October 11, 2025 • 63 mins
Who killed Emma Caldwell? The 27-year-old woman mysteriously disappeared in 2005. Her body was found naked in isolated Scottish woods just weeks later. But it took 19 years to catch her killer.
BBC journalist Sam Poling began investigating the cold case, only to discover the man she’d been interviewing for months was the man who murdered Emma. In a rare interview, Sam shares how she came face to face with a killer.
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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 persons never exposed to.
I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty
five of those years I was catching killers. That's what
I did for a living. I was a homicide detective.
I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking
the public into the world in which I operated. The
(00:23):
guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from
all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest,
just like the people I talked to. Some of the
content and language might be confronting. That's because no one
who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join
me now as I take you into this world. Today,
(00:46):
I had an interesting conversation with investigative journalist Sam Poling,
whose work helped put a murderer behind bars. Sam interviewed
killer Ian Packer, which led to his eventual arrest and
was later convicted the murder of twenty seven year old
Emma Caldwell. Joining us today from Scotland, Sam took us
right through the case, highlighting where the investigation went wrong
(01:09):
and how her interview played a major role in locking
up a predator. Just a warning up front, some of
the things we discuss here will be confronting. A young
woman's life was taken and many other women's lives were
destroyed by the actions of this serial predator. Packer was
also charged with fences against twenty two women who had
(01:29):
been raped or assulted. We also talked about how investigations
can go wrong and the role the media play in
bringing offenders to justice by making police accountable for their actions.
Sam Poling, Welcome to our Catch Killers. Thank you, it's
great to have you on. And a friend of mine,
(01:51):
a person that I got to know very well, Steve Kio,
contacted me and said, hey, you've got to speak to
this lady the work that she's done. So that got
me curious, and that led me to listening to your
podcast and looking at a bit of the work that
you've done and the podcast I'm referring to a third
in part who Killed Emma. I found it fascinating, so
(02:15):
I'm really pleased we've got you here to have a
chat about it today.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Well, thank you for inviting me, and I'm glad you're
at the time to listen to it.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, well, I started listening to it and you had
me hooked. So that's how I've spent last couple of
a couple of days. When you first started the investigation
into Emma Caldwell, did you have any idea how far
it would take you down the rabbit hole? Oh?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
No, I mean, you know, I have a history with
investigating or looking into a number of murders of young
women who'd worked as prostitutes prior. I mean, my very
first job, and we can talk about that was the
murder of a young woman who had been working as
a prostitute. So over the years I'd covered a number
of cases. And then when Emma had been murdered, I
(02:58):
was working for the BBC at the time, so I
was I didn't cover it, I didn't investigate it. So
then when I started this investigation, I just thought, Okay,
it's just going to be another documentary, another investigation. I
never ever could have predicted that what happened would happen.
(03:20):
I never thought in a million years I would find
myself in the position that I found myself in. And
as it slowly unfolded, and I think, I hope you've
got a sense from the podcast that I genuinely did
not know who the killer was, where the killer was,
where we should be looking. I didn't know anything, and
(03:41):
so as it slowly came to like, yeah, it was
as much a shocked for me as it was for
those for those watching on I think.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Well, it's a new medium, the podcast world looking at
true crime, and it really is a game change, or
isn't it. Because you've worked in media a long time.
I've worked in place a long time, but now delving
into the media side of things, and there was a
narrative that media would often just support the place, like
(04:09):
you had your contacts in the media, and the place
would feed the information. The media report the positive news stories.
But this new form of journalism, it's a completely different world,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Oh, it's a completely different world. And you know, I
think once upon a time there was a world in
which the police and the media worked together and worked
well together. I think it's fair to say that the
relationship we used to have as journalists with the police.
I mean, I've been doing this a long time. I've
had incredible relations relationships with the police throughout my career.
(04:44):
But it has changed, and as you say, the landscape's
changed and we don't have the same friendly, cozy relationship
that we used to have. You know, we used to
have cop contacts. My film was full of cop contacts. Now,
if you even talk to an officer, they have to
go and report, or I've had a conversation with the journalists,
or I've got enter as a journalist, And so everything
has changed and they are under The police are under
so much more scrutiny than ever before, I think, and
(05:08):
so they're very very cautious about who they talk to,
what they say, how they say it, how far they
go with what they're saying, and the information they're passing on.
So I think that has put a barrier between the
police and journalists considerably. What that has done, how is
basically the landscape I think has kind of opened up
(05:29):
a little bit more for them, for the journalists to
be a lot more investigative, put the police work into
a lot more scrutiny because they don't have that cozy
relationship anymore. And I think podcasts are a fantastic platform
to allow you to go in depth into an investigation.
(05:49):
You're not up against the time limit, you're not up
against an episode limit, you're not against anything other than
your own self in terms of how far you can
push something. So I think the landscape has changed, and
I think it's changed for the better, despite the kind
of loss of coziness, if you like, between the media
and the police. We're no longer you know. I think
(06:10):
you're right, you know. I think journalists did used to
get feder lined by the police, and then they would
pursue that line, and very often it wasn't questioned. It
was well, they're the police, and so what they're telling
us must be true, and now we go, okay, well
they're the police, and what they're telling us now needs
to be questioned, and that's what we do.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Well, your experienced that in your field in the media
and your contacts of the police. The large part of
my career in policing, I saw that connection with journalism
and it didn't sit well with me because the narrative
could be controlled. From the place point of view, the
police would simply say that the matter's been looked at,
(06:47):
there's an investigation. We call them strike forces. You might
call them something different over where you are, but a
strike force has been informed. I knew that the strike
force might consist of one person the narrative was never
never questioned. So I think it's a step in the
right direction. And I'm yeah, I'm still very proud police.
It's not me beating up on that on PLAE. I
(07:10):
just think scrutinyeds a good thing and I think it
makes us lift lift their game. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And but you know, the police, you know, you guys
have used us for years, right and understandably so, and
very often rightly so, because you want to put some
information out there, you want to pursue a line of
inquiry that you need media attention on, or perhaps you
know it's to help with an investigation, to raise the
(07:36):
profile of an investigation. So I understand all that, and
now that that has shifted a little bit, and I
think US journalists are not prepared to be used as
to as great an extent as we were before. I
just I think the relationship with the balance has changed
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, well, I agree, And I know now the what
you talked of, the reluctance of place and moment the
journalist speaks to them, they ever goes into panic made.
But look, I think it's a good thing. And if
the end result is what happened in the mc coldwell case.
No one can argue the benefits of it, certainly with
cold cases or unsolved cases that it's been left in
(08:15):
the hands of place it hasn't got a result. I
think it's beneficial to have that type of discussion and
scrutiny on the investigation.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, I mean, I do. I mean I was. We
were under a lot of pressure from the police not
to broadcast, right, We had phone calls from the police
begging us not to broadcast because the investigation was live,
or the investigation was at a sensitive point, or the
investigation was at a crucial point. Well, the fact is
(08:46):
this has been a cold case for a long time.
There had been many many years when action could have
been taken the information was there, and we will go
on to talk about what information was there. But you know,
you're right, there is a response ability that we all
have to make sure that no investigation is hindered. But
there comes a point, I think as journalists where you
(09:07):
have to sit down, look at it from a moral perspective,
look at it from the legal perspective, and then just
think what's the right thing to do in this case.
And in this situation, the right thing was to broadcast.
But it wasn't an easy decision, and I faced and
we all face a lot of criticism from some quarters
(09:28):
for proceeding to broadcast and proceeding to broadcast the interviews
that we broadcast, which eventually and ultimately led to the
conviction of a killer.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, and that you can argue with the results of
that way and in hiding behind that it's a live investigation,
and that it might cut it in the first week
or so. But when you're talking a meato that's been
running as long as Emma's case head, surely it's been official.
But look, first, investigative journalism, how did you get into it?
(10:02):
And what was it that drove you to that type
of work.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Oh, I just wanted to be a journalist, That's all
I ever wanted to be. I think I got my
first typewriter when I was eight, and I used to
sit and write little stories in my bedroom. And then
as I grew up. There were two journalists that I
don't know if you'd have well, Roger Cook the Cook Report,
who was one of the best investigative journalists that existed
(10:28):
in the world for me, and every episode of his
show he was going after the bad guys anywhere around
the world, and he got into scrapes and all sorts
of things, and he always got the guy. He always
got the bad guy, and I just used to think, Oh,
I want to be him. And then there was a
woman journalist. She was the foreign correspondent for the BBC,
k Ad, and I used to watch her and think,
(10:49):
you are incredible, and I couldn't make my mind up
which one I wanted to because I knew I was
going to be one of them. And I thought, well,
I'm going to be kat Ad. She's amazing. And then
I used to phone up people at the BBC when
I was like in my early teens and say, how
do I get your job? What do I have to do?
(11:12):
And a couple of people gave me some great advice,
and I would give the same advice to anybody else.
They said, go and be a newspaper reporter, because newspaper
reporters are the best journalists in the world, because you
have to work twice as hard on your own and
just I guess it's like being a cop, where you
work through the ranks. And I was told, work your
way through the ranks and then you'll make it. And
(11:34):
I was like, Okay, well that's what I'm going to do.
And I ended up going going through newspapers, local newspapers,
regional newspapers. Then I joined the National Press and worked
for press agencies and that's the toughest gig you will
ever ever have as a journalist. And then I joined
the BBC and I came across the story and I
(11:55):
went to my bosses and said, I've got this great,
great story and I think it could be a great
investigation done one before, and they gave me. They gave
me the opportunity to do it, and that was it.
I was hooked, and so I didn't become Kad Roger Cook.
So yeah, I kind of followed my dream a little
bit that way.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Well, I agree with what you say about the print
journalists working in the newspaper and a lot of journalists
that I know and look up to and greatly respect.
They always talk about the time in the original paper
reporting on cattle prices and great breakthrough stories like that,
But that's where they learned their trade.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
It would be like somebody going in as a cop
to you know, a chief superintendent level who have not
you know, walked the walk. And I have literally worked
every single rank there is as a journalist. And yeah,
and I'm so grateful that I have because it makes
the difference.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Well, it's paid off in the work that you do,
and you've got a great body of work. And I
think even a couple of awards came your way in
the form of Beth the rewards which are pretty impressive.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Six six buffters.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
You need to update, update the records on you. I've
only got three here.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Oh really get that updated? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Well, congratulations. I just wanted people to get a sense
of who you were because the work that you did
on the Emma cardwell, I'm sure it came at a
cost to you, and we'll talk talk about that. Let's
start talking about that particular case. So can you just
tell us, give us a sense and whenever and coming
from the police and then in the media and talking
about these crimes. I always make a point of not
(13:36):
forgetting the victims. You know, a murder has a lot
of different layers, but it's someone's life that has been taken.
So who is Emma Emma Caudwell, can you describe her
to us?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah? So, I mean it is so important to keep
the victim at the center of this. And I think
all too often, especially in the world of true crime podcasts, now,
that it's all about sensational storytelling and forgetting about the victim.
The victim is the center of everything. Emma was a
twenty seven year old woman. She grew up in the
(14:08):
same village that I lived. I didn't know her. She
came from a really nice family, really nice family. Mom
and dad ran a pub. She had an older sister,
she had a brother. She loved horses. She would go
and help out at the stables when she could, go
riding when she could. They had a normal, happy family life.
(14:31):
They lived on the outskirts of Glasgow, about half an
hour away from the city of Glasgow. And she was
just I mean, I've spoken to school friends who went
to school with her. She was lovely, she was funny,
she was cheeky. If she didn't like a particular teacher
in a class, she would just go into a different classroom.
And she got away with everything because she was just
(14:51):
a nice girl, you know. And then one day her sister,
who'd left home, came back and told Emma's mum and dad,
Margaret and Willie, that she had been diagnosed with cancer.
She had non Hodgkins lymphoma, and she went through treatment.
She battled hard for a couple of years, and then sadly, Karen,
(15:15):
Emma's sister, died and Emma was really really close to Karen.
I mean they had a great, typical sister relationship. But
you know, Karen was the one that she would go
to with problems and chat and boy talk and stuff,
and Emma just Emma's world collapsed. I mean she lost
she lost everything in that moment. And she was working
at stables at the time, and grief was just something
(15:40):
that she she couldn't deal with. And her boyfriend, who
used to go along to the stables, just said to
her one day, you know, I've got something that can
can help you with your grief, and that was heroin.
And and so he was the person who gave Emma
her first taste of heroine and it numbed the pain.
(16:05):
And I guess you've heard this story a million times
from people. She became addicted, and she moved to Glasgow
to be close to the boyfriend. Her addiction grew, the
relationship didn't last, and so she was left with, you know,
no relationship, a broken heart, and a heroin addiction. And
(16:28):
of course heroin addiction is expensive, incredibly expensive, and so
she needed a way of funding that addiction, and she
turned to prostitution. This was not a world that Emma nu.
This is the thing when I mean, I know, I've
looked at there were a number of murders in Glasgow
(16:50):
of young women who were prostitutes. There were eight in all.
Emma was the eighth woman to be murdered. And the
story is very much the same. You know, the women
come from broken homes or broken families. They go into
the care system, they leave the care system with no support,
They end up with a drug habit. They need to
fund the drug habits, so they turn to prostitution. They
(17:12):
need the drugs to numb the pain of what they're
having to do. They need to fund that bigger habit,
so then it's more prostitution, and so this cycle just
goes on and on and on. This was not Emma.
Emma wasn't in the care system. She had an incredible family.
They did not know about her addiction. They didn't know
what she was doing to fund it. They only found out, well,
(17:33):
they found out about the addiction when Emma realized herself
that she was in trouble, and she had been in
bed for a couple of days poorly, and she went
downstairs and she said to Margaret, her mum. She said, look, mom,
I've got something to tell you and dad, and I
think I'm addicted to drugs. And they didn't know anything
about drugs. I mean, Margaret's told me so many times.
We didn't have a clue. And Margaret said, well, what
(17:57):
drugs and Emma said, well, it's heroine. Knew nothing about her.
So they bundled her up in jackets and drove her
to accident an emergency and said can you give us something?
And you know, the naivety in that moment for me
is heartbreaking, because they really knew nothing about about this world.
And the doctor just kind of shook her head and said,
(18:20):
there's there's nothing we can do. Emma moved out of
the family home and was living up in a women's
hostel and she was she was working as a prostitute.
And it was only when Emma went missing that they
found out what she'd been doing. And I remember Margaret
said that Willie, Emma's dad, when he found out, had
(18:40):
turned around and said, you know it was very typical
of Emma to choose a way of funding her habit
that only harmed herself. You know, she didn't go she
didn't turn to crime.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, that it was saying I heard heard that mentioned
in the in the podcast and the sort of a
reflection of the type of girl that Emma was. And
that's that's her father's take on it. He is a
sad story, said, story that happens happens too often often
in that environment, and as a working girl on the
(19:14):
streets of Glasgow, I would imagine it was a pretty
uh yeah, they were very vulnerable in that in that circumstance.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Look, I mean everybody's I think most people around the
world will have heard of Glasgow. It is an incredibly vibrant, friendly,
amazing city, always has been. But it's also got a
side to it that's violent. I mean it was the
murder capital of Europe I think at one point, and
you know, an incredibly violent place and especially for these women,
(19:46):
and they would go out at night. I mean the
women that I've spoken to have said, you know, I've
said to them, you know, have you were you ever attacked?
And they're like, was I ever not attacked?
Speaker 1 (19:57):
You?
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Know, women would keep books as to who raped them,
not so that they could avoid that person that next time,
but so that they knew what they would be in
for when they went with these men, because they were
so desperate they needed the money, and you know, they
would work in an area of Glasgow it's called the
Drag and Glasgow is a grid like the roads are
(20:20):
set out in a grid, so up and down, left
and right and one way system and there's the Drag
is like a rectangular you can drive around and the
women would all stand on the four corners and that
way when the cars are stopped at the traffic lights.
If the police catch them, they go, oh, I've just
stopped at the traffic lights. But they're not. They're stopping
for the girls. And these women were selling themselves for
(20:40):
as little as you know, ten pounds, you know, out
push twenty pounds because they needed the money. And they
would go out at night and they would be raped,
sexually assaulted, beaten. I know some of the women were scalped.
At one point one man was going around doing that.
There were the most frightening, horrific attacks and this was
(21:04):
a whole new world for someone, well for any woman, right,
But for someone like Emma who had did not know
this world at all, and she struggled on the streets,
you know, because she wasn't tough, she wasn't street wise,
she knew nothing. And the attacks don't just come from
the clients. The attacks come from the other women because
(21:24):
you're now on their patch. It's a new girl. Emma
was really attractive, and she wasn't so far into her
heroin addiction where she was so thin, and this has
started to take away how she looked, and so she
used to get, you know, beaten and hurt really quite
badly by some of the women. And it was a
(21:45):
tough life for her, a tough life for so many
of the women. And remember this is against the backdrop
of murder after murder after murder of prostitutes in the
city in the previous years. It was terrifying.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
The circumstances, sarianning Emma's disappearance and the discovery of her
remind so can you talk us through that? Yes.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
So it was April and Emma would go out most nights.
She would leave about ten or eleven o'clock at night.
She phoned her mum every day. Right, they had a
great relationship. Every single day, she'd phone her mom. Every
single day, she would go to a chemist to pick
up her methadone prescription as she was trying to get
help with her heroin addiction. And every single day, in
(22:32):
the early hours of the morning, she would return back
to the hostel where she was staying, and she took
the same route every single evening into the city center.
And this one night she left us and all she
phoned her mom. Her mom and dad used to see
her twice a week on a Wednesday and a weekend,
and they would take all her dirty washing, wash it
(22:54):
all iron it, give it back to her, and do
a swap with the dirty washing. And she was due
to see them, but they had phoned and said, listen, Emma,
we're getting carpet fitted, so maybe we'll come and see
you tomorrow night. And she said, yeah, that's cool, that's fine.
She went off to work that night as normal. They
obviously did not know where she was going what she
was doing. The following day, William's dad said to Margaret,
(23:18):
I've tried phony Emma, and she's not picking up. I
hope she's okay. Margaret said, she'll be fine. Don't worry.
So they tried again, and they tried the next day
and the next day, and nothing. And not only was
she not answering the phone, she hadn't returned to the hostel,
she hadn't gone to the chemist to pick up her prescription.
(23:38):
Nobody had seen her. And Margaret and Willie they had
gone to the police and said, look, our daughter's missing.
And that's that's when they reported her missing a few
days later, and the police at that point checked Emma out,
checked out, you know, and the police files, and they
sat down and they said to Margaret, well, I mean,
(23:59):
you you do know that your daughter frequents the city center,
don't you. And Margaret thought, well, we go shopping and
the city said and she said, well we frequent the
city yeah, And the police said, no, no, no, she
frequents it. She's a prostitute. And that's the moment that,
you know, these parents find out how their daughter has
(24:23):
been has been funding this habit and what she's doing.
And so of course, now not only do they have
the missing daughter, not only do they now know that
she's been working as a prostitute, but put all of
that together, she's also missing. And you know this this
was absolutely horrific on what you know, because there had
been so many murders of women the police which were unsolved. Right,
(24:47):
These were unsolved murders. It wasn't like there was a
murder of a young woman and within a few months
they've got the killers. These killers were out there. They
were unsolved murders.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
You're talking night in what over? How many is the
way over?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
About ten years? Yeah, in the lead up. Yeah, and
Emma was the eighth eighth woman to be murdered. So,
I mean I covered a number of the murders. They
were my first jobs as a journalism with the press
agencies in the national papers, and so against that backdrop,
you know, understandably terrified the police thinking and realizing when
(25:20):
they looked into Emma, this is not someone who goes missing.
And a massive missing person's inquiry was launched and they
you know, there were billboards around the city, they were
missing person posters. They were stopping men in the street,
in the red light area, around the drag have you
seen this girl? Do you know this woman? Are you
(25:42):
a client? Do you use any of the women? Do
you pay for sex with any of the women? You know,
they were just doing everything and Emma was and there's
no polite way to say this. Emma was very busy
in her line of work. She was very popular with
the clients. She had two mobile phones. When the police
took her phones, there were two of them, and she
(26:04):
had dozens and dozens and dozens of contact names and
details in her phones of clients. So the police are
suddenly faced with this mammoth task of where Emma's going,
who she knows, who her friends are, what clients that
she has, regular clients, clients that she has in her phone.
(26:25):
But that's only a handful in comparison to the rest
of them. So they already have hundreds of men to
be looking at that they're aware of. Then there's men
that just turn up in the city and stop and
pick her up. Then there's men that come from out
with the city. Then there's men that come from out
with the country, and they're from down south in England.
So you are talking thousands of men that they are
(26:47):
having to try and track down.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
And broad investigation from the start.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Isn't massive massive.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
When was Emma's body fan there?
Speaker 2 (26:57):
So she goes missing in April, and then five weeks
later there is a dog walker walking in some woods
about an hour from Glasgow. It's about forty six miles
just off the main motorway south between Scotland and England,
about half an hour drive from the motorway. In the
middle of nowhere. If I gave you a map Gary
(27:18):
and said go find this place, you would not find it.
And in the middle of a forest, a dog walker
came across a body. The body was naked, with some
bruising and what looked like a cord or a rope
wrapped around the neck. It was a woman. He called
(27:39):
the police. The police turned up and Emma had a
very distinctive tattoo on her shoulder. So from that and
from other other inquiries, it was the body was identified
to be Hemma cold Well. So that was five weeks
after she'd gone missing, and five weeks of one of
the biggest missing person's inquiries that you could imagine, and
(28:00):
that's where she was found. Strange, very strange location. None
of the other women, and this was what was different.
None of the other women had been murdered, had been
found like this. This was different from the off.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
The others I assume had been left at the scene
or not as far away from where they were working. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
The majority of women found in a car park, found
in a lay by, found in a bus stop, one
beaten to death in her flat, but you know layby's
car parks where they worked.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, and my understanding these the cause of death was
put down to strangulation.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah, I mean, the cause of death was strangulation. That
wasn't revealed for quite some time. In fact, Margaret, the
family weren't old for two years how Emmera died because
it was deemed to be well, you'll understand this specialist knowledge.
So it was never really revealed how she died. But yes,
she'd been strangled and her body it was described as
(28:58):
the deposition site. Right, So everybody from the office like, okay,
so she'd been taken their dead and dumped and that
was that was what we all thought, and the well thought.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah. And now your observation from from the outside looking
at the investigation, you said it was thorough. I picked
up on billboards, posters and all that. It seems like
a lot of resources went into the investigation. What was
what was your assessment before you actually involved yourself in
the investigation, You thought things were running along nicely.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, I mean having covered the previous murders of women,
you know, they were resourced. Well, there was always a
porter cabin put up in the plate and you know,
in the on the drag, there was always a police
port cabin on the drag, and you know the women
were always aware of the police presence and that you know,
(29:49):
there were investigations. This one was, I mean this this
grams and legs. This was a massive investigation and from
the outside looking in, you know, it was it was
well resourced, it was, it was hugely resourced. Very quickly, well,
very quickly, within a few months, I can't remember the
exact time frame, but not long after Emma's bodies found.
(30:13):
You know, within the first two years, they had made arrests.
You know, they had found their suspects and it was
four Turkish men and they had evidence to show that
these they believed the four Turkish men had killed Emma
and deposited her body, kept her body hidden for five
weeks and then deposited her body down in these woods.
(30:35):
And they were arrested and charged and well that's it great,
going to trial. Everybody's happy. You know, this was one
of the successful cases.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
And that's how it would have been looked at publicly
from there, just a structure of an investigation team there,
I'm aware of it. That just make sure we're on
the same page that you have a senior officer with
specialist experience in murder investigation, and then the task force
(31:04):
as we call it here all the investigation term is
comprised of specialist detectives and other detectives brought him from
different different areas like call detectives.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah, so you had the SiO was in place and
he was in charge of the investigation. And then what
they did with they had I think it was called
mutual mutual aid where they brought in police officers from
other police stations and policing areas to come in and
help on the investigation. And that's how big this inquiry was.
(31:33):
I mean, it was absolutely massive. And it was only
when within a very short amount of time, I mean days,
they got hold of Emma's phone. They realized that the
last phone call that Emma's phone had made was to
a Turkish man who she had had been a client
of hers on one previous occasion. Her phone pinged at
(31:57):
the mobile phone mast outside or around the corner from
a Turkish cafe so they were like, Okay, we've got
a Turkish client, We've got a Turkish cafe. And the
Turkish cafe was run by a man who had was
a convicted sex offender, so they had that, and then
they were getting evidence and statements from women who worked
on the street alongside Emma who were saying, oh, yeah, yeah,
(32:19):
we know the cafe, we go there, we have sex
with lots of Turkish men. They're aggressive, they're violent. I've
been raped, I've been attacked. And then they do the
forensics and they find a spot of blood on a
quilt inside the cafe, and so I mean, you can
imagine this is just gold, this is gold dust to
to the to the inquiry, and that's when it takes
(32:43):
it takes a different turn.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
And I think also, if I understand it properly too,
one of the Turkish men left the country that die
after Imma disappeared, or around the same time, to go
and get married.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
And yes, yeah, a police officer, and you find out
he's left the country.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
You'd be looking at. And then the forensic examination, the
spot of blood on the bed, on the bed in
the cafe, I can understand that. And they also had
listening devices in place for a long time.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
So they put listening devices in fairly quickly once they
realized that one of the Turkish men had been a
client and they had left the country and with the
evidence about the cafe, So listening devices and not just
listening devices, but also cameras were put into the cafe.
They were put into people. You know, there were bugs
(33:38):
put into homes, businesses, cars, I mean, the place was
a wash with bugs put in by the police. And
the police was sitting there twenty four to seven listening
to the conversations within this Turkish community in the hope
that they could pick up evidence of these men talking
(33:59):
about what had happen to Emma. The problem is none
of these cops speak Turkish.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
And that was the biggest is a is a problem.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
So they brought in some Turkish speaking officers. And the
problem was these Turkish speaking officers, I mean, we found
out one of them said, well, I mean I've got
a no level in Turkish, if that helps, And one
of the other officers said, well, I mean my Turkish
is not that great. But you know, these were the
translators and the interpreters who were being relied upon and Also,
(34:29):
you've got to remember the bugs. They're probably much better nowadays,
but back in two thousand and five and six and seven,
you know, technology wasn't as.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Good cafe, and I could imagine it'd be very hard
to decipher exactly what's being said, why this was all
going on. There was other information coming in the packer,
and I just want to hold on to that information
because I want to talk about that later. But we'll
just explore this line with the Turkish Men. So look,
(35:00):
from the outside, the police have got their suspects. It
fits nicely with the information they've got. They've been charged.
Everyone sort of steps back, wait for it to come
to trial. Fill apart at the trial. But didn't it
with the the translations, Yeah, wells mistranslated and misinterpreted.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
I mean, Gary, if I ever get to the bottom
of the translations, that will be a good day. Basically,
they were waiting. They were listening for so long and
listening to try and hear specialist knowledge, something that only
the killer or the killers could know. And then one
day they hear apparently a conversation where one of the
(35:42):
Turkish Men says, oh, yes, the girl, we killed her.
Khalil killed her. And he hid her clothes in the
bushes by the casino. Right now, to the listening police,
you're like, okay, well, if we go to those bushes
and we find Emma's clothes in the bushes by the casino,
that specialist knowledge, only they could know, only the kill
(36:05):
or killers could know. Brilliant slam dunk. So they go
to the bushes and they find a T shirt and
they find a key ring, and it's a horse shoe keyring.
Now remember I told you Emma loved horses. Yeah, she
worked dinner stables. She was horse obsessed. And they found
a black T shirt. Now the black T shirt would
(36:25):
was I mean it was massive, right, it was massive,
and I believe they found a cardigan. I mean, none
of the clothing was ever proved forensically to be Emma's
number one no forensic link. Secondly, Emma hadn't been wearing
those items when she was last seen on CCTV leaving
the hostel that day, so she hadn't been wearing them,
(36:48):
and they never were able to link the horseshoe keyring
to Emma. Despite this, this is specialist knowledge. The four
Turkish men are arrested and they're charged and it goes
heads to trial. I mean they're remanded, they're in prison.
I mean they're in Barliny, the notorious BARLINI. If you
have committed a crime and you're in this prison, that's tough.
(37:10):
If you have done nothing and you're in for the
merger of you know, of a young woman, you know,
you don't imagine. And then one of the lawyers says, well,
I want to get the translations checked and let's just
see whether it does say yeah. So they get them
checked and not only was what was said not exactly said,
(37:34):
but some of the translations didn't exist at all. It
just was not said. So the case collapses. All four
men are released and that's it. Case goes cold. And
so you have four men who've spent time remanded for
a brutal murder who are now suddenly told well, that's it,
off you go. They're not told you didn't do it,
(37:55):
no charges against you. There, You're being released. Were still
looking into it, right.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Look, I don't know enough about the investigation to comment
on what causes causes this, but to me, looking from
the outside, it seems like a case of group think
where the you've got a case theory and you're making
the evidence what skinny the evidence it was mets the
(38:21):
case case theory. But thoughts well, I.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Mean, look, I've spoken you can imagine I've spoken to
many officers. I had to wait until many of the
officers had retired before I could. They would, you know,
dare to speak to me because they were terrified. And
you know, the one thing keeps coming back is, look,
this was driven by ego. This is what they say.
This was driven by you know, wanting to not just
(38:46):
catch a killer, but they believe that this community. Look,
it's not a community cafe. They it was kind of
I describe it in the podcast as park cafe, park
gang heart. I mean, it was horrible. Things happened in
this cafe, utterly horrible things happened in this cafe to many,
many women, and I think and there were rumors about
what they were going to get was their trafficking, was
(39:08):
their drugs, There were weapons, and it just it just
got out of control. I mean, they spent four million
on this.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
I'm looking at the way it was described and I
can only imagine the resourcing that went into it. But
were satisfied based on the evidence that was presented at
the core that got fri and they at the court
they were acquitted. When did you become involved from a
working point of view to look at the investigation? Was
that after the acquittal?
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Yeah, so that was in two thousand and seven. Right,
the case gets thrown out of court, it collapses, it
goes cold. Then in twenty fifteen, it's the tenth anniversary
of Emma's disappearance and murder and a Sunday newspaper an
anniversary piece, and they're the front page of this newspaper,
(40:03):
I think it was called the Forgotten Suspect, and they
have a picture of a man and they name him
and he's called the Ian Packer, and they say this
man was interviewed by police as part of the inquiry
and they had managed to get hold of some of
his statements that had given to police at the time,
and in the statements he talks about having gone to
a remote wooded location with a number of women, including Emma.
(40:27):
And they name this man. I mean, it was very
very brave of them to do this, but they name
this man and say, look, you know, surely he's a
potential suspect, and surely you know if this case is
cold and it wasn't the turkish Men. It clearly wasn't
the turkish Men. Look at this guy. And so that
was in twenty fifteen, and the case just kind of
nothing happens. Right, the police said immediately we are going
(40:51):
to look at this investigation again. But what they actually
did was decide they were more interested, they were more
interested in trying to track down who them all was
because they believed there was a leak in the merging
inquiry to the to the Sunday Mail journalists, rather than
actually go after the killer of them.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Stop there saying I always find that, Sorry, I always
just find that amazing. I just wanted to jump in
on that bit that I've seen that time and time again,
more if it goes into finding it where information has
leaked from, if it's critical of police or harmed police,
than the actual investigations. Sorry, I just had to jump
in there because I say, and it resonates with.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
You, yeah, exactly. And what they did was they ended
up carrying out unlawful surveillance on the journalists, right, and
some retired cops to try and find out who the
leak was. Now, there was no leak, right, there was
no leak at all the information had clearly come from
(41:53):
out with the police. So anyway, this made the headlines
and that was the story rather than well, who actually
killed Emma Coldwell? So that's twenty fifteen, and then it
just goes quiet. And then I did an investigation in
twenty eighteen where I investigated the police, pointed fingers at
the police for a number of botched investigations that had
(42:15):
been carried out that were appalling. And then about two
weeks after we broadcast, I received a letter out of
the blue, like nobody receives letters nowadays, do we. And
I remember getting this letter with a stamp on it
and hand of written, and I'm just being all excited,
going all right, great a letter. And I only get
letters like that from prisoners. Prisoners writes me all the
(42:35):
time because of my job. And I was like, all right, okay, fine,
but it's got a stamp on it, and I'll have
a look. And I open this letter and this letter
is there's a letter in there to the Chief Constable
from a man called Ian Packer saying I'm i in Packer.
I was questioned as part of the Mmacldorn investigation, and
(42:56):
I want to know what information you have on your
system about me, and I'm sending a copy of this
letter to the journalist Sam Poling and just to let
you know. Right, So I thought, okay, this is very odd.
Ian Packer. I know that name, Ian Packer. How do
I know this name? I mean, honestly, Gary, It wasn't
like I opened it and went shit. I opened it
(43:17):
and went I know that name from somewhere. And of
course it was Ian Packer. And we'd mentioned him in
the documentary that I'd just done. And I thought, all right, okay,
because i'd been looking into the unlawful surveillance and that
kind of watched the investigation. So I wrote a letter
back to Ian Packer and just said, Hien, thanks very
much for your letter. Bit confused as to why you've
(43:39):
sent me this, but why don't we meet up for
a coffee and here's my email address? And he emailed
back and said, yeah, but it has to be off
the record. I want your definition of off the record,
and he was insistent, I want your definition. So I
told him what my definition was of off the record
and the kind of moral code by which we journ
(44:01):
this work, and he said, okay, final, let's meet for
a coffee. And so that was early twenty eighteen and
I went and met Ian Packer for a coffee. He
came with his girlfriend. Yeah, Yeah, he was strange. He
(44:21):
was very nervous, he was very anxious. I've never been
in the presence of somebody, and I've said this to
a few people, I've never been in the presence of
somebody who has been so angry, constantly in his demeanor
and his just this seething rage that would sit underneath.
(44:42):
And he would stare at me, and I used to say, look,
are you're okay meeting for this coffee, and he'd be like, oh, yep, yep, yep,
and snap out of it. And then slowly his face
would sink back to this kind of just anger underneath.
And he had such a powerful build. Remember looking at him,
just thinking strange, But he was open. He said to me, look,
(45:04):
I was questioned by the police on a number of occasions.
They at one point thought I did it, and I
didn't do it. And you know the consequences of being
questioned by the police, and the consequences of the twenty
fifteen newspaper article where it pointed the finger. It means
that I was a suspect. It's ruined my life. I've
lost my business. People point fingers at me in the street,
(45:26):
they call me murderer. And this has destroyed me. And I,
you know, I want compensation, and I want to find
out what the police have gotten me, and I'd like
your help. And I said, well, okay, Well I don't
know anything about the case. I mean, and I didn't.
I knew what the public had read. And I said, okay,
And I remember his girlfriend. I mean, you know, Gary,
(45:49):
you will probably, I think, be the same. It's very
often not the person the target that you're interested in.
It's who they surround themselves with that gives you the
most clique.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
And his girlfriend was articulate, intelligent, forthright, like a dog
with a bone. And she said, listen, I have asked Ian,
did you kill Emma? And I would know if he did,
you know, I would know. I have never let this
drop and I know he didn't, and that's why I'm
standing by him. And you know, we want your help.
(46:22):
So that was the first of many meetings between myself
and Ian Packer, and I said to him, all right, well,
I'll look into the investigation like I'll look into the
police investigation, because he said, look, the investigation was investigation
was corrupt, the investigation was wrong, and they targeted me
and definitely wasn't me, and it was definitely the turkishman,
(46:44):
you know. And I didn't know anything about the Turkish case.
So I was like, all right, okay, well fine, because
look Gary, and you will know this again as well.
To arrest and charge one wrong man is a mistake.
Right to arrest and charge four wrong men, that does
not happen. It has not happened for many, many years.
(47:07):
You know, we're talking Guildford for Birmingham, six.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
To other cases that come to mind, like grab a
group like that.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Yeah, so'ting. I'm sitting with this guy who has approached me,
who has been open and honest to me, and said,
I was questioned, I yes, I knew Emma. I you know, yes,
I used em I paid it for sex, I used prostitutes.
Ask me anything you like, and I will tell you
the truth, anything about that life, anything about the police
(47:38):
investigation where I'm concerned, and I will answer your questions.
But you need to look into the case. And I said, okay, fine,
would you if I do look into the case and
bearing in mind, this is not just at the first meeting.
This is meeting after meeting, after meeting. Yeah, and you
know I would sit there and spend hours with them,
hours with him. You know, I'm into motorbikes and he's
into motorbikes. So we would go farf an hour talking
(48:00):
about motorbikes or dogs and you know his dog, and
you know, we talk about stuff, and you know, it'd
text and they've gone holiday in text, and you know
we're not friends, but you know, he's a good contact
at that point. And so I said, okay, I'll look
into the case. And eventually I said to look right,
because I'm thinking it must be the Turkish men and
(48:23):
the police they had it right, because they're not going
to get it wrong, are they for it?
Speaker 1 (48:26):
And they're not throwing the hands up sighing, oh we
got it wrong.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
We're looking for someone else still exactly exactly. And here's
this guy. This is great television, isn't it. So I've
got this guy, this, this this victim almost of a
miscarriage of justice, this victim of a set of the
most unfortunate coincidences, been to the same words, well, is
it the same words? We didn't even know the same words,
you know, any new Emma and he liked them and
(48:51):
all these things. But you know, Emma was very popular
in her line of work. She had lots of clients.
So I said, I'll look into the case. Would you
do an interview and I will then go away and
investigate everything and get you back and show you what
I've got. In my mind thinking well, I'm going to
(49:11):
be confronting him with okay, we've discovered the police said this,
and the police did that, you know so and he
said absolutely, Sam, whatever it's going to take, that's that's
what I'll do. And I thought, well, this is great.
So I started looking into it and then I go
on holiday by coincidence, to Turkey. And it's while I'm
(49:32):
in Turkey I get a phone call from someone i'd
never spoken to before. I didn't know him. I will
not name him. And he said, I understand you're looking
into him a coldwell case. I said that's right, I am.
And he said to someone you need to talk to
as a journalist. So and his name's Aim and O'Connor.
So I said, well, I'm in Turkey, I'll fly back tomorrow.
(49:53):
Phone and went on Monday. So I phoned this journalist
who I knew, I knew of very good journalists, and
I said, A and Sam, I'm looking to the mc
coldwell case. And he said, oh right, okay, what you're
doing about it? And I said, oh, well, I'm going
to show that. You know, it was a total, you know,
total bad investigation, and they you know, they had the
right people and they let them go. And there was
(50:15):
I remember, there was this silence and he said, Sam,
who do you think killed Emma? And I said, well,
what Wasn't it the Turkish men? And he said there
was the Ian packer And he said, I can, I can.
(50:38):
I can show you evidence which will help you with that.
And so, to cut a very long story short, we
met up and he showed me evidence which was the
same evidence that the Sunday Mail had had, and these
were relating to the statements that the impacker had given.
(51:00):
When I read through the statements, which I'd never seen before,
I started to notice things which I hadn't noticed before.
The women that he was seeing, the women he was
paying sex for, how he would attack them. They would describe.
Because I managed to find and get information from women
(51:22):
at the time, who had been attacked. They would describe
certain jewelry that this man would wear. When I met
with him, he wore the same jewelry. And I started
to look into the location of where Packer said that
he took women, and it was the exact same location
where Emma's body was found. So you started to have
(51:44):
this jigsaw that was being put together in my head.
And I'll never forget sitting there looking at this staff
and reading about his jewelry and reading about the location,
and reading about things that he was describing to the police.
I knew because I'd spoken to the women involved, So
I had all the pieces of the jigsaw at that point,
(52:07):
and I just remember sitting there in utter disbelief, thinking, Okay,
you have been lying to me this whole time, this
whole time, and I'm not someone who you can lie
too easily. Like I mean, if you tell me you
didn't take the last biscuit, Gary, I promise you I
will hunt you down until I can prove you took
(52:30):
the last biscuit, right, And you're lying, And he had been.
Look I knew that he wasn't going to be telling
me the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But
the fact he had come to me, the fact he
was being open and approachable, the fact he was just
constantly wanting this contact, And I just slowly began to
realize that not only had he there was an attack
(52:57):
on Emma behind some billboards and glass, actually about a
couple of hundred yards where I'm sitting today, and she
had been raped by a man and it was described,
his vom was described and everything. So I suddenly realized,
putting the jigsaw together, it was Ian Packer who had
raped Emma in before she goes missing, in the months
before she goes missing. I then realized that this man
(53:20):
is also responsible for a number of rapes of women.
I then realize he's responsible for a number of abductions
of women. I then realize he's responsible for a number
of women being taken to a remote wooded location which
sounded very similar to the one where Emma's body was found.
And then I discover that he had taken Emma to
(53:42):
those very same woods on six occasions prior to her murder. So,
in a split moment, I realized that the man that
I've been meeting for months is a rapist, a violent,
aggressive man who has raped and murdered Emma Caldwell. And
(54:09):
that's a moment that you don't forget. And then remember,
I still have to meet this.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
Man, Okay, well you.
Speaker 2 (54:17):
Still yeah, I've still got to interview him, and I've
still got to go in and do a full investigation.
And part of part of the evidence that I was
finding was was after we did the first interview. So
when I did the first interview, I knew it was
likely that he had killed Emma. Not one hundred percent,
but most likely. I knew about some of the attacks.
(54:40):
I didn't know everything. So I did the first interview
with him and he and that interview was about two
and a half hours long, I think, and I put
everything to him. Look, I've seen statements. You told the
police this. Did you know Emma? Had you been to
the woods? No, you'd never been to the woods. Okay,
well you know you told the police that you had.
Oh well, they bullied you. Okay, fine, And the story
that he came out with I was being bullied by
(55:01):
the police. Yes, but mister Packer, you know you actually
took the police down to the woods where you took
all the women, including Emma, and it was the deposition side. Oh, well,
that was just you know, the police took me there.
I never took them. It's coincidence. And this back and
forth for two and a half hours, and he went
from being a victim, you know, crying, to being angry,
(55:26):
to being you know, empathetic to Emma, and to being
frustrated with how it's affected is life. I mean, every
emotion in that interview from him, But it wasn't him.
He didn't do it. It was not me. I was not
their end of And at the end of that interview,
I said, look, I'm going to go away and investigate
(55:47):
all of this, everything that you've told me, and I'm
going to get you back for a second interview if
that's okay, and I'll put everything i've found to you.
And he says, no problem. And I said, if I
have to point the finger at you, I will point
the finger at you. And he says, fair news, no problem.
And that was it. And that's when I started to
really look into it. And that was when I started
(56:08):
to realize the extent of who he was and what
he had done.
Speaker 1 (56:11):
Okay, it's quite frightening all the information that was available
there that yeah, all of it, I say it, but yeah,
the proper white wasn't wasn't placed on it. You did
the second interview. The second interview was played on the documentary.
I believe in after that that generated other people coming
(56:31):
forward that resulted in.
Speaker 2 (56:34):
Ye, sorry, Well, so what we did was we then
at this point we were we were making a documentary
this so this interview with Ian Packer was for a
documentary and in the documentary. So we got him back
for the second interview. And obviously you've got to remember,
you got to imagine he knew nothing about what was
coming his way for that second interview at all. He
(56:57):
had been away on holiday. I got on Christmas Day
saying Merry Christmas, sweetie, I hope you get all you
wish fun. I started to realize there was a bit
of a fascination that he had with me, and from
the text from from from that kind of level of contact,
and all while uncomfortable, thinking right, okay, and as soon
(57:17):
as he gets back, I've got to do this confrontation,
get him back for the second interview. And I meet
him outside the building and and I says, are you okay?
And he says, yeah, I'm so excited. I can't wait
to hear what you found out. Take him into the room,
sit him down, and I just said, you know, I
said i'd get get you back and if I was
(57:38):
going to point the finger, and he said, that's absolutely fine.
I said, you're not. You've not been telling me the truth.
I think you're a violent man. I think you're a
sexually violent man. And I think you're a rapist. And
I think you killed Emma. And in that moment you
see his face, the oxygen just leaves.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
The room, the drop the pretense.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
It's it's horrific. I mean, it was horrific. I remember
the used of saying to me beforehand, right, you know,
we'll need to make sure that you know he's he's
Let's not use radio mic. Let's use a line mic
so that if he tries to run away like he's tight,
he's tied to the equipment, all this stuff. And I said,
I'm telling you now, this man is not leaving. He
(58:16):
will not leave. He will stay. I know him. He
will stay to the bitter end. And Gary, he would
not leave. He got up at the end, he got up,
he went to talk away, comes in, he sits back down,
gets up, walks away, comes in six backs, oh, Sam,
I can't believe you've done this to me, and I
can't you know that's right? And at one point, after
(58:36):
I've accused him of everything, he kind of sits down
and he leans forward and he says, does this meme?
Will no longer be in touch?
Speaker 1 (58:47):
I get a sense of what you're going through there.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
I said, well, no, we will no longer be in touch.
I will be in touch to let you know when
the program's going out buzz than that now and anyway,
eventually we had to get a security guy to escort
him out the building because he just wouldn't leave. And
so that was the documentary. So that was the first
documentary called Who Killed Emma that was broadcast, and that
was broadcast on the Wednesday, on the Wednesday night, and
(59:13):
on the Friday, he was arrested and the film had
to come down. But he was not arrested for murder
or any of the offenses which we had exposed him for.
He was arrested because he had attacked his girlfriend, the
one that I had been meeting with him, and unbeknown
to me, throughout the entire time I was meeting them,
he was being violent behind closed doors with her and
(59:36):
then had a fall out about the first interview that
had done with me and he had throttled her and
he was arrested in charge. So the film came down.
It was only up for forty eight hours, and then
we had the podcast which we worked on and so,
you know, long story short, once that case went through court,
(59:56):
we were allowed to put the documentary in the podcast
back up the first eight episodes, and that was when
it just took off because women were listening to this
and going, hold on, that's the man that attacked me.
That's a man who raped me. And I started to
get calls and texts and emails from women saying he
did that to me. I know that man he raped me,
(01:00:19):
and I'm having to send them to the police.
Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
It was taken down because he was charged with the
assault of his partner, which I think he was inside
for two years. After that court meta finalize, that's when
the documentary in the podcast could air again. Is that yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
So it could air again, Yeah, because the case he
was sentenced to two years. He served one year and
as soon as he was released then we were able
to put them back up because the case was no
longer active, and we put them back up, and we
just sat thinking, oh, well that's okay, because they're going
to arrest him now for the merger and for all
these rapes and sexual assaults. I mean, he'd been abducting
(01:00:59):
women and nothing happened.
Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
That you were in undicted with more information coming in
that you were referring to the place, the information from
other women that are so m of.
Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
The Yeah, so you're in this situation Gary, where as
a journalist, you just want to go, Okay, tell me
the story. What happened. You know, how did this happen,
When did this happen? What did he do? But you know,
you have a duty of care to these women. You
have a duty of care to Emma's family who are
seeking justice. You have a duty of care to the
police investigation. And so the right thing to do was
(01:01:34):
to say, I would love your story, but it's more
important you go to the police and I will put
you in touch with the officers involved. And some of
the women I never found out whether they did or
not until I saw the charge sheet. I was like, God,
you went, you did it, well done. You know I
would not find out other women I drove them to
(01:01:54):
the police station. One woman I took to the police station.
She wouldn't give her a statement unless I sat in
the room with her. You know, it was just difficult.
Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
I can imagine how difficult you are really you're embedded
in the whole investigation. Look, it's not giving away. We
know the end result of it. He was convicted the trial.
I will talk about that in the second part, but
I'd like to finish the podcast here and say, look,
he got convicted and we all lived happily ever after.
(01:02:27):
But what has blown me away, disappointed me was the
information that the investigators, the people leading the investigation, had
on the Packer during the course of the investigation, when
the whole Turkish line of inquiry was being followed up,
and then the fiasco at caught with that, and the
(01:02:47):
impact that has had on so many people, and the
way the information came to you. And I was listening
and it was sort of the last four parts of
the podcast, so I'm thinking, Okay, well, I've seen this
an interesting investigation, but from a homicide detectives point of view,
I was just so disappointed with some of the things
(01:03:10):
that were missed in that investigation. And I think we
talked before We're miked up that there might be a
public inquiry. There's been calls for a public inquiry. These
type of things just shouldn't happen.
Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
No, I mean there will be a public inquiry. I'm sure. Well,
they've said there will be a public inquiry. I think
if the story finished there, it's bad enough. But what
we then went on to discover, it's just worse than
you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
And the people's lives and the further victims, all sorts
of things. But we'll talk about that when we get
back to part two. So we'll just have a short
break
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective sy aside of life the average persons never exposed to.
I spent thirty four years as a cop. For twenty
five of those years I was catching killers. That's what
I did for a living. I was a homicide detective.
I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking
the public into the world in which I operated. The
(00:23):
guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from
all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest,
just like the people I talked to. Some of the
content and language might be confronting. That's because no one
who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join
me now as I take you into this world. Today,
(00:46):
I had an interesting conversation with investigative journalist Sam Poling,
whose work helped put a murderer behind bars. Sam interviewed
killer Ian Packer, which led to his eventual arrest and
was later convicted the murder of twenty seven year old
Emma Caldwell. Joining us today from Scotland, Sam took us
right through the case, highlighting where the investigation went wrong
(01:09):
and how her interview played a major role in locking
up a predator. Just a warning up front, some of
the things we discuss here will be confronting. A young
woman's life was taken and many other women's lives were
destroyed by the actions of this serial predator. Packer was
also charged with fences against twenty two women who had
(01:29):
been raped or assulted. We also talked about how investigations
can go wrong and the role the media play in
bringing offenders to justice by making police accountable for their actions.
Sam Poling, Welcome to our Catch Killers. Thank you, it's
great to have you on. And a friend of mine,
(01:51):
a person that I got to know very well, Steve Kio,
contacted me and said, hey, you've got to speak to
this lady the work that she's done. So that got
me curious, and that led me to listening to your
podcast and looking at a bit of the work that
you've done and the podcast I'm referring to a third
in part who Killed Emma. I found it fascinating, so
(02:15):
I'm really pleased we've got you here to have a
chat about it today.
Speaker 2 (02:18):
Well, thank you for inviting me, and I'm glad you're
at the time to listen to it.
Speaker 1 (02:22):
Yeah, well, I started listening to it and you had
me hooked. So that's how I've spent last couple of
a couple of days. When you first started the investigation
into Emma Caldwell, did you have any idea how far
it would take you down the rabbit hole? Oh?
Speaker 2 (02:36):
No, I mean, you know, I have a history with
investigating or looking into a number of murders of young
women who'd worked as prostitutes prior. I mean, my very
first job, and we can talk about that was the
murder of a young woman who had been working as
a prostitute. So over the years I'd covered a number
of cases. And then when Emma had been murdered, I
(02:58):
was working for the BBC at the time, so I
was I didn't cover it, I didn't investigate it. So
then when I started this investigation, I just thought, Okay,
it's just going to be another documentary, another investigation. I
never ever could have predicted that what happened would happen.
(03:20):
I never thought in a million years I would find
myself in the position that I found myself in. And
as it slowly unfolded, and I think, I hope you've
got a sense from the podcast that I genuinely did
not know who the killer was, where the killer was,
where we should be looking. I didn't know anything, and
(03:41):
so as it slowly came to like, yeah, it was
as much a shocked for me as it was for
those for those watching on I think.
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Well, it's a new medium, the podcast world looking at
true crime, and it really is a game change, or
isn't it. Because you've worked in media a long time.
I've worked in place a long time, but now delving
into the media side of things, and there was a
narrative that media would often just support the place, like
(04:09):
you had your contacts in the media, and the place
would feed the information. The media report the positive news stories.
But this new form of journalism, it's a completely different world,
isn't it.
Speaker 2 (04:21):
Oh, it's a completely different world. And you know, I
think once upon a time there was a world in
which the police and the media worked together and worked
well together. I think it's fair to say that the
relationship we used to have as journalists with the police.
I mean, I've been doing this a long time. I've
had incredible relations relationships with the police throughout my career.
(04:44):
But it has changed, and as you say, the landscape's
changed and we don't have the same friendly, cozy relationship
that we used to have. You know, we used to
have cop contacts. My film was full of cop contacts. Now,
if you even talk to an officer, they have to
go and report, or I've had a conversation with the journalists,
or I've got enter as a journalist, And so everything
has changed and they are under The police are under
so much more scrutiny than ever before, I think, and
(05:08):
so they're very very cautious about who they talk to,
what they say, how they say it, how far they
go with what they're saying, and the information they're passing on.
So I think that has put a barrier between the
police and journalists considerably. What that has done, how is
basically the landscape I think has kind of opened up
(05:29):
a little bit more for them, for the journalists to
be a lot more investigative, put the police work into
a lot more scrutiny because they don't have that cozy
relationship anymore. And I think podcasts are a fantastic platform
to allow you to go in depth into an investigation.
(05:49):
You're not up against the time limit, you're not up
against an episode limit, you're not against anything other than
your own self in terms of how far you can
push something. So I think the landscape has changed, and
I think it's changed for the better, despite the kind
of loss of coziness, if you like, between the media
and the police. We're no longer you know. I think
(06:10):
you're right, you know. I think journalists did used to
get feder lined by the police, and then they would
pursue that line, and very often it wasn't questioned. It
was well, they're the police, and so what they're telling
us must be true, and now we go, okay, well
they're the police, and what they're telling us now needs
to be questioned, and that's what we do.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Well, your experienced that in your field in the media
and your contacts of the police. The large part of
my career in policing, I saw that connection with journalism
and it didn't sit well with me because the narrative
could be controlled. From the place point of view, the
police would simply say that the matter's been looked at,
(06:47):
there's an investigation. We call them strike forces. You might
call them something different over where you are, but a
strike force has been informed. I knew that the strike
force might consist of one person the narrative was never
never questioned. So I think it's a step in the
right direction. And I'm yeah, I'm still very proud police.
It's not me beating up on that on PLAE. I
(07:10):
just think scrutinyeds a good thing and I think it
makes us lift lift their game. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (07:15):
And but you know, the police, you know, you guys
have used us for years, right and understandably so, and
very often rightly so, because you want to put some
information out there, you want to pursue a line of
inquiry that you need media attention on, or perhaps you
know it's to help with an investigation, to raise the
(07:36):
profile of an investigation. So I understand all that, and
now that that has shifted a little bit, and I
think US journalists are not prepared to be used as
to as great an extent as we were before. I
just I think the relationship with the balance has changed
a little bit.
Speaker 1 (07:52):
Yeah, well, I agree, And I know now the what
you talked of, the reluctance of place and moment the
journalist speaks to them, they ever goes into panic made.
But look, I think it's a good thing. And if
the end result is what happened in the mc coldwell case.
No one can argue the benefits of it, certainly with
cold cases or unsolved cases that it's been left in
(08:15):
the hands of place it hasn't got a result. I
think it's beneficial to have that type of discussion and
scrutiny on the investigation.
Speaker 2 (08:23):
Yeah, I mean, I do. I mean I was. We
were under a lot of pressure from the police not
to broadcast, right, We had phone calls from the police
begging us not to broadcast because the investigation was live,
or the investigation was at a sensitive point, or the
investigation was at a crucial point. Well, the fact is
(08:46):
this has been a cold case for a long time.
There had been many many years when action could have
been taken the information was there, and we will go
on to talk about what information was there. But you know,
you're right, there is a response ability that we all
have to make sure that no investigation is hindered. But
there comes a point, I think as journalists where you
(09:07):
have to sit down, look at it from a moral perspective,
look at it from the legal perspective, and then just
think what's the right thing to do in this case.
And in this situation, the right thing was to broadcast.
But it wasn't an easy decision, and I faced and
we all face a lot of criticism from some quarters
(09:28):
for proceeding to broadcast and proceeding to broadcast the interviews
that we broadcast, which eventually and ultimately led to the
conviction of a killer.
Speaker 1 (09:41):
Yeah, and that you can argue with the results of
that way and in hiding behind that it's a live investigation,
and that it might cut it in the first week
or so. But when you're talking a meato that's been
running as long as Emma's case head, surely it's been official.
But look, first, investigative journalism, how did you get into it?
(10:02):
And what was it that drove you to that type
of work.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
Oh, I just wanted to be a journalist, That's all
I ever wanted to be. I think I got my
first typewriter when I was eight, and I used to
sit and write little stories in my bedroom. And then
as I grew up. There were two journalists that I
don't know if you'd have well, Roger Cook the Cook Report,
who was one of the best investigative journalists that existed
(10:28):
in the world for me, and every episode of his
show he was going after the bad guys anywhere around
the world, and he got into scrapes and all sorts
of things, and he always got the guy. He always
got the bad guy, and I just used to think, Oh,
I want to be him. And then there was a
woman journalist. She was the foreign correspondent for the BBC,
k Ad, and I used to watch her and think,
(10:49):
you are incredible, and I couldn't make my mind up
which one I wanted to because I knew I was
going to be one of them. And I thought, well,
I'm going to be kat Ad. She's amazing. And then
I used to phone up people at the BBC when
I was like in my early teens and say, how
do I get your job? What do I have to do?
(11:12):
And a couple of people gave me some great advice,
and I would give the same advice to anybody else.
They said, go and be a newspaper reporter, because newspaper
reporters are the best journalists in the world, because you
have to work twice as hard on your own and
just I guess it's like being a cop, where you
work through the ranks. And I was told, work your
way through the ranks and then you'll make it. And
(11:34):
I was like, Okay, well that's what I'm going to do.
And I ended up going going through newspapers, local newspapers,
regional newspapers. Then I joined the National Press and worked
for press agencies and that's the toughest gig you will
ever ever have as a journalist. And then I joined
the BBC and I came across the story and I
(11:55):
went to my bosses and said, I've got this great,
great story and I think it could be a great
investigation done one before, and they gave me. They gave
me the opportunity to do it, and that was it.
I was hooked, and so I didn't become Kad Roger Cook.
So yeah, I kind of followed my dream a little
bit that way.
Speaker 1 (12:14):
Well, I agree with what you say about the print
journalists working in the newspaper and a lot of journalists
that I know and look up to and greatly respect.
They always talk about the time in the original paper
reporting on cattle prices and great breakthrough stories like that,
But that's where they learned their trade.
Speaker 2 (12:33):
It would be like somebody going in as a cop
to you know, a chief superintendent level who have not
you know, walked the walk. And I have literally worked
every single rank there is as a journalist. And yeah,
and I'm so grateful that I have because it makes
the difference.
Speaker 1 (12:51):
Well, it's paid off in the work that you do,
and you've got a great body of work. And I
think even a couple of awards came your way in
the form of Beth the rewards which are pretty impressive.
Speaker 2 (13:03):
Six six buffters.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
You need to update, update the records on you. I've
only got three here.
Speaker 2 (13:09):
Oh really get that updated? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Well, congratulations. I just wanted people to get a sense
of who you were because the work that you did
on the Emma cardwell, I'm sure it came at a
cost to you, and we'll talk talk about that. Let's
start talking about that particular case. So can you just
tell us, give us a sense and whenever and coming
from the police and then in the media and talking
about these crimes. I always make a point of not
(13:36):
forgetting the victims. You know, a murder has a lot
of different layers, but it's someone's life that has been taken.
So who is Emma Emma Caudwell, can you describe her
to us?
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Yeah? So, I mean it is so important to keep
the victim at the center of this. And I think
all too often, especially in the world of true crime podcasts, now,
that it's all about sensational storytelling and forgetting about the victim.
The victim is the center of everything. Emma was a
twenty seven year old woman. She grew up in the
(14:08):
same village that I lived. I didn't know her. She
came from a really nice family, really nice family. Mom
and dad ran a pub. She had an older sister,
she had a brother. She loved horses. She would go
and help out at the stables when she could, go
riding when she could. They had a normal, happy family life.
(14:31):
They lived on the outskirts of Glasgow, about half an
hour away from the city of Glasgow. And she was
just I mean, I've spoken to school friends who went
to school with her. She was lovely, she was funny,
she was cheeky. If she didn't like a particular teacher
in a class, she would just go into a different classroom.
And she got away with everything because she was just
(14:51):
a nice girl, you know. And then one day her sister,
who'd left home, came back and told Emma's mum and dad,
Margaret and Willie, that she had been diagnosed with cancer.
She had non Hodgkins lymphoma, and she went through treatment.
She battled hard for a couple of years, and then sadly, Karen,
(15:15):
Emma's sister, died and Emma was really really close to Karen.
I mean they had a great, typical sister relationship. But
you know, Karen was the one that she would go
to with problems and chat and boy talk and stuff,
and Emma just Emma's world collapsed. I mean she lost
she lost everything in that moment. And she was working
at stables at the time, and grief was just something
(15:40):
that she she couldn't deal with. And her boyfriend, who
used to go along to the stables, just said to
her one day, you know, I've got something that can
can help you with your grief, and that was heroin.
And and so he was the person who gave Emma
her first taste of heroine and it numbed the pain.
(16:05):
And I guess you've heard this story a million times
from people. She became addicted, and she moved to Glasgow
to be close to the boyfriend. Her addiction grew, the
relationship didn't last, and so she was left with, you know,
no relationship, a broken heart, and a heroin addiction. And
(16:28):
of course heroin addiction is expensive, incredibly expensive, and so
she needed a way of funding that addiction, and she
turned to prostitution. This was not a world that Emma nu.
This is the thing when I mean, I know, I've
looked at there were a number of murders in Glasgow
(16:50):
of young women who were prostitutes. There were eight in all.
Emma was the eighth woman to be murdered. And the
story is very much the same. You know, the women
come from broken homes or broken families. They go into
the care system, they leave the care system with no support,
They end up with a drug habit. They need to
fund the drug habits, so they turn to prostitution. They
(17:12):
need the drugs to numb the pain of what they're
having to do. They need to fund that bigger habit,
so then it's more prostitution, and so this cycle just
goes on and on and on. This was not Emma.
Emma wasn't in the care system. She had an incredible family.
They did not know about her addiction. They didn't know
what she was doing to fund it. They only found out, well,
(17:33):
they found out about the addiction when Emma realized herself
that she was in trouble, and she had been in
bed for a couple of days poorly, and she went
downstairs and she said to Margaret, her mum. She said, look, mom,
I've got something to tell you and dad, and I
think I'm addicted to drugs. And they didn't know anything
about drugs. I mean, Margaret's told me so many times.
We didn't have a clue. And Margaret said, well, what
(17:57):
drugs and Emma said, well, it's heroine. Knew nothing about her.
So they bundled her up in jackets and drove her
to accident an emergency and said can you give us something?
And you know, the naivety in that moment for me
is heartbreaking, because they really knew nothing about about this world.
And the doctor just kind of shook her head and said,
(18:20):
there's there's nothing we can do. Emma moved out of
the family home and was living up in a women's
hostel and she was she was working as a prostitute.
And it was only when Emma went missing that they
found out what she'd been doing. And I remember Margaret
said that Willie, Emma's dad, when he found out, had
(18:40):
turned around and said, you know it was very typical
of Emma to choose a way of funding her habit
that only harmed herself. You know, she didn't go she
didn't turn to crime.
Speaker 1 (18:52):
Yeah, that it was saying I heard heard that mentioned
in the in the podcast and the sort of a
reflection of the type of girl that Emma was. And
that's that's her father's take on it. He is a
sad story, said, story that happens happens too often often
in that environment, and as a working girl on the
(19:14):
streets of Glasgow, I would imagine it was a pretty
uh yeah, they were very vulnerable in that in that circumstance.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Look, I mean everybody's I think most people around the
world will have heard of Glasgow. It is an incredibly vibrant, friendly,
amazing city, always has been. But it's also got a
side to it that's violent. I mean it was the
murder capital of Europe I think at one point, and
you know, an incredibly violent place and especially for these women,
(19:46):
and they would go out at night. I mean the
women that I've spoken to have said, you know, I've
said to them, you know, have you were you ever attacked?
And they're like, was I ever not attacked?
Speaker 1 (19:57):
You?
Speaker 2 (19:57):
Know, women would keep books as to who raped them,
not so that they could avoid that person that next time,
but so that they knew what they would be in
for when they went with these men, because they were
so desperate they needed the money, and you know, they
would work in an area of Glasgow it's called the
Drag and Glasgow is a grid like the roads are
(20:20):
set out in a grid, so up and down, left
and right and one way system and there's the Drag
is like a rectangular you can drive around and the
women would all stand on the four corners and that
way when the cars are stopped at the traffic lights.
If the police catch them, they go, oh, I've just
stopped at the traffic lights. But they're not. They're stopping
for the girls. And these women were selling themselves for
(20:40):
as little as you know, ten pounds, you know, out
push twenty pounds because they needed the money. And they
would go out at night and they would be raped,
sexually assaulted, beaten. I know some of the women were scalped.
At one point one man was going around doing that.
There were the most frightening, horrific attacks and this was
(21:04):
a whole new world for someone, well for any woman, right,
But for someone like Emma who had did not know
this world at all, and she struggled on the streets,
you know, because she wasn't tough, she wasn't street wise,
she knew nothing. And the attacks don't just come from
the clients. The attacks come from the other women because
(21:24):
you're now on their patch. It's a new girl. Emma
was really attractive, and she wasn't so far into her
heroin addiction where she was so thin, and this has
started to take away how she looked, and so she
used to get, you know, beaten and hurt really quite
badly by some of the women. And it was a
(21:45):
tough life for her, a tough life for so many
of the women. And remember this is against the backdrop
of murder after murder after murder of prostitutes in the
city in the previous years. It was terrifying.
Speaker 1 (22:01):
The circumstances, sarianning Emma's disappearance and the discovery of her
remind so can you talk us through that? Yes.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
So it was April and Emma would go out most nights.
She would leave about ten or eleven o'clock at night.
She phoned her mum every day. Right, they had a
great relationship. Every single day, she'd phone her mom. Every
single day, she would go to a chemist to pick
up her methadone prescription as she was trying to get
help with her heroin addiction. And every single day, in
(22:32):
the early hours of the morning, she would return back
to the hostel where she was staying, and she took
the same route every single evening into the city center.
And this one night she left us and all she
phoned her mom. Her mom and dad used to see
her twice a week on a Wednesday and a weekend,
and they would take all her dirty washing, wash it
(22:54):
all iron it, give it back to her, and do
a swap with the dirty washing. And she was due
to see them, but they had phoned and said, listen, Emma,
we're getting carpet fitted, so maybe we'll come and see
you tomorrow night. And she said, yeah, that's cool, that's fine.
She went off to work that night as normal. They
obviously did not know where she was going what she
was doing. The following day, William's dad said to Margaret,
(23:18):
I've tried phony Emma, and she's not picking up. I
hope she's okay. Margaret said, she'll be fine. Don't worry.
So they tried again, and they tried the next day
and the next day, and nothing. And not only was
she not answering the phone, she hadn't returned to the hostel,
she hadn't gone to the chemist to pick up her prescription.
(23:38):
Nobody had seen her. And Margaret and Willie they had
gone to the police and said, look, our daughter's missing.
And that's that's when they reported her missing a few
days later, and the police at that point checked Emma out,
checked out, you know, and the police files, and they
sat down and they said to Margaret, well, I mean,
(23:59):
you you do know that your daughter frequents the city center,
don't you. And Margaret thought, well, we go shopping and
the city said and she said, well we frequent the
city yeah, And the police said, no, no, no, she
frequents it. She's a prostitute. And that's the moment that,
you know, these parents find out how their daughter has
(24:23):
been has been funding this habit and what she's doing.
And so of course, now not only do they have
the missing daughter, not only do they now know that
she's been working as a prostitute, but put all of
that together, she's also missing. And you know this this
was absolutely horrific on what you know, because there had
been so many murders of women the police which were unsolved. Right,
(24:47):
These were unsolved murders. It wasn't like there was a
murder of a young woman and within a few months
they've got the killers. These killers were out there. They
were unsolved murders.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
You're talking night in what over? How many is the
way over?
Speaker 2 (24:59):
About ten years? Yeah, in the lead up. Yeah, and
Emma was the eighth eighth woman to be murdered. So,
I mean I covered a number of the murders. They
were my first jobs as a journalism with the press
agencies in the national papers, and so against that backdrop,
you know, understandably terrified the police thinking and realizing when
(25:20):
they looked into Emma, this is not someone who goes missing.
And a massive missing person's inquiry was launched and they
you know, there were billboards around the city, they were
missing person posters. They were stopping men in the street,
in the red light area, around the drag have you
seen this girl? Do you know this woman? Are you
(25:42):
a client? Do you use any of the women? Do
you pay for sex with any of the women? You know,
they were just doing everything and Emma was and there's
no polite way to say this. Emma was very busy
in her line of work. She was very popular with
the clients. She had two mobile phones. When the police
took her phones, there were two of them, and she
(26:04):
had dozens and dozens and dozens of contact names and
details in her phones of clients. So the police are
suddenly faced with this mammoth task of where Emma's going,
who she knows, who her friends are, what clients that
she has, regular clients, clients that she has in her phone.
(26:25):
But that's only a handful in comparison to the rest
of them. So they already have hundreds of men to
be looking at that they're aware of. Then there's men
that just turn up in the city and stop and
pick her up. Then there's men that come from out
with the city. Then there's men that come from out
with the country, and they're from down south in England.
So you are talking thousands of men that they are
(26:47):
having to try and track down.
Speaker 1 (26:48):
And broad investigation from the start.
Speaker 2 (26:52):
Isn't massive massive.
Speaker 1 (26:54):
When was Emma's body fan there?
Speaker 2 (26:57):
So she goes missing in April, and then five weeks
later there is a dog walker walking in some woods
about an hour from Glasgow. It's about forty six miles
just off the main motorway south between Scotland and England,
about half an hour drive from the motorway. In the
middle of nowhere. If I gave you a map Gary
(27:18):
and said go find this place, you would not find it.
And in the middle of a forest, a dog walker
came across a body. The body was naked, with some
bruising and what looked like a cord or a rope
wrapped around the neck. It was a woman. He called
(27:39):
the police. The police turned up and Emma had a
very distinctive tattoo on her shoulder. So from that and
from other other inquiries, it was the body was identified
to be Hemma cold Well. So that was five weeks
after she'd gone missing, and five weeks of one of
the biggest missing person's inquiries that you could imagine, and
(28:00):
that's where she was found. Strange, very strange location. None
of the other women, and this was what was different.
None of the other women had been murdered, had been
found like this. This was different from the off.
Speaker 1 (28:12):
The others I assume had been left at the scene
or not as far away from where they were working. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (28:19):
The majority of women found in a car park, found
in a lay by, found in a bus stop, one
beaten to death in her flat, but you know layby's
car parks where they worked.
Speaker 1 (28:29):
Yeah, and my understanding these the cause of death was
put down to strangulation.
Speaker 2 (28:35):
Yeah, I mean, the cause of death was strangulation. That
wasn't revealed for quite some time. In fact, Margaret, the
family weren't old for two years how Emmera died because
it was deemed to be well, you'll understand this specialist knowledge.
So it was never really revealed how she died. But yes,
she'd been strangled and her body it was described as
(28:58):
the deposition site. Right, So everybody from the office like, okay,
so she'd been taken their dead and dumped and that
was that was what we all thought, and the well thought.
Speaker 1 (29:07):
Yeah. And now your observation from from the outside looking
at the investigation, you said it was thorough. I picked
up on billboards, posters and all that. It seems like
a lot of resources went into the investigation. What was
what was your assessment before you actually involved yourself in
the investigation, You thought things were running along nicely.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
Yeah, I mean having covered the previous murders of women,
you know, they were resourced. Well, there was always a
porter cabin put up in the plate and you know,
in the on the drag, there was always a police
port cabin on the drag, and you know the women
were always aware of the police presence and that you know,
(29:49):
there were investigations. This one was, I mean this this
grams and legs. This was a massive investigation and from
the outside looking in, you know, it was it was
well resourced, it was, it was hugely resourced. Very quickly, well,
very quickly, within a few months, I can't remember the
exact time frame, but not long after Emma's bodies found.
(30:13):
You know, within the first two years, they had made arrests.
You know, they had found their suspects and it was
four Turkish men and they had evidence to show that
these they believed the four Turkish men had killed Emma
and deposited her body, kept her body hidden for five
weeks and then deposited her body down in these woods.
(30:35):
And they were arrested and charged and well that's it great,
going to trial. Everybody's happy. You know, this was one
of the successful cases.
Speaker 1 (30:43):
And that's how it would have been looked at publicly
from there, just a structure of an investigation team there,
I'm aware of it. That just make sure we're on
the same page that you have a senior officer with
specialist experience in murder investigation, and then the task force
(31:04):
as we call it here all the investigation term is
comprised of specialist detectives and other detectives brought him from
different different areas like call detectives.
Speaker 2 (31:12):
Yeah, so you had the SiO was in place and
he was in charge of the investigation. And then what
they did with they had I think it was called
mutual mutual aid where they brought in police officers from
other police stations and policing areas to come in and
help on the investigation. And that's how big this inquiry was.
(31:33):
I mean, it was absolutely massive. And it was only
when within a very short amount of time, I mean days,
they got hold of Emma's phone. They realized that the
last phone call that Emma's phone had made was to
a Turkish man who she had had been a client
of hers on one previous occasion. Her phone pinged at
(31:57):
the mobile phone mast outside or around the corner from
a Turkish cafe so they were like, Okay, we've got
a Turkish client, We've got a Turkish cafe. And the
Turkish cafe was run by a man who had was
a convicted sex offender, so they had that, and then
they were getting evidence and statements from women who worked
on the street alongside Emma who were saying, oh, yeah, yeah,
(32:19):
we know the cafe, we go there, we have sex
with lots of Turkish men. They're aggressive, they're violent. I've
been raped, I've been attacked. And then they do the
forensics and they find a spot of blood on a
quilt inside the cafe, and so I mean, you can
imagine this is just gold, this is gold dust to
to the to the inquiry, and that's when it takes
(32:43):
it takes a different turn.
Speaker 1 (32:44):
And I think also, if I understand it properly too,
one of the Turkish men left the country that die
after Imma disappeared, or around the same time, to go
and get married.
Speaker 2 (32:57):
And yes, yeah, a police officer, and you find out
he's left the country.
Speaker 1 (33:04):
You'd be looking at. And then the forensic examination, the
spot of blood on the bed, on the bed in
the cafe, I can understand that. And they also had
listening devices in place for a long time.
Speaker 2 (33:16):
So they put listening devices in fairly quickly once they
realized that one of the Turkish men had been a
client and they had left the country and with the
evidence about the cafe, So listening devices and not just
listening devices, but also cameras were put into the cafe.
They were put into people. You know, there were bugs
(33:38):
put into homes, businesses, cars, I mean, the place was
a wash with bugs put in by the police. And
the police was sitting there twenty four to seven listening
to the conversations within this Turkish community in the hope
that they could pick up evidence of these men talking
(33:59):
about what had happen to Emma. The problem is none
of these cops speak Turkish.
Speaker 1 (34:03):
And that was the biggest is a is a problem.
Speaker 2 (34:08):
So they brought in some Turkish speaking officers. And the
problem was these Turkish speaking officers, I mean, we found
out one of them said, well, I mean I've got
a no level in Turkish, if that helps, And one
of the other officers said, well, I mean my Turkish
is not that great. But you know, these were the
translators and the interpreters who were being relied upon and Also,
(34:29):
you've got to remember the bugs. They're probably much better nowadays,
but back in two thousand and five and six and seven,
you know, technology wasn't as.
Speaker 1 (34:37):
Good cafe, and I could imagine it'd be very hard
to decipher exactly what's being said, why this was all
going on. There was other information coming in the packer,
and I just want to hold on to that information
because I want to talk about that later. But we'll
just explore this line with the Turkish Men. So look,
(35:00):
from the outside, the police have got their suspects. It
fits nicely with the information they've got. They've been charged.
Everyone sort of steps back, wait for it to come
to trial. Fill apart at the trial. But didn't it
with the the translations, Yeah, wells mistranslated and misinterpreted.
Speaker 2 (35:22):
I mean, Gary, if I ever get to the bottom
of the translations, that will be a good day. Basically,
they were waiting. They were listening for so long and
listening to try and hear specialist knowledge, something that only
the killer or the killers could know. And then one
day they hear apparently a conversation where one of the
(35:42):
Turkish Men says, oh, yes, the girl, we killed her.
Khalil killed her. And he hid her clothes in the
bushes by the casino. Right now, to the listening police,
you're like, okay, well, if we go to those bushes
and we find Emma's clothes in the bushes by the casino,
that specialist knowledge, only they could know, only the kill
(36:05):
or killers could know. Brilliant slam dunk. So they go
to the bushes and they find a T shirt and
they find a key ring, and it's a horse shoe keyring.
Now remember I told you Emma loved horses. Yeah, she
worked dinner stables. She was horse obsessed. And they found
a black T shirt. Now the black T shirt would
(36:25):
was I mean it was massive, right, it was massive,
and I believe they found a cardigan. I mean, none
of the clothing was ever proved forensically to be Emma's
number one no forensic link. Secondly, Emma hadn't been wearing
those items when she was last seen on CCTV leaving
the hostel that day, so she hadn't been wearing them,
(36:48):
and they never were able to link the horseshoe keyring
to Emma. Despite this, this is specialist knowledge. The four
Turkish men are arrested and they're charged and it goes
heads to trial. I mean they're remanded, they're in prison.
I mean they're in Barliny, the notorious BARLINI. If you
have committed a crime and you're in this prison, that's tough.
(37:10):
If you have done nothing and you're in for the
merger of you know, of a young woman, you know,
you don't imagine. And then one of the lawyers says, well,
I want to get the translations checked and let's just
see whether it does say yeah. So they get them
checked and not only was what was said not exactly said,
(37:34):
but some of the translations didn't exist at all. It
just was not said. So the case collapses. All four
men are released and that's it. Case goes cold. And
so you have four men who've spent time remanded for
a brutal murder who are now suddenly told well, that's it,
off you go. They're not told you didn't do it,
(37:55):
no charges against you. There, You're being released. Were still
looking into it, right.
Speaker 1 (38:00):
Look, I don't know enough about the investigation to comment
on what causes causes this, but to me, looking from
the outside, it seems like a case of group think
where the you've got a case theory and you're making
the evidence what skinny the evidence it was mets the
(38:21):
case case theory. But thoughts well, I.
Speaker 2 (38:25):
Mean, look, I've spoken you can imagine I've spoken to
many officers. I had to wait until many of the
officers had retired before I could. They would, you know,
dare to speak to me because they were terrified. And
you know, the one thing keeps coming back is, look,
this was driven by ego. This is what they say.
This was driven by you know, wanting to not just
(38:46):
catch a killer, but they believe that this community. Look,
it's not a community cafe. They it was kind of
I describe it in the podcast as park cafe, park
gang heart. I mean, it was horrible. Things happened in
this cafe, utterly horrible things happened in this cafe to many,
many women, and I think and there were rumors about
what they were going to get was their trafficking, was
(39:08):
their drugs, There were weapons, and it just it just
got out of control. I mean, they spent four million
on this.
Speaker 1 (39:18):
I'm looking at the way it was described and I
can only imagine the resourcing that went into it. But
were satisfied based on the evidence that was presented at
the core that got fri and they at the court
they were acquitted. When did you become involved from a
working point of view to look at the investigation? Was
that after the acquittal?
Speaker 2 (39:40):
Yeah, so that was in two thousand and seven. Right,
the case gets thrown out of court, it collapses, it
goes cold. Then in twenty fifteen, it's the tenth anniversary
of Emma's disappearance and murder and a Sunday newspaper an
anniversary piece, and they're the front page of this newspaper,
(40:03):
I think it was called the Forgotten Suspect, and they
have a picture of a man and they name him
and he's called the Ian Packer, and they say this
man was interviewed by police as part of the inquiry
and they had managed to get hold of some of
his statements that had given to police at the time,
and in the statements he talks about having gone to
a remote wooded location with a number of women, including Emma.
(40:27):
And they name this man. I mean, it was very
very brave of them to do this, but they name
this man and say, look, you know, surely he's a
potential suspect, and surely you know if this case is
cold and it wasn't the turkish Men. It clearly wasn't
the turkish Men. Look at this guy. And so that
was in twenty fifteen, and the case just kind of
nothing happens. Right, the police said immediately we are going
(40:51):
to look at this investigation again. But what they actually
did was decide they were more interested, they were more
interested in trying to track down who them all was
because they believed there was a leak in the merging
inquiry to the to the Sunday Mail journalists, rather than
actually go after the killer of them.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
Stop there saying I always find that, Sorry, I always
just find that amazing. I just wanted to jump in
on that bit that I've seen that time and time again,
more if it goes into finding it where information has
leaked from, if it's critical of police or harmed police,
than the actual investigations. Sorry, I just had to jump
in there because I say, and it resonates with.
Speaker 2 (41:31):
You, yeah, exactly. And what they did was they ended
up carrying out unlawful surveillance on the journalists, right, and
some retired cops to try and find out who the
leak was. Now, there was no leak, right, there was
no leak at all the information had clearly come from
(41:53):
out with the police. So anyway, this made the headlines
and that was the story rather than well, who actually
killed Emma Coldwell? So that's twenty fifteen, and then it
just goes quiet. And then I did an investigation in
twenty eighteen where I investigated the police, pointed fingers at
the police for a number of botched investigations that had
(42:15):
been carried out that were appalling. And then about two
weeks after we broadcast, I received a letter out of
the blue, like nobody receives letters nowadays, do we. And
I remember getting this letter with a stamp on it
and hand of written, and I'm just being all excited,
going all right, great a letter. And I only get
letters like that from prisoners. Prisoners writes me all the
(42:35):
time because of my job. And I was like, all right, okay, fine,
but it's got a stamp on it, and I'll have
a look. And I open this letter and this letter
is there's a letter in there to the Chief Constable
from a man called Ian Packer saying I'm i in Packer.
I was questioned as part of the Mmacldorn investigation, and
(42:56):
I want to know what information you have on your
system about me, and I'm sending a copy of this
letter to the journalist Sam Poling and just to let
you know. Right, So I thought, okay, this is very odd.
Ian Packer. I know that name, Ian Packer. How do
I know this name? I mean, honestly, Gary, It wasn't
like I opened it and went shit. I opened it
(43:17):
and went I know that name from somewhere. And of
course it was Ian Packer. And we'd mentioned him in
the documentary that I'd just done. And I thought, all right, okay,
because i'd been looking into the unlawful surveillance and that
kind of watched the investigation. So I wrote a letter
back to Ian Packer and just said, Hien, thanks very
much for your letter. Bit confused as to why you've
(43:39):
sent me this, but why don't we meet up for
a coffee and here's my email address? And he emailed
back and said, yeah, but it has to be off
the record. I want your definition of off the record,
and he was insistent, I want your definition. So I
told him what my definition was of off the record
and the kind of moral code by which we journ
(44:01):
this work, and he said, okay, final, let's meet for
a coffee. And so that was early twenty eighteen and
I went and met Ian Packer for a coffee. He
came with his girlfriend. Yeah, Yeah, he was strange. He
(44:21):
was very nervous, he was very anxious. I've never been
in the presence of somebody, and I've said this to
a few people, I've never been in the presence of
somebody who has been so angry, constantly in his demeanor
and his just this seething rage that would sit underneath.
(44:42):
And he would stare at me, and I used to say, look,
are you're okay meeting for this coffee, and he'd be like, oh, yep, yep, yep,
and snap out of it. And then slowly his face
would sink back to this kind of just anger underneath.
And he had such a powerful build. Remember looking at him,
just thinking strange, But he was open. He said to me, look,
(45:04):
I was questioned by the police on a number of occasions.
They at one point thought I did it, and I
didn't do it. And you know the consequences of being
questioned by the police, and the consequences of the twenty
fifteen newspaper article where it pointed the finger. It means
that I was a suspect. It's ruined my life. I've
lost my business. People point fingers at me in the street,
(45:26):
they call me murderer. And this has destroyed me. And I,
you know, I want compensation, and I want to find
out what the police have gotten me, and I'd like
your help. And I said, well, okay, Well I don't
know anything about the case. I mean, and I didn't.
I knew what the public had read. And I said, okay,
And I remember his girlfriend. I mean, you know, Gary,
(45:49):
you will probably, I think, be the same. It's very
often not the person the target that you're interested in.
It's who they surround themselves with that gives you the
most clique.
Speaker 1 (45:59):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:59):
And his girlfriend was articulate, intelligent, forthright, like a dog
with a bone. And she said, listen, I have asked Ian,
did you kill Emma? And I would know if he did,
you know, I would know. I have never let this
drop and I know he didn't, and that's why I'm
standing by him. And you know, we want your help.
(46:22):
So that was the first of many meetings between myself
and Ian Packer, and I said to him, all right, well,
I'll look into the investigation like I'll look into the
police investigation, because he said, look, the investigation was investigation
was corrupt, the investigation was wrong, and they targeted me
and definitely wasn't me, and it was definitely the turkishman,
(46:44):
you know. And I didn't know anything about the Turkish case.
So I was like, all right, okay, well fine, because
look Gary, and you will know this again as well.
To arrest and charge one wrong man is a mistake.
Right to arrest and charge four wrong men, that does
not happen. It has not happened for many, many years.
(47:07):
You know, we're talking Guildford for Birmingham, six.
Speaker 1 (47:12):
To other cases that come to mind, like grab a
group like that.
Speaker 2 (47:16):
Yeah, so'ting. I'm sitting with this guy who has approached me,
who has been open and honest to me, and said,
I was questioned, I yes, I knew Emma. I you know, yes,
I used em I paid it for sex, I used prostitutes.
Ask me anything you like, and I will tell you
the truth, anything about that life, anything about the police
(47:38):
investigation where I'm concerned, and I will answer your questions.
But you need to look into the case. And I said, okay, fine,
would you if I do look into the case and
bearing in mind, this is not just at the first meeting.
This is meeting after meeting, after meeting. Yeah, and you
know I would sit there and spend hours with them,
hours with him. You know, I'm into motorbikes and he's
into motorbikes. So we would go farf an hour talking
(48:00):
about motorbikes or dogs and you know his dog, and
you know, we talk about stuff, and you know, it'd
text and they've gone holiday in text, and you know
we're not friends, but you know, he's a good contact
at that point. And so I said, okay, I'll look
into the case. And eventually I said to look right,
because I'm thinking it must be the Turkish men and
(48:23):
the police they had it right, because they're not going
to get it wrong, are they for it?
Speaker 1 (48:26):
And they're not throwing the hands up sighing, oh we
got it wrong.
Speaker 2 (48:29):
We're looking for someone else still exactly exactly. And here's
this guy. This is great television, isn't it. So I've
got this guy, this, this this victim almost of a
miscarriage of justice, this victim of a set of the
most unfortunate coincidences, been to the same words, well, is
it the same words? We didn't even know the same words,
you know, any new Emma and he liked them and
(48:51):
all these things. But you know, Emma was very popular
in her line of work. She had lots of clients.
So I said, I'll look into the case. Would you
do an interview and I will then go away and
investigate everything and get you back and show you what
I've got. In my mind thinking well, I'm going to
(49:11):
be confronting him with okay, we've discovered the police said this,
and the police did that, you know so and he
said absolutely, Sam, whatever it's going to take, that's that's
what I'll do. And I thought, well, this is great.
So I started looking into it and then I go
on holiday by coincidence, to Turkey. And it's while I'm
(49:32):
in Turkey I get a phone call from someone i'd
never spoken to before. I didn't know him. I will
not name him. And he said, I understand you're looking
into him a coldwell case. I said that's right, I am.
And he said to someone you need to talk to
as a journalist. So and his name's Aim and O'Connor.
So I said, well, I'm in Turkey, I'll fly back tomorrow.
(49:53):
Phone and went on Monday. So I phoned this journalist
who I knew, I knew of very good journalists, and
I said, A and Sam, I'm looking to the mc
coldwell case. And he said, oh right, okay, what you're
doing about it? And I said, oh, well, I'm going
to show that. You know, it was a total, you know,
total bad investigation, and they you know, they had the
right people and they let them go. And there was
(50:15):
I remember, there was this silence and he said, Sam,
who do you think killed Emma? And I said, well,
what Wasn't it the Turkish men? And he said there
was the Ian packer And he said, I can, I can.
(50:38):
I can show you evidence which will help you with that.
And so, to cut a very long story short, we
met up and he showed me evidence which was the
same evidence that the Sunday Mail had had, and these
were relating to the statements that the impacker had given.
(51:00):
When I read through the statements, which I'd never seen before,
I started to notice things which I hadn't noticed before.
The women that he was seeing, the women he was
paying sex for, how he would attack them. They would describe.
Because I managed to find and get information from women
(51:22):
at the time, who had been attacked. They would describe
certain jewelry that this man would wear. When I met
with him, he wore the same jewelry. And I started
to look into the location of where Packer said that
he took women, and it was the exact same location
where Emma's body was found. So you started to have
(51:44):
this jigsaw that was being put together in my head.
And I'll never forget sitting there looking at this staff
and reading about his jewelry and reading about the location,
and reading about things that he was describing to the police.
I knew because I'd spoken to the women involved, So
I had all the pieces of the jigsaw at that point,
(52:07):
and I just remember sitting there in utter disbelief, thinking, Okay,
you have been lying to me this whole time, this
whole time, and I'm not someone who you can lie
too easily. Like I mean, if you tell me you
didn't take the last biscuit, Gary, I promise you I
will hunt you down until I can prove you took
(52:30):
the last biscuit, right, And you're lying, And he had been.
Look I knew that he wasn't going to be telling
me the whole truth and nothing but the truth. But
the fact he had come to me, the fact he
was being open and approachable, the fact he was just
constantly wanting this contact, And I just slowly began to
realize that not only had he there was an attack
(52:57):
on Emma behind some billboards and glass, actually about a
couple of hundred yards where I'm sitting today, and she
had been raped by a man and it was described,
his vom was described and everything. So I suddenly realized,
putting the jigsaw together, it was Ian Packer who had
raped Emma in before she goes missing, in the months
before she goes missing. I then realized that this man
(53:20):
is also responsible for a number of rapes of women.
I then realize he's responsible for a number of abductions
of women. I then realize he's responsible for a number
of women being taken to a remote wooded location which
sounded very similar to the one where Emma's body was found.
And then I discover that he had taken Emma to
(53:42):
those very same woods on six occasions prior to her murder. So,
in a split moment, I realized that the man that
I've been meeting for months is a rapist, a violent,
aggressive man who has raped and murdered Emma Caldwell. And
(54:09):
that's a moment that you don't forget. And then remember,
I still have to meet this.
Speaker 1 (54:14):
Man, Okay, well you.
Speaker 2 (54:17):
Still yeah, I've still got to interview him, and I've
still got to go in and do a full investigation.
And part of part of the evidence that I was
finding was was after we did the first interview. So
when I did the first interview, I knew it was
likely that he had killed Emma. Not one hundred percent,
but most likely. I knew about some of the attacks.
(54:40):
I didn't know everything. So I did the first interview
with him and he and that interview was about two
and a half hours long, I think, and I put
everything to him. Look, I've seen statements. You told the
police this. Did you know Emma? Had you been to
the woods? No, you'd never been to the woods. Okay,
well you know you told the police that you had.
Oh well, they bullied you. Okay, fine, And the story
that he came out with I was being bullied by
(55:01):
the police. Yes, but mister Packer, you know you actually
took the police down to the woods where you took
all the women, including Emma, and it was the deposition side. Oh, well,
that was just you know, the police took me there.
I never took them. It's coincidence. And this back and
forth for two and a half hours, and he went
from being a victim, you know, crying, to being angry,
(55:26):
to being you know, empathetic to Emma, and to being
frustrated with how it's affected is life. I mean, every
emotion in that interview from him, But it wasn't him.
He didn't do it. It was not me. I was not
their end of And at the end of that interview,
I said, look, I'm going to go away and investigate
(55:47):
all of this, everything that you've told me, and I'm
going to get you back for a second interview if
that's okay, and I'll put everything i've found to you.
And he says, no problem. And I said, if I
have to point the finger at you, I will point
the finger at you. And he says, fair news, no problem.
And that was it. And that's when I started to
really look into it. And that was when I started
(56:08):
to realize the extent of who he was and what
he had done.
Speaker 1 (56:11):
Okay, it's quite frightening all the information that was available
there that yeah, all of it, I say it, but yeah,
the proper white wasn't wasn't placed on it. You did
the second interview. The second interview was played on the documentary.
I believe in after that that generated other people coming
(56:31):
forward that resulted in.
Speaker 2 (56:34):
Ye, sorry, Well, so what we did was we then
at this point we were we were making a documentary
this so this interview with Ian Packer was for a
documentary and in the documentary. So we got him back
for the second interview. And obviously you've got to remember,
you got to imagine he knew nothing about what was
coming his way for that second interview at all. He
(56:57):
had been away on holiday. I got on Christmas Day
saying Merry Christmas, sweetie, I hope you get all you
wish fun. I started to realize there was a bit
of a fascination that he had with me, and from
the text from from from that kind of level of contact,
and all while uncomfortable, thinking right, okay, and as soon
(57:17):
as he gets back, I've got to do this confrontation,
get him back for the second interview. And I meet
him outside the building and and I says, are you okay?
And he says, yeah, I'm so excited. I can't wait
to hear what you found out. Take him into the room,
sit him down, and I just said, you know, I
said i'd get get you back and if I was
(57:38):
going to point the finger, and he said, that's absolutely fine.
I said, you're not. You've not been telling me the truth.
I think you're a violent man. I think you're a
sexually violent man. And I think you're a rapist. And
I think you killed Emma. And in that moment you
see his face, the oxygen just leaves.
Speaker 1 (57:52):
The room, the drop the pretense.
Speaker 2 (57:55):
It's it's horrific. I mean, it was horrific. I remember
the used of saying to me beforehand, right, you know,
we'll need to make sure that you know he's he's
Let's not use radio mic. Let's use a line mic
so that if he tries to run away like he's tight,
he's tied to the equipment, all this stuff. And I said,
I'm telling you now, this man is not leaving. He
(58:16):
will not leave. He will stay. I know him. He
will stay to the bitter end. And Gary, he would
not leave. He got up at the end, he got up,
he went to talk away, comes in, he sits back down,
gets up, walks away, comes in six backs, oh, Sam,
I can't believe you've done this to me, and I
can't you know that's right? And at one point, after
(58:36):
I've accused him of everything, he kind of sits down
and he leans forward and he says, does this meme?
Will no longer be in touch?
Speaker 1 (58:47):
I get a sense of what you're going through there.
Speaker 2 (58:50):
I said, well, no, we will no longer be in touch.
I will be in touch to let you know when
the program's going out buzz than that now and anyway,
eventually we had to get a security guy to escort
him out the building because he just wouldn't leave. And
so that was the documentary. So that was the first
documentary called Who Killed Emma that was broadcast, and that
was broadcast on the Wednesday, on the Wednesday night, and
(59:13):
on the Friday, he was arrested and the film had
to come down. But he was not arrested for murder
or any of the offenses which we had exposed him for.
He was arrested because he had attacked his girlfriend, the
one that I had been meeting with him, and unbeknown
to me, throughout the entire time I was meeting them,
he was being violent behind closed doors with her and
(59:36):
then had a fall out about the first interview that
had done with me and he had throttled her and
he was arrested in charge. So the film came down.
It was only up for forty eight hours, and then
we had the podcast which we worked on and so,
you know, long story short, once that case went through court,
(59:56):
we were allowed to put the documentary in the podcast
back up the first eight episodes, and that was when
it just took off because women were listening to this
and going, hold on, that's the man that attacked me.
That's a man who raped me. And I started to
get calls and texts and emails from women saying he
did that to me. I know that man he raped me,
(01:00:19):
and I'm having to send them to the police.
Speaker 1 (01:00:22):
It was taken down because he was charged with the
assault of his partner, which I think he was inside
for two years. After that court meta finalize, that's when
the documentary in the podcast could air again. Is that yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:00:38):
So it could air again, Yeah, because the case he
was sentenced to two years. He served one year and
as soon as he was released then we were able
to put them back up because the case was no
longer active, and we put them back up, and we
just sat thinking, oh, well that's okay, because they're going
to arrest him now for the merger and for all
these rapes and sexual assaults. I mean, he'd been abducting
(01:00:59):
women and nothing happened.
Speaker 1 (01:01:02):
That you were in undicted with more information coming in
that you were referring to the place, the information from
other women that are so m of.
Speaker 2 (01:01:10):
The Yeah, so you're in this situation Gary, where as
a journalist, you just want to go, Okay, tell me
the story. What happened. You know, how did this happen,
When did this happen? What did he do? But you know,
you have a duty of care to these women. You
have a duty of care to Emma's family who are
seeking justice. You have a duty of care to the
police investigation. And so the right thing to do was
(01:01:34):
to say, I would love your story, but it's more
important you go to the police and I will put
you in touch with the officers involved. And some of
the women I never found out whether they did or
not until I saw the charge sheet. I was like, God,
you went, you did it, well done. You know I
would not find out other women I drove them to
(01:01:54):
the police station. One woman I took to the police station.
She wouldn't give her a statement unless I sat in
the room with her. You know, it was just difficult.
Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
I can imagine how difficult you are really you're embedded
in the whole investigation. Look, it's not giving away. We
know the end result of it. He was convicted the trial.
I will talk about that in the second part, but
I'd like to finish the podcast here and say, look,
he got convicted and we all lived happily ever after.
(01:02:27):
But what has blown me away, disappointed me was the
information that the investigators, the people leading the investigation, had
on the Packer during the course of the investigation, when
the whole Turkish line of inquiry was being followed up,
and then the fiasco at caught with that, and the
(01:02:47):
impact that has had on so many people, and the
way the information came to you. And I was listening
and it was sort of the last four parts of
the podcast, so I'm thinking, Okay, well, I've seen this
an interesting investigation, but from a homicide detectives point of view,
I was just so disappointed with some of the things
(01:03:10):
that were missed in that investigation. And I think we
talked before We're miked up that there might be a
public inquiry. There's been calls for a public inquiry. These
type of things just shouldn't happen.
Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
No, I mean there will be a public inquiry. I'm sure. Well,
they've said there will be a public inquiry. I think
if the story finished there, it's bad enough. But what
we then went on to discover, it's just worse than
you could possibly imagine.
Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
And the people's lives and the further victims, all sorts
of things. But we'll talk about that when we get
back to part two. So we'll just have a short
break
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