April 19, 2025 • 55 mins
WARNING: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised that the following podcast contains the names of deceased persons.
Lasonya Dutton was found dead in a backyard being attacked by dogs. It is just one of the chilling cases The Advertiser journalists Douglas Smith, Kathryn Bermingham and Emily Olle investigated in the award-winning podcast, Dying Rose - and now they have released a book. On this episode, Gary joined Doug and Emily in their newsroom to look back at what has changed.
Read the book, Dying Rose, here or listen to the podcast here.
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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 talked to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world.
(00:46):
Today I had a conversation. I wish it wasn't necessary,
but there's something I think we need to talk about today.
I sat down with Emily Olie and Douglas Smith. They
both hosts of a podcast series called Diane Rose and
the authors of a book of the same name. We
talked about how families of Indigenous women found to cease
were routinely let down by those responsible for finding out
(01:07):
what happened.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
To them.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I thought this was a thing of the past, but
it's still happening and it needs to stop.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
This is a conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
This is a different location for an Eye Catch Killers podcast.
We're on the floor of the Advertiser newspaper down here
in Adelaide. Before I start, I'm just going to read
out a listener warning and the podcast addresses sensitive topics,
including murder and suicide, specifically of Indigenous women in Australia.
We recognize that these discussions can be deeply distressing.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
And may evoke strong emotions.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Okay, a police officer has told an inquest she would
have now done several things differently from when she investigated
the death of a mother discovered being eaten by dogs.
That's an extract from a media report of an inquest
that's been held as we speak into the death of Lassange.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
You're done in Wilkenia.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
These are the type of things that we raised when
we last spoke, and you covered in your podcast series
of Dime Rows and covered in your book A Dime Rows.
Does it shock you that the police officer, the officer
in charge is making those type of comments.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Yes and no. I guess no, because I mean as
an Indigenous person myself, I kind of expect it that,
you know, but at the same time it kind of
tells me that the system is still flawed. You know,
when we talk about, you know, what came out of
Barabal years ago, and then also when we look at
this and then we look at all the recommendations. You
(02:42):
can have so many recommendations that come out of an
inquest or a parliamentary inquiry or whatever that is. But
at the end of the day, if there's not a
change on the ground, and you can have these recommendations,
you can see that over the years, you know that
nothing really does change to the extent that it should.
You know, did you his voices still feel drowned out
in these these cases and in these situations. As you know,
(03:06):
we don't have any indigenous homicide detectives. We don't have
those you know, indigenous people working closely with homicide or
you have those Indigenous community aison officers, and you know,
we can teach you know, stuff of indigenous culture in
police forces, in any organization or an institution. But at
the end of the day, I think, you know, when
(03:27):
we look at having more Indigenous people in I guess
homicide itself or something like that that might make a change.
But I don't feel like they listen to us and
our recommendations or any of those cranial inquest, parliamentary inquiries,
whatever you'll say, said inquiries, and none of it really
matters if it doesn't actually, you know, take if it's
(03:48):
not taken seriously, because we'll continue to see what we
continue to see now.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
And yeah, not ticking and flicking.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
I think, I mean for us, it's unsurprising because it's
what Keith was telling us three years ago understad. Yeah,
when we first spoke to him. His concerns were that
the right questions hadn't been asked, that the right people
hadn't been questioned, that the investigation felt not properly supported,
(04:18):
that it felt rushed. So I think to hear that
stuff come out more formally in court by the people
who were involved is unsurprising because it is It's what
he said.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
And here it is a playing out in an inquest
trying to find out what's happened. I'm sad and I'm
sitting here speaking to you guys, and I say that
with the greatest respect, but I'd like not to be
having these discussions. I'd like to think that on the
back of you identifying the issues that you saw in
Dying Rows and things that have happened in the past,
(04:52):
that we've learnt, we've changed, we've evolved, and these type
of things wouldn't happen, but seeing it play out in
the inquest contemporary lo it just brings it back to
the fact that, okay, we still still haven't got it right.
Just for the listeners, and I have had you guys
on the podcast before, but just put in the perspective
how you became involved in the Dime Rope Rose Project,
(05:15):
which is a podcast series and also a recently released book.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
I mean that story began an International Women's Day of
All Days, which was you know, our editor Jemma Jones
went to an event and Courtney Hunter Heaberman is a
mother and she was speaking at the event and she said,
she gave her welcome to country and she said, if
you think it's hard being a white woman in Australia,
try being a black woman. And I think Gemma was
(05:41):
just really captured by that, and she approached Courtney after
and you know, kind of disasked her what's that all about?
And Courtney's daughter Rose had died in twenty nineteen in
what Courtney believed were circumstances that she didn't feel were
properly investigated, and that sort of center on this. That
(06:01):
was the first case, and that's what we started investigating.
And as we investigated, Courtney put us in touch with
another mom whose daughter had died in circumstances she didn't
feel we're properly investigated, and then another one, and then
another family got in touch with Doug.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
For me, it started. I used to work at National
Indigenous Television and a colleague of mine, Diana, she'd been
talking to Keith about like, you know, shortly after his
daughter passed away. So now after she was found, my
colleague had been speaking to Keith and she needed someone
with her to go to will Kenya, and you know,
I put my hand up and I was like, let's
(06:37):
do it. And that was back in twenty twenty two,
probably in March. It was a month after that, and
that's when I first went there. It kind of felt
from the start that this was, you know, a story
that would you know, follow me in my career until
we get some sort of answers for the family. And
here we are.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Three years later, we ended up with these six cases
that went hugely similar in the concerns that the families
had about police not properly looking into, in their eyes,
the circumstances of these really horrible, tragic deaths of their daughters.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
You see that more more than the coincidence.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Like we're talking so six indigenous Indigenous women and the
families all had the same concerns.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Yeah, and like some of their concerns is that the
way the police behavior, I guess, responding to their situation.
Whether it's a death in Indigenous communities, it's anything really,
but particularly in these cases obviously it's it's death. So
the way that the police had responded to these families,
(07:43):
it's quite I don't know what to say put into
words really. In one case, you know that there was
it was rules like, you know, the family were comfortable
that it was a suicide, but the police got there
instead of helping the family, the arrested the brother and
bashed him like it was bad while while the daughter
was on the ground getting resuscitated. Those you know, response
(08:04):
to police have for our communities just terrible at times. Yeah,
I think.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
That's kind of what, you know, these were six cases,
but we were only scratching the surface of as was shown.
You know, there was a sent inquiry into missing in
murdered First Nations women and children that you were part of,
and you know we learned of that inquiry through our
two year investigation into all of these cases. It became
(08:28):
clearer and clearer that this wasn't just isolated incidents of police,
you know, maybe one officer not looking properly into something.
It was a systemic issue that these families and the
families who gave evidence to the inquiry, and huge amounts
of other families that we didn't speak to, as Doug says,
(08:50):
felt was a systemic approach from police towards Indigenous people
in lots of circumstances, as you say, but particularly when
it comes to death that they felt were suspicious.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Okay, let's talk about la Sonya's case. Can you give
us a background to the circumstances in which Lasnya disappeared
and where.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
She was found.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yeah. So Lasnya, you know, thirty one year old bark
and gy woman from will Kenya in central western New
South Wales.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
She was on foing discovered on March twenty ninth, so yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
So four days before that, right, So it was a Friday,
and she'd been having a few drinks with her two
close cousins. They were in this place like in will Kenya,
just it's called the they're called it the safe house,
so it's where women are usually live for scape domestic
violence or whatever. And she was there and sitting down
during the day having a drink. She's taken off at
about by thirty six o'clock in the afternoon. She's walked
(09:46):
away and she said to all of her family last
years later, my mom, my family are catches tomorrow. And
she says she was going home, but she went and
no one saw her after that. Apparently on that night
she was seen in another house in the Malley that's
a part of the community where you know, mostly Indigenous
people live. She was seeing at another house with someone
(10:07):
and they were drinking and then they were there to
the late hours of the night and they've taken off.
No one's seen them after that. So she's taken off
Friday night, no one's seen her on Saturday, no one's
seen her on Sunday, Monday, and then on Tuesday, Tuesday morning,
at about ten o'clock that's when her body was discovered
in the backyard of her own home. And like I
said before, it was just meters away from the back door,
(10:30):
the back kitchen window, right next to the clothesline, and
up into this yard. And this yard is it's actually
where she was found, is probably two three meters away
from a backway path that people just use, like they
don't even live in that house. I just use that path.
They like walk through to the next street so they
don't got to go the whole way around. So that
yard is constantly visited throughout the day. And it's loss
(10:53):
only his grandmother's house, none of norm you know, she's
a big matriarch there for the family.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
People have dropping people dropped in and gave a.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Cuppa, you know, sit down, have a yarn. That's where
a lot of people go. And it's just yeah, for
the whole community. It's like, well, I'm pretty sure she
wasn't there yesterday, and I'm pretty sure she wasn't there
the day before. How is she there today?
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And I asked how her body was found that.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
It had an electrical cable wrapped around her neck. It
was an Xbox three sixty cord like an audio visual
AV cord and I think like she was. She was
found with that wrapped around her neck. She was in
an advanced state of decomposition. So she'd been dead for
about all they said around four days, three to four
days because of the state of her body. And yeah,
(11:42):
so she had been laying there for that long, and
there were dogs chewing at her, and she'd been missing
some limbs, and you know, it looks like they've been
there a while. And you know when her uncle, her
uncle just walked in the backyard one morning and just
found her there and he was, like, he told me,
he goes, I thought it was a kangaroo at first,
but then I looked again and he goes, you know,
(12:03):
don't I realize it wasn't a kangaroo. It was it
was my niece. And he was just screaming his head off.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
What I can imagine how horrific it would have been
before him was she reported missing, before her body was found,
anyone made the inquiries, where where was she living?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Where was she.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Change she was at that house where she was found
in like will Kenya, you know, and even I asked.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
That question provocatively because I want you to explain that
because people will be young. But yeah, if she didn't
come home, but explain the community.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
In will Kenya, in my community as well, if I
went missing for a couple of days, like, oh, he's
probably just over at cousin's house doing something, you know,
like he's just staying there. Like we don't think of
it in that manner, like we don't think of it like, oh,
something really bad is wrong here, like something is really
wrong here. And I could see how the family didn't
see that straight away, because you know, will Kenya is like,
you know, she might be off at cousin's house or
(12:53):
they went down to the river, or they were doing
something like that's just normal for outback country life, you know.
And so in this case, it's like, no, she wasn't
reported missing, and I don't think they would have reported
in missing unless well I don't think anyone in that
community would report someone missing. And I say, had a
really really bad feeling that it was wrong, and then
they had to go to the cots to say something.
And I don't think they felt that and because to them,
(13:18):
that's just normal living. And you know, it's just same
in my community, like my brother goes missing for three
or four days sometimes and I'm like, hell is he
you know? Oh, he's at the mission doing something. It's
the same thing.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, okay, So the first involvement or notification of the
police is when Sonya's body has been found. Yeah, they've
contacted the police. Found by her husband. Her husband, her
uncle Merle and he's got in contact with the police. Then,
as my understanding, homicide detectives of local police would.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Have come out.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
I'm just surmising here, but I know from the report
that homicide detectives attended that day, so they would have
would have flown up.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
I'm very cautious.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
This matter is before an inquest and the coroner hasn't
handed down findings at this point in time. So what
we're talking about here is what's been reported at the
inquest and reports that have come from the inquest. The inquest,
my understanding, has been held at will Kenny.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Okay. Some of the things that come.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Out to have caused me concern. When you've had the
officer in charge of the investigation in the witness box
said that she wasn't even aware initially that she was
in charge of the investigation.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (14:40):
And she has also expressed as I read out at
the start of the podcast that would have done things differently.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
What's your take on that.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
I mean, yeah, look, I think, as I mentioned before,
flawed system when it comes to you know, historically, you know,
when we look at other cases like this, you I
go back to Barville again. My take is nothing is
like changed enough. You know, we're looking forward, we're fast
forwarding here, and it's like what's been identified as you know,
(15:12):
gaps and you know police have done the wrong thing
or you know, like unintentionally you know, missed things in
the past because either they're unconscious bias, they're like, oh
it's you know, that's probably not something that we need
to look at or whatever, blah blah blah. Like that
is still playing out as we've talked about, like that
will bring it forward to this police officer right unaware
(15:33):
that they were because where was the communication within the
police force, or where was the organization to get a
proper task force there or you know, team of detect
homicide detectives to look at this properly, I mean thoroughly right. Well,
I also.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Think it speaks to the difference as well. I think
there's a couple of factors at play the remote community.
It's massively a factor. But also you know, if a
white woman's body was found decomposed being eaten by dogs
in the middle of the Adelaide CBD, there would be
streets blocked out, there'd be one hundred of coppers, hundreds
of cops crawling the streets. You know, I think that
(16:09):
those concerns that she's raised about that response, the fact
that you know there was a fairly junior comfortable at
the scene is pretty bathelic given the circumstances that she
was found.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
In breaking it down and this is this is me
joining joining the pieces from a next homicide detective understanding
the working to New South Wales homicide squad and what's
been reported in the media from the inquest into Lasagna's death.
A homicide of attended if we accept how it's been
reported in the media on the day. So I'm assuming
(16:42):
they ever flew up or drove up, drove up the
moment they were notified.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
So that's a tick.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
The first mistake you could make is we won't send homicide.
There's nothing, nothing to nothing to see there and that
could potentially be.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Where a problem is.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
So the first step is right they've sent homicide team
up there. They're treating it seriously initially, but there's also
reports of the lack of CCTV footage gathered. I think
it was at the club or the location she was
drinking that on the Friday, but only the CCTV footage.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
From that period of time was gathered.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
From a homicide investigation point of view, it's crucial the
last sighting. The last sighting is basically your starting point
to do the investigation. There seems to be some problem
problems there is that your take on.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
It, I mean, it's interesting.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
One of the things that was raised in the inquest
is that Lasagna's ex partner was asked to provide CCTV
for the four day period that she was missing, and
when that cc he was handed to USB stick and
he gave it back, and when that.
Speaker 5 (17:45):
CCTV was handed over Friday.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Night and Saturday morning and all of Monday that we're missing.
And you know, I think that the detective said that
she kind of brushed up off as a technical issue
or you know, there's all sorts of reasons that footage
could be corrupted. But you know, having spoken to Keith,
(18:08):
who's got so many doubts about the way that this
was approached. Something like that only raises more questions because
when you've got an incomplete picture, for whatever reason, it
could be completely innocent. It could you know, it could
absolutely be the far was corrupted, but you then sort
of opened that door to questions being asked that now
can't be answered because that hasn't been provided. And I
think that that's one of the things that we're now
(18:29):
seeing play out in this inquest is all of the
concerns that the family had that you know, maybe corners
had been cut or things haven't been sort of properly
looked into, seemed to becoming somewhat to fruition.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Well, and we're getting this because the police are actually
under oath giving evidence, and this is where this information
is flowing out up until that point. Correct me if
I'm wrong. When you when you guys were looking at
and you're making inquiries with the police, and the response
you got back, well, you explained to me.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
The response, I've got the same response a year year,
I think it was. It was the exact same response
from the cops. There was any any any questions, any
assertions that we put to the police from the family,
their concerns, not none of it was answered. They had
a strike force there and they were looking into this death,
and that they had spoken extensively with the family and
(19:18):
that was it. There was no other nothing from the cops.
I even went to the cops shop in wil Kenya
to speak to the cops and that was a bit
of a tense moment itself. But yeah, that the nothing
at all.
Speaker 5 (19:31):
No we uh we.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Actually, at the end of the podcast process ended up
dubbing at the wall of silence because each of the
I we had cases across different states and territories, and
each of the police institutions that we approached came back
with much the same responsors, which were m no comment
(19:53):
or you know, we're we're investigating, or we've spoken to
the family, but you know, we weren't really given any
sort of insight into those processes.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, and look, playing Devil's advocate, the police could say
it's an ongoing investigation, we can't speak to the media. Yes,
you can go down that path occasionally, but I've spoken
more detail to you guys and seeing the response and
it was a generic sort of blame response that gives
no comfort to the family. Or to yourselves investigating it
(20:21):
from a journalistic point of view, that things have been done.
And I've got to say, and you know, you were
predicting this two years ago when you were saying that
the family was saying they've got concerns, And now we've
got police officers in the witness box acknowledging that things
could have been done differently and getting an emotional about
(20:42):
the way the investigation has been done. The USB that
was provided to the ex partner, and I think we
need to clarify that he's not considered publicly, he's not
considered a suspect in this matter, but the police thought
it important enough to gather cc TV footage from from
his place and the US that provided him a USB
(21:03):
stick and that's come back and there's significant portions of
the footage missing from a homicide. To take this point
of view, that would cause me concern. Now there's technical
glitches that you can have in computers. What's what's your
take on that?
Speaker 5 (21:20):
I mean, I guess.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
It's hard not to look at that and have questions.
I think any person would look at that, and you know,
whatever the reason you then it just creates questions. You go, well,
why was that portion missing? What happened during that time?
Is there something that we're missing?
Speaker 5 (21:36):
Is there?
Speaker 4 (21:37):
And I think that, you know, particularly for her family,
you know, you will always have questions. Those sort of
things are what's viiral into those questions of well, what are.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
We missing, what's not being provided, what's not being said.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
It's also because they're missing in specific times where like
we really are looking to know what happened on those
days or where she was on those days. And again
like we're not saying that this person is you know,
like in any way you know, the person that's done
anything to her. But it's just that it raises questions, right,
(22:12):
It just raises so many questions because the specific all
the times of where that footage is missing is really concerning.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Like it's yeah, I look, yes, yeah, and you would
have to get to the bottom of it. Like I
wouldn't be as overly concerned if the police were in
the witness box at this inquest and said, yes, there
is footage missing. We've provided the USB stick and we've
examined the computer and it shows that there was a
technical difficulty between this period and that period. But what
(22:42):
I'm getting and I preface that with any reports from
the media, there's been no explanation on.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Why that's forgotten.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
The officer in charge also made a comment I'm just
looking for it here.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I haven't got the I haven't.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Got the specific quote, but it was along the lines
the officer in charge was. I saw it, and this
is my interpretation of it. I saw it as her saying, well,
it was all a bit confusing the structure of who
was leading leading the investigation. I'll say, I'll call you
guys outside this. I understand the organization, the way things work.
(23:17):
What with that type of commentary? Does that cause you
concern massively?
Speaker 4 (23:22):
I mean, look and again it's not and at no
stage I think is anyone putting any and nor should
they put any blame on this officer when you're you know,
it's it's hard.
Speaker 5 (23:35):
To imagine in a circumstance.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
You know, allegations of murder is the worst crime, So
it's it's hard as an outsider to understand why you
wouldn't have a pretty solid set of systems and processes
in place when you know a possible even a whiff
of murder, is homicide, or suspicious circumstances is raised. How
(23:57):
someone could walk into that scene and be like, I'm
really sure who's supposed to be looking at what here?
It's I find that pretty hard to fat it really.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
I mean I just think that that was that they
would just rock up. No, I mean as a police officer, right,
I mean if it was as we say, as if
it was a case here at Adelaida in Sydney, that
would probably be the case, right, they'd rock up. They
would know who's in charge, who's doing what? You would satis,
how do you think you would run an investigation of
that manner or that type? You would you would be
the leader of You would be the leader I know.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
And yeah, there is experience officers and inexperience officers. I
know from experience how you run investigations, and there's a
clear structure and things need to be set in place.
So you don't want to see a police officer in
the witness box acknowledging mistakes were made in an investigation
where the family have been flagging. We've got concerns about
(24:49):
the way this is going to be investigated. From the outset.
You've got you guys doing stuff in the media expressing
concerns and the very concerns that you've expressed, and then
fast forward we get to the inquest and the evidence
that is coming out of the inquest, and we preface
that with the coroner hasn't handed down the finding, so
this has just been reported.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
You've got all this.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Concern about the way the investigation has been conducted. I
see that the homicide detective also gave evidence that the inquest,
and the homicide detective said, I didn't have concerns about
Broken Hill or Barrier Police District being able to carry
out the investigation.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
She told the court again.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah, then you've got the local police saying, well, would
have done things differently. So there's a failure without putting
blame on the individuals, because I don't think anyone sets
out to not do an investigation properly. But there's a
failure there somewhere, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
I Mean it's like in a newsroom, right, if you
have your big breaking story today, you're not sending your
cadet out to do it. And if you are, you're
making sure that you've given them all of the training,
all of the advice, You're checking their work, You're making
sure that someone experience is looking over that. So I
think you know, it's hard to it's hard to understand
(26:05):
how someone could look at and again it's not speaking.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
To the skills or the capabilities.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Of any individual officer, but Tidler's look at that and go, well,
you know, why was it just a matter of Okay,
they've got it.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
Seems good now, no worries.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Well, looking from the outside the investigation, this is me
speaking with the Bete hindsight, but based on years of
experience as a homicide detective, crucial that you would lock
in the person that found the Sogna's body, details of
where you were, who was around the house, or that
a statement her last movements would be crucial.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
In this day and age, that's quite often.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
CCTV footage, so that's a high priority interviewing people and
following up those type of investigations. I got to say,
from looking from the outset, bearing in mind the coroner
hasn't come back with the findings yet, that doesn't appear
to be a peer to be the case.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
I can say that I've spoken a peace that as
I think about it now, because I did mention before
when she left on the Friday night, no one really
knew where she went, but there were actually people that
reported sightings of her late into the night, and police
never spoke to them as far as I'm aware, because
I know cops went back a second time. It was
in twenty twenty three that they'd gone back there. They'd
(27:20):
conducted I don't know how many interviews after it, but
they'd gone back to have a second stab at this case.
Right but before that, there were a few people that
had seen her late in that night. All said that
they'd seen her later on that night walking along the
main street at the local football oval. None of them
had ever Cops had never get a statement from any
of them. And I'd spoken to one of them and
(27:41):
he was like, no, cops never came to me and
ask many of these questions.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
I think one of the ones that you know, I
think we struggle with is Mele, her uncle who discovered
her body. He says he was a question by police,
And to me, that's I don't understand how the first
person to discover the body could have never been asked
the question.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Well, I can't be And look, people might think how
we're sitting here, we're beating up on the investigation that's
before the coroner. The families flagged this. You guys flagged it,
you spoke to me about it. I had concerns, and
that's why I say I'm sitting here wishing I wasn't
sitting here talking to you because I'd liked all those concerns.
The police have done a thorough job and the family
(28:22):
now know what happens to what happened to Lasagna, but
that hasn't been the case, and that's why I want
to talk about That's why I wanted to sit down
with you guys and talk about it, because how many
times are we going to let this happen? And how
can you have confidence in an investigation if you're the family,
if you've got a family member that side, how can
you have confidence in an investigation when you've got police
(28:45):
acknowledging that they could have could have done things better.
I'm all for admitting we make mistakes. We all make
mistakes time and time time again. But these are pretty
simple things that it should have been done and should
have been properly. Not blaming the individual offices, but what
it's a structure that this is allowed to happen, given
the fact that there's been warnings about this. Let's call
(29:06):
it from the bearable time, because the bearable time should
changed the landscape. We should not be making these mistakes.
And that's why that's why I'm so passionate about it.
I think, well, stuff this. We identified all the problems
back there, and look what's happened there, and here we are,
thirty thirty five years down the track, we're still making
those mistakes.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
So well, we've got it's thirty years later, and we've
got a book filled with we'll take out Shannaro because
she the circumstances of her death, but the same thing,
the response to her death thirty years later, and we've
got a book filled with the stories of six families
who have gone through essentially the exact same thing, those
the families of the Bowerville cases.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Let's talk about the Senate inquiry, the Senate Inquiry into
Missing the murdered First Nations Women and Children. Do you
guys know how that came about or what generated that,
how that inquiry started? I do.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
It's been so long since I've covered it.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
I've actually had a blank.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Not the specific individual that's initiated, but I think it
was because of all the dramas. It was collectively like
one situation after another that it was decided the Senate
inquiry and they don't have a whole a federal Senate inquiry.
Lightly Statistically, just if we look at things from a
statistic point of view, have you got a focus on
(30:28):
the statistics of murdered Indigenous women or missing Indigenous women?
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Yeah, I mean the rates are I think on average
it's about eight times high for Indigenous women murder rates
in Western Australia. It's actually about seventeen point five times
higher than non Indigenous women.
Speaker 5 (30:46):
And there's also a lot of other statistics that come
into play.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
Four times more likely to be hospitalized due to domestic
violence and six times more likely to die of family violence.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
And I think a lot.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Of those figures as well, unfortunately, are the best that
we can get. But the reporting around the deaths and
the instances of missing persons, particularly in the cases of
Indigenous women, is actually not there's no solid reporting structures
around it. So that's the best that they can glaim
of those stats, but there's still a lot of question
(31:19):
marks about them.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
They could be hindy just.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Say something is those statistics themselves is right? So you've
got you know, you talk about the one of suicide,
and then you talk about the one of family violence
domestic violence itself. So if a cop or a detective
rocks up to a case, you know, and they think
likes or and that it, you know, they might think, right,
suicide or they had that assumption in the back of
their mind that this is probably a suicide, they should
(31:43):
also have the other statistic in their head that yeah,
Indigenous women do experience domestic violence at higher rates as well.
So it's like these two statistics themselves is has she
done something to yourself or has someone done something to her?
They both go hand and hand in a way that
they're both something that should be in the back of
a detective's mind when it comes up to well.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
I think the part when I gave evidence at the
inquiry was talking about where assumptions have made, where misunderstanding
about things and on that basis go down a path
or ignore lines of inquiry. That's where problems often occur.
I just the inquiry's terms of reference focused on missing
(32:26):
the murdered First Nations women and children sought to examine
the extent of the problem, comparing investigative practices between First
Nations and non First Nations cases. Examining systemic causes, the
effectiveness of existing policies, and exploring actions to reduce violence
and improve safety. After two years and sixteen, here in
sussending inquiry into Missing the murdered First Nations Women handed
(32:49):
down its report. While important, it's not the moment of
reckoning many of us had hopedful. So that is an
extract again, and I think you guys met that while
we're just sitting here talking about it, that Okay, it's
one thing to have the inquiry, but are people going
to react react to it?
Speaker 2 (33:09):
One thing I.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Thought interesting and I think there was a flow and
I haven't got the details here, but the important role
that media play on it, playing this we identified here
sitting talking about it, and clearly the Senate inquiry have
come up with the same same view that the media
play a part. We need and here we're sitting in
the news office, so it's a bit embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
But we need to play a part in it.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
We're working in the media that these cases are not forgotten.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
These cases are focused.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
When someone when someone's found in tragic circumstances, dead in
the backyard just near it, near the family home, being
eaten by dogs, you'd think there'd be some attention to it.
So thirty one year old woman and there wasn't. You said, Doug,
you're up there, and there was no one.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
We were the first to report on it, I believe
an ITV that was Yeah, So there were none and
that's just great. I mean, we can talk about the
remoteness of the community, but what's two hours away is
a broken Hill, right. They should have heard about this.
I don't know if they did or not, but I
didn't hear anything or read anything from that from Broken
Hill media.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
Well.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
I think a really good example of that was one
that we investigated as well here in South Australia, Sharan Warrior,
who was missing for nine days before her body was found,
and it was only once the media got involved that really,
you know, sort of kicked into gear. But I mean
it was a when we looked at sort of even
(34:35):
and I think we can. I think we have to,
as you said, you have to admit your mistakes, and
I think that we have to admit our mistakes as
well as a media as a whole. That we didn't
pick up on that case until much later down the track,
because I think that you do see I think those biases.
And I think I mentioned earlier that the you know,
it's not necessarily it's not just the police that have
(34:58):
issues with biases. And I think it's we have to
acknowledge that. You know, we will see police releases put
out about missing women, and I think there is a
tendency in an.
Speaker 5 (35:08):
Unconscious bias to go, oh, well, it's.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
An Indigenous woman, so it should probably.
Speaker 5 (35:12):
Turn up or you know, And I think that that's
that's what happens.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
And I think that the media is just as complicit
a lot of the time in not not really focusing on.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Those stories, with the with the book that you've got
and the and the podcast series and I know you
too are passionate about it and the whole team that
you've worked on this.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Do you think we can make a change?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Oh man, that's a big one. A. I think only
time will tell. To be honest, it's going to take
an effort from everyone. And I guess the media itself
to have a look at itself in the way that
they report. As you know, Emily has said that admits
to your in the States. I think the media do
play a big role in not covering these stories. Properly
(35:54):
and or giving it even attention as they would a
non Indigenous person or And one thing I did find
is well, as socio economic status does play a big
role in how much time media or police are going
to spend in someone's case, you know. So, and that's
regardless of skin color, I believe as well, but it
just happens that Unfortunately for Indigenous women, it's more more often,
(36:16):
it's more common in our communities, and that we don't
get that media attention, that we don't get that police
response that you know, we desire, that we need that
is you know, to correct it, to make things. It
just doesn't happen.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
So I think as well, particularly for audiences and particularly
you know, as white people, I think that people can
have a tendency when you have these conversations to feel
like they're being attacked or they're being blamed for something, right,
you know, like white people here, someone say, you know,
policing is a the institution has racial biocense, right, and white.
Speaker 5 (36:52):
Police officers might go, oh, but not me.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
And I think that people it's really important for people
and something that I hope that can happen is to
be able to separate out and go, this isn't an
attack on me. Think that people need to separate out
and go just remove yourself. No one's having a go
at you. You can acknowledge that we as a society
and as Australia have made mistakes. We need to fix
(37:15):
those mistakes. And the only way that you can fix
those mistakes is to acknowledge that they have happened. And
so I think that acknowledgment and then that listening, and
then that understanding, and then that change has to come
right from the start of recognizing that something is wrong
in the first place.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yeah, and I think what you've said is one hundred
percent correct. I think police have to also acknowledge that
there has been problems in the past. I'm talking from
a police point of view, and we're going to overcompensate
for that. We're going to make sure we do it properly,
because time and time again we've shown that we haven't
done it, done it properly, and it's just not good enough.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
I can tell you that sitting in that Senate inquiry
the day that we did, the head of the New
South Wales Police Force was there, the homicide squad. They
didn't really admit to anything like wrongdoing on their side.
On their part, nothing was really you know, they hadn't
made that many mistakes. Or when it comes to you know,
like how do you deal with this case, they always
bring up cultural sensitivity training. We do enough cultural awareness
(38:14):
training that it's like cultural awareness training is not going
to solve a murder, right, So it's like and then
they even asked it the head of this somermicide squad
or you know, how many Indigenous people do you have
in the homicide squad? You couldn't answer that question. And
it's also there was one big question I think it was,
is do you think that I don't know after the
senator or in the Cox axit or not. Was there racism?
(38:36):
Was it rife in the South Wales Police Force? And
that no, Like they were just saying no, like straight up,
like there's no, But there was no room for them
to say that it is. But it's you know, we're
trying to address like it was just no, it was
they don't want to admit to it.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
And that's one of.
Speaker 4 (38:51):
The criticisms of the recommendations of the findings from the
Senate inquiry was that they didn't go far enough During
the Cox Senator during the came out and said, you know,
one of the main ones was the Police Minister's Counsel
to review existing police practices towards first Nations people.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
Right, sure, that is important.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
But you know, I think that even because even then
a Senate inquiry is being held within a system, within
a you know, system that was created by white Australia
to cater to you know, like, I think, until there's
that cross the board recognition that we have made mistakes,
we have all made mistakes as a society, we are
going to acknowledge them and we're going to do something
(39:33):
about them. Until police, you know, senior police officers can
sit in front of an inquiry and say yes, we
acknowledge that, you don't really see how you've moved forward
in a meaningful them.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
And what saddens me saddens me about that when we
had the parable Parliamentary inquiry and the recommendations that came out,
one of the first one of the first recommendations was
training the education of police. But they went further to say,
not we all sit in the room and watch a
PowerPoint presentation and we all know that like if they
(40:04):
do the training here and the media, you just sit
there and not They wanted something that was meaningful, and
they created a training film with me narrating it, speaking
with the passion, speaking with the anger about what happened
unbearable and so people should watch that to change that culture.
And we've got to push police and not just police.
(40:28):
If we're educating everyone, you don't just learn just sitting
there and going okay, cultural competency and awareness. It's got
to be lived experience, and you've got to see how
this impacts so problems that occurred. What happened, Well, someone
has still got a way of murdering three children in
the Vowerable case. So yeah, it's definitely something that we
(40:48):
need to need to fixed.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
So it's interesting you mentioned anger as well, because I
think that's something that you know, the response when journalism
one one one when you want someone to you know,
you don't use statistics to get someone across the line.
Speaker 5 (41:03):
You could have faced a story. And that's the case study.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
And I think when people saw the cases that we
presented in Diagos, there was outrage. People how could this
be happening under our noses? And I actually think in
this instance that's what people should be feeling they should
be anger and they should be outrage that these systems
are still failing these people in this way.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
Well, you know, I know what you're saying. It's probably
not a good terminology, but you need to hit people
over the head with a baseball bat to get it in.
But what I say with Boarable like I can talk
about Barable, you know, in day out and people go, yeah,
that's terrible, And I say, okay, if the police responded
properly when the first child disappeared, Colin Walker, the other
(41:45):
two children could quite possibly still be alive to this day.
So that's the consequences if you don't do an investigation.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Probably does that bring it home hard enough? Do you understand? Now?
Speaker 1 (41:55):
So that's the type of thing. And as I said,
we all make mistakes, and here we are. I'm criticizing
the cops and the media.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
You're criticizing the media, which starts.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
But it's an important thing and unless unless we push
it and push it, it's.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Not going to not going to change.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
And I've got to have those hard conversations, you know.
And it's in all aspects of life in Australia. I
believe politics when it comes to that or media or
whatever it may be, having hard conversations about it and
acknowledging your fuck ups, let say that, but acknowledging it
and then working to fix it. That's what needs to
(42:34):
be happening more more often.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Okay, I'm going to ask you this question, and forget
I'm a former cop and homicide detective. I'm asking you, guys,
why do you think this occurs?
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Big question?
Speaker 4 (42:49):
I mean, I guess one of you know, and I
can only speak to what I learned through this process,
and Doug can speak much better to know lived experience.
But I think that there's a there's a series of
issues in sort of entrenched biases, and it's not just
within policing.
Speaker 5 (43:06):
I think it's, you know, within society more broadly.
Speaker 4 (43:08):
But entrenched biases towards Indigenous people on a lot of fronts,
in terms of rates of suicide, murder, rates of domestic violence.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
You know.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
I think that there is this underlying and it's not
necessarily a conscious bias. I think there's plenty of conscious
racism within the police forces, but I also think there's
this sort of underlying, unconscious bias in the way that
a lot of police officers approach cases involving Indigenous people,
and that clouds the way that they feel that they
(43:43):
need to investigate them. And then there's the other layer
that we sort of touched on as well, and that
you've spoken about previously as media interests. And you know,
I think the media plays a role in putting a
lot of pressure. Cleosmith in w A was a great
example of when the media gets involved a little girl
who went me seeing and was found. When the media
gets involved in that, pressure is put on police step
(44:04):
up because they know they're under the spotlight. A lot
of these cases don't get media interest, and so I
think that there is kind of, again maybe an unconscious
feeling that police go, oh, well, you know, we did
our beds.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
It could even and I don't disagree with what you're
saying that all on that, but human nature, if you're
not being pressured to do something that okay, well if
I don't attend to it today, I can do it tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Pull off.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
No one's actually asking and it gets shelved in the
two hard basket, or you're just touching the surface and
not doing it properly. I as I said, I hoped
with what happened with Boarable and the things that were said,
and I thought there were some watershed moments that, you know,
where the police had the commission to come up and
(44:52):
actually apologize.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Skippy One.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Commission of Skippy One came up and apologized to the
Bearable community and acknowledge that we could have done it
better back when the children disappeared.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
But the fact that there's still these.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Situations going on, and you said you just scratched the
surface in regards to the six cases that you identified
in Diane Ray's I can I can say here I
get phone calls from people that are expressing the same
concerns from across the country, not just New South Wales,
that these matters aren't being looked at, looked that properly.
(45:25):
Having put the effort into the podcast series, which congratulations
to believe it won a Walkley Award, which is which
is a prestigious award.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
I've learned that in the time of the working well,
I've learned a lot of them. I've hearned a lot
of good journalists on the Walkley But you guys have
actually got it.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
I say it's almost sad in a way that a
Walkley Award winning podcast series and still perhaps a message
didn't get out there. Do you do you find that
because I found I've found that on the Bearable Thing,
where you think, okay, it's here, it's on sixty minutes,
on four corners, it's on then ITV, people are going
to listen, but it just sort of slips away.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
I think it's it's an issue that I guess Australia itself,
like as a whole, you know, we don't really identify
with it completely. Like it's not something that you know,
that's an issue that we need to address, Like that's
something that we should be working, like we should all
be collectively trying to you know, make that a better
situation for families. But that's not something you know, And
(46:25):
like your question before is what do you feel it is?
Is like it's for me, it's the history of this
country as well. It's the history of policing in Australia,
and it's the history of relationships between policing and Indigenous
people and that's always going to be, you know, a
bit of a shaky relationship no matter what. And this
type of stuff is, you know, it shows that it's
(46:48):
still there. You know, what happens in dying roads is
because there's no communication between the Indigenous community and the
police to the level that I think there needs to be,
especially in my community where I'm from, and you know,
we see a lot of issues there as well. But
it's also you know, I've grown up with police, you know,
knocking on my door all the time. I've been arrested
(47:10):
as a teen myself. You know, I've had police. I've
had a police slag on me, call me a boom,
a nigger. You know, I've had that happen to me.
I've had you know, I've had racist police at me
since I was about ten years of age, and for
no reason at all, I could tell you that, and
I responded in a way whereas I hate the police
(47:33):
now because I'm only a young Aboriginal kid and the
way that they've treated me, and I've been traumatized from
the cops, like believe me, and I've had to sort
of fight back. And how do I fight back is
with you know, doing the wrong thing. And that's because
you know, if I would have had a good copper
walk up to me and treat me good as a kid,
I wouldn't have saw them as you know, the enemy
(47:54):
growing up. And I'm not saying the enemy. I'm just
saying like, that's how it felt, and that's how it
feels in indigit communities. Cops something there to help us,
they're there to police us, and that's how it's always
going to fill with us.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Yeah, and that that communication breakdown. It can go both ways,
like the police will be you know, they'll have their
point of view, You've got your point of view, And
I think that presents part of a problem with these
investigations to where that communication isn't a forthcoming between the
two groups. But I say that with the fact that
(48:27):
you're the police, you're there to serve the public, the
public being everyone in the community, not selected people you
want to help. So we what we saw with diing
Rose covered in the book and the podcast is this
and you described as systemic type of type of situation. Doug,
you're talking from a black man's point of view and
(48:48):
the relationship between the police that all plays a part.
How do you guys like and I'll talk about my
thoughts on it from a homicide or ex homicide the
technique point of you, how do you guys think it
should be fixed? What what would you like to see, like,
when this came out, do you think the world would change?
Speaker 2 (49:06):
And with all the cops to go we get it now.
Speaker 4 (49:09):
I thought there'd be a few more people nodding their
heads and going, yeah, that is. And I think that's
the thing that was that we saw is the response
was massive, the listenership, the readership, the you know, the comments,
the outrage. People were outraged. They couldn't believe that this
(49:30):
was how these families had been treated. So I think
we did get quite hopeful that you know, there was
this sort of rumbling that there would be a bit.
Speaker 5 (49:37):
Of pressure put on and then there kind of wasn't.
Speaker 4 (49:40):
And I think that there's you know a lot of
ways to address that, and you know, I can't speak
to the best ways for the police as an institution
to address that. That's something that people fast mo other
than us can you know, come up with ways. But
I think you know, communication understanding at starting point. I
(50:01):
think the media has a huge role to play in
coverage of these issues, in continuing to bring them to light.
And I think particularly you know, we've got amazing services
like in our TV, but it shouldn't just be up
to indigenous people to tell stories of Indigenous people. It's
the same as police. You know, police are there to
serve all of the public. The media is here to
(50:22):
serve all of the public. And I think we need
to do a better job of being being more aware
of which stories we're choosing and you know, which ones
we're bringing to the fore, and you know, drawing attention
to to make people realize.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
To get that awareness, I think from a policing point
of view too, there should be sort of you call
it affirmative action or understanding that if you're investigating the
death of an Indigenous person, you've got to look at
things a little bit differently and treat things a little
bit differently. Not you know, it's the same rule for everyone.
We're not saying completely different practices, but understand that there's
(50:58):
going to be a barrier to communecsion.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
Sometimes it's going to be hard.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
And I think La Sonya's father said that, you know,
he was worried that because of his past history with
conflict with police and the fact that they've done time,
but the police were just going to go, well, who cares,
it's his daughter, that type of attitude. We've got to
way overcome that attitude haven't we.
Speaker 4 (51:16):
And I think that also comes from putting you know, Doug,
you've spoken before like you need indigenous homicide detectives. You
need to have that lived experience there to understand and
build those relationships.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
And obviously they've got to put their hand up for it.
But I don't know, you know, what the situation it
is with policing, and you know, if like any original
police officer I know is usually a community constable, none
are really sworn in officers to fully sworn in officers,
I've known a few in my time, and I don't
know how the police recruit and what they do there.
(51:51):
You know, like maybe there needs to be a drive
to push to get more Indigenous homicide detectives because you know,
we know that Indigenous well there's a lot of death
in our communit, you know, and this book shows it well,
you know, and what we've talked about just shows it. Really,
So why wouldn't they get an indigenous more Indigenous homicide
detectives such trying to help with these cases? You know,
(52:11):
Like that is one thing. I think that's only one thing.
Like there's a whole lot of like and I think
what you said about the media and what, you know,
making that story a lot bigger for people to like,
this is serious, Like it's not just an indigenous girl
from the from the outback. This is actually a person, right,
So there's a lot of times where we're not really
looked at as well. I feel that we're not looked
at as actual people when it comes to these type
(52:33):
of cases. We're just another statistic. We're another statistic, you know,
and because there's so many of it, or there's so
much of it, we're just another statistic. Whereas you know,
we're not like, we don't want to be treated that way.
You know, we want to be we want the full investigation.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
It made me think they're doug about more homicide, indigenous
homicide detectives or different things.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
There's a structure you've got to go through to get.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
To that that position working in homicide. But when a
homicide is set up in I'm speaking for New South Wales,
but I know it's pretty similar in all the other
states around the country, a strike force is formed, so
you bring in, yeah, you bring in some homicide detectives,
You'll bring in some general detectives. If it involves a child,
you might bring in a child sex crime detective, you
(53:22):
bring in analysts, you bring in a whole range of
people to form a strike force to investigate a death
or a suspected suspected murder.
Speaker 2 (53:31):
It lends itself.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
We have liaison officers in New South Wales and have
similar things across the country potentially, And it just made
me think, why you're talking. You could if I was
heading up a murder investigation, let's say, heading up this
investigation into Lasagna, we could have had someone appointed to
the strike force as the liaison officer, because we appoint
(53:54):
family liaison officers when you've got a murder investigation, someone
that might be the officer in charge, the person with
appropriate skills to liaise and keep the family informed because
there's a lot happening with investigations. Just made me think
it's probably not a bad way that you could overcome
those barriers of communication, understanding where the community's are coming
(54:17):
from and their distrusted police, that.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
Type of thing.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
So that's that's something that perhaps we should should flag something.
Speaker 3 (54:25):
You've got to change the perspective of young Indigenous people too,
and you've got to do that by going into community,
learning the dynamics of the community and working with indigenous people.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
Yeah, breaking breaking, breaking those barriers down.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
Well, I hold the book up if people want to
dive in to what we're talking about here, Dieing Rows.
Speaker 2 (54:45):
But I've read it.
Speaker 1 (54:46):
Cover to cover, listen to the podcast, and everything you
speak is so important that people have just got to
hopefully change our ways, admit that we could do things better.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
So we're not having this discussion. Going to be really
pissed off if I'm here in two years talking to
you guys.
Speaker 1 (55:06):
But look, thanks for coming on the eye catch killers,
and thanks for bringing the attention to something that is
great concern to a lot of people.
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 talked to. Some
of the content and language might be confronting. That's because
no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged.
Join me now as I take you into this world.
(00:46):
Today I had a conversation. I wish it wasn't necessary,
but there's something I think we need to talk about today.
I sat down with Emily Olie and Douglas Smith. They
both hosts of a podcast series called Diane Rose and
the authors of a book of the same name. We
talked about how families of Indigenous women found to cease
were routinely let down by those responsible for finding out
(01:07):
what happened.
Speaker 2 (01:07):
To them.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
I thought this was a thing of the past, but
it's still happening and it needs to stop.
Speaker 2 (01:13):
This is a conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:15):
This is a different location for an Eye Catch Killers podcast.
We're on the floor of the Advertiser newspaper down here
in Adelaide. Before I start, I'm just going to read
out a listener warning and the podcast addresses sensitive topics,
including murder and suicide, specifically of Indigenous women in Australia.
We recognize that these discussions can be deeply distressing.
Speaker 2 (01:36):
And may evoke strong emotions.
Speaker 1 (01:39):
Okay, a police officer has told an inquest she would
have now done several things differently from when she investigated
the death of a mother discovered being eaten by dogs.
That's an extract from a media report of an inquest
that's been held as we speak into the death of Lassange.
Speaker 2 (02:00):
You're done in Wilkenia.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
These are the type of things that we raised when
we last spoke, and you covered in your podcast series
of Dime Rows and covered in your book A Dime Rows.
Does it shock you that the police officer, the officer
in charge is making those type of comments.
Speaker 3 (02:21):
Yes and no. I guess no, because I mean as
an Indigenous person myself, I kind of expect it that,
you know, but at the same time it kind of
tells me that the system is still flawed. You know,
when we talk about, you know, what came out of
Barabal years ago, and then also when we look at
this and then we look at all the recommendations. You
(02:42):
can have so many recommendations that come out of an
inquest or a parliamentary inquiry or whatever that is. But
at the end of the day, if there's not a
change on the ground, and you can have these recommendations,
you can see that over the years, you know that
nothing really does change to the extent that it should.
You know, did you his voices still feel drowned out
in these these cases and in these situations. As you know,
(03:06):
we don't have any indigenous homicide detectives. We don't have
those you know, indigenous people working closely with homicide or
you have those Indigenous community aison officers, and you know,
we can teach you know, stuff of indigenous culture in
police forces, in any organization or an institution. But at
the end of the day, I think, you know, when
(03:27):
we look at having more Indigenous people in I guess
homicide itself or something like that that might make a change.
But I don't feel like they listen to us and
our recommendations or any of those cranial inquest, parliamentary inquiries,
whatever you'll say, said inquiries, and none of it really
matters if it doesn't actually, you know, take if it's
(03:48):
not taken seriously, because we'll continue to see what we
continue to see now.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
And yeah, not ticking and flicking.
Speaker 4 (03:55):
I think, I mean for us, it's unsurprising because it's
what Keith was telling us three years ago understad. Yeah,
when we first spoke to him. His concerns were that
the right questions hadn't been asked, that the right people
hadn't been questioned, that the investigation felt not properly supported,
(04:18):
that it felt rushed. So I think to hear that
stuff come out more formally in court by the people
who were involved is unsurprising because it is It's what
he said.
Speaker 1 (04:31):
And here it is a playing out in an inquest
trying to find out what's happened. I'm sad and I'm
sitting here speaking to you guys, and I say that
with the greatest respect, but I'd like not to be
having these discussions. I'd like to think that on the
back of you identifying the issues that you saw in
Dying Rows and things that have happened in the past,
(04:52):
that we've learnt, we've changed, we've evolved, and these type
of things wouldn't happen, but seeing it play out in
the inquest contemporary lo it just brings it back to
the fact that, okay, we still still haven't got it right.
Just for the listeners, and I have had you guys
on the podcast before, but just put in the perspective
how you became involved in the Dime Rope Rose Project,
(05:15):
which is a podcast series and also a recently released book.
Speaker 4 (05:19):
I mean that story began an International Women's Day of
All Days, which was you know, our editor Jemma Jones
went to an event and Courtney Hunter Heaberman is a
mother and she was speaking at the event and she said,
she gave her welcome to country and she said, if
you think it's hard being a white woman in Australia,
try being a black woman. And I think Gemma was
(05:41):
just really captured by that, and she approached Courtney after
and you know, kind of disasked her what's that all about?
And Courtney's daughter Rose had died in twenty nineteen in
what Courtney believed were circumstances that she didn't feel were
properly investigated, and that sort of center on this. That
(06:01):
was the first case, and that's what we started investigating.
And as we investigated, Courtney put us in touch with
another mom whose daughter had died in circumstances she didn't
feel we're properly investigated, and then another one, and then
another family got in touch with Doug.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
For me, it started. I used to work at National
Indigenous Television and a colleague of mine, Diana, she'd been
talking to Keith about like, you know, shortly after his
daughter passed away. So now after she was found, my
colleague had been speaking to Keith and she needed someone
with her to go to will Kenya, and you know,
I put my hand up and I was like, let's
(06:37):
do it. And that was back in twenty twenty two,
probably in March. It was a month after that, and
that's when I first went there. It kind of felt
from the start that this was, you know, a story
that would you know, follow me in my career until
we get some sort of answers for the family. And
here we are.
Speaker 4 (06:54):
Three years later, we ended up with these six cases
that went hugely similar in the concerns that the families
had about police not properly looking into, in their eyes,
the circumstances of these really horrible, tragic deaths of their daughters.
Speaker 2 (07:13):
You see that more more than the coincidence.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
Like we're talking so six indigenous Indigenous women and the
families all had the same concerns.
Speaker 3 (07:22):
Yeah, and like some of their concerns is that the
way the police behavior, I guess, responding to their situation.
Whether it's a death in Indigenous communities, it's anything really,
but particularly in these cases obviously it's it's death. So
the way that the police had responded to these families,
(07:43):
it's quite I don't know what to say put into
words really. In one case, you know that there was
it was rules like, you know, the family were comfortable
that it was a suicide, but the police got there
instead of helping the family, the arrested the brother and
bashed him like it was bad while while the daughter
was on the ground getting resuscitated. Those you know, response
(08:04):
to police have for our communities just terrible at times. Yeah,
I think.
Speaker 4 (08:07):
That's kind of what, you know, these were six cases,
but we were only scratching the surface of as was shown.
You know, there was a sent inquiry into missing in
murdered First Nations women and children that you were part of,
and you know we learned of that inquiry through our
two year investigation into all of these cases. It became
(08:28):
clearer and clearer that this wasn't just isolated incidents of police,
you know, maybe one officer not looking properly into something.
It was a systemic issue that these families and the
families who gave evidence to the inquiry, and huge amounts
of other families that we didn't speak to, as Doug says,
(08:50):
felt was a systemic approach from police towards Indigenous people
in lots of circumstances, as you say, but particularly when
it comes to death that they felt were suspicious.
Speaker 1 (09:03):
Okay, let's talk about la Sonya's case. Can you give
us a background to the circumstances in which Lasnya disappeared
and where.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
She was found.
Speaker 3 (09:11):
Yeah. So Lasnya, you know, thirty one year old bark
and gy woman from will Kenya in central western New
South Wales.
Speaker 5 (09:18):
She was on foing discovered on March twenty ninth, so yeah.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
So four days before that, right, So it was a Friday,
and she'd been having a few drinks with her two
close cousins. They were in this place like in will Kenya,
just it's called the they're called it the safe house,
so it's where women are usually live for scape domestic
violence or whatever. And she was there and sitting down
during the day having a drink. She's taken off at
about by thirty six o'clock in the afternoon. She's walked
(09:46):
away and she said to all of her family last
years later, my mom, my family are catches tomorrow. And
she says she was going home, but she went and
no one saw her after that. Apparently on that night
she was seen in another house in the Malley that's
a part of the community where you know, mostly Indigenous
people live. She was seeing at another house with someone
(10:07):
and they were drinking and then they were there to
the late hours of the night and they've taken off.
No one's seen them after that. So she's taken off
Friday night, no one's seen her on Saturday, no one's
seen her on Sunday, Monday, and then on Tuesday, Tuesday morning,
at about ten o'clock that's when her body was discovered
in the backyard of her own home. And like I
said before, it was just meters away from the back door,
(10:30):
the back kitchen window, right next to the clothesline, and
up into this yard. And this yard is it's actually
where she was found, is probably two three meters away
from a backway path that people just use, like they
don't even live in that house. I just use that path.
They like walk through to the next street so they
don't got to go the whole way around. So that
yard is constantly visited throughout the day. And it's loss
(10:53):
only his grandmother's house, none of norm you know, she's
a big matriarch there for the family.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
People have dropping people dropped in and gave a.
Speaker 3 (11:01):
Cuppa, you know, sit down, have a yarn. That's where
a lot of people go. And it's just yeah, for
the whole community. It's like, well, I'm pretty sure she
wasn't there yesterday, and I'm pretty sure she wasn't there
the day before. How is she there today?
Speaker 2 (11:15):
And I asked how her body was found that.
Speaker 3 (11:18):
It had an electrical cable wrapped around her neck. It
was an Xbox three sixty cord like an audio visual
AV cord and I think like she was. She was
found with that wrapped around her neck. She was in
an advanced state of decomposition. So she'd been dead for
about all they said around four days, three to four
days because of the state of her body. And yeah,
(11:42):
so she had been laying there for that long, and
there were dogs chewing at her, and she'd been missing
some limbs, and you know, it looks like they've been
there a while. And you know when her uncle, her
uncle just walked in the backyard one morning and just
found her there and he was, like, he told me,
he goes, I thought it was a kangaroo at first,
but then I looked again and he goes, you know,
(12:03):
don't I realize it wasn't a kangaroo. It was it
was my niece. And he was just screaming his head off.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
What I can imagine how horrific it would have been
before him was she reported missing, before her body was found,
anyone made the inquiries, where where was she living?
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Where was she.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
Change she was at that house where she was found
in like will Kenya, you know, and even I asked.
Speaker 1 (12:26):
That question provocatively because I want you to explain that
because people will be young. But yeah, if she didn't
come home, but explain the community.
Speaker 3 (12:33):
In will Kenya, in my community as well, if I
went missing for a couple of days, like, oh, he's
probably just over at cousin's house doing something, you know,
like he's just staying there. Like we don't think of
it in that manner, like we don't think of it like, oh,
something really bad is wrong here, like something is really
wrong here. And I could see how the family didn't
see that straight away, because you know, will Kenya is like,
you know, she might be off at cousin's house or
(12:53):
they went down to the river, or they were doing
something like that's just normal for outback country life, you know.
And so in this case, it's like, no, she wasn't
reported missing, and I don't think they would have reported
in missing unless well I don't think anyone in that
community would report someone missing. And I say, had a
really really bad feeling that it was wrong, and then
they had to go to the cots to say something.
And I don't think they felt that and because to them,
(13:18):
that's just normal living. And you know, it's just same
in my community, like my brother goes missing for three
or four days sometimes and I'm like, hell is he
you know? Oh, he's at the mission doing something. It's
the same thing.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Yeah, okay, So the first involvement or notification of the
police is when Sonya's body has been found. Yeah, they've
contacted the police. Found by her husband. Her husband, her
uncle Merle and he's got in contact with the police. Then,
as my understanding, homicide detectives of local police would.
Speaker 2 (13:55):
Have come out.
Speaker 1 (13:55):
I'm just surmising here, but I know from the report
that homicide detectives attended that day, so they would have
would have flown up.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
I'm very cautious.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
This matter is before an inquest and the coroner hasn't
handed down findings at this point in time. So what
we're talking about here is what's been reported at the
inquest and reports that have come from the inquest. The inquest,
my understanding, has been held at will Kenny.
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Okay. Some of the things that come.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
Out to have caused me concern. When you've had the
officer in charge of the investigation in the witness box
said that she wasn't even aware initially that she was
in charge of the investigation.
Speaker 2 (14:39):
Is that correct?
Speaker 1 (14:40):
And she has also expressed as I read out at
the start of the podcast that would have done things differently.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
What's your take on that.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
I mean, yeah, look, I think, as I mentioned before,
flawed system when it comes to you know, historically, you know,
when we look at other cases like this, you I
go back to Barville again. My take is nothing is
like changed enough. You know, we're looking forward, we're fast
forwarding here, and it's like what's been identified as you know,
(15:12):
gaps and you know police have done the wrong thing
or you know, like unintentionally you know, missed things in
the past because either they're unconscious bias, they're like, oh
it's you know, that's probably not something that we need
to look at or whatever, blah blah blah. Like that
is still playing out as we've talked about, like that
will bring it forward to this police officer right unaware
(15:33):
that they were because where was the communication within the
police force, or where was the organization to get a
proper task force there or you know, team of detect
homicide detectives to look at this properly, I mean thoroughly right. Well,
I also.
Speaker 4 (15:45):
Think it speaks to the difference as well. I think
there's a couple of factors at play the remote community.
It's massively a factor. But also you know, if a
white woman's body was found decomposed being eaten by dogs
in the middle of the Adelaide CBD, there would be
streets blocked out, there'd be one hundred of coppers, hundreds
of cops crawling the streets. You know, I think that
(16:09):
those concerns that she's raised about that response, the fact
that you know there was a fairly junior comfortable at
the scene is pretty bathelic given the circumstances that she
was found.
Speaker 1 (16:20):
In breaking it down and this is this is me
joining joining the pieces from a next homicide detective understanding
the working to New South Wales homicide squad and what's
been reported in the media from the inquest into Lasagna's death.
A homicide of attended if we accept how it's been
reported in the media on the day. So I'm assuming
(16:42):
they ever flew up or drove up, drove up the
moment they were notified.
Speaker 2 (16:45):
So that's a tick.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
The first mistake you could make is we won't send homicide.
There's nothing, nothing to nothing to see there and that
could potentially be.
Speaker 2 (16:55):
Where a problem is.
Speaker 1 (16:56):
So the first step is right they've sent homicide team
up there. They're treating it seriously initially, but there's also
reports of the lack of CCTV footage gathered. I think
it was at the club or the location she was
drinking that on the Friday, but only the CCTV footage.
Speaker 2 (17:14):
From that period of time was gathered.
Speaker 1 (17:16):
From a homicide investigation point of view, it's crucial the
last sighting. The last sighting is basically your starting point
to do the investigation. There seems to be some problem
problems there is that your take on.
Speaker 5 (17:28):
It, I mean, it's interesting.
Speaker 4 (17:30):
One of the things that was raised in the inquest
is that Lasagna's ex partner was asked to provide CCTV
for the four day period that she was missing, and
when that cc he was handed to USB stick and
he gave it back, and when that.
Speaker 5 (17:45):
CCTV was handed over Friday.
Speaker 4 (17:47):
Night and Saturday morning and all of Monday that we're missing.
And you know, I think that the detective said that
she kind of brushed up off as a technical issue
or you know, there's all sorts of reasons that footage
could be corrupted. But you know, having spoken to Keith,
(18:08):
who's got so many doubts about the way that this
was approached. Something like that only raises more questions because
when you've got an incomplete picture, for whatever reason, it
could be completely innocent. It could you know, it could
absolutely be the far was corrupted, but you then sort
of opened that door to questions being asked that now
can't be answered because that hasn't been provided. And I
think that that's one of the things that we're now
(18:29):
seeing play out in this inquest is all of the
concerns that the family had that you know, maybe corners
had been cut or things haven't been sort of properly
looked into, seemed to becoming somewhat to fruition.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
Well, and we're getting this because the police are actually
under oath giving evidence, and this is where this information
is flowing out up until that point. Correct me if
I'm wrong. When you when you guys were looking at
and you're making inquiries with the police, and the response
you got back, well, you explained to me.
Speaker 3 (18:56):
The response, I've got the same response a year year,
I think it was. It was the exact same response
from the cops. There was any any any questions, any
assertions that we put to the police from the family,
their concerns, not none of it was answered. They had
a strike force there and they were looking into this death,
and that they had spoken extensively with the family and
(19:18):
that was it. There was no other nothing from the cops.
I even went to the cops shop in wil Kenya
to speak to the cops and that was a bit
of a tense moment itself. But yeah, that the nothing
at all.
Speaker 5 (19:31):
No we uh we.
Speaker 4 (19:32):
Actually, at the end of the podcast process ended up
dubbing at the wall of silence because each of the
I we had cases across different states and territories, and
each of the police institutions that we approached came back
with much the same responsors, which were m no comment
(19:53):
or you know, we're we're investigating, or we've spoken to
the family, but you know, we weren't really given any
sort of insight into those processes.
Speaker 1 (20:00):
Yeah, and look, playing Devil's advocate, the police could say
it's an ongoing investigation, we can't speak to the media. Yes,
you can go down that path occasionally, but I've spoken
more detail to you guys and seeing the response and
it was a generic sort of blame response that gives
no comfort to the family. Or to yourselves investigating it
(20:21):
from a journalistic point of view, that things have been done.
And I've got to say, and you know, you were
predicting this two years ago when you were saying that
the family was saying they've got concerns, And now we've
got police officers in the witness box acknowledging that things
could have been done differently and getting an emotional about
(20:42):
the way the investigation has been done. The USB that
was provided to the ex partner, and I think we
need to clarify that he's not considered publicly, he's not
considered a suspect in this matter, but the police thought
it important enough to gather cc TV footage from from
his place and the US that provided him a USB
(21:03):
stick and that's come back and there's significant portions of
the footage missing from a homicide. To take this point
of view, that would cause me concern. Now there's technical
glitches that you can have in computers. What's what's your
take on that?
Speaker 5 (21:20):
I mean, I guess.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
It's hard not to look at that and have questions.
I think any person would look at that, and you know,
whatever the reason you then it just creates questions. You go, well,
why was that portion missing? What happened during that time?
Is there something that we're missing?
Speaker 5 (21:36):
Is there?
Speaker 4 (21:37):
And I think that, you know, particularly for her family,
you know, you will always have questions. Those sort of
things are what's viiral into those questions of well, what are.
Speaker 5 (21:49):
We missing, what's not being provided, what's not being said.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
It's also because they're missing in specific times where like
we really are looking to know what happened on those
days or where she was on those days. And again
like we're not saying that this person is you know,
like in any way you know, the person that's done
anything to her. But it's just that it raises questions, right,
(22:12):
It just raises so many questions because the specific all
the times of where that footage is missing is really concerning.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Like it's yeah, I look, yes, yeah, and you would
have to get to the bottom of it. Like I
wouldn't be as overly concerned if the police were in
the witness box at this inquest and said, yes, there
is footage missing. We've provided the USB stick and we've
examined the computer and it shows that there was a
technical difficulty between this period and that period. But what
(22:42):
I'm getting and I preface that with any reports from
the media, there's been no explanation on.
Speaker 2 (22:46):
Why that's forgotten.
Speaker 1 (22:49):
The officer in charge also made a comment I'm just
looking for it here.
Speaker 2 (22:54):
I haven't got the I haven't.
Speaker 1 (22:56):
Got the specific quote, but it was along the lines
the officer in charge was. I saw it, and this
is my interpretation of it. I saw it as her saying, well,
it was all a bit confusing the structure of who
was leading leading the investigation. I'll say, I'll call you
guys outside this. I understand the organization, the way things work.
(23:17):
What with that type of commentary? Does that cause you
concern massively?
Speaker 4 (23:22):
I mean, look and again it's not and at no
stage I think is anyone putting any and nor should
they put any blame on this officer when you're you know,
it's it's hard.
Speaker 5 (23:35):
To imagine in a circumstance.
Speaker 4 (23:37):
You know, allegations of murder is the worst crime, So
it's it's hard as an outsider to understand why you
wouldn't have a pretty solid set of systems and processes
in place when you know a possible even a whiff
of murder, is homicide, or suspicious circumstances is raised. How
(23:57):
someone could walk into that scene and be like, I'm
really sure who's supposed to be looking at what here?
It's I find that pretty hard to fat it really.
Speaker 3 (24:06):
I mean I just think that that was that they
would just rock up. No, I mean as a police officer, right,
I mean if it was as we say, as if
it was a case here at Adelaida in Sydney, that
would probably be the case, right, they'd rock up. They
would know who's in charge, who's doing what? You would satis,
how do you think you would run an investigation of
that manner or that type? You would you would be
the leader of You would be the leader I know.
Speaker 1 (24:28):
And yeah, there is experience officers and inexperience officers. I
know from experience how you run investigations, and there's a
clear structure and things need to be set in place.
So you don't want to see a police officer in
the witness box acknowledging mistakes were made in an investigation
where the family have been flagging. We've got concerns about
(24:49):
the way this is going to be investigated. From the outset.
You've got you guys doing stuff in the media expressing
concerns and the very concerns that you've expressed, and then
fast forward we get to the inquest and the evidence
that is coming out of the inquest, and we preface
that with the coroner hasn't handed down the finding, so
this has just been reported.
Speaker 2 (25:08):
You've got all this.
Speaker 1 (25:09):
Concern about the way the investigation has been conducted. I
see that the homicide detective also gave evidence that the inquest,
and the homicide detective said, I didn't have concerns about
Broken Hill or Barrier Police District being able to carry
out the investigation.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
She told the court again.
Speaker 1 (25:28):
Yeah, then you've got the local police saying, well, would
have done things differently. So there's a failure without putting
blame on the individuals, because I don't think anyone sets
out to not do an investigation properly. But there's a
failure there somewhere, isn't it.
Speaker 4 (25:44):
I Mean it's like in a newsroom, right, if you
have your big breaking story today, you're not sending your
cadet out to do it. And if you are, you're
making sure that you've given them all of the training,
all of the advice, You're checking their work, You're making
sure that someone experience is looking over that. So I
think you know, it's hard to it's hard to understand
(26:05):
how someone could look at and again it's not speaking.
Speaker 5 (26:07):
To the skills or the capabilities.
Speaker 4 (26:09):
Of any individual officer, but Tidler's look at that and go, well,
you know, why was it just a matter of Okay,
they've got it.
Speaker 5 (26:16):
Seems good now, no worries.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Well, looking from the outside the investigation, this is me
speaking with the Bete hindsight, but based on years of
experience as a homicide detective, crucial that you would lock
in the person that found the Sogna's body, details of
where you were, who was around the house, or that
a statement her last movements would be crucial.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
In this day and age, that's quite often.
Speaker 1 (26:40):
CCTV footage, so that's a high priority interviewing people and
following up those type of investigations. I got to say,
from looking from the outset, bearing in mind the coroner
hasn't come back with the findings yet, that doesn't appear
to be a peer to be the case.
Speaker 3 (26:58):
I can say that I've spoken a peace that as
I think about it now, because I did mention before
when she left on the Friday night, no one really
knew where she went, but there were actually people that
reported sightings of her late into the night, and police
never spoke to them as far as I'm aware, because
I know cops went back a second time. It was
in twenty twenty three that they'd gone back there. They'd
(27:20):
conducted I don't know how many interviews after it, but
they'd gone back to have a second stab at this case.
Right but before that, there were a few people that
had seen her late in that night. All said that
they'd seen her later on that night walking along the
main street at the local football oval. None of them
had ever Cops had never get a statement from any
of them. And I'd spoken to one of them and
(27:41):
he was like, no, cops never came to me and
ask many of these questions.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
I think one of the ones that you know, I
think we struggle with is Mele, her uncle who discovered
her body. He says he was a question by police,
And to me, that's I don't understand how the first
person to discover the body could have never been asked
the question.
Speaker 1 (28:00):
Well, I can't be And look, people might think how
we're sitting here, we're beating up on the investigation that's
before the coroner. The families flagged this. You guys flagged it,
you spoke to me about it. I had concerns, and
that's why I say I'm sitting here wishing I wasn't
sitting here talking to you because I'd liked all those concerns.
The police have done a thorough job and the family
(28:22):
now know what happens to what happened to Lasagna, but
that hasn't been the case, and that's why I want
to talk about That's why I wanted to sit down
with you guys and talk about it, because how many
times are we going to let this happen? And how
can you have confidence in an investigation if you're the family,
if you've got a family member that side, how can
you have confidence in an investigation when you've got police
(28:45):
acknowledging that they could have could have done things better.
I'm all for admitting we make mistakes. We all make
mistakes time and time time again. But these are pretty
simple things that it should have been done and should
have been properly. Not blaming the individual offices, but what
it's a structure that this is allowed to happen, given
the fact that there's been warnings about this. Let's call
(29:06):
it from the bearable time, because the bearable time should
changed the landscape. We should not be making these mistakes.
And that's why that's why I'm so passionate about it.
I think, well, stuff this. We identified all the problems
back there, and look what's happened there, and here we are,
thirty thirty five years down the track, we're still making
those mistakes.
Speaker 4 (29:27):
So well, we've got it's thirty years later, and we've
got a book filled with we'll take out Shannaro because
she the circumstances of her death, but the same thing,
the response to her death thirty years later, and we've
got a book filled with the stories of six families
who have gone through essentially the exact same thing, those
the families of the Bowerville cases.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
Let's talk about the Senate inquiry, the Senate Inquiry into
Missing the murdered First Nations Women and Children. Do you
guys know how that came about or what generated that,
how that inquiry started? I do.
Speaker 5 (30:01):
It's been so long since I've covered it.
Speaker 3 (30:04):
I've actually had a blank.
Speaker 1 (30:05):
Not the specific individual that's initiated, but I think it
was because of all the dramas. It was collectively like
one situation after another that it was decided the Senate
inquiry and they don't have a whole a federal Senate inquiry.
Lightly Statistically, just if we look at things from a
statistic point of view, have you got a focus on
(30:28):
the statistics of murdered Indigenous women or missing Indigenous women?
Speaker 4 (30:33):
Yeah, I mean the rates are I think on average
it's about eight times high for Indigenous women murder rates
in Western Australia. It's actually about seventeen point five times
higher than non Indigenous women.
Speaker 5 (30:46):
And there's also a lot of other statistics that come
into play.
Speaker 4 (30:49):
Four times more likely to be hospitalized due to domestic
violence and six times more likely to die of family violence.
Speaker 5 (30:56):
And I think a lot.
Speaker 4 (30:57):
Of those figures as well, unfortunately, are the best that
we can get. But the reporting around the deaths and
the instances of missing persons, particularly in the cases of
Indigenous women, is actually not there's no solid reporting structures
around it. So that's the best that they can glaim
of those stats, but there's still a lot of question
(31:19):
marks about them.
Speaker 5 (31:19):
They could be hindy just.
Speaker 3 (31:21):
Say something is those statistics themselves is right? So you've
got you know, you talk about the one of suicide,
and then you talk about the one of family violence
domestic violence itself. So if a cop or a detective
rocks up to a case, you know, and they think
likes or and that it, you know, they might think, right,
suicide or they had that assumption in the back of
their mind that this is probably a suicide, they should
(31:43):
also have the other statistic in their head that yeah,
Indigenous women do experience domestic violence at higher rates as well.
So it's like these two statistics themselves is has she
done something to yourself or has someone done something to her?
They both go hand and hand in a way that
they're both something that should be in the back of
a detective's mind when it comes up to well.
Speaker 1 (32:05):
I think the part when I gave evidence at the
inquiry was talking about where assumptions have made, where misunderstanding
about things and on that basis go down a path
or ignore lines of inquiry. That's where problems often occur.
I just the inquiry's terms of reference focused on missing
(32:26):
the murdered First Nations women and children sought to examine
the extent of the problem, comparing investigative practices between First
Nations and non First Nations cases. Examining systemic causes, the
effectiveness of existing policies, and exploring actions to reduce violence
and improve safety. After two years and sixteen, here in
sussending inquiry into Missing the murdered First Nations Women handed
(32:49):
down its report. While important, it's not the moment of
reckoning many of us had hopedful. So that is an
extract again, and I think you guys met that while
we're just sitting here talking about it, that Okay, it's
one thing to have the inquiry, but are people going
to react react to it?
Speaker 2 (33:09):
One thing I.
Speaker 1 (33:10):
Thought interesting and I think there was a flow and
I haven't got the details here, but the important role
that media play on it, playing this we identified here
sitting talking about it, and clearly the Senate inquiry have
come up with the same same view that the media
play a part. We need and here we're sitting in
the news office, so it's a bit embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (33:30):
But we need to play a part in it.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
We're working in the media that these cases are not forgotten.
Speaker 2 (33:36):
These cases are focused.
Speaker 1 (33:37):
When someone when someone's found in tragic circumstances, dead in
the backyard just near it, near the family home, being
eaten by dogs, you'd think there'd be some attention to it.
So thirty one year old woman and there wasn't. You said, Doug,
you're up there, and there was no one.
Speaker 3 (33:54):
We were the first to report on it, I believe
an ITV that was Yeah, So there were none and
that's just great. I mean, we can talk about the
remoteness of the community, but what's two hours away is
a broken Hill, right. They should have heard about this.
I don't know if they did or not, but I
didn't hear anything or read anything from that from Broken
Hill media.
Speaker 5 (34:14):
Well.
Speaker 4 (34:15):
I think a really good example of that was one
that we investigated as well here in South Australia, Sharan Warrior,
who was missing for nine days before her body was found,
and it was only once the media got involved that really,
you know, sort of kicked into gear. But I mean
it was a when we looked at sort of even
(34:35):
and I think we can. I think we have to,
as you said, you have to admit your mistakes, and
I think that we have to admit our mistakes as
well as a media as a whole. That we didn't
pick up on that case until much later down the track,
because I think that you do see I think those biases.
And I think I mentioned earlier that the you know,
it's not necessarily it's not just the police that have
(34:58):
issues with biases. And I think it's we have to
acknowledge that. You know, we will see police releases put
out about missing women, and I think there is a
tendency in an.
Speaker 5 (35:08):
Unconscious bias to go, oh, well, it's.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
An Indigenous woman, so it should probably.
Speaker 5 (35:12):
Turn up or you know, And I think that that's
that's what happens.
Speaker 4 (35:15):
And I think that the media is just as complicit
a lot of the time in not not really focusing on.
Speaker 1 (35:22):
Those stories, with the with the book that you've got
and the and the podcast series and I know you
too are passionate about it and the whole team that
you've worked on this.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
Do you think we can make a change?
Speaker 3 (35:33):
Oh man, that's a big one. A. I think only
time will tell. To be honest, it's going to take
an effort from everyone. And I guess the media itself
to have a look at itself in the way that
they report. As you know, Emily has said that admits
to your in the States. I think the media do
play a big role in not covering these stories. Properly
(35:54):
and or giving it even attention as they would a
non Indigenous person or And one thing I did find
is well, as socio economic status does play a big
role in how much time media or police are going
to spend in someone's case, you know. So, and that's
regardless of skin color, I believe as well, but it
just happens that Unfortunately for Indigenous women, it's more more often,
(36:16):
it's more common in our communities, and that we don't
get that media attention, that we don't get that police
response that you know, we desire, that we need that
is you know, to correct it, to make things. It
just doesn't happen.
Speaker 4 (36:30):
So I think as well, particularly for audiences and particularly
you know, as white people, I think that people can
have a tendency when you have these conversations to feel
like they're being attacked or they're being blamed for something, right,
you know, like white people here, someone say, you know,
policing is a the institution has racial biocense, right, and white.
Speaker 5 (36:52):
Police officers might go, oh, but not me.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
And I think that people it's really important for people
and something that I hope that can happen is to
be able to separate out and go, this isn't an
attack on me. Think that people need to separate out
and go just remove yourself. No one's having a go
at you. You can acknowledge that we as a society
and as Australia have made mistakes. We need to fix
(37:15):
those mistakes. And the only way that you can fix
those mistakes is to acknowledge that they have happened. And
so I think that acknowledgment and then that listening, and
then that understanding, and then that change has to come
right from the start of recognizing that something is wrong
in the first place.
Speaker 1 (37:32):
Yeah, and I think what you've said is one hundred
percent correct. I think police have to also acknowledge that
there has been problems in the past. I'm talking from
a police point of view, and we're going to overcompensate
for that. We're going to make sure we do it properly,
because time and time again we've shown that we haven't
done it, done it properly, and it's just not good enough.
Speaker 3 (37:52):
I can tell you that sitting in that Senate inquiry
the day that we did, the head of the New
South Wales Police Force was there, the homicide squad. They
didn't really admit to anything like wrongdoing on their side.
On their part, nothing was really you know, they hadn't
made that many mistakes. Or when it comes to you know,
like how do you deal with this case, they always
bring up cultural sensitivity training. We do enough cultural awareness
(38:14):
training that it's like cultural awareness training is not going
to solve a murder, right, So it's like and then
they even asked it the head of this somermicide squad
or you know, how many Indigenous people do you have
in the homicide squad? You couldn't answer that question. And
it's also there was one big question I think it was,
is do you think that I don't know after the
senator or in the Cox axit or not. Was there racism?
(38:36):
Was it rife in the South Wales Police Force? And
that no, Like they were just saying no, like straight up,
like there's no, But there was no room for them
to say that it is. But it's you know, we're
trying to address like it was just no, it was
they don't want to admit to it.
Speaker 2 (38:50):
And that's one of.
Speaker 4 (38:51):
The criticisms of the recommendations of the findings from the
Senate inquiry was that they didn't go far enough During
the Cox Senator during the came out and said, you know,
one of the main ones was the Police Minister's Counsel
to review existing police practices towards first Nations people.
Speaker 5 (39:09):
Right, sure, that is important.
Speaker 4 (39:11):
But you know, I think that even because even then
a Senate inquiry is being held within a system, within
a you know, system that was created by white Australia
to cater to you know, like, I think, until there's
that cross the board recognition that we have made mistakes,
we have all made mistakes as a society, we are
going to acknowledge them and we're going to do something
(39:33):
about them. Until police, you know, senior police officers can
sit in front of an inquiry and say yes, we
acknowledge that, you don't really see how you've moved forward
in a meaningful them.
Speaker 1 (39:44):
And what saddens me saddens me about that when we
had the parable Parliamentary inquiry and the recommendations that came out,
one of the first one of the first recommendations was
training the education of police. But they went further to say,
not we all sit in the room and watch a
PowerPoint presentation and we all know that like if they
(40:04):
do the training here and the media, you just sit
there and not They wanted something that was meaningful, and
they created a training film with me narrating it, speaking
with the passion, speaking with the anger about what happened
unbearable and so people should watch that to change that culture.
And we've got to push police and not just police.
(40:28):
If we're educating everyone, you don't just learn just sitting
there and going okay, cultural competency and awareness. It's got
to be lived experience, and you've got to see how
this impacts so problems that occurred. What happened, Well, someone
has still got a way of murdering three children in
the Vowerable case. So yeah, it's definitely something that we
(40:48):
need to need to fixed.
Speaker 4 (40:50):
So it's interesting you mentioned anger as well, because I
think that's something that you know, the response when journalism
one one one when you want someone to you know,
you don't use statistics to get someone across the line.
Speaker 5 (41:03):
You could have faced a story. And that's the case study.
Speaker 4 (41:06):
And I think when people saw the cases that we
presented in Diagos, there was outrage. People how could this
be happening under our noses? And I actually think in
this instance that's what people should be feeling they should
be anger and they should be outrage that these systems
are still failing these people in this way.
Speaker 1 (41:22):
Well, you know, I know what you're saying. It's probably
not a good terminology, but you need to hit people
over the head with a baseball bat to get it in.
But what I say with Boarable like I can talk
about Barable, you know, in day out and people go, yeah,
that's terrible, And I say, okay, if the police responded
properly when the first child disappeared, Colin Walker, the other
(41:45):
two children could quite possibly still be alive to this day.
So that's the consequences if you don't do an investigation.
Speaker 2 (41:52):
Probably does that bring it home hard enough? Do you understand? Now?
Speaker 1 (41:55):
So that's the type of thing. And as I said,
we all make mistakes, and here we are. I'm criticizing
the cops and the media.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
You're criticizing the media, which starts.
Speaker 1 (42:07):
But it's an important thing and unless unless we push
it and push it, it's.
Speaker 2 (42:12):
Not going to not going to change.
Speaker 3 (42:13):
And I've got to have those hard conversations, you know.
And it's in all aspects of life in Australia. I
believe politics when it comes to that or media or
whatever it may be, having hard conversations about it and
acknowledging your fuck ups, let say that, but acknowledging it
and then working to fix it. That's what needs to
(42:34):
be happening more more often.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
Okay, I'm going to ask you this question, and forget
I'm a former cop and homicide detective. I'm asking you, guys,
why do you think this occurs?
Speaker 2 (42:46):
Big question?
Speaker 4 (42:49):
I mean, I guess one of you know, and I
can only speak to what I learned through this process,
and Doug can speak much better to know lived experience.
But I think that there's a there's a series of
issues in sort of entrenched biases, and it's not just
within policing.
Speaker 5 (43:06):
I think it's, you know, within society more broadly.
Speaker 4 (43:08):
But entrenched biases towards Indigenous people on a lot of fronts,
in terms of rates of suicide, murder, rates of domestic violence.
Speaker 1 (43:18):
You know.
Speaker 4 (43:19):
I think that there is this underlying and it's not
necessarily a conscious bias. I think there's plenty of conscious
racism within the police forces, but I also think there's
this sort of underlying, unconscious bias in the way that
a lot of police officers approach cases involving Indigenous people,
and that clouds the way that they feel that they
(43:43):
need to investigate them. And then there's the other layer
that we sort of touched on as well, and that
you've spoken about previously as media interests. And you know,
I think the media plays a role in putting a
lot of pressure. Cleosmith in w A was a great
example of when the media gets involved a little girl
who went me seeing and was found. When the media
gets involved in that, pressure is put on police step
(44:04):
up because they know they're under the spotlight. A lot
of these cases don't get media interest, and so I
think that there is kind of, again maybe an unconscious
feeling that police go, oh, well, you know, we did
our beds.
Speaker 1 (44:18):
It could even and I don't disagree with what you're
saying that all on that, but human nature, if you're
not being pressured to do something that okay, well if
I don't attend to it today, I can do it tomorrow.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
Pull off.
Speaker 1 (44:31):
No one's actually asking and it gets shelved in the
two hard basket, or you're just touching the surface and
not doing it properly. I as I said, I hoped
with what happened with Boarable and the things that were said,
and I thought there were some watershed moments that, you know,
where the police had the commission to come up and
(44:52):
actually apologize.
Speaker 2 (44:53):
Skippy One.
Speaker 1 (44:54):
Commission of Skippy One came up and apologized to the
Bearable community and acknowledge that we could have done it
better back when the children disappeared.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
But the fact that there's still these.
Speaker 1 (45:04):
Situations going on, and you said you just scratched the
surface in regards to the six cases that you identified
in Diane Ray's I can I can say here I
get phone calls from people that are expressing the same
concerns from across the country, not just New South Wales,
that these matters aren't being looked at, looked that properly.
(45:25):
Having put the effort into the podcast series, which congratulations
to believe it won a Walkley Award, which is which
is a prestigious award.
Speaker 2 (45:34):
I've learned that in the time of the working well,
I've learned a lot of them. I've hearned a lot
of good journalists on the Walkley But you guys have
actually got it.
Speaker 1 (45:44):
I say it's almost sad in a way that a
Walkley Award winning podcast series and still perhaps a message
didn't get out there. Do you do you find that
because I found I've found that on the Bearable Thing,
where you think, okay, it's here, it's on sixty minutes,
on four corners, it's on then ITV, people are going
to listen, but it just sort of slips away.
Speaker 3 (46:05):
I think it's it's an issue that I guess Australia itself,
like as a whole, you know, we don't really identify
with it completely. Like it's not something that you know,
that's an issue that we need to address, Like that's
something that we should be working, like we should all
be collectively trying to you know, make that a better
situation for families. But that's not something you know, And
(46:25):
like your question before is what do you feel it is?
Is like it's for me, it's the history of this
country as well. It's the history of policing in Australia,
and it's the history of relationships between policing and Indigenous
people and that's always going to be, you know, a
bit of a shaky relationship no matter what. And this
type of stuff is, you know, it shows that it's
(46:48):
still there. You know, what happens in dying roads is
because there's no communication between the Indigenous community and the
police to the level that I think there needs to be,
especially in my community where I'm from, and you know,
we see a lot of issues there as well. But
it's also you know, I've grown up with police, you know,
knocking on my door all the time. I've been arrested
(47:10):
as a teen myself. You know, I've had police. I've
had a police slag on me, call me a boom,
a nigger. You know, I've had that happen to me.
I've had you know, I've had racist police at me
since I was about ten years of age, and for
no reason at all, I could tell you that, and
I responded in a way whereas I hate the police
(47:33):
now because I'm only a young Aboriginal kid and the
way that they've treated me, and I've been traumatized from
the cops, like believe me, and I've had to sort
of fight back. And how do I fight back is
with you know, doing the wrong thing. And that's because
you know, if I would have had a good copper
walk up to me and treat me good as a kid,
I wouldn't have saw them as you know, the enemy
(47:54):
growing up. And I'm not saying the enemy. I'm just
saying like, that's how it felt, and that's how it
feels in indigit communities. Cops something there to help us,
they're there to police us, and that's how it's always
going to fill with us.
Speaker 1 (48:05):
Yeah, and that that communication breakdown. It can go both ways,
like the police will be you know, they'll have their
point of view, You've got your point of view, And
I think that presents part of a problem with these
investigations to where that communication isn't a forthcoming between the
two groups. But I say that with the fact that
(48:27):
you're the police, you're there to serve the public, the
public being everyone in the community, not selected people you
want to help. So we what we saw with diing
Rose covered in the book and the podcast is this
and you described as systemic type of type of situation. Doug,
you're talking from a black man's point of view and
(48:48):
the relationship between the police that all plays a part.
How do you guys like and I'll talk about my
thoughts on it from a homicide or ex homicide the
technique point of you, how do you guys think it
should be fixed? What what would you like to see, like,
when this came out, do you think the world would change?
Speaker 2 (49:06):
And with all the cops to go we get it now.
Speaker 4 (49:09):
I thought there'd be a few more people nodding their
heads and going, yeah, that is. And I think that's
the thing that was that we saw is the response
was massive, the listenership, the readership, the you know, the comments,
the outrage. People were outraged. They couldn't believe that this
(49:30):
was how these families had been treated. So I think
we did get quite hopeful that you know, there was
this sort of rumbling that there would be a bit.
Speaker 5 (49:37):
Of pressure put on and then there kind of wasn't.
Speaker 4 (49:40):
And I think that there's you know a lot of
ways to address that, and you know, I can't speak
to the best ways for the police as an institution
to address that. That's something that people fast mo other
than us can you know, come up with ways. But
I think you know, communication understanding at starting point. I
(50:01):
think the media has a huge role to play in
coverage of these issues, in continuing to bring them to light.
And I think particularly you know, we've got amazing services
like in our TV, but it shouldn't just be up
to indigenous people to tell stories of Indigenous people. It's
the same as police. You know, police are there to
serve all of the public. The media is here to
(50:22):
serve all of the public. And I think we need
to do a better job of being being more aware
of which stories we're choosing and you know, which ones
we're bringing to the fore, and you know, drawing attention
to to make people realize.
Speaker 1 (50:35):
To get that awareness, I think from a policing point
of view too, there should be sort of you call
it affirmative action or understanding that if you're investigating the
death of an Indigenous person, you've got to look at
things a little bit differently and treat things a little
bit differently. Not you know, it's the same rule for everyone.
We're not saying completely different practices, but understand that there's
(50:58):
going to be a barrier to communecsion.
Speaker 2 (51:00):
Sometimes it's going to be hard.
Speaker 1 (51:01):
And I think La Sonya's father said that, you know,
he was worried that because of his past history with
conflict with police and the fact that they've done time,
but the police were just going to go, well, who cares,
it's his daughter, that type of attitude. We've got to
way overcome that attitude haven't we.
Speaker 4 (51:16):
And I think that also comes from putting you know, Doug,
you've spoken before like you need indigenous homicide detectives. You
need to have that lived experience there to understand and
build those relationships.
Speaker 3 (51:30):
And obviously they've got to put their hand up for it.
But I don't know, you know, what the situation it
is with policing, and you know, if like any original
police officer I know is usually a community constable, none
are really sworn in officers to fully sworn in officers,
I've known a few in my time, and I don't
know how the police recruit and what they do there.
(51:51):
You know, like maybe there needs to be a drive
to push to get more Indigenous homicide detectives because you know,
we know that Indigenous well there's a lot of death
in our communit, you know, and this book shows it well,
you know, and what we've talked about just shows it. Really,
So why wouldn't they get an indigenous more Indigenous homicide
detectives such trying to help with these cases? You know,
(52:11):
Like that is one thing. I think that's only one thing.
Like there's a whole lot of like and I think
what you said about the media and what, you know,
making that story a lot bigger for people to like,
this is serious, Like it's not just an indigenous girl
from the from the outback. This is actually a person, right,
So there's a lot of times where we're not really
looked at as well. I feel that we're not looked
at as actual people when it comes to these type
(52:33):
of cases. We're just another statistic. We're another statistic, you know,
and because there's so many of it, or there's so
much of it, we're just another statistic. Whereas you know,
we're not like, we don't want to be treated that way.
You know, we want to be we want the full investigation.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
It made me think they're doug about more homicide, indigenous
homicide detectives or different things.
Speaker 2 (52:57):
There's a structure you've got to go through to get.
Speaker 1 (52:59):
To that that position working in homicide. But when a
homicide is set up in I'm speaking for New South Wales,
but I know it's pretty similar in all the other
states around the country, a strike force is formed, so
you bring in, yeah, you bring in some homicide detectives,
You'll bring in some general detectives. If it involves a child,
you might bring in a child sex crime detective, you
(53:22):
bring in analysts, you bring in a whole range of
people to form a strike force to investigate a death
or a suspected suspected murder.
Speaker 2 (53:31):
It lends itself.
Speaker 1 (53:32):
We have liaison officers in New South Wales and have
similar things across the country potentially, And it just made
me think, why you're talking. You could if I was
heading up a murder investigation, let's say, heading up this
investigation into Lasagna, we could have had someone appointed to
the strike force as the liaison officer, because we appoint
(53:54):
family liaison officers when you've got a murder investigation, someone
that might be the officer in charge, the person with
appropriate skills to liaise and keep the family informed because
there's a lot happening with investigations. Just made me think
it's probably not a bad way that you could overcome
those barriers of communication, understanding where the community's are coming
(54:17):
from and their distrusted police, that.
Speaker 2 (54:19):
Type of thing.
Speaker 1 (54:20):
So that's that's something that perhaps we should should flag something.
Speaker 3 (54:25):
You've got to change the perspective of young Indigenous people too,
and you've got to do that by going into community,
learning the dynamics of the community and working with indigenous people.
Speaker 2 (54:35):
Yeah, breaking breaking, breaking those barriers down.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
Well, I hold the book up if people want to
dive in to what we're talking about here, Dieing Rows.
Speaker 2 (54:45):
But I've read it.
Speaker 1 (54:46):
Cover to cover, listen to the podcast, and everything you
speak is so important that people have just got to
hopefully change our ways, admit that we could do things better.
Speaker 2 (54:58):
So we're not having this discussion. Going to be really
pissed off if I'm here in two years talking to
you guys.
Speaker 1 (55:06):
But look, thanks for coming on the eye catch killers,
and thanks for bringing the attention to something that is
great concern to a lot of people.
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