Loose Units: The Podcast
The Fingerprint Genius - Part One
Today, John begins taking a two-part look at one of his most formative mentors in Scientific, through the lens of one of his most storied cases.
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- Broadcast on:
- 02 Sep 2024
- Audio Format:
- other
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I'm John Behoven and I was a cop back in the 80s in Sydney. And I'm Paul Behoven John's son. I'm an author and I wrote two books about dad's time as a cop. The first five seasons of Lucian had spanned my time in general duties, forensics. My time as a firefighter and even my stint running a funeral home. This season, we're visiting the locations of Australia's most notorious, baffling horrific crimes and looking at what happened there. From Snowtown to the family, from the Morehouse murders to haunted highways. This season of Lucianets is your go-to guide to the worst crimes in Australian true crime history. Welcome to Lucianets, the Shadow Files. Hello and welcome to Lucianets, the Shadow Files. Now for those of you who have minds like steel traps and who pay attention to all the different names of people that sort of cross our desk, our figurative desk here at Lucianets, dad has mentioned a couple of times a bit of a character called senior constable Barry Fay. Now Barry Fay did some writing for the Australian police journal and on the occasion of his retiring from the gig, they published his first article, they republished his first article back in the magazine. They did this on the 28th of August this year in fact, but the article itself was from back in 1976, which as you will know is before dad was on the force. But dad, I actually wanted to ask you just quickly on the subject of police retiring. I don't know if I've ever asked you this on the show before, but when you left the force, I know there's a bit of a cliche about, you know, retiring, getting a gold watch or whatever, but did you get any kind of like, what happened when you quit the force? Did you get any formal retirement-ish moment or did you just kind of sneak out the back? Good question. The year that I left the New South Wales police force, they were losing when I don't know what the stats are today, but approximately 150 police officers per month were pulling the pin. Right. And it was a terrible drain in terms of expertise, when you consider that the New South Wales police force spends so much money, training officers. So in terms of general duties, you've got the experience factor, which is also very, very important, but when you send officers, as in my case, to study and become competent in various fields within the service, for me it was the air wing, scientific fingerprints, yep, and other sections. Okay. Julian and Dave and a couple of my absolute stalwart friends, chums, that I used to hang out with all the time, they had all gone on to become detectives at North Sydney. And for a while, I considered going back to that, but for those listeners that are, as you made reference to at the beginning, who are very, very astute and keen observers of past episodes, they may recall certain things that happened to me whilst being accepted into plainclothes training, involving the theft at a particular job by detectives. And I sort of took, I took the moral high ground, so funny, and decided on them from a moral principle not to join these corrupt detectives. That's not to say that all detectives were corrupt, of course. So, you know, I'm just sort of thinking, what happened to me, and I remember the day that I left the force. Oh, really? Yeah, I remember, I can tell you what time it was, I can tell you the weather. I can tell you, I can show you exactly when you next come to Sydney where it happened. And I can tell you what direction I turned when I walked out of the building. So it was a momentous occasion, but what happened, I did what was called an exit interview. And unfortunately, I forgo, for went for, for whatever the truth, I decided, because one does not like to burn one's bridges. So my, I guess I'd discussed this, obviously very deeply. And for a long time with Christine, your kids were, you know, you were Paul, you know, maybe seven, seven or eight. Yeah. There was a big thing to do. So you've got two choices. I mean, the exit of the interview process is one where they want to find out why you're leaving so they can, you know, figure out what they're doing wrong. Well, they don't want to, if you, you're not going to say, well, I have lots of dirt on you. And I need to be able to tell the press about this. So I, I, you know, sort of, yeah, but you know, they had this, I've mentioned it before that pretty well in every police station in, that I've ever been into, that I had ever been into worked in, in every urinal of every police station, they had that as TJF, a graffitied in all the mail toilets, which meant the jobs fucked. That was a common, common term. I did the jobs fucked. I didn't, I didn't know that. Yeah, it was everywhere. Right. It was graffitied in police shit houses. So the things were not good. But I sort of foolishly, you know, decided to make it all sound very lovely and there wasn't their fault. I was very positive because I thought in the back of my mind, you know what, John, you may one day want to come back. I never did. And I guess one could then argue that I should have been more honest, not in terms of the bad things I'd seen, Paul, but just management, you know, the shift systems, which have all changed, of course, for the better. There were so many problems. So I didn't give an open and frank exit interview. So that was a waste of time. But I loved chemistry in high school. One of the things I loved about chemistry was that I got to build my own chemistry kit. So I've always loved kits. And I had first aid kits. You know, when I was doing this in John's ambulance, when I was a cadet, you know, my parents would carry a well-stocked first aid kit that we got to use twice in anger, the, in anger meaning for real. It's gnashing on someone's head or anything. You know, okay. No, no. But, you know, it was, I just loved the whole concept of kit. And then eventually when I decided to apply to join the central fingerprint bureau, which was based in Liverpool Street, Sydney, in the Remington building, I, I just, I remember I went through my training and then they presented each one of us. It was a small class. There were three of us with our own fingerprint kit. Oh, it was just, you know, I took it home and I, I just, I loved it. It was something tangible. I knew I could have absolutely sort of be sort of a caked crusader in a way and solve real crimes. And I just sort of set about. But one of the, one of my mentors was at the time, you mentioned senior comes to, well, Barry Fay, he was a senior comes to, when he wrote this, his first article in 76, but he was then a sergeant and highly regarded and the fingerprint expert. But one could say he was one of the greatest fingerprint experts, definitely in Australia. And, and he really liked me. And my father, because Barry was connected with the Australian Police Journal and my dad did a lot of proofreading and editing of some of the great stories in the Australian Police Journal and built up a bit of a relationship with, with Barry. Now Barry's just retired, as you mentioned, and the Australian Police Journal have as homage to Barry, they've reprinted his first story that he wrote as a senior comes to, and it's in relation to a, and it's a murder poll that, and we have discussed that our live shows the mutilator. And it took place in virtually the same location, the same park, which again, I'll show you, it's near Sydney University. Is this a particularly crime prone area? Yeah, it, it looked historically, I'm sure we could do quite a few episodes on the park, because it's got lots of things. It's in a, look, parks are great, parks have got trees, they've got water. This one's got pool, like a big swimming pool. Now swimming pools, particularly in summer, are going to attract, but not exclusively, they will definitely attract pedophiles. There's no, there's no doubt about it. People are drawn to various sort of locations where they can commit their, their crimes. But on this fateful day, it was late in the afternoon on the 16th of February, 1970, a telephonist at the Fairfax newspaper, which, which, yeah, telephonist. Oh, for facts, isn't joking. Yeah, I didn't. Oh, John Fairfax, and so I was, I was joking, I was joking. Oh, okay, good. So, um, opposite, uh, the park, yeah, where this particular offence takes place is the headquarters for the Sydney Morning Herald, which is one of the big newspapers in Australia. A telephonist gets a phone call from a very softly spoken male person. Okay. He basically says to her that, you know, I've got some information. Um, you know, I'd like to report a crime. Yep. And she puts him on to sort of, to the newsroom, and he gets to speak to a, quite a junior person, and he's explaining that, you know, there's going, there's a body. Um, something terrible has happened with this particular person. Within 20 minutes, the, uh, the newspaper have contacted Regent Street Police. Which is quickly, how does a, I'm very curious about this, how does a newspaper, for example, yeah, I'm not sure how much of a, I'm not sure how much of a, um, you know, big deal, this is now, but how does a newspaper discern whether a call like that is real or not? The information that was given to this particular person was relayed in a very calm manner. Um, they obviously made a decision that appeared. Remember it's 1970. That's a, it's a completely different world. Okay. The 70s. Utterly, Utterly, different times. That is, yeah. You know, we think of communication and chattering and, and, and, you know, the world of social media. It's, it's insane. But, but, you know, back in the 70s, they used to have, and I've made, I've made mention to this before, is that you'd be driving along any street in Australia, and you would see sort of bound between two sort of wire cages, a large caption of a headline, you know, representing a headline from the current newspaper. Be it. Yes. I, I've, I've seen the telegraph, the mirror, any of the big papers, the age, they would have these on, on the streets, they'd be leaning up against telegraph polls. That was a way of communicating news, like a miniature billboard, and they had to sort of replenish these. Um, no doubt someone's job back in the 70s was to drive along, you know, there would have been a few people, their sole job, they would have had a van full of these flyers. They were sometimes painted in red ink, they, the incredibly large font, maybe four or five lines on a, on a, and sort of a, these um, signs were about half the size of a, of a, of a bath towel. And you, and you just saw them everywhere, and there would be things like armed robbery. Now think about that. Can you imagine an armed robbery even getting a mention today in the cycle? Yeah. No, it's just, it's not, but back then, so they get this call, the person, the copy boy, um, does the right thing, contacts Regent Street police station. They sent out a couple of general duties police, uh, to, to the park. And they actually went to, now this person said that there was a body in a toilet, so clearly it's a public toilet. The local police know that, uh, you know, they'd know where all the public toilets are. They start searching. They come to a, a small building. By that time, the sun is, is, is really, really going down and they can, they're aware that the lights are on inside this particular locked building. They didn't force the door, but they lent against the door. And as the door pops open, there's a small hallway. There are four toilet cubicles. It's a ladies toilet. And at the end of the small hallway is a powder room. Now this particular sort of public toilet that's used for females, it's, it has a permanent during the day, sort of attendant, a lady. Her job is to maintain cleanliness, which is a really cool idea. It does not happen these days. No, I mean, I've been to a bunch of different, um, you got like a fancy restaurant or whatever. I really nice hotel in the States and they will have a bathroom attendant who, you know, had the hotel and, yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, when we were in Europe in 1970, the same year this story is going to unfold, we were in Germany. So it was my mum and dad and the four of us. Yep. And we were in a German village and there was a, what looked like a very highly ornamental decorative house with window decorations and, you know, frilly curtains. We went inside and it was actually a public toilet and at the back of the toilet was a private residence that you could see. Right. And that's a family that lived, but that was their business. Their job, they maintained the the pub. And of course it was like walking, seriously, Paul, Paul was like walking into a room in a private home and it was carpeted and it was very surreal. So this is sort of not quite to that level, but what they're confronted with is a woman. She has no underwear on. She has a bra that is sort of sort of been raised above her breasts. She has got her stockings have been used to strangle her. She has a two inch sort of section cut out of her breast. I'm unfortunately looking at the photos right now. Yeah. And yes. And she's also got a knife sticking out of her heart. The knife turns out to be the victim's knife and the police. Hate your crime fans. Tired of ads interrupting your gripping investigations? Good news. With Amazon music, you have access to the largest catalog of ad free top podcasts included with your prime membership. After all, ads shouldn't be the scariest thing about true crime. To start listening, download the Amazon music app for free or go to amazon.com/adfree true crime. That's amazon.com/adfree true crime to catch up on the latest episodes without the ads. Hey, I'm Ryan Reynolds. At Mint Mobile, we like to do the opposite of what Big Wireless does. They charge you a lot. We charge you a little. So naturally, when they announced they'd be raising their prices due to inflation, we decided to deflate our prices due to not hating you. That's right. We're cutting the price of Mint Unlimited from $30 a month to just $15 a month. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. $45 up from payment equivalent to $15 per month. New customers on first three month plan only, taxes and fees extra, speeds lower above 40 gigabytes detail. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. Try it at progressive.com. Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates. Price and coverage match limited by state law, not available in all states. I confronted with this horrendous scene. They engage the detectives very early on. They get there are a few witnesses that one lady in particular believes that she'd actually seen the offender. Paul, if you have a look, it's a very interesting sort of aside to this story, is that they did an identity sort of drawing with a police artist and they come up with this extraordinary sort of drawing of a person. Next to that drawing is an almost identical person. You can see the person that turns out that that person that they did the drawing of was in fact a detective at the scene. So a witness has seen the detectives, got a little bit confused at the time. Oh my god. In essence, she's actually described in minute detail as the offender. That's a detective. How often does that happen? I've never heard of that. I've never heard of that, but having said that, I mean, because I keep thinking about the suggestibility of people, but also it's so hard to get all this stuff right, especially when there's man. That's an incredible likeness. It really is, but at the same time, that's very unfortunate. Well, if I was that detective, I'd be shitting myself for a little while. Okay, so we have discussed in the past the problem and a crime scene has to be preserved. It's a public toilet with four cubicles, powder room. It's going to be frequented by a lot of people, mainly women, of course. So they get in touch with the Central Fingerprint Bureau and who do they call? Barry Fay. They call Barry. Barry gets there. Barry is. Just quickly, Dad, as far as the Barry of it all is concerned, in the, in electric blue, I took a composite of different people that you described in forensics. And I turned them into a new character who was essentially a cross between John Pertwee's Doctor from Doctor Who and Doc Emmett Brown from Back to the Future. Because I can't actually, I'm not allowed to describe these specifics of certain people, so I'm allowed to create certain people. So what I'm saying is Barry Fay is probably the closest the closest sort of analog to Gray, if you're a fan of electric blue, this is kind of him, kind of, right? Like a guy in Scientific who is extremely charismatic and strange and well-liked and has a real, yeah, okay, great. That's really good to know. So for those of you who've read electric blue, just picture Gray while we're talking about Barry. Yep, Barry, you know, would have been in playing clothes. He would have come along. He would have driven himself. He could see each, you know, fingerprint person had a car, generally a station wagon, because they had a family gear in the back. He more than likely would have rocked up by himself. He's confronted with a scene. It's relatively sort of, it hasn't been tainted. Is it normal for a person to rock up to the, I was under the assumption police, no matter what department, would always have somebody with them? So, no, not fingerprints. I did so many. I remember that incredible one with the, the hostel with the guy, the attempted rape. You know what's funny is I, I mean, I wrote about that story and yet I remembered, surely there was someone else there for that one. No, no, I was on my own. Oh, that's okay. So, hang on. I would assume that the bigger the case, the more, not necessarily, not with fingerprints. Forensic some scientific back then. It was generally one person. If someone was in training, like when I was in training in forensics, clearly to people. But, you know, there's no, there's no need. It's good to be sort of a lone wolf, if you like, walking amongst it. What you're trying to do, what Barry says quite clearly, and has said over the years, and I know this because this is what, and I talk about this to everyone I can get a chance to talk to even today, is that one's objective in, when you're in forensics, fingerprints, crime scene investigator, is to go to a crime, preferably have it nice and quiet, which generally it probably would be, to say to the other police, look, okay, no one's to come in, you go in, body in situ, then you begin to analyze and get into the head of the, the assailant. It's important, because particularly in fingerprints, you need to hypothesize, you need to imagine, you need to be very creative in terms of almost creating a sort of a ghost-like figure with your vivid imagination, and go through the process of what happened to this particular woman, how did she end up from being a living sentient being, to being abused and murdered, she's on the floor, and then very importantly from a fingerprint technicians perspective is what may the offender have touched, super important. Oh, so you kind of chart their headspace, you can go, well, they may have come in here and then put something down, then ah-ha, fingerprints where they arrested there, whatever, it's like a, you're trying to paint a picture, and the best way to do that is to walk through the steps, get in their heads. Yes, now she's found in the powder room, she's not even found in one of the cubicles, but the fingerprint, in this case Barry, what Barry does is he goes into every single cubicle, he dusts every surface, he has to do that, because what happens if, well, let's assume, and you can't really assume, but imagine it's one offender, yet it could have been two, could have been three, they have been incredible cases over the years where multiple offenders have committed terrible things upon one person, yeah. So, you know, it's possible that the offender may have gone into another cubicle, they may have gone to the toilet, they may have relieved themselves sexually, because at this particular scene there was no indication outwardly of a sexual assault, which is very interesting down the track, and all the person may have changed their clothes, they may have gone in, put a bag into one of the cubicles with a change of clothes, and as we're going to find out in next week's episode, Paul, this offender is a fucking deviant, this is, he is such a psychopath, and I'm really excited by the prospect of this, because I've, you want this to go over two weeks, I want it to go over two weeks, I want to show you, that's fantastic, I also think that Barry deserves a two-parto, frankly, so that's very important. There's so much, there's such a build up to this case, it's, there are some things that are going to happen that we'll talk about next week that quite frankly are so bizarre, almost some of the parts of this story are the sort of things that you would see in a black comedy, it's so, some of the things, you know, there's such thing as serendipity, as we all know, and I'm really excited about this story, and I really want to sort of let it just boil or come to the boil slowly, and I think it's worthy, it's sort of homage to Barry even though Barry's still alive, homage to my father who's deceased, because Barry and my father, you know, kept in close contact and Barry actually sent my data, made inefficient, and quite costly, and beautiful pen, which is very appropriate, you know, for the sort of work that Barry did being a writer and my father being an editor and proofreader. I mean, when you got your dad, did you get your dad, you got your dad, the gig, the, the political, right? Yes, I did. So, did it change his perspective, because writing books about you has changed my perspective and understanding of what you did, it's changed my understanding of you as a person, and it's changed my understanding of law enforcement. I was very curious as to whether, because I know that initially, I was called a hank, grandpa didn't, the family didn't really approve of your move into the police force. No, they didn't. So, I'm, I find it so interesting that your dad then ended up writing for the police journal, did it change his perspective on you as a person and what you did? That's a great question, and that is a question that will forever remain unanswered, because dad and I never, never discussed that. But he actually, they used to give him every quarter, a colour addition of the Australian police journal. And when my father, just before he passed away, he, he gave me his, his collection, because weirdly, for some reason or after I left the police, I, I don't know what happened. I just, I didn't get the magazines and, and they are a restricted publication. And my father had a trove of these. I mean, he edited my father proofread for Barry, some of the great stories, including the millpera bikie massacre, which is a, it's a ball terror. So I think my father had a respect, but, you know, my father certainly never enunciated the, with through words. Oh, yes, I'm very proud of you. I think that's one of the things about particularly modern day parenting is one of the, the positives is that you let your kids know how you're feeling. Yeah, that was not a thing, particularly between father and son to sort of be demonstrative. You know, it just, it just didn't happen. And I think that's very sad. Yeah, I, yeah. I couldn't agree more. I think part of the reason I like this show is because it does sort of create moments where we just have constant furthering of our understanding of each other and what we do. So I'm really very grateful for that. But I think as far as the John Hank Barry chain of, you know, stuff goes, I'm, I'm very, very, very excited to see where this case goes. But I think in terms of the, in terms of Barry entering the crime scene and seeing what he saw, where do you want to build to? This is me asking you, when do you, where you want to end this episode? Because we want to talk a bit more about the him entering the crime scene and stuff like that. Well, I think we've established the protocols of any crime scene, officer, investigator, interestingly, you know, people that do forensics, you know, the CSI, all that sort of stuff. Now they're not, they're not actually police in New South Wales. You know, they go to university and they, you know, clearly they get to experience a lot of, you know, fascinating things. But I think, you know, during the 1980s and, and, and before that, from my perspective, to get into any of these sections, you had to be a sworn constable. I guess one of the reasons at the time was that sometimes you were entering entering a crime scene, but it may have been an active crime scene. Okay. So I know that, you know, CSI officers, that they're not police. They, that, which means they're not sort of, they're not armed. I mean, there was that, that great story that we tell Paul, where I was investigating a particularly horrendous murder out west that involved a ball paint hammer. And we had to search the premises next door that happened to belong to a biokie gang. Yeah. And one of my colleagues ended up shooting their German Shepherd. Yes. As the German Shepherd was trying to kill us and I jumped over a fence in a single bound, like, not unlike Superman. I don't know how CSI would have gone in that situation. Right. Right. You know, what, what would you do? Yeah. I would not like to be mauled by a dog. So it's interesting the transition we've made. I don't know what the story is overseas. I'd be very curious to find out whether, you know, certain CSI divisions are still police. Yeah. With all the powers. But yeah. I think Paul, next week, it's going to get pretty dark because this, this person, I think we, we possibly should end with the opinion given by a leading psychiatrist at the time who said this particular person was a sexual predator and a deviant. And if he wasn't caught, he would kill a gang. And those words were proven to be correct. Jesus Christ. It's so, these photos are very difficult. Well, look, I know that what we did was primarily dwell on the, I mean, we didn't actually get to too much of the crime this week, but I'm really, really glad we sort of started building a, you know, a deeper picture of the context around it and also around Barry. And I always relish any chance to sort of explore father, son stuff, because frankly, it's, it's very important. And it's kind of the theme of the whole show. So, okay. Next week on loose units, the shadow files, we will get deeper into the actual crime itself. Part of the reason there is a slight reticence to do so is because I believe I'm looking, I mean, I've looked ahead at the case files and at the photos and whatnot. And once we do that, we're sort of on a very, very slippery slope. It just, it really takes off from there. So consider this week's episode the setup for that. Also, I am still kind of remarkably sick, but also I'm dad and I've had a bunch of stuff happening, which has kind of made the past couple of days a little bit odd in terms of just, there's a lot going on. And dad's recovery is continuing a pace, but we're so, so grateful to have the show here and so grateful to have all of you listening. So thank you so much for hanging out and listening to another episode of loose units, the shadow files. We'll see you at the end of the week for a loose ends and we can't wait. So dad, lovely hanging out with you, lovely working with you and yeah, I'll see you soon. Cheerio. This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. Do you ever find yourself playing the budgeting game? Well, with the name your price tool from Progressive, you can find options that fit your budget and potentially lower your bills. 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