Introduction 

Renowned investigative journalist Hedley Thomas sits down with Hayden Kelly to discuss his trailblazing work unraveling some of Australia’s most high-profile cold cases through groundbreaking true crime podcasts. 

 

Hedley Thomas shares his personal journey into investigative reporting, inspired by groundbreaking journalism that exposed police corruption in Queensland in the 1980s. He delves into the immense responsibility and challenges he’s faced in reporting on cases like the murder of Lynette Dawson, where his “The Teacher’s Pet” podcast was instrumental in securing a conviction, despite concerns it could jeopardize a fair trial. 

 

Thomas also draws compelling parallels between the Dawson case and his current investigation into the disappearance of Bronwyn Winfield, highlighting the common threads of seemingly upstanding men accused of murdering their wives. Throughout the conversation, Thomas shares insights into maintaining journalistic integrity, his views on the impact of social media and AI on the industry, and his hopes for the future of investigative true crime storytelling.

Parallels and Patterns in Unsolved Crimes

The Striking Similarities Between Dawson and Winfield

Drawing parallels between the Dawson case and his current investigation into the disappearance of Bronwyn Winfield, Thomas sheds light on the common threads that often bind these tragic tales of seemingly upstanding men accused of murdering their wives. Both cases involve the perceived abandonment of families, the perceived mishandling of investigations by authorities, and the complex dynamics of marital breakdown and property disputes.

The Challenges of Cooperation with Law Enforcement

Thomas expresses frustration with the lack of cooperation and engagement from law enforcement in these types of cases, finding it puzzling that police agencies have not embraced the opportunity to utilize true crime podcasts as a platform for public outreach and information-gathering. He believes this missed opportunity represents a failure to adapt to the changing media landscape and leverage the power of these investigative platforms.

 

The Evolving Landscape of Journalism

The Impact of Social Media and Emerging Technologies

Thomas shares his candid views on the profound impact of social media and emerging technologies like AI on the journalism industry. While acknowledging the potential benefits of these tools for distribution and efficiency, he expresses concern about the narcissistic tendencies and distractions they can foster, potentially detracting from the deep investigative work that he believes is essential for serving the public interest.

Envisioning the Future of Investigative True Crime Storytelling

Looking ahead, Thomas is hopeful that the success of true crime podcasts in solving cold cases will lead to increased funding and resources for this type of investigative journalism. He believes the public’s strong demand for well-researched, deep-diving examinations of unresolved cases will drive a shift in the industry, ultimately leading to more impactful storytelling that can deliver justice and closure for victims and their families.

 

Conclusion

Through this captivating dialogue, Hedley Thomas emerges as a stalwart of investigative journalism, a relentless truth-seeker driven by an unwavering commitment to uncovering justice for victims and their families. His storied career, marked by high-profile cases that have captivated audiences worldwide, serves as a testament to the power of meticulous, evidence-based reporting to reshape the course of criminal investigations and deliver long-sought accountability.

 

Yet, Hedley Thomas journey has not been without its challenges, as he navigates the delicate balance of maintaining journalistic integrity while grappling with the responsibility of reporting on cases that could potentially jeopardize a fair trial. His candid reflections on the parallels between the Dawson and Winfield cases, and the frustrations encountered in securing cooperation from law enforcement, underscore the obstacles faced by investigative journalists seeking to amplify voices that have too long been silenced.

 

As the media landscape continues to evolve, shaped by the proliferation of social media and the disruptive potential of emerging technologies, Hedley Thomas insightful perspectives offer a cautionary tale. While embracing the opportunities these tools present, he cautions against the pitfalls of narcissistic tendencies and the risk of becoming distracted from the depth of investigative work that is so crucial to serving the public good.

 

Ultimately, Hedley Thomas unwavering vision for the future of investigative true crime storytelling stands as a testament to the enduring power of journalism to effect meaningful change. By inspiring a new generation of reporters to follow in his footsteps, and by advocating for the resources necessary to tackle the complex, cold cases that have long evaded resolution, he forges a path towards a future where justice is not merely an aspiration, but a steady drumbeat, resounding through the echoes of the past and ushering in a more accountable, transparent society.

 

 

Transcript :
Hedley Thomas: Bye.

Hayden Kelly: Hey, Hedley? Nice to meet you, mate.

Hedley Thomas: You, too. You too, good to see you. I haven’t taken into account… I’d forgotten that there’s gonna be…

Hedley Thomas: There are some guys on the roof doing solar panels.

Hayden Kelly: That’s alright. Yeah, we just do the best with what we can, I guess.

Hedley Thomas: Yeah. Well, I was gonna say, if you like, I could go out in the car to, you know, a short distance.

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, sure. Sure.

Hedley Thomas: Have a break.

Hayden Kelly: It’s best. Yeah.

Hedley Thomas: Okay, but how about I dial back into this?

Hayden Kelly: I’ll just confirm, Hedley, just to check. I saw your email about… And, to be honest, I’m completely happy to respect your wishes, you know, because, obviously, with The Teacher’s Pet, you know how to podcast. So, in terms of the video, do you want to turn the video off, and we just do…

Hedley Thomas: I guess.

Hayden Kelly: That’s fine! I’m…

Hedley Thomas: How much you want to use and what it’s for? Because I sort of feel like… And is it a video? Or is it a podcast? You know, like I don’t do video interviews, or very, very rarely, with people for podcasts. I don’t know. I don’t understand the, you know, the engagement there. Maybe you could just tell me why.

Hayden Kelly: Yeah. So what I’ve got, Hedley, is a bit of a… and I know that you’re very big on podcasting, obviously. But when I looked on all these social media platforms like Instagram, and that obviously, you like to focus more on your journalism and less on that side of like Twitter and Instagram, and that kind of thing.

Hedley Thomas: Didn’t hear that, yeah.

Hayden Kelly: What we actually have, we have a team of editors that put together some little clips and snippets. And essentially, what it is, it’s just like marketing the episode or the series. So from this, what I’ll do is just have some snippets where you’re talking, and I’m talking in it. They’re little 1-minute clips, and they generally get pushed on different social media platforms. And then with YouTube, there’s just a few short clips that go up. And, yeah, I’m really happy for you to not have your video on. That’s completely fine. But that’s kind of what I’ve done in the past. But, as I said, I’m happy to respect your wishes.

Hedley Thomas: If we’re talking about a handful of 1-minute clips, that’s fine. I just thought we were talking about… I thought what you might have been proposing, and I possibly misread this, was like an hour-long video, you know, for YouTube or something.

Hayden Kelly: Bye.

Hedley Thomas: Yeah, no worries. Well, what I’ll do is jump in the car, drive down to a nearby paddock, hotspot it, and call and jump back on this link.

Hayden Kelly: Sounds good. And I just want to say thanks so much for your time, Hedley. I know you’re so busy with Bronwyn at the moment. So I really appreciate it. And, you know, in this circumstance, I should be paying you really for your hour of your time. And it’s amazing, mate. So thank you very much.

Hedley Thomas: No worries. No, I’m looking forward to it. I should be back online in about 5 or 6 minutes.

Hayden Kelly: Good, thanks, mate. I’ll speak to you soon.

Hedley Thomas: Bye.

Hedley Thomas: Hi! So now you’ve got the backdrop of my car now, mate.

Hayden Kelly: I tell you what, regardless of the backdrop, having you on the podcast, Hedley, without, you know, tooting your horn or blowing smoke up your ass, this is a real honor for me to have a chat with you today. And I’ve listened very intently to a lot of your podcast series, in particular The Teacher’s Pet and The Teacher’s Trial, Shandy’s Story, and more recently, Bronwyn. So thanks for giving up your time today.

Hedley Thomas: No, thank you. And I do respond well to flattery, but that was very kind. I appreciate it. I don’t know how it’s happened that, you know, an old dog like me, who’s always been doing print reporting, has been able to develop a following and, you know, a pretty loyal and committed listenership to podcasts. But there you go.

Hayden Kelly: Yeah. And I think at the forefront of that is kind of how your investigative journalism has transformed the way we look at all of these cold case murders of women in Australia. You have this relentless pursuit of justice, and you can tell in the passion you have for what you do. I guess, what is it that drew you to investigative journalism in your early years? Do you want to take us back to when you started as a journalist, and I guess what was it that drew you towards this method of storytelling? And also, I guess, what you’ve been able to do now with, for instance, we’ve seen Chris Dawson, the success you had with ultimately the guilty verdict there that sent him to 20 years in prison.

 

Hedley Thomas: Yeah. Look, almost all journalists now enter the profession or the craft, as some people call it, with a tertiary education. They’ve been to university. They’ve been schooled in all sorts of things that when I left high school at the end of ’94 on the Gold Coast, I didn’t understand. And when I started at the Gold Coast Bulletin as a copy boy with the promise of a cadetship if I didn’t screw up in the first 6 or 9 months as a copy boy, I just thought, “Wow, wouldn’t it be great to be a reporter covering general news and, you know, police incidents, maybe even serious crimes, whatever was happening in my community?” I didn’t properly appreciate or understand the potential with investigative journalism. But I credit my mom and my dad, in particular. I can still remember being a teenager. I’d recently become a cadet, and I was working in the sports section of the Gold Coast Bulletin because they probably thought that’s where I should start. You know, I had an interest in sport, and my old high school, where Chris Dawson taught, was powering in rugby league. And, you know, they’d become newsworthy, my school of Keebra Park State High. And Dad said, “Pal, when do you think you might think about investigative journalism?” It just seemed like such a far-away thing, you know, this almost unattainable ideal. And yeah, so typical of my dad to sort of raise the bar a little bit higher. You know, I was just glad to have a job as a journo. And here he was saying, “Well, when are you gonna be like Chris Masters?” But it was a very fortuitous time to become a journalist in Queensland in the 1980s. Because what we saw in the second half of the ’80s was some incredible investigative journalism by Chris Masters and by Phil Dickie from the Courier-Mail. And it just… whether you were intending to sort of take lessons from it or not, it must have influenced so many young reporters. It certainly influenced me in realizing that for many years our criminal justice system had been completely bent. Our senior police, all the way up to the commissioner, Sir Terrence Lewis, a knight, was on the take. They were on the take, stealing money from the community, being paid bribes by brothel owners and casino operators, and all sorts of, you know, shadowy criminals. And we had always suspected this, I think, as a community, but no really serious journalism had exposed it until they came along. And those events, they have to have influenced a generation of young journalists to no longer just accept the trotted-out spin and lies of government officials and ministers and other people in authority.

 

Hayden Kelly: It seems like with this case in particular, the Chris Dawson case, given there was nobody, there was no admission from Chris, and there was no real DNA evidence, clothing, blood, or anything of that nature. So, it’s quite a massive landmark case in the history of Australia and investigative journalism. Do you understand, I guess, the responsibility that you have as a journalist and the role you have to play now, and I guess the way that these cases proceed moving forward, and what such an influence you’ve had in the landscape in Australia, but also across the world, given how broad and far wide the podcast spread?

Hedley Thomas: Yeah, I do. I do feel a burden of responsibility there. And I think that it’s a privilege and an honor as well as a bit of a weight. It depends on who you talk to, though, in terms of my role in this, in the investigation of Chris Dawson and the influence of The Teacher’s Pet. A lot of fair-minded lawyers and judges and retired judges, for example, and we’re talking now about representatives of the criminal justice system, they acknowledge to me as well as senior police. They acknowledge this, too, that if it hadn’t been for the podcast, there wouldn’t have been, in their view, a conviction, perhaps not even a prosecution proceeding.

Hedley Thomas: But then you get others who say, oh, yeah, but his podcast, and the way he, you know, took the way he spoke to so many witnesses who would have been key witnesses for the crown that almost blew the whole thing up. He could have ruined it, he almost did ruin it. It was lucky that it proceeded the way it did. So you get this kind of, you know, division in terms of the way my role is perceived.

 

Hedley Thomas: I think the listenership and most people who are not lawyers and who just use their common sense and look at what happened, the chronology of events, and so on, they have a view that there wouldn’t have been a prosecution, and that it took the Teacher’s Pet to really jolt the system to do the right thing after letting Lynn down for so many years. But you, you know I am aware that it’s not universal.

 

Hayden Kelly: Now, I’m not gonna, obviously, we’re not gonna go into detail about all the implications of the Chris Dawson case, because we’d need just like you did with the Teacher’s Pet, 30, 40 weeks’ worth of content to do so. So, I recommend anyone that’s listening to this podcast, if you haven’t already, the Teacher’s Pet podcast is back on Spotify. Now, you can access that. There’s also the Teacher’s Trial, thoroughly recommend. If you are listening to this now, and you haven’t listened to Hedley’s podcast series, pause this podcast, jump across to that one, get a bit of an insight. It’ll help you when you listen to this, understanding a bit of context behind what Hedley’s saying.

 

Hayden Kelly: Dawson pleaded guilty on—sorry, he pleaded not guilty, but he was sentenced on the 30th of August 2022, was guilty of the murder of his wife, Lynette Dawson, and he’s sentenced to 24 years in prison by Justice Ian Harrison. And on the 14th of September last year, he was also sentenced by Sarah Huggett for carnal knowledge, girl, between the ages of 10 to 17. And so Dawson actually pleaded that he couldn’t get a fair trial because of the podcast, the Teacher’s Pet podcast itself. Did you ever have any concerns or worries at any point that because of the work you’d been doing in the amount of hours and countless research and investigation and interviews you did with different family members, police, other specialists, did you ever have a concern that it would all fall through on the basis that Chris couldn’t get a fair trial?

 

Hedley Thomas: I had a huge concern about that. Yeah, I was very worried through 2019 and 2020, that the efforts of so many people to help me, the efforts that, you know, I had gone to, and the risks that I’d taken, my employer had taken, legal risks, editorial risks, journalistic risks, would all end up being effectively produced, and that he would be able to rely on the product. The podcast which we believe led to him being charged in the first place, being the thing that gave him the, you know, escape strategy. It was an awful proposition, you know, to contemplate that it just used to leave my guts churned, and you know, I would be unnerved pretty much every time his lawyers made a further demand for material or made a statement on television or to media conferences. They often did after some of the preliminary proceedings in which, you know, they took the opportunity to have a swing at the Teacher’s Pet, the podcast and me, and so on. And I just thought, God, when are we actually going to be able to get through all of this and into the nitty gritty and the questions over his probable guilt? I was in no doubt that he was a cold-blooded murderer and that he was spending a lot of money on very effective legal representation. That’s his right. And of course there is this presumption of innocence. I didn’t presume him innocent, though. So yeah, I’m not going to lie. I presumed him utterly guilty. I tried to give him his side of the story in the podcast, and he decided that he didn’t want to talk. So I did the best thing, I did the next best thing I could. I tried to present his side of the story through the lawyering by his brother Peter from when Peter was in an inquest on behalf of Chris and Chris’s twin brother Paul. And you know, I was also looking for people who knew Chris personally who might speak on his behalf, and one of those was a mate of mine called Scott Sattler, who had been at Coomba State High on the Gold Coast. Fantastic Rugby League player. And Chris and Paul Dawson had helped mentor Scott, and so Scott was talking on Chris’s behalf. But overwhelmingly, the Teacher’s Pet, you know, was a very focused and I think evidence-based examination of a case that was so strongly circumstantial in pointing at his, pointing to his guilt that you know it just was incredible for me and so many other people that he’d never been charged. And I couldn’t make a 50-50 kind of story, Chris Dawson. I couldn’t. There was not nearly enough material to even get to like, you know, 80-20 representation, and that’s not my fault. It’s his. He was just guilty from the get-go.

Hayden Kelly: It was just overwhelming, as you say, circumstantial evidence that he was guilty, that it made it almost hard for you to balance the need for transparency in your reporting. And did you ever struggle with this? I guess how sensitive the investigations were, and you know, things like confidentiality. And making sure that things were upholding, you know, legal integrity. You weren’t providing indications that you were saying that he was guilty and vice versa.

Hedley Thomas: I struggled.

Hedley Thomas: I struggled.

Hedley Thomas: I should just clarify. Are we gonna edit out bloopers and things.

Hayden Kelly: Yeah. So I’ve got time stamps here so I can just, and I’ll always edit it so that.

Hedley Thomas: Okay, yeah, I wasn’t sure cause some some people just sort of.

Hayden Kelly: No, no, no, I’ll I’ll not waste too much due diligence.

Hedley Thomas: Oh, great yeah. What I struggle with after I’d done several episodes, and after I had uncovered more evidence and talked to more people. I struggled with the traditional convention, the need for journalists to maintain balance, to try to be objective and not form a hard and fast view. I couldn’t rationally, logically maintain objectivity or be balanced when it came to Chris Dawson, because I couldn’t see any evidence that gave me comfort that perhaps he was an innocent man. It just didn’t exist. And I think that yeah, sometimes in journalism, and perhaps the perception of audiences is that journalists, you know, ideally, really have to never kind of form that view. They just have to be the messenger that’s ridiculous. We’re not robots. We’re all influenced by our education, our cultural values, our upbringing, our relationships. And you know what we regard as being capable of passing the pub test of what’s believable, what’s credible. And to me it was never likely that Lynn had just decided to start a new life after telling Chris she was going to change some clothes on a shopping trip, and she’s wearing a pair of pink shorts, and has got very little dough and leaves behind her girls, and a house worth almost 300 grand. Yeah, that’s just stupid. But as I got more into the case and more involved. it became even more stupid, that idea, and and so I found it increasingly  to avoid the what some people referred to as the sound of righteous anger as I was narrating and telling the story. And any people I you know I took aside I really did, but you know, by the same token.

Hedley Thomas: This was a case that when I started investigating it was 36 years old. Dawson had got away with murder for 36 years. And, case so old, it demanded pretty front footed robust investigative journalism to make a difference. If I had gone into it and finished it with timidity, with punches pulled and ticking all the boxes of theoretical fairness and balance that perhaps some of the armchair experts would have preferred. Well, you know, I think Dawson would still be living a life in his beachside house on the Sunshine Coast, and this woman and her family would have still been searching for justice and knowing they’d never, ever get it. This was the last chance. So we took risks. We really pushed the envelope, and thankfully the system finally kicked in and worked.

Hayden Kelly: Were you amazed? How similar? Say with the case that although with the series you’re working on now, Bronwyn. And I’ll put the links to all of these podcasts in the show notes. So people can, as we’re talking about them, they can bounce around and listen to them and get a bit of an idea what we’re talking about. But with the new series you’re working on Bronwyn. Were you amazed? How similar? Say, John Bronwyn’s wife and Chris Dawson. Just the so. I was just amazed how similar their stories were, where they had run away from, or they had this, you know, supposed wife running away from home with being a doted mother of young girls, John and Chris being, I guess you could say, well respected in their professions, where Chris was a renowned Rugby League footballer. And John, was this really well respected tradesmen in the area? Both good looking? I just found it was such an eerily similar kind of circumstance between the 2 stories.

Hedley Thomas: Yeah, that is striking a lot of people who have listened to the teacher’s pet and who are now deep into the Bronwyn podcast the parallels. I guess I have to be a bit careful in making too much of the parallels, because if they are identical, then that makes John an unconvicted murderer, and I’m not saying that, you know. I’m obviously of a view that he, he’s the recommendation of the former deputy State coroner Kamilovanovich, that he be prosecuted over Bronwyn’s alleged murder should have been adopted by the Dpp. And I think it still can be but there are, you know, eerie, eerie similarities in these cases. One thing I just and obviously not. This isn’t for the type. But I noticed that a minute and a half ago you said Brauman’s wife. John, you meant problem. I just just.

Hayden Kelly: Yeah. Yeah. Edit. Always listen through and just make sure it’s all.

Hedley Thomas: Yeah, yeah.

Hayden Kelly: Yeah. What I’ll do is.

Hedley Thomas: You probably find, as I do, that when you’re talking to people in just everyday life. Now you kind of listing and editing their conversation.

Hayden Kelly: I feel like when you do this podcasting, though you. I kind of feel that if I just let myself go and free myself up a bit when I’m talking. The good thing is, I know that it’s not live, so I can always go back and edit things, and if I just relax a little bit. The conversation tends to flow quite well, and you can always go back and just re-listen to what you said, and make sure it all. Sense. Yeah.

Hedley Thomas: Oh, that’s right. And I also now do something else. I never thought I’d end up doing, which is listening to listening carefully to the voices of visitors to the house people. I meet tradies. Some of them have got the best voices we’ve got. This guy does our swimming pool. Helps maintain the pool, and his voice just sounds like crushed gravel in a blender, and it’s so good.

Hayden Kelly: To be honest when you said, Come up north to our house, and we’ll have some soft chase and wine, and I was just thinking. You know about that when you’re podcasting and you’re listening like you get that raspy kind of voice and having some wine and cheese by a fire. And I was like, I was quite tempted to come up and on the podcast, up north. But yeah, it’s a bit of a stretch for me coming up 9 h drive midweek. So. But yeah, I’ll definitely take you up up on that offer.

Hedley Thomas: Yeah.

Hayden Kelly: Sure!

Hedley Thomas: Yeah, well, I do all my work from home except when I’m on the road interviewing people. Yeah.

Hayden Kelly: And yeah, it’ll probably be obvious to you as a very keen student of podcasting that my audio is not nearly as sophisticated as the really well produced audio of other yeah. And it’s not slide. Gibson’s fault, I should say fantastic. Yeah, it’s just. I’m not a great I’m not a great exponent of technology. And so you know a lot of my my interviews. For example, I’ve I’ve lost the why that I use that goes in my ear for when I’m wanting to do interviews over the phone with people.

Hedley Thomas: And I, I try to mix things up. I like having yeah interviews where it’s really nice clean audio into an iphone Mike, and then other interviews where it’s going through a Google meet or a zoom. Another other audio which I’m driving the car. I’m just using my laptop to record lately. What I’ve been doing is sitting in the garage with the cars. The car turned off, and I’m just running the audio through the Bluetooth and recording it on my laptop. But then you hear some weird noises that the car makes after you’ve turned it off when the electronics are still going, anyway. All this stuff it must do. Slade’s headed, and I see the occasional comment from people saying. Why is Henley’s audio always sort of just not kind of optimal. Well. it’s probably just life, you know. You know what.

Hayden Kelly: I reiterate your sentiments, because for me I have had guests who have been in Colombia guests who have been in Great Britain. We have this lady from Great Britain, Samantha rank, and she is an ambassador for disability. And yeah, she’s she. She was on one of these maltases commercials, but it was fantastic to have her on, but she was overseas right and same with a number of other guests I’ve had, and so for me to be able to podcast with them in person over. You know, 4 K video quality with crisp audio, a lot of the time. It’s not feasible. So we have to do it over. Zoom. Obviously, my video quality can be a little bit better. And I’ve kind of worked out how to do that where you can sync your iphone to the to zoom or use your your camera, a Nikon camera, and so forth. But I think a lot of the time the opportunity to bring certain guests on is much more important than the quality of the the video or the audio, and you probably see that some of the clips those listening to go on Instagram, or whatever social media platform it is. They’ll say, the video quality of my my guess. A lot of the time is a bit scratchy and low quality, but that’s just because have the opportunity to talk to people who are in different countries or around the world that I wouldn’t get to do if I wanted to have them in the studio, for instance, and the same thing for you. You’d be traveling around Australia talking to police officers lawyers, family members. You can’t be in a studio getting them to come to you all the time, so I think it just comes with the the territory in the nature. What you’re doing in investigative journalism?

Hedley Thomas: Yeah, I hope so. Well, I certainly think that’s right. And I hope that people understand that most people do. But you hear occasionally from so called aficionados of pristine podcast audio. So well, you know, mine is kind of more rustic, it’s authentic. It’s never gonna be that really clear beautiful.

Hayden Kelly: You do a great job, mate, you do a great job. And then, obviously, the teachers pets going out to millions. It’s not about the quality of the content all of the time. It’s more about the conversations and the people and the storyline. I think you’ve done a fantastic job of that.

Hedley Thomas: It’s the genuineness of the of the people you talk to, and the storyteller, and I believe that listeners work it out. It’s almost like the way in which I talk to people, and the way in which people talk to me is is heard so very carefully, and considered by listeners who have a pretty good bullshit detector on whether or not I care whether or not the people I’m talking to. Honest. Do they care? And and when they work out we care. I think that’s a really significant thing, you know, there’s an engagement level that that you know, we hit because people realize we’re serious. We’re not trying to tell a style story.

Hedley Thomas: Where there’s been a result and everything’s kind of like, you know, everything that could be achieved in terms of criminal justice has been achieved, and we just eating it all store. We’re not doing that. What I really try to do is take cold cases and find new evidence so that guilty people can be made accountable, at least prosecuted.

Hayden Kelly: Honestly, I have this really strong fascination with true crime, and so these series that you’ve been doing for me have been—I’ve loved it. Every time I get in the car to drive to Newcastle or different places, where I’m going, I always put on an episode of “The Teacher’s Pet” or whatever it might be, “Shandy’s Story,” and I really got entrenched in it, really, really deeply invested in all the finer details and things. So I found it really interesting, and I’ve recommended the podcast to a few different people at the gym and so forth. As I say, yeah, I think the content, regardless of whether it’s high-quality video or audio, I think the nature of the storytelling and the fact that people can, as you say, cut through the bullshit and see that you’re passionate about what you do is really evident. On that topic, mate, when we talk about how difficult it was in some circumstances for you to kind of remain impartial with different cases—the case against the Queensland Forensic Services Laboratory—but Sean Peros, who’s a suspected murderer of his previous girlfriend Shandy, I imagine, when you have the evidence of the white Hilux, the blood, the CCTV footage of that white shadow sprinting across the top of the street there from the surveillance camera, when you have cases like that where there’s just this overwhelming sense of evidence that John is guilty, I can imagine it is particularly hard for you to avoid taking sides. Is that something you’ve found particularly difficult? With that story in particular, the “Shandy Story” series?

Hedley Thomas: I think with “Shandy’s Story,” it was complicated by a couple of other issues that made me really want to be so careful in the way I presented the story. And those issues were that although police and Shandy’s family and, you know, the Crown, the prosecutor in Queensland, believed that John was guilty of Shandy’s murder, he had not only vehemently denied that, but when it went before a jury in a murder trial in Mackay in 2017, they acquitted him in a very short period of time. And, you know, that was sort of fact number one, that we can—yeah, but whether or not they reached the right verdict, but that was the verdict they reached. So he had actually been held accountable, and the jurors said, “We can’t get to, you know, the level that is needed.” I don’t know who—who knows how they deliberated and what—maybe they believed that there was just no case whatsoever to us, we don’t know. And then what we had, after a period of two years and a lot of concern in the community of Mackay about this case that hadn’t been resolved, was an inquest run by a local coroner, a very senior magistrate. And that inquest heard a lot of evidence that was not heard by the jurors in John’s murder trial. And the coroner, acting as, you know, a senior law officer, ended up delivering a finding, a very detailed judgment, that John had actually killed Shandy, that he had done it. And, you know, you had this very interesting tension then between two parts of the criminal justice system and two completely different outcomes. And into that, you know, I really wanted to explore how the jurors, or how the trial had unfolded, how the murder had taken place, how the coroner had come to his view, and try to be as open-minded as possible, given the different outcomes. And I was probably also still thinking as well that at that time that I was doing “Shandy’s Story,” Chris Dawson was awaiting trial. You know, that was inching towards trial. I was mindful of the criticisms that had been made of me and of “The Teacher’s Pet” over the way that that had unfolded. So I was probably just being super careful with that case in not making any sweeping statements or unsupported, unsubstantiated statements about John. And as a result, I think we ended up getting an incredibly important and, you know, extraordinary outcome being findings and evidence and—and now, you know, huge reforms funded by more than a hundred million dollars because of our discovery with Dr. Kirsty Wright, who helped me, that the Queensland forensic lab, the DNA testing laboratory for all crime—serious crime in Queensland—was a basket case and had been for years and had failed thousands of victims of crime, including Shandy, in terms of identifying perpetrators, rapists, and murderers, and other very serious, the worst possible criminals. And so, you know, we—I don’t sort of step back from the “Shandy’s Story” and say we identified a killer, someone other than John, or even John. What we identified in “Shandy’s Story” was everything that we believed was in the public interest and relevant in that case, but more than that, we exposed a corruption in the most important part of the forensic science. It’s the worst forensics disaster in the world, according to Dr. Kirsty Wright, and it would not have ever been known if it hadn’t been for her efforts and our joint kind of determination to keep exposing it and keep digging with that podcast series. It’s gonna have a long tail, too. You know, the legacy will be many, many more people who would otherwise have got away with their crimes getting arrested. And, you know, it’s just happening. People are being arrested and charged with serious crimes as a result of the realization by the system that should have known better that they were doing it wrong, that they were failing to detect DNA that was always there. And, you know, people talk about, “Well, do true crime podcasts, you know, really make a difference? Do they get in the way? Do they hinder? Or do they help?” You look at the findings that have come out of

Hedley Thomas: The Shanty Story podcast in relation to Queensland’s lab and the impact on so many people—positive impact, as a result.

Hedley Thomas: When you know the smartest people in the room—the judges, the prosecutors, the defense lawyers, the senior police, the scientists—they had all utterly failed to appreciate that their own system was broken. The forensic testing system was broken. And you know, in many ways, the outcomes from that podcast, because they affect so many cases—retesting of tens of thousands of samples now going back some 15-odd years and changes to the testing for years to come—that wouldn’t have come about were it not for what was discovered in that podcast series and all of the benefits that will then flow to victims of crime who would never have seen justice. It kind of… you know, when we talk about the individual cases that are really important, you know, Bronwyn and Lynn and Janine Vaughn in The Night Driver. They’re so important as single cases. But we are talking about potentially hundreds and hundreds of cases that are going to be rectified, fixed up because of this one podcast—Shandy’s story and Shandy’s legacy.

Hayden Kelly: Yeah. So I actually read, I was reading the first page of the report before we came on air, and I’ll put it in the show notes so people can read the report from the commission of inquiry into the forensic DNA testing in Queensland. But that into 2022, 6th of June, as you say, Premier Anastasia Palaszczuk, she launched an independent commission of inquiry into the forensic DNA testing in Queensland. The inquiry was established to ensure transparency, identify opportunities for improvement, and ensure public confidence in the collection of DNA and testing and the analysis undertaken in Queensland in the criminal justice system more broadly.

Hayden Kelly: This inquiry was conducted by former President of the Court of Appeal, retired judge Mr. Walter Sofronoff.

Hedley Thomas: Sofronoff.

Hayden Kelly: Sofronoff, yeah. Okay. Mr. Walter Sofronoff, in terms of his background, I understand he’s got a really strong track record in terms of the work he’s done. Can you tell us a little bit about, I guess, how we got to that point and what the future holds for Shandy’s legacy given that report?

Hedley Thomas: Yeah. Before there was the inquiry, before the then Queensland Premier, Anastasia Palaszczuk, agreed that there should be a public inquiry, we in the podcast had been calling for it for weeks and weeks over multiple episodes. And we were just seeing more and more evidence that would justify it. It was piling up. And you know, I was saying to Kirsty, you know, when we’d catch up for a cup of tea or, you know, to talk about where things are at, “What’s your view about how bad this looks?” And she’s a very, very good, highly experienced forensic biologist who’s worked in this field in DNA, you know, is second to none. She’s like a dog with a bone, and she’s so gutsy. And she said, “Hedley, I’ve never seen anything like it. It’s corrupt. It’s letting down so many people, and I can’t believe that there isn’t an outcry, a much bigger public outcry over what we are showing. They’re not saying we’ve got anything wrong. They’re just not saying anything. They’re trying to make it go away.” And I had the same view, and it was so concerning that very senior politicians were believing the garbage that they were being told by bureaucrats who were just trying to cover their ass and support internally with misleading briefing notes that what Kirsty and I were talking about wasn’t right, that there were other explanations and so on. We didn’t see these. I didn’t dare do it publicly because I would have called it all out and forced them to provide evidence for their baseless spin. But it was really worrying that we weren’t seeing from government the proper response. Yeah, in my experience as a journalist, and I’ve been around a lot of important yarns and seen the response of government to serious, significant revelations. There is a public inquiry usually called, and it doesn’t take that long, and we can see lots of different types of inquiry. Sometimes they’re large ones, such as a Royal Commission style inquiry. Sometimes they’re relatively modest and still effective. But in this, we weren’t hearing anything. It was just crickets.

Hedley Thomas: It’s a testament to Kirsty and to our joint commitment that we just decided we’ll stop this. We’re just going to double down. We’re not going to let them off. And the turning point came when there was a media conference out at a place called Pinkenba, which is near Brisbane Airport. Think it’s Pinkenba, and the Premier was opening a cruise ship terminal there. And I don’t go to media conferences unless they’re directly related to the story that I’m dealing with. And I remember I was still in my pajamas at home. I was trying to get that episode out. And Lydia Lynch, one of my colleagues from The Australian, she’d give me a heads up that the Premier was going to be at this media conference, and Lydia was following the podcast so closely. And you know, I could tell that she was suggesting that perhaps she and I could form this sort of flying wedge and, yeah, ambush the Premier. And instead of, you know, asking banal questions about this cruise ship terminal at the back of whoop-whoop, you know, we could hammer her instead about the government’s utter failure to address the DNA scandal that we were exposing in the paper and in the podcast. And so I said, “Okay, no worries. I’ll shower and shave and get out of pajamas and see you out there.” And we proceeded to ask a number of, you know, direct and very penetrating questions of the Premier in front of the rest of the media and also the VIPs and other people who’d been invited to sort of see this ribbon-cutting ceremony that it would have been, you know, otherwise fairly lackluster. And it’s actually, I don’t know whether you do this in your podcast, but it might be worth—I could, if you like, I can tell you which episode and give you a time code for—

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, sure.

Hedley Thomas: Recorded it, and I think it’s one of the most… it was one, it was high stakes. And certainly, there were some grumbles from some of the people there that we had effectively, you know, tarnished this special occasion, you know, after the years of COVID and so on. And these cruise operators were so proud of their new terminal. And here’s a couple of journos from The Australian who didn’t want to talk about the terminal; they wanted to talk about the government’s failure in addressing a DNA scandal. But it was a really effective push that we made, and it was within, I think, an hour and a half, maybe even less, of our questions being directed at the Premier that the first seeds for the public inquiry were being sown. She was on the phone to her senior advisors, to her Attorney General, and they were working out how were they going to address this. Yeah, there was no escape. They were getting it in the podcast; they were getting it in the paper. And now we were turning up at a press conference and asking questions about things that she didn’t want to answer. And so that was the turning point. That’s how we got that inquiry that really then began an excoriating process of vindicating what we’d been saying in the podcast and showing so much more about what was literally the corruption of science in that laboratory.

Hayden Kelly: How did she fend off the questions? Was it just a lot of, I guess, bouncing back and forth and roundabout answers?

Hedley Thomas: Well, she did her best, and you know, I, looking back, probably think that she wasn’t herself to blame. She, like the Health Minister and the Attorney General, were being given really dodgy, really misleading advice by Others, public servants, for their own reasons. And you know this is often the way in the public service and in state governments, and no doubt the Federal Government ministers will require. They need honest, independent, fearless advice from public servants. But if those public servants fear that they’ve got a target on their back, because if they give the honest, fearless advice, it means they’ve completely screwed up. If they say, Minister, yeah, look, we think those journalists have gone on have actually discovered that we may be sitting on the world’s worst forensics disaster, yeah. Doesn’t look right then it’s their jobs or their KPIs or their futures potentially on the line. So I think the number of public servants just live through their teeth to try to protect their own reputations. And you know it was quite disgusting, really.

Hayden Kelly: So now kind of change your pace, Headley. We’re just talking a little bit about the Bronwyn series that you’ve now kind of commenced. I understand there’s some really important developments in that case where I think some witnesses have actually come forward and alluded to the chance to body wrapped up in sheets within the back of a car. Can you tell us a little bit more about that case? Oh, that’s that series with Bronwyn, and also kind of where you’re at with that, and where that’s heading at the moment.

Hedley Thomas: Absolutely. With Bronwyn Winfield’s disappearance in 1993, there were no witnesses to what actually happened apart from her estranged husband, John, and he says that he didn’t see where she went. He just claimed that on a Sunday night, May 16th, 1993, she decided that she needed to have what he called a few days away as a break. They were going through their own very difficult domestic situation. They’d separated. She’d moved out of the house when she wanted to leave him, and she took the two girls, and she was looking after them in rented accommodation. So he stayed in their house in Lennox Head, near Byron Bay, and then he decided that he would go to Sydney because there was some good work for him in Sydney. So he left the house. And when he left the family home, he changed the lock so she couldn’t get back into it. But she was doing it pretty tough, financially. He was not noted for being generous with money, and she was on a very tight budget when they were living as husband and wife. Things were worse when they were separated. So she decides she couldn’t actually afford to keep renting downtown, and that there was an empty family home he wasn’t living in it. It was nuts that she was going to keep paying rent in Byron Street, Lennox Head. So she, on a Friday night, moved back into their house and settled the girls and through the weekend, kept moving stuff in, and on the Sunday evening she was just expecting. No doubt that her daughters would go to school the next morning, Monday. She had an appointment to see her solicitor for more advice about the separation that she and John were going through, and how they would be able to settle things like ownership, or proceeds from the sale of property, and who would get the car, and who would get the spoons and the lounges, and all that sort of stuff. So that was her plan. She had an 11 AM appointment with a solicitor on the Monday. But on the Sunday evening John flew back from Sydney, and he came back. It seems, because of his concern that she was back in the house. The house which had had its locks changed by him to prevent that happening. And as a result, we know that they had a disagreement. We don’t know to what extent, but we know it was a disagreement, because he has said that. We don’t know what happened next other than his version is that she went away. She got into a car that pulled up outside. He says that she’d made a couple of telephone calls from the bedroom, and then soon afterwards a car came. And he says that’s the last he saw of her, and no one’s ever seen her since.

Hedley Thomas: And we don’t know. Sorry. Let me repeat that. Let me change that. Until recently, there were no witnesses apart from a neighbor called Murray, who described seeing John’s car driving down the street at 10:40 PM that night with its engine off and its lights off. Fairly unusual way to leave a house and downhill street. But that’s what was happening. That’s what Murray witnessed. John drove to Sydney through the night with the girls. Turns up in Sydney the next morning. It wasn’t expected. People were surprised when he turned up. He’d left the house in disarray. And then, when neighbors went into the house a couple of days later, they discovered that it didn’t appear Bronwyn had taken anything, you know, makeup and clothing, and so on. It didn’t appear to be a trip that she well planned, if indeed it had happened at all. So you know, a lot of the neighbors and family members became suspicious, but they didn’t really know what was going on. And then for the next 31 years, the case just went through different stages of well, for the first five years, actually not really being taken seriously at all by local police. They just believed that Bronwyn must have been a bad wife, and Mom, who decided to, you know, take off with next to nothing, leaving behind the house and never contacting her kids again. And I think most reasonable people know that that is such a dumb idea. The idea that mothers without, you know, serious drug addictions or any other serious factors in their life, just decide one morning to or evening to take off and never contact anybody again, and not come back for anything. You know, it’s not to say it’s not normal is, you know, huge understatement. It’s just absurd, in my view.

Hedley Thomas: But very recently, as a result of the podcast, a woman called Judy Singh contacted me. And she was a near neighbor. And in 1993, late at night, and we’re very confident that it was the night that Bronwyn disappeared. Judy Singh was sitting on her balcony. And she was worried about things in her own life. She was concerned that she was going to miscarry the child that she was several months pregnant with. She was worried about how she was going to make ends meet with her marriage having fallen apart, and she had two children already who were dependent on her. She knew, but not well, Bronwyn and John, and she was sitting out late at night just reflecting on these worries, and thinking about what she might be able to do to get out of this mess that she felt she was in. She also had health issues. So her balcony looked down onto Granite Street, and Granite Street runs off Sandstone Crescent, very close to John and Bronwyn’s house. And from that balcony you have this almost bird’s eye view into passing cars. And Judy says that very late at night she thinks it might be around midnight. She saw and heard John’s car coming down the street with its lights on. So it was a different trip to the one that Murray witnessed earlier.

Hedley Thomas: And that… It was going very slowly. And unusually, the interior light was on in the car. As a result of the interior light being on in the car, she could see John very clearly driving, and she said he looked up because there was a lantern on the balcony where Judy was sitting. She was looking down and seeing John. But then she says that she saw something which haunted her then, and has haunted her for three decades. It was what appeared to her to be a body wrapped like a mummy, an Egyptian-style mummy in what appeared to be shapes or a shade in the back seat.

She’s given a very vivid description of this. I’ve interviewed her a couple of times, and we’ve filmed her describing this. You know, in my opinion, she’s compelling, credible, and deeply troubled by what she saw. Instinctively, she believed that it was really a body. She said you could see the outline of the head wrapped up by the sheet. The head and neck were sort of pushed into the corner of the back seat behind the front passenger seat, where the back seat meets the framework of the car. The torso and legs were stretching out towards the center console.

When she discovered from other neighbors that Bronwyn had gone missing and that’s why there were some police in the street, Judy went to the local police station in Ballarat and told police about what she’d seen. She said they couldn’t have been less interested, which was consistent with what other people have told us about the response of police, that they were hopeless, really quite lacking in curiosity, not identifying or thinking about the many red flags that were flying in relation to the disappearance of Bronwyn. It became obvious very soon that she wasn’t touching her bank accounts. If she was alive and living independently, how was she funding herself? She didn’t have money. She had a part-time job she didn’t turn up for. She didn’t turn up to see her kids again, and she didn’t meet the appointment with the solicitor. In fact, she rang her solicitor on the Sunday afternoon—a very unusual thing to call your solicitor, at least back then, after hours on a weekend at home—to tell him of her concern that her husband was returning to the house.

Bronwyn had previously talked to other friends about her fear of John. She had described, and we’ve heard this from a woman called Denise Barnard, who said that Bronwyn talked about how John had wrapped his hands around her throat and squeezed her throat, and she was really, really worried about what he was potentially capable of. So, as a result of Judy coming forward and me interviewing her at length and using that in episode 7 of the podcast, we saw police who had all but given up on the case take a renewed interest. Two detectives from the Unsolved Homicide squad in Sydney flew to Coolangatta and met Judy. They interviewed her at length, took a statement from her, which is all she’d wanted to do 31 years ago, and she wanted to do it subsequently too. She’d also gone to Byron Bay police with a New Zealand doctor she’d befriended. She hadn’t seen that doctor in years, and when I was trying to corroborate what Judy was talking about, I tracked the doctor down, and she remembered it and said, ‘Yeah, we went, and I believed her. She was telling the truth, in my view.’ She was sure of what she saw. So the police now will put more effort, I’m sure, into attempting to reconstruct what Judy has described.

John will continue to deny, as he always has, any wrongdoing. He has also been through an inquest that occurred in 2002, one year before the inquest that Carl Milovanovich held for Lynn Dawson’s presumed death. Really interesting that it was the same coroner in both inquests. In fact, it was that coroner who first told me about Bronwyn’s case back in December 2017, when I was interviewing him for ‘The Teacher’s Pet,’ and you can hear his voice in ‘The Teacher’s Pet’ series. But he told me something back then which I didn’t use in ‘The Teacher’s Pet.’ He told me about these cases involving missing women who had disappeared under really suspicious circumstances. And yet, possibly because of the culture at the time, the police hadn’t done their jobs properly and hadn’t investigated these cases as possible homicides. They just treated them as missing people.

Carl was concerned about that in the 2000s, and he said there were many of these cases, and he told me about the Bronwyn Winfield case briefly. He just said that he’d run this other case. That was the start for me of an interest in Bronwyn’s case. So that goes back to 2017, and I did a number of interviews over the years between then and now, but I was never able to get the clear air—I was never able to get the clear air I needed to do a proper, really committed investigation without interruption and distraction from other ones.

Hayden Kelly: As you’ve been sitting here, as I’ve been sitting here, Hedley, and listening to you talk there about Bronwyn’s series, it’s really compelling. Really, as you… so as we talked about earlier in the podcast, it’s so eerie how similar both these cases are, Chris Dawson and John in this case. As you said, they’re the same coroner ultimately, which told you about Bronwyn’s case, the same coroner. Both men were very tight with their budgets. So I understand Chris kept Lynn basically stranded in the IV. She couldn’t drive anywhere up on the top of the hill. I’ve actually been up

Hayden Kelly: Winger Drive with my partner, and we went and had a look at the where it was situated, and so high up. Even if you were a good driver, it’s almost hard to navigate some of those slopes, and straight so but so tight with their budgets, and Chris with his money, too, was very. He constrained Lynn very much in what she could use her money on and in similar circumstance here, but also the issues with the family home. So a large part of Chris’s case was the reason for Lynn’s death was because Chris didn’t want to sacrifice his property, or he didn’t want to give up his share to Lynn, and so that was there was 1 point there when he was with Jc. He wanted to move to a flat in Manly, and he was talking to his brother about. You know what would happen if they were to divorce. You know what share of the property would go to whom? How much he would lose out if they were to divorce. So again, similar circumstance today, with the issues, with the property and tempers as well, so we know Chris had a very large temper in the back, like those instances where witnesses said in the backyard, you know, he had Lynn up against the wall like screaming at her with his arms around her throat very similar to John’s case as well. When both women vanished, there was this betrayal that they had just run away from their kids. Yet they were both portrayed by friends and family as very loving, doting mothers. The credit card transactions, no credit card transactions on both sides. Brought. Bronwyn hadn’t taken anything when she supposedly left. Lynn hadn’t taken anything. All of her jewelry and handbags and clothing were still situated exactly where they were. Police weren’t interested. The same thing occurred. I understand that the police, at the time where Chris went to report Lynn missing, had some form of connection with the Newtown jets, and so there was, you know, potentially some form of cover-up in that respect. But it’s yeah. It really is eerily similar in these 2 instances, and I don’t know how you, whether it’s just a matter of coincidence or potentially, like a generational issue among men and the treatment of women, which I think is a really important thing, that you’re addressing through these podcasts.

Hedley Thomas: Thank you. I think it’s a combination of those. And, you know, we’ve learned so much as a society since the 2000s about the propensity of mostly male partners. Of course, there’ll be some female, and those who will do this too, but males to kill their spouse, and then go to pretty elaborate lengths to conceal that crime. In Chris’s case, that’s been fully exposed. Now, although you know we have to speculate about some aspects of it, because he hasn’t owned up to it. He has told us where Lynn’s remains were disposed of. And I think what we’ve also learned as a society is that women don’t just pack up without warning and leave behind really important parts of their lives, in particular, children. There’s a bond between the overwhelming majority, you know, of moms and their kids that prevents them from doing that. It’s a very, very powerful instinctive connection that women have, and it takes unusual exceptional circumstances to sever that link permanently. And we should have always understood that, and been suspicious of these sorts of cases. But they were just put in the 2 hard baskets by police. There would have no doubt, been pretty glib, smooth, talking husbands, and certainly in Dawson’s case, he did have that football connection. He had star appeal. He had charisma. After he’d finished playing with the Newtown jets, he was a bit of a hero on the Northern beaches and played footy with the Bellrose Eagles. One of the senior detectives on the northern beaches helped run that club, and had even helped recruit Chris and Paul Dawson after their 1st grade Newtown jets careers to play for Bellrose. So, you know, the old mates act. We’re all blokes. It’s part of that culture, no doubt, but it doesn’t exist today. I think today, thankfully, if a woman disappeared, it would be very quickly a social media concern, and then no doubt a mainstream media and police concern, and that would be immediately or soon afterwards checking the house, the car, phone records, bank accounts, getting warrants to intercept communications between husband and wife on text, and so on to work out what sort of what the relationship looked like. The other thing we’ve come to understand is that when bad men are going through separations with their partner, that’s when she’s at her most vulnerable. There’s this quite unhinged belief or determination in some men, that what they own, what they believe they outright own insofar as a family home or other significant assets of a relationship are concerned, is theirs. And then they don’t want to share it. And in there was the bitch can fuck off. But she’s not going to get this. I’m not going to give it up. I’ve earned this. And it doesn’t matter how much effort, how much time, how much sacrifice the female partner has made in terms of mothering children and keeping the house, and doing all of the traditional roles in what may have perhaps been the traditional kind of marriage where he’s worked, and she stayed at home looking after children. That all kind of just gets diminished. The role of the female is just somehow extinguished is not really relevant, and the value of the bricks and mortar is all important to the male. Now I’m generalizing, and I know that there’ll be a number of your listeners who will disagree with this, but I’m sure that the statistics will bear out that in times of marriage breakdown, separation, when property settlements are looming and decisions will be made, perhaps, by other people more fair-minded than the male. That’s when women are really vulnerable when they’re in bad relationships.

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, I definitely think what you said. There’s a really important point around the nature of the male and female responsibility in marriages through time. Obviously, I’m a lot younger than you. So, growing up in my time, I was born in the in 1996 or the late 90s. And from what I understand, based on, you know, history, and talking to my family and friends, and so forth, back in that time, where the mother kind of had that responsibility of taking care of the home, and the father would often be the breadwinner going out and working. Maybe it’s not necessarily an issue of a generational issue among men per se, but more so just around the social dynamic and the working responsibilities of the mail in the home at that point in time, so if they were working, they felt like they almost were the one that pave the way for the family home and all those assets that the family owned. And so in that sense, or that train of thought, it’s theirs theoretically, and that’s the perception they had, whereas now you look at a lot more opportunities for women. You only have to look at the Nrl. W. And all these sporting opportunities for women these days, which is fantastic. So there’s a lot more opportunity for them now. But it’s quite a scary statistic that. Like the start of this year, we’ve had the highest rate of murders of women in, I think Australia in in years. Yet coercion has been now become a prisonable offense. So do you think we’re going forward or backwards, or where? Where do you think we are? With this issue?

Hedley Thomas: I think we’re going forwards, but you know these homicide rates are just out of control, and you know the propensity of domestic violence, you know, is still so dangerously high. You know, there’s a huge amount of work that’s being done, and rightfully so, to try to educate people, to report domestic violence, to educate neighbors and strangers, to help women in this situation, to demand of men that they meet standards that any civilized society must have. But it must be better in many ways, because governments and police services and other groups dedicated to domestic violence are so much better educated and resourced than what they were.

You’ll never eradicate it, of course. I mean, you know, there are some lofty ambitions, and people talk about ending domestic violence. The sad reality is, it’s a bit like the idea that we could end fraud, or end murder. I mean, it is unattainable. There will be red mist that just descends on people who have a propensity to hurt women, and probably the most that we can hope for is that more people act sooner to try to nip it in the bud when it’s visible, when it’s capable of being stopped and the perpetrator arrested and hopefully given a bit of a flogging on the way into the watch house before there is another fatality. And I think that the role of good role models, coppers, and prosecutors, and others who work with domestic violence, and in the media, the role of men exposing other men who are harming women, has never been more important.

Hayden Kelly: Walk us through the typical process when you’re starting a new investigation like Bronwyn. And what kind of legal loopholes and challenges do you typically face when you’re trying to unravel these cold cases which have baffled authorities for years? What kind of things don’t we see or hear when we listen to your podcast?

Hedley Thomas: Well, what you don’t see or hear is me doing whatever I can, haranguing people and making calls, and sending emails and scouring archives to try to get every possible document, record, piece of paper, newspaper clipping, letter, memo, finding everything that could be potentially relevant to a case that I’ve decided to take on. And I do this because I need to understand and read and reread and underline and circle and highlight things in these documents that I believe may be helpful to me long before I’ve tried to interview anybody.

I believe that the best method for me, and it’s probably different for others, but it works for me, is just hours, and then days, and sometimes weeks and weeks of just careful, reflective reading and re-reading of the material until I feel like I know it really well. Then I’m just so much better off when I need to do the interviews that are going to be the mainstay, the significant parts of the podcast series. Because I’ll know the detail at least as well as the person I’m interviewing. Sometimes I know it better. I know their statements and their evidence better than they do, because they haven’t thought about it for years, and I’m reading documents going back to say 1998 or 1985 or 1982, when they made those statements. They’ve forgotten a lot of this detail. But it’s there in black and white. It’s in recordings that were made at the time. It’s in statements they’ve signed off.

So, if I become so familiar with that material, I’m more confident when I’m doing an interview. I’m asking better questions. I’m potentially extracting more material and more answers than would have been thought possible. That’s the first stage, and you don’t hear that, because that’s just part of the dark work behind the scenes.

Hayden Kelly: And how important is it in terms of collaboration with law enforcement agencies? We heard a little bit about your interactions with Dr. Kirsty Wright and some of those important forensic officials and government officials, police. Not only from the standpoint of maintaining your factuality in your reporting, but also in terms of engaging the audience emotionally and maintaining integrity in your work.

Hedley Thomas: Yeah, I want to maintain independence as a journalist. And at the same time, I want to make sure that I can potentially help a law enforcement agency or a homicide unit if I get information that I think they really need to be onto as well. And yeah, that might sound a little bit conceited. You know what the Juno podcaster thinks that he can help the homicide unit. But the reality is that a lot of people who listen to podcasts are not picking up the phone to talk to the cops, but they are sending me emails. They are sending me messages on Facebook or through the website for the podcast, and they’re doing that because they feel like they’ve got a connection with the podcast or with me. That is important, that makes a lot of sense. They don’t care about crime stoppers. They don’t know it. Anyone at crime stoppers they don’t know cops in the homicide unit. So it does make a whole lot of sense that podcast journalists who have won trust and respect from their listenership will get information from people who haven’t previously come forward.

But I think we’ve got a really fundamental problem with the attitude of a lot of people involved in law enforcement. And I haven’t put my finger on whether the attitude is the product of them being territorial. They have a view, perhaps, that their job as homicide cops or senior detectives wearing badges and having the right to carry guns is to investigate these murders. And a journalist with a microphone can just fuck right off, you know. Do they? Do they feel threatened potentially because we might get information that they’re not getting well? We do that we do get that information? Do they They believe that we’ll destroy their potential to solve a case by getting information that that we then broadcast before they’ve had a chance to put operational tactics into play. Maybe that’s probably part of it. I think that’s a far fetched scenario. In most cases my gut feeling is that they just haven’t adjusted to a modern era where it makes a whole lot of sense for them. With proper protocols to have dialogue, to build a bridge with a podcast, with a true crime series. It is, I think, just really weird that we haven’t, for example, in the Bronwyn Podcast Series, been contacted by any senior representative of the New South Wales police force to say, “Hey, this case that you’re working on. It’s still unsolved for us. Do you reckon we could provide someone from the New South Wales police in an interview in one of your episodes talking about how we’re really interested in this case? We’re still looking at it. We have never given up.” And that way, some of your listeners who know stuff could contact that copper. I mean, that’s just sort of, you know, public engagement 101. It is so obvious, and none of the highly paid communications professionals, none of the senior officers of the New South Wales police, have thought about that. Or if they have thought about it, they’ve ruled it out. I don’t need anything from the New South Wales police. Like, I don’t need them to give me anything. I don’t ask them for anything. But I shake my head at the failure of them to say, “Why don’t we utilize this podcast that’s reaching so many more people than our Crime Stoppers ads that has this captive audience? Why don’t we utilize it? See if we can get one of our detectives on there talking about the case, and we’ll give him a really careful, controlled script so he doesn’t stray off and blow anything up, and we might get something out of it.” I mean, do you find that weird?

Hayden Kelly: So I think it should be a given, right? The fact that the police cooperate with you to make sure that, as you say, you’re in sync with what you, the correct and proper way to approach things in terms of navigating your communication and your messages around the investigation, but also, as I say, just outreach and having people that are ringing in and giving you evidence, providing that to police or cooperating with police so that you both are across all the evidence and information that’s available. I think you’re right. It makes sense. It should be given.

Hedley Thomas: I mean, if I’ve lost a loved one and I’m not a journalist, I’m just a listener to a true crime podcast, I think I’d be berating the senior detective saying, “Mate, do you realize that this podcast is getting millions of downloads with this story about my sister or my daughter who’s gone missing? Why aren’t you on there talking about how police can contact you? Because you’re running the task force that’s investigating. Why aren’t you on there? Why aren’t you a presence in this podcast? How come you’re completely invisible? What is wrong with you?” You know? It’s not going to benefit my podcast to have that. I don’t say this because I really think there’s a big hole in the storytelling and the cops aren’t there. I just say it because I can’t believe how this missed opportunity just isn’t taken up to help victims of crime and their families.

Hayden Kelly: Do you still think there’s a long way for police to go before they get to? I guess I think a lot of the community, particularly in, I’d imagine, Queensland but also New South Wales, have kind of lost a bit of touch with the police. There’s been a number of things that have been reported in the media about, I won’t go into detail, but different things that have happened at festivals, and some corruption there. But do you think that, like, obviously with the Chris Dawson case, with the forensics laboratory, with the Shanty story, do you think there’s still a long way to go before you know, you’ll be happy with the kind of intent and integrity you see come through the police investigations into these murders?

Hedley Thomas: Yeah, look, I don’t want to be, planned, or anyone. Well, that’s not it. I support police, and I think police do a lot of really good work. And I have enormous respect for a lot of police I’ve dealt with, so I guess I don’t want to sound like I’m smearing the police force as a whole. I’m not. I’m just against and baffled by the failure of police to take this amazing opportunity, this true crime podcasting, and turn it to their advantage. It’s like they’re threatened by it, or they’re jealous of it, or they’re scared. I don’t know. They’re intimidated. I don’t know what it is. They would, I believe, grow as a more effective crime-fighting organization if they took the opportunity, if they showed their commitment by saying, “Okay, what are the big true crime podcasts into unsolved cases at the moment? And who can we roll out to be interviewed in them to enhance the story but also improve our chances of getting information and tips from informants who have been quiet?” It’s great that these informants are talking to the podcast, but we want to channel some of them to us.

Hayden Kelly: Improve the standards of podcasting, too, you know. Maybe there’s been things you’ve said in the past that you necessarily shouldn’t have said, but the police jumping on board, they can kind of tighten up in that respect, too.

Hedley Thomas: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Hayden Kelly: So, in terms of what you mentioned before about social media and that kind of thing, there’s been this massive boom in artificial intelligence. And I saw this really funny ad the other day on a billboard, saying, “You know AI is coming for your job, but it’s not coming for your Nando’s chicken,” or something of that nature. But I guess, being a journalist and being in this field, one of the biggest fears, no doubt, I imagine for a lot of people in media and journalism, but also a lot of other professions, is this incoming or influx of new technologies and machine learning and that kind of thing, which potentially down the track will eradicate the need for some of these jobs. I guess you’re quite fortunate in the fact that I imagine people love the personal nature of your podcasts and the work you do. So, I definitely don’t think your podcasting is under threat. But is there a concern, you know, more broadly amongst a lot of journalists that AI is, you know, there’s that looming threat of AI?

Hedley Thomas: I think there would be, you know, pockets of concern about that. And I’ve thought about how it might affect true crime podcasting. I just can’t see the robots being able to do the kinds of interviews and analysis that I do. I did get a bit of a surprise, though, when I used Trent in a way that I hadn’t used before. So for all of my audio, I put it through the Trent transcribing system, and I get, you know, usually a pretty good result. I hasten to add, I’m not sponsored by Trent. I’m not trying to plug them or anything. But they had this new button that you could push to give you an executive summary of your transcript. And I thought, “Oh, okay, so what’s going to interpret, you know, a one-hour interview and give me this little snapshot of it as a memo for myself, see how that works.” I was absolutely gobsmacked by the accuracy of it. It was incredible, and it took a matter of seconds. Yeah, I’m still amazed at the accuracy of these robots.To turn a one or two-hour recording into a very accurate, perfectly time-coded transcript that would have taken a day when we have to transcribe our own files to do so, you know. When we had tapes. Oh my God! I’m still haunted by the noise of rewinding those tapes and trying to get the quote down, and we’d spend forever doing it. And then we’d only end up using about three percent of the actual content of the tape in the story. But it’d taken a day to transcribe. Now, you know, I just go make a cup of tea or have a beer, and away the transcribing system goes. And now it’s also giving me a memo that summarizes what’s there in case I’ve forgotten. Yeah. So that’s gotta be a good thing, but I worry about, you know, every other potential application that could take real people’s jobs.

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, wasn’t with my research at the moment that I’m doing, working on a systematic review. And imagine there’s gonna be a lot of people in just like journalism and research that are gonna get a little bit upset with, you know, some of these technologies. There’s one technology at the moment that they’re utilizing, which is used for screening text for the purposes of reviews, systematic reviews, and so forth. And I’ve only just finished like outcome extraction with my research paper that we’re working on. Sorry, my review paper that we’re working on, and it would have been, between, you know, 12 to 17,000 studies that we had to screen. And now what they’re finding is that there’s actually software which you can use, which makes it—you can shoot through the screening process, I imagine, in a matter of days, weeks, whereas before it would take months, right? And so, and the same thing with in high-performance sport with the use of GPS units and technology now, and a lot of the software and technology they have. I can get all these metrics and insights on athletes’ load and all sorts of other measures with, you know, the click of a button. And so all of these professions, I imagine, technologies saved by a lot of professionals these days is a great thing. But I imagine for a lot of people, seeing all of this technology coming into play now, it’d be a little bit of a—you know, if I had to, my day would have been much better, and saved me a lot of time and energy. But yeah. So one of the things I also wanted to chat to you about. So in Bondi we had this stabbing recently at the Westfield in Bondi. And one thing I’ve noticed now is the proliferation of media on different outlets—TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. And I’ve heard you publicly saying, you know, a lot of journalists should be focusing more on working, on refining the stories, how they communicate those stories with the community, and less on their Twitter platform or their social media profiles. What kind of implications is social media having for the way that journalists, not just like yourself, but other journalists too, in the way that not only the community receive information, but also your role and your responsibility as a journalist?

Hedley Thomas: Well, I think that the penetration of social media coinciding with the fracturing of mainstream media has been really, you know, pernicious, and has damaged journalism and changed listening and viewing and reading habits fundamentally such that, you know, people apparently, you know, in their teens and twenties now regard the news cycle as what they get out of TikTok. It used to be what they would read by scanning the pages of a, you know, respected broadsheet newspaper or listening to quality programs, whether it’s on the ABC or some of the commercial free-to-air channels. And yeah, the social media profiles of journalists seem to me to have been justified as a tool to distribute their journalism, and that’s fair enough. But they’ve also, I believe, been a tool for journalists to, in some ways, even narcissistically curate their own profiles. So they’ve become more invested. And it doesn’t—certainly isn’t the case for, you know, all journalists, but a number of journalists who have developed really strong social media followings, I believe, have done that to the detriment of their journalism. And they’ve been so invested and committed to creating a profile for themselves online and in social media that just to keep up with, you know, the output that’s required with, you know, Twitter—what’s now known as X—and to keep feeding this growing audience they have, there must be an impact on what they can actually produce in terms of journalism. Tweeting isn’t journalism. And if you’re spending hours a day producing, you know, tens of thousands of tweets a year, what’s the actual upside? How is society benefiting from that? How are you actually producing quality journalism if you’re too distracted by the social media profiles as a journalist to be practicing investigative journalism? So maybe I’m missing something here, but I just can’t imagine how I could possibly get through the amount of work I have to do, and it’s grueling when we’re doing, you know, a series such as The Teacher’s Pet or Brahmin. The hours are punishing just keeping up with the production deadlines and the writing, and the writing and interviewing, and so on. It’s insane sometimes. But if you also heaped on top of that the demands that journalists have been meeting with social media, it wouldn’t get done. I couldn’t get it done. So, you know, I’m not a fan. I don’t like Twitter. I think that it’s been terrible for journalism. It’s caused so many journalists to become publicly perceived as partisans, as activists. It’s led to many journalists wearing their beliefs and their, at times, narcissistic tendencies on their Twitter profiles, exposing them and their colleagues and outlets sometimes to ridicule. I don’t know how many jobs it’s destroyed because of the late-night drunken tweets. So yeah.

Hayden Kelly: Is there any KPIs around that kind of thing in the journalism profession? You know, I imagine there’s probably some outlets where journalists are promoted. Like, for instance, in research, we’re kind of pushed to have our X now or Twitter formerly username on our presentations, for instance, so that people can connect with our research, or whatever. Is there that kind of push in journalism as well to have—

Hedley Thomas: There was. There was certainly at News Corp. I can’t speak for other media outlets, but I suspect it was the same. There was certainly a view going back several years, that it was a good thing. The view has changed. And I think people have understood that, or sensible people have understood that Twitter has to be managed very carefully because it can be really destructive and not beneficial at all. And perhaps because, as I said to you earlier, you know, I’m not a natural convert to all technologies. But it’s not just that. I just had a view that for me, Facebook was really interesting when it started. And, you know, I still have a Facebook profile, although I don’t really post on it anymore, because it just seems to sort of be more of a chore than a pleasure. I think that increasingly public companies and media outlets and journalists are gonna sort of swing back, swing away. I’ve got a feeling. We’ve reached Peak stupidity. With the rush into Twitter, and that it’s moving. moving back to a more sensible balance. That’s my hope. What’s your sense of that? Or do you think not.

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, I think, coming at it from a more, I’d say from a being a younger individual from a different generation. I can definitely see the need for, you know, at the end of the day it’s marketing like, whether we like it or not. And I’ll kind of reiterate the sentiments of David Goggins. I think I’ve talked about this on another podcast but he’s kind of said that he blatantly doesn’t like social media. To be honest, I don’t really enjoy it, either. I don’t like posting. I kind of don’t. I try to put a lot of my time into publishing content and not absorbing it. So I try not to absorb anything there, and rather, instead of putting my time into absorbing the content, I try to focus more on the content production of, I guess, the podcast to try and get the message out there and get more listeners. It’s definitely helped me in terms of collaborating with other people in the space like yourself.

For instance, I just as an example, Dean Summers, who we had on, who swam from Newcastle to Sydney, the 60-mile swim which took him about 31 hours for him to get the message out there. You know not many people are watching the news anymore. Not many people are consuming media other than through social media. Whether I know that you’re saying we’re getting dumber. And I agree with that. I think, as a society definitely, we’re getting locked in our little echo chambers of our news feeds and things on social media. And that’s how I try to escape that a little bit.

Hedley Thomas: I agree. It makes a lot of sense to be able to market and distribute your stories and podcasts and news breaks and so on on social media. If it really were limited to that, that would be fine. But what I’ve seen is that a lot of people on Twitter just get sucked into the comments and things.

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, and I don’t really do that. I don’t. To be honest, I don’t really like or comment, or anything. I just basically just post and get up to delete the app or get off it. That’s all.

Hedley Thomas: Oh, that’s the discipline you need. And that works, yeah.

Hayden Kelly: Hedley, it’s been an absolute pleasure of mine to have you on the podcast today. I’ve been an avid listener, as I said at the start of your podcast. Today was a nice pivot away from some of the other topics. We’ve been talking about some crazy endurance feats from some incredible people. But to get someone like yourself on the podcast today, it’s been an absolute pleasure. Before we wind things up, I just want to talk a little bit about where you foresee investigative journalism going in the coming years. How is this area of journalism continuing to evolve? And what do you foresee for the future? Particularly in relation to digital storytelling, but also podcasting.

Hedley Thomas: I’m hoping that as a result of the outcomes of these true crime podcasts, like The Night Driver, Shandy’s Story, and exposing wrongdoing in cases like The Teacher’s Pet and The Teacher’s Trial and others that have achieved amazing results, more outlets, more executives, more bank counters will appreciate the public’s strong demand for quality, detailed, well-researched, deep-diving examinations of cases, particularly cold cases. And that as a result, there’ll be more commitment from the people who fund these that they’ll be more money available to help solve more unsolved. And that’s gonna be a great thing. You know, I know that a lot of people are increasingly fickle with the journalism that they consume. But what they want in my experience and what I’ve discovered they want through the podcast I’ve been doing is factual, interesting storytelling in cases where justice has not been served and might still be served with the help of members of the public coming forward and committed journalism. You know, that’s got a really strong connection with people, as it should. And you know, we can keep doing that and meeting that need. And if more media outlets take the risk and fund it, then, you know, I reckon we’ll all be a lot better off. That’s where I hope we’re going.

Hayden Kelly: Yeah with Bronwyn. Is there any other series on the horizon that you’re working on?

Hedley Thomas: I’ve got a lot in mind, but I figure that I can’t really talk about them. I don’t want to put pressure on the people who want to help me if I talk about them early. Unfortunately, I can probably only take on one big one a year because there’s months of investigation and work before you release an episode. You know, I’ve become a bit of a laughing stock within my group of friends and colleagues because at the outset, I’ll say, “Oh, look! I think this is going to be about 6 episodes,” and they roll their eyes and double it. And you know, I’ve become kind of renowned for underestimating how these series will expand and grow. The reason is people contact me, and information is presented and produced as a result of people listening to early episodes. So my estimates are correct in the absence of that material. But these podcasts have such an impact on listeners who know stuff or who want to help that the information base just widens and deepens. And what am I meant to do? Say, “Oh, well, I estimated only 6 eps. I’m not going to investigate these new leads.” We’ll just forget about that and proceed to the finish line. Now you’ve got to just squeeze every last bit out of these things to ensure that you might get the result.

Hayden Kelly: So you mentioned that people can provide evidence? If people scroll down on this episode on Spotify, wherever they’re listening, they can find. I’ll put all the links to The Night Driver, Shandy’s Story, The Teacher’s Pet, The Teacher’s Trial, and currently, Bronwyn. But if people want to get in touch with you and provide evidence, where can they email, Hedley?

Hedley Thomas: Yeah, people find my email address at the Australian. And I’ve also got a website called hedleythomas.com. I get a lot of people who email me through that website. It’s in keeping with my own lack of engagement with social media. If you go to it, there’s not a lot there. I don’t know how to update it. But there’s an address there, and a couple of photos, and a bit of bio, and so on. So it’s really just a landing place and I try to respond to everybody. I can’t respond immediately because I’ve just got so much work on at the moment, but I do try to get back to everyone.

Hayden Kelly: Just before we round things out, normally what we do, Hedley, is I have a playlist on Spotify where I get every guest to add one of their favorite songs to the playlist. So we have this ever-evolving playlist of music from our guests.

Hedley Thomas: You know what? I reckon it’d be easier for me to recommend a song, because…

Hayden Kelly: We can do both. Let’s do both. Let’s do one of each.

Hedley Thomas: Yeah, yeah. So I really enjoyed the podcast going back a few years now of the Nixon years and the Watergate tapes. Now, that was an American production. And there’s a particular brand or podcast company that produced it. I thought it was amazing. I love that, you know, political, US political history. And do you remember? Do you want me to try and find out?

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, you know what, Hedley, if you can pull that up and get Anna to email that across. Put that in the note.

Hedley Thomas: In terms of songs, I mean, I get excited every time I hear Bruce Springsteen’s born to run. that’s a favorite. Lately I have been playing a lot of murder on the dance floor.

Hayden Kelly: Oh, great one. Yeah. Timeless.

Hedley Thomas: Oh, my God! The movie that I watched recently at home, the last few sayings just did my head in so… Oh.

Hayden Kelly: It’s been a pleasure, Hedley. Thanks so much for your time today. And I wish all the best with Bronwyn.

Hedley Thomas: Thank you. I’ve enjoyed a lot, and appreciate your patience, and I’m sorry I couldn’t come on sooner. It took a little while to schedule this one, but we got there. No dramas at all.

Hayden Kelly: Before you go, mate, before you go, I might just get you to look down the barrel of the camera and just say, “Welcome to episode 37 of the normal Podcast. This is Hedley Thomas,” just a nice big strong… because this will be part of the opening statement. Yeah.

Hedley Thomas: Okay, alright. Is that down the barrel?

Hayden Kelly: Yeah, yeah. Okay. So it’s just… Well, so just please repeat them. “Welcome to episode 37 of the normal Podcast. This is Hedley Thomas.”

Hedley Thomas: Welcome to episode 37 of the normal Podcast. This is Hedley Thomas.

Hayden Kelly: Very good, mate. Thanks for that. Alright. I’ll leave going out of taking up enough of your time today.

Hedley Thomas: God. I will stay in touch, mate, if I’m up. I’m actually up in New South Wales next weekend for a workshop, but… yeah, if I’m ever, if you’re ever around, or whatever, love to.

Hedley Thomas: Yeah, we do love. We do love Noosa, so we go to Noosa for a bit. But I won’t be there this week next weekend. But I’d love to… love to have a coffee with you one day when it doesn’t matter when it’s down the track. And yeah, just make… Alright. We’ll go better than that. We’ll bring you over and enjoy.

Hayden Kelly: Bring my partner, Valerie, up. We’ll bring some cheese and stuff, and we can have a… Right, right. Look forward to it.

Hayden Kelly: Alright! Thanks, mate, I really appreciate it. I’ll let you go now. Have a great day.

Hedley Thomas: You, too. Take care! See ya!