0:01

You know them as the journalists behind some of

0:03

the Australians' most riveting stories.

0:05

On Wednesday, National Chief Correspondent and

0:07

creator of the Teachers Pet podcast, Hedley Thomas

0:10

and National Crime Correspondent, David Murray,

0:13

joined editorial director, Claire Harvey at a

0:15

special live event in Brisbane. We're

0:17

bringing you that conversation in this special episode

0:19

of The Front.

0:29

Good evening. I'm Claire Harvey.

0:31

I'm the editorial director of The Australian, which means

0:34

one of my great privileges is to look after

0:36

all the podcasts that we make. I'm

0:38

here, of course, with Hedley Thomas and

0:41

David Murray, who's our National Crime

0:43

Correspondent. Dave and Hedley

0:45

and I have become great friends over

0:47

the past couple of years because we've been working

0:50

very closely on The Teachers'

0:52

Trial and The Teachers' Accuser and

0:54

Shandy's Legacy. I feel

0:56

like we have stepped

0:59

into

0:59

the renaissance in storytelling

1:02

that is podcasting. We're

1:04

all extremely privileged to be on the cutting

1:06

edge of journalism and working

1:08

in a field where The Australian's audience

1:11

is willing to go, that audiences

1:14

are there for long-form investigative

1:16

journalism, which, of course, is

1:19

why we got into this craft in the first

1:21

place. It's unforeseen,

1:24

isn't it, Dave, that in 2023,

1:28

long after people predicted newspapers

1:31

and journalism would be dead, it's

1:33

back. Oh, look, it is incredible.

1:35

I think when I started in newspapers, I thought,

1:37

oh, great, I'll never have to do radio or TV.

1:40

I can just cover this stuff in print.

1:43

I mean, that's just completely changed in the last

1:45

few years in particular.

1:47

Of course, Headley has led

1:49

us to this great new frontier

1:52

of journalism. But what I

1:54

didn't know when I stepped into your world was

1:56

exactly that everybody in Brisbane

1:58

journalism seems to be

1:59

related and related to

2:02

Headley. So something

2:04

you guys might not know is that Headley

2:07

and Dave are brothers-in-law.

2:08

Yes,

2:11

I know. Everyone

2:13

in Brisbane knows it's a small town, Claire.

2:15

These guys didn't know, clearly. So

2:18

tell me, how are you brothers-in-law? What's

2:20

the relationship there? Well, my wife Ruth,

2:23

who I actually met at Rick's Bar

2:26

in Fortitude Valley. That's

2:28

an in-joke, I don't know. Just over 30 years

2:30

ago. Ruth's sister, little sister,

2:33

is Katrina. In fact, soon

2:36

after I met Ruth and decided

2:39

within about half an hour of meeting her that I

2:41

actually wanted to marry her, she was going

2:43

to Mackay for Christmas and I

2:45

tracked down the phone number for the Matheson

2:48

home in Mackay. And Katrina,

2:50

Ruth's little sister, answered the phone number and then went

2:53

off squealing to her parents that her

2:55

sister was being asked out on a date by this guy

2:58

in Brisbane. Anyway, Katrina

3:00

is Dave's partner and

3:02

so we have many happy times. We're very

3:04

close and fortunately Dave

3:07

and I also team up on stories

3:09

very effectively. She's been an enormous

3:11

help for me. Did you guys

3:13

meet in a newsroom or at a family

3:15

Christmas? I met Dave in the

3:17

newsroom. Yeah, I think I

3:19

was at the time working in the investigative

3:22

unit at the Korea Mall. They had this tiny little

3:24

room right in the bowels of the building.

3:27

It could barely fit us.

3:30

People come through there like some of the great journalists

3:32

from Australia, Paul Whittaker, Michael

3:35

Ware became an international correspondent

3:38

and they passed through this little room

3:40

and I think that's where I remember meeting.

3:43

I want to stop you there because Paul Whittaker,

3:45

who Dave just mentioned, became editor-in-chief

3:47

of the Australian, is now running

3:50

Sky News and is also Headley's

3:52

brother-in-law.

3:52

Yeah, and

3:55

when he was editor-in-chief of the Australian, he

3:58

agreed to let me have more than six months.

3:59

just on one story, the

4:02

Dawson story. And today

4:04

he actually just voiced his lines for the

4:07

audiobook for the book that

4:09

I've done. That was a gratuitous plug.

4:11

Sorry, I take that back. Oh

4:15

you've got a book? Yeah, it's

4:18

quite funny because I remind Paul

4:20

who is a fantastic investigative

4:22

journalist and then became a terrific

4:24

editor and editor-in-chief and now CEO

4:26

of Sky News that in 1989 when he was a

4:29

cadet reporter at the

4:30

Courier

4:34

Mail and this was shortly after

4:36

we both left the Gold Coast where we shared a flat

4:39

together, he went to Coomba Barre

4:41

State High for a human interest story about

4:43

all of the twins at Coomba

4:45

Barre State High. There were about

4:48

a dozen sets of twins including several

4:51

sets of teachers and he interviewed Chris

4:53

and Paul Dawson for this human

4:55

interest story and he went on to become a

4:57

great investigative journalist but he completely

4:59

missed that

5:02

yarn. He missed the yarn. I hope you haven't

5:04

let him forget it. No,

5:05

don't worry. It's even in the book.

5:11

So tell me about your work in

5:13

podcasting Dave. You've done some remarkable

5:16

work, not only of course with us, but

5:18

your own podcast, A Lighthouse, was

5:21

about the disappearance of the young backpacker

5:23

Theo Hayes in Byron Bay. How

5:26

did you get onto that story? How did

5:28

you know it was a story and why did

5:30

you choose to do a podcast about it?

5:31

Well I was approached by

5:33

the volunteers in Byron Bay who

5:36

were looking for Theo Hayes. He went

5:38

missing in 2019

5:41

just here on holidays, went out one night and just

5:43

vanished and they came and they

5:45

met me and they talked me through their

5:47

incredible efforts both by

5:50

the family and by the

5:52

community in Byron to find

5:54

him and I was just blown away. I was completely

5:57

amazed by what they'd done. They had basically been

5:59

able to get into it. to his Google account

6:01

and then track his movements walking

6:04

through the town. And they'd found information

6:06

way ahead of the police and so much more information

6:09

than the police had found. Incredible.

6:11

So quite often we'll get approached by people

6:14

who ask us to do stories with them. And

6:16

you can only do so many. In a store like that,

6:18

it requires a lot of time. So

6:21

I spent four or five months

6:23

working on that one project. I just

6:25

finished helping on the teacher's pet in

6:28

the news coverage side of things. And

6:30

the podcasts, I'd become really interested in

6:32

podcasts through, like most people,

6:34

podcasts like Serial and Damn

6:36

Boxes podcasts. Now I reveal,

6:39

it'd blind me away about how it

6:41

showed, for the first time, really what journalists do.

6:44

You kind of hear the knock on the door. You

6:46

hear the dogs barking as you go to a

6:48

gate. And that to me just went, oh, that's

6:50

actually what our job is like. And I'd never seen that

6:52

described anywhere on TV and print.

6:55

And then you have all the other aspects

6:57

of a podcast of actually hearing people's voices

6:59

or something. Of course, you edit

7:02

it, but you get to hear what people

7:04

really sound like. You get much more of a deeper

7:07

connection with the story. Dave was one

7:09

of the first movers with podcasts in our

7:11

company. I remember when

7:13

Dave was still at the Courier Mail and I was

7:16

at the Australian in Brisbane, and

7:18

there was an area outside our offices

7:21

that was used to be where the papers

7:23

were printed. And now it's just a suite

7:26

of open office plan.

7:28

And Dave was there trying to find

7:30

a quiet place to do some narration

7:33

for this podcast that he had started working on. It

7:35

was about the disappearance of a teenage

7:37

girl called Rachel Antonio from

7:39

North Queensland. And if you haven't heard this podcast,

7:42

it's really worth going back and

7:45

listening to. He must

7:47

have done that in what, 2016? Yeah, 20.

7:50

Yeah, that's right. It was so good

7:53

and really helped, I

7:55

think, drive early interest in podcasts.

7:57

Certainly fired

7:58

my interest for it.

7:59

doing The Teacher's Pet the following

8:02

year and they've taught me a lot

8:05

before I went into it and showed me what to do. I remember

8:08

sharing with Dave a lot of my early scripts

8:10

and asking him what what do you reckon

8:12

and getting fantastic advice because he'd

8:14

already done it he knew more than anyone

8:17

what was going on.

8:18

Headley in your podcasting work

8:20

you've gone from of course The Teacher's

8:23

Pet which you which we first started publishing in 2018 through

8:26

to your most recent investigation Shandy's

8:28

story which we we

8:30

started in 2021 I think and then he's

8:33

still going and you've really traversed

8:35

a wide spectrum of there being no

8:38

audio materials available and no

8:40

video really of Lin except

8:42

for a few fragments that you found to

8:45

in Shandy's case an absolute

8:47

wealth of material that

8:48

you managed to obtain. Tell me

8:50

about that richness of material

8:53

and how it helps guide your

8:55

journalistic choices when you're writing scripts

8:57

and producing the podcast. Yeah

9:00

I think that when you're trying

9:02

to work out what investigation

9:05

to take on

9:06

the material that might be available

9:09

is a really important guide

9:11

as to what you'll do next. If

9:14

you can't put your hands on

9:17

very good documentary materials

9:19

such as

9:20

trial transcripts or inquest transcripts

9:23

or witness statements all

9:25

of that written material and

9:27

you can't help convey

9:30

the person who has been murdered

9:33

or who has disappeared presumed murdered through

9:35

audio and video so it's

9:37

a lot more challenging because

9:40

all you'll have are the memories the

9:42

contemporary memories of people that you're interviewing

9:45

and when these cases might go back three

9:48

decades four decades in Lin's case those

9:50

memories

9:52

less reliable than what

9:54

they were at the time the witness statements were

9:56

taken at the time that people gave evidence

9:58

under oath so it's very important

10:00

for me when I'm working

10:03

out what to do to have that underpinning,

10:05

that base of material. Because,

10:08

I mean, we all come to these podcasts

10:10

with different objectives, but

10:12

I think for Dave and I and

10:14

Euchler, one of the overriding ones is

10:17

can this unsolved case potentially

10:20

be solved? And you can't, in

10:23

my view, come close to solving

10:26

the case unless you get really lucky without

10:28

generating a lot of public interest

10:31

in the story as it's unfolding. And

10:34

you can't generate a lot of public interest in the

10:36

story without the ballast, without

10:38

the material that you're relying on to tell

10:40

the story, without the documentary, without

10:43

the audio and video of the

10:45

victim that will, I

10:47

think, cause people to focus on who

10:49

we're talking about. There's a real person here.

10:52

And in Shandy's case, the

10:55

trove of material was unprecedented.

10:58

In my career, I've never seen that

11:00

kind of availability. Every witness

11:03

statement that the police took, every

11:05

interview that the police did, often interviews

11:08

with suspects who didn't know that they

11:10

were being recorded, even the audio

11:13

of the police walking down

11:15

Boddington Street in Mackay at

11:17

about three o'clock in the morning

11:19

to knock on the door of

11:22

a woman, Vicki Blackburn, and

11:24

tell her that her daughter has been

11:27

stabbed to death just down the road.

11:30

That

11:31

was recorded by the police with a

11:34

device that they wear and it's

11:36

routine that they do this. And all of

11:38

that audio goes into the inquest,

11:41

into trial and committal proceedings and so on.

11:44

And it was provided

11:46

with Vicki's blessing

11:47

for this podcast, Shandy's

11:50

story. And I think that

11:52

it was the availability and the rawness

11:55

of that material that really

11:58

propelled the podcast.

11:59

forward and helped us get

12:02

to where we got to which was a

12:04

incredible finding about

12:07

the failure of the DNA testing laboratory

12:10

and ultimately a commission of inquiry

12:12

that continued for about six months

12:14

of last year and delivered damning

12:16

findings that will

12:19

with the recommendations that have been introduced

12:22

lead to a revolution in how crime

12:24

scenes are being processed and

12:27

DNA is being tested in Queensland.

12:29

Dave, your bread and butter is

12:31

crime. Every morning when I'm in news conference

12:33

my heart sinks for poor Dave when some crime has

12:36

happened it's like oh wouldn't it need to get Dave onto that.

12:38

I know Dave is working on big investigations

12:40

and huge stories but suddenly he has to jump

12:43

into crime of the day.

12:44

Is it a frustration

12:47

of the crime journal that you know that all that

12:49

material like in Shandi's case is there

12:52

but often you can't get it.

12:54

Yeah look it's kind of that's why

12:57

only certain cases really lend themselves

12:59

to podcasts because you need as

13:01

headless to subscribe so much material to

13:03

support these lengthy investigations

13:07

but you know almost every story you can start

13:09

with nothing and you have to find a way

13:11

to actually get into that story and in

13:13

a national newspaper like the Australian it's not going to be

13:16

necessarily in your backyard it's going to be anywhere

13:18

in the country but you just have to find

13:20

a way to find out what's going on and

13:22

whether the police won't talk to you

13:25

then you know usually someone else

13:27

will.

13:27

You've recently stepped into and really

13:30

you've got the wind in your sails on a story that

13:32

had been the subject of a podcast The Lady

13:34

Vanishes but you knew that

13:36

there was more to be done on that story. How

13:39

did you know that the disappearance of Marion

13:41

Barta was still a story that

13:43

was more to investigate there?

13:44

Marion's disappearance was

13:47

something that I wrote about four years ago when the

13:50

Channel 7 podcast The Lady Vanishes was first

13:52

launching and this

13:54

year you know got a message on a weekend saying look

13:57

could you have a look at this again and I did and

13:59

I I think I didn't expect to take

14:01

a deep dive into it at that point. I

14:04

wrote a story for that for the paper

14:06

and a couple of days later and it didn't quite

14:08

get the run that I was kind of hoping it would. But

14:11

I kind of immediately said, well, that's all right. That's

14:13

good, because now we can we can do a bigger kind

14:15

of feature for the weekend. And so that's what

14:17

happened. I did a feature in the acquirer

14:19

section for that weekend. And it just really

14:22

took off from there for me because

14:25

this is such an incredible story. And the thing

14:27

about Marion's disappearance is that it is only

14:30

where it is today because of

14:33

the sheer determination, the dedication

14:35

of her daughter, Sally, to find

14:38

her and media organisations

14:41

putting the resources into researching

14:44

that case and then the public getting

14:46

on board and finding the most

14:48

incredible things that had been

14:50

missed. And there's many, many aspects

14:53

of the investigation into Marion's

14:55

disappearance that are just a failure. Like

14:57

this would not be where they are today without all

14:59

those other elements coming together. So

15:02

it shows what can be done if you

15:04

have the right circumstances, media get involved. Often

15:07

police won't want you involved. You

15:09

know, it could be potentially they find they

15:11

might think that you're going to interfere with their investigation

15:14

or they might be worried about being embarrassed could be any

15:16

number of reasons.

15:17

That power of

15:19

the audience that Dave has spoken

15:21

about about has been a big part of

15:24

projects like the teachers, pet headily, immense

15:27

audience engagement, of course, which makes it possible

15:29

for us to do this kind of journalism.

15:31

But also journalism is now

15:34

a two way street, right? You're getting information

15:36

from the audience in real time.

15:38

And that was crucial

15:41

to the momentum that the teachers,

15:43

pet developed during 2018.

15:47

We were releasing a weekly

15:49

episode and and I thought

15:51

that they might end up being eight

15:54

episodes. It ended up being 16. And

15:57

the reason was

15:58

when the series started. It started

16:02

when it was incomplete. I hadn't

16:05

written eight episodes.

16:08

I hadn't done all the interviews. I didn't have the material

16:10

to support eight episodes. I had

16:12

written in draft

16:14

form four episodes and

16:17

they were ready to go and most of the and most

16:19

of those episodes had been built by Slade Gibson,

16:21

the audio engineer, absolute

16:24

champion bloke. If

16:27

I had done The Teacher's Pet in

16:29

a conventional way, I would have written

16:32

and Slade would have built all

16:34

eight episodes before we released

16:37

episode one because they're weekly episodes

16:39

and lots can go

16:41

wrong, big legal risks.

16:43

You can't just wing these things

16:46

but we decided to wing it

16:49

after.

16:50

Why did you decide to wing it? I

16:53

was just impatient to start releasing

16:55

it. I wanted it to go out. I knew it was such an important

16:57

story and I thought it

17:00

could take me another three or four weeks to finish

17:02

writing the other 30 or 40 thousand

17:04

words I've got to do for the other episodes.

17:08

I just thought I'll be able to handle this

17:10

because we've

17:12

got these first three or

17:14

four pretty much done and

17:17

when the first one goes out, I'll

17:20

just be working on episode four or five

17:22

and then the second one goes out, I'll be on the next one

17:24

and it'll be alright. Of

17:27

course there's the deluge of information

17:30

that starts coming in. We've suddenly

17:32

ripped the band-aid off this story, off

17:34

this case that had

17:37

haunted many people who knew Lin,

17:40

who knew a number of the students from

17:42

those high schools, particularly Cromer High, people

17:45

who had grown up on the northern beaches,

17:47

the children

17:49

of students

17:51

of those schools who had been

17:53

raised with their parents telling them about

17:55

this case, about this teacher

17:58

who they were sure had killed.

17:59

killed his wife and buried her under

18:02

the tennis court or the

18:05

school's library. There

18:07

were all these different rumours about where Pauline's

18:10

remains were buried, but nobody was

18:12

in any doubt that she'd been killed. And

18:14

it was like this extraordinary community

18:18

knowledge that had never been properly

18:21

developed or properly investigated

18:24

by police. I should add that

18:27

it was well investigated by Damien

18:29

Loon over a number of years, but

18:32

in the early years it was not investigated

18:34

well at all by police.

18:35

Next Friday, Christopher Michael

18:38

Dawson is back in court. We've

18:40

all spent lots of time in courtrooms. Dave,

18:42

I think you've spent the highest number

18:44

of days in a court looking right at

18:46

Chris Dawson. This is sentencing

18:49

submissions for his conviction

18:51

for unlawful, carnal knowledge of

18:54

a schoolgirl. And then two

18:56

weeks later there'll be the actual

18:58

sentence. So the sentence submissions, Dave,

19:01

tell us what you're expecting from that hearing.

19:03

And yes, that does mean I do want you to come

19:05

down. Yeah,

19:07

and Claire drove our coverage of

19:09

that carnal knowledge trial and

19:12

made sure we're all together covering that. Look,

19:15

I expect Chris Dawson will probably roll out

19:18

every reason under the sun for why he

19:20

shouldn't get a tougher sentence

19:22

or something that's at the end of the tougher scale. Will

19:25

it make much difference either way what the sentence

19:27

is? I mean, he's not getting out of prison due

19:29

to the murder conviction unless he somehow

19:32

manages to overturn a very

19:34

seasoned judge's very well considered

19:37

conviction of him. But look,

19:39

I think regardless of what the sentence is, I think the

19:41

actual conviction would have been so important

19:43

to the victim in that

19:45

case who went, got to give her

19:48

credit, she went and gave evidence during

19:50

a very intense murder trial with

19:52

all the attention that was on it, with all the kind

19:55

of pressure that was put on her. But she wanted

19:57

her,

19:57

what happened to her, to be.

19:59

in a courtroom and she followed

20:02

that through and again our judge looked

20:04

at that and said yeah he did at his duty.

20:06

I've covered a lot of sexual

20:08

assault trials as have you guys

20:10

and this was the first one that I'd sat in

20:12

where the benefit of legislative

20:15

reform to protect victims I

20:17

really saw it when the complainant

20:19

was giving evidence she didn't have

20:21

to be in the same room as the accused

20:24

she didn't have to look at him

20:26

she didn't even have to look at us or

20:30

any members of the public so members of the public were asked

20:32

to leave the courtroom we

20:33

were asked to move into the jury box so

20:36

that she couldn't see us of course this was a

20:38

this was a judge alone trial it was

20:40

quite remarkable wasn't it that in

20:43

I think a pretty short space of time we've seen

20:45

a huge leap in the way

20:47

complainants and victims are treated in courtrooms.

20:51

Adley in the years since you

20:53

made the teachers pet the metoo revolution

20:56

has happened has that changed the way you

20:58

have thought about these topics of grooming

21:01

of child sexual abuse of

21:02

you know this young woman's

21:05

story in relation to that? Yeah

21:08

in fact the Harvey Weinstein

21:10

scandal was actually unfolding

21:14

when I was going through

21:16

the research phase for the teachers pet in

21:18

late 2017 and I remember

21:20

driving out to the town of Miles

21:23

over the dividing range

21:25

past Toowoomba west of Toowoomba to meet a

21:28

former St. Ursula's college schoolgirl

21:31

who had seen Chris Dawson

21:33

grooming other girls at that school

21:35

years after he'd left the Northern

21:37

Beaches I mean it's

21:39

hard to believe isn't it that this man who

21:42

had done what he did at Cromer

21:44

High on the Northern Beaches moves to Queensland

21:47

having been accused by his second wife of

21:49

having murdered his first wife he ends

21:52

up teaching at an all-girls school

21:55

in Poon but that's what happened but

21:58

on that trip the Harvey Weinstein Weinstein

22:00

was, I remember listening to a documentary about

22:03

it on the way out there and on the way back

22:05

I remember it was Don Burke, the guy,

22:07

yeah, he was being accused of

22:09

misogyny and harassment

22:12

and so on. And it was all coming together

22:14

at that time. And I think that,

22:17

you know, the arguments that have

22:19

been playing out over recent

22:21

times that it has for

22:23

some people gone too far. Yeah

22:26

I think that those arguments possibly

22:28

have some force.

22:29

But right when I was in

22:32

the research phase and developing the teacher's

22:34

pet, those passions and the emotions

22:37

no doubt unleashed

22:39

a lot of the disclosures

22:42

from school students of the Northern Beaches

22:45

who talked to me about not

22:47

just what was going on at Cromer High, but

22:50

at their high schools, completely unrelated to

22:52

Chris Dawson. And many

22:54

other women from around

22:57

the Australian, around the world. One

22:59

of the challenges that I had after

23:01

Chris Dawson was charged was

23:04

meeting the demands of

23:06

the defence legal team. They

23:08

wanted

23:09

not just all of my interviews or

23:11

my audio, they wanted all of the

23:14

emails that I had received, unsolicited

23:16

emails from listeners, hundreds

23:19

and hundreds of emails from listeners

23:21

who believed that this case

23:24

had special touchstones for

23:26

them in their lives and gave them

23:28

an opportunity to express

23:31

sometimes for the first time what

23:34

had happened to them in sexual assault,

23:36

in a rape. And they were disclosing

23:38

these things in the emails which

23:40

I was then being told I had to hand over.

23:43

Completely irrelevant to Chris

23:45

Dawson's murder case. I had

23:48

to take advice on what we

23:50

could redact and what we could

23:53

avoid handing over. I've never had

23:55

that kind of reaction in terms

23:58

of people sharing.

23:59

their experiences and I think

24:02

that was partly because of Lynn's story

24:05

and the way that people identified

24:07

with what happened to her and partly because

24:09

of the time.

24:10

I mean that is me too

24:12

right that that is people saying this

24:14

happened to me too you know and I think

24:17

we've all got a fluency in

24:19

the language of this. Dave I

24:21

was interested during the the

24:24

carnal knowledge trial that we heard the complainant

24:26

say in fact she'd said it during the murder

24:28

trial I was groomed I

24:30

was I was being groomed by a pedophile.

24:34

Yeah she clearly reflected on those events

24:36

you know for a long time and the

24:39

damage that it

24:40

inflicted on her was just so obvious

24:42

when we were sitting in the court and watching

24:44

her give evidence. I mean she when she

24:46

gave her first police statement in 1990 she was in

24:49

her mid-20s and you don't

24:51

see in that first police statement that

24:54

flavor of I was groomed I

24:56

was a victim of this or that.

24:58

I don't think that was even a word that were

25:01

used in 1994. And

25:03

then she gives a second police statement in 1998

25:06

so

25:08

she's another eight years older and

25:11

again she's quite selflessly

25:13

talking more about what happened

25:16

to Lynn and Chris Dawson's

25:18

actions that she believed were

25:22

deeply suspicious and

25:24

likely connected to his murder of Lynn. And

25:27

I think that we've all been on a journey in terms of

25:29

understanding grooming and and

25:31

the impacts of it and that's why

25:33

when we get to 2022 and the murder trial

25:39

2023 and June this year and the carnal

25:41

knowledge trial the evidence

25:44

of people like Chris

25:46

Dawson's accuser is calling

25:48

out the fact that she was

25:51

groomed and she uses that word repeatedly

25:53

and she's clearly become very knowledgeable

25:56

about

25:58

the process and what happened to her. and

26:00

you hear a sort of a righteous anger in

26:03

her because her life she believed

26:05

had been destroyed by his

26:08

conduct, his very selfish conduct. By

26:10

the time of that second statement she was also

26:12

a mother of a teenage girl. So

26:15

I think many of us have had that

26:17

experience as a parent of

26:20

seeing your child grow up and realising that

26:22

this is still a child. I don't want to put words

26:24

in her mouth but I imagine part of it might have

26:27

been realising that at 15 when

26:29

she met him

26:30

she was a child still. Maybe

26:33

being able to let go of a little bit of the idea

26:35

that she had that she was a willing participant

26:38

or that she wanted this to be happening. Coming

26:41

up after the break, more from Claire Harby's conversation

26:43

with National Chief Correspondent Headley Thomas

26:46

and National Crime Correspondent David Murray.

26:57

Please ask us some questions. We've

26:59

got a roving microphone which will come to you. I'm

27:02

just curious because there's probably no shortage

27:05

of shocking behaviour especially when

27:07

I was young. It was pretty bad.

27:10

How do you choose a good story?

27:14

What are the ingredients? I

27:17

think partly it's

27:20

instinct. You just sometimes

27:22

have an instinctive sense of

27:27

what could be solvable and

27:30

also compelling. I

27:33

rely on just that kind of instinct

27:35

quite a lot that sense you sometimes

27:37

get because it's often right, usually

27:40

right. I

27:42

think that

27:44

if the story affects me

27:47

when I first start reading about it, when

27:49

I first start looking at it, if I

27:51

feel

27:52

moved by it then

27:56

I'm going to be a much better storyteller

27:59

as well.

27:59

going to be more committed to it. If

28:02

I don't care as much about the story,

28:04

even after reading a

28:06

hundred pages and getting right into it, I just

28:08

can't develop

28:11

sympathy because it might be the

28:13

victim might actually be a

28:15

drug dealing criminal

28:18

who has been murdered. Now

28:21

there's a place of course for a podcast

28:23

about that, but for me, I won't prioritize that. There

28:25

are too many completely

28:28

blameless, innocent, murdered

28:31

women and mothers who

28:33

I think deserve our attention before

28:36

that. So I feel I need to

28:39

be connected and

28:41

almost

28:42

moved by that. And then I want

28:45

to know that there is the material underpinning

28:47

it that will allow me to get my

28:49

teeth into it properly and really,

28:52

really give it a good shake and possibly

28:54

make that difference.

28:55

Dave, one of the wonderful things

28:57

about doing journalism in 2023 is that we

28:59

have a lot of analytics at our disposal.

29:01

You know, once upon a time we would put a story in the

29:03

paper and we wouldn't know how many

29:06

of the papers, subscribers or purchases

29:08

had actually read that particular story. Now

29:11

we know down to the smallest click,

29:13

we know what they click on next. We know where they came

29:15

from before they clicked on that. What

29:17

do you find with all the stories that you write

29:20

is something that makes a particular

29:23

crime story resonate?

29:25

Yeah, look, it's

29:28

weird, isn't it? Some things just take

29:30

off in ways that others don't.

29:33

Like I'm thinking of our coverage

29:35

of Alison Baden-Clay who

29:37

went missing here in Brisbane 11 years ago

29:40

now for 10 days and before

29:42

she was found, her body was found quite

29:45

a way away from her home and she'd of course been murdered

29:47

by her husband with that, but that just completely captured

29:50

this city. So I think it's, Headley's

29:52

talking about he's got to be able to relate. I

29:54

think it's what

29:55

the audience, what our readers, what they can

29:57

relate to as well, they have to be able to relate

29:59

to those. stories.

30:00

What about when there's a story that doesn't

30:02

catch fire in the way that you might hope?

30:05

I'm thinking not that this is any criticism

30:07

of your journalism but you've done some amazing reporting

30:09

about the lady who's potentially

30:11

had fallen into a rubbish bin and whose body might

30:14

have ended up in at the tip of the police investigating

30:16

here in Brisbane. I'm an outsider

30:18

of course. Has that story caught

30:20

fire here in Brisbane? Well

30:22

look that's probably the first thing people

30:25

will ask me about in my community. It certainly

30:27

has amongst people that I know. This

30:30

is Brisbane's leafy western

30:32

suburbs we're talking about and you don't

30:34

get a lot of events like that happen.

30:37

So when they do think Alison's murder

30:39

was one of the last big kind of mysteries that

30:41

the western suburbs police detectives

30:44

had really worked on. So there is a lot of

30:46

interest here whether there is nationally,

30:49

I'm not sure but I think there should be because

30:51

a woman doesn't just end up in

30:54

a wheelie being dead and then

30:56

we kind of all just move on. I was

30:59

really taken by that story. I actually just

31:01

wanted to know what's going on here so I would just

31:04

go after work, before work,

31:06

my way to the office I just go and just sit outside the

31:09

house and for quite a number of days

31:11

and just talk to people as they came and

31:13

went from the apartments and they told me

31:15

a lot about what was happening in that area.

31:18

These feuds that had been going on I

31:20

ran across this guy who was picking through all the rubbish

31:22

and getting all the 10 cent containers

31:25

out and he said yeah he'd been chased down the street by

31:27

a woman matching her description not

31:29

long before her death and then

31:31

of course they told me about the neighbour who she

31:33

had been in a dispute with and

31:35

eventually he ran into him

31:38

outside the house one day and approached him and he

31:40

said I'll have a think about whether I'll talk to you and

31:43

then he did he just he rang and said I'm

31:45

ready to talk to you now so I sat down with him and heard

31:47

that story so I think that's an important story.

31:49

That was a remarkable piece of journalism and

31:51

to get him to talk to you you made a

31:53

great video with him and very

31:56

compelling to have him to be able to hear

31:58

his voice.

31:59

calculus in your head about

32:02

this man's willingness to speak to you,

32:04

your obligation as a journo

32:06

to make sure that he knew that he was

32:09

in some ways exposing himself to the

32:10

public judgment. Well

32:12

he spoke to me he said he wanted to basically

32:15

just be as open with

32:17

me as he had been with the police and you know his approach

32:20

was well look here's a guy he doesn't

32:22

even have a lawyer he's sitting down time and time

32:24

again with the police yet when he goes out

32:26

into the street he'll have people who

32:29

will say things to him and he's not sure

32:31

if it relates to the death of this

32:33

woman his neighbour and so how

32:36

he put it to me was the reason that he was speaking

32:38

to me was to just lay out the facts

32:41

and and he wanted to say look I just want

32:43

people to know I'm not involved in that regardless

32:46

of what was going on between me and her but you

32:48

know it's a complicated story because you've got two

32:50

very very different versions of events

32:52

depending on which side you talk to and

32:55

emotions are high in that story from

32:58

her family who have a certain view

33:00

about things it's a it's a real juggler

33:02

you got to try to treat people fairly you know

33:04

there's certain things about that that could have you know

33:06

if you just run without thinking it it can be

33:08

misinterpreted and that's

33:10

very easy to do as a journalist but you know that's

33:13

not really why we're here we're trying to get to the truth

33:15

of things it's not that the kind

33:17

of solid journalism that I like to do

33:20

someone of you's got a question Headley,

33:23

Doug Disher, I was interested

33:25

in I'm curious about what you said

33:27

earlier on about the police

33:30

and of course courts and the

33:32

police and journalists they're all after

33:35

one thing which is I guess the truth and

33:38

yet there seems to be an adversarial relationship

33:41

between the journalist and

33:43

the policeman

33:45

and I just wonder whether you've obviously given us some

33:47

thought over the years do you

33:50

see any solution to that

33:52

dreadful situation where you're working against

33:54

each other instead of towards the same goal

33:56

yeah I think it's a great question

34:01

Police, generally,

34:04

in my view, really don't like

34:07

podcasters like us coming

34:11

in and pulling files and

34:13

going over their own

34:16

work and possibly

34:18

getting information that

34:19

they missed, seeing

34:22

or finding witnesses that they

34:25

failed to identify, and then

34:27

maybe getting information that changes the

34:30

whole direction of a case. And

34:32

I think that just goes to professional

34:35

pride. And cops wouldn't be used

34:37

to it either. Before long-form

34:39

podcast journalism, of course

34:42

investigative journalism could deal

34:44

with a lot of these cases, but not to

34:46

the level that we deal with it now. If

34:49

you're doing 16 or 20 episodes,

34:51

as Shandy's story was, you're

34:54

doing about the

34:56

equivalent of, well 20 episodes would have been more

34:58

than 200,000 words. That's

35:01

two large books. That's

35:03

how much information is being developed

35:06

for a podcast series in a series like

35:08

Shandy's story.

35:09

And that means you really dive deep. So

35:13

cops are

35:15

wary, they're cautious, sometimes

35:18

they'll even run interference. In

35:21

The Teacher's Pet, they didn't want to have anything

35:23

to do with what I was doing. They

35:26

were doing their own cold case investigation

35:28

at the same time. Lynn's family

35:31

said, we don't expect anything to come of it because

35:34

they do this periodically and we

35:37

want you to do this podcast investigation

35:40

because we don't know that

35:42

anything's going to change. And

35:45

it got to a point where I was becoming concerned.

35:48

I was so busy trying to produce the episodes,

35:50

but so much material was coming in from people I

35:52

didn't know that I

35:54

was worried leads that were coming

35:57

to me.

35:58

Important information that I thought needed. to be

36:00

developed could fall between the cracks. And

36:03

I reached out via

36:06

a friend of mine, Ben Fordham, who'd become

36:09

very invested in the case as a broadcaster

36:11

at the 2GB.

36:12

In fact, he asked me, well, what are you talking

36:15

to the police about some of these leads and things?

36:18

And I said, mate, they don't want to have anything to do with it. Anyway,

36:20

Ben organised a meeting with the police

36:22

commissioner and I

36:25

met him and his senior advisor

36:27

and Ben and we worked out a protocol

36:30

where I was then

36:31

giving

36:33

to his lead detective on the case

36:36

information with the consent of the

36:38

informants. I was giving him audio

36:40

files that he requested. I was giving him contact

36:42

details for people who said they knew things. And

36:45

it was a really effective partnership. Now

36:48

that is how it should work. And yet

36:51

that was severely criticised when

36:54

there was a stay proceeding brought by

36:56

Chris Dawson. He sought a permanent stay

36:58

of the whole case, meaning the termination

37:01

of the prosecution proceeding. And

37:04

there was criticism of the fact that

37:06

the police commissioner and I

37:09

had worked out this arrangement. So

37:13

will it change? Will there be some

37:15

better way of sharing

37:17

this information, of working in tandem? I'm

37:21

not sure. I think journalists have

37:23

to maintain their independence. But there are also

37:25

opportunities for journalists such as when

37:27

I was doing the teacher's pet to say, I

37:29

can't actually manage all this material. And

37:32

some of it with all of your powers, you

37:34

can tap phones, you can execute

37:36

warrants, you can get a much better use of this

37:40

lead that I can. And we're all

37:42

on the same page. We all want to see this case

37:44

solved. That should happen more

37:46

often. So

37:48

I hope that it does. But

37:50

I don't

37:52

know that it's going to be irregular.

37:55

I think many cops will just continue

37:58

to want to just...

38:00

ignore us and do

38:03

it their own way.

38:05

After Chris Dawson was convicted,

38:07

Dave spoke to the Police Commissioner Mick

38:09

Fuller

38:10

and he told

38:13

Dave that

38:14

he'd never seen anything like the podcast

38:17

in terms of a crime-fighting

38:19

tool. He described it as,

38:22

and he wasn't particularly talking about the

38:24

teachers but he was talking about podcasts generally

38:26

in this genre, true crime, deep

38:29

diving podcasts that capture the public's

38:32

imagination that get engagement and he told

38:34

Dave that it was the most

38:36

effective crime-fighting tool

38:39

he'd ever seen in his police career. The

38:41

course of the level of public

38:43

engagement that is generated from it. Yeah

38:47

I think it was a really good question too. A detective,

38:49

very experienced detective recently

38:51

said to me, look I'm happy to give you this information,

38:54

I want people to know this because if

38:57

they don't they then they kind of assume that we

38:59

don't need any more help, we've got that covered,

39:02

we don't need the public to come forward with information so

39:04

I wish there was more like that. The fact is

39:06

that police run some fantastic

39:08

investigations and they run some absolute shockers,

39:11

like some are so bad, so

39:13

lackadaisical, amateurish

39:16

that you think this is terrible,

39:19

how did the victim in this case,

39:21

their family, ever stand a chance

39:24

with the way this investigation

39:26

was run? But

39:28

as I say, others are a grade and

39:31

you know there's not one, probably a bit like

39:33

journalism, right, some great journalism and some

39:35

really poor journalism. But I think what's

39:38

happening in our podcast is people are getting

39:40

an insight into

39:42

the investigations

39:45

that police do and people who

39:47

have been affected by crime,

39:49

listening to podcasts about

39:52

another crime, they're

39:54

becoming much more aware of

39:57

what a kind of like a minimum standard

39:59

of professionalism should be. So

40:02

there's a great benefit there. The other, you know,

40:05

amazing benefit of these podcasts is

40:08

listeners, and I think particularly women, it might

40:10

explain why more women listen

40:12

to these podcasts,

40:14

is they're better

40:16

able to identify

40:19

danger, risk,

40:20

sociopathic characters,

40:23

potential partners, because they

40:26

listen to them in their podcast, they

40:28

hear them being profiled and they're

40:30

able to work it out, and so they can

40:33

be safer as a result

40:36

of listening to them. Let

40:36

me just before you ask that question, I just, we

40:39

have talked about some really heavy-duty stuff tonight.

40:42

As always, Lifeline is always available, 13,

40:45

11, 14, 1-800-RESPECT

40:47

is always available, so I don't really

40:49

mind if you think I'm naff for mentioning

40:51

it, but it's available. Firstly,

40:54

thank you in 2018 when

40:56

Teachers Pet started, we were living in Vietnam

40:58

and I was waiting with bated breath every week,

41:01

so thank you for getting them out,

41:03

as you did. I don't know whether or not

41:06

you can answer this or

41:08

not.

41:10

Being as close to it as you have

41:13

been, do you have the

41:16

gut feel that you spoke about as

41:18

to where perhaps

41:20

Lynne may be and how

41:23

many in the family

41:24

also know where she is? Getting

41:26

some really tough questions. For

41:29

some time, quite some time,

41:31

I believe that Lynne's

41:33

remains were on the

41:35

block up at Gilwinger Drive, or

41:37

very close to it,

41:39

and of course that was

41:41

thoroughly searched and turned out

41:44

that the areas that we were suspicious

41:46

of, she wasn't there. I think

41:49

that there's some potential

41:51

force in the theory that her

41:53

body was there for a while, and that's

41:56

why police found what they believed

41:58

was her cardigan, that her

41:59

had been cut multiple times

42:02

in what the police forensics officer said was consistent

42:04

with a violent stabbing.

42:07

I've been thinking a lot about this while writing

42:09

the book

42:10

because I've had to, and I've

42:13

been reminded of a number of leads that some

42:15

of which I developed in the podcast and some which just

42:17

passed me by. And lately I've

42:19

been thinking about Chris Dawson's

42:22

insistence right from the beginning

42:24

that Lynne had gone to the central coast.

42:27

We know that Chris drove

42:30

to the central coast, to southwest rocks,

42:33

within 24 to 48 hours of

42:36

Lynne disappearing because

42:38

he wanted to go and collect

42:41

his

42:42

teenage

42:44

girlfriend and install her

42:46

in the house immediately.

42:49

And Chris Dawson was very, very

42:52

mean with money, very controlling,

42:54

and had an obsessive

42:57

disorder which I think

43:00

meant that it would have appealed to him

43:02

to waste no money, no fuel

43:05

or

43:06

time

43:07

if his wife's body were rolled up

43:10

in a carpet in the Corona station

43:12

wagon and he disposed of

43:14

her remains

43:15

in a

43:16

rural area on the way

43:18

to southwest rocks. There's a lot of sandy ground

43:21

there, I've been there. So he

43:23

could have, as the prosecutor

43:25

described it, got out with the

43:28

old and in with the new in that

43:30

return trip to southwest rocks and

43:33

maybe when he talks about Lynne going to the

43:35

central coast, that's what he means.

43:38

She was going to the central coast.