# The Santa Claus Serial Killer: Hank Idsinga Pt. 2

An episode of [I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/podcast/1506667049), 29 Jun 2026, 1 h 05 min.

Audio: https://p.podderapp.com/2544644999/traffic.omny.fm/d/clips/2fb3740d-3436-44af-8cc0-a91900716aa5/5bc8c2ed-b718-4f44-beb3-ac2a005246cc/d83d7e6f-fce5-4c5e-80ab-b47400322bf9/audio.mp3?utm_source=Podcast&in_playlist=786928c3-10c1-4cef-a7bf-ac2a005246d0

Between 2010 and 2017, eight men vanished from Toronto's gay village. The man responsible was hiding in plain sight, a landscape gardener who moonlighted as a shopping centre Santa Claus. In part two of his chat with Gary, former Toronto Homicide Inspector Hank Idsinga reveals the full story behind the Bruce McArthur serial killer investigation. From a tip about cannibalism on the dark web, to dismembered victims discovered inside backyard garden planters, this is one of the most disturbing cases in Canadian criminal history. Hank also reveals how his team arrived just in time to save the life of what would have been victim number nine. In this episode of I Catch Killers, Hank also opens up about commanding the homicide response to the 2018 Toronto van attack, a mass murder scene stretching two and a half kilometres, and what it truly takes to make the right calls when lives are on the line. Hank is also the author of The High Road, a behind-the-scenes account of his career inside the Toronto Police Service. Subscribe to our new Youtube channel. Follow I Catch Killers: Instagram: @icatchkillers Tiktok: @icatchkillerspodcast Facebook: @icatchkillers See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

## Transcript

[0:01] Speaker 1: The public has had a long held fascination with detectives.
[0:05] Speaker 2: Detective see aside of life.
[0:06] Speaker 1: The average person is never exposed her I spent thirty
[0:10] Speaker 1: four years as a cop. For twenty five of those
[0:12] Speaker 1: years I was catching killers. That's what I did for
[0:15] Speaker 1: a living. I was a homicide detective. I'm no longer
[0:18] Speaker 1: just interviewing bad guys. Instead, I'm taking the public into
[0:21] Speaker 1: the world in which I operated. The guests I talk
[0:24] Speaker 1: to each week have amazing stories from all sides of
[0:27] Speaker 1: the law. The interviews are raw and honest, just like
[0:29] Speaker 1: the people I talk to. Some of the content and
[0:32] Speaker 1: language might be confronting. That's because no one who comes
[0:35] Speaker 1: into contact with crime is left unchanged. Join me now
[0:38] Speaker 1: as I take you into this world. Hank is what
[0:47] Speaker 1: I consider a true detective in every sense of the word,
[0:51] Speaker 1: and we're not done with him yet. In part two
[0:53] Speaker 1: of my chat with Hank, we talked about theorist serial
[0:56] Speaker 1: killer Bruce MacArthur, who was convicted of murdering eight men
[1:00] Speaker 1: in twenty nineteen. The investigation first landed on Hank's radar
[1:05] Speaker 1: through allegations of cannibalism. You just can't make this stuff up.
[1:10] Speaker 1: We also talk about how you manage the chaos and
[1:12] Speaker 1: the weight of responsibility when a mass killing occurs on
[1:16] Speaker 1: your watch. I could talk to this bloke all day.
[1:19] Speaker 1: I find it fascinating discussing homicide with a real live
[1:22] Speaker 1: homicide detective. Have a listen, Hank, Welcome back to I
[1:28] Speaker 1: Catch Killers Part two?
[1:30] Speaker 3: Still here?
[1:31] Speaker 2: Okay.
[1:33] Speaker 1: Sometimes I feel the name of the podcast, I Catch
[1:36] Speaker 1: Killers is a bit inappropriate when I'm interviewing, let's say,
[1:40] Speaker 1: people that might be on the other side of the law.
[1:43] Speaker 1: But it feels right eye catch Killers speaking to you.
[1:46] Speaker 1: But I want to say, say up front, we talk
[1:49] Speaker 1: about what we've done in our careers and all that,
[1:52] Speaker 1: but the acknowledgment and I know that you would feel
[1:55] Speaker 1: this way that it's such a team effort in homicide.
[1:58] Speaker 1: No homicide is solved one person. It's a team effort
[2:02] Speaker 1: and there's a lot of assistance that goes into it.
[2:05] Speaker 1: Quite often, people like yourself or myself. We might have
[2:08] Speaker 1: the profile because we've been leading the jobs, but there's
[2:11] Speaker 1: people that are working just as hard or if not
[2:13] Speaker 1: harder and better behind the scenes. Do you want to
[2:16] Speaker 1: just tell us about the type of people that go
[2:18] Speaker 1: into making up a good successful homicide investigation.
[2:22] Speaker 3: Well, you know, when I started in homicide in two
[2:25] Speaker 3: thousand and five, it was literally two of us that
[2:29] Speaker 3: were assigned to each homicide case from the homicide squad
[2:33] Speaker 3: and we would go into the division where it happened,
[2:36] Speaker 3: and if we needed help, hopefully we could get a
[2:39] Speaker 3: couple of officers from that division, so kind it to
[2:42] Speaker 3: us for a few weeks. But if you think about
[2:45] Speaker 3: when a homicide happens, let's take a shooting, for example,
[2:49] Speaker 3: on the streets of Toronto or somewhere in Australia. I mean,
[2:54] Speaker 3: the police are rarely the first one there. Usually it's
[2:57] Speaker 3: the ambulance attendance and the fire department, so they're involved.
[3:01] Speaker 3: And then you've got the first responding uniform officers, and
[3:04] Speaker 3: then they're supervisors. Likely after that is the divisional investigators
[3:10] Speaker 3: and they're the ones who would call homicide, and then
[3:12] Speaker 3: the homicide squad comes out. And you know, the last
[3:15] Speaker 3: portion of my time in homicide, we instead of operating
[3:19] Speaker 3: in teams of two, we operate in teams usually five
[3:22] Speaker 3: or six responding officers. So you've got your major case manager,
[3:26] Speaker 3: your primary investigator, your file manager, and then your investigative
[3:31] Speaker 3: support officers. Forensic identification officers usually two to every homicide.
[3:38] Speaker 3: In some cases we had six or eight of them
[3:40] Speaker 3: on each homicide. You know your emergency task force or
[3:44] Speaker 3: your SWAT teams that are responding center of forensic science.
[3:48] Speaker 3: I mean, they're so many different roles to complete a
[3:54] Speaker 3: homicide investigation and put it all together, and ultimately everything
[3:59] Speaker 3: flows up to the case manager and either they or
[4:04] Speaker 3: the primary investigator are usually the ones who see it
[4:07] Speaker 3: through the core process. So it's a lot of people involved.
[4:13] Speaker 3: If you need support from different units. If it's a
[4:17] Speaker 3: drug involved case, you need help from your drug squad,
[4:20] Speaker 3: If it's a gang involved case, you need help from
[4:23] Speaker 3: your guns and gangs units. Dozens and dozens of officers
[4:27] Speaker 3: usually at the very least involved somehow in any homicide investigation.
[4:33] Speaker 1: You also made a point in the Gain that resonated
[4:36] Speaker 1: with me on putting it into Hank's life. Homicide hacks
[4:41] Speaker 1: about with the briefings. And this was taught to me
[4:45] Speaker 1: very early by some good mentals and great leaders, that
[4:49] Speaker 1: you quite often have a briefing when the homicides happened,
[4:51] Speaker 1: when you could step back and everyone sits around and
[4:54] Speaker 1: you've got the person running the investigation. You've got the
[4:58] Speaker 1: uniform officers, you've got everyone see in there for a briefing,
[5:01] Speaker 1: just to so everyone can catch up with what's happened.
[5:04] Speaker 1: And the point was made to me very early in
[5:07] Speaker 1: my career, and I tried to continue that through that
[5:10] Speaker 1: You listen to everyone in the room and it might
[5:13] Speaker 1: be the most junior person sitting quietly in the corner
[5:16] Speaker 1: that hasn't got much to say, and they'll just you know,
[5:19] Speaker 1: you can see them tentatively put their hand up and
[5:22] Speaker 1: make a suggestion, and that might be the breakthrough that
[5:25] Speaker 1: the collective geniuses that were talking about it hadn't come
[5:28] Speaker 1: up with. And the importance of not having that tunnel
[5:32] Speaker 1: vision and listening to other people's ideas, whether they be
[5:36] Speaker 1: right or wrong, and then make your decision based on that.
[5:39] Speaker 3: Yeah, absolutely, I was very dishooning. At one point in time,
[5:43] Speaker 3: one of the teams at a homicide and I wasn't
[5:46] Speaker 3: the boss yet at the time, but I walked into
[5:51] Speaker 3: the homicide squad at police headquarters and there are two
[5:54] Speaker 3: young officers sitting off by themselves where their team has
[5:57] Speaker 3: rmly set up, and I was like, whereas all your guys,
[6:00] Speaker 3: And they're like they're in the briefing room having a briefing. Yeah,
[6:04] Speaker 3: And I'm like, why aren't you guys in there while
[6:07] Speaker 3: the detective sergeant doesn't include us in the briefings. And
[6:10] Speaker 3: I thought that that should never happen. And some of
[6:15] Speaker 3: the homicide cases that I was involved in, and even
[6:18] Speaker 3: some of the homicide cases that people give me credit for, no,
[6:22] Speaker 3: it was the youngest members on the teams who came
[6:25] Speaker 3: up with that little spark of an idea or had
[6:27] Speaker 3: that extra energy to go the extra mile. And it's funny.
[6:32] Speaker 3: I was presenting to a book club last night and
[6:35] Speaker 3: one of the attendees of the book club was a doctor,
[6:38] Speaker 3: and they said, it's like you see on TV on
[6:43] Speaker 3: you know, Gray's Anatomy, when they come around and do
[6:46] Speaker 3: the rounds, and you've got the senior doctor and everyone
[6:49] Speaker 3: in between, right down to the most junior one, and
[6:53] Speaker 3: everyone's input is valued and everybody gets listened to. And yeah,
[6:58] Speaker 3: sometimes you might hear a stupid idea, but you might
[7:01] Speaker 3: also may hear a brilliant idea as well. And I
[7:03] Speaker 3: think really the structure of the police forces these days
[7:08] Speaker 3: really don't promote that tape of approach to police work.
[7:14] Speaker 3: And investigations in general, and I think that that's a
[7:17] Speaker 3: lot of lost opportunity there, and that's where we fall
[7:19] Speaker 3: down a lot sometimes as well.
[7:21] Speaker 1: Yeah, I picked up on the theme of people hiding
[7:25] Speaker 1: behind their rank, and you made the point with Gary
[7:28] Speaker 1: that you were talking about the homicide the experienced homicide detective,
[7:32] Speaker 1: that he might have the rank, but he had the experience.
[7:34] Speaker 1: And I think sometimes we have people in the police services,
[7:39] Speaker 1: police forces that hide behind the rank because it's that
[7:41] Speaker 1: para military structure, and I think things can be lost.
[7:45] Speaker 1: The other point, and this was, you know, I was
[7:49] Speaker 1: chuffed when I was a young detective and invited into
[7:52] Speaker 1: the briefing for a homicide and yeah, the boss has said,
[7:55] Speaker 1: and Gary, what do you think? I know he choked.
[7:58] Speaker 1: I didn't think I had a void see it. But
[8:01] Speaker 1: I made some points and what that did that motivated
[8:04] Speaker 1: me as well. And I think that's an important thing
[8:06] Speaker 1: that everyone because homicide investigation can be a hard slog
[8:11] Speaker 1: and it's a way to make everyone feel that they're
[8:13] Speaker 1: part of a team and let them have their input.
[8:16] Speaker 1: There's a motivation factor that comes into it as well.
[8:19] Speaker 3: Yeah. Absolutely, if they you know, the senior homicide guy
[8:24] Speaker 3: is the one being looked up to in the room
[8:26] Speaker 3: and some of these some of the young officers don't
[8:28] Speaker 3: get yourself. They're an absolute awe of who they're surrounded by. Right,
[8:34] Speaker 3: good homicide senior, seasoned homicide investigator is going to be
[8:39] Speaker 3: legendary in any police department he works in. And you're
[8:44] Speaker 3: probably the first time you meet some of these young officers,
[8:47] Speaker 3: they're going to be why aren't you saying anything? Right, Well,
[8:50] Speaker 3: you know, why aren't you looking at me? Because they're
[8:52] Speaker 3: scared shitless. So few yep, because it's very very intimidating.
[8:58] Speaker 3: I remember being in those shoes is at one point
[9:01] Speaker 3: in time, right. And I also remember being in one
[9:04] Speaker 3: of the first office case briefings very early in my
[9:08] Speaker 3: homicide career in two thousand and five and discussing a
[9:11] Speaker 3: case and probably one of the most senior, well respected
[9:14] Speaker 3: guys in the office came up to me afterwards he said,
[9:17] Speaker 3: that was a really good idea that you came up with,
[9:20] Speaker 3: and we're going to chase that down. And yeah, I'm
[9:23] Speaker 3: over the moon. Right. It's huge for those young investigators
[9:28] Speaker 3: to feel valued and to feel that their voice is
[9:31] Speaker 3: being heard, and you know, but it also wasn't unusual
[9:35] Speaker 3: to have one of them suggest something completely outlandish, but
[9:39] Speaker 3: then it becomes a learning point for them as well. Right,
[9:42] Speaker 3: we're not going to do that. Here's why we're not
[9:44] Speaker 3: going to do that. And I'm going to try and
[9:47] Speaker 3: make you understand why we're not going to do that,
[9:49] Speaker 3: and that they're going to appreciate that as well. But
[9:52] Speaker 3: that paramilitary structure that I talk about, and I don't
[9:56] Speaker 3: know how bad it is in Australia, but the major
[10:00] Speaker 3: policing reviews in Canada over the last ten years, I've said,
[10:03] Speaker 3: get away from that. Get away from that. It's Stafles
[10:06] Speaker 3: free thought, it's Stafles free expression, and you're really doing
[10:11] Speaker 3: ato service to the younger officers as well as the
[10:14] Speaker 3: taxpayers who are getting the best bang for their bucke
[10:17] Speaker 3: in policing. If you're going to operate like that, sadly
[10:21] Speaker 3: we still do well.
[10:22] Speaker 1: My thing with the police is that, yeah, we're public servants,
[10:27] Speaker 1: and those public servants, it's pretty easy to defind what
[10:30] Speaker 1: our role is. We're there to serve the public, and
[10:34] Speaker 1: I see so many hard working, good police officers, not
[10:37] Speaker 1: just detectives, uniform officers in any different section that really
[10:41] Speaker 1: joined for the right reason and doing for the right reason.
[10:44] Speaker 1: But then I also see the people that are driven
[10:46] Speaker 1: by what can I take from the organization? Then how
[10:49] Speaker 1: far can I get promoted and just focus solely on
[10:52] Speaker 1: the promotion. You made a point in part one about Yeah,
[10:55] Speaker 1: if I didn't get promoted and just stayed in homicide
[10:57] Speaker 1: for the rest of my career, I would have stayed happy.
[11:00] Speaker 1: I was the same way. I think the best times
[11:03] Speaker 1: I had probably around the detective sergeant time in homicide.
[11:08] Speaker 1: We got rotated out because they bought a rotation policy
[11:11] Speaker 1: in and I ended up getting because I had been
[11:14] Speaker 1: there the longest as a sergeant, I was going to
[11:16] Speaker 1: be the first one rotated out, and so that's when
[11:19] Speaker 1: I went for promotion. But I would have happily retired
[11:21] Speaker 1: as a detective sergeant if I was left alone just
[11:24] Speaker 1: to do my work in homicide, because I found it
[11:27] Speaker 1: fascinating and they're the type they're the type of people
[11:31] Speaker 1: that you want in homicide, the ones that are just
[11:33] Speaker 1: fixated with I just this is what I want to do, Let.
[11:37] Speaker 2: Me do it.
[11:38] Speaker 3: The number one recurring anxiety dream I had when I
[11:43] Speaker 3: was in homicide was I had always had this dream
[11:47] Speaker 3: that the boss came to me and said, your time's up.
[11:49] Speaker 3: Back to a uniform of your goal. No, no, I can't, right,
[11:53] Speaker 3: it's I don't ever want to leave here. This is
[11:56] Speaker 3: what I wanted to do from day one. This is
[11:59] Speaker 3: what I think I was meant to do. And you know,
[12:02] Speaker 3: as you said, and I said earlier, homicide detective. Yeah,
[12:07] Speaker 3: I'm right where I need to be. I don't if
[12:09] Speaker 3: I never get promoted again, I'm happy. I'm fine. I'll
[12:13] Speaker 3: do my time and have a blast every single day
[12:16] Speaker 3: that I'm here working my butt off, right, So absolutely
[12:21] Speaker 3: best job going. You know, I think best occupation going
[12:26] Speaker 3: is policing, and the best job and policing is the
[12:28] Speaker 3: homicide work. So don't ever forcefully take it away from me.
[12:32] Speaker 3: I'm not going to be a happy man.
[12:34] Speaker 2: Yeah.
[12:34] Speaker 1: Well, when I got moved around, I many to find
[12:37] Speaker 1: homicides that I could investigate anyway, and in the end
[12:40] Speaker 1: they gave up and just put me back in homicide.
[12:43] Speaker 2: So there's always a homicide if you look deep enough.
[12:46] Speaker 1: I was working as a crime manager and many to
[12:48] Speaker 1: find some homicides when I was meant to be doing
[12:51] Speaker 1: sort of a semi uniform role. But they ended up
[12:53] Speaker 1: leading homicide. So I understand the passion most definitely. Can
[12:58] Speaker 1: we talk now about we touched on it briefly, Well,
[13:03] Speaker 1: the start of the investigation is my reading of it
[13:06] Speaker 1: from what I've read about it. But the Bruce MacArthur investigation,
[13:11] Speaker 1: if you could tell uson why I said we touched
[13:14] Speaker 1: on it briefly. I think there's some links there to
[13:17] Speaker 1: the cannibal informant about in the men that had disappeared,
[13:24] Speaker 1: and that was sort of the starting point. If you
[13:26] Speaker 1: could just explain what the case was and how it culminated,
[13:29] Speaker 1: because it's a fascinating, fascinating story.
[13:32] Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, this case evolved over eight years up
[13:37] Speaker 3: here in Toronto. So Bruce MacArthur was praying on. He
[13:42] Speaker 3: was a gay man. He was married earlier in life
[13:46] Speaker 3: with kids, and then he came out of the closet
[13:48] Speaker 3: late in the life and moved into the gay village
[13:52] Speaker 3: in Toronto and killed his first victim in twenty ten.
[13:57] Speaker 3: And his first victim was a follow Yam scan Ratnam,
[14:00] Speaker 3: who was originally from Sri Lanka and lived in the
[14:04] Speaker 3: village and disappeared in September twenty ten, and he has
[14:11] Speaker 3: reported missing about two weeks after he was last seen
[14:14] Speaker 3: just by a friend who thought, I haven't seen Scanda
[14:17] Speaker 3: for a while, I'm going to report him missing. So
[14:20] Speaker 3: the divisional investigators didn't have any luck figuring out what
[14:24] Speaker 3: had happened to Scanda. But of course we get about
[14:27] Speaker 3: five thousand missing persons reports every year, so the divisional
[14:33] Speaker 3: detectives did some great work, but at the end of
[14:35] Speaker 3: the day just didn't have any answers. And it wasn't
[14:38] Speaker 3: until two late twenty twelve, and by this time MacArthur
[14:43] Speaker 3: had killed two other men, so it, unbeknownst to us,
[14:46] Speaker 3: his victim tally was at three when that tip came
[14:49] Speaker 3: in from Switzerland about a fellow on a cannibalism fetish
[14:54] Speaker 3: website on the Internet bragging about killing and eating a
[14:59] Speaker 3: brown skin mail from Toronto's Gay Village. So that's when
[15:04] Speaker 3: I first got involved, and I was sent to fifty
[15:07] Speaker 3: one Division to oversee the investigation to the point could
[15:12] Speaker 3: we include or exclude this suspect that we developed from
[15:16] Speaker 3: this confession as being responsible for at least one murder,
[15:21] Speaker 3: And by mid twenty thirteen we're able to exclude him
[15:25] Speaker 3: and determine no, this guy's full of it. He's never
[15:28] Speaker 3: killed anyone in his life. But at that point in time,
[15:31] Speaker 3: we realized we've got three missing brown skinned men from
[15:35] Speaker 3: Toronto's gay village. We don't know what's happened to them,
[15:39] Speaker 3: So I went back to homicide. The missing person's investigation
[15:44] Speaker 3: continued in the division and it wasn't until twenty and
[15:48] Speaker 3: seventeen where MacArthur killed his last victim, a fellow named
[15:54] Speaker 3: Andrew Kinsman, at the end of June in twenty seventeen,
[15:58] Speaker 3: and he made some pretty serious mistakes. He had been
[16:02] Speaker 3: very very careful, especially since the twenty twelve twenty thirteen
[16:07] Speaker 3: portion of the investigation. He selected his victims a lot
[16:11] Speaker 3: more carefully. A couple of them were never even reported
[16:14] Speaker 3: as missing to police. But he killed his eighth victim.
[16:18] Speaker 3: Like I said, end of June of twenty seventeen, it
[16:22] Speaker 3: was obvious that mister Kinsman, his last victim, had met
[16:26] Speaker 3: with some sort of foul play, and we as homicide officers,
[16:34] Speaker 3: were again sent to fifty one Division to oversee what
[16:38] Speaker 3: was still a missing person's investigation, but with some pretty
[16:41] Speaker 3: strong undertones of foul play. So MacArthur himself was identified
[16:49] Speaker 3: because Kinsman went missing around three o'clock in the afternoon
[16:55] Speaker 3: and he had written on his calendar three pm, Bruce.
[17:02] Speaker 3: So the divisional investigators picked up on that and they
[17:06] Speaker 3: pulled all the surveillance video from the neighborhood. And it
[17:09] Speaker 3: took about a month and a half of going through
[17:11] Speaker 3: that surveillance video till they found a red Dodge caravan.
[17:15] Speaker 3: So we got a list of all the Dodge caravans
[17:18] Speaker 3: in the Greater Toronto area that fit the profile, and
[17:21] Speaker 3: then we cross referenced it to that calendar entry. How
[17:25] Speaker 3: many of those Dodge caravans are registered to somebody named
[17:29] Speaker 3: Bruce five, one of them being Bruce MacArthur. And one
[17:34] Speaker 3: of the investigators said, Bruce MacArthur, we interviewed him back
[17:38] Speaker 3: in twenty thirteen in relation to the other missing men.
[17:42] Speaker 3: All right, let's take a good look at Bruce MacArthur.
[17:44] Speaker 3: So we ended up grabbing his van covertly, finding some
[17:51] Speaker 3: blood and semen in the back of the van, matching
[17:55] Speaker 3: it through DNA to Andrew Kinsman. And then December twenty seventeen,
[18:01] Speaker 3: we snuck into mister MacArthur's apartment and cloned his computer
[18:07] Speaker 3: and started going through all of that data. And it
[18:10] Speaker 3: wasn't until mid January of twenty and eighteen where we
[18:13] Speaker 3: started finding the images of his victims. He liked to
[18:17] Speaker 3: kill his victims and then dress them up and take
[18:20] Speaker 3: photographs of them, so it took quite a while to
[18:23] Speaker 3: find those photographs.
[18:25] Speaker 1: At that stage, before you found the photos, were you
[18:30] Speaker 1: of the belief you looking at the serial killer there?
[18:32] Speaker 1: I know he had links to the previous investigation, so
[18:35] Speaker 1: the thought must have crossed your mind. But did you
[18:38] Speaker 1: have a sense of the magnitude of what you were
[18:41] Speaker 1: going to uncover at that stage?
[18:43] Speaker 3: Not yet, And even in twenty twelve, twenty and thirteen,
[18:49] Speaker 3: they really were strictly missing persons investigations. We had that
[18:54] Speaker 3: cannibal evidence, but we excluded that, and of course everyone's
[18:59] Speaker 3: think King serial killer, but we had no evidence to
[19:03] Speaker 3: say there was a serial killer, right. We actually had
[19:06] Speaker 3: other missing men from the gay village who we eventually found,
[19:12] Speaker 3: right we you know. So it really wasn't until November
[19:18] Speaker 3: of two thousand and seventeen where we said, okay, now
[19:21] Speaker 3: we've got some blood that belongs to Kinsman in the
[19:23] Speaker 3: back of MacArthur's van. So that's some evidence that Kinsman
[19:27] Speaker 3: has met with foul play, and it's some evidence that
[19:30] Speaker 3: MacArthur was somehow involved. But is he dead. We don't
[19:33] Speaker 3: know that yet. Probably he's falling off the face of
[19:37] Speaker 3: the earth. And then it wasn't, like I said, until
[19:41] Speaker 3: January till we started finding photographs. And the first photographs
[19:45] Speaker 3: what we found were actually of his seventh victim, a
[19:49] Speaker 3: fellow named selim Essen. And we decided then that Okay,
[19:55] Speaker 3: we've got to arrest this guy. We've got to get
[19:57] Speaker 3: him into custody. We don't have any bodies, We've got
[20:01] Speaker 3: a pretty weak case, but the risk to the public
[20:05] Speaker 3: right now is too great. So fingers crossed that we
[20:09] Speaker 3: find the victims.
[20:10] Speaker 1: Right those fight those you said that they would decise,
[20:14] Speaker 1: Was it obvious that they would decis and were they
[20:17] Speaker 1: addressed up? What would the knights for the fights?
[20:20] Speaker 3: Well, they sure looked like they were deceased. But you know, interestingly,
[20:25] Speaker 3: I did a presentation at a pathologist conference about a
[20:30] Speaker 3: year later, and I put the photographs up on the screen,
[20:34] Speaker 3: and I had about three hundred pathologists in the room,
[20:37] Speaker 3: and I said, who would get up in court and
[20:39] Speaker 3: testify that the people in these photographs are dead? Not
[20:43] Speaker 3: a one? Right? They sure they look dead, but we
[20:48] Speaker 3: can't prove that they're dead, right, So we ended up
[20:52] Speaker 3: arresting MacArthur with, like I said, a pretty weak circumstantial
[20:58] Speaker 3: case of two murders of Andrew Kinsman and Slim Essen,
[21:01] Speaker 3: because we had found photos of both of them and
[21:04] Speaker 3: both of them were missing, and we had blood of
[21:07] Speaker 3: Kinsmen in the back of MacArthur's van. So it wasn't
[21:13] Speaker 3: until a few days after he was arrested that we
[21:17] Speaker 3: managed to start recovering the remains of victims. So we
[21:22] Speaker 3: seized a bunch of properties that he was associated to,
[21:26] Speaker 3: and one of the properties he was associated to, he
[21:31] Speaker 3: was a landscaper and it was an elderly couple who
[21:35] Speaker 3: owned this property, and so he would do their landscaping
[21:38] Speaker 3: in exchange for storing his landscaping equipment in their garage.
[21:44] Speaker 3: And they had a summerhouse, so they are never home
[21:47] Speaker 3: in the summer. They were only home in the winter.
[21:50] Speaker 3: And so what MacArthur was doing was killing these men.
[21:53] Speaker 3: He was dismembering them, and then he was storing the
[21:56] Speaker 3: body parts in planters in this couple's backyard. So after
[22:03] Speaker 3: we arrested him, we seized the premise, the house, and
[22:08] Speaker 3: we put our canine units into the backyard and one
[22:11] Speaker 3: of the canine units indicated on one of the planters,
[22:16] Speaker 3: but we didn't know if they were indicating on the
[22:17] Speaker 3: planter or the ground beneath the planter. So we seized
[22:21] Speaker 3: a few of the planters from the backyard and they
[22:23] Speaker 3: ended up being taken to the morgue and it took
[22:27] Speaker 3: a few days for them to actually file out so
[22:29] Speaker 3: we could x ray them. And then we x rayed
[22:32] Speaker 3: them and you could see the outline of our rib
[22:34] Speaker 3: cage and one of the planters. So we went and
[22:37] Speaker 3: got the remaining planters from the backyard and we recovered
[22:42] Speaker 3: seven of the eight victims from those planters, and it
[22:46] Speaker 3: wasn't until the summer of twenty eighteen where we recovered
[22:51] Speaker 3: the eighth victim. He was buried in a rubber garbage
[22:55] Speaker 3: container in a ravine behind the house the day MacArthur
[23:00] Speaker 3: was arrested. So we found the photographs on a Wednesday.
[23:06] Speaker 3: Made the decision to arrest him. But we need to
[23:10] Speaker 3: get search warrants put in place, and search teams all
[23:12] Speaker 3: put it in place. So I said, MacArthur is to
[23:16] Speaker 3: be put on a twenty four hour surveillance. We're gonna
[23:19] Speaker 3: get these search warrants so we're going to execute and
[23:21] Speaker 3: arrest them on Saturday morning. The one caveat is he
[23:25] Speaker 3: is not allowed to be behind a closed door with
[23:28] Speaker 3: another man Murphy's law. Thursday morning, what does he do.
[23:34] Speaker 3: Picks up a man that we've seen him pick up before,
[23:37] Speaker 3: parks in a spot that he normally doesn't park in
[23:40] Speaker 3: his apartment building, goes up the back stairwell with his
[23:43] Speaker 3: other man, and goes into his apartment. So the surveillance
[23:47] Speaker 3: team calls me. They call the primary investigator, a really
[23:51] Speaker 3: good detective named Dave Dickinson. Here's what's going on, get
[23:55] Speaker 3: in there and arrest them, and sure enough that guy
[23:58] Speaker 3: would have been victim number nine. Tied to MacArthur's bed,
[24:01] Speaker 3: MacArthur had put a hood over his head and he
[24:04] Speaker 3: had started a file on him on his computer. So
[24:09] Speaker 3: very little doubt in my mind that we saved life
[24:12] Speaker 3: that day by going in there and getting MacArthur into custody.
[24:17] Speaker 3: And at the end of it, there is no court proceeding.
[24:20] Speaker 3: He pled guilty a year later to eight counts of
[24:24] Speaker 3: first degree murder, sentenced to life in prison, no chance
[24:28] Speaker 3: of parole for twenty five years, by which time I
[24:31] Speaker 3: believe he'll be ninety two and he's not going to
[24:34] Speaker 3: live that long and regards was I highly doubt you
[24:38] Speaker 3: would ever get parole anyway. So very lengthy, long investigation,
[24:43] Speaker 3: probably the highest profile investigation I was ever involved in,
[24:47] Speaker 3: And my full time job in twenty eighteen was juggling
[24:52] Speaker 3: the media. Really, I had minimal involvement in the actual
[24:58] Speaker 3: investigative process. My detective was the one who really drove that,
[25:03] Speaker 3: came to me for advice and you know, where do
[25:06] Speaker 3: we go from here? That sort of thing. But twenty eighteen,
[25:11] Speaker 3: you know, every week we were identifying victims and laying
[25:14] Speaker 3: more charges, and I was dealing with the media, and
[25:19] Speaker 3: that was a full time job through all of twenty
[25:22] Speaker 3: eighteen until July when I was promoted to inspector in
[25:25] Speaker 3: charge of homicide.
[25:26] Speaker 1: I would imagine the media, you'd have to use the
[25:29] Speaker 1: media for appeal for more information coming in, even though
[25:33] Speaker 1: that you've clearly got him for strong cases against him,
[25:37] Speaker 1: but identifying the other victims would have played the part
[25:40] Speaker 1: appealing to appealing to the media. But I can imagine
[25:44] Speaker 1: the media getting hold of that any Yeah, murder gets
[25:47] Speaker 1: the front page, but when you're talking a serial killer
[25:50] Speaker 1: and that type of case, well, the insight you would
[25:54] Speaker 1: have got from the victim or the potential victim that
[25:58] Speaker 1: was saved due to the called to have him arrested.
[26:02] Speaker 1: That's a handy thing to understand how we actually operated,
[26:05] Speaker 1: isn't it. That's really giving an insight in the mind
[26:07] Speaker 1: of a psychopath that you've got a victim that's actually
[26:10] Speaker 1: lived to tell the story.
[26:12] Speaker 3: We had a couple of victims. You know, that ninth victim.
[26:16] Speaker 3: Nobody was happier than him when MacArthur pled guilty because
[26:20] Speaker 3: he was a married man and a closeted homosexual. Yeah,
[26:25] Speaker 3: and so he was never exposed to the public or
[26:29] Speaker 3: to his family. There was another victim who didn't realize
[26:34] Speaker 3: he was a victim. We were going through MacArthur's computer.
[26:37] Speaker 3: We found photographs of an unconscious male and MacArthur liked
[26:42] Speaker 3: to dress them up in a fur coat. So he
[26:45] Speaker 3: had this fellow dressed up in a fur coat, and
[26:47] Speaker 3: we ultimately identified him and he was still alive. So
[26:51] Speaker 3: we went and talked with him and we said, you know,
[26:54] Speaker 3: tell us about the time when you're having sex with
[26:57] Speaker 3: MacArthur and he choked you unconscious and took these photographs
[27:01] Speaker 3: and he was like what are you talking about? Right,
[27:04] Speaker 3: he never realized he had been choked unconscious and that
[27:07] Speaker 3: these photographs had been taken of him. So for some reason,
[27:11] Speaker 3: MacArthur just chose not to kill him, so he was
[27:15] Speaker 3: still alive. But yeah, just dealing with a lot. And
[27:19] Speaker 3: we had one other victim who managed to fight MacArthur
[27:23] Speaker 3: off in the back of his van, so he was
[27:28] Speaker 3: He would have been a great witnessing court as well.
[27:32] Speaker 3: But like I said, it never came to that, and
[27:34] Speaker 3: the case was just way too strong. As soon as
[27:36] Speaker 3: we started finding those remains and identifying the victims, you know, Dave,
[27:41] Speaker 3: Dick and Sin and I had a chat and we
[27:44] Speaker 3: both agreed, this is never going to trial and there's
[27:47] Speaker 3: no way, Like the case is just way too strong.
[27:50] Speaker 3: So and sure enough, that's that's how it ended up. Right.
[27:54] Speaker 3: It's not that usual that a you get a serial
[27:57] Speaker 3: killer before the courts and b he pleads guilty without
[28:01] Speaker 3: having a full blown trial. Because as you say, it
[28:04] Speaker 3: was psychopaths. They kind of like that attention.
[28:07] Speaker 1: I was going to say, they enjoy the reliving the moment.
[28:11] Speaker 1: That's the next little kick.
[28:13] Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, we had a psychiatrist intimately involved in
[28:17] Speaker 3: the investigation and making his determination, and he said, he's
[28:22] Speaker 3: actually not a psychopath, he's a sexual sadist and that's
[28:27] Speaker 3: what was motivating him. But definitely more your prototypical serial
[28:33] Speaker 3: killer than Mark Moore was, for instance.
[28:35] Speaker 2: Yeah, how was he killing the victims? Was it strangulation?
[28:40] Speaker 3: It was strangulation, manual strangulation, and then I believe once
[28:45] Speaker 3: they were unconscious from the manual strangulation, he would take
[28:49] Speaker 3: a rope in an iron bar and winch it around
[28:52] Speaker 3: their neck like a garat and suffocate them to death.
[28:58] Speaker 1: Did he talk with all the participied in any interview?
[29:03] Speaker 3: You know, the day he is arrested, we have two
[29:05] Speaker 3: officers out of our sex crimes unit who are trained
[29:09] Speaker 3: on the polygraph and they take every interviewing course imaginable.
[29:15] Speaker 3: So we brought one of them in and he talked
[29:17] Speaker 3: with MacArthur for about eight or ten hours. And MacArthur's
[29:21] Speaker 3: biggest concern was he had a lunch date that day
[29:24] Speaker 3: and would he be out in time to make his
[29:26] Speaker 3: lunch date. And you know, no, you're being charged with
[29:30] Speaker 3: two counts of murder today. I don't think you're going
[29:34] Speaker 3: to be making your lunch date. And he was concerned
[29:36] Speaker 3: because he was the one who's supposed to be driving,
[29:39] Speaker 3: picking somebody up and going to this lunch date. But
[29:42] Speaker 3: other than that, he gave us nothing whatsoever at the time.
[29:47] Speaker 3: So once he was in prison, there's been some more
[29:49] Speaker 3: conversations with him, but nothing really significant. Of course, our
[29:54] Speaker 3: biggest concern for a long time was have we accounted
[29:58] Speaker 3: for all of his victims? I think we can pretty
[30:01] Speaker 3: safely say yeah, because he kept file folders on all
[30:04] Speaker 3: his victims. He did talk to us enough after the
[30:07] Speaker 3: fact to reassure us there were no other victims, and
[30:13] Speaker 3: I think we certainly background investigated all of his movements
[30:18] Speaker 3: through his life as closely as we could. You know,
[30:21] Speaker 3: for instance, we knew through border security that he had
[30:26] Speaker 3: been in England on vacation a particular point in time,
[30:30] Speaker 3: so we called the authorities in England and said, we're looking.
[30:33] Speaker 3: We know he was in this town on vacation. Do
[30:36] Speaker 3: you have any outstanding missing persons or do you have
[30:39] Speaker 3: any unsolved murders in your gay community at that point
[30:43] Speaker 3: in time? No, thank you very much, right so, but
[30:46] Speaker 3: we really we had quite a team that was assembled
[30:50] Speaker 3: after he was arrested, and a ton of investigative work
[30:54] Speaker 3: just backtracking his entire life, just to make sure we
[30:56] Speaker 3: didn't miss anything. And of course the phones were ringing
[30:59] Speaker 3: off the right people whose loved ones are missing and
[31:03] Speaker 3: still outstanding, and they're calling and saying, is it possible
[31:07] Speaker 3: he is involved in you know, my brother's disappearance or
[31:11] Speaker 3: my son's disappearance, And every single one of them we
[31:15] Speaker 3: looked at and we're able to say, no, it doesn't
[31:18] Speaker 3: look like any of the timelines add up, and really
[31:21] Speaker 3: not his thing. Right. So I had one lady who
[31:24] Speaker 3: reached out to me after the fact, and she actually
[31:27] Speaker 3: wrote a letter to MacArthur when he was in prison
[31:30] Speaker 3: and her I believe it was her brother who is missing,
[31:34] Speaker 3: and she said, did you have anything to do with
[31:37] Speaker 3: my brother's disappearance? And sent him a photograph and he
[31:41] Speaker 3: actually responded, he said, no, he's a handsome man, but
[31:46] Speaker 3: he's not my type and I never met him before
[31:49] Speaker 3: in my life, so it wasn't me who was responsible
[31:54] Speaker 3: for that. So and she passed that on to me,
[31:57] Speaker 3: but I was pretty surprised that he actually did respond
[32:01] Speaker 3: to her.
[32:01] Speaker 1: Yeah, an investigation of that profile, that nature of the
[32:06] Speaker 1: horror of the investigation, did it, what impact did it have?
[32:10] Speaker 1: On yourself, the team, or like those type of investigations
[32:14] Speaker 1: can be life changing for people that work it.
[32:17] Speaker 3: That one will I mean everybody involved. That's one of
[32:20] Speaker 3: those investigations that you're going to be sitting around the
[32:24] Speaker 3: retirement home in your agies still talking about. Right, It's
[32:28] Speaker 3: never going to leave you. You remember such intimate details about
[32:32] Speaker 3: the investigation even years later. I mean, here we are,
[32:35] Speaker 3: almost ten years later, and I can rattle off all
[32:39] Speaker 3: the victims' names, usually the dates that they disappeared, and
[32:44] Speaker 3: certainly seeing you know, teams from across the entire police
[32:50] Speaker 3: service coming together, the provincial police coming in and helping out,
[32:56] Speaker 3: my cousins in Holland sending me newspaper clippings from the coverage.
[33:02] Speaker 3: Right certainly made international headlines. And even in the aftermath
[33:08] Speaker 3: of the book, Right, I had one podcast that wanted
[33:12] Speaker 3: to interview me, or actually my publish reached out and
[33:16] Speaker 3: said to them, do you want to interview hank It
[33:18] Speaker 3: Singa about his book? And they're like, who's hank it Singer? Right?
[33:22] Speaker 3: What's this book all about? And what cases has he done? Oh? Well,
[33:26] Speaker 3: he did this case with the serial killer who dismembered
[33:30] Speaker 3: the bodies and put them. Yeah, we want Hank it
[33:33] Speaker 3: singa on our podcast, right. So, and that was down
[33:36] Speaker 3: in the United States, so it certainly had a lot
[33:38] Speaker 3: of notoriety to it and certainly I think affected absolutely
[33:43] Speaker 3: everybody who's involved in it, and of course radically affected
[33:49] Speaker 3: the entire community and the entire city. You know, I
[33:53] Speaker 3: don't think anybody in that community in Toronto is ever
[33:56] Speaker 3: going to forget about it either. Whereas if most people
[34:00] Speaker 3: in front of you said to them, who's Mark Moore,
[34:03] Speaker 3: they wouldn't know. Yeah, but if you say who's Bruce
[34:06] Speaker 3: Bruce MacArthur, absolutely everybody would know. And the impact that
[34:10] Speaker 3: he had on the community.
[34:12] Speaker 1: No, it's an interesting case, and that's sort of once
[34:16] Speaker 1: in a career the type case that you get to
[34:18] Speaker 1: work on. We've got serial killers here in Australia, but
[34:22] Speaker 1: they're few and far between, and I think with the
[34:25] Speaker 1: changes of the way investigative structures and practices now, it's
[34:30] Speaker 1: getting harder and harder for.
[34:32] Speaker 2: Serial killers to operate.
[34:33] Speaker 1: And yeah, the United States and notorious for their serial killers,
[34:38] Speaker 1: but I've spoken to experts from that area and saying
[34:42] Speaker 1: the appears to be a decline and a lot of
[34:45] Speaker 1: it's put down to practices of police now in that
[34:48] Speaker 1: we used to operate in silos. A couple of serial
[34:51] Speaker 1: killers in Australia got a way of things because we're
[34:54] Speaker 1: looking at individual cases, not looking at the connection between
[34:58] Speaker 1: between the cases. But yeah, they're a different type of
[35:02] Speaker 1: investigation for a homicide investigator too. When you're looking at
[35:05] Speaker 1: the serial killer. Normally we're reactive, but you've got the
[35:08] Speaker 1: added pressure of being proactive that you've got to prevent
[35:11] Speaker 1: the person killing again too, So that adds the pressure
[35:15] Speaker 1: as a homicide detective. Following on from that, you got
[35:19] Speaker 1: a promotion and ended up heading up the Toronto Homicide Squad.
[35:23] Speaker 1: How many people did you have under your command? How
[35:26] Speaker 1: big was the squad at the time.
[35:28] Speaker 3: Well, we had the investigative response teams, We also had
[35:32] Speaker 3: a cold case units, We had a missing Persons unit
[35:36] Speaker 3: that came online in twenty eighteen, and we also had
[35:39] Speaker 3: our Major Case Management Unit to make sure the entire
[35:44] Speaker 3: police service abided by government regulations when it came to
[35:47] Speaker 3: how investigations are indexed and also investigated. So just a
[35:53] Speaker 3: little bit over one hundred personnel within that umbrella. But
[35:58] Speaker 3: the investigative squad we had six of them and each
[36:02] Speaker 3: of those squads held onto seven officers, so forty two
[36:11] Speaker 3: usually if we're fully staffed investigators ready to roll out
[36:15] Speaker 3: on the homicides.
[36:16] Speaker 1: Yeah, the structure seems very similar to New South Wales
[36:20] Speaker 1: Police homicide. We'd have on average and just rough figures
[36:24] Speaker 1: like one hundred murders a year within the state. But
[36:28] Speaker 1: there'd be other jobs you called out to that you
[36:30] Speaker 1: have to investigate police shootings and different things and suspicious deaths,
[36:35] Speaker 1: and our teams would be set up with an inspector,
[36:37] Speaker 1: two sergeants and then four constables. The ideal situation. You
[36:42] Speaker 1: spoke about the pressures of working in a like a
[36:46] Speaker 1: pair with a partner, and there's a lot of perception
[36:48] Speaker 1: that that's, yeah, the best practice. It's great to have
[36:52] Speaker 1: a partner because you can share the responsibility and if
[36:55] Speaker 1: you get on with your partner, the day passes. Yeah,
[36:59] Speaker 1: you have so much fun working with a partner. But
[37:02] Speaker 1: in homicide, I think now, especially with all the forensic
[37:06] Speaker 1: evidence that's available and I'm talking the phone records, all
[37:09] Speaker 1: the data that you've got to assess, you need more
[37:12] Speaker 1: than two people working a case. We try to send
[37:16] Speaker 1: out in our homicide we'd send out a minimum of
[37:19] Speaker 1: three a sergeant and two constables, so at least you've
[37:22] Speaker 1: got three there. You might have someone at the crime
[37:24] Speaker 1: scene managing that, you might have someone setting up the
[37:27] Speaker 1: incident room and the other person handling the allocation of
[37:30] Speaker 1: the tasks that break it up.
[37:32] Speaker 2: That way.
[37:33] Speaker 1: With homicide, I think, and I just want to run
[37:37] Speaker 1: this past you. I think the most crucial time and
[37:40] Speaker 1: it's a narrative that people say the first forty eight hours,
[37:43] Speaker 1: but I think to set the homicide up in the
[37:45] Speaker 1: right direction is crucial to a successful investigation. I came
[37:48] Speaker 1: in a lot during reinvestigations where the initial investigation had
[37:52] Speaker 1: been mucked up. But the crucial time is gathering all
[37:56] Speaker 1: the evidence, going to the crime scene, making sure you're
[37:59] Speaker 1: not missing, and then setting it up from there. Would
[38:02] Speaker 1: you agree with that sort of approach.
[38:04] Speaker 3: Yeah. The first forty eight hours is like drinking from
[38:07] Speaker 3: a fire hose, right, and when you only had two
[38:11] Speaker 3: responding officers, that was very, very tough to do, and
[38:15] Speaker 3: you'd have to put so much of it on the
[38:17] Speaker 3: back burner instead of being able to react to it
[38:19] Speaker 3: right away. So as we evolved into the front end
[38:23] Speaker 3: loading team concept, we got a lot more successful with
[38:26] Speaker 3: our homicide investigations because that bit of information would come in, Okay,
[38:32] Speaker 3: Officer so and so you go take care of that.
[38:34] Speaker 3: Another bit would come in, Okay, you take care of that. Okay,
[38:38] Speaker 3: this is more important. Come back, put that other thing
[38:41] Speaker 3: on the back burner, Go take care of this. You
[38:44] Speaker 3: need that personnel right at the outset, especially the first
[38:48] Speaker 3: forty eight hours, because there's so much coming in, and
[38:51] Speaker 3: there's so much that you have to react to and
[38:53] Speaker 3: respond to, and you need the personnel to be able
[38:56] Speaker 3: to do that. So it's certainly made homicide investigations sound
[39:02] Speaker 3: much better, but you're right, the amount of information flowing
[39:06] Speaker 3: those first two days is absolutely enormous, and you're the
[39:10] Speaker 3: one at the top of that pyramid who has to
[39:13] Speaker 3: keep up on absolutely everything. So it's a big, big task.
[39:18] Speaker 1: It sounds like when you were there too, the missing
[39:22] Speaker 1: persons unit got overhauled and more closely aligned with homicide
[39:26] Speaker 1: and unsolved homicide. That's something that's occurred in our state
[39:30] Speaker 1: too over the years, that there was sort of a
[39:33] Speaker 1: disconnect between people that had disappeared and what we're doing
[39:36] Speaker 1: at homicide. So we're sort of closer a line now.
[39:40] Speaker 1: So these things don't happen when you were the boss
[39:45] Speaker 1: of a homicide, you also had the Toronto Van of
[39:49] Speaker 1: mass killing. If you could let the listener know about
[39:51] Speaker 1: know about that, I'm sure they've heard about it, but
[39:54] Speaker 1: just give the brief details and then the impact and
[39:56] Speaker 1: how you responded to that, because that's a lot of
[39:59] Speaker 1: pressure as well.
[40:01] Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what. I actually was not the inspector
[40:04] Speaker 3: in charge yet. I believe that happened in April of
[40:07] Speaker 3: twenty and eighteen, and I became the boss in July
[40:12] Speaker 3: of twenty eighteen. But I was in the office when
[40:15] Speaker 3: it happened. And what happened is our main street in Toronto,
[40:20] Speaker 3: Young Street, which cuts through the entire city north south.
[40:25] Speaker 3: In the north part of the city, a fellow named
[40:28] Speaker 3: Alex Manassian decided he was part of the in cell
[40:34] Speaker 3: movement or the involuntarily celibate movement, so he obviously had
[40:38] Speaker 3: some mental health issues, and he went and took a
[40:42] Speaker 3: van one day and drove down the sidewalk of Young
[40:46] Speaker 3: Street and struck and killed I believe fifteen people. I
[40:51] Speaker 3: think it was fourteen. I might be off on the number,
[40:53] Speaker 3: but eventually became fifteen. And then eventually his van, the
[40:59] Speaker 3: van is driving broke down and he was taken down
[41:04] Speaker 3: and arrested by responding uniform officer. So just an absolutely
[41:09] Speaker 3: horrendous little chapter in Toronto's history. A mass murder as
[41:14] Speaker 3: opposed to a serial killing. And you'll appreciate, as a
[41:19] Speaker 3: homicide guy, a crime scene that stretched two and a
[41:23] Speaker 3: half kilometers, right, And you can only have so much
[41:29] Speaker 3: training and take so many courses. But when have you
[41:33] Speaker 3: ever been instructed on how do we deal with this?
[41:38] Speaker 3: You never have because A it used to never happen.
[41:42] Speaker 3: Then yeah, b it has happened now in several parts
[41:46] Speaker 3: of the world, but in midtown Toronto you would never
[41:51] Speaker 3: expect that. So but you know, a great response by
[41:55] Speaker 3: the team from homicide, led by a friend of mine,
[41:59] Speaker 3: Graham Gibson, and they put the case together and they
[42:02] Speaker 3: convicted them of all of those murders as well. But
[42:06] Speaker 3: an awful lot of learning points. And still I'm sure
[42:10] Speaker 3: you do the same thing. You walk down the street
[42:14] Speaker 3: now on Young Street, and every single time you walk
[42:18] Speaker 3: down that sidewalk you think about that, right, and all
[42:22] Speaker 3: through the city. I drive my wife and my daughter
[42:25] Speaker 3: crazy if we're driving through Toronto. I was like, this
[42:28] Speaker 3: happened here, and this happened here, and this happened there.
[42:32] Speaker 3: You know, the stories all stay with you, but that
[42:35] Speaker 3: one is definitely etched into the minds I think of
[42:37] Speaker 3: every Torontonian of the rest of their lives.
[42:41] Speaker 1: Yeah, sadly they're becoming more frequent and across the globe actually,
[42:46] Speaker 1: And yeah, we've had recently the Bondoi massacre, a mess
[42:50] Speaker 1: mess killing and yeah, place you see situations like that,
[42:55] Speaker 1: and then I always admire watching the police step up
[42:59] Speaker 1: at something you can't trying for that magnitude. But there's
[43:03] Speaker 1: a why the place just get it done.
[43:05] Speaker 3: Yeah, Well, if you think, you know, just throwing it
[43:09] Speaker 3: out on that case, the number of survivors plus the
[43:14] Speaker 3: number of victims, and they're all being brought to different
[43:17] Speaker 3: hospitals all across the Greater Toronto area, and you're trying
[43:21] Speaker 3: to scramble detectives to go to every single one of
[43:23] Speaker 3: those hospitals to deal with every single one of those victims,
[43:26] Speaker 3: all of those victims' families. You're holding down a two
[43:29] Speaker 3: and a half kilometer crime scene that has fifteen murder
[43:33] Speaker 3: scenes within it, trying to get your forensic personnel there,
[43:37] Speaker 3: and you can't get there because the entire city is
[43:41] Speaker 3: gridlocked because the main street has been shut down because
[43:46] Speaker 3: of this mass killing. So just an absolute logistical nightmare
[43:51] Speaker 3: from minute one of there. But at the end of
[43:54] Speaker 3: the day, we got the job done and put together
[43:57] Speaker 3: a great investigation and like I said, convicted them of everything.
[44:01] Speaker 1: When you see it start to work that way, it
[44:05] Speaker 1: makes you proud to be a part of an organization
[44:07] Speaker 1: when can pick it up and you see the individuals
[44:10] Speaker 1: that step up. Some might fall by the wayside, others
[44:13] Speaker 1: step up and really, yeah, carry carry the weight of
[44:16] Speaker 1: it and point it in the in the right direction.
[44:19] Speaker 3: Yep. Yeah. And one thing that that inedability that you
[44:23] Speaker 3: develop working homicide for years. Every time that phone rings,
[44:29] Speaker 3: it's a crisis, right, and it's a project and you're
[44:34] Speaker 3: dealing with that on a daily basis. And you look
[44:37] Speaker 3: at some of these promotional processes, especially in the senior
[44:40] Speaker 3: officer ranks, and what they really try and get the
[44:43] Speaker 3: candidates talk about is you know, one time they handled
[44:47] Speaker 3: a major project. And that's when you can take your
[44:50] Speaker 3: experience as a homicide guy and say, every time that
[44:53] Speaker 3: phone rang, it was a major project. Which one do
[44:55] Speaker 3: you want to tell me about? Yeah, And seeing a
[44:58] Speaker 3: homicide guy at the top the pyramid when it comes
[45:01] Speaker 3: to a mass murder like that makes you're extremely proud.
[45:05] Speaker 3: And then you have the senior officer who's never worked
[45:08] Speaker 3: homicide before putting a command pullst right in the middle
[45:11] Speaker 3: of the crime scene. You know, obviously you've never worked
[45:14] Speaker 3: homicide before. Not one homicide guy would ever do that,
[45:18] Speaker 3: So get the heck out of there. So definitely a
[45:23] Speaker 3: great place to work to develop that skill set where
[45:26] Speaker 3: you know what to do and when to do it.
[45:29] Speaker 1: Now, I hear you, and I agree with everything you're
[45:32] Speaker 1: saying there, and I the aspect of homicide investigation, whatever
[45:37] Speaker 1: decision you make is going to be scrutinized in some form.
[45:40] Speaker 1: It's a public's expectation through the media, at the Supreme Court,
[45:46] Speaker 1: or a coroner's inquest. And that's what when I was
[45:49] Speaker 1: lecturing to homicide course, all detectives courses, I'd say, I
[45:53] Speaker 1: understand that if you come to homicide, everything you do
[45:56] Speaker 1: is going to be scrutinized. So you've got to be
[45:59] Speaker 1: got to be able to justify what you've done. You're
[46:01] Speaker 1: playing high stakes, and yeah, you've got to prepare for it.
[46:06] Speaker 3: And we still see it to this day. You know,
[46:09] Speaker 3: even though I'm removed three years from the Toronto Police Service,
[46:12] Speaker 3: and you see again some of the senior officers and
[46:16] Speaker 3: the command officers getting called out on the carpet for
[46:19] Speaker 3: some of the decisions they've made, and you know, erroneous decisions,
[46:24] Speaker 3: and the number of times I've sat back and said, man,
[46:27] Speaker 3: you should have spent five years at homicide. You wouldn't
[46:29] Speaker 3: have said that, or you wouldn't have done that. It's
[46:32] Speaker 3: definitely a great training ground for being able to have
[46:35] Speaker 3: the foresight to see what the repercussions are of every
[46:38] Speaker 3: decision that you make, and so you better make the
[46:40] Speaker 3: right ones at the right times.
[46:43] Speaker 1: We're probably bossed, they'll put my hand up to the
[46:46] Speaker 1: boss to a homicide.
[46:48] Speaker 2: I think you're going to have to join that. Yeah.
[46:52] Speaker 1: I think the promotion game in policing, and I've seen
[46:55] Speaker 1: it in New South Wales police it's just people cloring
[46:58] Speaker 1: over themselves to get promoted them. If they just settled
[47:01] Speaker 1: down and did their job and let the experience build up,
[47:06] Speaker 1: it would be a better place. And that's not criticizing
[47:08] Speaker 1: every senior police officer. There's some great senior police officers,
[47:12] Speaker 1: but the ones that haven't got the experience. They're the
[47:16] Speaker 1: ones that concern me, and the ones that think a
[47:20] Speaker 1: rank or a position naturally gives them experience. When I
[47:24] Speaker 1: was at homicide, I had I think it was eight
[47:27] Speaker 1: or nine different bosses at homicide, and there were some
[47:30] Speaker 1: great bosses and there were some others that really were problematic.
[47:34] Speaker 1: But that's about as kind as I can say. Let's
[47:39] Speaker 1: talk about some of your homicide life hacks. We've covered
[47:43] Speaker 1: quite a few of them, but I just I was
[47:45] Speaker 1: pulling them out of the book. So day and age
[47:48] Speaker 1: homicide are difficult to operate in pairs. All members can
[47:52] Speaker 1: have input, rankers not provide experience. Homicide detective should go
[47:58] Speaker 1: to the crime scene. We haven't touched on that so much,
[48:00] Speaker 1: but I love that point too, because what the hell
[48:04] Speaker 1: are you doing here? Why aren't you at the crime scene?
[48:06] Speaker 1: And I know that's the thoughts that were going through
[48:08] Speaker 1: my mind when they'll get called out to a job
[48:10] Speaker 1: and have people the detectives at the police station where
[48:13] Speaker 1: they should have been at the crime scene. Talk us
[48:15] Speaker 1: through your thoughts here.
[48:17] Speaker 3: Yeah, you know what, especially in the city like Toronto,
[48:21] Speaker 3: it absolutely blew me away. When I saw homicide detectives
[48:27] Speaker 3: not go to their murder scenes. They would go to
[48:30] Speaker 3: the local police station where the murder happened, and they
[48:33] Speaker 3: would get briefed on everything, but never go to that scene.
[48:36] Speaker 3: I would scratch my head. I'm like, where is your mind?
[48:40] Speaker 3: Where are you even starting? If you want to see
[48:44] Speaker 3: a good homicide detective, they're the guys who pull up
[48:47] Speaker 3: in their cars outside the perimeter of the murder scene
[48:50] Speaker 3: and they don't get out of their cars for twenty
[48:53] Speaker 3: minutes thirty minutes because they're busy writing notes as to
[48:56] Speaker 3: what they're taking in or what they're seeing. The number
[49:00] Speaker 3: of times people have said to me, what are you doing?
[49:06] Speaker 3: Because I'm usually standing in the middle of a crime scene, right,
[49:10] Speaker 3: I've checked in in the perimeter, I've gone into the
[49:12] Speaker 3: crime scene, and I'll usually just stand there for five
[49:16] Speaker 3: or ten minutes, just kind of looking around and absorbing everything,
[49:20] Speaker 3: and people would say, what are you doing? Quiet, I'm observing, right,
[49:27] Speaker 3: I'm taking it all in. And I wouldn't know where
[49:30] Speaker 3: to begin if I just went into the police station
[49:32] Speaker 3: and relied on second hand information as to what's going
[49:35] Speaker 3: on at that crime scene. And I talk about a
[49:38] Speaker 3: friend of mine who's in the Ontario Provincial Police. Sometimes
[49:42] Speaker 3: they take eight nine hours to get to their murder scenes.
[49:45] Speaker 3: But he's still he goes to the scene first, right,
[49:49] Speaker 3: And we've talked about it and we've kind of laughed
[49:51] Speaker 3: about it that some people don't. And then if you're
[49:56] Speaker 3: working in active murder and it's out in let's say,
[50:01] Speaker 3: twenty three Division in the northwest part of Toronto Police
[50:04] Speaker 3: headquarters is right downtown where the homicide squad is, if
[50:09] Speaker 3: you're back at police headquarters within twenty four hours, again,
[50:13] Speaker 3: I say, what are you doing right? Your murder's out
[50:16] Speaker 3: half an hour that way in twenty three Division. No, yeah,
[50:19] Speaker 3: but you know it's well in hand, and you know
[50:22] Speaker 3: I'm just doing payperwork here. Yeah, but you've got officers
[50:26] Speaker 3: working for you right now, probably canvassing processing it forensically.
[50:35] Speaker 3: They're out there working, And what do you think they
[50:38] Speaker 3: would say if they saw you were back here at
[50:40] Speaker 3: your desk. What's motivating them to get the work done.
[50:44] Speaker 3: So usually when I was the boss and a homicide
[50:51] Speaker 3: team would go out to a division, I would say,
[50:54] Speaker 3: I don't expect to see you again for a week. Yeah, right,
[50:58] Speaker 3: as long as that investigation is active and it's out
[51:01] Speaker 3: of that division. That's your home base until you get
[51:05] Speaker 3: to the point where you don't need to be out
[51:07] Speaker 3: there anymore. But if people are out there working on
[51:10] Speaker 3: it for you, you better be out there as well, leading them.
[51:13] Speaker 3: So that's I would have thought a no brainer.
[51:18] Speaker 1: Homicide, Well, I know, I agree. I say there's a
[51:23] Speaker 1: no brainer get to the crime scene. Obviously, the stuff
[51:26] Speaker 1: that you pick up at the crime scene, going there visiting.
[51:29] Speaker 1: But the other thing when you're in homicide, and I
[51:33] Speaker 1: gain I learned this everything. You don't just wake up
[51:36] Speaker 1: and become a homicide detective if you learn the trial
[51:38] Speaker 1: and error and things. With Paul Jacob when we're working homicide,
[51:44] Speaker 1: he just had this capacity to keep working and working,
[51:47] Speaker 1: and yeah it was hard and I had that capacity too,
[51:50] Speaker 1: but it was hard to keep up with him. But
[51:52] Speaker 1: he always made the point of you know where the
[51:54] Speaker 1: homicide detectives will be here longer than anyone else.
[51:58] Speaker 2: The locals.
[51:59] Speaker 1: Yeah, the locals will watch the homicide the techniques and think,
[52:02] Speaker 1: these guys don't stop, They just keep working.
[52:04] Speaker 2: So it motivates.
[52:05] Speaker 1: So then I come across people in homicide at various
[52:09] Speaker 1: stages of my career that oh yeah, we called in
[52:12] Speaker 1: and saw the locals and they said they've got it
[52:14] Speaker 1: all in hand, so it's fine. And then they're sitting
[52:17] Speaker 1: back having a coffee at the homicide office. No, that's
[52:20] Speaker 1: not the way it works. Another point that you're brought up,
[52:24] Speaker 1: and I agree with this because I've had issues in
[52:27] Speaker 1: my career that sometimes a high profile investigation soon your
[52:31] Speaker 1: police will want to throw staff at me. But I'm
[52:34] Speaker 1: a big believer. Give me a good quality team rather
[52:37] Speaker 1: than a large, poor quality team. I don't need numbers,
[52:40] Speaker 1: I need quality because in homicide, if you've got someone
[52:44] Speaker 1: that's not doing the work at the standard that should be,
[52:46] Speaker 1: that's going to cause more problems than what it's worth.
[52:49] Speaker 1: I prefer quality, smaller team rather than the large team.
[52:54] Speaker 1: What's your I know what your thoughts are because it's
[52:56] Speaker 1: your hack. I'm trying to steal your hack, So talk
[52:59] Speaker 1: us through that.
[53:01] Speaker 3: Send people back. Sometimes it didn't happen that often, but
[53:04] Speaker 3: it did happen. And we got to a point in
[53:07] Speaker 3: time in homicide when I was the boss and we
[53:10] Speaker 3: were very shorthanded, and people would want to leave because
[53:19] Speaker 3: they were getting burnt out. And I always say, you know,
[53:24] Speaker 3: there's a bit of a cardinal rule amongst senior officers.
[53:27] Speaker 3: You don't give up a body unless you get a
[53:29] Speaker 3: body in return, And we don't have anyone to send
[53:32] Speaker 3: to you in return, so keep that person there. And
[53:34] Speaker 3: I was like, no, they don't want to be here.
[53:36] Speaker 3: I don't want them, right, and maybe they just need
[53:39] Speaker 3: a break, or they actually don't want to be here.
[53:43] Speaker 3: I'd rather run short with good people than have a
[53:48] Speaker 3: full team of people who don't actually want to be
[53:50] Speaker 3: here and do the job. So a lot of times
[53:53] Speaker 3: as well, like you allude to, you would need to
[53:57] Speaker 3: bring in people from different divisions around the city, and
[54:01] Speaker 3: sometimes the bosses that those divisions would take it as
[54:04] Speaker 3: an opportunity to give you their dead wood, right, get
[54:09] Speaker 3: rid of a problem person. That's all right, We'll send
[54:11] Speaker 3: them to a homicide for a few months or a year.
[54:14] Speaker 3: Sometimes you can actually make that work if you could
[54:18] Speaker 3: find the buttons.
[54:19] Speaker 2: Suppose you just kind of steer them in the right direction. Yeah,
[54:22] Speaker 2: I'll add that, yep.
[54:24] Speaker 3: And sometimes they turn into all stars. Other times they
[54:27] Speaker 3: said I don't want to be here. My boss sent
[54:29] Speaker 3: me here. I don't know what I'm doing here. They
[54:33] Speaker 3: think I'm a problem child. I've got no interest in
[54:36] Speaker 3: doing the work, then I don't want you here right, Sorry,
[54:40] Speaker 3: you're going to go back so again, going back to
[54:44] Speaker 3: our earlier point of give me people who want to
[54:46] Speaker 3: do the work and who want to be there will
[54:48] Speaker 3: be much more effective and everyone. Yeah, we might have
[54:51] Speaker 3: to work a little bit harder because we're shorthanded, but
[54:54] Speaker 3: I'd rather be in that position and get the job
[54:56] Speaker 3: done properly than have people who don't want to do
[54:59] Speaker 3: the job abruptly and don't want to be there.
[55:02] Speaker 1: Most definitely, I think it needs to I see problems
[55:05] Speaker 1: if you have people working homicide because of the commitment
[55:09] Speaker 1: you've got to make, the sacrifices you've got to make.
[55:11] Speaker 1: They've got to want to be there, they've got to
[55:12] Speaker 1: have a passion for it. And it's not a criticism
[55:15] Speaker 1: of the people that don't. There's plenty of other jobs
[55:18] Speaker 1: you can do in the police, and you could probably
[55:19] Speaker 1: do them very well, but if you're working homicide. There
[55:23] Speaker 1: comes a responsibility in working homicide and you can't I
[55:28] Speaker 1: can't go there half hard. That You've got to fully
[55:30] Speaker 1: commit because the consequences are too high. The last hacker
[55:34] Speaker 1: fairly obvious one. Don't drive when you've been awake for
[55:37] Speaker 1: forty eight hours.
[55:40] Speaker 3: Yeah, and try not to you. I mean, I don't
[55:43] Speaker 3: think there's a driver on this planet who hasn't had
[55:46] Speaker 3: a bit of a nod once in a while as
[55:48] Speaker 3: they're driving. But you know, I talked about that scenario
[55:53] Speaker 3: when I was an Idowa where I was full blown
[55:58] Speaker 3: sound asleep in the middle of the hi way. And
[56:01] Speaker 3: then there's another time. I remember we had been up
[56:03] Speaker 3: for probably close to fifty hours, and where I live
[56:09] Speaker 3: is about maybe three quarters of a kilometer from the
[56:13] Speaker 3: main road to where my house is, and driving along
[56:17] Speaker 3: that main road, I knotted off, woke up, I'm almost home,
[56:23] Speaker 3: got to make home, nodded, woke up three times in
[56:26] Speaker 3: that three quarters of a kilometer, and you know, I
[56:29] Speaker 3: thankfully made it home safe. And there's the one time
[56:33] Speaker 3: when I had that incident in Ottawa and finally got
[56:36] Speaker 3: home and the phone rang and they wanted me to
[56:39] Speaker 3: go back to Ottawa, and I started putting my suit on,
[56:42] Speaker 3: and had it not been for my wife basically grabbing
[56:45] Speaker 3: me and saying, you're not going back to Ottawa, I
[56:49] Speaker 3: would have gone back to Ottawa and I probably would
[56:52] Speaker 3: have died in the process. But she wouldn't. She wouldn't
[56:55] Speaker 3: let me go.
[56:56] Speaker 1: You need people like that because you're not only mad.
[56:59] Speaker 1: The skill's gone you. Your cognitive skills are gone as well.
[57:01] Speaker 1: When you and the dangerous part is you think that
[57:05] Speaker 1: you're functioning well.
[57:07] Speaker 3: Yeah at all?
[57:09] Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, not at all.
[57:11] Speaker 1: I also kept the pillow under my desk for some
[57:14] Speaker 1: of those times where you're just not getting any sleep
[57:17] Speaker 1: and just crawl under there, get the twenty minute power
[57:19] Speaker 1: and happened away. You go think your career. You finished
[57:24] Speaker 1: thirty four years in the police. You had a couple
[57:27] Speaker 1: of issues at the end of things, and you've spoken
[57:30] Speaker 1: about a few things here in your book. I've got
[57:32] Speaker 1: the sense that there were certain aspects of the police
[57:34] Speaker 1: that you think could have been improved. Not coming across
[57:37] Speaker 1: as someone bitter, it sounds like you've enjoyed every day
[57:40] Speaker 1: in the polace. What's your your thoughts on policing at
[57:43] Speaker 1: the the end of your career.
[57:45] Speaker 3: Oh, you know what, I don't regret a thing. Best
[57:48] Speaker 3: job in the world. You know, got into the best
[57:52] Speaker 3: office in the entire organization, did the work that I
[57:57] Speaker 3: really think I was meant to do from a very
[57:59] Speaker 3: young age, and definitely was lucky early in my career
[58:03] Speaker 3: to identify that homicide was where I wanted to be
[58:06] Speaker 3: and that was the work I wanted to do. And
[58:08] Speaker 3: I think there's so many options, as you said earlier,
[58:11] Speaker 3: in police work, it's nice to be able to identify
[58:14] Speaker 3: that career goal early and get there and be able
[58:18] Speaker 3: to enjoy it while you're there. So, you know, policing,
[58:22] Speaker 3: I think, is having a real tough time evolving with society.
[58:28] Speaker 3: And we talked about paramilitary structure and really stifling open
[58:34] Speaker 3: thought and free thoughts, and people who don't necessarily do
[58:38] Speaker 3: the job well, but they get promoted well end up
[58:42] Speaker 3: running the organization. And there's a couple of anecdotes in
[58:46] Speaker 3: the book as well where senior officers are trying to
[58:49] Speaker 3: throw ideas of me for what to do next to
[58:52] Speaker 3: my homicide investigation that were absolutely laughable. And I think,
[58:58] Speaker 3: you know, I talk about the internal racism in the
[59:01] Speaker 3: organization in the book and some of the issues I
[59:03] Speaker 3: had with that, And my question at the end of
[59:06] Speaker 3: it is what do we do to make sure that
[59:11] Speaker 3: that doesn't happen to the next guy? Right? What is
[59:14] Speaker 3: wrong with the structure and the culture of the police
[59:19] Speaker 3: service that somebody who's that vile of a racist, and
[59:23] Speaker 3: is that incompetent when it comes to actual police work,
[59:27] Speaker 3: ends up being really near the top of the organization
[59:32] Speaker 3: because of their personal relationships and because of their friendships
[59:36] Speaker 3: with people who have that ability to promote them and
[59:39] Speaker 3: pull them up. So I've kind of, you know, it
[59:42] Speaker 3: made quite a splash here in Canada and in Toronto,
[59:46] Speaker 3: some of the stuff that I put in the book,
[59:49] Speaker 3: and thankfully the Police Services Board has stood up and said, yeah,
[59:56] Speaker 3: we're going to look at this and we're going to
[59:58] Speaker 3: figure out how we can do the better right, which
[1:00:01] Speaker 3: has pissed off a lot of the command officers because
[1:00:05] Speaker 3: of course they did their typical police thing, got very
[1:00:08] Speaker 3: defensive about it, tried to try to turn it around
[1:00:12] Speaker 3: on me, and I was like, listen, guys, this isn't
[1:00:16] Speaker 3: a hit piece. This is my story, this is my memoir.
[1:00:19] Speaker 3: Here's what I experienced firsthand. You want to do something
[1:00:23] Speaker 3: about it, yes, I think you should go do something
[1:00:27] Speaker 3: about it, but don't come back and criticize me now
[1:00:29] Speaker 3: for saying the things that I said. So I think
[1:00:33] Speaker 3: hopefully it helps give a bit of a voice and
[1:00:37] Speaker 3: it helps things evolve. But the really interesting thing is
[1:00:43] Speaker 3: the aftermath of it. The number of police offers sirs
[1:00:47] Speaker 3: who have reached out and said thank you, thank you
[1:00:51] Speaker 3: for saying that, thank you for saying that publicly, thank
[1:00:54] Speaker 3: you for being our voice. Same things are happening to
[1:00:58] Speaker 3: me in tron over across all of Canada and I'm
[1:01:02] Speaker 3: sure in Australia, and they need to do something to
[1:01:06] Speaker 3: make it better. So the number of female officers who
[1:01:09] Speaker 3: have complained the number of black officers who have complained
[1:01:13] Speaker 3: over the decades really interesting. The bulk of the messages
[1:01:17] Speaker 3: of support and me too stories I got were from
[1:01:20] Speaker 3: Asian officers. They're having a real tough time right now.
[1:01:24] Speaker 3: So a lot of issues in policing and hopefully this
[1:01:30] Speaker 3: spurs some activity and conversations to turn that very big
[1:01:35] Speaker 3: boat around and for the better.
[1:01:38] Speaker 1: Well well, full courage for raising the issues. And my
[1:01:42] Speaker 1: take on and I read it in depth cover the cover,
[1:01:45] Speaker 1: that it was balancing your views. You were saying what
[1:01:49] Speaker 1: you thought and how improvements could be made. You're not
[1:01:53] Speaker 1: someone that's retired, bitter and twisted that hate the place
[1:01:56] Speaker 1: and the place should have done this place, should have
[1:01:58] Speaker 1: done that. You're saying you love the organized It's just
[1:02:01] Speaker 1: we could change and make things better. So good on
[1:02:04] Speaker 1: you for standing up. I know it comes to the cost.
[1:02:06] Speaker 1: I've spoken out about certain things in policing and it
[1:02:10] Speaker 1: led to my career as I got charged and that
[1:02:14] Speaker 1: was the end of my thirty four years. But I
[1:02:18] Speaker 1: still stand by the positions that I took in policing
[1:02:22] Speaker 1: and the organizations we should be striving to improve. It's
[1:02:27] Speaker 1: a great job, it's something that's important. So someone like
[1:02:31] Speaker 1: yourself that's held in such high high esteem within the
[1:02:34] Speaker 1: community that you served, I think by having the courage
[1:02:37] Speaker 1: to speak out is an important, important message and maybe
[1:02:42] Speaker 1: just some of the stuff that you're talking about, there
[1:02:44] Speaker 1: might be improvements.
[1:02:45] Speaker 3: So yeah, I am optimistic. We'll see what they do.
[1:02:50] Speaker 3: You know, hopefully they do something. But the very people
[1:02:56] Speaker 3: who have the ability to do something about it are
[1:02:59] Speaker 3: the one who have profited from the culture and the
[1:03:04] Speaker 3: structure in the first place. So it's going to be tough.
[1:03:09] Speaker 3: And like I said, there's no shortage of me Too
[1:03:12] Speaker 3: stories out there. There's no shortage of books. You know.
[1:03:15] Speaker 3: There was a high ranking officer in the jurisdiction just
[1:03:20] Speaker 3: north of us who wrote a very similar book. He
[1:03:23] Speaker 3: was black and brought up a lot of the racial
[1:03:27] Speaker 3: issues that he dealt with. There's been tons of female
[1:03:30] Speaker 3: officers who've written very similar books raising this for years,
[1:03:37] Speaker 3: and every time you think something's going to change for
[1:03:40] Speaker 3: the better, it never does. So we'll see if my
[1:03:43] Speaker 3: voice is big enough that they will make some positive change.
[1:03:47] Speaker 2: Okay, well let's say it does.
[1:03:50] Speaker 1: I thank you, as I do with police officers coming
[1:03:53] Speaker 1: on the podcast, thank you for the service you gave
[1:03:56] Speaker 1: you community, because I do understand the sacrifice. Enjoyed chatting
[1:04:00] Speaker 1: with you. I reckon we could sit and chat for
[1:04:04] Speaker 1: days and days and days before we get tired and
[1:04:07] Speaker 1: fall asleep about homicide. Clearly, you're a passionate homicide detective.
[1:04:10] Speaker 1: I love that in you. I share the passion. Good
[1:04:15] Speaker 1: luck with your book, High Road Confessions of a Homicide Cop.
[1:04:20] Speaker 1: I've read it as an ex homicide cop, and I
[1:04:22] Speaker 1: enjoyed it. I found it fascinating.
[1:04:24] Speaker 2: So good luck with that and whatever endeavors you've got.
[1:04:27] Speaker 1: And I'm sure you're spending a little bit of time
[1:04:29] Speaker 1: with your family now that and apologizing to them for
[1:04:33] Speaker 1: all the time that you spent away chasing your career.
[1:04:38] Speaker 3: Yeah, semi retirement I like to call it. So It's
[1:04:42] Speaker 3: been a busy couple of years since I retired, and
[1:04:45] Speaker 3: the book certainly kept me busy for you know, in
[1:04:49] Speaker 3: and around its release, and things are quieting down a
[1:04:52] Speaker 3: little bit now, but hopefully by July will be back
[1:04:58] Speaker 3: into vacation mode and just enjoy spending time with my
[1:05:02] Speaker 3: wife and daughter and doing some biking and some travels.
[1:05:05] Speaker 3: So until the next project.
[1:05:08] Speaker 2: Okay, Well, well deserved and enjoyed having the chat. Thanks
[1:05:11] Speaker 2: for coming on.
[1:05:12] Speaker 3: You as well. Gary, It was a real pleasure. I
[1:05:14] Speaker 3: really appreciate it.
[1:05:15] Speaker 2: Jeez,

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