition is sort of not as exciting
as we once thought. It was a bite marks again.
You know, you used to be able to tell an
individual from a bite mark.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Now you can't well talk about that because I've been
involved in investigations where the bites have come into play.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Ye, very hard to actually pin it to a particular person.
If it's a small bite, it's a child with large
bidet's an adult. But it really the importance of bite
marks is swabbing for saliva DNA. That's the most real.
So there are a lot of things that we used
to think were important that you know, ant is reliable.
One of the best things I find in court is
(30:08):
to be able to say I have no idea and
the jury, you know, will then make eye contact and
you can see them thinking, well, he's honest. So when
he does say he knows something, then we can probably trusted.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Have you seen and without the specific examples, experts at
sort of stray outside their lane of expertise in court.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Yes, your honor, And that's one of the problems is
you know people are experts because I say they are,
you know, and some people will go all over the
place with and I've had experts who have been accused
of knowing we misleading the court and it just seems
to bounce off them. I think that people like us
(30:50):
are in no man's land because we're prepared to say
that nothing's absolute, this is possible, and not half as
convincing as saying clearly this is the cause of death
and nothing else.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yeah, if but you talk about credibility to like, if
you make that comment, then that other evidence comes in
that can dispel what that person's saying. Definitely happened.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
You need to do so, mister, they call me mister.
They want to, you know, diminish my status in the court.
I mean my father was mister. So they dropped the professor. Yes, mister,
can you definitely exclude that?
Speaker 1 (31:28):
That's Have they ever got you down to Roger? Roger?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
What were you not as such?
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Well?
Speaker 2 (31:34):
That's outside the court. I've been called worse.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
But yeah, if they're talking me up, if I'm in
the witness box, detective chief inspector, the very experienced, once
they start to talk me up, I know I'm about
to be hit, be brought down. So I imagine you
the experience experience that. What's the longest time you've spent
in the witness box.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Well, it's not chronological. The following trial, I was only
in for an afternoon, but that was a very long
afternoon probably I suppose day or two.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
You know, Well, we've had we've had a guest on
that wrote the book about Catheline Folbing and what's your
take on them. It's a very complex matner. It's probably
a hard question to yeah, for you to answer, but
just in your area of involvement in the matter.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Well, I appeared for the defense back in two thousand
and three, and I've always said that I think there
was reasonable doubt. I think all four kids had significan
potentially significant conditions. Caleb had a soft larynx, he was
having trouble breathing. Patrick was epileptic. Sarah had a very
strange shape at the back of her soft Palette and
(32:42):
Laura had my carditis. So I mean people now looking
at this genetic material. For me, I don't need genetics
to say there was no evidence of inflicted suffocation and
that they had conditions that could potentially kill them. Could
they been suffocated, yes, they could, but they also could
have died of this. I think there was always reasonable doubt.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Yeah, and that's a thing that's played out. It's a
fascinating case, but.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
It's a tragic case.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
No matter which side you're on, you've got four dead, lovely.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Children, no one, no one wins. You've talked about in
the views that you've done a right to mourn and
talk us through that, because we're getting deep into the
emotional side of the type of crime that you've done.
And my observation.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
I've observed.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Slip, So what other crimes if you've done, I'll just
start cautioning you. But my observation, you've kept your sense
of humor. You've seen a lot of darkness in life,
and you also talk about the right to mourn, that
there's nothing wrong with mourning and feeling the pain that
the things you've seen. Talk us through through your thinking there.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Well, I think anybody exposed the tragedy needs to mourn.
He has said if you if you don't, then I
think that you're knowingly or unwittingly just cutting yourself off
from an important part of emotional processes. The reason I've survived,
I think, is because I understand how important these deaths
(34:15):
are the families in the community, and it's something I think.
Forensic pathology is more than just dissection and report writing.
It should be integrating into the community to help people.
And that's It's bizarre though, the cases that get through,
And I don't know how we do it in the police.
(34:36):
I don't know how we actually we're not taught to
warl ourselves off, but we do somehow. But some cases
just I remember there was a case of a he
was an execution of one of the biker gangs, and
he committed suicide on a lonely beach and I was
sitting there with my wife that night and she said,
what's wrong with you? I said, really really upset about
(34:59):
this case. But you see murdered children, you see this,
this and this. I don't know. There was just something
about this that got to me. It's very strange.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
It's interesting isn't it. Is there something particular about that,
because given all the things that you've seen, I'm just
wondering why that sort of jump jumped out.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
I don't know. I talked about it with my wife
and we wonder whether it was because he was a
bloke about my age and he'd gone to this isolated
beach that was very like some of the beaches I
used to go to as a kid in Tasmania. So
they just seemed to be a lonely poignancy to it.
But yeah, it may be that it was just somebody
strangely I could identify with.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
It's interesting how different cases have different different impacts. What
about your faith in society?
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I like dogs?
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Okay, what about killer dogs?
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Killer dogs are usually the product of killer owners. You know,
if you treat a dog badly, it'll.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Be well, you see the most terrifying looking dogs and
they're placid them. That comes down to the owner generally.
But have you seen many situations of dogs that have killed.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
I've seen a few. There was a fascinating case in
Canada that I wasn't involved with, but the pathologist who
did the autopsy said the child had been a stab
with scissors and the mother went to jail and there
was a pitbull in the house that actually had a
bloodstained in front. Subsequently came out and it was a
(36:33):
dog attack. He just got it completely wrong. But there
are certain breeze yes, you know. I mean, I've got
a golden a Trita. I don't think it's been one
report of Golden A Tria licking somebody, leah.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
But anyway, before we got off on the dog track
a society.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
I'm worried. I think that a couple of reasons. Methamphetamine
is everywhere, as you know, that that's a toxic drug
and it just destroys people. And we've done studies showing
the percentage of meth with homicide victims and homicide perpetrators,
and as you know, it's very high. Also, I think
that the Internet trivializes violence. You have kids just watching
(37:13):
this stuff and they think that this is normal. Some
of those computer games are outrageous. You know, they train
troops now on computer games when they're taking out soldiers
and stuff. So it's the same process.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
You can embedd it in the actions and the thing.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
I think it just it makes quite violent horrific acts
seem normal.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
No interesting, interesting take on that than what you've said
about the drugs too, And I would imagine that you've
done some post more thans and seen the results of
heavy use of drugs.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
And I was walking past a group of houses in
my neighborhood just around the corner the other night, and
the fellow the allegations of myth selling there, and there
was a fellow inside who'd broken down the doors and stuff.
That was nine o'clock on Saturday night. By six o'clock
the next morning, he had murdered the bloke in the park.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
No role or reason.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
So it's everywhere now, Okay.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
I think I mentioned Guardians of the Dead, a seven
part podcast series that you did. How did you get
involved in that.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
One of the media people, Lisa Black at the university,
was interested in forensics and we just got chatting one
day and she said, well, you know, the local paper
might be interested in doing a podcast. I'd done a
full podcast. We just sat down and chatted about stuff
that I'd done and seen, and it was an interesting process.
I find getting involved with the media and assemblitting information interesting,
(38:44):
you know, whether it's film or whether it's radio or whatever.
So it's just something different to do that I think
can be useful.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Well, I think that ken, then it's not glorifying, not
glorifying crime. You're explaining, explaining situations in preparation for this podcast,
I think I said to you before we start, I
sat down to listen just to get a sense of
what you're about, and I listened to all episodes.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
So and as I said, you need to get out,
I probably shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
I probably shouldn't be talking up on the podcast big
sitting here here doing my own podcast, But yeah, it was.
It was fascinating. And what I did like about it
that you take on that because quite often you could
be called an academic, but you've also got that let's.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Say, how do you well?
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Academic can be a compliment, but it can also be
said if it said with the right tone. But you're
explain it in layman's terms. And I think that's important
because quite often science puts itself up up there that
you don't need to know. We're not going to explain
it to the common person, but you've got a way
of explaining what you come across.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
My philosophy is if you can't explain something simply to somebody,
then you don't understand it yourself.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way of looking at I'll
think of that next time the computer per and comes
out to fix my computer. I don't care.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Why just fix it and don't don't change that.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
What are you doing with yourself? Now?
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Still working halftime at Forgics. So I'm on call in
a couple of weeks time, but winding back. Actually, yeah,
I've I got I had a goal to get a
thousand peer reviewed papers, and I got that a couple
of weeks ago. Yeah, so that was I mean, it's
it's like a golf handicap. Who cares except yourself, But
you know it was important to me.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
You're you're under underplane your success and you're standing within
the field that you've operated into a lot of awards
and different things. So full credit to you.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
I've enjoyed. I've enjoyed the chat.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
I wish I could say the same.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Maybe you're not that funny. I thought you were funny,
but maybe maybe you're not. Maybe you are a horrible Roger. Look,
I'd like to thank you for not just coming on
the podcast, but also for the work that you've done,
and because I know it's difficult work and doing it
with compassion. I think that's so important. I saw that
in the homicide, and if people didn't have that empathy
and compassion, they do cause more damage to people that
(41:09):
shouldn't be damaged any further. And you've kept your sense
of humor and you seem seemed like quite a reasonable person.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
That's the medication, all right. Thanks Roger,
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective sy aside of life, the average person is never
exposed her I spent thirty four years as a cop.
For twenty five of those years I was catching killers.
That's what I did for a living. I was a
homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead,
I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world.
(00:46):
In part two of my chat with forensic pathologists Professor
of Roger by Art, we discuss the murder of twenty
one year old Jasmine Kor, who is buried alive, the
horrors of the Boxing Day tsunami, and the Balley bombings.
We also talked about the work Roger does that prevents
death and how Roger looks at the way we deal
with death. Roger, You've seen so much death, and I
(01:10):
was interested in a quote from yourself, and I'll just
read it out and get you to comment on that
if you could. I think that recognizing death as part
of life, as a transition is really important. It's something
we fail these days. We sanitize it. What do you
mean by those quotes.
Speaker 2 (01:26):
We're frightened of death nowadays? I mean we've always been
frightened to death. But in the old days, I think
there was a lot more acceptance of death as part
of life. A lot of children died of diseases, and
the bodies weren't just whisked away and you know, cremated.
You'd lay the body out and have a wake. You'd
(01:46):
celebrate the person's existence. In the nineteenth century leads to
take photographs of the you, mum and dad dressed up
and the baby dead in a coffin as a memento.
And that's not creepy. That is just remember, bring the
person so that you've got some sort of token to
take with you. Whereas we just we don't talk about it.
(02:08):
We're more and more frightened of it. Whereas it is
part of life, it's going to happen to us all.
I went to a writer's Week in Adelaide, and they
were talking about death and they just weren't getting it.
And I just said, the last time I was in
the tent as big as this, as hot as this,
with as many bodies, it was Thailand, the tsunami, and
they're all dead, I said. And the tires had a
(02:29):
very The monks would wander around the bodies at night, chanting,
helping them on their paths. So there was an acceptance
that they could actually commemorate these people, which is something
we don't do.
Speaker 1 (02:42):
And do you think that has a detrimental effect to
the way we deal with death? And I think so.
Speaker 2 (02:48):
I think it's just we're becoming more and more sanitized
and more and more closed off. We're closing off from
human interaction with our computers and social media. Just the
I see people down the beach with their dog when
I take my dog for a walk, and they've got
headphones on. I mean, why not stand hard? You know,
what's the point of being down there? And they're not.
(03:10):
They're just focused on what they're listening to, probably your podcast.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Well, I was going to say, the one proviser there,
if I catch kill this podcast, they're doing well, But yeah,
I know what you're saying, and the fact that the
sanitized it where we're more aware of death and now
I look at it, it just gets push pushed away.
So in the work that you did, do you have
your colleagues that would support support the people that you
(03:36):
worked with, because I know in the homicide world sometimes
I couldn't go home and talk about what we've seen
or done that your colleagues you do brief Did you
have that support from colleagues.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
It's interesting. We were talking earlier just about how you
deal with cases, and you know, I was saying, you
focus on the science. I remember one case of a
little boy who had been punched by the de facto boyfriend,
and this fellow had actually videoed this little boy dying,
that's how bad it was. But when I opened his abdomen,
I got this stench of you know, rotting parisanaitis, and
(04:10):
I brought tears in my eyes. I was just leaning
over and I was sort of just I had to
actually put that behind me. I was seeing the big picture.
I had to focus on what I was doing. And
what had happened is that he'd been punched really forcefully
and his intestines had ruptured, so they'd torn, so all
the contents gets into the abdominal cavity causes this really
(04:30):
vile inflammatory action, and so that was the smell and
talking to my colleagues as well. When I had Jasmine
and I found all the soil and the upper airway,
I called my colleagues in to have a look at it,
and they still told me that they're shattered by just
just seeing that. But we it's like soldiers in the trenches,
(04:51):
like police. You know your colleagues know what you're going through,
and you can talk to them. I went to see
a counselor after Jasmine. The manager said, you really need
to get this scene too, because I was I was
going to bed at night thinking over I was waking
up in the morning and at the end of the
council said, I said, well, you know, I just wanted
some techniques of getting this out of my head. And
(05:12):
she said, it's very difficult, isn't it. You told me
something I don't know.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
You've mentioned that Jazz main call and obviously it plays
on you pretty heavily. Can you tell us about that case?
The details of that case.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
I can because it's gone through the courts, And he
pleaded guilty. So she was a really lovely young Punjabi
woman who's working in a nursing home and she'd had
a relationship with a young Indian fellow and had told
him very nicely that she liked him, but he wasn't
the one for her, and so he just flipped out
and the day before went to Bunnings on CTV footage
(05:49):
buying cable ties a shovel. It was so well thought out,
was so stupid. He gave a mate his car with
his phone in it to go south when he was
kidnapping her from her workplace, tied up, put her in
the boot, drove around for five hours. Yeah, and a
lot of terror for her. Imagine what it was like
five hours in the boot, and then took her up
north and dug her grave and put her in it
(06:13):
and buried her alive. It's most horrific thing that I've
ever come across.
Speaker 1 (06:19):
Yeah, I'm just comprehending what you've.
Speaker 2 (06:22):
I'm outraged by it. Yeah, there were no drugs. She
did never hit injury, so she was completely conscious.
Speaker 1 (06:28):
The examination when you examined her body, did you find
this out at the time.
Speaker 2 (06:34):
Well, it's interesting because she had some cuts on the
side of her neck that I thought, as I said,
were the cause her death. But then we found the
soil and yes.
Speaker 1 (06:42):
It was just then the soul was in her.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
In her right down into her, and she also swallowed
some as well. It's the only time I've been to
a sentencing because I didn't get a chance to see
him in court because he pleaded guilty. So I wanted
to actually just look at him and just see what
sort of monster this was. And he looks so ordinary,
(07:05):
He looks so bernal, you.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
Know, and that's funny. But that can freak you out
more than if you're looking for this monster.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
I want to see Charles Manson, Yeah, that would have
made you want to see that understandable.
Speaker 1 (07:16):
Yeah, what is it about that particular case that stuck
with you so heavily.
Speaker 2 (07:21):
I think that she was just such a sweet, young,
innocent She was over here, she only had a mum
in India. She was staying with her uncles, so he
would feel responsibility for it. Her mother's lost her only child.
It's just there's nothing good about that story.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Now I can what can you say? She had come
from India, But you did some interesting work again, horrific
work stemming from a conference that you attended over in
India and you came into contact with someone about the
acid attacks on women in India.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
Yeah, pret Core is a she's a PhD lawyer, academic
and she co founded the Lasmi Foundation, which is a
foundation for acid attack victims. And acid attacks are very
common in India. Acid so furry gasid particularly is very cheap.
They use it in the cleaning drains, they use it
for cleaning equipment. And it's usually a spurned lover or
(08:21):
a jealous male and to get his revenge, he throws
acid on these young women's faces. Only four percent of
them die, but they're completely disfigured. They often go blind
because their eyes have been burnt. They can't breathe because
their nose is gone. They can't hear because the ear
canals are gone. They may have tremendous deformity, so they
(08:41):
can't speak or eat properly. They look horrific. So this
person has condemned them to a life of suffering pain
medical procedures. Sometimes their families shun them because they can't
afford to support them, or they just don't want them
as part of the family.
Speaker 1 (08:58):
Shun the victim.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
I wanted to do a study with Navpret on the
suicide rate in these women, but of course there's no
data there. But what these organizations are doing, like the
Laxmi Foundation, they've got a Shiro's Cafe in Agra. These
young women actually front the cafe. They serve and they
work there and they put themselves right out in front
of you know, it's remarkable. I did meet the young
(09:23):
woman need To who was the subject of a film
as a director in Melbourne, who did this film called
Geta because kneed To, Her sister and her mother were
asset attacked by her father because there were no boys
in the family and knit Too's got tremendous scarngh a
very poor vision, but it's interesting. Aw for about half
(09:44):
an hour with her, you don't see the scars.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
You know.
Speaker 2 (09:47):
Resilience is a word that's abused. She is one of
the most resilient people I've known. And again it comes
back to why you do forensic pathology. It's such a
privilege to be able to meet with these people and
to try and help. So what Gravpret and I do
is we've written a number of papers for the medical
community on asset attacks on dowry deaths, you know, people
(10:07):
being murdered for their dowries, on child labor, all sorts
of sort of human rights abuses that occurring in India. Now,
what right do I have to do to do that?
Navpret's got the information and we work together very well
disseminating it, letting people.
Speaker 1 (10:23):
Know, okay, to get that get that story out again.
Preventative And how prevalent is it?
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Like extremely prevalent. There are thousands of cases of this
in Pakistan and Bangladesh and India, and it happens all
over the world. It's in the UK it's called face
melting and it's often often rival gangs who do it
to each other. So bloke, So it's not it doesn't
have that sort of sexual element.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
No, it's brutal.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
It's it's a palling.
Speaker 1 (10:50):
The fact that it's happening over in India. So prevalent
there is it almost a cultural thing that the education
you've you've got to change the narrative.
Speaker 2 (10:58):
That's exactly right. And what navpreta since they go around
the schools and she once sent me a text and
it would I like to write a paper about menstruation?
So I texted back in two pico seconds. No, but
then she started telling me that you eighteen percent of
women in India have access to sanitary products. They're using
newspapers and leaves, and so we wrote that paper to
(11:21):
draw attention to it so that the authorities can then
do thing. I mean, the boys and girls don't have
separate toilets, but they are going to the schools and
they're trying to educate the youth, because that's the way
to go about just treating people with respect and giving
people a go.
Speaker 1 (11:37):
Roger, where do you find the time and the passion
to pursue these things?
Speaker 2 (11:42):
Well, I don't sleep, okay, well's yeah, no, I've worked out.
Actually recently, I've worked more than sixty hours a week
for four decades. I'm a bit tired.
Speaker 1 (11:53):
You can happen that after we've finish. Happened that. But look,
if you're doing a job that you're passionate about, it's
not like working.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
It's not working. That's what my boss is to say.
If they pay you for doing stuff you like, then
you know you win.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
Have there been any good role models that you've learned
a lot from.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
A couple not pathologists actually, but my first mentor in
Ottawa when I was training in pathology was a blow
called Irving Dartik. I did research term with him and
he said, you know what I want is I want
my students to do better than me, and he meant that.
And another fellow Grant Sutherland, he's a geneticist. He climbed
(12:30):
the fragile extremee. I personally think he was in line
for a Nobel prize. But once he had achieved what
he wanted to achieve, he retired and started up a
small farm. A man very happy with himself. But also
just shows you you don't have to be toxic to
get to the top. You know, if you treat people properly,
(12:52):
you can still mentor people and encourage people. And that's
the way, and that's those two are being great.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
It's good to have those type of role models or
people that you can learn things from. What's the messaging
you give when you're teaching people that are starting out
in the field that you're worked in. What's the type
of message you would pass.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
On give up now you've got a chance. No, I
tell them that it's if you're going to do You've
only got one shot at life. And so you know,
you've got to do stuff that you enjoy doing, and
that's important. I mean, it may be flower ranging, if
it's important to you and you do it well, excellent.
(13:30):
My boss's retired now in forensics, so he hadn't written
a paper in his life, but he's a very good fisherman,
and so I respected his fishing prowss.
Speaker 1 (13:38):
You know.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
So it doesn't matter what you do, just as long
as you do it with enjoyment.
Speaker 1 (13:42):
Is compassion an important part of the type of work
that you do.
Speaker 2 (13:46):
I think, yes, you've got to have credibility and you've
got to have compassion. If you don't feel the need
to help people, then you should be in something else.
And I think this is part of the problem with medicine.
It's one of the reasons I got out of clinical medicine.
It's becoming a bit of a factory, you know, to
make a few extra bucks to put your kids from
(14:08):
your third family through private school and buy another Mercedes.
You well, not not using caricat.
Speaker 1 (14:14):
I understand exactly what you're saying, but credibility and compassion,
you do need that combination. Because I think we've all
gone to get medical advice and there's someone that they've
got the academic skills, they've got the science, but the
delivery of the message is yeah, it's not what I need.
If someone's are the important part talking about their health
(14:35):
or their future, you need someone that's got the compassion
understanding then can deliver the message. Because I think the
days are going where we put the same for policing,
but for doctors, where they're put on the pedestal and
we never question. You go see your local doctor growing
up and Okay, that's what the doctor said, that's what
you do. But it's readily available on the internet that
(14:57):
doctor Google. Well, doctor Google diagnosed yourself, so they can question.
But you need that communication skill.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Yeah, I agree.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
I'm going to talk about the two thousand and four tsunami,
which Asian tsunami. I remember it was a horrific, horrific
day and hundreds of thousands of people were killed as
a result of that. What was your role in responding
to that.
Speaker 2 (15:21):
I didn't think i'd be asked to go, but I
went in the second rotation, so I was there in
the second week. And essentially because of the AFP's experience
with Australian Federal Police experience with the balley bombings. The
ties were working with them. The ties were excellent. They
really did an amazing job. But essentially, teams would come
(15:45):
over basically the body to be brought in. You would
do examinations, not full autopsies, just adult male tattoo, dental examination,
DNA fingerprints, and then compare it to people who are
known to be in the area. Part of the problem
is I wrote a paper and I called it DVII
tourism because so many teams arrive around the world, around
(16:08):
the world, and you know, they have to be accommodated,
they have to be fed. Sometimes their language is not English.
So you know, I always said, when I was on
the state, dv I commit the first thing I would
do is put signs around the state saying keep out.
Take forty eight hours just to work out how we
were going to do it. Processes, yeah, hasten slowly.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
Because I'm trying to comprehend. And if you could paint
a picture, you know, when we're talking hundreds of thousands
of people killed, and yeah, we all saw the images
of the waves washing in the floods and the sharp
metal floating around that people drowning. People have horrendous injuries.
It's in the tropics, so a body is going to
decompose very quickly. I would imagine what were the processes
(16:53):
that were put in place to and the purpose of
it was to identify as many people. That's correct, you
weren't going there. This person died specifically that it was
identifying the bodies. So what were the processes that were
put in.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Place identifying and repatriating. Well, in Thailand, the bodies were
brought into Buddhist temples because they had space to put containers,
freeze and frozen containers, and the the Thai troops volunteered
to work on it, so you'd have the bodies and
the containers. They'd be wheeled out. They were spraying all
(17:30):
this stuff around to reduce decomposition and everything. And my
mortuary tendant was really worried about this stuff and I said,
I don't worry about it's probably water. And he said
one day said look, the naggots are dead. And I said, oh,
nothing kills makets. You can freeze them. And so I
went out and these folks from their full suits spraying
around and I said, what is this stuff? No idea,
(17:52):
but it really works, so God knows what.
Speaker 1 (17:54):
We were exposed to could be the age and orange probably.
Speaker 2 (17:59):
So anyway, the body would come in and they would
they'd be fingerprinted by police officers. They'd come to us
and we would do the identification and detail what we thought.
Then they would go to the dental people and we'd
take specimens of DNA and so we put all that
together and yeah, they'd be found in areas of tourist hotels,
so we'd have a list of people. So that's the
(18:23):
then you get the anti modern stuff from them. And
we developed the system there too, which was rather than
just identifying each body on its own, we started to
identify children against identified parents, so that you know, you
had the parents' DNA in the database and the children
you can actually identify through that. But it's a lot
of interesting things happened. And I wrote a paper recently
(18:44):
called Hiding in Plane Sight, and I was just talking
about how best to hide a homicide if you can
put the body amongst others. And I was called out
the back and there was a coffin under a whole
part of other coffins full of rotting bodies and they'd
taken those and there was the body of a young
woman that was fresh and so clearly she didn't die
(19:05):
in the sin, but in three days she would have
been writting like the rest. So handed her over to
the tire authorities. But I was talking about the blitz
in London. I think the crime rate went up like
forty seven percent. How easy would it be to follow
somebody home from the pub, hit them on the head,
chuck them into a bomb site.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
I'm starting the wonder about you, Roger. You've come up
with you're obviously thinking too much about to get away
with murder. Yeah, well this I catch Killers. That's the
name of the podcast.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
So I'm on your radar.
Speaker 1 (19:35):
Yeah I've got another case. Yeah, I looking at that.
With what you're saying with the body body turning up there,
what a golden opportunity. You talked about the monks walking
around and that, and then dealing dealing with death. What
was I'm trying to get the sense of what the
feeling was for everyone involved in that, because it must
have been.
Speaker 2 (19:56):
It was er, it was horrific. What the Tie did
at one stage is they had a ceremony to honor
the two thousand dead at Carlak and they diverted planes
around this so you had a whole stadium of monks
and we're on an oval with candles, and they had
these rice paper lanterns, each one representing one person that
(20:16):
they let go into the sky. It was you can
see it on the internet. It was like the Milky
Way overhead. It was the most beautiful thing I've ever
seen with the chanting. And yet the next day you
go back to basically trucks pulling up and just decomposed
bodies being being pulled out of them, hundreds and hundreds
and hundreds of them.
Speaker 1 (20:37):
How did it impact on you?
Speaker 2 (20:39):
I found it really difficult the first day I got there.
That the smell was extraordinary, the heat, the humidity. Yeah,
I as I said, I was offered the second chance
to go back the second time. Some people went back
five times. I couldn't do it. And I used to
get quite emotional when I saw people's presentations on Thailand
showing the pictures.
Speaker 1 (20:59):
You know have.
Speaker 2 (21:02):
A family member, you know, in their bathers with their child.
And I remember when one father was he knew that
we had his child, but the child hadn't gone through
the formal process of identifications. They couldn't be released, so
he was beside himself with anger. As you can imagine,
my little boy he is in there. There was one picture,
(21:25):
because the tires got boards, you could put pictures up
of your loved ones, and there was one little boy
with these beautiful, big blue eyes and had his name
and everything. I thought, you know, even if you get
him back, he's never going to be like that.
Speaker 1 (21:38):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:39):
Yes, then the tires were I mean they had photographs
of the decomposing bodies, their faces, and families were coming around.
They had the seed easy you could take home and
go through them. You know, maybe it was some weird
shaped tooth or something that you could pick.
Speaker 1 (21:51):
So do you think from disaster Victim Identification DBI, where
there's been multiple casualties to identify all the victims, do
you think we learned things from that practices?
Speaker 2 (22:02):
You know we did, And there were there were some
teams that came that you know, weren't practicing pathologists, and
you know they were taking off the jewelry and putting
under the body, or not filling out the forms correctly
and taking the original forms with them. It was just
you know, coordinating that was was not easy.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
Do you know you talk about bringing the bodies back
how many Australians You got an idea of the rough
figure that caught up in them.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
I don't. Actually, one of the important things for me
was the last week I was there, there were two
Australian bodies and a couple of containers that weren't refrigerated.
I found them. And then one of the women came
from Adelaide and so I represented forensic science going out
to the plane when she came back to get the
(22:52):
body and met the family. So I thought that was
a sort of a nice finishing off. I'd been with
them in Thailand and I was there, come she came back.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
Yeah, those things mean a lot.
Speaker 2 (23:04):
I think they do.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
Circumstances. Did you get was it mandatory for you to
sit down with a psychologist and talk these things? We
have that at homicide we'd have to go every six
months and sit down and talk. But it was that
part and parcel of it.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
Yeah, I did, and the psychologist I said, what was
one of the worst things? I said, We're just not
being recognized and he said, yeah, that's that's what happens
with me. So really, how do you deal with this?
I'd drink off headmen, I said, what do you drink
and whiskey. So we discussed whiskeys and then about two
weeks later I got an email from him saying, what
was that whiskey? You recommended Highland? So that was the
extent of the psychological support.
Speaker 1 (23:41):
Okay, okay, you've talked and you've mentioned a couple of
times in while we've been sitting down the smell and
the smell of death, and unless you've smell that, you
can't you can't really describe it. It's hard to describe.
Does that have an impact on you, the amount of
death that you would have smelled.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
It's something you do, you do get used to, and
after a few decades inhaling formalon, your smell's not as
good as it used to be. But we were down.
We had a ceremony at Patong Beach and one of
the mortue tenders and we walked over and there was
a remnants of a Japanese restaurant, and sure enough that
(24:20):
clearly little bodies under that. So I was thinking, you know,
he'd probably be cheaper than a sniffer dog. Maybe we
should use him.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
It's not your first first experience in these type of things,
and the barley bombing, you're also had some involvement in that,
and that's I look at that from a different perspective
because that was an active evil murder court. Cause that
what was your experience dealing with the Barley bombings.
Speaker 2 (24:49):
I came in later in that, so I was sort
of more auditing. But I had a fair bit to
do with Ikbar one of the suicide bombers at Paddy's Bar,
so I was repatriating his his remain.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Again, when you say you had a fair bit to
do with him, you were looking at his remains, so
that put all the pieces together. Basically, basically you find
out what happened.
Speaker 2 (25:10):
The problem with Bali was interesting. I was watching it
when it first happened, and you know it was chaos,
but you had people trying to help, so they were
sweeping up stuff, so they were destroying the crime scene.
But of course, again with a DBI, the important thing
is not so much the deceased. It's to get the
injured and wounded out and looked after. But yes, Barlei
(25:32):
was particularly nasty because the bomb that went off at
the Sari Club was in a vehicle outside and there
was cast iron grating and glass, so there were secondary
projectiles that went into the nightclub, and of course there
was fire, so there was monoxide inhalation as well as
the injuries. People were crushed trying to get out of
(25:54):
the doors. So there were a whole lot of different
things that went on there, and the bodies were fragmented,
unlike Thailand, where mostly in Thailand the bodies were intact.
But you do occasionally find strange things. I was in
mortuary in Thailand and colleague from Zealand and said, look
at this, and it was an adult woman and her
(26:15):
head had exploded. And I said, have you found pellets
because it looked like a shotgun. Yeah, but she must
have just been going through the water at such as
speed and hit something. So that's the thing really you're
looking for. Is this something that doesn't fit you know?
And as I said, what a perfect way to hide
crimes in amongst that.
Speaker 1 (26:36):
Put your body in there with the Bali bombings. What's
the effect on the body where it's caught up in
the blast.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
It varies, but if a body is in the blast,
they'll have burns, but they also have characteristic sort of
internal findings. If the body is still intact, you know
where the lungs have expanded up against the chest wall.
The intestines have sort of blown out, so you can
see things to support it. But if it's if they're
close to the epicenter, basically it'll be fragmented. So they
(27:07):
always say that, you know, and it didn't apply in Barley,
but with suicide bombers you need to look around the
rus for half a kilometer because their head has gone.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Are you When you're going through the bodies on a
situation like that, you're also looking for the physical evidence
of support the police investigation.
Speaker 2 (27:23):
You're going through looking for ordinance. And that's one of
the dangers of dv I in the sale war zone
is that the body has been booby trapped. I mean,
what better way to actually cause further problems.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
Thinking about how to commit crimes again.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Not just relating, right, I must admit though the bombings
in London, I was told this by a forensic pathologist
and I don't know whether it's a pock fall, but
they've taken the bodies to a parade ground and they're
looking for a gunshot residue, and they were getting incredible
hits until I realized that a cannon had been fired
(28:01):
at noon every day for the last hundred years in
that quadrangle, so they had to peel that back.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:07):
Yeah. I also said to the fellows in England, I said,
why didn't they let a dirty blob GoF with anthrax
or something? I mean, I said, we can talk about
this because terrorist not a see. If they've done that,
we couldn't have coped. I don't understand why they just
do the one hit, not a couple. I'm pleased they don't,
but the.
Speaker 1 (28:25):
Type of impact that.
Speaker 2 (28:27):
Do you destroy the support worker is coming and then
you really cause the problem.
Speaker 1 (28:31):
You've been in this field for the years, changes, improvements
and different things. We used to rely on facial recognition.
You can see some problems with facial recognition if you
reconstruct a face from a skeletal remain.
Speaker 2 (28:46):
I think, and this is just my personal view, that
facial recognition what it does best is remind people of
memories they have of the time, so that brings in
and you would know this too, that brings extra information forward.
But when I see a face reconstruction and the skeleton,
(29:07):
what I have to do And apparently this has been
done as people have done studies where they've taken donated
bodies so they've got what the face looks like. They've
then taken the skull, they've given it to facial reconstruction people,
and then you compare the two. So that is something
I need to look at because I'm sure that they're
quite different. I mean, this is flash, you know, he
is hair, all that sort of stuff. Yeah, so I
(29:29):
think that facial recognition is sort of not as exciting
as we once thought. It was a bite marks again.
You know, you used to be able to tell an
individual from a bite mark.
Speaker 1 (29:39):
Now you can't well talk about that because I've been
involved in investigations where the bites have come into play.
Speaker 2 (29:47):
Ye, very hard to actually pin it to a particular person.
If it's a small bite, it's a child with large
bidet's an adult. But it really the importance of bite
marks is swabbing for saliva DNA. That's the most real.
So there are a lot of things that we used
to think were important that you know, ant is reliable.
One of the best things I find in court is
(30:08):
to be able to say I have no idea and
the jury, you know, will then make eye contact and
you can see them thinking, well, he's honest. So when
he does say he knows something, then we can probably trusted.
Speaker 1 (30:20):
Have you seen and without the specific examples, experts at
sort of stray outside their lane of expertise in court.
Speaker 2 (30:28):
Yes, your honor, And that's one of the problems is
you know people are experts because I say they are,
you know, and some people will go all over the
place with and I've had experts who have been accused
of knowing we misleading the court and it just seems
to bounce off them. I think that people like us
(30:50):
are in no man's land because we're prepared to say
that nothing's absolute, this is possible, and not half as
convincing as saying clearly this is the cause of death
and nothing else.
Speaker 1 (31:04):
Yeah, if but you talk about credibility to like, if
you make that comment, then that other evidence comes in
that can dispel what that person's saying. Definitely happened.
Speaker 2 (31:15):
You need to do so, mister, they call me mister.
They want to, you know, diminish my status in the court.
I mean my father was mister. So they dropped the professor. Yes, mister,
can you definitely exclude that?
Speaker 1 (31:28):
That's Have they ever got you down to Roger? Roger?
Speaker 2 (31:32):
What were you not as such?
Speaker 1 (31:34):
Well?
Speaker 2 (31:34):
That's outside the court. I've been called worse.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
But yeah, if they're talking me up, if I'm in
the witness box, detective chief inspector, the very experienced, once
they start to talk me up, I know I'm about
to be hit, be brought down. So I imagine you
the experience experience that. What's the longest time you've spent
in the witness box.
Speaker 2 (31:53):
Well, it's not chronological. The following trial, I was only
in for an afternoon, but that was a very long
afternoon probably I suppose day or two.
Speaker 1 (32:04):
You know, Well, we've had we've had a guest on
that wrote the book about Catheline Folbing and what's your
take on them. It's a very complex matner. It's probably
a hard question to yeah, for you to answer, but
just in your area of involvement in the matter.
Speaker 2 (32:19):
Well, I appeared for the defense back in two thousand
and three, and I've always said that I think there
was reasonable doubt. I think all four kids had significan
potentially significant conditions. Caleb had a soft larynx, he was
having trouble breathing. Patrick was epileptic. Sarah had a very
strange shape at the back of her soft Palette and
(32:42):
Laura had my carditis. So I mean people now looking
at this genetic material. For me, I don't need genetics
to say there was no evidence of inflicted suffocation and
that they had conditions that could potentially kill them. Could
they been suffocated, yes, they could, but they also could
have died of this. I think there was always reasonable doubt.
Speaker 1 (33:03):
Yeah, and that's a thing that's played out. It's a
fascinating case, but.
Speaker 2 (33:09):
It's a tragic case.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (33:11):
No matter which side you're on, you've got four dead, lovely.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
Children, no one, no one wins. You've talked about in
the views that you've done a right to mourn and
talk us through that, because we're getting deep into the
emotional side of the type of crime that you've done.
And my observation.
Speaker 2 (33:34):
I've observed.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
Slip, So what other crimes if you've done, I'll just
start cautioning you. But my observation, you've kept your sense
of humor. You've seen a lot of darkness in life,
and you also talk about the right to mourn, that
there's nothing wrong with mourning and feeling the pain that
the things you've seen. Talk us through through your thinking there.
Speaker 2 (33:55):
Well, I think anybody exposed the tragedy needs to mourn.
He has said if you if you don't, then I
think that you're knowingly or unwittingly just cutting yourself off
from an important part of emotional processes. The reason I've survived,
I think, is because I understand how important these deaths
(34:15):
are the families in the community, and it's something I think.
Forensic pathology is more than just dissection and report writing.
It should be integrating into the community to help people.
And that's It's bizarre though, the cases that get through,
And I don't know how we do it in the police.
(34:36):
I don't know how we actually we're not taught to
warl ourselves off, but we do somehow. But some cases
just I remember there was a case of a he
was an execution of one of the biker gangs, and
he committed suicide on a lonely beach and I was
sitting there with my wife that night and she said,
what's wrong with you? I said, really really upset about
(34:59):
this case. But you see murdered children, you see this,
this and this. I don't know. There was just something
about this that got to me. It's very strange.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
It's interesting isn't it. Is there something particular about that,
because given all the things that you've seen, I'm just
wondering why that sort of jump jumped out.
Speaker 2 (35:18):
I don't know. I talked about it with my wife
and we wonder whether it was because he was a
bloke about my age and he'd gone to this isolated
beach that was very like some of the beaches I
used to go to as a kid in Tasmania. So
they just seemed to be a lonely poignancy to it.
But yeah, it may be that it was just somebody
strangely I could identify with.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
It's interesting how different cases have different different impacts. What
about your faith in society?
Speaker 2 (35:47):
I like dogs?
Speaker 1 (35:48):
Okay, what about killer dogs?
Speaker 2 (35:53):
Killer dogs are usually the product of killer owners. You know,
if you treat a dog badly, it'll.
Speaker 1 (36:01):
Be well, you see the most terrifying looking dogs and
they're placid them. That comes down to the owner generally.
But have you seen many situations of dogs that have killed.
Speaker 2 (36:12):
I've seen a few. There was a fascinating case in
Canada that I wasn't involved with, but the pathologist who
did the autopsy said the child had been a stab
with scissors and the mother went to jail and there
was a pitbull in the house that actually had a
bloodstained in front. Subsequently came out and it was a
(36:33):
dog attack. He just got it completely wrong. But there
are certain breeze yes, you know. I mean, I've got
a golden a Trita. I don't think it's been one
report of Golden A Tria licking somebody, leah.
Speaker 1 (36:42):
But anyway, before we got off on the dog track
a society.
Speaker 2 (36:47):
I'm worried. I think that a couple of reasons. Methamphetamine
is everywhere, as you know, that that's a toxic drug
and it just destroys people. And we've done studies showing
the percentage of meth with homicide victims and homicide perpetrators,
and as you know, it's very high. Also, I think
that the Internet trivializes violence. You have kids just watching
(37:13):
this stuff and they think that this is normal. Some
of those computer games are outrageous. You know, they train
troops now on computer games when they're taking out soldiers
and stuff. So it's the same process.
Speaker 1 (37:27):
You can embedd it in the actions and the thing.
Speaker 2 (37:31):
I think it just it makes quite violent horrific acts
seem normal.
Speaker 1 (37:36):
No interesting, interesting take on that than what you've said
about the drugs too, And I would imagine that you've
done some post more thans and seen the results of
heavy use of drugs.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
And I was walking past a group of houses in
my neighborhood just around the corner the other night, and
the fellow the allegations of myth selling there, and there
was a fellow inside who'd broken down the doors and stuff.
That was nine o'clock on Saturday night. By six o'clock
the next morning, he had murdered the bloke in the park.
Speaker 1 (38:06):
No role or reason.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
So it's everywhere now, Okay.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
I think I mentioned Guardians of the Dead, a seven
part podcast series that you did. How did you get
involved in that.
Speaker 2 (38:20):
One of the media people, Lisa Black at the university,
was interested in forensics and we just got chatting one
day and she said, well, you know, the local paper
might be interested in doing a podcast. I'd done a
full podcast. We just sat down and chatted about stuff
that I'd done and seen, and it was an interesting process.
I find getting involved with the media and assemblitting information interesting,
(38:44):
you know, whether it's film or whether it's radio or whatever.
So it's just something different to do that I think
can be useful.
Speaker 1 (38:51):
Well, I think that ken, then it's not glorifying, not
glorifying crime. You're explaining, explaining situations in preparation for this podcast,
I think I said to you before we start, I
sat down to listen just to get a sense of
what you're about, and I listened to all episodes.
Speaker 2 (39:09):
So and as I said, you need to get out,
I probably shouldn't.
Speaker 1 (39:12):
I probably shouldn't be talking up on the podcast big
sitting here here doing my own podcast, But yeah, it was.
It was fascinating. And what I did like about it
that you take on that because quite often you could
be called an academic, but you've also got that let's.
Speaker 2 (39:28):
Say, how do you well?
Speaker 1 (39:31):
Academic can be a compliment, but it can also be
said if it said with the right tone. But you're
explain it in layman's terms. And I think that's important
because quite often science puts itself up up there that
you don't need to know. We're not going to explain
it to the common person, but you've got a way
of explaining what you come across.
Speaker 2 (39:49):
My philosophy is if you can't explain something simply to somebody,
then you don't understand it yourself.
Speaker 1 (39:55):
Yeah. Yeah, that's a good way of looking at I'll
think of that next time the computer per and comes
out to fix my computer. I don't care.
Speaker 2 (40:03):
Why just fix it and don't don't change that.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
What are you doing with yourself? Now?
Speaker 2 (40:10):
Still working halftime at Forgics. So I'm on call in
a couple of weeks time, but winding back. Actually, yeah,
I've I got I had a goal to get a
thousand peer reviewed papers, and I got that a couple
of weeks ago. Yeah, so that was I mean, it's
it's like a golf handicap. Who cares except yourself, But
you know it was important to me.
Speaker 1 (40:31):
You're you're under underplane your success and you're standing within
the field that you've operated into a lot of awards
and different things. So full credit to you.
Speaker 2 (40:40):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (40:42):
I've enjoyed. I've enjoyed the chat.
Speaker 2 (40:44):
I wish I could say the same.
Speaker 1 (40:47):
Maybe you're not that funny. I thought you were funny,
but maybe maybe you're not. Maybe you are a horrible Roger. Look,
I'd like to thank you for not just coming on
the podcast, but also for the work that you've done,
and because I know it's difficult work and doing it
with compassion. I think that's so important. I saw that
in the homicide, and if people didn't have that empathy
and compassion, they do cause more damage to people that
(41:09):
shouldn't be damaged any further. And you've kept your sense
of humor and you seem seemed like quite a reasonable person.
Speaker 2 (41:15):
That's the medication, all right. Thanks Roger,
Popular Podcasts
Boysober
Have you ever wondered what life might be like if you stopped worrying about being wanted, and focused on understanding what you actually want? That was the question Hope Woodard asked herself after a string of situationships inspired her to take a break from sex and dating. She went "boysober," a personal concept that sparked a global movement among women looking to prioritize themselves over men. Now, Hope is looking to expand the ways we explore our relationship to relationships. Taking a bold, unfiltered look into modern love, romance, and self-discovery, Boysober will dive into messy stories about dating, sex, love, friendship, and breaking generational patterns—all with humor, vulnerability, and a fresh perspective.
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com