NZ Detectives

Telling Tales (1x1)

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The purpose of any investigation is to establish the truth. In many cases that can be quite problematic. Telling Tales explores one of the most fundamental skills a detective needs – the ability to communicate effectively on many levels. ‘To get a rapport with people – to have them tell you things that sometimes they’ve never told anybody else.’ Detective Senior Sergeant Tusha Penny When a handless corpse is found at Red Rocks in Wellington detectives are faced with an immense task. Detective Inspector Mike Arnerich heading the team remembers going to the scene ‘ There’s just a beach with a drag mark coming out of the beach and we had a special search group doing the search. And there’s about 10 of these guys on the ground, freezing cold southerly coming in, all suited up in protective cross-contamination clothing and they’re going through stone by stone every piece of pebble along these drag marks. And I actually thought to myself what the heck are they ever going to get out of there?’ Their finds include a cigarette butt which would prove to have the killers DNA on it. The painstaking work would provide other critical leads. Unravelling the mystery Mike Arnerich enlisted the media – clocking up several front pages stories and prompting the public to call in with pivotal information. Covert surveillance teams were assigned to one particular individual and again it was a member of the public working at a hardware store who would recall the purchase of the secateurs used to sever the hands. Operation Red Rocks reveals that the key to an investigation can lie in excellent communication on many levels. Likewise, in the state of death the victim’s body can also provide detectives with an enormous amount of information. ‘When there’s a homicide there’s a post-mortem …and the investigators are there, to look at the body, and what they can tell us in their state of death about how they died and what went on at their crime s