May 17, 2025 • 50 mins
A man eaten by his own cats, cannibal killers and mummified men dying alone in their homes. These are just some of the cases forensic pathologist Roger Byard has faced in his career. Roger sits down with Gary Jubelin to talk about the cases that he’ll never forget including the young woman who was buried alive by her boyfriend and the Snowtown murders where eight bodies were found in barrels.
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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 person is 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.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world.
(00:45):
Today's guest Professor Roger Bayard is a forensic pathologist. One
of the many cases he was involved in was examining
the remains of eleven murdered victims, eight of which were
stilled in barrels in the South Australian Snowtown murders case.
He has seen more death than anyone should, but still
manages to have what I found to be a practical
(01:06):
and compassionate view about life. And death. He has conducted
thousands of posts, more than examinations examining the remains of
people who have died of unnatural causes, been murdered, victims
of terrorist attacks, natural disasters, or even killed by animals.
We spoke about his career spanning more than forty years,
(01:26):
including some of the truly bizarre cases that he has
seen and the work that he does to prevent death.
It's probably appropriate to give a content warning up front.
What we talk about here is quite confronting. Roger. You
are the pathologists on the Snowtown murders. That's one of
Australia's most horrific cases. We'll talk more about that later,
(01:48):
but first help me understand what is the role of
a forensic pathologist.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Well, as you know, it's variable. Sometimes it's really critical,
other times it's not. If somebody is shot on the
head in front of thirty witnesses, you don't need a
forensic pathologist to tell you what's happened. But other times
we act as a team, so we're working together. So
the police have worked the scene and we have a
body and they want to know what's a likely cause
(02:14):
of death? What do I think has happened, what are
non possibilities, so it guides them so they're looking for
a samurai saw, not a pistol sort of thing. Time
of death is always a very difficult issue, and we're
often called in the past for that, but that's become
I think we've become more aware that it's not as
(02:36):
accurate as we used to think it was. You know,
we had those incredibly interesting scientific charts and you'd plot
this and that and they died at two minutes past
midnight and as I say, poss and minus a week.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
But from a to take this point of view, crucial
to an investigation if you can get the time of
time death for when the incident occurred.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, I mean, if they're warm, the body temperatures of
thirty seven degrees, that means has happened very recently, which
means that the perpetrator may be in the area. If
you can give them a time frame, then it cuts
down on the number of people that may be evolved.
And I think that's the importance of it as well.
You know, the police come to the autopsy as well,
so that we can chat about stuff and work our
(03:16):
way through. People have said we should record all of
our conversations. Well, I disagree with that because it's a
work in progress. You know, we're coming up with all
sorts of theories, and we're bouncing off each other and
using each other's experience saying no, I don't think that's
likely all.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yes, I think that's possible, and that's appropriate from a
policing point of view. If we've got well, this person
was last sight that we know for a fact that
this person was at the shopping center at nine am
in the morning, that type of information could be helpful
for you.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yes, indeed, But strange things happened. I remember I went
to a stabbing and those have been stabbed multiple times.
But he had drops of blood on his back. So
I was very excited by this. I said, look, I
mean the only way he could get that is if
it had dropped from a height. Must be the perpetrator blood.
So I worked up for about forty five minutes, and
then one of the crime scene cops came in and said,
(04:04):
I'll actually passed the bloody T shirt over the back
of the body. But the usefulness of that is getting
information from each other so we don't make mistakes.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, have you got any case, Well, you've done over
six thousand posts more than so when I say have
you got any cases, I assume that there's a lot
in that memory of yours, ones that your initial thoughts
on it changed to be completely different to what the
final analysis was. Well.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I think probably one of the most recent ones was
Jasmine Korr, a young Punjabi woman who was buried alive
by her ex boyfriend. He had a story that they
had a suicide packed and she had cuts on the
side of her neck. So the initial assumption was that
he'd cut her neck and then buried the body. But
(04:53):
the cuts are very superficial and so the assessment of
the crime scene was inaccurate. It wasn't cuts. She had
actually inhaled soil. She'd be buried alive. So that was
completely different from what we originally thought and horrific.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Of course, Yeah, I want to talk further about that
case because that is quite quite horrific. And in your
role as a forensic pathologist, did you go out to
the crime scenes or it was on a need basis
When you attended the crime scenes, you do.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
When you don't, For example, Snowtown, which we're going to
talk about, I didn't go to the crime scene there
because that was a bank fault for me. The crime
scene was in the barrels, and so we'll talk about that,
how the evidence was inside the barrel So he brought
those down to Adelaide with Jasmine. I went to the
crime scene and assisted with the exhumation, just to see
(05:44):
the process. Also to be able to tell the court, yes,
I was there, I saw these injuries or not, because
if you're not at the crime scene sometimes it can
be put you. Well, clearly these injuries occurred post mortem
when the body was being moved. But if I could say, no,
I was there and this is what I saw, and
I document what I saw.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, And the crime scenes can be misleading. I recall
one where I've turned up the crime scene, called out
to it on a Friday afternoon. Going to the crime scene.
There's a person naked with a cord wrapped around their
neck and blood all over the walls, with finger marks
and all that looked like there'd been a violent struggle.
We set that up as a murder investigation that was
(06:23):
running for twelve hours until we could get the forensic
pathologist to examine the situation. This person had a ruptured
a orta really and was making a phone call. The
called around his neck was a cord to the telephone
and was writhing around in agony with a ruptured a order,
coughing up blood and the blood was hitting the wall.
So that taught me, and that was very early in
(06:45):
my career, the importance of getting the opinion of a
forensic pathologist because we'd still be looking for the murderer
on that case. What led you to this.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Field, basically laziness.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
I liked your on the sensors.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I was going back to Canada. I trained in Tasmania,
and I've been going to Canada and I've done family
practice training there. But I was going back to emergency
medicine and I was in Belize and having great time snorkling,
and spent so much time snorkling. By the time I
got back to Canada, all the emergency jobs were taken,
so all I had left was pathology.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And you didn't get a career as a snoggl.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
No, So then I went from general pathology to pediatric
pathology to forensic pathology. So it's fascinating. I mean, it
covers so many areas of medicine and life and law.
There's nothing quite like it.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Well, I see that you're passionate about it, and you've
been working in it for a very very long long time.
From it the impact it has on you. You're looking
at death, causes of death. What's the toll it's taken
on you.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Well, I'm only twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
I was gonna say you're doing well for thirty.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
That's right. Okay. It's an interesting question, and it's one
that I've for considered, as you know, and I've called
it the right to mourn and say that nobody talks
about post traumatic stress with forensic pathologists, and yet every
month of every year we go out to scenes. We
see dismembered bodies, incinerated bodies, we see children that have
(08:16):
been staffed to death, vehicle accidents, dreadful scenes, and we
have to not only immerse ourselves in it, we have
to then describe it in great detail, understand it. Then
we have to present it sometimes to a jury, and
be attacked, have our credibility attack while we're doing it.
So we are so close to this. I think one
(08:36):
of the things that saves us is the science of it.
We're focusing on the science, We're not focusing on the
horror of the situation. But I'm nearing the end of
my career now, in fact, I'm nearly dead.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Probably well, actually, if you died on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
That would be a spectacular finish.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
We could do something with it. It wouldn't be forgotten.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
But that going sort of television bloopers.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Or look, we'll find the place for this social media. Well,
I'm starting to come to terms of it. We'll find
the place fore you'll go viral.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
I feel comfortable there, okay, But as I get to
the end of my career, I've been thinking more and
more about the toll and what I've seen, and it
doesn't get easier. You know, my area's children pediatric forensics.
When I first started, I knew I was going to
find courses of these deaths and gung ho. And then
as I got further and further into my career, I
(09:32):
realized that, no, I'm not going to finances all the time,
and I'm going to have to sit down with families
and say I have no idea. All I can say
to them is it was nothing that you did. And
also a lot of the times they just want to
meet the person that looked after their baby between the
time when they saw the baby last, and when they
saw the baby at the funeral home, and to know
(09:53):
that the it wasn't just a case. And of course
I always refer to the babies by their name and
just so this was not just a case for me
or for the mortuary stuff. You know, a baby who
has died, or a little child has died is a
tragedy and there's no getting around it.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
And that commit because they're very sensitive at that stage
and you say the wrong word or forget the child's
name or.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Call the child. I've seen people do that. Yeah, I
mean just terrible things.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And that they're real triggering for a person grieving. So
I think I can see what you're saying, and we'd
have a great benefit to the people knowing that the
person handling their child or that loved one is someone
that's compassionate.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Well, I remember the first pediatric autopsy I did, a
little French Canadian girl called Genevieve, and that was back
in ninety eighty four. I think, and I often wonder
whether because I use her case for teaching, I've often thought,
should I get in contact with the parents and let
them know that you know, somebody remembers Genevieve, but I
don't know. I mean, it's it's so long ago, and
(10:58):
maybe it's better just to let it let it go.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
The perception of what is involved in the post mortem
can Yeah, you've done over six thousand post mortems. Can
you just describe to our listeners what is involved in
the post mortem?
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah, it's a basically, it's a scientific medical examination of
the body. So if it's a suspicious death, it'll involve
the clothing and the surroundings. But if it's just a
natural death somebody's just sort of fallen over in the street,
we bring them in. We video the bodies with the
clothing and possessions so that there's a record of that.
(11:33):
We take the body into the mortuary and then we
do a really detailed external examination. So essentially we're looking
for any signs of injury, because that's what we want
to exclude, you know, it's something that's unexpected that shouldn't
be there. And we're looking for signs of disease as well.
Sometimes you can identify disease from external examinations. And then
we do a three cavity dissection, and this is a
(11:55):
traditional autopsy. We've moved away from that now with radiological investigations.
But in the traditional form you would open the head
and examine the brain, you'd open the chest and examine
the lungs and heart and the admin, liver, intestines, all
the orbits are taken out in wighe they're carefully dissected,
looking for tumors, looking for inflammation, looking for some sort
(12:16):
of disease. We've moved on now we have CT examinations,
So all of our cases, most fronsic mortars around the
world get a CT which is just a very sophisticated
X ray that gives us very good imaging, the same
as the clinical cts and hospitals. So we can see
if there's a ruptured order blood around the heart, we
(12:39):
can see if there's a florid in pneumonia, we can
see if there's a brain hemorrhage. So in those cases
we will then say, okay, we've got a cause of death.
We'll do an external to make sure we don't see
anything untoward, and then the families don't have to go
through the whole process of having the autopsy done. We
have the information we need, so it's I think, in
a way kind of to families. Some families want autopsies,
(13:00):
families don't, and if they don't, this is a way
of sort of getting their loved ones back to them
as soon as possible.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Yeah, do you find now that's progressed into getting CT
scans and the science has improved along lads lines. The
findings that you had prior to T scans were correct,
because quite often I'd be standing there at the post
more than and we'd be looking at the say it
was a bullet wound. What was the direction of the
bullet stab wound? That type of thing looks like it's
(13:27):
come from the left. Did that change the thinking on
determining what the nature of the injuries were?
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah, CET's been excellent. It's interesting, as you know, with
stab wounds, you will the knife will be taken out
and then you'll do a careful lad dis section and
you can say this is the way it was going.
A friend of mine in Sweden a number of years
ago did a CT on a stab wound with the
knife in place. And what the knife had done is
had come in from the left side and pushed all
(13:55):
of the organs to the right. But when you took
the knife out, everything came back to the midline. So
the careful dissection was say, knife was coming from the front.
The CT told us a different story. And sometimes cts
will tell you something that's not at all obvious. I
had a poor detective. He'd had a body and this
fellow had cut his wrists and arms and bled to
(14:17):
death in the bath. And so I was looking at
the CT and lo and behold there was a collapse
lung and there was a stab wound in the chest
which this bloke had missed. And so I presented it
to Major Crime and I said, fancy missing that, I said,
and look at the body. I missed it too, because
what had happened is that the wound had closed over,
so you couldn't looking at the body externally. Very hard
(14:38):
to see CT two seconds.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Wow, well there's a science, said. Were you a believer
in having the investigator at the post more than absolutely?
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yes, yeah, all the time. I mean it's with OCKH
health and safety rules. Now, sometimes the police have to
stand on the other side of the observation screen. I
prefer to have the police in there so that we're
talking about the case, working our way through it. When
I find something, you know, if I show you through
a glass window. It's not the same as pointing out
to you directly.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
No, I always found it beneficial to be at the
post more than if I was on a particular investigation.
I tell this story and that probably dates me. But
the first post, more than I went to, and I'm
not going to name the hospital, and I'm sure the
pathologist is long gone, was smoking, standing there smoking, Yes,
no gloves on. And I walk in as this young
(15:28):
copy shook my hand and then I look where his
hands had been with no gloves and standing over the
body smoking. We've come a long way.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Well, i wear a full protective suit, so I've got
a respirator, you know, I've gloves, sleeves, food smoking, nothing
like that in the mortuary. No, it's a much more.
It's a process that could be videoed and used to
show people that it's done scientifically now and with respect,
(15:57):
with respect.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Well, that's the important thing. And I think that's a
fear that the victim or the deceased families have, is
what's going to happen. Who's caring for our loved one,
regardless of the fact that they're now deceased. I want
to talk on this is. I think it's played prominently
in your career. Not the only case, obviously, but that's
(16:18):
the bodies in the barrel case. We talk about the
Snowtown murders. Eleven people I believe were murdered. Where the
bodies were disposed. I think there was eight bodies disposed
in a disused bank in a small country town. I'd
call them forty four gallon drum type barrels. You had
just started as a forensic pathologist, yep, down in South Australia.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
My first week on call.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Actually, I don't know what it is about South Australia,
but whenever South Australia police I find me, it was
never good news. There's something about South Australia, but it's
a special place. Your second week and you get a call,
do you want to talk us through the process of
that case? It was a horrific and what you uncovered
and the role that you played in that case.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Well, when I started, my colleagues in Eastern States, we're
talking about adelaide As being the city of churches and
serial killers, and there's there's a certain truth to that.
There's Snowtown. I was called by head a major crime
one night I think it was a Thursday night, and
I was so green. I didn't realize that when the
head of major crime calls you, it's pretty serious.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
He said he was in a little place called Snowtown
and he described the barrels and they said, do you
want to come up? And so you know the evidence
is in there, you know, why don't you just bring them?
Bring them down to Adelaide. So I didn't go to
the crime scene because for me, the crime scene was
actually within the barrels. So they were brought down and
the next day we had to work out the mechanics
of how to handle this because they're very heavy. We'd
(17:49):
been told our full of acids, so it could be toxic,
so we had to test the fluid. Then we had
to work out how to empty the barrels and not
lose evidence because you know, you could be bullets are
inn in there. So there are eight bodies partially dismembered
in the barrels.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
What did you know at that stage?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Well, I tried to convince Paul Schram that was probably hydroponic,
and he said what should he do? And I said,
We'll take a lit off and if you find remains,
give me be a call, and you know, ten minutes
later said yes, there were feet poking out. So I said, dear,
how many barrels? Eight barrels, and I said, let's bring
(18:26):
them down. But there were two bodies buried at Waterloo Corner.
Clinton's recise had been murdered. He was the first one
buried up at lower Light. And there was a case
that was a hanging that originally thought to be a suicide,
but they'd actually forced their spoke to hang himself. So
there were a number of them. But the mechanics of
taking the bodies out was extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So okay, and I hadn't even thought about the logistics,
but yeah, moving the barrels and all sorts of potential issues.
You don't know what's in them. So you work out
the mechanics to get the barrels to your laboratory or
and then how did you what was the process?
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Well, we took the lid off, had to look inside,
got some idea what was going on, and they were
in various states of decomposition. Some are actually quite well preserved.
Then we put the lid bag on, turned them on
the side on a bench and used sieves, you know,
the sieves were archaeological and just sieved all the fluid
as it came out. We found well, we found thumb
(19:28):
locks and gags and all sorts of things. So we
didn't we didn't want that material to be lost because
it was very important. So then when all the floor
was out, we brought the bodies out and we just
gave them letters f and then put them on taps
and then just matched up. We did DNA testing, which
didn't work. Which is interesting is that, well, that's what
(19:49):
people said, you know you can get you can do
DNA testing on dinosaurs. Why not this because of the
nature of how it was the bodies were stored. They're
in an oxygen deprived environment, which was originally a and
DNA just doesn't survive that. We got a foot in
a gumbot that came up in a fishing net in
the bit. We could do DNA on that, and it
was from a fisherman who had overboard ten years before.
(20:10):
But the condition was obviously much better for preserving DNA
than in these barrels.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Had the bodies that had the flesh decomposed in.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
The yes, No, some hadn't, some had, Some were very
well preserved and we could. We could see tattoos you
could use to identify, We could do dental records. And
also the police had a fair idea who they were,
which is obviously important because if you have no idea
who somebody is, how can you actually then you know,
do dental records, you know, how can we.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Where these stay? Yeah, that's right, you've called out identification,
but also the cause and manner of death.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yes, indeed, what did you find? It was difficult because
of the or preservation. The bodies had broken down. We
were looking for natural diseases, but sometimes the augments were
missing because that decomposed. We found gags and things put
(21:06):
in their mouths, you know, suffocation was was likely. As
I said, they had handcuffs and thumb locks, so we
didn't find any evidence of torture, probably because of the
state of preservation. There's been stories about they've been inserting
sparkles into their penises, and we could find OVID into that,
which doesn't mean it didn't happen. Happen. And the cannibalism,
(21:28):
you know, the last victim, apparently forgotten which perpetrator might
have been Bunting, took a slab of thigh and cooked
it up for his mates.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Where where did where did that information come from?
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Jimmy of Thesarkus was one of the perpetrators Bunting Wagner
of the circus, and he gave the police a lot
of evidence. He gave that story.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah, how did that impact on you?
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Again? You hide behind the science. You know, people generally
are just terrible dealing with death now. But because we
do it all the time, and because my aim was
to see if I could find physical evidence of this
to corroborate or disprove the story, then I'm focusing on that.
You sort of remove yourself. It's like surgeons in the
(22:16):
operating room sometimes leaning on a chest and then takes
a breath. They realized it it's actually a patient, not
just an appendix. You know, you focus.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
I understand and that one of the interviews that you did,
you talked about it didn't impact because you had a
job to do. You're looking at this person is okay,
this is my role, this is a job.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I think that's true. I mean with Thailand, with the tsunami,
when I was in body identifications, I was offered a
chance to go back a second time. I couldn't do it.
There were so many dead children, and you know, these
piles of bodies, truckloads of bodies. That was and you're
just seeing the whole scene. You're not focusing on a
knife wound and the horror of it all.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
How long were you involved in the Snowtown investigation? Did
you give evidence at court? Yes?
Speaker 2 (23:00):
I did. Snowtown went on for years actually, but initially
we were asked about the state of the bodies and
you know how they putrefy, what sort of does this
do to the evidence? And then the case that I
went to caught with. I mean, I assisted getting all
the bodies out of the barrels, but then I was
(23:21):
overseas for a couple of weeks. So the one that
I was involved when was a body, a skeletonized body
found at Waterloo Corner. Two bodies found there. Again, could
I exclude the fact that she had died of a
heart attack and they just hidden the body? No, I couldn't,
because I don't have the heart. You know, if you
don't have the organs. And that's I've done a study
(23:42):
on concealment of homicides and quite a significant percentage, as
you know, are concealed hoping they won't be found, or
if they are found, I'd be so decomposed that a
lot of the evidence will have gone.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yeah, I find that then. I don't want to say
too much. You don't want to give people idea is
but the amount of bodies that go into the water,
that surface come to the surface, and that gives us
something to something to start the investigation with.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Time and time again, I think we can talk about
it because I think that the people who do this
sort of thing are so into the internet. I did
a study a few years ago. They do surgical studies
on pigs, and I got the carcasses and I took
a broken wine glass, I took a quantus plastic knife
(24:30):
that i'd bitten, and I took a Stateler pen and
I could stab straight into the carotids. So what I
was saying with that is that all the security measures
at the airports, you know, if you really want to
do it, you can do it. And I wasn't informing
terrorists they know that.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah, yeah, obviously, why do we use pigs?
Speaker 2 (24:46):
They're quite like us. I mean, the most similar, of course,
would be primates. But that's no go territory.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
I'm not going.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Not at all. So that is not done anymore. There
have been some horrific experiments in the past, but with
pigs they can be anesthetized. Their tissues are pretty similar
to humans. We did a pig study with the series
I did with Lawless, looking at the Canniff brothers up
in Queensland. You know the classic story. The two bush
(25:15):
rangers had killed a station owner and a cop and
then the dismembered remains were found in saddle bags and
they'd been put on a fire, and so the prosecution
turned it around from being shot to actually these horrific
creatures dismembered these poor men and then burnt them. So
(25:36):
we got a whole pig carcass and a dismembered pig
carcass put on the fire. The dismember pig carcass disappeared,
the whole carcass turned into what we had seen with
the Caniff, so we could show using the bodies there
that their story was actually correct. They hadn't dismembered them.
And that's that's historical forensics. It's not important nowadays, but
(25:57):
it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
No, it is odd experience. How often would you find
yourself in court?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Ah, it's interesting. I never kept a record. I mean,
sometimes you know, you know what it's like. You get
three in a week. Other times you get nothing for months, so.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
You never won the see the inside of a cord.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Again, that's right. Other times, you know, it can be
a breeze. I mean the last one I went to,
I think it was a shooting, and both prosecution and
defense agreed that yes, it was a shooting. And they said, well,
what did you find? I said, A gunshot wound? What
did they die of? Gunshot wound? Thank you very much?
You know that. I like that when and it happens
(26:32):
more with experienced lawyers, when they're not trying to make
points or you know, pursue some odd story, you know,
taking what's obvious and then moving on.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
We talked before we started recording about being involved in
trials where there's a lot of medical evidence and how
confusing it is for myself that I have an understanding
of what's occurred and you've got the jury there and
people like yourself, eminently qualified people are coming in and
giving them very scientific explanation. Do you get a sense
(27:03):
how difficult it would be for juras on some cases,
not cidely any particular case, but some case to absorb
all the information that's put for lock.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Absolutely, and it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Sometimes I'm giving the most interesting information in my career
and the juries asleep and the judges gone to sleep.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
They realize how long I studied.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Other times I'm almost sleep myself and they're writing it
all down. So yeah, it's fascinating, and I think it's
particularly difficult with experts. You're an expert if you say
your life. Sometimes you don't have to have a background
in it, and so you can get somebody being diametrically
opposed to you and they look like, you know, an
(27:42):
old guy that's been on the traps for one hundred years.
You know, who do you believe? Also, now part of
the problem is in publishing. There are these journals called
predatory journals, and they look absolutely kosher. But you pay
to get your stuff.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Published, Okay, so I can get ability.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah, I can give two thousand US and I can
get a paper published on my theory and that can
be produced in court and it looks.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
And then you represented as have been published. You find
these zoo impact.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I had a friend in a colleague in Malaysia that
happened to in the middle of the trial, I said,
what about this? It goes completely against what you said.
So the way I handle that is, you're on I
haven't had a chance to read this. Could I have
a ten minute recess? And then I go out and
I frantically google is this a predatory journal? And if
it comes up as one, then I go in and say,
well it's not worth the papers. Predial Okay, interesting, but yeah,
(28:32):
thank god for Google. I don't know how we survived
up until when you talk about strange steps, different things
that you've come across with the examinations. If you've done
animals killing people. I heard you talk on the podcast
Guardians of the Death and talking about animals that kill.
(28:54):
What's your experience with animals because some of the stuff
that you were saying was quite bizarre that I never expected. Yeah,
I've been collecting animal deaths. I mean your death from dogs, snakes, sharks, roosters, mackerel,
bloke fishing in the dar And Harbor, and sharks from nearby.
(29:15):
So this twenty five kilogram mackel jumped out of the
water and sideswiped him.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, wrong place, wrong time.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Absolutely, you can't be unlucky. And the rooster death.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, please tell me about the roosters.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
It's just a little old lady out the back collecting
eggs and roosters. I understand, the nasty creatures. It went
for her and she had Varica's veins and pecked her leg.
And I've had a number of deaths of people with
Varka's veins who have just had minor trauma. There was one.
There's a cat scratch and people don't realize. And this
is the reason that I actually publicized this this stuff.
(29:49):
It's not because it's bizarre and weird. It's to let
people know that if you've got Varka's veins and you
get a small hole, lie down and put your finger
over it and elevate it, right, you will survive. What
they tend to do is wander around panicking and they
bleed to death, completely unnecessary deaths. Okay, but you never
trust a rooster.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Okay, Well, take some advice there. Part of the stuff
that you do too. And I found that interesting because
people often look at forensic pathologists where you're only looking
at death, but part of your attraction to the work
that you do is that you can also prevent death.
Now you've given us all a warning about watching out
for roosters. If you've got Barricker's fanes, we'll take that,
take that on board. What what are some of the
(30:31):
things that you've looked at And I know that you
had a high level of expertise in Sid's death, and
how has that what you've learned helped prevent those deaths
down the track.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
What's interesting My clinical colleagues call me doctor Death because
they don't understand forensic pathology. So I've they don't understand
all that much.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Really the area we won't delete that, we'll stand stand
by you.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
But it's an area called preventive pathology. And so I
was taking cases from the mortuary and examining them and
seeing what went wrong and what you can do to
prevent it. And this is one of the joys I
find of pediatric forensic pathology. People say, how can you
do it so well? If I can actually find something
that caused this death and then let people know about it,
Like unsafe cots, unsafe costs. Years ago, they were all
(31:23):
over the place and kids were hanging themselves and getting
stuck in them and wedging. So I work with Kids
Safe and we lobbied the federal government and now there's
a standard. All cots in the secondhand ones have to
follow the Australian standard, so you cannot sell an unsafe
cut and that's safe lives. Can't remember the last unsafe
cut I've seen, so that's really heartening. The SIDS story
(31:45):
is interesting. I've been involved with SIDS groups for decades
and we did a collaborative study with Harvard and we
showed that the SIDS babies have a deficiency and a
chemical in the back of the brain that controls they
head and neck movement substance P. So we've always said,
why do they you know, why are they dying face down?
Why don't they just lift their heads? They don't lift
(32:06):
their heads because they can't. So we're looking at genetic
markers of that. So maybe we can have a diagnostic
market to show kids at increase risk. So that sort
of thing I think makes this job really rewarding.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Yeah, well, you talk about the cots and wasn't the
old school thinking about laying children I'm talking young infants
laying them on their stomach and that that changed with.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
The medicine is an interesting area and if you look
at the history of babies sleeping patterns. Babies used to
be put to sleep on their backs, and then people
said no, no, no, well I'll vomit. No last break,
Let's put them face down, and so there was a
really strong push to have babies sleeping face down. There
(32:49):
was a pediatrician Abrams in New York, so don't do this,
I'll suffocate. And there was a study that showed that
by putting babies face down, probably sixty thousand babies died.
Don't hear that very often that medicine is responsible for
that because it was a health initiative that didn't have
evidence and they saw you put them on their back,
they're going to vomit and inhale that they don't. So
(33:09):
it was just well intentioned but wrong.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
I understand now what you're saying about the work of
forensic pathologists. It's not all about Okay, the death's happened,
there's nothing we can do, move on to the next step.
There is things that you can pick up in the
science and the medical science that can assist.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
And that's why talking to you like I think is
important because it gets it. It tells people what forensics
is about. So it means that you know when I retire,
I'm not going to get you know, leather bound seat
of my autopsy reports. You know, I've put another notch
on the wall. I've actually done something to have an
impact in medicine. It may be because I am qualified
general practitioner. I qualified in general practice in Canada before
(33:46):
it started forensics, and so that maybe has given me
an idea of what the community deserves.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
So you're looking at prevention, a couple of other little
side I won't say site hustles, that's not the right words. Careful, careful, Okay.
You had an interest in going back and look at
the historical cases involving bush Rangers, and I thought that
was that was quite interesting. Do you want to talk
us through that and what inspired you to have a look.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Well, the two areas that I findancially bush rangers and respute.
And I don't know whether you've seen my paper on
the death of rescue. You can you can take us
through you like that one? Yeah, I know the bush Rangers.
I got involved with a Foxtail series, Lawless, and we
looked at Ned Kelly, Captain Moonlight, Ben Hall and the
Kenniff brothers and basically trying to see what the what
(34:37):
evidence there was for the historical story. If you look
at Ben Hall, the popular theory is that basically the
police snuck up on him and shot him in his swag.
The police version some things don't change. Be careful, it's
a bit different. They said they were waiting for him,
They called him to stop, he didn't, and then consortable
hip Kiss shot him through and through with a point
five six went through his gun belt. So we had
(34:59):
the gun belt at the Powerhouse Museum. Nobody had ever
looked at it properly. I put it together and it's extraordinary.
The bullet hole, it was a bullet hole shelving and
the only place you could have shot him to do
that would have been standing behind him, to the left
where hip Kiss was. Then we did scanning electro microscopy
which looks at sort of particles, and we found accelerant
and part of the bullet that killed Ben Hall, which
(35:21):
got lost in the cutting room floor. Because I thought
it was the most fascinating part.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Of the story and your interpretation from that that the
police story was absolutely correct, supporting supporting the place. Another
one that you looked at, Ned Kelly that's been put
up there as this folk here, you've got different in views.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
I'm amazed. I mean, you know, we had a stamp
issued on the one hundredth anniversary of his death. You know,
he was the Sydney Olympics, and yet he was a
bloke who very proudly stole cattle and horses from sharecroppers.
He wasn't stealing always from squatters, so people whose livelihood
depended on it he was taking.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
So it wasn't a Robin Hood.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
As I say, Robin Hood did not steal from the
poor and keep it fro himself. Yes, you only have
to look at the Drillery letter where he says he
wants the blood of the brains and the police to
rain down, where he wants to tie people who oppose
him over ant heaps and pour their fat boiling down
their throats. If the glen Rowan train crash it occurred,
it would have been the biggest killing of police to date,
(36:24):
set up to kembush twenty eight police by derailing the train.
I don't think killing serving police officers is a good thing,
and I don't think the person who has done it
should be treated as a hero. People will say to
me meetings and stuff, Well, you know the Americans do it.
Billy the Kid didn't see Billy the Kid at the
LA Olympics.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah, true, true, it's funny.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
And we named so many things after Nick Kelly. He
was as sociopath and the thug.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Well part of our history, isn't it? And yeah, what
other things about Ned Kelly did you learn looking into
the history?
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Well, it was interesting when we were filming Lawless up
at Stringy Bark Creek. Stringy Bark Have you been a
Stringy Bar It's actually quite an eerie place because of
the history of it. Yeah, and it's just kind of presence.
But what they wanted to do is they wanted to
have relatives of people on both sides. So Leo Kennedy,
(37:19):
who was the great grandson of Sergeant Kennedy who was
executed by Ned Kelly, he actually initiated the whole project
by saying how terrible it is to go to his relatives'
graves to find kelly memorabilia. You know, we're more yea
giving a memorial to the killers, but not to the
serving police officers. But one of Kelly's relatives was there
and I was asked what I thought of the killing
(37:41):
of Sergeant Kennedy, and I said, well, when you shoot
an unarmed maned point blank in the chest with the shotgun,
it's an execution. And this fellows. Oh, I don't know
about that. You know, none of us were there. I said, well,
Sergeant Kennedy was there, and Kelly came out with a shotgun,
so he could have put him on a horse and
send him back.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Because the the narrative that's been fed is that he
was dying and he put him out of his misery,
so it was a noble action. But you're you're suggesting otherwise.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Well, I wouldn't trust things that Ned said.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yes, you're so judgmental, right, yeah, I am.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
I just this is what.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Robert Robert a couple of banks and chewed a couple
of people. And what about his arm or what's your
take on that from would that that protect him from
a forensic pathologist point of view?
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yeah, Well, it's interesting because if he'd actually successfully killed
the those police with the train, would have been the
biggest killing of police officers to date in Australia. But
I thought it was just a somewhat irish approach to armor,
that he'd only had the upper part of his body protected,
but it was actually well thought out. He that's probably
(38:49):
a racist slurtion. Yeah, my great grandmother was Irish.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Okay, you can balance that out then.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
But the plan was that the carriage would go over
the bank and he would be protected by the embankments
so his legs wouldn't have to be covered. And of
course it was made out of plowshares. It was very heavy,
so if you could reduce as much as weight. Yeah.
The other thing too, is you know, such his life.
He didn't say that really. Yeah, no, it's just myth.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
So with all those people that have such a life,
it was you, wasn't it that identified if you've got
ned Kelly tattoos? Yes, to talk us through that, that's
another obscure fact that came from well so obscure.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
But no, I just noticed that a lot of the
people coming into the watary with ned Kelly tattoos that
died violent death. So I did a retrospective study, and
then I did a ten year prospective study, and sure enough,
something like eighty percent of them have died of accidents
or suicides or homicides or all sorts of strange things.
That's in a forensic context that doesn't mean if you're
in the community and you've got a Ned Kelly tattoo,
(39:51):
you're marked. But it's just it's a I think a
mark for sometimes drug associated lifestyles or risk breaking.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Risk taking. It's interesting. But I remember when I looked
at or heard you say that, I thought.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
You're a Kelly tattoo taken off.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Now I'm taking off straight away. I had had an
informant that was pretty hard to hide, and he's passed
away now so I can talk about him. But he
had a bald head and the tattoo of ned Kelly
on the back of his head, with the helmet and
the two guns, he was hard to hide. Needless to say,
Oh interesting Respute, Oh yes, please do.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
I've always been fascinated by Respute. And the story is
that he was invited around to Prince Yusupov's house. He
was given enough sign not to kill a horse. They
bludgeoned him and then they shot him, and then they
threw him into the Neva River, and the autopsy showed
that it actually drowned. So I thought this sound was
not plausible. So there's one crime scene shot and there's
(40:52):
a contact gunshot wound in his head. You don't get
that underwater. You don't get that running across the courtyard
yelling out, I'm going to tell Zarina. You get that
when you walk into the place and the toxicology was
negative for the sin ard as well. You get that
walking into the place they want to get rid of in.
What do they do. They put a gun to his
head and shooting. I mean, you know, they want to
get it over with quickly. So just that one photograph
(41:15):
on the historical record could show that all of the
mythology around resputants death was wrong. It's an interesting applying
modern techniques to that.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
Well, it is interesting. And look, eye catch skills. Here
we are on the podcast and we're solving something unraveling.
There was another and I think it was a recent
article that you did about again, it's just the bizarre
world that you look at that your observations of the
world that mummified males dying in their house in South
Australia tell us about that.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
I was sitting one Sunday night and there was an
SBS program on this thing called kotakushi in Japan, elderly
folk without family or social contacts being found dead after
months or years in their huh, And so I thought
that's interesting. I wonder where that happens here. So I
did a study looking at elderly twenty years ago elderly
now and the percentage of cases that had decomposition and
(42:05):
increased markedly. The major group is sixty to sixty nine
year old. This is in Salustralia, sixty to sixty nine
year old males. And it makes sense because they're the
ones whose relationships have fallen apart, their kids have moved out,
their friends have all gone, they're getting into alcohol abuse
(42:26):
and they're lonely. So when they die, nobody knows.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
You're getting or they've been referred to examinations. People are
being called and or coming across an abandoned place and
finding these bodies.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Well we see them the news all the time, don't
you know. Somebody has found they had been seen for
three years and nobody cared. The way around this is
to have communities. And where I live in North Adelaide,
there's a coffee shop that will go to and about
two years ago one of the old fellows used to
come every morning didn't turn up, so people went around.
(42:58):
He'd had a stroke and he was in his bed.
He hadn't had that contact, he'd be yet another statistic.
So we've just got to get back to understanding importance
of community very much.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
The way life can live these days, you can not
have contact and those little things like you're not going
down to the local newsagent to buy the paper in
the morning. Yeah, that could be a simple thing, but
we've lost all that, and we can sit on their
phones or on their computers and not have that human contact.
But it's interesting that you identified identified that. What's the
most bizarre case you've come across.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
There was a sharer talking about animal deaths who basically
got his throat cut because the electric shears and the
sheep kicked the shears. You know, something you wouldn't expect.
I remember one fellow had I think thirty cats in
his house of cause animals, when you're dead get hungry
and they feed on you. So these cats are just
stripped this body. Of course, I don't know how he
died because there are no organs left. If you have
(43:54):
a suspected homicide by shooting, say dogs have been at
the body, you need to get the youngest probationary constable
to go around and pick up all the dog scouts
in the dog dropping Yeah, to X ray and look
for bullets, and you need to look at the dogs
to see those bullets inside there. I suppose the worst
would have been Jazzmine Core. The most bizarre probably would
(44:15):
have been Snowtown.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Okay, with the Snowtown, I know that you've made a
comment that that stuck with you for a bit, that
you were getting the dreams.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
About a week. Yeah, okay, coming back alive.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah, talk us through that, because not many people talk
talk about that.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
No, it's just it's only happened to me twice once.
It was with Snowtown, and I just was having these
nightmares that the bodies were all coming back alive. The tsunami.
I had nightmares after that, only for a short time.
And Jasmine I didn't have nightmares. I just couldn't get
her death out of my head. It really weighed heavily
on me because it was so horrific.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Another said case that the murder of Samanthro Riley, that
she was too thousand and three, schoolgirl, fifteen year old.
What was the circumstances surrounding that case? And this sort
of demonstrates why the forensic pathologists can bring to an investigation.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yes, I mean I can talk about this as you know,
because I've been through the courts and everybody knows what happened,
and the perpetrator has been convicted. Her body was found
semi clad beside a road north of Adelaide, Humbug scrub.
It was, it was, it's a strange scene. Her underwear
had been obviously taken off and put on again. So
(45:32):
we don't undress bodies at the scene because you'll lose things.
So it took her into the mortuary and she'd been strangled,
and underneath her underpants I found a tuft of green
carpet and all these brown flakes. It turned out to
be paint flakes. I also took a lot of DNA swaps.
(45:52):
I will swab anything because if I get a negative result,
who cares. If I get a positive result, great, And
I did get a positive result the DNA from the
outside of her genitalia, and so the police announced they
were going to test all the men in the district.
He perpetrator. He tried to kill himself but failed and
turned himself in. If we hadn't had the DNA. The
(46:13):
carpet came from the back of his car and the
pain flakes came from his backstep. It shows you that
we've got modern scientific techniques, but we could have also
had something to fall back on, and just shows you
just a tiny tuft of carpet is one of the
most important parts of the autopsy. You know, my mother
could tell that she had been strangled, but she might
understand the significance of the carpet.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Did you feel the pressure when you're doing autopsies on
cases like that, in a very sad case of fifteen
year old girl, did you feel the pressure that when
you're looking at this doing the autopsy, making sure that
you're not missing missingthing.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Well, that's why I think the police help. Actually, you
know when they're in the autopsy room, because we're working
through it together. So and the police have never put
pressure on me to be the case through or to
come up with a particular conclusion. They've always been incredibly
reasonable and I do appreciate that. But it was it
(47:11):
was very sad because at the end of the autops
he was about three in the morning. The mortue tender said,
if you noticed something about her, I said, yeah, she
doesn't have her ears pierced. She was quite a naive
little girl, and she used to go up to the
bride shop at the shopping center and look at bridle
gowns and imagine being married in BALI.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Yeah, that's just in your take on that situation that
sort of brings at home. What we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Is does and I feel sad twenty years later.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
Still it's horrible.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
And if you don't feel sad, then I don't think
you should be doing the job.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Actually, yeah, look you say that. I agree. I've been
surprised when working homicides that some people just seem to
have a disconnect. And I'm thinking that you actually understanding
what we're doing here, the importance of it and the
impact it should have on you, and something I'd think
chip's missing if you don't pick up on.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
I do too. And one other thing that I just
we can do that it's useful as forensic pathologists, you know,
if you're in court and the family are there. And
I remember going through a horrific assault this young woman
and her father was. She was Irish and her father
was he'd come out and I went out to him afterwards,
and I said, you realize, of course that she had
(48:23):
quite a significant head injury. So it's quite likely she
was unconscious right at the beginning and felt nothing. I
don't know that, but it's possible, and at least that's
something he can hold something to hold on to, rather
than listening to all of my description of the horror.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
I've found families want to be informed, and there's a
time and place when they can be informed if the
investigation's ongoing. Sometimes you've got to protect the integrity of it.
But I in my dealings, and I'm not saying that
it's across the board, but in my dealings, at some
point in time, I say I'll sit down and I'll
tell you everything that I know, and they appreciate it,
because otherwise, as you said, it's just circling around in there.
(48:59):
He had one under A lot took place, get.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
The wrong end of the stick sometimes and so easy
just to correct it. And I've had I've had a
woman contact me twenty five years after I autopsy her
daughter really just to go over it again. Yeah, it
was lovely actual because she sent me a poem this
little girl had written with a photograph of her afterwards.
So that that's what makes it worthwhile.
Speaker 1 (49:22):
It must mean a lot to you, little things like that,
we might we might take a break here when we
get back. We've got we've got so much, so much
to talk about. I want to talk about the tsunami
and the process and what your involvement there in disaster,
victim identification, also balley bombing, and a couple of other
(49:45):
cases that you've lent your expertise to get into the
bottom of it. I also want to talk about your
thoughts on life and death, because I find it fascinating
someone like yourself that has seen so much death, what
your your take on the whole? Are these our purpose here,
so we might delve a little bit deep into that,
if you don't mind that, h
Speaker 2 (50:10):
M hm
The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
Detective sy aside of life the average person is 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.
(00:23):
The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories
from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw
and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world.
(00:45):
Today's guest Professor Roger Bayard is a forensic pathologist. One
of the many cases he was involved in was examining
the remains of eleven murdered victims, eight of which were
stilled in barrels in the South Australian Snowtown murders case.
He has seen more death than anyone should, but still
manages to have what I found to be a practical
(01:06):
and compassionate view about life. And death. He has conducted
thousands of posts, more than examinations examining the remains of
people who have died of unnatural causes, been murdered, victims
of terrorist attacks, natural disasters, or even killed by animals.
We spoke about his career spanning more than forty years,
(01:26):
including some of the truly bizarre cases that he has
seen and the work that he does to prevent death.
It's probably appropriate to give a content warning up front.
What we talk about here is quite confronting. Roger. You
are the pathologists on the Snowtown murders. That's one of
Australia's most horrific cases. We'll talk more about that later,
(01:48):
but first help me understand what is the role of
a forensic pathologist.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
Well, as you know, it's variable. Sometimes it's really critical,
other times it's not. If somebody is shot on the
head in front of thirty witnesses, you don't need a
forensic pathologist to tell you what's happened. But other times
we act as a team, so we're working together. So
the police have worked the scene and we have a
body and they want to know what's a likely cause
(02:14):
of death? What do I think has happened, what are
non possibilities, so it guides them so they're looking for
a samurai saw, not a pistol sort of thing. Time
of death is always a very difficult issue, and we're
often called in the past for that, but that's become
I think we've become more aware that it's not as
(02:36):
accurate as we used to think it was. You know,
we had those incredibly interesting scientific charts and you'd plot
this and that and they died at two minutes past
midnight and as I say, poss and minus a week.
Speaker 1 (02:47):
But from a to take this point of view, crucial
to an investigation if you can get the time of
time death for when the incident occurred.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
Yeah, I mean, if they're warm, the body temperatures of
thirty seven degrees, that means has happened very recently, which
means that the perpetrator may be in the area. If
you can give them a time frame, then it cuts
down on the number of people that may be evolved.
And I think that's the importance of it as well.
You know, the police come to the autopsy as well,
so that we can chat about stuff and work our
(03:16):
way through. People have said we should record all of
our conversations. Well, I disagree with that because it's a
work in progress. You know, we're coming up with all
sorts of theories, and we're bouncing off each other and
using each other's experience saying no, I don't think that's
likely all.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Yes, I think that's possible, and that's appropriate from a
policing point of view. If we've got well, this person
was last sight that we know for a fact that
this person was at the shopping center at nine am
in the morning, that type of information could be helpful
for you.
Speaker 2 (03:43):
Yes, indeed, But strange things happened. I remember I went
to a stabbing and those have been stabbed multiple times.
But he had drops of blood on his back. So
I was very excited by this. I said, look, I
mean the only way he could get that is if
it had dropped from a height. Must be the perpetrator blood.
So I worked up for about forty five minutes, and
then one of the crime scene cops came in and said,
(04:04):
I'll actually passed the bloody T shirt over the back
of the body. But the usefulness of that is getting
information from each other so we don't make mistakes.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Yeah, have you got any case, Well, you've done over
six thousand posts more than so when I say have
you got any cases, I assume that there's a lot
in that memory of yours, ones that your initial thoughts
on it changed to be completely different to what the
final analysis was. Well.
Speaker 2 (04:33):
I think probably one of the most recent ones was
Jasmine Korr, a young Punjabi woman who was buried alive
by her ex boyfriend. He had a story that they
had a suicide packed and she had cuts on the
side of her neck. So the initial assumption was that
he'd cut her neck and then buried the body. But
(04:53):
the cuts are very superficial and so the assessment of
the crime scene was inaccurate. It wasn't cuts. She had
actually inhaled soil. She'd be buried alive. So that was
completely different from what we originally thought and horrific.
Speaker 1 (05:09):
Of course, Yeah, I want to talk further about that
case because that is quite quite horrific. And in your
role as a forensic pathologist, did you go out to
the crime scenes or it was on a need basis
When you attended the crime scenes, you do.
Speaker 2 (05:23):
When you don't, For example, Snowtown, which we're going to
talk about, I didn't go to the crime scene there
because that was a bank fault for me. The crime
scene was in the barrels, and so we'll talk about that,
how the evidence was inside the barrel So he brought
those down to Adelaide with Jasmine. I went to the
crime scene and assisted with the exhumation, just to see
(05:44):
the process. Also to be able to tell the court, yes,
I was there, I saw these injuries or not, because
if you're not at the crime scene sometimes it can
be put you. Well, clearly these injuries occurred post mortem
when the body was being moved. But if I could say, no,
I was there and this is what I saw, and
I document what I saw.
Speaker 1 (06:01):
Yeah, And the crime scenes can be misleading. I recall
one where I've turned up the crime scene, called out
to it on a Friday afternoon. Going to the crime scene.
There's a person naked with a cord wrapped around their
neck and blood all over the walls, with finger marks
and all that looked like there'd been a violent struggle.
We set that up as a murder investigation that was
(06:23):
running for twelve hours until we could get the forensic
pathologist to examine the situation. This person had a ruptured
a orta really and was making a phone call. The
called around his neck was a cord to the telephone
and was writhing around in agony with a ruptured a order,
coughing up blood and the blood was hitting the wall.
So that taught me, and that was very early in
(06:45):
my career, the importance of getting the opinion of a
forensic pathologist because we'd still be looking for the murderer
on that case. What led you to this.
Speaker 2 (06:55):
Field, basically laziness.
Speaker 1 (06:59):
I liked your on the sensors.
Speaker 2 (07:02):
I was going back to Canada. I trained in Tasmania,
and I've been going to Canada and I've done family
practice training there. But I was going back to emergency
medicine and I was in Belize and having great time snorkling,
and spent so much time snorkling. By the time I
got back to Canada, all the emergency jobs were taken,
so all I had left was pathology.
Speaker 1 (07:19):
And you didn't get a career as a snoggl.
Speaker 2 (07:22):
No, So then I went from general pathology to pediatric
pathology to forensic pathology. So it's fascinating. I mean, it
covers so many areas of medicine and life and law.
There's nothing quite like it.
Speaker 1 (07:36):
Well, I see that you're passionate about it, and you've
been working in it for a very very long long time.
From it the impact it has on you. You're looking
at death, causes of death. What's the toll it's taken
on you.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
Well, I'm only twenty eight.
Speaker 1 (07:53):
I was gonna say you're doing well for thirty.
Speaker 2 (07:55):
That's right. Okay. It's an interesting question, and it's one
that I've for considered, as you know, and I've called
it the right to mourn and say that nobody talks
about post traumatic stress with forensic pathologists, and yet every
month of every year we go out to scenes. We
see dismembered bodies, incinerated bodies, we see children that have
(08:16):
been staffed to death, vehicle accidents, dreadful scenes, and we
have to not only immerse ourselves in it, we have
to then describe it in great detail, understand it. Then
we have to present it sometimes to a jury, and
be attacked, have our credibility attack while we're doing it.
So we are so close to this. I think one
(08:36):
of the things that saves us is the science of it.
We're focusing on the science, We're not focusing on the
horror of the situation. But I'm nearing the end of
my career now, in fact, I'm nearly dead.
Speaker 1 (08:47):
Probably well, actually, if you died on the podcast.
Speaker 2 (08:53):
That would be a spectacular finish.
Speaker 1 (08:56):
We could do something with it. It wouldn't be forgotten.
Speaker 2 (09:00):
But that going sort of television bloopers.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
Or look, we'll find the place for this social media. Well,
I'm starting to come to terms of it. We'll find
the place fore you'll go viral.
Speaker 2 (09:10):
I feel comfortable there, okay, But as I get to
the end of my career, I've been thinking more and
more about the toll and what I've seen, and it
doesn't get easier. You know, my area's children pediatric forensics.
When I first started, I knew I was going to
find courses of these deaths and gung ho. And then
as I got further and further into my career, I
(09:32):
realized that, no, I'm not going to finances all the time,
and I'm going to have to sit down with families
and say I have no idea. All I can say
to them is it was nothing that you did. And
also a lot of the times they just want to
meet the person that looked after their baby between the
time when they saw the baby last, and when they
saw the baby at the funeral home, and to know
(09:53):
that the it wasn't just a case. And of course
I always refer to the babies by their name and
just so this was not just a case for me
or for the mortuary stuff. You know, a baby who
has died, or a little child has died is a
tragedy and there's no getting around it.
Speaker 1 (10:09):
And that commit because they're very sensitive at that stage
and you say the wrong word or forget the child's
name or.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Call the child. I've seen people do that. Yeah, I
mean just terrible things.
Speaker 1 (10:21):
And that they're real triggering for a person grieving. So
I think I can see what you're saying, and we'd
have a great benefit to the people knowing that the
person handling their child or that loved one is someone
that's compassionate.
Speaker 2 (10:37):
Well, I remember the first pediatric autopsy I did, a
little French Canadian girl called Genevieve, and that was back
in ninety eighty four. I think, and I often wonder
whether because I use her case for teaching, I've often thought,
should I get in contact with the parents and let
them know that you know, somebody remembers Genevieve, but I
don't know. I mean, it's it's so long ago, and
(10:58):
maybe it's better just to let it let it go.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
The perception of what is involved in the post mortem
can Yeah, you've done over six thousand post mortems. Can
you just describe to our listeners what is involved in
the post mortem?
Speaker 2 (11:13):
Yeah, it's a basically, it's a scientific medical examination of
the body. So if it's a suspicious death, it'll involve
the clothing and the surroundings. But if it's just a
natural death somebody's just sort of fallen over in the street,
we bring them in. We video the bodies with the
clothing and possessions so that there's a record of that.
(11:33):
We take the body into the mortuary and then we
do a really detailed external examination. So essentially we're looking
for any signs of injury, because that's what we want
to exclude, you know, it's something that's unexpected that shouldn't
be there. And we're looking for signs of disease as well.
Sometimes you can identify disease from external examinations. And then
we do a three cavity dissection, and this is a
(11:55):
traditional autopsy. We've moved away from that now with radiological investigations.
But in the traditional form you would open the head
and examine the brain, you'd open the chest and examine
the lungs and heart and the admin, liver, intestines, all
the orbits are taken out in wighe they're carefully dissected,
looking for tumors, looking for inflammation, looking for some sort
(12:16):
of disease. We've moved on now we have CT examinations,
So all of our cases, most fronsic mortars around the
world get a CT which is just a very sophisticated
X ray that gives us very good imaging, the same
as the clinical cts and hospitals. So we can see
if there's a ruptured order blood around the heart, we
(12:39):
can see if there's a florid in pneumonia, we can
see if there's a brain hemorrhage. So in those cases
we will then say, okay, we've got a cause of death.
We'll do an external to make sure we don't see
anything untoward, and then the families don't have to go
through the whole process of having the autopsy done. We
have the information we need, so it's I think, in
a way kind of to families. Some families want autopsies,
(13:00):
families don't, and if they don't, this is a way
of sort of getting their loved ones back to them
as soon as possible.
Speaker 1 (13:05):
Yeah, do you find now that's progressed into getting CT
scans and the science has improved along lads lines. The
findings that you had prior to T scans were correct,
because quite often I'd be standing there at the post
more than and we'd be looking at the say it
was a bullet wound. What was the direction of the
bullet stab wound? That type of thing looks like it's
(13:27):
come from the left. Did that change the thinking on
determining what the nature of the injuries were?
Speaker 2 (13:35):
Yeah, CET's been excellent. It's interesting, as you know, with
stab wounds, you will the knife will be taken out
and then you'll do a careful lad dis section and
you can say this is the way it was going.
A friend of mine in Sweden a number of years
ago did a CT on a stab wound with the
knife in place. And what the knife had done is
had come in from the left side and pushed all
(13:55):
of the organs to the right. But when you took
the knife out, everything came back to the midline. So
the careful dissection was say, knife was coming from the front.
The CT told us a different story. And sometimes cts
will tell you something that's not at all obvious. I
had a poor detective. He'd had a body and this
fellow had cut his wrists and arms and bled to
(14:17):
death in the bath. And so I was looking at
the CT and lo and behold there was a collapse
lung and there was a stab wound in the chest
which this bloke had missed. And so I presented it
to Major Crime and I said, fancy missing that, I said,
and look at the body. I missed it too, because
what had happened is that the wound had closed over,
so you couldn't looking at the body externally. Very hard
(14:38):
to see CT two seconds.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Wow, well there's a science, said. Were you a believer
in having the investigator at the post more than absolutely?
Speaker 2 (14:47):
Yes, yeah, all the time. I mean it's with OCKH
health and safety rules. Now, sometimes the police have to
stand on the other side of the observation screen. I
prefer to have the police in there so that we're
talking about the case, working our way through it. When
I find something, you know, if I show you through
a glass window. It's not the same as pointing out
to you directly.
Speaker 1 (15:07):
No, I always found it beneficial to be at the
post more than if I was on a particular investigation.
I tell this story and that probably dates me. But
the first post, more than I went to, and I'm
not going to name the hospital, and I'm sure the
pathologist is long gone, was smoking, standing there smoking, Yes,
no gloves on. And I walk in as this young
(15:28):
copy shook my hand and then I look where his
hands had been with no gloves and standing over the
body smoking. We've come a long way.
Speaker 2 (15:37):
Well, i wear a full protective suit, so I've got
a respirator, you know, I've gloves, sleeves, food smoking, nothing
like that in the mortuary. No, it's a much more.
It's a process that could be videoed and used to
show people that it's done scientifically now and with respect,
(15:57):
with respect.
Speaker 1 (15:58):
Well, that's the important thing. And I think that's a
fear that the victim or the deceased families have, is
what's going to happen. Who's caring for our loved one,
regardless of the fact that they're now deceased. I want
to talk on this is. I think it's played prominently
in your career. Not the only case, obviously, but that's
(16:18):
the bodies in the barrel case. We talk about the
Snowtown murders. Eleven people I believe were murdered. Where the
bodies were disposed. I think there was eight bodies disposed
in a disused bank in a small country town. I'd
call them forty four gallon drum type barrels. You had
just started as a forensic pathologist, yep, down in South Australia.
Speaker 2 (16:42):
My first week on call.
Speaker 1 (16:43):
Actually, I don't know what it is about South Australia,
but whenever South Australia police I find me, it was
never good news. There's something about South Australia, but it's
a special place. Your second week and you get a call,
do you want to talk us through the process of
that case? It was a horrific and what you uncovered
and the role that you played in that case.
Speaker 2 (17:04):
Well, when I started, my colleagues in Eastern States, we're
talking about adelaide As being the city of churches and
serial killers, and there's there's a certain truth to that.
There's Snowtown. I was called by head a major crime
one night I think it was a Thursday night, and
I was so green. I didn't realize that when the
head of major crime calls you, it's pretty serious.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:27):
He said he was in a little place called Snowtown
and he described the barrels and they said, do you
want to come up? And so you know the evidence
is in there, you know, why don't you just bring them?
Bring them down to Adelaide. So I didn't go to
the crime scene because for me, the crime scene was
actually within the barrels. So they were brought down and
the next day we had to work out the mechanics
of how to handle this because they're very heavy. We'd
(17:49):
been told our full of acids, so it could be toxic,
so we had to test the fluid. Then we had
to work out how to empty the barrels and not
lose evidence because you know, you could be bullets are
inn in there. So there are eight bodies partially dismembered
in the barrels.
Speaker 1 (18:04):
What did you know at that stage?
Speaker 2 (18:06):
Well, I tried to convince Paul Schram that was probably hydroponic,
and he said what should he do? And I said,
We'll take a lit off and if you find remains,
give me be a call, and you know, ten minutes
later said yes, there were feet poking out. So I said, dear,
how many barrels? Eight barrels, and I said, let's bring
(18:26):
them down. But there were two bodies buried at Waterloo Corner.
Clinton's recise had been murdered. He was the first one
buried up at lower Light. And there was a case
that was a hanging that originally thought to be a suicide,
but they'd actually forced their spoke to hang himself. So
there were a number of them. But the mechanics of
taking the bodies out was extraordinary.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
So okay, and I hadn't even thought about the logistics,
but yeah, moving the barrels and all sorts of potential issues.
You don't know what's in them. So you work out
the mechanics to get the barrels to your laboratory or
and then how did you what was the process?
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Well, we took the lid off, had to look inside,
got some idea what was going on, and they were
in various states of decomposition. Some are actually quite well preserved.
Then we put the lid bag on, turned them on
the side on a bench and used sieves, you know,
the sieves were archaeological and just sieved all the fluid
as it came out. We found well, we found thumb
(19:28):
locks and gags and all sorts of things. So we
didn't we didn't want that material to be lost because
it was very important. So then when all the floor
was out, we brought the bodies out and we just
gave them letters f and then put them on taps
and then just matched up. We did DNA testing, which
didn't work. Which is interesting is that, well, that's what
(19:49):
people said, you know you can get you can do
DNA testing on dinosaurs. Why not this because of the
nature of how it was the bodies were stored. They're
in an oxygen deprived environment, which was originally a and
DNA just doesn't survive that. We got a foot in
a gumbot that came up in a fishing net in
the bit. We could do DNA on that, and it
was from a fisherman who had overboard ten years before.
(20:10):
But the condition was obviously much better for preserving DNA
than in these barrels.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
Had the bodies that had the flesh decomposed in.
Speaker 2 (20:21):
The yes, No, some hadn't, some had, Some were very
well preserved and we could. We could see tattoos you
could use to identify, We could do dental records. And
also the police had a fair idea who they were,
which is obviously important because if you have no idea
who somebody is, how can you actually then you know,
do dental records, you know, how can we.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
Where these stay? Yeah, that's right, you've called out identification,
but also the cause and manner of death.
Speaker 2 (20:46):
Yes, indeed, what did you find? It was difficult because
of the or preservation. The bodies had broken down. We
were looking for natural diseases, but sometimes the augments were
missing because that decomposed. We found gags and things put
(21:06):
in their mouths, you know, suffocation was was likely. As
I said, they had handcuffs and thumb locks, so we
didn't find any evidence of torture, probably because of the
state of preservation. There's been stories about they've been inserting
sparkles into their penises, and we could find OVID into that,
which doesn't mean it didn't happen. Happen. And the cannibalism,
(21:28):
you know, the last victim, apparently forgotten which perpetrator might
have been Bunting, took a slab of thigh and cooked
it up for his mates.
Speaker 1 (21:37):
Where where did where did that information come from?
Speaker 2 (21:41):
Jimmy of Thesarkus was one of the perpetrators Bunting Wagner
of the circus, and he gave the police a lot
of evidence. He gave that story.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
Yeah, how did that impact on you?
Speaker 2 (21:53):
Again? You hide behind the science. You know, people generally
are just terrible dealing with death now. But because we
do it all the time, and because my aim was
to see if I could find physical evidence of this
to corroborate or disprove the story, then I'm focusing on that.
You sort of remove yourself. It's like surgeons in the
(22:16):
operating room sometimes leaning on a chest and then takes
a breath. They realized it it's actually a patient, not
just an appendix. You know, you focus.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
I understand and that one of the interviews that you did,
you talked about it didn't impact because you had a
job to do. You're looking at this person is okay,
this is my role, this is a job.
Speaker 2 (22:35):
I think that's true. I mean with Thailand, with the tsunami,
when I was in body identifications, I was offered a
chance to go back a second time. I couldn't do it.
There were so many dead children, and you know, these
piles of bodies, truckloads of bodies. That was and you're
just seeing the whole scene. You're not focusing on a
knife wound and the horror of it all.
Speaker 1 (22:55):
How long were you involved in the Snowtown investigation? Did
you give evidence at court? Yes?
Speaker 2 (23:00):
I did. Snowtown went on for years actually, but initially
we were asked about the state of the bodies and
you know how they putrefy, what sort of does this
do to the evidence? And then the case that I
went to caught with. I mean, I assisted getting all
the bodies out of the barrels, but then I was
(23:21):
overseas for a couple of weeks. So the one that
I was involved when was a body, a skeletonized body
found at Waterloo Corner. Two bodies found there. Again, could
I exclude the fact that she had died of a
heart attack and they just hidden the body? No, I couldn't,
because I don't have the heart. You know, if you
don't have the organs. And that's I've done a study
(23:42):
on concealment of homicides and quite a significant percentage, as
you know, are concealed hoping they won't be found, or
if they are found, I'd be so decomposed that a
lot of the evidence will have gone.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
Yeah, I find that then. I don't want to say
too much. You don't want to give people idea is
but the amount of bodies that go into the water,
that surface come to the surface, and that gives us
something to something to start the investigation with.
Speaker 2 (24:08):
Time and time again, I think we can talk about
it because I think that the people who do this
sort of thing are so into the internet. I did
a study a few years ago. They do surgical studies
on pigs, and I got the carcasses and I took
a broken wine glass, I took a quantus plastic knife
(24:30):
that i'd bitten, and I took a Stateler pen and
I could stab straight into the carotids. So what I
was saying with that is that all the security measures
at the airports, you know, if you really want to
do it, you can do it. And I wasn't informing
terrorists they know that.
Speaker 1 (24:43):
Yeah, yeah, obviously, why do we use pigs?
Speaker 2 (24:46):
They're quite like us. I mean, the most similar, of course,
would be primates. But that's no go territory.
Speaker 1 (24:52):
I'm not going.
Speaker 2 (24:54):
Not at all. So that is not done anymore. There
have been some horrific experiments in the past, but with
pigs they can be anesthetized. Their tissues are pretty similar
to humans. We did a pig study with the series
I did with Lawless, looking at the Canniff brothers up
in Queensland. You know the classic story. The two bush
(25:15):
rangers had killed a station owner and a cop and
then the dismembered remains were found in saddle bags and
they'd been put on a fire, and so the prosecution
turned it around from being shot to actually these horrific
creatures dismembered these poor men and then burnt them. So
(25:36):
we got a whole pig carcass and a dismembered pig
carcass put on the fire. The dismember pig carcass disappeared,
the whole carcass turned into what we had seen with
the Caniff, so we could show using the bodies there
that their story was actually correct. They hadn't dismembered them.
And that's that's historical forensics. It's not important nowadays, but
(25:57):
it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
No, it is odd experience. How often would you find
yourself in court?
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Ah, it's interesting. I never kept a record. I mean,
sometimes you know, you know what it's like. You get
three in a week. Other times you get nothing for months, so.
Speaker 1 (26:10):
You never won the see the inside of a cord.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
Again, that's right. Other times, you know, it can be
a breeze. I mean the last one I went to,
I think it was a shooting, and both prosecution and
defense agreed that yes, it was a shooting. And they said, well,
what did you find? I said, A gunshot wound? What
did they die of? Gunshot wound? Thank you very much?
You know that. I like that when and it happens
(26:32):
more with experienced lawyers, when they're not trying to make
points or you know, pursue some odd story, you know,
taking what's obvious and then moving on.
Speaker 1 (26:42):
We talked before we started recording about being involved in
trials where there's a lot of medical evidence and how
confusing it is for myself that I have an understanding
of what's occurred and you've got the jury there and
people like yourself, eminently qualified people are coming in and
giving them very scientific explanation. Do you get a sense
(27:03):
how difficult it would be for juras on some cases,
not cidely any particular case, but some case to absorb
all the information that's put for lock.
Speaker 2 (27:11):
Absolutely, and it's interesting.
Speaker 1 (27:13):
You know.
Speaker 2 (27:13):
Sometimes I'm giving the most interesting information in my career
and the juries asleep and the judges gone to sleep.
Speaker 1 (27:19):
They realize how long I studied.
Speaker 2 (27:21):
Other times I'm almost sleep myself and they're writing it
all down. So yeah, it's fascinating, and I think it's
particularly difficult with experts. You're an expert if you say
your life. Sometimes you don't have to have a background
in it, and so you can get somebody being diametrically
opposed to you and they look like, you know, an
(27:42):
old guy that's been on the traps for one hundred years.
You know, who do you believe? Also, now part of
the problem is in publishing. There are these journals called
predatory journals, and they look absolutely kosher. But you pay
to get your stuff.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
Published, Okay, so I can get ability.
Speaker 2 (27:59):
Yeah, I can give two thousand US and I can
get a paper published on my theory and that can
be produced in court and it looks.
Speaker 1 (28:06):
And then you represented as have been published. You find
these zoo impact.
Speaker 2 (28:10):
I had a friend in a colleague in Malaysia that
happened to in the middle of the trial, I said,
what about this? It goes completely against what you said.
So the way I handle that is, you're on I
haven't had a chance to read this. Could I have
a ten minute recess? And then I go out and
I frantically google is this a predatory journal? And if
it comes up as one, then I go in and say,
well it's not worth the papers. Predial Okay, interesting, but yeah,
(28:32):
thank god for Google. I don't know how we survived
up until when you talk about strange steps, different things
that you've come across with the examinations. If you've done
animals killing people. I heard you talk on the podcast
Guardians of the Death and talking about animals that kill.
(28:54):
What's your experience with animals because some of the stuff
that you were saying was quite bizarre that I never expected. Yeah,
I've been collecting animal deaths. I mean your death from dogs, snakes, sharks, roosters, mackerel,
bloke fishing in the dar And Harbor, and sharks from nearby.
(29:15):
So this twenty five kilogram mackel jumped out of the
water and sideswiped him.
Speaker 1 (29:20):
Yeah, wrong place, wrong time.
Speaker 2 (29:21):
Absolutely, you can't be unlucky. And the rooster death.
Speaker 1 (29:26):
Yeah, please tell me about the roosters.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
It's just a little old lady out the back collecting
eggs and roosters. I understand, the nasty creatures. It went
for her and she had Varica's veins and pecked her leg.
And I've had a number of deaths of people with
Varka's veins who have just had minor trauma. There was one.
There's a cat scratch and people don't realize. And this
is the reason that I actually publicized this this stuff.
(29:49):
It's not because it's bizarre and weird. It's to let
people know that if you've got Varka's veins and you
get a small hole, lie down and put your finger
over it and elevate it, right, you will survive. What
they tend to do is wander around panicking and they
bleed to death, completely unnecessary deaths. Okay, but you never
trust a rooster.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
Okay, Well, take some advice there. Part of the stuff
that you do too. And I found that interesting because
people often look at forensic pathologists where you're only looking
at death, but part of your attraction to the work
that you do is that you can also prevent death.
Now you've given us all a warning about watching out
for roosters. If you've got Barricker's fanes, we'll take that,
take that on board. What what are some of the
(30:31):
things that you've looked at And I know that you
had a high level of expertise in Sid's death, and
how has that what you've learned helped prevent those deaths
down the track.
Speaker 2 (30:41):
What's interesting My clinical colleagues call me doctor Death because
they don't understand forensic pathology. So I've they don't understand
all that much.
Speaker 1 (30:51):
Really the area we won't delete that, we'll stand stand
by you.
Speaker 2 (31:00):
But it's an area called preventive pathology. And so I
was taking cases from the mortuary and examining them and
seeing what went wrong and what you can do to
prevent it. And this is one of the joys I
find of pediatric forensic pathology. People say, how can you
do it so well? If I can actually find something
that caused this death and then let people know about it,
Like unsafe cots, unsafe costs. Years ago, they were all
(31:23):
over the place and kids were hanging themselves and getting
stuck in them and wedging. So I work with Kids
Safe and we lobbied the federal government and now there's
a standard. All cots in the secondhand ones have to
follow the Australian standard, so you cannot sell an unsafe
cut and that's safe lives. Can't remember the last unsafe
cut I've seen, so that's really heartening. The SIDS story
(31:45):
is interesting. I've been involved with SIDS groups for decades
and we did a collaborative study with Harvard and we
showed that the SIDS babies have a deficiency and a
chemical in the back of the brain that controls they
head and neck movement substance P. So we've always said,
why do they you know, why are they dying face down?
Why don't they just lift their heads? They don't lift
(32:06):
their heads because they can't. So we're looking at genetic
markers of that. So maybe we can have a diagnostic
market to show kids at increase risk. So that sort
of thing I think makes this job really rewarding.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Yeah, well, you talk about the cots and wasn't the
old school thinking about laying children I'm talking young infants
laying them on their stomach and that that changed with.
Speaker 2 (32:28):
The medicine is an interesting area and if you look
at the history of babies sleeping patterns. Babies used to
be put to sleep on their backs, and then people
said no, no, no, well I'll vomit. No last break,
Let's put them face down, and so there was a
really strong push to have babies sleeping face down. There
(32:49):
was a pediatrician Abrams in New York, so don't do this,
I'll suffocate. And there was a study that showed that
by putting babies face down, probably sixty thousand babies died.
Don't hear that very often that medicine is responsible for
that because it was a health initiative that didn't have
evidence and they saw you put them on their back,
they're going to vomit and inhale that they don't. So
(33:09):
it was just well intentioned but wrong.
Speaker 1 (33:13):
I understand now what you're saying about the work of
forensic pathologists. It's not all about Okay, the death's happened,
there's nothing we can do, move on to the next step.
There is things that you can pick up in the
science and the medical science that can assist.
Speaker 2 (33:26):
And that's why talking to you like I think is
important because it gets it. It tells people what forensics
is about. So it means that you know when I retire,
I'm not going to get you know, leather bound seat
of my autopsy reports. You know, I've put another notch
on the wall. I've actually done something to have an
impact in medicine. It may be because I am qualified
general practitioner. I qualified in general practice in Canada before
(33:46):
it started forensics, and so that maybe has given me
an idea of what the community deserves.
Speaker 1 (33:53):
So you're looking at prevention, a couple of other little
side I won't say site hustles, that's not the right words. Careful, careful, Okay.
You had an interest in going back and look at
the historical cases involving bush Rangers, and I thought that
was that was quite interesting. Do you want to talk
us through that and what inspired you to have a look.
Speaker 2 (34:15):
Well, the two areas that I findancially bush rangers and respute.
And I don't know whether you've seen my paper on
the death of rescue. You can you can take us
through you like that one? Yeah, I know the bush Rangers.
I got involved with a Foxtail series, Lawless, and we
looked at Ned Kelly, Captain Moonlight, Ben Hall and the
Kenniff brothers and basically trying to see what the what
(34:37):
evidence there was for the historical story. If you look
at Ben Hall, the popular theory is that basically the
police snuck up on him and shot him in his swag.
The police version some things don't change. Be careful, it's
a bit different. They said they were waiting for him,
They called him to stop, he didn't, and then consortable
hip Kiss shot him through and through with a point
five six went through his gun belt. So we had
(34:59):
the gun belt at the Powerhouse Museum. Nobody had ever
looked at it properly. I put it together and it's extraordinary.
The bullet hole, it was a bullet hole shelving and
the only place you could have shot him to do
that would have been standing behind him, to the left
where hip Kiss was. Then we did scanning electro microscopy
which looks at sort of particles, and we found accelerant
and part of the bullet that killed Ben Hall, which
(35:21):
got lost in the cutting room floor. Because I thought
it was the most fascinating part.
Speaker 1 (35:24):
Of the story and your interpretation from that that the
police story was absolutely correct, supporting supporting the place. Another
one that you looked at, Ned Kelly that's been put
up there as this folk here, you've got different in views.
Speaker 2 (35:41):
I'm amazed. I mean, you know, we had a stamp
issued on the one hundredth anniversary of his death. You know,
he was the Sydney Olympics, and yet he was a
bloke who very proudly stole cattle and horses from sharecroppers.
He wasn't stealing always from squatters, so people whose livelihood
depended on it he was taking.
Speaker 1 (36:00):
So it wasn't a Robin Hood.
Speaker 2 (36:03):
As I say, Robin Hood did not steal from the
poor and keep it fro himself. Yes, you only have
to look at the Drillery letter where he says he
wants the blood of the brains and the police to
rain down, where he wants to tie people who oppose
him over ant heaps and pour their fat boiling down
their throats. If the glen Rowan train crash it occurred,
it would have been the biggest killing of police to date,
(36:24):
set up to kembush twenty eight police by derailing the train.
I don't think killing serving police officers is a good thing,
and I don't think the person who has done it
should be treated as a hero. People will say to
me meetings and stuff, Well, you know the Americans do it.
Billy the Kid didn't see Billy the Kid at the
LA Olympics.
Speaker 1 (36:44):
Yeah, true, true, it's funny.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
And we named so many things after Nick Kelly. He
was as sociopath and the thug.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
Well part of our history, isn't it? And yeah, what
other things about Ned Kelly did you learn looking into
the history?
Speaker 2 (36:58):
Well, it was interesting when we were filming Lawless up
at Stringy Bark Creek. Stringy Bark Have you been a
Stringy Bar It's actually quite an eerie place because of
the history of it. Yeah, and it's just kind of presence.
But what they wanted to do is they wanted to
have relatives of people on both sides. So Leo Kennedy,
(37:19):
who was the great grandson of Sergeant Kennedy who was
executed by Ned Kelly, he actually initiated the whole project
by saying how terrible it is to go to his relatives'
graves to find kelly memorabilia. You know, we're more yea
giving a memorial to the killers, but not to the
serving police officers. But one of Kelly's relatives was there
and I was asked what I thought of the killing
(37:41):
of Sergeant Kennedy, and I said, well, when you shoot
an unarmed maned point blank in the chest with the shotgun,
it's an execution. And this fellows. Oh, I don't know
about that. You know, none of us were there. I said, well,
Sergeant Kennedy was there, and Kelly came out with a shotgun,
so he could have put him on a horse and
send him back.
Speaker 1 (37:59):
Because the the narrative that's been fed is that he
was dying and he put him out of his misery,
so it was a noble action. But you're you're suggesting otherwise.
Speaker 2 (38:08):
Well, I wouldn't trust things that Ned said.
Speaker 1 (38:12):
Yes, you're so judgmental, right, yeah, I am.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
I just this is what.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
Robert Robert a couple of banks and chewed a couple
of people. And what about his arm or what's your
take on that from would that that protect him from
a forensic pathologist point of view?
Speaker 2 (38:27):
Yeah, Well, it's interesting because if he'd actually successfully killed
the those police with the train, would have been the
biggest killing of police officers to date in Australia. But
I thought it was just a somewhat irish approach to armor,
that he'd only had the upper part of his body protected,
but it was actually well thought out. He that's probably
(38:49):
a racist slurtion. Yeah, my great grandmother was Irish.
Speaker 1 (38:54):
Okay, you can balance that out then.
Speaker 2 (38:56):
But the plan was that the carriage would go over
the bank and he would be protected by the embankments
so his legs wouldn't have to be covered. And of
course it was made out of plowshares. It was very heavy,
so if you could reduce as much as weight. Yeah.
The other thing too, is you know, such his life.
He didn't say that really. Yeah, no, it's just myth.
Speaker 1 (39:16):
So with all those people that have such a life,
it was you, wasn't it that identified if you've got
ned Kelly tattoos? Yes, to talk us through that, that's
another obscure fact that came from well so obscure.
Speaker 2 (39:31):
But no, I just noticed that a lot of the
people coming into the watary with ned Kelly tattoos that
died violent death. So I did a retrospective study, and
then I did a ten year prospective study, and sure enough,
something like eighty percent of them have died of accidents
or suicides or homicides or all sorts of strange things.
That's in a forensic context that doesn't mean if you're
in the community and you've got a Ned Kelly tattoo,
(39:51):
you're marked. But it's just it's a I think a
mark for sometimes drug associated lifestyles or risk breaking.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
Risk taking. It's interesting. But I remember when I looked
at or heard you say that, I thought.
Speaker 2 (40:08):
You're a Kelly tattoo taken off.
Speaker 1 (40:09):
Now I'm taking off straight away. I had had an
informant that was pretty hard to hide, and he's passed
away now so I can talk about him. But he
had a bald head and the tattoo of ned Kelly
on the back of his head, with the helmet and
the two guns, he was hard to hide. Needless to say,
Oh interesting Respute, Oh yes, please do.
Speaker 2 (40:30):
I've always been fascinated by Respute. And the story is
that he was invited around to Prince Yusupov's house. He
was given enough sign not to kill a horse. They
bludgeoned him and then they shot him, and then they
threw him into the Neva River, and the autopsy showed
that it actually drowned. So I thought this sound was
not plausible. So there's one crime scene shot and there's
(40:52):
a contact gunshot wound in his head. You don't get
that underwater. You don't get that running across the courtyard
yelling out, I'm going to tell Zarina. You get that
when you walk into the place and the toxicology was
negative for the sin ard as well. You get that
walking into the place they want to get rid of in.
What do they do. They put a gun to his
head and shooting. I mean, you know, they want to
get it over with quickly. So just that one photograph
(41:15):
on the historical record could show that all of the
mythology around resputants death was wrong. It's an interesting applying
modern techniques to that.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
Well, it is interesting. And look, eye catch skills. Here
we are on the podcast and we're solving something unraveling.
There was another and I think it was a recent
article that you did about again, it's just the bizarre
world that you look at that your observations of the
world that mummified males dying in their house in South
Australia tell us about that.
Speaker 2 (41:44):
I was sitting one Sunday night and there was an
SBS program on this thing called kotakushi in Japan, elderly
folk without family or social contacts being found dead after
months or years in their huh, And so I thought
that's interesting. I wonder where that happens here. So I
did a study looking at elderly twenty years ago elderly
now and the percentage of cases that had decomposition and
(42:05):
increased markedly. The major group is sixty to sixty nine
year old. This is in Salustralia, sixty to sixty nine
year old males. And it makes sense because they're the
ones whose relationships have fallen apart, their kids have moved out,
their friends have all gone, they're getting into alcohol abuse
(42:26):
and they're lonely. So when they die, nobody knows.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
You're getting or they've been referred to examinations. People are
being called and or coming across an abandoned place and
finding these bodies.
Speaker 2 (42:38):
Well we see them the news all the time, don't
you know. Somebody has found they had been seen for
three years and nobody cared. The way around this is
to have communities. And where I live in North Adelaide,
there's a coffee shop that will go to and about
two years ago one of the old fellows used to
come every morning didn't turn up, so people went around.
(42:58):
He'd had a stroke and he was in his bed.
He hadn't had that contact, he'd be yet another statistic.
So we've just got to get back to understanding importance
of community very much.
Speaker 1 (43:10):
The way life can live these days, you can not
have contact and those little things like you're not going
down to the local newsagent to buy the paper in
the morning. Yeah, that could be a simple thing, but
we've lost all that, and we can sit on their
phones or on their computers and not have that human contact.
But it's interesting that you identified identified that. What's the
most bizarre case you've come across.
Speaker 2 (43:33):
There was a sharer talking about animal deaths who basically
got his throat cut because the electric shears and the
sheep kicked the shears. You know, something you wouldn't expect.
I remember one fellow had I think thirty cats in
his house of cause animals, when you're dead get hungry
and they feed on you. So these cats are just
stripped this body. Of course, I don't know how he
died because there are no organs left. If you have
(43:54):
a suspected homicide by shooting, say dogs have been at
the body, you need to get the youngest probationary constable
to go around and pick up all the dog scouts
in the dog dropping Yeah, to X ray and look
for bullets, and you need to look at the dogs
to see those bullets inside there. I suppose the worst
would have been Jazzmine Core. The most bizarre probably would
(44:15):
have been Snowtown.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Okay, with the Snowtown, I know that you've made a
comment that that stuck with you for a bit, that
you were getting the dreams.
Speaker 2 (44:24):
About a week. Yeah, okay, coming back alive.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Yeah, talk us through that, because not many people talk
talk about that.
Speaker 2 (44:31):
No, it's just it's only happened to me twice once.
It was with Snowtown, and I just was having these
nightmares that the bodies were all coming back alive. The tsunami.
I had nightmares after that, only for a short time.
And Jasmine I didn't have nightmares. I just couldn't get
her death out of my head. It really weighed heavily
on me because it was so horrific.
Speaker 1 (44:52):
Another said case that the murder of Samanthro Riley, that
she was too thousand and three, schoolgirl, fifteen year old.
What was the circumstances surrounding that case? And this sort
of demonstrates why the forensic pathologists can bring to an investigation.
Speaker 2 (45:11):
Yes, I mean I can talk about this as you know,
because I've been through the courts and everybody knows what happened,
and the perpetrator has been convicted. Her body was found
semi clad beside a road north of Adelaide, Humbug scrub.
It was, it was, it's a strange scene. Her underwear
had been obviously taken off and put on again. So
(45:32):
we don't undress bodies at the scene because you'll lose things.
So it took her into the mortuary and she'd been strangled,
and underneath her underpants I found a tuft of green
carpet and all these brown flakes. It turned out to
be paint flakes. I also took a lot of DNA swaps.
(45:52):
I will swab anything because if I get a negative result,
who cares. If I get a positive result, great, And
I did get a positive result the DNA from the
outside of her genitalia, and so the police announced they
were going to test all the men in the district.
He perpetrator. He tried to kill himself but failed and
turned himself in. If we hadn't had the DNA. The
(46:13):
carpet came from the back of his car and the
pain flakes came from his backstep. It shows you that
we've got modern scientific techniques, but we could have also
had something to fall back on, and just shows you
just a tiny tuft of carpet is one of the
most important parts of the autopsy. You know, my mother
could tell that she had been strangled, but she might
understand the significance of the carpet.
Speaker 1 (46:34):
Did you feel the pressure when you're doing autopsies on
cases like that, in a very sad case of fifteen
year old girl, did you feel the pressure that when
you're looking at this doing the autopsy, making sure that
you're not missing missingthing.
Speaker 2 (46:47):
Well, that's why I think the police help. Actually, you
know when they're in the autopsy room, because we're working
through it together. So and the police have never put
pressure on me to be the case through or to
come up with a particular conclusion. They've always been incredibly
reasonable and I do appreciate that. But it was it
(47:11):
was very sad because at the end of the autops
he was about three in the morning. The mortue tender said,
if you noticed something about her, I said, yeah, she
doesn't have her ears pierced. She was quite a naive
little girl, and she used to go up to the
bride shop at the shopping center and look at bridle
gowns and imagine being married in BALI.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Yeah, that's just in your take on that situation that
sort of brings at home. What we're talking about.
Speaker 2 (47:34):
Is does and I feel sad twenty years later.
Speaker 1 (47:37):
Still it's horrible.
Speaker 2 (47:40):
And if you don't feel sad, then I don't think
you should be doing the job.
Speaker 1 (47:43):
Actually, yeah, look you say that. I agree. I've been
surprised when working homicides that some people just seem to
have a disconnect. And I'm thinking that you actually understanding
what we're doing here, the importance of it and the
impact it should have on you, and something I'd think
chip's missing if you don't pick up on.
Speaker 2 (48:02):
I do too. And one other thing that I just
we can do that it's useful as forensic pathologists, you know,
if you're in court and the family are there. And
I remember going through a horrific assault this young woman
and her father was. She was Irish and her father
was he'd come out and I went out to him afterwards,
and I said, you realize, of course that she had
(48:23):
quite a significant head injury. So it's quite likely she
was unconscious right at the beginning and felt nothing. I
don't know that, but it's possible, and at least that's
something he can hold something to hold on to, rather
than listening to all of my description of the horror.
Speaker 1 (48:38):
I've found families want to be informed, and there's a
time and place when they can be informed if the
investigation's ongoing. Sometimes you've got to protect the integrity of it.
But I in my dealings, and I'm not saying that
it's across the board, but in my dealings, at some
point in time, I say I'll sit down and I'll
tell you everything that I know, and they appreciate it,
because otherwise, as you said, it's just circling around in there.
(48:59):
He had one under A lot took place, get.
Speaker 2 (49:02):
The wrong end of the stick sometimes and so easy
just to correct it. And I've had I've had a
woman contact me twenty five years after I autopsy her
daughter really just to go over it again. Yeah, it
was lovely actual because she sent me a poem this
little girl had written with a photograph of her afterwards.
So that that's what makes it worthwhile.
Speaker 1 (49:22):
It must mean a lot to you, little things like that,
we might we might take a break here when we
get back. We've got we've got so much, so much
to talk about. I want to talk about the tsunami
and the process and what your involvement there in disaster,
victim identification, also balley bombing, and a couple of other
(49:45):
cases that you've lent your expertise to get into the
bottom of it. I also want to talk about your
thoughts on life and death, because I find it fascinating
someone like yourself that has seen so much death, what
your your take on the whole? Are these our purpose here,
so we might delve a little bit deep into that,
if you don't mind that, h
Speaker 2 (50:10):
M hm
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