BONUS | Behind the scenes on Mr Big

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Hi, I'm Alicia, the host of Mr.

Big.

I'm here with Rachel Brown, my fellow true crime podcast host at the ABC.

Rach investigated and presented two seasons of the ABC's first true crime podcast, Trace.

In this bonus episode, Rach is going to ask me some questions about the series and raise any lingering thoughts she had after hearing the show.

Hi, Rach.

Hey, Alicia, congrats on a great series.

Thanks so much.

So I've heard it all and I've got lots of questions for you.

Apologies in advance.

So firstly, I have to ask you this because I know a lot of the audience will want to know.

Do you think Glenn is guilty?

I mean, Glenn Weaven was convicted of this crime.

He went to court.

There was a trial back in 2011.

A jury sat through nine days of testimony, decided that Glenn Weaven was guilty.

So, you know, there's no new evidence.

If Glenn Weaven wanted to to try to overturn his conviction, he'd need what the court sees as fresh and compelling evidence.

And, you know, we haven't come across anything that would be considered fresh and compelling.

And so why did you want to do this story?

Like, what was it about it that got its hooks stuck into you?

Well, I guess it started when I was working as a reporter in a city called Saskatoon in the prairies in Canada for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

And we were investigating a story about a missing woman.

And there wasn't a lot of information about it at the time.

We knew that her estranged husband had been a suspect.

So we started looking into the story.

Unbeknownst to myself and the other reporter working on it, the police had also launched an undercover investigation into the estranged husband at the same time that we were looking at it as a story.

So we sort of had these parallel investigations.

Was that quite common in Canada by that stage, the use of that technique?

It was quite common, but I hadn't heard of it.

I came to understand a lot about Mr.

Big Stings, how much they had been used in that country.

They've been used hundreds of times and they're not in the news all the time, but they're something that the average person has probably heard about at some stage.

I moved back to Australia during the pandemic and I started looking around for information about Mr.

Big Stings in Australia and realised that there just wasn't a lot of reporting on it.

I couldn't find many cases.

And so I started asking around and that's when I I came across this case.

Someone sent me this tape.

Yes, the tape.

So

this Mr.

Big Sting, where Glenn Weaven was the target, that's the first thing I thought when I heard that tape.

I'm like, where did you get that?

Are you allowed to tell me?

Well, I can tell you that somebody sent it to me.

So, yeah, through that process of sort of calling everybody I could find that maybe had some connection with one of these cases or, you know, some understanding of one of these cases, someone said to me you should look at this case and you should listen to this tape and so I just sat down and listened to the whole sort of couple hours of it and it was it was fascinating do you remember how you felt when you first heard it I'm sure you've heard it thousands of times since then but the first listen

yeah I think I felt a lot of things um I mean overall it's confusing it's fascinating it's really hard to decipher who's telling the truth What is the truth?

There's multiple versions of the confession.

One of the things that struck me initially is just how sad it really was to hear these men talking about the murder of Mary Cook in such a sort of cold way.

You know, this is a woman who died, but it's really just a sort of a business conversation.

Procedural.

Yeah, yep.

How'd you do it?

This way.

Okay.

Like, where'd you take it?

It's really sad and that they're so detached from what they're talking about.

That was what was most interesting for me as a listener because what was most fascinating but also troubling is that I couldn't work out what the truth was, whether there even was a truth or just various people had various versions of different truths.

You know, did you, I mean, Glenn was so ambiguous for me, but then Victoria Police.

We see them as the good guys.

I mean, they were acting.

So did you, did you struggle with that?

Yeah, I think that's what's so fascinating and potentially, you know, concerning about this method is that it does muddy the truth.

And police would say that, regardless of sort of what you feel about the confession, that they will always try to find physical evidence to support the confession.

So in this case, you have the knife.

In some cases, the killer will lead police to the remains of their victim or...

evidence that has say a DNA connection to the suspect.

And I think, I guess, that's where it's sort of, it depends how much weight you put in the physical evidence and how strong that physical evidence is, whether or not one of these cases is going to make it through the courts, if someone will be convicted.

In this case, I think that was up to the jury to consider whether or not they felt that knife was a strong piece of evidence, but it's certainly not as strong as something like a body or a piece of DNA evidence that would connect the suspect to the crime.

With these stings as a whole, I watched a video of the Queensland Mr Big sting, the one that caught Daniel Morecombe's killer, in which that Mr Big uses the exact same words as in this series.

He says, all I'm looking for, this is Mr Big, says, all I'm looking for is loyalty, respect and honesty.

So what do I need to fix?

And that's the exact same wording as they use with Glen Weaven.

Is it as surprising to you that each Mr Big chat seems to be read from the same playbook?

I guess I'm not surprised at this point because I've looked at so many of these cases and they're almost carbon copies of each other.

They often or usually begin with some sort of survey or competition.

They'll often end up going to, say, for example, a holiday together.

There's one case I know of where they all went to another part of the country on a holiday and everyone who was there was an undercover officer.

And that's how they all got to know each other.

They use that situation to sort of offer this person work.

Often the target is someone who doesn't have a lot of money.

They're quite vulnerable.

They might need a job.

You know, they're pretty easy jobs usually.

From the outside, looking in, it's not very convincing.

It's like, go out and do this job for, you know, three hours.

You have to move a car from this location to that location and we'll give you 500 bucks or 300 bucks.

But obviously, for the person in that moment, it's money and

they'll take it.

And then they sort of, from there, the undercovers will bring them into this organization.

But yes, the language is really similar.

And I guess what's surprising about it is that it works over and over and over again.

You don't even have to change it that much.

But I think the reason it works is because the target is always a very specific type of person.

This would not work on anyone.

If they're a person who's lonely, suddenly they're brought into a community, they have some sort of purpose.

Yeah, you mentioned community.

That's one thing that stood out for me in the Mr.

Big Sting for Daniel Morecombe.

That killer found that crime gang.

He considered them his family, like he'd never had real mates before.

And, you know, he's got this family now, which is, you know, scary and sad at the same time.

Well, I guess that's, you know, in a real gang, often that's what people, I mean, you know, I imagine that's what they're getting from it is it's not just you know a financial gain from whatever crimes you're involved in.

It's also a sort of that mateship and being a part of something.

And again, often I think people who find themselves being a part of a gang are people who are maybe a little bit lost before they find themselves in that situation.

With this technique, Charlie Bazina, former police officer, kindly agreed to talk to you about this technique for the series.

Did you get a lot of no's from other officers or former officers that you tried to interview?

Yeah, I mean.

So many no's, all no's.

Nobody wanted to talk about this from a police perspective.

So basically, we contacted every undercover officer that we could make contact with.

So my colleague Ayla Darling, who's a producer on the story, I mean, she went above and beyond to try to find anyone who had any connection to an undercover officer.

I also tried, you know, my contacts to get in touch with people.

And we did manage to reach undercover officers who had worked on these cases, but none of them wanted to talk to us about it.

And neither did retired police officers.

Even retired.

Even retired.

And it's all because there's this perception that, you know, this is what we were told multiple times is that they don't want to talk about it because they think it won't work the more people talk about this they feel the less likely it is to be effective and they don't want to be a part of that it's a covert technique and the more under wraps they can keep it the more likely it is to be effective into the future is their argument right so why did charlie bezina agree

Well, I think he felt that it was worth defending the technique.

That's why we wanted to talk to the police is because we know that this is an effective technique.

It does work.

It solves, you know, horrendous crimes.

It puts really dangerous people behind bars.

Yeah, it was really important to get that perspective, I think.

That was a really strong part of that episode.

Yeah, and

we really, really wanted that to come across because, you know, yes, there are concerns about it, but also it's done some incredible good.

in this country.

You couldn't argue that it has not made the community safer.

And then, so

something that's really important to me in covering true crime cases is the blessing of families involved.

Was that weighing on your mind when you were deciding whether or not to kind of

not reopen this case, but I guess pick at the wound of the Mary Cook story?

Yeah, it's been on my mind the whole time.

It's on my mind quite a lot.

I

think it's really important that we do everything we can to be sensitive to the family.

I think, unfortunately, covering the Mr.

Pig technique, there aren't many cases where the family would feel that

the technique should be scrutinised or should be criticised because it led their family to answers.

And in this case, Mary Cook's family feel that Glenweaven is where he should be, that he is guilty.

And that's why we

made sure that we contacted the family, that we've kept them informed about what the story is going to be about.

We've tried to include their perspectives as much as we can and make sure that Mary Cook was,

we wanted the story to reflect that this family lost someone very important to them, that there's a woman at the heart of this case who was killed.

That really is, you know, she is the victim.

here in this story and we wanted her to maintain that presence through the story.

Nothing is going to bring her back.

But if Glenn Weaven can stay in jail, you know, for the maximum amount of time in their view, then that's the outcome that they wanted.

And I think that was important to communicate how they feel about it, because this has found answers for them.

They've found justice and

they think that this, it ended the way it should have.

And we wanted to say that too.

Yeah, lots of complicated things that you tackled in this series.

Absolutely.

yeah.

And do you ever worry that by revealing details of this technique, that it might be less effective in the future?

I mean, I've definitely thought about it because it's been raised with me so many times when trying to get someone to speak about this technique.

But, I mean, having come from Canada where I was reporting on it,

it had been in the media over and over and over again in that country for decades.

I mean, more so, I would say, in the past 10 to 15 years.

It continued to to work but it's not only that, it's the fact that our

courts have refused to suppress the methodology.

I mean I've gone back and read these decisions by the High Court of Australia and also in this specific case with Glen Weaven.

The judges refused to keep the methodology under wraps.

That you know there are multiple examples of judges and High Court justices saying that this it is in the public interest that police shouldn't be able to operate with these covert techniques without public scrutiny.

And there are multiple cases where the judges allowed it.

And Glenn Weaven's case is one of them.

And the judge in that case felt quite strongly that you know, this information should be public.

And also that, you know, in his view, the horse is kind of bolted.

The information is out there already.

It's not that it's secret.

It's readily available for anyone who wants to find it on the internet.

Yeah.

And have I remembered this correctly?

I think it was you that was telling me an example of the target of a Mr.

Big Sting talking about Mr.

Big Sting's in the car with the crime group who were undercover cops.

Do I remember that right?

Yeah, this is kind of, I don't actually know the source of that story.

It's kind of, I think, maybe third hand, but there is a sort of story that goes around of there being a Mr.

Big target in Canada who was listening to a radio news story in the car with an undercover officer during the sting where

they were talking about this this technique and the target in the sting said, oh, like, who would fall for that?

Like, what kind of idiot would fall for that?

But they were in that moment the target of a sting and obviously, you know, they'd fallen for it at that point.

So, I mean, yeah, it's one of those things where obviously...

you know, people think that they would never find themselves in that situation, but maybe, you know, maybe they would.

And a good example, I guess, that public awareness of this technique doesn't mean that it won't work in future.

Well, that's right.

And I think, well, if you look at the Canadian example,

you can see how many times it has worked in the past 10, 15 years, you know, despite all of the reporting around it.

Yeah, right.

Are there any obvious differences in the execution of Mr.

Big Stings in Canada compared to Australia?

Yeah, there are some differences.

The first sort of key difference is that in a Canadian Mr Big Sting, they'll often often have something called a, they call it the violence scenario.

So they will like simulate some kind of violence, usually against a woman, if the victim in the case was a woman.

And

I can give you an example of a case where the undercover police made it look like one of the members of the gang had killed a woman.

and that a cleanup guy had been called in to get rid of the body.

And obviously the suspect sees all of this.

The idea is to make them feel like they're surrounded by people who are comfortable with violence against women and comfortable with cleaning up a crime like that.

And that potentially the cleanup guy could help them with that.

That doesn't happen in Australia, the violence scenario, it wouldn't be admissible in court.

So there are some legal differences there that stop that from happening.

The other difference that I noticed is from sitting in court and watching one of these cases unfold, because of the Supreme Court of Canada decision from 2014, which made it so the onus was on the police and the Crown to prove that the evidence should be admitted in court.

So it's automatically not allowed.

They have to go into the courtroom and say, here are all the reasons that you should admit this evidence from our Mr.

Bigsting.

Because the courts there now consider elements like vulnerability of the suspect, whether or not that person is financially vulnerable, whether or not the police have given them alcohol or exploited their addictions, the The police will now run scenarios specifically to cover off those points so that when they get in the courtroom, they can say, well, we ran this scenario where we showed the target that we don't encourage alcoholism or, you know, binge drinking or overindulgence in alcohol.

So they'll have a scenario where one of the members of the gang who has an addiction or is an alcoholic, they actually, they ran a scenario where they sent that person to to rehab to help them out so that they could get past their addiction.

And this is in a case where the suspect was an alcoholic.

So

they're covering off all these points to say, we did this thing to make sure that the person didn't feel like they...

Trapped.

Yeah,

we did this scenario to make sure they knew that we didn't condone alcoholism.

We did this other scenario to make sure that they knew that they could leave the gang at any time.

And so in this particular case, case, there were over 100 scenarios because, I mean, there are some other factors as to why there were quite so many in that case, because a suspect had an injury, a brain injury, and forgot a bunch of stuff.

And so they had to repeat all of it.

But, you know, in the cases that we've looked at in Australia, they don't have to do that necessarily because the court doesn't require...

the Crown to prove that the evidence should be admitted and to cover off these specific points about vulnerability, about addictions, about financial vulnerability, things like that.

Yeah, yeah.

And I know with these series, you know, you have to leave a lot out, but is there anything kind of niggling that you would like listeners to know about that they mightn't have heard of in the episodes?

Yeah, I mean, there's so much we had to leave out.

And I think, you know, I can mention these things in brief.

One of the things we had to leave out was on the night of Mary Cook's murder, a neighbour of someone who lived nearby saw a green car speeding away from Mary's house almost sort of moments after the explosion from the fire.

And the police did investigate this green car.

It was trying to find out like who had a green car.

What kind of green car was it?

Did Glenn have a green car?

There was a lot of discussion about that.

Some of the neighbours swore blind that Glenn had a green car, but Glenn had a red car.

So

it became very confusing.

And, you know, in the end, it kind of amounted to nothing.

There's not really anywhere we could go with that

thread.

Another thing that you know we mentioned briefly in the story and you hear it in the tape is that Glenn, we even mentioned someone named Sean during his confession.

And he says that there was another guy who was there when Mary was killed.

In fact, he says that Sean stabbed Mary Cook first and that he sort of panicked and stabbed her himself as well.

Glenn then says that Sean got killed by someone else and there's a whole tale there about Sean, you know, going on a permanent holiday and ending up in the hills somewhere in Victoria.

But we tried to find out if there was a real Sean, who might have played that role,

if there was some truth to that story, because there were other elements of Glenn's first two confessions that appeared to have some relevance to the final confession.

He does talk about a knife.

And we did find a couple of people named Sean, but even talking to those people, we weren't able to make any connection.

There was nothing that we stumbled across that suggested that someone named Sean could have also been involved in Mary Cook's murder.

So before we finish up, Rachel, you've got a podcast coming out later this year.

What can you tell me about it?

I do.

So you're in Perth, right?

I am.

Did the story make it over there of a Jetstar pilot charged with murder of two campers in Victoria's High Country?

Absolutely.

Right.

Yes.

So it's about that camper's case that

kind of introduced the world to Greg Lynn, the pilot, and it looks into him.

Wow.

I can't wait to hear more.

That sounds fascinating.

Yeah.

So you'll hear more towards the end of the year.

And that podcast will be able to be found in this feed, in the Unravel feed.

Thanks so much for talking to me, Rachel.

It's been really great.

Pleasure.

I'm happy to answer some of those questions.

And also, you know, just to talk to someone who has worked on a story, has been through the same thing.

It's great to chat.

Well, I know these things are a massive slug.

So good job.

And hopefully you can have a bit of a breather now.

Thank you.

Thanks for your time.

Okay.

Take care.

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