Almost busted infiltrating a bikie clubhouse: Todd Maguire Pt. 2

In the gripping second part of Gary Jubelin’s conversation with former undercover operative Todd Maguire, the stakes reach a breaking point. Todd delves deeper into the psychological toll of maintaining multiple false identities, where the line between his real self and his undercover personas began to dangerously blur. From terrifying rural setups involving illegal firearms and rust-covered blades to the high-stakes world of city underbelly operations, Todd reveals the raw reality of life in the field. He shares the harrowing moment he truly thought his cover was blown and how a reckless descent into alcohol and substance abuse became his only way to cope with the trauma he couldn't process. Gary and Todd also discuss the profound personal cost of the job, the "tick and flick" approach to officer welfare, and the life-changing wakeup call that finally forced Todd to confront the train wreck his life had become. 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

  Todd Maguire built a life around the lie. A false identity so convincing that it had to hold up under pressure, most of us will never face. Surrounded by people who would have killed him if they'd known the truth. In part two of my chat with Todd, we go further into the undercover policing investigations he was involved in. The criminals he had to befriend and the personal costs that came with it all. Have a listen.

• 1:13Speaker 00

  This is part two of I Catch Killers and I'm with Todd Maguire, former undercover cop with Queensland Police. Or am I with Donny or a new little character that you've invented, Reno?

• 1:27Speaker 00

  For those that listen to, oh, I should welcome you back.

• 1:30Speaker 01

  Thank you.

• 1:31Speaker 00

  Todd, Reno, Donny.

• 1:32Speaker 01

  Yes, one of them.

• 1:34Speaker 00

  It's interesting that there's other characters. Like we've talked about Donny in part one and you've got a new character and we'll talk how that came about. But how would you differ Donny and Reno? What's the difference in the characters?

• 1:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, Reno was probably even worse than Donny. So even when I started writing the book, it wasn't until I was putting it on paper and then I was reading it back. Shit, I think that's when Reno or Donny was at his last.

• 2:07Speaker 00

  Right.

• 2:08Speaker 01

  Real big time. Like I remember personally, you know, I couldn't sleep at night. I was up in Bundaberg. The place that I lived in was a fortress, but I had the worst panic attacks trying to go to sleep. My heart would pound through the roof. I was seeing things. I was looking, turning over and, you know.

• 2:26Speaker 00

  This was when you're in the Reno role? I'll just read out an extract from the book talking about Reno. "The machete was suddenly at Reno's throat. Cold steel pressing against his skin. The edge trembling in Lance's white knuckled grip. Reno didn't flinch, he couldn't. His heart jackhammered in his chest. But his face stayed blank, calm. The only thing that moved was a bead of sweat trailing down his temple. Lance's eyes twitched. You're lying to me, I can see it." Okay.

• 2:57Speaker 01

  He was right, wasn't he?

• 2:59Speaker 00

  He was right. Let's talk about Reno, how he came to be. Let's talk about how Reno found himself in that situation and what case you were working at that time.

• 3:12Speaker 01

  So Reno was basically, you know, Donny was going up to Bundaberg to do another job after he'd done a few in Caboolture and Brisbane, a few other things. Donny was quite happy to go out there as Donny. But then there was some bit of intelligence to say that, you know, some of the crooks from the Caboolture job overlap here. And even though there was no social media, if the name Donny came up, that would be like, hang on, Donny was involved in what was going on here.

• 3:45Speaker 00

  And by that time it had gone out, Donny was a UC.

• 3:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, that Donny was the undercover cop. So, yeah, so my hierarchy said, no, you're going to have to have a new name for this one.

• 3:59Speaker 00

  Did you want to give up, Donny?

• 4:00Speaker 01

  No, no, no. And I went, oh, I just, I really got used to being called Donny, answering to the name without flexing, anything. Like having to go, that was almost 12 months of getting used to it. And then all of a sudden I had to do it properly again. I was like, oh man, I don't know, I can do this. And I think that identity crisis, along with everything else, really, really confused me.

• 4:25Speaker 00

  So now you're playing with three. You've got Todd.

• 4:29Speaker 01

  I had to put Donny to sleep for three months.

• 4:31Speaker 00

  Then you've lost your best mate, Donny. And now you've become Reno.

• 4:35Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah.

• 4:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I can see why it puts you in a headspin.

• 4:39Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. And I think that's, as I said, you know, writing the book, you could tell that's when my brain was really struggling.

• 4:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 4:49Speaker 01

  You know, and it's probably, it's not, it's not unusual to say that it probably came along with the alcohol and drug abuse, which probably made it worse.

• 4:59Speaker 00

  Yeah. Now, the alcohol and drug abuse, did that happen because of the nature of the work you were doing? Or you would have found your way that way anyway?

• 5:09Speaker 01

  I still do it from the can, yeah.

• 5:10Speaker 00

  Mindset that you're in. After, before we get on to Reno and that particular investigation, after Donny, the job that you were talking about at Caboolture, came to a conclusion, did they give you some downtime? Did they let you clear your head and become normal again?

• 5:28Speaker 01

  It's just by luck. If there's no jobs on the horizon, yep, happy days. But if there's a heat come through, you're either doing back to back or sometimes I did two jobs at once. That was confusing.

• 5:40Speaker 00

  Running different phones and, yeah. Okay, so with Reno, describe him in more detail. What role will you play?

• 5:49Speaker 01

  So I'd already been up there for a couple of weeks as Donny and then all of a sudden I had to change the whole thing to Reno.

• 5:56Speaker 00

  Did you change your appearance?

• 5:58Speaker 01

  No.

• 5:58Speaker 00

  Right.

• 5:59Speaker 01

  No, I still, still look pretty bad.

• 6:05Speaker 01

  So Donny or Reno was sent up to Bundaberg because there was a murder of an English backpacker, Caroline Studdell. And she was walking over the Burnett Bridge late at night. And it was like a bit of a robbery, took a handbag and they pushed her over. There was no leads at all. There was just whispers, you know, small town. The detectives were shaking everything they can. The same names kept on coming up. They're involved somehow, don't know how, but we need to find out. So enter Donny or now Reno.

• 6:44Speaker 01

  Had an informant. He was pretty rotten, couldn't trust him, but I didn't have any other choice. So he's invited me out to his place. And one of the crooks, Lance, who we wanted to befriend, was going to, that was our introduction. And as I'm going through this dirt road, 45 minutes from Bundaberg, up near Jingin, you know, it's a dirt road. Look at my phone, there's no, there's no range. Like, that's useless, bye bye. I pulled up at this dirt road, just a real, real old rural sort of farming house type thing. But there's, because they did pit bull fighting as well. So you could set the scene up, yeah, pretty cool.

• 7:29Speaker 01

  Like car bodies everywhere about there.

• 7:32Speaker 00

  I know the places, I'm picturing the place. Just a place you don't want to be. And you don't want to be when you turn up in force with marked police vehicles. You don't want to be out there on your own undercover.

• 7:45Speaker 01

  Yep. So I got out and there was something like four dogs, you know, with a metal six foot inch stake and a chain. And you should see what they'd done to the ground, just.

• 7:59Speaker 00

  Just savage pit bulls.

• 8:01Speaker 01

  Yeah, and just, and all they were doing was dying to get off to get me. That was probably one of the scariest things. Tried to get through them up to the house, can hell. That was, I was already on my jitters already. But I'd always have like an overproof rum and cola, have two or three before I go into a house, just settles the nerves.

• 8:22Speaker 00

  Settles the nerves, but do you think it also plays the character that you're meant to play?

• 8:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd probably smell on my breath and yeah.

• 8:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:29Speaker 01

  It's 11 o'clock in the morning, mate.

• 8:30Speaker 00

  They want you to stink of smokes and rotting alcohol. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so it's coming out of the pores of your skin and that'd make them feel more at home in that environment.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  But as I was going up, old mate had taken the bolt out the back.

• 8:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 8:46Speaker 01

  He got paranoid and somehow thought I was a copper. For some reason, he just, he saw the car coming up. He said, that's copper, that's copper. Don't trust you. So he ran out into the bush.

• 8:59Speaker 00

  And that's a paranoia these dudes have, yeah.

• 9:02Speaker 01

  Somehow, I don't know if he had it with him or it was old mates, but he had a slasher, yeah. It was like, yeah, it was like an old slasher that, you know, back in the old days, the old fellows, that's how they would have cut the cane.

• 9:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 9:16Speaker 01

  And anyway, he's just running through the bush, getting out of there. He's just cutting it, going through, going through. And old mates yelling at him, he's not a copper, get back here. Took about 30 minutes to get him back. He finally came back and he goes, you sure? I said, yeah, I was a fucking mate, fuck that. And I said, mate, I've known this bloke for a year, he can vouch for me. And he goes, this fucking, he goes, he'd sell his mother out. He was right. So, yeah, he still lost his shit for a bit and he's like walking around, you know, who knows you? Tell someone, bloke, that tells me that knows you, that can vouch for you apart from this fuckwit. It was a good one, he really gave it to me.

• 9:59Speaker 00

  How did you respond to that?

• 10:01Speaker 01

  Well, that's where, at stages, he had it up against a, yeah, he could tell he's never going to use it, it was just to threaten me. And I think it was one of those old ones that had that much rust. It probably wouldn't have done anything anyway. But anyway, yeah, he's just ripping into me and I'm going, mate, I'll go, mate, I don't need this shit, fuck off, you know, blah, blah, blah. He's still going off, still going off. I could see that he was obviously affected by speed. So I said, I said, let's have a bong.

• 10:30Speaker 01

  So I think one of us started up a bong and, and I've just put it in front of his face. Oh, okay.

• 10:37Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 10:37Speaker 01

  That settled him down. It was amazing.

• 10:39Speaker 00

  And that, that part of that is because I, I know the thought is with the crooks, that a cop's not going to take, take the drugs.

• 10:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 10:48Speaker 00

  And all that. Um, yeah, it's exceptional circumstances in which you, you've got to, that, yeah. Gone are the days of, well, Keith Banks that we've had on here and we've, we've spoken about. He got my interest before I became friends with him, talking about the first line of coke he had was with a loaded shotgun pointed at his head. And, yeah, these, these are the type of things that you've got to do. So.

• 11:13Speaker 01

  You know, I ne- I never got threatened and said, you have to do this.

• 11:16Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 11:17Speaker 01

  But I was in a situation that if I didn't, it wouldn't have looked good.

• 11:20Speaker 00

  No.

• 11:21Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 11:21Speaker 00

  And I, I think people have got to appreciate where you are in, in that's the location, the ge- the geography of it. Like, no, uh, if no phone signal. And you're out there on your own. So you've got to do what you've got to do.

• 11:35Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 11:36Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 11:37Speaker 00

  So how did you, how did that all play out? Did he settle down?

• 11:41Speaker 01

  Yeah. The worst part about it, I wasn't a big smoker, you know, you, you don't. It wasn't something before undercover I sort of was in.

• 11:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 11:50Speaker 01

  And, and this was probably one of my first times of having a real good.

• 11:55Speaker 00

  Smoke.

• 11:56Speaker 01

  Session going around and around, around. I was so fucked. I was, I, I couldn't handle it. I was out.

• 12:02Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 12:02Speaker 01

  And I sort of just went back into the couch and I was just worried. I was hoping that recording device wasn't channeled somewhere. And I kept on saying, I don't even know why, but I was so out of it.

• 12:13Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 12:13Speaker 01

  Just saying, fuck off, can't, I was just, just giving it to him. I said, I don't need your business. Get off. Yeah. And I just kept on saying, no, I'm going. I don't need your shit. And I kept on doing that. And, you know, once they sort of think you're losing you, oh, I, I, I just had to make sure you were a cop. So no, fuck you. No, fuck off.

• 12:32Speaker 00

  Were you doing that consciously or were you so, so stoned? Because, yeah.

• 12:37Speaker 01

  And I just didn't react. I was calm because I was so stoned. Yeah.

• 12:41Speaker 00

  Do you think the fact that you, you didn't give a stuff about yourself made it an easier job for you to do?

• 12:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 12:49Speaker 00

  Like, if your life was all rosy and you're thinking, well, I'm going to lose this if this goes bad, but it, it sounds like you just had reckless abandonment.

• 12:57Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did, yeah, yeah.

• 12:58Speaker 00

  Type of stuff that you're doing.

• 12:59Speaker 01

  So hard that I didn't, I didn't know what to do.

• 13:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:03Speaker 01

  And that just felt the best way to do it.

• 13:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 13:06Speaker 00

  How did that job play out? Because that was trying to get, uh, uh, get some information about the murder, about an unsolved murder. How far did you go with that job?

• 13:15Speaker 01

  No, we didn't, um, they weren't involved. They, they were, um, two that were under the bridge and doing a drug deal.

• 13:22Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 13:22Speaker 01

  And saw it happen, but they weren't going to tell cops.

• 13:25Speaker 00

  They weren't, weren't, weren't involved.

• 13:26Speaker 01

  They weren't the ones that did it, but they were witnesses. So the detectives were very close in terms of their names keep coming up.

• 13:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:34Speaker 01

  But they weren't the ones that did it. So they end up getting a, another fella for it and he, no relation, no whatever.

• 13:43Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:43Speaker 01

  But he was a, he was an addict and just wanted our money and there was no connection there at all. But, yeah, interesting.

• 13:50Speaker 00

  After that one, did you, uh, put Reno to bed?

• 13:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, what we did was, there's another story of when Reno was really bad.

• 13:57Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 13:57Speaker 01

  You know, like, I was drinking a couple of bottles of rum a day and.

• 14:01Speaker 00

  And just so people know, we're not bipolar. We're, we're talking about all those people. We're talking about the character that you're playing undercover. Reno being one and Donny the other one.

• 14:11Speaker 01

  Donny will come back soon.

• 14:12Speaker 00

  Okay, good.

• 14:12Speaker 01

  So Reno.

• 14:14Speaker 00

  Maybe we're, maybe we're being up to something we shouldn't before we sat down. Yeah.

• 14:18Speaker 01

  So Reno would need, you know, a bottle or two of rum a day at night, tamazepam, cannabis, all this, just to go to sleep. Which meant that it just wasn't going well. The brain wasn't working properly. These two fellas had rumored to have, um, broken into a gun shop. So I then went over to their place and, and said, you know, I had a knife that I had and gave it to him. And then we started throwing it against walls and as those dickheads do, you know. And, um, and then I said, oh, have you got a bang bang? Any guns? I said, yeah. That's when they took us out to the bush. And, uh, but as I was driving through the streets, I thought I saw Karen. I was a hundred percent sure it was her. I stopped the car, left it running, door open, middle of the street, and I ran down the street trying to chase her.

• 15:03Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 15:03Speaker 01

  And like these two crooks are going, what the fuck is he doing?

• 15:08Speaker 00

  Well, the craziness that you are in that, like with the drugs and the alcohol and then the, the trauma that you've, um, processed trauma. You were like a crazy, crazy man.

• 15:20Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:20Speaker 00

  Like, uh, uh, jumping out, thinking you've, you've seen, uh, seen Karen. Um, that might have.

• 15:25Speaker 01

  When I got to her, no, I didn't like her at all.

• 15:28Speaker 00

  That, that might, that might have fitted, uh, okay, this bloke's as crazy as we are. That might have made you, uh.

• 15:34Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 15:34Speaker 00

  So when you, you went to get the guns, that was another, uh, and this is like, there's pressures working in a city. But there's also pressures working rural. And when you're driving down, uh, dirt tracks, looking for, uh, to buy a gun off someone, um, it's a pretty worrying, yeah. Your warning signs would be going off, I would imagine.

• 15:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I, I, I didn't get a chance to tell my controller that we were moving from the house to an unloca- location. No, I couldn't tell him. Couldn't get the text out or whatever. Cause it was like, ready to go now. And we all went out together, jumped in the car.

• 16:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:09Speaker 01

  I went, oh, I'll just have to wing it.

• 16:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 16:12Speaker 01

  Uh, so we're driving down south. Now there's all these palm trees and he just says, turn on the left, mate. Okay. And as we're going, it was getting darker and darker and darker. It was like really scary looking place, um, just even on its own. And as he got out there. Cause he had a police scanner with him as well in the front seat and he would just keep on looking at me.

• 16:34Speaker 01

  And I'm going, yeah, he's good. He's good, this fella. Anyway, um, so as we got out there, you know, he said, there you stop the car. And that's when someone jumped out the back, out the back of a, behind a tree trunk, like someone's already waiting out there. So. Okay, this is a bit of a stitch up. Yeah. This is where I went, okay, I'm out of here. Anyway, they, they wouldn't let me go. I go, no, you came out here to get them. And that's where I honestly thought for the first time ever, that was it.

• 17:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:02Speaker 01

  They found out there was a cop and, um, they're coming to bury me out of here.

• 17:06Speaker 00

  Well, that's, that's where they do you.

• 17:08Speaker 01

  That's, I honestly thought that was it. Yeah. Especially when I saw the bloke come from around there. I went, hello mate, how you going? So, yeah, I was just trying to, I was trying to avoid it. Like, go, mate, I've got some piss in the back. Let's have a drink, you know? I don't even want the guns anymore. Fuck them. Yeah. No, no, no, you are. You're getting them. And that's, um, you know, I had a recording device on and I was, I was talking to the recording device, saying who had done this in case they found me later. And there was still a recording.

• 17:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 17:34Speaker 01

  You know, under the dirt, you know, maybe six months later, twelve months later. At least they wouldn't get away with it. Um, so I must have sounded like a madman, like, who am I, who am I talking to? Yeah. But, um, as this fella was walking around hundreds of meters away, like trying to, like, no, it's not, not underneath this, uh, tree. Every time I heard it was like.

• 17:54Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 17:55Speaker 01

  And he goes, I found it. I went, oh, thank fuck. No, hang on. What's he doing over there? Come on, let's go. And I honestly thought, as I got around the, at the corner of the tree, there'd be a, you know, a hole dug for me or something.

• 18:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 18:09Speaker 01

  I sort of closed my eyes, type thing, waiting for it, waiting for it. Boom. It was a duffel bag full of guns.

• 18:14Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:15Speaker 01

  Exactly how he said it was going to be.

• 18:19Speaker 00

  What type? And this is in the middle of the night? This is?

• 18:21Speaker 01

  No, this is probably four or five in the hour though.

• 18:23Speaker 00

  Right.

• 18:23Speaker 01

  Yeah. Yeah. Um, and, uh, and he says, um, which ones do you want? I said, all of them. He goes, no, no, no, you can only take two. All the, all the rest are already, you know, safe for. So I ended up buying two rugers that, uh, are on the, um, in the book and on the cover of the, uh, book as well.

• 18:40Speaker 00

  They're the, they're the two.

• 18:44Speaker 00

  So what, what happened after, after that? You bought the, the guns. Uh, you got back safely, obviously.

• 18:50Speaker 01

  Yep. So in the meantime, what was happening with the informant.

• 18:53Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 18:53Speaker 01

  There was a, a detective from the drug squad kept on coming up and standing over him and, and saying, you work for me now. You don't talk to the detectives in Bu- in Bundaberg and.

• 19:05Speaker 01

  He just didn't do a good thing and it was starting, he was starting to make some noises that, you know, there could be an undercover in town, you don't know, you don't know.

• 19:14Speaker 00

  That's fucked.

• 19:15Speaker 01

  Yeah, it wasn't good. And the other whispers, we're getting back. And like, my informant was getting a calls at midnight from this old mate.

• 19:22Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 19:23Speaker 01

  And his mates in the background, he said, you could tell they're drunk, but they were saying, we'll kill you, you're dead, you're dead. If you don't do what we do, tell us. And he's going, mate, I'm out, I want out of this. And it took me ages to get him back on. That was like, took me a month or two. He's going, no, this is scaring the shit out of me.

• 19:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 19:39Speaker 01

  And like, this detective has just duffed it big time.

• 19:42Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 19:43Speaker 01

  It got that bad where, yeah, they said, you know what, we're going to cut our losses and go, we're out.

• 19:50Speaker 01

  So my boss, my controller said, we're hitting the road at midnight tonight, be ready. Keys out, all that sort of stuff. Yep.

• 19:57Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 19:57Speaker 01

  And it was like, that night, we're out. So I went and paid my last rents and all that sort of bullshit. And um, packed my car, goes over and sees him. I go, we'll drive out together. And he goes, hang on, do you still remember where the guns are? I went, I think so, I think so. He goes, let's try and find the rest of them, take them. Seize them.

• 20:20Speaker 00

  Well, you can't have guns out on the street. That that that needs to be the priority.

• 20:23Speaker 01

  We got them and it was pretty scary at midnight doing it.

• 20:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 20:26Speaker 01

  But we found it, took me ages and um, and returned all the guns.

• 20:31Speaker 00

  Oh, well, that's a.

• 20:32Speaker 01

  That was something.

• 20:32Speaker 00

  Uh, I, I think getting guns off the street, because we know the damage that one gun can do. So that, that makes it rewarding. You, you might not have got the, the breakthrough with the murder investigation, but you, you got to try these, uh, try those things. On operations like that, they put you up in accommodation, like you got accommodation because, yeah, it might, I dare say, get to the point where one of the blokes that you're befriending might say, well, let's catch up or I'll come to your place and just want to suss your place out. So do you have to keep a, a, a place that you could let someone in and it looks like this is the type of place Reno would uh, live in or Donny had lived in?

• 21:07Speaker 01

  Yeah, if there's anything else that I need in my personal stuff.

• 21:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:11Speaker 01

  You leave it at the controller's house.

• 21:12Speaker 00

  Right, okay.

• 21:13Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 21:14Speaker 00

  So you are really embracing the whole lifestyle.

• 21:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did a job in, in the valley.

• 21:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:20Speaker 01

  Um, where they put me up in a unit at Kangaroo Point and it was beautiful.

• 21:23Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 21:24Speaker 01

  I suggested as it, as the job went on, that I needed like a female with me.

• 21:29Speaker 00

  Oh, is this Liz?

• 21:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, Liz.

• 21:31Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay.

• 21:32Speaker 01

  It ended up being a, yeah, it was gold, it worked perfectly.

• 21:35Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 21:36Speaker 01

  But our persona as well was to be boyfriend, girlfriend.

• 21:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:40Speaker 01

  Living in this high rise.

• 21:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 21:42Speaker 01

  Where we invited them all over and, you know, pre-drinks before we went out. We even had like a pretend engagement party.

• 21:49Speaker 00

  Yeah, tell, tell us about that, because that was, uh, this is away from, um, yeah, the rural areas or the smaller towns and the

• 21:57Speaker 01

  Back of the city.

• 21:58Speaker 00

  Ice heads and everything else that you're dealing with there. Um, no wonder you suggested a, let's do a job this way. So where, where did you have your apartment and?

• 22:07Speaker 01

  It's a Kangaroo Point.

• 22:08Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay.

• 22:09Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:09Speaker 00

  On the coast.

• 22:10Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 22:10Speaker 00

  Yeah, very nice. And uh, what, what was your role there? What crime were you trying to target?

• 22:15Speaker 01

  Uh, M D M pills, just in, in the, um, in the, the nightclubs in the valley.

• 22:20Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. And that would have been fairly rampant.

• 22:23Speaker 01

  It was, but you know.

• 22:24Speaker 00

  How, how did, how did uh, Donny or Reno fit in?

• 22:27Speaker 01

  Oh, good, because Donny looked like a bike. He looked like a rural, you know, rough sort of bloke. And it was just a cold start. There was no informants or anything like it. And the first one that I went to was, was a, you know, a very well-known gay place. I didn't attract too many people that night. For some reason, I would hit up so many people about, you need drugs, you need drugs, fuck no, fuck no.

• 22:51Speaker 00

  But yeah, that's not the type of, uh, type of person that would be.

• 22:54Speaker 01

  I looked out, I looked out a place and that's where I went. I did two weekends of doing it. I got nothing. And I went, can we bring Liz in?

• 23:02Speaker 00

  They don't like Donny in this place.

• 23:04Speaker 01

  I think they would have been scared of him.

• 23:05Speaker 00

  So you, you bring, uh, bring Liz in and you're playing, uh, she's playing your, uh, your lady.

• 23:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:11Speaker 00

  And what are you playing? The, the, the tough guy?

• 23:14Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was the heavy, just sitting in the corner.

• 23:15Speaker 00

  And, and she, she's the, the part, party girl.

• 23:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:18Speaker 00

  Yeah, okay. So that, that fitted more into that, uh, that environment.

• 23:22Speaker 01

  Yeah, I was just that gruff bloke in the corner.

• 23:25Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 23:25Speaker 01

  Just keeping an eye on her, making sure she's all right, you know? Um, and then, you know, she'd come back, she goes, I've got a thousand pills. It's like next to the, I did two weekends of doing, getting nothing. Comes back within an hour of, you know, a thousand pills.

• 23:39Speaker 00

  So that, uh, that, you had a lot of success with that. And as, as you said, like, you'd have people back to your apartment. You were forming friendships.

• 23:47Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 23:47Speaker 00

  Yeah. And just living, living the lifestyle. Did you lose yourself in, in the lifestyle? Cause that, that's a fun, fun lifestyle. And if, if you think you're living that lifestyle for a good reason, I, I would imagine, uh, it was a, a good time.

• 24:02Speaker 01

  There was many times where I, you know, I used to say, I can see why these bloody, you know, these kingpins live like this.

• 24:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:10Speaker 01

  It feels good.

• 24:12Speaker 00

  Cause you, you're not sitting in a busted out lounge out the back of Queensland somewhere, smoking a dirty bong in an Archie bottle. Yeah.

• 24:19Speaker 01

  But as you know, as a copper, you know, that's not going to last forever.

• 24:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:23Speaker 01

  There, there's some hazards to that job.

• 24:25Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 24:25Speaker 01

  And I didn't want to do that shit.

• 24:26Speaker 00

  Yeah. So how, how long did the operation run with you and Liz for?

• 24:31Speaker 01

  Only about three months.

• 24:32Speaker 00

  Yeah. When the, the operation was up and you had to declare that these people that, uh, yeah, you'd been hanging around with were, uh, uh, cause once they start selling drugs, you, you've got them.

• 24:44Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 24:45Speaker 00

  How, how did you feel with that? Because I would imagine there's a bit of, we all know there's bad crooks. There's other crooks that for whatever reason have found themselves in a, a lifestyle and people that, yeah, there's some good in bad, uh, good in people that do some bad, bad things. Did you feel any guilt or, or remorse that you had to, um, had to betray them?

• 25:05Speaker 01

  No, I never did. I knew I was doing it. Um.

• 25:07Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 25:07Speaker 01

  I felt, I felt a little bit bad for my, you know, a little bit, but I certainly didn't dwell on it.

• 25:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:13Speaker 01

  I didn't care too much.

• 25:14Speaker 00

  You were a bit driven as well because of what happened to Karen and the, you attribute the ecstasy pill that might have played a part.

• 25:22Speaker 01

  I still think it might have, you know, um, might have done something to her serotonin levels or whatever and just made her do something that she would never have done.

• 25:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:31Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I, I did have that in the back of my mind, like, I want to get rid of this. I don't want to do that anymore. I want them off the streets. But what I did notice was, you know, when you go from speed cooks, shooting up, heroin deals, and then you're doing M D M people.

• 25:47Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 25:48Speaker 01

  There's no criminal history there. There's no nothing. They're just normal people.

• 25:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 25:53Speaker 01

  They've got, they work in a hairdresser or a bank or whatever, and they're just doing that shit on the weekends.

• 25:57Speaker 00

  It's, it's a cautionary tale. It's a cautionary tale for people. I've had, uh, the people that sit in that chair that start off, they're just using party drugs and then they start buying more party drugs. And then they start giving the part, some of the party drugs to their friends. And before they know it, they're dealing drugs and don't realise the ramifications. You can see how people fall into it and that. So when the, when the game was up, what happened with Lorenzo?

• 26:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, um, yeah, as, as they do, they, you know, they ask for a confrontation where as an undercover, you can go in. If that person doesn't believe that that person sold to an undercover, we're coming and go, hey mate, I'm Donny. You bastard.

• 26:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:40Speaker 01

  He didn't do that, which was good. He had, he admitted to it all. Um, and it was probably one of the ones where I went, you know, he didn't deserve that, but.

• 26:47Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 26:47Speaker 01

  He was a good, good bloke, never been in trouble his whole life, but just had a marriage, mate, yeah, marriage breakdown.

• 26:55Speaker 00

  Bit of a.

• 26:56Speaker 01

  Stupid idea.

• 26:57Speaker 00

  Life crisis.

• 26:57Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 26:58Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 26:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. So, um, anyway, he's, he's sort of, you know, going to court, he's, he's in charge of trafficking and, um, I get a phone call from him. I could see it come up. I went, oh, he's going to give me a spray, because I got a few of them, you know, after it sort of finished.

• 27:13Speaker 00

  So you, you still keep your, keep your phone for a bit after it?

• 27:16Speaker 01

  Just for a bit, yeah. Anyway, he's, he's rung me and I went, ah, I'll get out of the way.

• 27:22Speaker 01

  I said, hey Lorenzo, how you going?

• 27:23Speaker 00

  And he knows you're, you're the.

• 27:25Speaker 01

  He definitely knows now. And that's why I'm going, I'll let him have a spray with me.

• 27:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:30Speaker 01

  Get out of your system, tell me, call me all the names under the sun, I don't care, you know?

• 27:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 27:34Speaker 01

  That'll make you feel good. But he didn't do that. Um, you know, he was crying straight up. And I said, hey Lorenzo, what are you doing? He goes, just tell my wife and kids, but I love them. I didn't mean for any of this, but I can't do this. I'm not going to jail. I could hear what he was saying. I said, what are you doing? He goes, I said, where are you? You know, he's on the Brisbane River.

• 27:54Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 27:54Speaker 01

  Just over sort of Brunswick Street type sort of area. And I said, mate, don't do anything. I'm coming straight over. I was at West End, which is only 10 minutes across the city. And I found him, yeah, he was standing over looking at it. Um, I said, I, you know, when I think back now, I knew that he wasn't going to do it. If he waited that long for me.

• 28:15Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:15Speaker 01

  He wasn't going to do it. But my recklessness as well was stupid. That I grabbed his hand and said, mate, thanks for waiting for me. Let's do it. Come on, one, two, three. And he's gone, I thought you were talking me out of it. What the, what the? And it was a bit of reverse psychology and, you know.

• 28:30Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 28:30Speaker 01

  Um, it worked and, uh, and then he's, he sort of yanked me back. He, like, anywhere we went to the, near the end of the edge. No, don't go near there. I can't, I thought we were doing it. Anyway, he yanked me back and, you know, we laid on the ground. You know, he was crying, I was crying. And then we sat on a park bench. I told him all about Karen. I obviously didn't tell him while I was undercover. Um, told him about, you know, everything that had happened to me and everything. And I said, you know, you don't want to do that to your family. You really don't.

• 29:01Speaker 00

  Hmm. What a heavy conversation.

• 29:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, it was, it was a game changer for me.

• 29:06Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 29:07Speaker 01

  Where I went home that night and I don't think I'd cried in, in a year or so. I balled it, balled for 12 hours straight. It was that, that one that just made me realise, what the fuck am I doing? I don't want to do that to my family either. I don't want the same as what he is doing to himself. I'm in his position. My family and friends. Are gonna miss me.

• 29:30Speaker 00

  He, he was about to destroy himself.

• 29:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:33Speaker 00

  And you, you saw that, that's what you're trying to do to yourself.

• 29:36Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 29:36Speaker 00

  And it was a wake up call.

• 29:38Speaker 01

  It was, big time.

• 29:38Speaker 00

  That would have been a heavy, heavy moment for you.

• 29:40Speaker 01

  It was really good. Yeah, it was, yeah. It was all the emotions where I'd been building up and I just let it all out that night.

• 29:47Speaker 00

  That, that's what you needed to happen.

• 29:49Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. I needed that. I knew, I was on that, I was on like a steam train that just couldn't be stopped.

• 29:55Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 29:55Speaker 01

  And there was no one at the bloody wheel. At this time, he's jumped on the wheel, sort of stopped it for a bit and said, how to think of this?

• 30:02Speaker 00

  It, it's strange the connections you can have in life with people that you have no reason to have, have that connection, but leave an indelible impression. There, there's a bloke that you've caught as an undercover cop and, yeah, has such a defining moment in your life.

• 30:19Speaker 01

  He did go to jail.

• 30:20Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 30:22Speaker 01

  I don't know what he's doing now, but anyway.

• 30:24Speaker 00

  Yeah, I would imagine that you, that you've got to keep your focus on, on what, what you're doing. Like I was saying, he, he's gone to jail. I had Joe Stoney on, who was a real Donnie Brasco of the movie that Johnny Depp played in that everyone knows. He went undercover in the mafia for fi- five years and I asked him about how he kept his, um, because he became friends with all, all the people that he, he brought down. And he said, he always remembered what he was there for. And, yeah, it came, it came, it came as a cost. But, yeah, you've got to hold that moral ground, haven't you?

• 31:03Speaker 01

  Yeah, I did, yeah. And I was still, I was still pretty much focused on, you know, being a cop, but acting very differently.

• 31:11Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 31:12Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I never really, I never really strayed from that because I, I did notice that, you know, I was getting all these awards and everything like that. But even though I didn't care about that, I was going, I finally could do something. It's not bad.

• 31:24Speaker 00

  Right, so, okay, so that, that was, that was striking your, your mindset that you are doing something good.

• 31:31Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 31:31Speaker 00

  That's, uh, the, uh, bikie situation, when you're in the bikie clubhouse and you're being accused of, uh, being a cop and you're wearing a wire. Not a good position to be in.

• 31:42Speaker 01

  No.

• 31:42Speaker 00

  Tell, tell, tell us what happened there.

• 31:45Speaker 01

  Well, it's, it's funny.

• 31:46Speaker 00

  And that was Donny or Reno?

• 31:47Speaker 01

  That was Donny, yeah, Donny.

• 31:48Speaker 00

  Good old Donny is back.

• 31:49Speaker 01

  Getting back to, um, you know, Donnie Brasco, I mean, I reckon I watched it twenty times before I went in undercover. I tried to watch all the undercover movies as I possibly could and just get information, get scenarios, get, how did that person deal with it?

• 32:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 32:05Speaker 01

  And I just kept them in the back of my mind going, you never know, one day I might be able to use them.

• 32:10Speaker 00

  He was, uh, I was just so excited about speaking to him, you know, he's a legend in, in law enforcement for what, what he did. And just a really chilled, calm type person, as you would expect. And when he finally declared what was going on, family members of the mafia dudes were reaching out to him and, yeah. He just wanted to let you know that he's glad you took him down and, and stuff like that, some really heavy stuff. And Michael Francisi, who's a mafia dude, had him on the podcast and I did a tour around the country with him. And he was in the New York mafia and had crossed paths with, with Donny. And I was interested just chatting with him, you know, how, what's your thoughts on Donny?

• 32:54Speaker 00

  And he looks back and, yeah, they're older, older now and wiser and go, well, he was just doing his job. He did his job very well. We were trying to do our, do our job, but it's interesting how it comes about.

• 33:04Speaker 01

  The fellow from, you know, the Mackay-Sarina area.

• 33:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:07Speaker 01

  The big job I did there, did the same thing. Um, I rang him just before he was going to jail and said, do you want to jump on board?

• 33:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:14Speaker 01

  Do you want to help out? He goes, no, no, I'll do it, I'll do it myself. But, um, he goes, oh, you did your job. No hard feelings, mate. You did a good job too. You got me.

• 33:24Speaker 00

  Yeah. Well, it's good if they're, they're thinking, thinking that way.

• 33:27Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 33:28Speaker 00

  All right. So in, in with the, in with the bikies.

• 33:31Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah. So, um, and as I said about the Donnie Brasco book, um, book and the movie is, I'd only just watched it that many times beforehand. And it was amazing that, um, I used one of his sayings to, to get me out of it.

• 33:44Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:45Speaker 01

  And that's a, when I look at all the things that I do, it's all these movies and books that I've, you know, well.

• 33:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 33:50Speaker 01

  How did you get that information? I sort of kept that in the back of my mind for any time you might need something. So anyways, um, I was already on another job.

• 34:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:02Speaker 01

  But my controller says, they got another one for you. It's only one night. So, God, okay. What is it? It was a clubhouse down the south side. They have one of those, you know, invite to all of the local businesses come in. You know, it's not a closed thing or anything like that. Uh, there were strippers, there was, you know, music, there was parties, bikes, cars. Out of flyer, so I just knocked on the door. Really, I, I didn't know if it was going to be real or not, whether they'd just let me in. I thought the controllers might be talking shit. But they said, we just want to see what's going on in there. Tell us if there's anything illegal, anything like overt, right in front of everything.

• 34:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 34:40Speaker 01

  Is there prostitution? All these sort of things. So I just had to go in there and just have a, have a look. And, um, when I went in there, yeah, all I saw was blokes about six foot eight, they were massive.

• 34:53Speaker 01

  And, but they were great fellows, great fellows, you know. At one stage I was, you know, up the bar with them and trying to get my arms up there around them. And, you know, we're just passing the DB down the, the bar. Like, it wasn't anything, that was the most I saw all night. And, um, and then I was over playing Pearl later, you know, and this is over from six P M. through to twelve, one o'clock.

• 35:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:14Speaker 01

  So, um, I'm drinking a fair few stubbies at this time. I had six scurnes before I went there just to loosen the, uh, loosen the throat. So, so I could talk a little bit of shit. So anyway, um, yeah, I'm just hanging with different people. You've just got to, as, as an undercover, you, you've just got to go and talk to people.

• 35:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 35:32Speaker 01

  You know, don't be in that person sitting in the corner. Pearl table's always a good place for that. So I'm playing Pearl. I would see this fellow over the corner, I went, oh, look, I do know him, I do know him. And, um, he sort of going, hey, Todd. And I go, I'm not listening, not, I could, I could sort of half hear it. I knew he was trying to get my attention. Anyway, I stopped playing Pearl, he sort of come up to me and he goes, hey mate, how you going? Good to see you. The fuck are you, mate? Oh, you're Todd, aren't you? And like, it was one of those things where I went, fucking hell, his music's loud, but.

• 36:09Speaker 00

  People.

• 36:09Speaker 01

  It sounds like he's, you could, I don't want him to say anything. And I go, no, mate, no. He goes, yeah, we played footy together down the goal case. I said, no, I'm from Sydney, mate. I have no idea what you're talking about. Yeah, yeah, you, you're Todd and you're playing the centres and I was playing on the wing and reserve grade. I said, oh, that's probably why that person would have known, you know?

• 36:31Speaker 01

  And then, uh, and then he goes, but weren't you a cop then? And that's when it, it was almost like the music just stopped. It hadn't.

• 36:39Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 36:40Speaker 01

  But that's what it did to me. It just went, doon, doon, doon, doon. Holy shit, what am I gonna do? So I just hit him, fucking hit him with a beauty and he laid him out. And then that's when the music stopped. I said, what the fuck's going on over here? And I was going, no, no, mate, no, I'm, I'm out of here. See you later. So I've sort of raced over to the toilet because I was basking for a piss too. Knowing that my controller was about a kilometer down the road.

• 37:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:05Speaker 01

  So I've gone in, I do a piss. That's when these bikies come in and I noticed it was the same fellows that I was having a, a smoke with earlier.

• 37:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:15Speaker 01

  And we'd had a lot of jokes and laughs then.

• 37:18Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 37:18Speaker 01

  Um, I shit myself a bit, but I thought, no, we've had a bit of rapport.

• 37:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 37:24Speaker 01

  Up until now, but who knows what could happen. Anyway, they go, hey, what'd you hit my brother for? And I went, who, him? Oh, see, your brother. I'm sorry about that, mate. Well, he grabbed me on the cock, mate. He goes, he would not have. I went, yeah, he did. That's why I hit him.

• 37:42Speaker 01

  And then he sort of, you could tell I sort of, I went, ah, gotcha, fucking didn't even know him. We, we thought he was a faggot too. Thanks for doing that for us. I went, oh, thank fuck.

• 37:53Speaker 00

  That was lucky.

• 37:54Speaker 01

  And then it was like, there was one fellow with a shoddy, but I don't reckon it was loaded, but it was just, he must have been taking it somewhere and was carrying it. And he goes, but that fellow said you're a cop. I said, no, he said, I grabbed him on the cock.

• 38:10Speaker 01

  And I was just, I was just spitballing, just trying to bamboozle all these, these fellows. And at one stage I said, you know, what if I am a cop? Yeah, maybe I am. What are you gonna do about it? Yeah, actually, I'm Detective Donny. You're all under arrest. Turn around and put your hands more on your back.

• 38:25Speaker 00

  That's what you said then.

• 38:26Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 38:26Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:27Speaker 01

  And they go, fuck off, mate, fuck off. I said, have you got your own handcuffs? Cause I don't have enough. And I was just making joke of it. Some will laugh and some will laugh, whatever.

• 38:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 38:35Speaker 01

  And they went, ah, fuck yeah, you're not even worth the bullets, mate. Fuck, just something like that. I remember hearing that as I was, as they were leaving. And that was a big practical joke for them. They were pissing themselves, back slapping, fucking, no, we got that little fucker, you know, and I'd went straight to the door and I ran my fucking ass off.

• 38:52Speaker 00

  Yeah. Oh, you're lucky, lucky, lucky to get out of there by the sounds of it. Um, you had a job down in Sydney as well?

• 39:00Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 39:00Speaker 00

  And you got a bit of a harbour cruise.

• 39:03Speaker 01

  It was, and that was one of the times where I thought I could live like this.

• 39:06Speaker 00

  Yeah, that, that was now you're getting closer to Miami Vice type that you were looking for.

• 39:11Speaker 01

  Yeah, and it was right at the end of my, my, my two years of undercover work, it was like two or three months left to go. And they said, oh, do you wanna start your integration early or do you wanna do this one last job?

• 39:24Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 39:25Speaker 01

  Oh, I know, I always wanna do another job. They said, oh, there's something, you gotta think about this one. It's on cops in New South Wales.

• 39:35Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 39:35Speaker 01

  I went, nah, nah, mate, not doing that. They said, do you wanna read it first? I went, oh, tell me what it is. He goes, oh, yeah, they got a pill press involved in the Surrey Hills nightclubs and they're punching pills out and getting the bounces, so I dispirited him. I went, yeah, they're not cops. Yeah, I'll do that. But yeah, it was a bit of an eye opener coming down here. They did things very differently to Queensland. But yeah, had many good drinks in a lot of the pubs in Darlinghurst and I think we're doing a thousand, thousand pill buys at twenty three bucks or something. Did a few of them, but the coppers were always standoffish. There was always this one other fella who was doing all the buys for them.

• 40:16Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 40:17Speaker 01

  And, um, you know, I got invited over to a, you know, a boat one night. It was a yacht. It was magnificent. Yeah, there was TV people there, there was models, there was, it was great. And then I finally got to meet the two coppers who were at Targets.

• 40:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:32Speaker 01

  And, um, yeah, they were sus on me straight away.

• 40:35Speaker 00

  What do you think made them, made them sus?

• 40:37Speaker 01

  I don't know, don't know.

• 40:38Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:38Speaker 01

  Just being coppers. I think they're just one step ahead, I think.

• 40:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 40:42Speaker 01

  And old mate gave me, threw me a bag of pills or something and I had to go to the toilet. And they must have followed me and sort of as I was closing the thing, they smashed the door and all three of us were in the, in the, in the, in the toilet. And they're just ripping in me. Who the fuck are you? Go on. Got the pills. I said, mate, they're old mates, mate. They're not mine. I said,

• 41:02Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:03Speaker 01

  Oh, you're a cop, aren't you? Nah, fuck no, no. Well, have a couple.

• 41:07Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:08Speaker 01

  No, why not? You're a cop, aren't you? I went, no, give me them then, fuck yeah.

• 41:14Speaker 00

  Yeah, and took pills?

• 41:15Speaker 01

  I did. Cause there was no way of getting out of that cubicle.

• 41:19Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 41:20Speaker 01

  And, um, yeah, I found out later what those things do to you.

• 41:27Speaker 00

  Do they kick in straight away?

• 41:28Speaker 01

  No, no, it was like thirty, forty minutes later and I didn't know what the hell it hit me.

• 41:33Speaker 00

  Then where did you go?

• 41:34Speaker 01

  I was still on the boat.

• 41:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:35Speaker 01

  And I went from, um, you know, someone who was just, you know, being very sociable and had my wits about myself to a, a fellow that couldn't walk properly. He was falling over, jumping in the pearls, just doing crazy shit.

• 41:49Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 41:49Speaker 01

  Giving everyone sprays. I was that idiot.

• 41:52Speaker 00

  Yeah, wild times.

• 41:54Speaker 01

  Yeah, so it sort of has, it's sort of gotta be better. I kept on telling them that I hung out at the strip joint and I did. I used to go to a strip joint most nights, but I'd, my sort of mantra was just to be seen. I'm not going there to look at the girls. I'd have my back to them and that's what I do in my business and, you know, it's just the city underbelly. And, um, anyway, I said, I'll take you there. We'll go to the strip joint. Yeah, okay. Yep. So we've all gone there, plus the coppers. And they're just, they just can't wait to see me fucking, like really lose my shit.

• 42:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:26Speaker 01

  But it didn't get any worse. I just, I just carried on like a pork chop all night. Next thing you know, I'm walking out at six or seven in the morning, the sun, went back to my unit, played music till about midday. It's like, what a life this is.

• 42:39Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 42:40Speaker 01

  And then I went to sleep. I wake up twenty four hours later. Oh, feeling like so shit. Feeling really bad. And that's where I went, I can sort of half see how, what Karen was feeling there. Like, you feel really bad. Like it's a real, it's a real low.

• 42:55Speaker 00

  Yeah, and you, you don't know, I suppose, what part it played in Karen's taking her own life, but everyone talks about the lows that you get after the highs of, of drugs and then you just wonder the impact it, it has on, has on people. So you, you, you got down to, uh, got down to Sydney, did anything come of those cops? Were they caught up in any of the?

• 43:16Speaker 01

  Well, they were, but, um, I think they eventually got them later.

• 43:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:19Speaker 01

  But, you know, when I wake up and I, you know, I was feeling, you know, the worst person in the world, you know, you, you regret all these things. I wanted to do that. Oh, fuck off. I might have fucked this.

• 43:30Speaker 01

  Yeah, you get a phone call from the Sydney controller.

• 43:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:33Speaker 01

  They're obviously listening to particular phone calls and they said, yeah, we got that cop, didn't we? That fucking undercover cop. Yeah.

• 43:40Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 43:40Speaker 01

  He goes, mate, gigs off.

• 43:42Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 43:43Speaker 01

  Pack your bags, going home.

• 43:44Speaker 00

  The, the, the alert to it.

• 43:46Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 43:46Speaker 00

  When, uh, when you finally, uh, got out of undercover work, how hard was that to go back to, uh, real policing?

• 43:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I, I, I found that really hard. Yeah, there was not only times when, you know, I used to say, like, I would have it in my mind to give the cops a hard time as I drove, drove past them or something. Especially when I was with the crooks, like they gave, and they go, yeah, yeah, fucking, yeah, look at those fucking.

• 44:10Speaker 00

  Stick your fingers up.

• 44:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, that sort of shit, yeah. Well, I did it one night when I wasn't working. I was just with a group of mates and my, and my missus come and picked me up.

• 44:19Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:20Speaker 01

  And as we're driving, it was like someone doing a road traffic job or something.

• 44:24Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 44:25Speaker 01

  Yeah, I'd hang out the window and gave him the biggest spray in the world. Like, fuck yeah.

• 44:31Speaker 01

  I don't know why.

• 44:32Speaker 00

  You're losing yourself, aren't you?

• 44:33Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:35Speaker 01

  I don't know why I was doing it. Anyway, he chased me and stopped the car. We got, we almost got in the biggest fight ever because I wasn't backing down and it was just stupid.

• 44:45Speaker 00

  Did you, uh, declare that you're a cop?

• 44:47Speaker 01

  No.

• 44:47Speaker 00

  Just arguing.

• 44:48Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 44:48Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 44:49Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'd finally backed down when he goes, oh, you know, notice to pee and you can, you can go to the mag, uh, watch house and speak to the magistrate tomorrow. I went, I go, yeah, I'm not doing that. I'm back down. I said, nah, sorry, mate. Shouldn't have done that. Shouldn't have done that. Yeah, so that was my attitude then. So, and that was only a couple of weeks before I finished and it was still not good. And they said, okay, well, you're starting now. Crime stop is answering phones. And I go, what? I said, two weeks ago.

• 45:20Speaker 00

  Is that to help you for a transitional period before they unleash you out in the?

• 45:24Speaker 01

  Yeah, it's in a controlled environment and ideally is just to get you back into, you know, a structured work environment. Eight o'clock in the morning till four o'clock. I said, I have not woken up at eight o'clock in two years, my friend. This is not gonna be easy.

• 45:40Speaker 00

  Oh, sorry, princess.

• 45:41Speaker 01

  Yeah, but all my work was done at night and in the afternoons, you know, no one does drug deals at eight thirty in the morning. I said, oh, I'll, I'll do my best. I really, I'll try my best to get there at a reasonable hour, you know. I think nine thirty or ten o'clock was my first one and I was quite proud of myself. And, uh, anyway, he goes, you obviously know how crime stops work. People are in there, they dob on people. And then we pass it on to the detectives. Okay. Couple of phone calls in, blah, blah, blah. Uh, and like, I had to borrow someone's uniform as well. I couldn't even tuck in. It wasn't ironed.

• 46:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 46:15Speaker 01

  It was, it was pretty awful.

• 46:17Speaker 00

  You're looking messy. Yeah.

• 46:20Speaker 01

  And, um, and anyway, a fella rings up and he goes, oh, I just wanna let you know the next door neighbor's, uh, smoking drugs, man. I went, and the fuck are you calling here for, you fucking dog?

• 46:33Speaker 00

  That would have gone over well.

• 46:35Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I'm going, mate, don't you know, snitches, you know, if you snitch, mate, this'll get you killed. Don't you know the rules about this? And I was just ripping into him. Senior sergeant comes over, grabs the phone, gives it to another eighty. Boy, this time I'm still screaming my heart, like that fucking idiot, what the fuck is he doing? Comfortable walk for me down the street, Todd. Let's get some breath here. Yeah, get settled down. And I'm still going off a hundred metres down the road. He doesn't know the rules this fuck with.

• 47:03Speaker 01

  Anyway, he goes, I might get you to do this and filing for more, for a while. Yeah. So that was, I say that because that was my mindset and it took me a couple of months to get me out around, bend back normal again.

• 47:13Speaker 00

  I, I would imagine because it's a completely different lifestyle. Uh, it's a loose lifestyle you get to live in, in the U C's. And then you come back into the regiment of, uh, working as a policeman on the streets and.

• 47:25Speaker 01

  That's what I'm saying. I've gone from living in a high rise over Hyde Park.

• 47:29Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:30Speaker 01

  I was driving a BMW, hanging out at strip joints all night and then buying pills and going on super yacht parties. And now I'm answering phones.

• 47:38Speaker 00

  Did you get access to, um, psychologists or professional help? Did, uh, that come into play or did we just kick you out of, or not kick you out of U C's, just you leave U C's? And was it by choice you left the U C's?

• 47:51Speaker 01

  Yeah, you're only allowed to do two years at the time.

• 47:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 47:53Speaker 01

  Yeah, I didn't wanna lose, didn't wanna leave at all.

• 47:55Speaker 00

  But it's probably, probably a good thing because you could perhaps lose yourself in there.

• 47:59Speaker 01

  Yeah, I reckon, I reckon one or two more years would have been enough.

• 48:03Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah. The, the shame, the shame of it is that the longer you stay in, the better you become at your trade.

• 48:08Speaker 01

  That's what I was.

• 48:08Speaker 00

  It's, it's a trade, but.

• 48:10Speaker 01

  It took me twelve months to, to be okay.

• 48:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 48:13Speaker 01

  And then eighteen months to be, I felt, yeah, I'm really confident now. And then two years was a lot like, I'm the king. I can do whatever I want. Do anything now.

• 48:22Speaker 00

  Did you, you get any, um, debriefs or how, how did they debrief you?

• 48:26Speaker 01

  It was just the tick and flicks, you know, um.

• 48:29Speaker 00

  How do you feel?

• 48:30Speaker 01

  Do your psychometrics test. Like I, I did the psychometrics test that many times. I knew what the answers were. And you always knew, you know, coming out of undercover, do I like a well-written poem? Or a well-made handgun? What do you reckon I'm gonna take?

• 48:51Speaker 01

  Because all the ones where it needed to me to be of sound and mind.

• 48:57Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 48:57Speaker 01

  I passed and I still remember this day. I said, this is my last one.

• 49:01Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 49:02Speaker 01

  I'm gonna do a real one, exactly how I feel right now.

• 49:05Speaker 00

  Right, okay. And how did that score?

• 49:07Speaker 01

  Got a phone call straight away. You need to come and see us straight away. That's when, how easy is that? How easy?

• 49:14Speaker 00

  I got, I got a call after a welfare check, a psychometric testing that I think one of the questions, do you think people are trying to kill you? And I said, yes. And then I get dragged in and go, we're a little bit worried. And you know how they talk and it's just very calm. We're a little bit worried about one of the answers that you've given that you believe people are trying to kill you. Why do you think that? Well, that's because they are. And I explained which, which ones were. And they go, oh, well, that puts it in context. Yeah.

• 49:43Speaker 01

  It wasn't make believe people.

• 49:44Speaker 00

  Look, we, we laugh at it, but we know, and we laugh at it. It's a bit of a bravado, but we know what you're being through. It's not normal to go through what you've been through, not just talking about the personal impact that you had in your, in your personal life, the personal problems. But then going into that environment and then coming out and expecting you to be normal. It's like we, we send people to war and come back now, I want you to integrate back into society. Um, do you think more could be done?

• 50:12Speaker 01

  Heaps, heaps more.

• 50:14Speaker 00

  What, what, what sort of things? How do you think Donny and Reno could have been tamed and bring Todd back?

• 50:23Speaker 01

  Probably genuine care instead of just tick and flicks. You're working a lot closer with us as to how do we see our reintegration go and what we would need.

• 50:33Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 50:34Speaker 01

  To go to all that. It might have been done by now, but um, you know, in two thousand and three, it wasn't a great deal.

• 50:40Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I think all the law enforcement agencies are getting better at understanding that there's a problem that needs to be addressed. But you say tick and flick. I say tick and flick. That's the thing that annoys cops more than anything. When, and this is just a cynical view of, you know, of ex cops, but I know it's, it's what we carry. That you felt any welfare checks was just a tick and flick. And you say, I say it's because so the bosses can sign off on. No, we managed Todd's welfare. Um, we made a psychologist available to him and he had an opportunity. Yeah.

• 51:17Speaker 01

  Yeah, I mean, the organisation as a whole, doing a lot of good things.

• 51:21Speaker 00

  Yeah, yeah.

• 51:22Speaker 01

  A lot of other stuff could be improved. Uh, but in, in relation to undercover work for me back then was, you know, there wasn't a great deal. I still can't believe that they let me in for starters, like.

• 51:35Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, I, I got, I was, I was reading your book and I could see a few warning signs, but.

• 51:43Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 51:44Speaker 00

  You know, you can't, undercover work is a specific skill set that you've got. And your, your attitude to life was a skill set that served you very well.

• 51:55Speaker 01

  I would have been a good asset for.

• 51:56Speaker 00

  In, in that environment.

• 51:59Speaker 01

  Yeah. And I think it took me a while to work out because I got told numerous times by controllers and other detectors. You know, you're just an investigative tool in my belt.

• 52:09Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, we'll use that over there. If that doesn't work, we'll use a device. We'll do that. That's how much we, you know, you, you mean to us.

• 52:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 52:19Speaker 01

  Because that's why we've got a couple, heaps of views. We, we lose one, we'll put another one in. It was like, oh, that didn't, didn't sit well.

• 52:26Speaker 00

  That, that, that's not good.

• 52:27Speaker 01

  No. And undercover officers have always had a, a quite sketchy past, especially in Queensland.

• 52:35Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 52:35Speaker 01

  Um, and it's cost the service a lot of money. So, you know, being tarnished with an ex, as an ex undercover, didn't do well for you. For your bloody promotional stuff either.

• 52:46Speaker 00

  Yeah, well, they had a reputation, but say, like detectives had a reputation, the whole criminal investigation before royal commissions came through and, and all that. And there was, yeah, corruption exposed. So I think my take on it, there was a lot of corruption outside of the police too. It was a different era.

• 53:03Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 53:03Speaker 00

  And, uh, yeah, there were people in high places that were involved in it as much. But yeah, I, I can see the reputation and I, I know everyone, when a UC came back into the normal policing. Everyone was a little bit wary of a, a UC, like, yeah, we saw them come back into detectives and, you know, different places. But if someone had marked on their, their career that they'd been a UC, you're sort of looking, okay, what, what's this bloke or what's this girl about?

• 53:33Speaker 01

  If I could tell people who are a little bit sus on me, I'd sort of just get my mobile phone and I'd go, do you mind if I just keep it there for a bit? Right in front of them?

• 53:41Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 53:42Speaker 01

  What? What?

• 53:44Speaker 00

  Yeah. But that, that's, uh, it's just part and parcel of it, isn't it?

• 53:48Speaker 01

  They're just breaking down the barriers.

• 53:49Speaker 00

  Because and that's, that's how you guys get attacked at, uh, in court too. Because if I'm the defence barrister, the first question I'm asking you, so you're an undercover police officer?

• 54:00Speaker 01

  Yep.

• 54:01Speaker 00

  And your whole thing that you do, your role is to lie and give a, a false impression. And just attack your credibility.

• 54:11Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 54:12Speaker 00

  You would have had that in the witness box.

• 54:13Speaker 01

  Oh, heaps of times, yeah. I, I talk about it once in the, in the book because I didn't want to go over and over and over. But yeah, definitely. That was always a, a good way of going. Well, how do you know when you're not lying?

• 54:23Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:23Speaker 01

  Which one's not a lie? Because your whole world is a lie.

• 54:26Speaker 00

  Then the barrister turns to the jury and go, this officer here was paid to lie. And you're now expected to believe what they're saying. Yeah. So that, that's where the integrity of undercover police work has to. You have the controller, the documenting, because we've, we've talked about, we'll call it the exciting, the exciting stuff. But there's a lot of paperwork that goes with it. I would imagine that you've got to, um, keep a log of all your meetings and details of all your meetings. It's not just, um, party time and hanging out with ice heads.

• 54:56Speaker 01

  Hours and hours and hours and hours of typing afterwards.

• 54:58Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 54:59Speaker 01

  I got to the stage where I didn't talk much anymore during a bye, knowing that I had to transcribe it later.

• 55:08Speaker 00

  Okay, I can, I can understand it.

• 55:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, because I might have done one last week and I just, it took me four hours to type some stupid conversation that I had that meant nothing.

• 55:18Speaker 00

  How have you gone since you're out dealing with your alcohol and, uh, and drugs and, and all that? Is that, you got that under, under control?

• 55:26Speaker 01

  Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I mean, I, I noticed, I noticed the type of, you know, prior to Karen's death, you know, drinking was a social thing for me.

• 55:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 55:36Speaker 01

  Afterwards, it became just a source of wrecking me.

• 55:40Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 55:41Speaker 01

  Where, so I didn't have to, have to feel anything. Um, I don't feel I do that anymore. I, I go back to social drinking or whatever. And I do notice that when I start carrying on like that, where drinking is not enjoyable, it's an anger thing, especially my wife now.

• 55:58Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 55:59Speaker 01

  So that's why the name's Donny and ever since undercover, whenever PTSD sort of, sort of nips at my, my ankles. And my wife can see it. She'll go, hey, you all right? I can see a bit of Donny coming back in.

• 56:17Speaker 01

  So it became the analogy of.

• 56:18Speaker 00

  I, I can imagine that would be a good way of raining you in each time. What are we, Donny now? Yeah. Um, and that's.

• 56:24Speaker 01

  There's enough for me to go, okay, something's going on. And then I'll just really check myself, work out what was going on.

• 56:30Speaker 00

  Your, uh, your, your partner, now wife and, uh, mother of your, uh, your, your child, Peter, she knew you during this period of time. She must be a very understanding woman.

• 56:40Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know.

• 56:41Speaker 00

  Or she might see something in you that others don't.

• 56:43Speaker 01

  Yeah, I know. And, and I, I keep asking and.

• 56:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 56:46Speaker 01

  I still don't know what it is, but, um, yeah, she's been bloody awesome.

• 56:50Speaker 00

  I, I get the sense that, uh, yeah, what you put your family through and, and Peter at different times, having them stand by you would, would have made the difference.

• 57:00Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, definitely. Yeah, like, Peter can almost, because I told her a lot.

• 57:08Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:09Speaker 01

  Um, she can basically say, I remember you telling me that. I remember you telling me that.

• 57:13Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:13Speaker 01

  And I'd even go back to my diaries and double check. Yeah, yeah.

• 57:16Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:17Speaker 01

  But she was through the whole time, you know, there was times where I was sort of, I'd ring her just before, uh, thirty minutes before I'd go and do a bye up north. I'd, I'd ring her thirty minutes afterwards.

• 57:28Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:28Speaker 01

  So if you don't hear from me, something's bad's happened.

• 57:32Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:33Speaker 01

  And I hated to do that, but that's what she wanted to hear, so.

• 57:36Speaker 00

  Yeah, I can understand. Well, that, that's another cost that comes for the work that you do as an undercover, your, your family and your partner and, uh, every, everyone else that, uh, when you disappear.

• 57:47Speaker 01

  Sort of still, you know, still a boyfriend, girlfriend. I had a weekend off.

• 57:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 57:51Speaker 01

  And I said, oh, let's, let's get the sunshine occasion and just have a bit of downtime.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 57:55Speaker 01

  But you know, one of those phone calls that comes through that you've been waiting for months and months.

• 58:00Speaker 00

  You've got to take it.

• 58:01Speaker 01

  It's the big one.

• 58:02Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 58:02Speaker 01

  I'm flying some drugs down north, from up north down to Kabul to with you, for you, in a, in my own plane. So, okay, nice. Um, I'll meet you at this pub. It's like.

• 58:15Speaker 01

  I'm on the road, driving up the coast with my girlfriend.

• 58:18Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:19Speaker 01

  And he's going, but I've got this big, big bit for you here.

• 58:23Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 58:24Speaker 01

  And if I said no, never hear from me again.

• 58:28Speaker 01

  I said, oh, okay, Pete, you just stay in the car. And I'm going in the pub, I've got to do what I've got to do, coming out. And like, she was just like, oh, I can't believe I'm doing this. She had never done anything like that in her life. She was shitting herself.

• 58:46Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:46Speaker 01

  And to me, it was just so normal, but.

• 58:48Speaker 00

  Well, you get desensitized to it, don't you?

• 58:50Speaker 01

  I said, I'm just going in to get a couple of pounds, you know?

• 58:52Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 58:54Speaker 00

  Um, the career that you've had after, you, you found some peace in the policing because you stayed in for a long time after the undercover work. You've been, you've been retired, what, three years, three years?

• 59:05Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 59:05Speaker 00

  So you, you got in detective work, you, you enjoyed it and satisfaction from that?

• 59:10Speaker 01

  Yeah, yeah, I, um, you know, as soon as I finished my six month three integration.

• 59:15Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 59:15Speaker 01

  I went straight into crime operations in, in headquarters and started my, um, detective training there. And I, I went to flying squad and then property crime.

• 59:25Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 59:26Speaker 01

  And then that's when, you know, in the two thousand and four or five was where the baby was coming along.

• 59:32Speaker 00

  Yep.

• 59:33Speaker 01

  And it was like, okay, I've got to stop travelling.

• 59:35Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:35Speaker 01

  Because those other ones, I was still away for 10 days back before.

• 59:39Speaker 00

  Takes an impact, doesn't it?

• 59:40Speaker 01

  Yeah. So I thought to myself, I've been living out of a suitcase for four years now.

• 59:44Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 59:45Speaker 01

  I've got to, got to slow down. So I took a job at, um, Fortitude Valley C I B.

• 59:51Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 59:52Speaker 01

  Which meant I was home every day, home every night, normal.

• 59:55Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 59:56Speaker 01

  But it was almost like I was sitting on the train with all the other officers.

• 59:59Speaker 00

  Becoming a civilian.

• 1:00:00Speaker 01

  And it was like, I was hating every minute of it, going, oh, I'm not, I'm not like these people.

• 1:00:05Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:06Speaker 01

  But I was convincing myself that I was going to be. And, um, yeah, it's sort of, I was liking it, but what I needed was, what I noticed was, yeah, Donny needed to be let out every now and then, just to keep me sane type thing. Because I was feeling too caged up type thing, yeah.

• 1:00:25Speaker 00

  Your path has been, uh, it's had its highs and highs and lows, but you seem to be in a good, good place now. Any regrets?

• 1:00:31Speaker 01

  No, no, you never regret anything in my books.

• 1:00:34Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:35Speaker 01

  Um, the decisions you make at the time were the right ones. You can't look back now and go, oh, I shouldn't have done that. Here's what it is. I've learnt from it. I haven't done, I've done a lot of silly things, a lot of stupid things. That's life, eh? I can't change it.

• 1:00:50Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:00:50Speaker 01

  It's the way I look at it.

• 1:00:51Speaker 00

  Well, it's not a bad way. And you've got to, uh, got to accept yourself and love yourself and, uh, yeah, think, okay, I, I did my best.

• 1:00:59Speaker 01

  It, like, I was a pretty confident kid.

• 1:01:01Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:01:01Speaker 01

  You know, sporting bloke. Up until two thousand, you know, I, I probably had a bit of a strut in me, in my, um, in my stride and thought I was a little bit hot shit. So it certainly did bring me down a fair bit.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:01:15Speaker 01

  Um, and for ages, I was sort of thinking to myself, you know, why did this happen to me? Was it karma? Was it something I did really bad that deserved it? Was it, was it something I had to be taught? I don't know.

• 1:01:30Speaker 00

  Hmm.

• 1:01:30Speaker 01

  Um, what am I supposed to learn from it was one thing that I got and I kept on coming up with nothing. None of this makes sense. I don't understand. And so it's sort of, for a while I had to sort of go, I noticed my confidence was just shot. I was so shot. Like, I remember just talking to people and I couldn't look in their eyes and my bottom lip would quiver and I felt like I was crying every time I had to speak to someone. And I hated it. I went, okay, I've got to stop this. I've got to, and I kept on, you know, I was always hard on myself. Going, this is not like me. This is not me. This is something that's happened to me that's causing me to be like this. So I just started trying to convince myself, you know, you, you've got to start loving yourself again.

• 1:02:10Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:11Speaker 01

  Because I was pretty good at it before that.

• 1:02:13Speaker 00

  Yeah. With the book and, uh, that would have been, uh, therapeutic for you, I would imagine.

• 1:02:18Speaker 01

  Yeah.

• 1:02:19Speaker 00

  Getting it all out there?

• 1:02:20Speaker 01

  Yeah, just writing that, that first shitty copy, they call it.

• 1:02:24Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:24Speaker 01

  Blur. It was just straight work. First one to the end. I don't think there was any full stops or anything. Just let it out.

• 1:02:31Speaker 00

  Yeah.

• 1:02:32Speaker 01

  Because that's what I said, just get it all out and then we can put it all in the right places.

• 1:02:35Speaker 00

  Okay.

• 1:02:36Speaker 01

  Um, I didn't want to stop because I kept on bringing my editor. I said, when do I stop? I've got, I've got so many stories.

• 1:02:45Speaker 00

  Well, it's, uh.

• 1:02:46Speaker 01

  She said, yeah, stop now.

• 1:02:49Speaker 00

  Donny, an undercover cop with a death wish by Todd Maguire. It was a good read. I enjoyed it and, uh, I've enjoyed having, having our chat, uh, chat today. Thank guests that have, uh, done their, their public service and, uh, worked as cops. So thank you for the service you, you've done for the, uh, the community and, uh, thanks for coming on, uh, I Catch Killers. And I, I hope you have a, uh, have a good future.

• 1:03:12Speaker 01

  Thank you very much. Appreciate it.

• 1:03:13Speaker 00

  Enjoyed the chat.

• 1:03:14Speaker 01

  Thanks, mate.

• 1:03:15Speaker 00

  Cheers.