What it’s like to wait for someone never coming home: Nicole Morris Pt. 1

Every single day, around 130 Australians on average are reported missing. For the families left behind, there are no funerals, no closure, and no answers, just an unbearable silence where a person used to be. Nicole Morris has spent over two decades refusing to let that silence win. As the founder and director of the Australian Missing Persons Register, Nicole has supported countless families through the devastating trauma of unexplained disappearance. For more than two decades, she has earned the trust of law enforcement agencies and government bodies across Australia and internationally through her relentless commitment to ensuring the missing are never forgotten. In this episode of I Catch Killers, Gary and Nicole break down the human cost of disappearance, what it truly means to live with an "ambiguous loss", and share the stories of families whose lives have been irrevocably changed by unanswered questions. Gary and Nicole also take a hard look at the system. Why does the first response to a missing persons report matter so much? What goes wrong when cases aren't treated with urgency? And why does the dangerous myth that you must wait 24 hours before reporting someone missing continue to cost precious time? Nicole is the author of Lost: More True Stories from Families of Australian Missing Persons. Subscribe to our new Youtube channel. https://www.youtube.com/@ICatchKillers-Podcast Follow I Catch Killers: Instagram:@icatchkillers https://www.instagram.com/icatchkillers/?hl=enTiktok:@icatchkillerspodcast https://www.tiktok.com/@icatchkillerspodcastFacebook:@icatchkillers https://www.facebook.com/icatchkillers/ See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

• 0:01Speaker 00

  The public has had a long-held fascination with detectives. Detectives see a side of life the average person is never exposed to. I spent 34 years as a cop. For 25 of those years, I was catching killers. That's what I did for a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into the world in which I operated. The guests I talk to each week have amazing stories from all sides of the law. The interviews are raw and honest, just like the people I talk to. Some of the content and language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now as I take you into this world.

• 0:46Speaker 00

  150 people go missing every single day in Australia. For the families left behind, there are no funerals, no closure, no answers. Just an unbearable silence where a person used to be. It's a grief that has no name because it never truly ends. I've seen the pain up close, and so has today's guest, Nicole Morris. She is the founder of Australian Missing Persons Register and the author of three books on the subject. For years, she's been a fierce advocate, fighting to ensure that missing person cases are treated with the urgency and seriousness they deserve. Today, Nicole pulls back the curtain on what's really happening

• 1:29Speaker 00

  inside the investigations, inside the institutions, and inside the lives of people waiting for answers that may never come. Let's get into it. Nicole Morris, welcome to I Catch Killers.

• 1:42Speaker 01

  Thank you so much, Gary. Good to be here.

• 1:45Speaker 00

  Well, we're going to have an interesting chat. You've certainly covered a lot of stuff in your time and been involved in missing persons. And I know from my time in homicide and I also, from reading your books and getting a sense of it, how many people are impacted in this country by missing loved ones?

• 2:05Speaker 01

  It's just an incredible number. And it's really not a situation that's improving a lot. You know, there's almost 50,000 people a year go missing. It's about 130 a day. And concerningly, we've got 2,800 long-term missing persons. And a long-term missing person is anyone who's been missing longer than three months. So that's a huge number. So I feel like, even though I've written three books about it, it's a drop in the ocean as to how many people are out there who need their voices heard.

• 2:37Speaker 00

  Well, I think a lot of people, when you see reports in the media of someone that's disappeared, unless it impacts on you directly or there's something significant about the case that has captured people's attention, we don't give it a lot of thought until it strikes close to home and it's someone that you know or associated with that just disappears.

• 2:59Speaker 01

  Absolutely. I was sending out some early copies of the books to people on Instagram. And typically, those bookstagrammers don't read a lot of true crime. So I always sort of say, do you think that you would be able to get through this sort of genre? And one of them was so enthusiastic, "Oh, yes, I'd love to read this book." And then she sent me her address to send the book to. And I said, "Do you know what? There's a person in the book who went missing about three streets from you." And she was blown away because that had never occurred to her before, that missing people are all around us, that it can affect absolutely anyone at any time. Because there's so many reasons for people to go missing. So, yeah, I think it's a surprise to people.

• 3:44Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, it's interesting that you say that because reading your last book, Lost, there was a couple of cases that you talked about disappearances. And it sort of got my interest in it because I knew the area. I knew the time. I knew the environment. And I think when you look at the closeness of the locations where people disappear and you think, "That could have been anyone. That could have been one of our loved ones." Before we start, in your book, Lost, you dedicate it to Peter Rolfe.

• 4:16Speaker 01

  Yes, yes.

• 4:17Speaker 00

  I think it's appropriate. I think we both agree on that. The talk about Peter, because Peter became a friend of mine. I knew him when I was in homicide. He was a great advocate for victims of crime, in particular homicide and missing persons. Made life hell for police, politicians, and everyone else. I think would be fair to say.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  He's proud of that.

• 4:41Speaker 00

  Made everyone accountable. Where did you first meet Peter?

• 4:47Speaker 01

  It was such a long time ago. I went to Sydney for, I think it was an anniversary birthday for families and friends of missing persons by the New South Wales Government. And we met at Parliament House, old Parliament House, I think, in Sydney. And he came up to me. And I had known about his work because he was such an advocate. And he just came up and introduced himself. And we were firm friends ever since. And he was such a supporter of what I do. I think also because he had had that personal connection with his very close friend, former partner, who had been murdered. But Pete also knew Stephen Jelfs, who has been missing since the 70s in King's Cross.

• 5:32Speaker 01

  So he had that personal connection with a missing person and really went to bat for them. And he was, as you say, one of those people who just kept constantly emailing you going, "This is what we need to do. This is what I'm doing. Now, this is what we need to do. We need to keep on at them." And he just never gave up. And for his whole life, he would sit beside victims in court and just provide that comfort. And he helped so many people.

• 6:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, he was tireless in his work. And you mentioned he was touched by a crime. I remember the case. It was his partner, Stephen Dempsey. And it was a horrendous crime. He was shot by a crossbow at Narabene Lakes. And I talk about it now with respect to what happened to Stephen and also the impact it had on Peter. But when you understand the nature of the crime, you might understand why Peter was so driven. After Stephen was murdered, his body was dismembered and placed in a fridge. Police discovered it in a fridge. After the person who killed Stephen killed another person, and the investigation led to that.

• 6:45Speaker 00

  It was horrific crime. I remember it well. It was in the time that I was working in major crime. And you can understand someone like Peter being driven for a lifetime because it was a long time ago that Stephen was murdered. You can understand someone like Peter being driven to make sure that these crimes are prevented as much as possible. Or if they do happen, to ensure that they're properly investigated. And my sense of Peter, what he would make... He didn't hate police. It wasn't against police or courts or whatever. He just wanted to make sure that things were done properly. And certainly, jumping out in your book, see some failings in systems

• 7:29Speaker 00

  and not necessarily blaming individuals where things have slipped through the cracks. And that was something that Peter really worked hard on to make sure that didn't occur.

• 7:39Speaker 01

  Very much so, yeah. He was particularly an advocate for rewards, which is a controversial issue in the missing person system. But he really pushed for that. I could not count how many emails and letters he would have written over the years, can you? To say, "Please do this. You need to do this. I'm requesting that you do this." They would have known his name very, very well.

• 8:05Speaker 00

  I can assure you, they knew his name very well. I always liked his name. There was other people that didn't like his name. I liked his name because I knew if Peter was on to something, there was going to be change coming soon.

• 8:18Speaker 01

  Exactly. And look what he achieved with the commission, the inquest, the investigation into the New South Wales historic gay hate crimes. He was instrumental in getting that happening and achieved wonderful things there.

• 8:35Speaker 00

  Well, look, it's good to talk about Peter because I think the work he does or did before he sadly passed away shouldn't be forgotten. And we need people like that to keep everyone on track.

• 8:48Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 8:49Speaker 00

  Now, talk about missing persons. I don't think people fully appreciate the impact that it has. And the only way you can describe it, I think, try to put yourself in that position. Think of a loved one, and then that loved one just disappears. And there is absolutely no answers. You don't know what's happened to the person. You don't know if the person's still alive. It's like carrying, it's like an ongoing nightmare, I think, for people that have had loved ones disappear. You've been witness to that more than most people in the work that you've done and the advocacy that you've done for missing persons. Can you describe the type of impact

• 9:31Speaker 00

  that you see from families that have lost their loved ones?

• 9:35Speaker 01

  In the missing persons world, we call it an ambiguous loss. That's the term that they have coined for what it feels like to have someone go missing. Because you've got that loss, but you don't know why you have that loss. You can't sort of rationalize it in your mind because you know that you've lost that person, but you don't know why or where or how. So your brain probably goes into more of a trauma because you're imagining what has happened to that person. And so many different scenarios, and you don't have any answers. So unlike someone who dies in a car crash or a heart attack, you know you've lost that person, but you know what's happened. And so your brain can go, "Okay, this is what happened.

• 10:18Speaker 01

  I can accept this. This is the reality of the situation." Whereas with a missing person... Are they still alive? Have they been murdered? Have they, did they take their own life? There's, there's all of these scenarios that go around in your head for decades and it absolutely destroys people. You know, marriages can fall apart if a couple stops communicating with each other. If they've lost a child, if they've lost a brother, sometimes it can bring people closer together. But everyone copes differently because we've all got different personalities and some people cope better than others. I was talking to Marcia Ryan's brother, Tony, the other week and he, it struck me

• 11:02Speaker 01

  how he copes with his sister's disappearance. He also lost a sister in a car accident. So he's had a lot of trauma in his life, but he's very, he's, he's almost casual about the way that he approaches the loss. He, he just sort of says, well, whatever's happened, I can't change it. I can just deal with it. So what's the point in, in torturing myself in thinking what's happened? But not everyone can get their mind there. Some people hyper-focus on, on the what if, what if, what if? And that's absolute torture to your brain and, and your soul. And these families

• 11:43Speaker 01

  just have to live with that often for decades. And, and it never goes away. You'd think perhaps the, the public might think that it changes and it eases and it, and, and people move on and they forget about it. But when I interviewed Tony Farrington, whose sister went missing in nineteen seventy nine, he sobbed during the interview. So did I. And it's just as raw now as it was when he was a very young man and his sister didn't come home.

• 12:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. And it's interesting how people deal with it in, in different ways and, and those that can accept it, that it's something out of their control. That's very enlightened view on it, but it's not what most people can, can get to. I, I saw the damage in homicide where the bodies haven't been recovered, victims, victims of crime. And it adds another layer and it's hard to say what could be worse than having a loved one murdered. Having a loved one disappeared and not knowing what's happened to that loved one can actually, it can actually be worse. And I, I, I say that with not having personal experience,

• 12:52Speaker 00

  but just watching how the families react when they just haven't got answers. And it's a, it's a torture for them, an ongoing torture for them.

• 13:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, there was a, a mother of a missing woman and we know that she was murdered, murdered by her husband in Victoria decades ago. And a quote that she said always stays with me, she said, I'd settle for bones. I'd settle for bones. You know, I know I'm not going to get it back. Just give me a bone. And, and that's what the Morecambs got. They, they, they knew immediately Daniel wasn't coming home. But they said, we just need a little bit of him home.

• 13:28Speaker 00

  Well, I, I saw it in a variety of cases and Matthew Levison, one comes to mind with Mark and Fay. Matthew and, and people that listen to the podcast would have heard me talk about that, that particular case. But Matt disappeared and for ten years, Mark and Fay didn't know what, what had happened to him. And when his body was eventually recovered at, at the National, National Park, south of Sydney.

• 13:56Speaker 00

  I, I was there when Matt's remains were found. Mark and Fay had been there and watching this dig in the National Park, looking for their son's remains for, you know, I think it was four weeks all up. It might have been even, even more. And the pain and the emotion I saw on their face when I had to walk from the location where we found Matt, which was only about fifteen metres away from where Mark and Fay were standing and then tell them that, look, I, I think we've found Matt. And they both broke down and cried, obviously. And we've talked about this. I'm not talking about stuff that, that they don't want to reveal. Obviously, it was very emotional for them. Watching that, it was almost like,

• 14:39Speaker 00

  thank God we've found him, but now it means he's never coming home. Because when someone disappears, my assessment of it, speaking to the families over the years, there's always that smidgen of hope, smidgen of hope that the person's, like Matt was in his, in his twenties. Smidgen of hope that he'd turn up at the, the front door of the house ten years later. Mark and Fay would have yelled at him, what have you done to us? And then given, given him a big cuddle. But, you know, when the, the remains are found, that's not, that's not gonna happen. But yeah, I, I want people, and I talk about this because what we're going to talk about in the podcast today is what can be done when people disappear. And a lot of the things that can be done is, is what you've been championing for two decades.

• 15:25Speaker 00

  There's an impact and we need to understand the impact of when someone just disappears. Mark and Fay would go down to the National Park on weekends with a shovel and a medic looking for Matt's remains randomly and, you know, working out theories, working on theories, looking for Matt's remains. And that's, that's how they were spending the ten years since the time Matt disappeared. So that's the type, type of, type of impact.

• 15:52Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah. Mark and Fay are very good friends of mine and they are some of my favourite people in the world. And on a personal note, I want to thank you for what you did for them. Because I know how much they, they hold you in the highest esteem because they, they couldn't have got through this without you.

• 16:09Speaker 00

  Oh, that, that, that's nice of you to say. And look, they're close friends. They're like family to me now. But again, inspirational people because it's not just what they did to, to resolve Matt's situation. It's the amount of people that have helped. And quite often when someone's in, in a bind and they need some advice. So I phoned Mark and Fay and say, hey, could you speak to this, this person? Because I think they're, they're a wealth of knowledge. How to take on the system, you know?

• 16:38Speaker 01

  Hmm. And what we were talking about before, about how different people cope with different things.

• 16:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:43Speaker 01

  Um, Mark and Fay could have broken apart. Instead, they became glued together. And Mark didn't break down. He broke down obviously when they found Matty, but, but he became angry and he's still angry. And that anger fuels his campaign and, and has ultimately been so helpful to him.

• 17:03Speaker 00

  Well, I haven't been on the end of Mark's anger, but I've been on the end of Fay's anger sometimes. And that, that was quite scary. And she'll, she'll laugh, laugh at that. But yeah, understandable. It's the emotions. And I, I keep talking about the emotions because I want people involved in anything that leads to the resolution of someone having disappeared, to understand the impact. And I, I think we lose sight of the impact. I'll tell you another story. And I think I've spoken about it publicly and I'm sure that they wouldn't mind. With William Tyrrell, when William Tyrrell disappeared, his foster parents, and there's been a lot said about that. I'm not going to buy into the, the whole story there. I'm talking about an aspect of that investigation.

• 17:49Speaker 00

  When I took over the investigation, I, I was speaking to his foster parents and obviously they had William's room set up at home. And they said to me, and I, I can't even remember at what stage of the investigation this was. I was on it for four years. So it was during a period, I'd say in the first year or, or two. They've asked me as the officer in charge, um, yeah, in an emotional conversation, when do you think we should pack William's room up? And that, to me, it, it just sort of typified what we're dealing with here is, yeah, at what point, at what point do you say, we're never going to see this young, young boy again? Do we pack his room up?

• 18:30Speaker 00

  Like, that, it, it just broke my heart when, when they asked that, that question. I thought, jeez, that really brings it home, what the emotion is when someone disappears. No answers.

• 18:42Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah. William's case, I'm asked about it all the time, as I assume you are. Um, and I never talk about it. I talk about it in very general terms. The, the loss of a child is obviously the worst thing that can happen to anyone. Um, and I think even, even when I was on Sunrise a couple of years ago and they asked me out of the blue about William, who has never been in any of my books. I've never written about William. But I, but I always think back to the very first day that I knew that he had gone missing. And I actually got a phone call from someone who was on the scene. So I got his information out there really quickly. And, um, and like everyone else, we just thought, okay, little boys wandered off

• 19:28Speaker 01

  wearing a bright red suit. We'll find him really quickly. And if we strip back everything that's happened since then, and if I go back to that very first day, it was the very first information I got. So the first words that were out of the, the mouth of the person that was on scene who called me said, it's a really nice family and they are absolutely frantic. And that is the one thing that has kept in my brain since two thousand and fourteen, that they were absolutely frantic. And that feeling never goes away. It never goes away. And as you said, when do you stop feeling frantic? When do you stop that feeling of, we've all, as parents, we've all turned around at a theme park and you thought that your

• 20:14Speaker 01

  seven-year-old was right behind you. And suddenly they've been distracted and wandered off. And that panic and that panic feeling can last for years with the family of a missing person, particularly a missing child.

• 20:24Speaker 00

  Oh, it's frightening. And I think any adult that's, has control of young children have experienced that moment of panic when you turn around and the, the child's not where you thought they would be. And the urgency of what needs to be done right from the start. So.

• 20:41Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 20:44Speaker 00

  When we talk missing people, now, a lot of missing people are found. And I want to debunk, and we'll debunk this one straight up and we might touch on it again. But the amount of people that say to me, oh, you can't report someone missing in the first 24 hours. And just, can we hit people over the head with the fact that yes, you can. And if anyone walks into a police station and a police officer tells you, we can't take a report until the person's been missing for 24 hours, just say bullshit.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 21:17Speaker 00

  It's circumstances.

• 21:19Speaker 01

  Your manager.

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 21:21Speaker 01

  Yes.

• 21:22Speaker 00

  Take their name and say, thank you very much. Who's your supervisor? I'd like to speak to the supervisor because it's circumstances that dictate whether something, how something should be followed up. Have you, with all the hundreds of people that you've spoken to that have been involved in reporting matters to the police, is that something that often comes up, that people aren't taking the report? Or not just police not taking the report, people thinking they can't report the disappearance?

• 21:53Speaker 01

  All the time. And people still say, oh, you know, this is what's happened. My roommate didn't come home. I can't get hold of my brother. What should I do? Go to the police now. Oh, isn't it a bit early? Should we wait a bit longer? I don't wanna... And a lot of people say, I don't want to get them into trouble. And like, there's no trouble, you know? Oh, he'll be angry with me if I go to the police. So, you know, what if something's happened? And I remember with the Carly McBride case, they were trying to report her as a missing person.

• 22:22Speaker 00

  Tell us a little bit about that, if you could.

• 22:25Speaker 01

  It was New South Wales, round Newcastle. Carly McBride was a young woman who disappeared, just didn't come home, was supposed to meet someone, a young Indigenous woman. And they tried to report her as missing. And the police said, oh, you know, she's well known to us. So the sort of person she is, she's, she'll turn up. It'll be fine. And they came to me and said, what do I do? And I said, well, I'm putting, and sometimes I will very cheekily put the information out there in, as a means of putting the pressure on the police to take the report. So I'm like, okay, if you've seen this person, I want you to call this particular police station because then they'll be forced to take the report if they start getting phone

• 23:10Speaker 01

  calls about it. So they came to me and said, you know, what do we do? I really think something's happened to her. And so I called the police and I said, you need to take this report. And they went, oh, you know, this, she'll turn up. And I said, you need to take this report. And it ended up being one of the biggest homicide cases that they had had. She had been murdered. They should have acted sooner on that particular case. And I still have all of that information. And it still upsets me that you have to insist and, and put aside prejudices as well. Just because someone has a criminal history, sometimes, because they have a history of disappearing, that doesn't mean you can't take every single report seriously and treat

• 23:54Speaker 01

  it, treat it on its own merits.

• 23:57Speaker 00

  That's right. You need to look at each case individually, but you talk about taking the reports. One thing in homicide, that the advantage we had, if there was a homicide and the body was found straight away, that's a huge advantage because we're straight on to it. We're, we're on to all the inquiries that need to be done, where information can be lost. When someone disappears and it's reported to the police, and then we find no inquiries have been done about the disappearance, and then, you know, it might be a month or so later that the body turns up, we're playing catch up. Catch up that could have been, we could have been on top of it right from the start. And that's, that's where mistakes are made. Give, we, we talk missing persons.

• 24:42Speaker 00

  Give us a sense of what constitutes a missing person in your mind. Give some examples of different types of situations where it's quite appropriate for someone to be reported as a missing, missing person.

• 24:55Speaker 01

  Hmm. I, I have quite a broad spectrum of what a missing person is and, and often feel that I need to correct others about it, who, who comes to me and say, well, you know, they, that's not really a missing person. I, I think it applies to anyone, even people who are lost at sea, whose body is almost certainly never going to be recovered. And that, as an aside, sometimes happens. Sometimes you'll get a bone washed up. I was reading the story about Martin Tan this week, who the coroner has just declared that he went missing in the ocean in Perth. One of his dreadlocks washed up later on a, on a beach.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  But he's still a missing person, even though we're probably never going to find him. He will remain missing until we find some of his body. And that applies to all missing persons. So someone who, to me, a missing person is someone who disappears unexpectedly, who is not where they are meant to be, who doesn't come home from work, who was last seen in this particular location, and then suddenly is not there anymore. You can't contact them. No one in the entire family can contact them. It, it differs from someone that you've just lost contact with, who might sort of have moved on and, and done something different with their life. A missing person disappears unexpectedly.

• 26:22Speaker 01

  And if you have concerns about their welfare, that's a missing person.

• 26:27Speaker 00

  Yeah. Okay. Because I, I think that's another thing to consider, but it's the circumstances. And if someone, we, we have people reporting a missing person when they haven't turned up for work. Now, people might say, well, you're just a, you know, a work colleague. How can you report? But if that person diligently turns up to work every day, and then stops turning up to work, well, yeah, there can be concerns. So.

• 26:52Speaker 01

  Yeah, absolutely. And it should be enough for a welfare check. It should be enough for police to just go and knock on the door and go, okay, we've had concerns.

• 26:59Speaker 00

  There, there you go. The welfare check. I honestly think sometimes you can create more work for yourself not doing the most obvious thing. You know, if someone's disappeared, like, don't fob the person off coming into the police station. Just take, take the report and make some initial inquiries. And I think in the long run, it's going to serve, serve better. Statistic, statistically, okay, I, this is, I got it, we were talking the other day, but I think this was from the AFP website. About 50,000 missing persons reports are received by police in Australia every year, with half of those reports relating to people aged between 13 and 17.

• 27:39Speaker 00

  So is that, you're, you've been in this field for 20 years or two decades. 50,000, that seems to be fairly, fairly consistent?

• 27:50Speaker 01

  Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, for sure. I'm actually surprised that the number isn't higher. I thought it was around 56,000.

• 27:57Speaker 00

  Right.

• 27:58Speaker 01

  So 50,000 makes me feel a little bit better, but as I said, the, the long-term missing numbers are very high. And I think I'm seeing a trend, as you said, that half of those are young people. And I'm seeing a trend of those average ages of the teenage runaways dropping dramatically. So I've regularly got 11-year-olds going missing, which is horrifying to me, absolutely horrifying.

• 28:26Speaker 00

  That, that's concerning. Now, statistically, most people reported missing are located within a short period of time. So that, that would, that would be fair. I'm, I'm looking at some of the other things here. You mentioned it before, that a long-term missing person is considered missing for more than three months.

• 28:44Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 28:45Speaker 00

  Well, how, how do you think they've come to that sort of timeframe? What's your, your, your take on that?

• 28:50Speaker 01

  Yeah, I don't know. It's, that kind of used to be the criteria in my head, because I've got the website and I've got the Facebook page. So people who are missing immediately go onto the Facebook page. Once they've been missing a long time, I'll move them to the website, which is a more permanent spot for them, so that we can continue to make appeals for them, but perhaps not on a daily basis. But sometimes I will move them over sooner than that if I think the circumstances are that I don't think this person is going to be found. So, yeah, three, three months, I think, is just a, a number that they've picked as in, okay, it's, it's probably definitely going to be a long-term missing person if it's three months.

• 29:33Speaker 00

  Well, it's not someone that's gone for the two-week holiday or someone that's, yeah.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  Yeah. And if, if there's a physical search for a missing person, generally they're going to find that person within a couple of weeks.

• 29:45Speaker 00

  They, they talk on the website here about the many reasons people go missing, including mental illness, miscommunication, misadventure, domestic violence, being the victim of, of crime. So that, that's a broad, but that, that's pretty well sort of covers it, that covers the type, type of things.

• 30:04Speaker 01

  I think so. Most, I think the general public thinks that victims of crime is the number one reason, and it's not.

• 30:10Speaker 00

  Well, that's the, that's the thing that you look at initially if someone disappears. You, you think, think the worst, but yeah, often it doesn't turn out. I'm heartened here by the fact that they, they point out, you do not have to wait 24 hours to report someone missing. We'll say that one more time. You do not have to wait 24 hours to report someone missing.

• 30:31Speaker 01

  You don't have to wait 24 minutes.

• 30:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:34Speaker 00

  Yeah. That's a lot, isn't it? When, when you break it down, that many people and... Tell me, and we touched on it earlier, but just tell me about the type of impact on families. Pick some cases you've talked about where where people have.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 30:49Speaker 00

  Their lives have been changed forever because of someone having disappeared.

• 30:55Speaker 01

  I work in dementia care, so I I work in a secure unit in a in a nursing home. So I think I do a pretty good job of keeping my people safe. Um, and it it's imagine if one of my people were to go missing. However, I did um have one who went missing and uh and I know that his family won't mind me telling this story because they told it at his funeral that I went to on Monday.

• 31:20Speaker 00

  Right, okay.

• 31:22Speaker 01

  A beautiful man, um a farmer who just loved being out in the fields and was loved his dogs and loved his horses. And um strong as an ox, but in a nursing home with dementia. And he smashed his way through the back gate with his wheelie walker, smashed the padlock off the back gate and managed to get all the way down, cross the New England highway and got himself down to the pub. And that's where I that's where I rescued him from um was the pub and got him back to the nursing home. But that's an example of a case where, you know, don't wait an hour to report them as a missing person. If you can't find them in ten minutes, you call the police.

• 32:07Speaker 00

  Yeah, in in those in those.

• 32:09Speaker 01

  Completely immediately.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  Uh circumstances and like a dementia patient or a young child. That that's that that critical time, that early time that, you know, if you can't can't find find the child or or someone like you've just described.

• 32:25Speaker 01

  Very vulnerable, yeah.

• 32:26Speaker 00

  Let's get get people on to it straight away.

• 32:30Speaker 01

  So so yes, Ray Speechley, the the impact that it has had on his family, his wife is she's she told me straight out. She's refusing to die until his remains are found. So she's a very stoic woman, a very pragmatic woman, but she's devoted to him. She can tell you to the minute how long they've been married. It's coming up to sixty eight years this year that they've been married. And she is just so determined that to find out answers before she goes. And um their daughter has organised over thirty searches for her father. Um. So when the official police searches finished and they said, there's no nothing more we can do. It's it this the terrain is too rugged.

• 33:15Speaker 01

  She said, right, well, then I'm going to do it. And so she has then spent, she she was down there this week tromping through the bush, looking for her dad's body. I can't imagine doing that, but she's done it more than thirty times. Um. Because she feels this need to, she feels the families feel a helplessness because they that and that's the the thing that they say to me all the time is, what should I be doing? What more can I do? Should I be walking the streets and and sticking posters on lamp posts? Should I what what can I physically do? And so she says, well, what I can physically do is go out there with a machete and cut my way through the bush

• 33:58Speaker 01

  and try and figure out which direction he went in and maybe find his body. That's all she wants thirty times.

• 34:03Speaker 00

  That's the sad thing, isn't it? Because my my take on it's like they're almost letting down the person that's disappeared. If they don't do everything they they possibly possibly can.

• 34:14Speaker 01

  The survivor guilt, yeah.

• 34:16Speaker 00

  And you you talk about, you know, these people, it just it gives me flashbacks of different cases like um Ian Draper. He disappeared and his mum, a beautiful, beautiful lady, just wanted answers. And that was tied up in a major murder investigation I was involved in. And we couldn't give the answers. It was certainly suspicious in the circumstances in which he disappeared. He wasn't a criminal. His his closest association with criminal aspect was he was a witness at a murder trial. And he finished work at a a club and that was the last time he was seen. And he's.

• 34:52Speaker 01

  Exactly.

• 34:53Speaker 00

  His car was found abandoned out the front of a outlaw motorcycle gang's clubhouse. And it had been wiped down and a lot of suspicion attached, but we've never been able to bring answers for Ian Draper's family. And there's stories like that and I I just remember how much pain that they carried just wanting to find out what's what's happened.

• 35:15Speaker 01

  Exactly, and it's it's a frustration and and it's a guilt. Tony Farrington has enormous guilt because he couldn't protect his little sister. And a lot of them think, well, how can I go on with my life? How can I have happy moments? Um Lauren Whitehead's daughter felt guilty that she got married without her mum being there. She felt like she should have, you know, delayed the wedding until she was found, but you can't do that forever. And as you said, sometimes they keep the rooms exactly the same. They refuse to move house.

• 35:49Speaker 00

  Because they might might I've seen that because they might come home. Like, how how sad is that? It's.

• 35:55Speaker 01

  I know exactly. Um Kay Doherty's brother um bought the family home just so he would stay there just in case Kay came home one day.

• 36:05Speaker 00

  Le- leaving the light on for them to come home.

• 36:08Speaker 01

  And leaving the light on, that's it.

• 36:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, the Australian Missing Persons Register. Now, you set that up. How long ago? Why?

• 36:18Speaker 01

  Twenty one years ago.

• 36:19Speaker 00

  Twenty one years ago. How quickly time flies. What uh what's got you interested in this aspect? And and tell us what the aim of the register is all about.

• 36:30Speaker 01

  Uh, I think it's it was, I'm asked this question a lot and I feel like I never answer it adequately. I think it's.

• 36:37Speaker 00

  Okay, well, you're not going to get away with that here. We're going to get right down to it.

• 36:41Speaker 01

  Okay, okay. Um, I think it's just my nature. I think I'm a curious person and I'm interested in human nature. As you are, you are interested in the mind of a killer. I am interested in the mind of those killers who might take a missing person. Uh, and the the in the minds of a missing person who um voluntarily goes missing. It was it was the curiosity factor of what happens to a person and what is the story? And so I grew up reading mystery books and uh then I would sneak in and get my mum's true crime books.

• 37:22Speaker 01

  And I read um the the book about the Truro murders by Anne Marie Makita, who was the mother of one of the victims. And I felt compelled to write to her because I was just so sad about what had happened to her daughter. And I wanted to say that let her know that her story had touched me. I was around, I was teenagers, about the same age as Anne Marie's daughter Juliet when she was murdered um in the the by the Truro serial killer. And she and then Anne Marie wrote back and we corresponded a few times. And and that really touched me because I thought, oh, and she got some comfort from hearing that from me. And I think that kind of just spurred me on to to have that.

• 38:07Speaker 01

  It wasn't just a morbid curiosity or a fascination. It was, I really cared about these people. Um. And then in two thousand and five, I watched a documentary about missing persons that mentioned that there was no national database for missing persons. And that was the time when the internet was just starting. And not many people had it in their homes. Um, but it was obvious that the internet was going to take over the world. And so I sort of went looking on the internet for information about missing persons and there wasn't any. And I had by that stage built up quite a large library of true crime books. And there was a lot of information about Australian missing persons in those books.

• 38:49Speaker 01

  So I would literally photocopy the the photos from um the books and then scan them in an old scanner and then upload them to a website. And I taught myself how to make a website and thought, well, I there needs to be a resource for people. How do how do people know that these people are still missing if there's nothing available? So I thought I would just create that. And so that's how it really started. It was just a collection of information for people to access as a as a resource. And then one day, the mother of a missing young man contacted me and said, can I add my son to your website? He's been missing a couple of weeks. And I was so taken aback by that. It's like, oh, this is a real person.

• 39:32Speaker 01

  I this is a family, I don't know how to do this. And I I think I asked my mum, I said, I don't know what to say to these people. And she said, just be yourself, just, you know, you don't need to be professional because you're not a professional. Just just talk to her. And so I added this young man's photo to the website and the basic information that she had given me. And then um he was found not long after and he had taken his own life. And I was absolutely shattered. I was, how can I talk to this woman now? How how is this? I can't do this. Um, this is crazy. And and then I did and she was just so, her overwhelming emotion was gratitude. And I couldn't believe that, you know, you've just lost your son.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  And she was just like, yeah, but you helped me. You you were there and you put his photo up and you tried to help me. Thank you, thank you. And it was that blew me away. It's like, oh, wow, okay. And so I thought, well, okay, maybe then I can help other people. So I sort of said, well, if you have a missing person, put my email address on there. And then that's really where it started. And then later, when Facebook was invented, that became a way of getting the information out very quickly to a lot of people. Um. So missing persons information could be disseminated within minutes of it being uploaded. So and then very gradually, law enforcement grew to understand that I wasn't some crazy woman trying to get no derity.

• 41:01Speaker 01

  And and they would then start to refer people. So people would go into a police station, report their person missing and say, what do I do now? And they would say, okay, here's Nicole's information. Go and talk to her and she will get the information out for you. So it sort of snowballed really over the years without me realising it.

• 41:19Speaker 00

  The register. So it's sort of grown organically then?

• 41:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, it really did. I didn't end up, you know, I'm sorry, I didn't start thinking this is what I want to achieve. It it just sort of, what do people need me to do? And I'll do that. So it became, I'm not a trained psychologist. I do have some mental health qualifications, but I, but I'm not a psychologist and I'm not going to sit down and say, this is how I help you get through this. It's more, tell me what you need me to do and I can refer you to psychologists. Um, you know, New South Wales Missing Persons has a, a section, they've got a psychologist on staff who specifically deal with missing persons. So I can refer them to that. I can um, help them through the coronial process,

• 42:05Speaker 01

  which I understand fairly well now. And, and so it's, it's practical.

• 42:09Speaker 00

  And it's ongoing. So if, if I, if I said, okay, my brother has disappeared, haven't, haven't seen him for months. I don't know what to do. I've reported it to the police. They've said, well, he's an adult. Um, yeah, we'll take the report, but there's not a lot we can do. I, I reach out to you and what, what sort of advice do you, you provide me? Or what sort of assistance can the register help?

• 42:33Speaker 01

  I, I would say, I don't feel that you can't ask the police for updates, because I think sometimes people feel that they feel a bit intimidated by the police and they feel like they're bothering them. But um, as you say, adult males are sort of the lowest priority for police to investigate, which is, which is very frustrating to me.

• 42:53Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:54Speaker 01

  Um, and the reality is that most people don't just take off for months and stop contacting every single person in their lives. How are they existing if that's what they've done? So I say, keep pushing. And if you have concerns, then keep, keep on it. Um, sometimes there's a physical search that they can do. More and more families are doing that themselves. Um, and just this week, um, there was another search for Patrick Lardicki in Northern New South Wales, and they found his wallet after over a year of him being missing, they've just suddenly found his wallet. So these community searches can be extremely valuable if you have some idea of the area that they've gone missing in. Um, but it's, it's uh,

• 43:37Speaker 01

  Sally Leyden said to me the other day, it's the squeaky wheel syndrome. It's, if you, if you keep on at them, they will listen to you and respond more. And, and so it's a difficult conversation to have if, if I say to a family, just be annoying.

• 43:54Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:54Speaker 01

  And ring them and, and keep on at them because that's when they will say, okay, this, we really need to do something here because this family is frantic.

• 44:03Speaker 00

  Well, Sally's quite right. We, we had her on the podcast and uh, mother Marion Barter that disappeared. And again, she just had to keep pushing and pushing. So if someone comes in, the advice that the, yeah, the Australian Missing Persons Register could provide is advice as to, yeah, what, what your rights are, what you can do. And I, I, I'm glad that you say that, uh, you know, tell people. And it seems like a simple thing. But I've seen it time and time again, and it's not a criticism of police. It's a, it's just this um, barrier that members of the public and quite often people that are dealing with missing persons have never had dealings with police, save a, you know, a parking fine or so- something like that.

• 44:47Speaker 00

  So they think they haven't got the right to go into the police station and say, I want answers. Can you, you tell me what's going on with the investigation? So that simple bit of advice is good. What about um, just on the register? So people know about it. If, if someone provides further information, is there any linkage that is done through the register if someone disappears?

• 45:09Speaker 01

  Uh, yeah, I mean, if I, I will absolutely, I have a good working relationship with the um, National Persons Missing Coordination Centre. So I talk to them all the time um, and pass on bits of information and, and they can update me with bits of information, which is really good. Um, I ask a family for as many photos as possible because people can look vastly different. Uh, in, in, if they've changed their appearance, if they're still out there and they've changed their appearance. So as many photos as possible. I was just thinking about a case that I was dealing with last night of a woman. Uh, and I ask an awful lot of questions of people. Um, possibly, I don't know if the police ask as many questions as I do, but I, I need to know everything.

• 45:53Speaker 01

  And so we were talking about she had, her partner went missing from Tasmania and uh, was last heard from in Victoria. And so I would, I, I just asked her a lot of questions. How did he get there? Was it the spirit of Tasmania? Did he fly? And then ended up, uh, they, the police found his car in a, near a lookout. So the police are assuming that he has taken his own life. She doesn't think that. Um, and so I've said, I just, through asking all of these questions, I said, okay, so he, where did he rent the car from? And she said, no, he bought the car. And I said, he bought a car and then jumped off a cliff. Is that what you're telling me? So immediately that's, hang on a minute.

• 46:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:37Speaker 01

  Perhaps the police have this wrong. Who buys a car and spends all that money and then jumps off a cliff?

• 46:43Speaker 00

  There's a subtle difference to renting a car and buying a car and, yeah.

• 46:47Speaker 01

  Yeah, exactly. If you're not intending to um, continue your life, why are you going out and buying a car? So I, by asking all of those questions, I get a lot more information. Uh, and then can, and every tiny little bit of information, sometimes you, you hear something and go, oh, hang on a minute, righty-o. Now that changes everything. You said that they were heading to, to, in this direction, but you know, they, they didn't like to drive, so they've actually taken public transport. And so, righty-o, then I need to focus. Who was, and send out a message and saying, was anyone on this particular train station on this date? You might have seen this person.

• 47:28Speaker 00

  With law enforcement agencies and, you know, it's a national register, are you having a lot of success dealing with law enforcement agencies? Are they, you've been around for a long time. Are they seeing you as a uh, uh, something, a useful tool that can complement what they're doing?

• 47:47Speaker 01

  They do now. I think um, it, it's, and I don't like to speak in general terms about policing. Because it's, it's, I can't just say, oh yeah, the police are supportive of what I do. Some are and some aren't. Some just think it's ridiculous. Well, you know, leave the policing to us. And that's fine. I, but I think after doing it for so long, they now get, they understand what I do. And that's why I think now I have a good relationship with them. But back then it was like, why do you want this? There was, um, there have been amazing police officers over the years who have really embraced it and worked with me. And because there, and sometimes I had, there was one woman who um,

• 48:29Speaker 01

  was actually the subject of an age-enhanced image, who went missing in Western Australia. And um, her boyfriend started messaging me, saying some weird sort of things like, or you know, are her parents really still looking for her? And I would, and I just kind of thought, something's going on here. And so I engaged with him at the same time, called the police and said, something's happening here. Um, and they said, all right, keep talking to him. And it turned out he was with her. Um, she had been missing for years. And he was with her at that time. And he was trying to figure out if he could trust me.

• 49:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:09Speaker 01

  Because he felt like she should make herself known, but she didn't want to. So it was very subtle. And so I worked with the police over all of this time and got her home. So that was, that was an incredible result. In, and that was an example of working directly with the police. So the police could have said, leave it to us. This is not, this is nothing to do with you. Don't be ridiculous. But the, the fact is that he trusted me and built up that trust with me. And I was then able to get her home by working in conjunction with police. That doesn't always happen. Um, but that, that was a really great example of, of them trusting that I wasn't, you know, some lunatic.

• 49:50Speaker 00

  Well, I, I think police are becoming more open-minded to the fact that they've got to work with all the outside agencies or out, outside groups to get the, get the proper result. It very much was the case going back decades and, and way before that, that nothing to see here. Don't worry about it. The police have this in hand. But the world has changed. The world has changed. And, and social media has changed. Before police could control the narrative with the traditional media about what information goes out and what information, you know, they hang on to. But the world has changed. And I, I think police, and this, this is my sense, I'm looking from the outside now,

• 50:31Speaker 00

  are learning, uh, are coming to terms with the fact that society's evolved and they've got to evolve with society and, and use whatever tools, uh, uh, you know, can it bring the right results to an investigation or an inquiry?

• 50:44Speaker 01

  I think so. I think um, it's, it, it has been a long period of trust though. And I think um, they And I've never tried to sort of say, oh, yes, I'm investigating this case. That's not me. It's not my job. I'm not trained to do that. Um, I just wanna help.

• 51:02Speaker 00

  Well, I, I, in, in defence of the police and having been involved in the police, the amount of people that reach out some wacky ideas and, uh, I'm just thinking some of the examples. Now, if I told people, they just wouldn't believe it. But yeah, it usually starts if

• 51:19Speaker 01

  Oh, I get all those messages too.

• 51:20Speaker 00

  If, if I get a, an email or text or communication in any way that, uh, starts off with, I had a dream and usually that's a warning.

• 51:31Speaker 01

  I feel that they are underwater.

• 51:33Speaker 00

  I, I've been, don't write me off as being mad, but I, yeah, okay.

• 51:37Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:38Speaker 00

  So I, I would imagine you would get inundated with that, uh, that type of, uh, type of stuff.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  All the time. Please, please tell the police that they're, they're in a shed, in a field.

• 51:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 51:48Speaker 01

  In a town that starts with W. Oh, okay. Well, absolutely fine. But I had one woman who said, I gave the police information that they were somewhere on a beach in between Sydney and Wollongong.

• 52:02Speaker 00

  That narrows it down.

• 52:03Speaker 01

  And, and, and they haven't acted on my information. I was like, really? Okay, they haven't, oh, that's terrible.

• 52:12Speaker 00

  Yeah, that, that's, that's the other thing in fairness that the police have got to deal with. And, you know, we get pictures of the missing person out. But I, I reference, say, the William Tyrrell case. That's when I was leading the investigation, there were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds. I, I think, and I'm going back now, but over five hundred reported sightings of, of William and, and possibly a lot more. It got to the point where it, it became ludicrous three or four years after William had disappeared. Someone would report that they saw a child in a Spider-Man suit. Yeah. And, and that was,

• 52:49Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 52:49Speaker 00

  It must be William because he's wearing a Spider-Man suit. So that, that can become problematic, but there's ways of dealing with it. You can sift through the information. But, uh, yeah, there's a lot going on now. There has been a lot of criticism of, uh, policing in the way that they deal with, uh, missing, missing persons. And, uh, that's come out in, uh, coronial inquests and parliamentary inquiries. And again, not attacking individuals, but, but, uh, some of the things that have been, uh, identified as systemic failings in the way, uh, police have handled missing persons investigations include delayed initial responses, inadequate evidence collection, poor communication with families,

• 53:30Speaker 00

  which I see in your book seems to come out time and time again, and, uh, systemic under-resourcing. So again, not blaming the individual, but we just don't have the police in numbers. But breaking down those, uh, areas that I've identified or just mentioned there, we're talking, uh, delayed initial responses. What's your, your take on that?

• 53:53Speaker 01

  Uh, I was reading a coroner's report this week and, um, and again, it was an adult male and I think that's the, they just kind of go, oh yeah, okay, we'll write down the details, but we won't do anything about it. Um, which is really frustrating. And I think that they kind of have in their head, oh, we'll give it a couple of days and if he comes back, then we won't need to have, have done anything about this report. Otherwise we'll look into it later. And by that stage, you see C T V has been wiped and you're, and your, your taxi driver doesn't remember who he picked up four, four days before or last week. And, and so that delayed initial response can be catastrophic because people forget things.

• 54:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:34Speaker 01

  And, and you've not got that, as you said, that those, um, the evidence, you, you're playing catch up. When, when you realise you do need to do something and that person is still missing.

• 54:45Speaker 00

  Yeah. Inadequate evidence collection. Well, we're, we're touching on that. And that quite often happens when it's not, uh, the necessary steps that needed to be taken, uh, weren't taken. And I, I should clarify here, we're talking about the, the negative side of things. For there's a flip side of it because, and you've identified some police investigations have been spot on right from the start. The moment, uh, someone's reported missing, they've done what needs to be done. Poor communication with families. I go on about that a lot when I'm, I'm talking policing aspects in that the simplest thing. And I get contacted a lot with people, even though I'm out of the police, talking about, uh, issues they have with police. And invariably it comes down to, uh, poor communication.

• 55:30Speaker 01

  Mm-hmm.

• 55:30Speaker 00

  And not that they don't understand what they're saying. It's basically, they're not passing on the information that if they had passed that information on, it would put the family's mind at ease or just updated on what they're doing. Uh, what, what's your, what's your take on that?

• 55:46Speaker 01

  Well, I, just this week I had, um, a family of a long-term missing person say, we'd really like to speak to whoever has the file currently because they haven't heard from police in years. And that's pretty typical. And so I went to the federal police and said, could you give, could you ask whoever has the file, um, give this family a call? And they said, okay, what's his phone number? And I said, right, okay, here is the phone number.

• 56:17Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  Why don't you have that? And why don't New South Wales police have that? And if you had found her, how are you going to call him and say that you had found her? Why don't you have the contact details for these families? It, it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. And it's, the, the communication is so vital because the families feel, they literally feel that they have been forgotten. And in many cases, they have been forgotten if there's, if the case hasn't progressed at all. Um, just a little bit of communication between police and families. Even once a year, I, I, the, the speechless case that I mentioned before, there was a police officer who would call every year and say, I haven't got any information,

• 56:59Speaker 01

  but I just needed to tell you, um, that I haven't forgotten him.

• 57:04Speaker 00

  That's appreciated, isn't it?

• 57:05Speaker 01

  That kept on my address.

• 57:07Speaker 00

  And that, that's, that's a difference that type of communication can make. The, uh, systemic under-resourcing, I know, uh, just from my time and I, I can only speak in regards to New South Wales, uh, police, but the missing persons unit needed an overhaul. And that's a kind way of saying that there were things that weren't, weren't being done that needed to be done.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 57:29Speaker 00

  I've been away from it for years now. I don't know, but I got the sense it was being linked more closely with the homicide unit, working with the, the homicide unit. And I, I think they learnt from their mistakes, uh, unfortunately, because, yeah, these are historic matters, some of the mistakes are still carrying through to today. But I get the sense that they're starting to understand the importance of, um, treating missing persons properly. There's a parliamentary inquiry running at the moment, um, New South Wales Parliamentary Inquiry about, uh, missing persons and on the mid-north coast of N- New South Wales. Your observation of things, do you think we are getting better at it?

• 58:10Speaker 00

  Do you think we're, we're starting to understand the importance? Are we chipping away and, and starting to realise, okay, we, we need to take these cases more seriously to start with?

• 58:20Speaker 01

  I think so. And, uh, something that has come out of the parliamentary inquiry that has astonished me is, is that suddenly there's hundreds of new cases that have appeared on the National Missing Persons Coordination Centre website. So all of these cases, I don't know where they've been all of these years, I guess, in a dusty file somewhere. And suddenly they've said, okay, we need to be thorough about this, uh, inquiry. And so we're going to pull all of these cases out and make sure that everyone is aware that there's, that these people are still missing. So I've added so many people to the register just in the last couple of months, which is really good.

• 59:01Speaker 01

  Um, my concern is if the inquiry is going to focus on, uh, is not going to take each case individually. I think that's, that's my only concern. Because there's, for every missing person, there's a different reason why they've gone missing. And I think we need to, you know, this woman has been killed by her husband. This woman was taken by a serial killer. This woman wandered off into the bush and was lost. So we can't, it, it concerns me if they're being lumped together, um, and not looked at individually because I think that's really important.

• 59:35Speaker 00

  Well, I, I think the key word is looked at. That's how, they may need to be assessed. Then there needs to be a, a triage of a system going through that they, okay, this one needs attention. This one is a, an area of concern. We need to focus our resources there. From my learnings through policing, the importance of starting something off properly, it always leads, or, or nine times out of ten, leads to a successful result in the end, if it's done properly from the start. So that's, you know, it, when we're talking missing persons, you've got, uh, I, I know in the, yeah, unidentified remains. Like if someone's missing and, and let's say it, it has to wait and it might be fair enough to wait for, uh,

• 1:00:18Speaker 00

  the three months till they become a long-term missing person if the circumstances don't dictate it being put at a higher level straight away. DNA from family members. So if remains are found, uh, as simple as that, that they can, uh, they can check who's, uh, who, uh, belongs to the remains and potentially put families' minds at ease. Like if they're, they're finding out what's happened to their loved one.

• 1:00:42Speaker 01

  Hmm. Absolutely. There's a, there's a case that I've written about in the book though, um, where the family provided DNA and police lost it. And so they provided DNA again. And then the police came back to this family a third time and said, oh, we need to take DNA. And the missing woman's brother said, you've got it twice. Why? And they said, oh, because it's, it's gone missing again. And they said, then I'm not doing it.

• 1:01:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:07Speaker 01

  Uh, and which, you can understand, you'd think, oh, well, you know, you have to do it because what if they find a body? But you can understand their frustration and their lack of trust in the police if they're, if that isn't being followed through. So it's, there are protocols and checklists that need to be, that need to happen. But they, they also need to be taking precious care of this evidence. And Jan Spitzley said the same thing about her husband. She had to, for some weird reason, she had to approach Canberra Hospital herself and say, I would like a, a sample, this, the hospital medical samples of my husband's DNA so that I can give this to the police. Why aren't the police doing that?

• 1:01:47Speaker 01

  Why did Jan have to go to the hospital and say, I need my husband's DNA? That's crazy to me. There, there are certain things, the protocols that police need to follow, um, to minimise the distress to the families.

• 1:01:59Speaker 00

  Well, I, I think if we put the protocols in place and the, the operating procedures, um, that takes away and, and you've touched on it. And I, I know it's, yeah, you'll have some dedicated good police and you'll have some that, uh, yeah, drop the ball, uh, more times than not. But if you've got the protocols in place, a, a system in place, that prevents it. Cause sometimes it's a lottery. You walk into the police station, it depends which police officer's standing at the counter or what dictates the response you're going to get from the, the complaint.

• 1:02:31Speaker 01

  Absolutely.

• 1:02:32Speaker 00

  But the way to overcome that and ensure a good quality is, uh, putting systems, systems in place. And look, again, watching from the outside, I get the sense that they're, they're waking up to, uh, the situation that we've got to make sure that we do, do things properly. And I hope, hope they are because it's for everyone's benefits. How about we take a, uh, break now? When we, uh, when we come back, we'll talk about some of the many cases that you've, uh, dealt with over the years and the, the contacts you've had with the families. We'll look at ways of improving it and just breaking down, again, just digging into missing persons. What constitutes it, how we should approach it and, uh, a whole other range of things. So let's take a break and we'll be, uh, back shortly.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  Wonderful.

• 1:03:15Speaker 00

  Cheers.