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Australian Crime Stories: The Investigators - Season 3 Episode 5 - Prescription For Murder
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00:26I definitely live by a quote that I heard when I first started in the police force.
00:30Crooks have to be lucky every day, we have to be lucky one day.
00:36An assault took place in West Perth.
00:38A male person threatened her with a handgun.
00:41She was sexually assaulted.
00:43The person we were looking for was already being referred to as the West Perth Rapist.
00:47We'd been looking for a ride of a black motorcycle.
00:50We had a chase and he actually just went head first into a bus stop.
00:55I started to search him and some weird stuff started to pop up.
00:59It made me go, something's very strange here.
01:02The search warrant we did at his address was on Christmas Eve.
01:06It was the Aladdin's cave.
01:09If somebody wanted to appear as a police officer, he had all those things ready to go.
01:13He had a compulsion to commit crimes.
01:23My name is Peter Marsh.
01:25I'm a detective sergeant, WA police.
01:28In 2012, I was at the Sex Assault Squad.
01:34An assault took place in West Perth, where a 19-year-old girl was assaulted by a male
01:39who she described as threatening her with a handgun.
01:46West Perth is not far from Kings Park.
01:50A lot of, I would say, corporate premises there.
01:56It's a fairly busy area during the day.
01:59It tends to be less populated at night time because of the businesses there.
02:05And that's when this assault happened.
02:11It was 8.30 on a Friday night.
02:16A 19-year-old female, an international student, became aware that a stranger was following her on Havelock Street.
02:27She was on her way to catch a bus around the corner on Ord Street.
02:31But as she turned right from Havelock to Ord, the stranger continued to follow her.
02:39He confronted her near the bus stop on Ord Street.
02:43And he lifted up his jumper, showed her what she described to be the butt of a handgun, told her
02:50that it was a robbery.
02:54The young lady was naturally paralysed with fear.
02:57Ord Street was deserted, no-one to help her, and a stranger pulling a gun on her.
03:05She tried to give him something, give him some cash, and he said, not here.
03:10And directed her to a business premises in Ord Street.
03:15To the back of the building.
03:20Had a path going down to the back.
03:23Some steps leading down to what was a sunken area.
03:27And it's within that area that she was sexually assaulted.
03:37Victim was very brave, put up a fight.
03:40She tried to scratch him, hurt him, hurt the guy.
03:43He threatened her another time.
03:47The assailant produced a large knife and threatened to slash the young lady unless she complied.
03:56After the assault, the offender searched the victim's bag, found her identification, told her not to go to police and
04:03fled.
04:06She was able to get going from there.
04:10She alerted some cleaners that were cleaning some of the buildings there of an evening, and police were called.
04:19Our on-call team was contacted.
04:23Detective Sergeant Frank Glenn and Tony Guerra.
04:27They spoke with the victim and arranged for her to go to the Sex Assault Resource Centre, where she consented
04:37to undergoing a forensic examination.
04:44Frank and Tony spent the weekend doing the initial inquiries.
04:48I joined the team on Monday.
04:52It was really just doing the basics of door knocks and the gathering of CCTV.
05:03But it was all grainy, it was dark.
05:08And at night time, everything just looks the same.
05:12The best physical evidence we had was a DNA profile retrieved during the forensic examination of the victim.
05:19That was run through the database.
05:22However, there was no links to anyone that had offended previously and was on the DNA database.
05:32In a case like this, an offender without a criminal history is the hardest kind of crook to catch.
05:39So, you've got nothing really to go on at all?
05:43No, no, not at all. No.
05:53It was a Sunday. It really wasn't busy.
06:00I actually think the football was on in Subiaco.
06:04So, there was a lot of people not far away, but certainly not in the West Perth area.
06:13At 4.15pm, a 26-year-old female exited a bus in Ord Street.
06:19Not far from the location of the first attack.
06:27She turned into Collins Street.
06:30And as she walked along, a stranger ran up from behind and confronted her.
06:35A male person has lifted up a hoodie and showed her a handgun and told her to walk under that
06:45area.
06:46If you look at the building, it has an undercover car park.
06:50And the young lady may have put two and two together.
06:54Because her assailant, under the pretense of a robbery, was trying to force her into a secluded area.
07:03The girl was very brave.
07:06She said no.
07:07She grabbed her bag and she threw it at him.
07:10And then she took off down the street running.
07:17And stopped to see whether he was still after her.
07:21And he was just standing there dumbfounded that someone hadn't listened to him.
07:27She stopped the guy riding a push bike and told him about what had occurred.
07:32Meanwhile, the offender had taken off.
07:41The offender took the victim's handbag with him.
07:44Perhaps as a trophy, but the most significant thing was the use of the firearm.
07:50We're not America, so we don't see a hell of a lot of firearms involved.
07:54We certainly weren't seeing it back in 2012.
07:57And so that was really what made us believe that the two incidents were linked.
08:08Once again, we undertook an extensive search of CCTV in the West Perth area.
08:15This time we were more lucky with our footage.
08:19We captured a view of a man who we believed to be our offender.
08:25He was walking quickly in a cap and shorts.
08:31A short time later, a separate camera captured the same man.
08:36He'd taken off his hoodie and was getting on a motorbike.
08:39And taking off down Emerald Terrace.
08:42I think Emerald Terrace is a one-way street, so he had to kind of U-turn it.
08:48He got away, but he didn't do a great job of taking off without a few stumbles on the way.
08:58I was tasked with identifying the motorbike.
09:03I spent many months trying to find out the make of the bike.
09:12I learnt the discrete differences between Yamaha and Honda and Kawasaki.
09:20There was a lot of back and forth with reps from all of those companies.
09:26Nothing.
09:27We didn't get anything from there.
09:32Thanks, Gerry.
09:35Yeah.
09:36Yeah.
09:36They're two of our media releases.
09:39Yeah, that's a picture of the U-turn on the motorbike.
09:44And the cap.
09:46The shorts.
09:48The joggers.
09:49Yeah, both of those images from the second scene.
09:52Did you have anything concrete come from the flyers at all?
09:56Nothing.
10:16Was this a big case at that time?
10:19It was.
10:20It had got a lot of media attention.
10:22The person we were looking for was already being referred to in the media as the West Perth Rapist.
10:31My name's Matt Daly.
10:322012, I was working at the Sex Assault Squad for the WA Police.
10:38So you had Frank Glynn, who was the detective sergeant, who I saw everything.
10:43He was a very clever man and a very good investigator.
10:48So a lot of what I did was just checking over things that had already been done and seeing whether
10:52anything had been missed.
10:54In truth, nothing had been missed.
10:57We had the offender's DNA, but without a link on the police database, we were unable to identify him.
11:05We knew he possessed a motorbike, but it was proving difficult to establish the make and model.
11:11Six months after the incidents, we were no closer to identifying the offender, and there was a certain amount of
11:17frustration in that.
11:19When you've got somebody running around who's been referred to as the West Perth Rapist and the serial offender, the
11:24community's got the right to be wanting a result on that job.
11:27Yeah.
11:31My name's Luke McCulloch.
11:34I was a police officer in 2012 at the Wembley Police Station over in Western Australia.
11:42On December 11th, 2012, I was on afternoon shift, so I would have started at 4pm.
11:51We had gone out on patrol at 5pm.
11:55I was driving west on Cambridge Street in Wembley.
12:00We had just passed the BP station.
12:02It was 9.26pm on the footpath on the left-hand side and was a motorbike on the footpath.
12:12And I remember seeing that it had no headlights on and it was moving quite slow.
12:19I said to Sergeant Anderson, do you want to stop that guy?
12:22He said, yeah, probably a good idea.
12:24When we turned the sirens and lights on to initiate a traffic stop, he completely stalled and stopped the motorbike.
12:38At that stage, he didn't look evasive.
12:41I got out of the car and I walked over to him.
12:44And I said, hey, mate, how are you?
12:46We're just doing a quick stop.
12:47What's going on with your motorbike?
12:52Why are you here?
12:53Why have you not got your lights on?
12:54Why are you not on the road?
12:59At that stage, he looked a little bit panicked and turned over to me.
13:03He said, oh, sorry, it's not working properly.
13:06The headlight isn't on.
13:08So I thought it would be safer to be on the footpath.
13:13But then he kept trying to start it again.
13:20At that stage, I said, don't worry about your motorbike.
13:22Can you pass me your driver's licence and we'll find out what's going on and maybe we can even give
13:27you a lift home.
13:30As I was asking for his driver's licence, he turned the motorbike back on, kicked it into gear and took
13:38off.
13:43Raced back to the car, get into the car and we started chasing this bike.
13:49We went down Cambridge Street and we turned left into a side street heading towards Subiaco.
13:56Our lights were on, Sergeant Anderson was driving and I remember turning to him and saying,
14:02should we put the sirens on and should I call the chase on the radio?
14:06I think we were only going about 45 k's an hour, 50 k's an hour,
14:10because the motorbike quite literally couldn't pick up the speed, I don't think.
14:15Sergeant Anderson just said, oh look, when he gets to a set of lights,
14:18if he is looking like he's going to blow the red, then we'll call the chase.
14:23Sure enough, the next left-hand turn went into Subiaco and there was a set of lights that were red.
14:27And he went straight through them.
14:30So I advised our head control centre that we had a chase.
14:36And as I was calling it, he tried to mount and curb.
14:40And the curb was one of those box type curbs.
14:42And the wheel of the tyre went up, it buckled straight away.
14:45And he actually just went head first into a bus stop.
14:54Jumped out, he stood up as well, he had his helmet on at that stage.
14:59And he decided to run.
15:01I chased him, knocked him over and we had him.
15:08I still didn't know why, I was like, what is this guy running from?
15:14Has he stolen the motorbike?
15:16Has he got stolen gear on him?
15:21From the point where he took his helmet off after the crash, he started to creep me out a bit
15:27more.
15:29He was just a weird cat.
15:33He seemed slimy, evasive.
15:38I was very distrusting at this stage.
15:41There you go, Luke.
15:44I was then able to discover his identity.
15:47He was 44-year-old Stephen Michael Adams.
15:50Yep, so that's definitely Stephen.
15:55His home address was a unit in the Perth suburb of Como.
16:01He was this jockey-like small man.
16:04I'm six foot six.
16:05Definitely looking at Stephen, I was looking down on him.
16:08Quite wiry in the face.
16:11Quite narrow and gaunt as well.
16:13A weird guy to be talking to.
16:18I was asking him why he ran.
16:22He said that the registration of the bike was not the registration plate that was on it.
16:27And he'd switched the plates because the registration had expired.
16:31He was worried about insurance.
16:34Again, it just didn't all seem to add up.
16:38But at this point, he was making us get more and more suspicious of him.
16:44Started to search him.
16:47And that's when some weird stuff started to pop up.
16:51On his person in his jacket, he had a can of pepper spray.
16:57He claimed that that was for his own protection.
17:01And then before I went any further, he did tell us that he had a needle on him at that
17:04point in his pants.
17:08The sensors definitely get heightened.
17:10Think about safety.
17:12So needle stick gloves came out.
17:14Where is the needle?
17:15He said it was in his pocket, but it was under his outer pants.
17:18So he had two sets of pants on.
17:20He brought that out eventually, and it looked like an EpiPen.
17:23And I remember asking him, what is this?
17:26And he said it was for blood pressure.
17:28I didn't believe it.
17:29It just didn't seem genuine.
17:34At the same time, because it was a police chase, and tackling him wasn't the easiest thing on his body
17:41either.
17:42Ambulance were called and we were going to take him to hospital.
17:47He was claiming that he was okay, but you'd rather just do a checkup over, obviously.
17:53We took him to hospital.
17:55I took that needle to one of the doctors there, and I asked them what it was.
18:00We said it's definitely not for blood pressure.
18:03It's used by males for erectile dysfunction.
18:07And it has an immediate effect.
18:11That was very strange.
18:16My police colleagues and I were keen to get Adams identifying particulars.
18:20His DNA, fingerprints and photos.
18:24We had authority to follow that course of action, because he'd been driving recklessly and failed to stop.
18:29But there was something bigger at play.
18:32We couldn't quite work out what he was up to.
18:35We knew he had done something wrong.
18:36We knew he was up to no good.
18:38Mainly because of the bizarre nature he had, and the weird vibe that we were getting from him.
18:46Once he was cleared from the hospital, we got the identifying particulars kit, to be able to take his DNA
18:52and his fingerprints.
18:56At that point, there was no further reason to hold him.
18:59We seized his motorbike, issued him with a court summons, and let him go home.
19:04And then I wrote everything up in a running sheet.
19:08When you can't quite put your finger on it, you're better off recording it, and then someone else hopefully will
19:14be able to do something with that.
19:16I finished work maybe one or two in the morning.
19:19Went home, went to sleep, and then the next morning woke up, my phone was ringing, and it was Detective
19:25Sergeant Frank Glynn.
19:27Basically asked me about the motorbike stop that we had done the night before.
19:33I ran him through the story, and I couldn't believe it, but he essentially had told me that we might
19:39have caught the West Perth rapist.
19:54Frank was very methodical.
19:57Pretty dry person.
19:59He was not the chattiest person of a morning, but he would sit there of a morning and go through
20:05all incidents that had occurred overnight or the previous day.
20:09Frank would read it. He was that guy who actually read them.
20:17That morning a running sheet came through in relation to a black motorcycle having been involved in a pursuit in
20:24the Wembley area.
20:27We'd been looking for a ride of a black motorcycle because it was in Wembley, which is not too far
20:31from West Perth where this offending had happened.
20:36I wouldn't say Frank straight away said that's our guy, but it was something that was of interest.
20:49My desk was right alongside Frank.
20:52He nudged me, get a car, we're going out to have a look at this bike.
21:01So I headed off to Leaderville.
21:05Got ourselves in there.
21:07Had a look at this bike.
21:10I took a series of photographs of it.
21:14And then I sent them back through to Pete Marsh.
21:20Yeah, that's the bike that was in the holding yard.
21:25There was a few things on it that matched what I was looking for that didn't seem to be identical
21:31on any Honda or Kawasaki or Yamaha.
21:35It was an import bike.
21:37Korean made, I think it was.
21:41Once I knew what kind of bike it was, I then did some research on that.
21:46I had a name now because we had a suspect as such.
21:51The gentleman had purchased it from a bike shop in Wangarra and had some repairs done in Palmyra, a company
21:59that had a business in both locations.
22:03I was really happy that that was our bike and that's what we were looking for.
22:07All of this was in leading up to the DNA sample.
22:13When Stephen Adams was apprehended for reckless driving and failing to stop, we extracted his DNA.
22:21Now we could compare it to the DNA sample from March 2012, when the West Perth Rapist was struck for
22:27the first time.
22:30One profile from March was the victim's DNA, but the second profile could only have belonged to the offender.
22:38It was put through the database and we hit the jackpot.
22:42It came up as a positive match for our first scene.
22:50That's when things really started to ramp up and our interest in Stephen Michael Adams really sort of started kicking
22:56off.
22:59The next step was to arrest him and execute a search warrant on his home in the suburb of Kono.
23:07We monitored Adams whilst conducting a thorough risk assessment.
23:12And what we found is that he worked for the Federal Government in the department that is today called Home
23:17Affairs.
23:20The office where Adams worked was on Wellington Street, West Perth, only a short distance from where he defended.
23:28It's likely he had surveilled the area and established the best exit routes to avoid detection on CCTV.
23:35But the plan to lure a second victim into a car park was thwarted when she ran, hence his hurried
23:40departure on the black motorbike.
23:48As we monitored Adams, we paid particular attention toward any signs of him becoming an increased flight risk.
23:54As we considered, he remained a likely danger to the community.
23:59Our boss, Detective Sergeant Frank Lynn, reinforced that when it came to executing the warrant, safety was our number one
24:06priority.
24:07We were all very aware that Stephen Adams had shown two victims a firearm, which they believed to be real.
24:13We were aware of the potential for a firearm to be present when we executed the search warrant and were
24:18prepared for that risk.
24:21The search warrant we did at his address was on Christmas Eve.
24:26I was told that I was going to run the door or I was going to be in charge of
24:30doing the search warrant,
24:31which was a pretty big deal at the time because it was probably the biggest job that I'd worked on.
24:38The order to run the door came directly from Frank Lynn.
24:42I know I felt proud to be asked to do it because he obviously thought that I was competent enough
24:47to do it.
24:48I just remember thinking that I hope I didn't screw it up.
25:00It was Christmas Eve 2012.
25:05We ended up arriving at about six o'clock in the morning.
25:09He lived in Como in a set of apartments.
25:13They had a kind of communal driveway that you'd just turn in and go into your carport.
25:21His partner wasn't home. He was home.
25:26He was pretty keen to get us inside the house.
25:31Didn't want to talk about what we were there for outside of the house.
25:35So once we were inside and told him what we were there for,
25:38we placed him under arrest for aggravated sexual penetration without consent and a few other things.
25:44And then the process of the search warrant went from there.
25:48We found clothing.
25:50And we found backpacks.
25:54A lot of clothing and a lot of backpacks.
25:57There were umpteen black backpacks there.
26:01There seemed to be a lot of knives around the place.
26:05Pocket knives.
26:07There were knives in the coffee table.
26:11A couple in backpacks.
26:13And there was a knife in the car.
26:17We found the erectile dysfunction medication.
26:23We suspected this was the same type of needle kit found by Senior Constable Luke McCulloch
26:28after he caught up with Adams on the streets of Subiaco.
26:34Adams' first sex assault victim did not recall Adams using a needle to inject himself
26:39on the night that he attacked her.
26:41But that's not to say he wasn't preparing to use it for his next attack.
26:48We labelled and bagged the needle along with lots of other evidence.
26:53He just got to hear a lot of the time,
26:54we'll be taking that, we'll be taking that, we'll be taking that.
26:58Our focus in the search warrant was to clearly uncover anything that might support the sex assault charges against Adams.
27:05But we started to find disturbing evidence of offending which fell outside the orbit of our initial inquiry.
27:16We found a big pile of passenger or PAX cards, the kind that Adams would have seen in his job
27:22at what was then called the Department of Immigration and Citizenship.
27:27They are cards that people fill out when travelling, so there's some fairly significant detail on that.
27:34We've all filled them out when we travel over to Bali or wherever else you fill out those cards with
27:39the little squares on them.
27:43We didn't know why he had those things.
27:46But there was a rating system which he'd put on those cards in relation to females that were passing through
27:51customs.
27:53Some of the cards would have comments on them about females' appearance.
27:58Some of them were reasonably vulgar in the way they'd describe some of those women that had passed through customs
28:04when he'd been working.
28:05So we seized those as well.
28:10We couldn't help but wonder, was Adams compiling a kind of dossier of potential victims for the future?
28:17He'd totally abused the position of trust he'd been put in as a customs employee.
28:23He'd obtained personal information from female travellers and kept records of those females, likely for his personal gratification.
28:31His partner had already left the house when we arrived.
28:37They had a puppy and she'd taken the puppy out for a walk.
28:40When she came back, we spoke to her, let her know what was going on.
28:45We were in the process of executing the search warrant.
28:49I think she was surprised as to what was going on.
28:54She went off to a relative's house with the dog.
28:59What was his demeanour through the whole process?
29:02At first, he was surprised.
29:04But then he'd argue.
29:06But he did make it pretty clear that he thought we had the wrong man.
29:09He's going to prove his innocence.
29:13We knew we were on solid ground with the first sexual assault.
29:17We had a DNA sample that gave us a link to the first victim.
29:21But we didn't really have anything linking up to the second victim.
29:27All of us had our heads around what we were looking for.
29:32Property items belonging to the second victim.
29:36The second victim had very bravely thrown a handbag at her attacker and run for her life.
29:43There was a phone inside the handbag as well, but the phone had been turned off.
29:47So we weren't able to track that because we'd tried to track it.
29:52Looking around Adam's apartment gave us the impression that he was a bit of a hoarder.
29:57We were hoping he'd souvenired the second victim's handbag as well.
30:01But unfortunately, there was no evidence of that.
30:05You never know what's interesting until it's interesting.
30:09A significant find came in an upstairs room which Adams referred to as his junk room.
30:16It was a receipt for a storage facility and it was in a name other than Adams.
30:21At that stage, that's all it was. It was just a receipt for a storage facility.
30:25We thought, why has he got this? Why is it stored in his junk room?
30:29We need to look into this further.
30:37There was plenty to do to get ready for the next search.
30:40Not even one of the hottest Christmas days on record was going to slow us down.
30:45Today, Perth was the hottest major capital city in the world,
30:49reaching a maximum of 39.6 degrees.
30:53We've had some champagne and lots of goodies.
30:57Now we're going home to turn the aircon on.
31:02We charged Adams the day before, so he was safely locked away on remand.
31:06And a few days later, we had another search warrant ready to go.
31:12So 28th December 2012, there was a search warrant that was executed at a storage facility.
31:19The team cut off the padlock and inside the storage locker, there was boxes of property.
31:31Immediately evident, we could see a handbag.
31:34And that was a very distinct handbag.
31:38We found the handbag, the purse, the phone.
31:43All there in that storage unit, which linked him to both offences that he committed.
31:59The storage unit was really important for us.
32:04He was remanded in custody based on the two principal charges.
32:09The DNA, he wasn't going to be able to explain away.
32:12The handbag in his own premises, he wasn't going to be able to explain that away.
32:20He just kept trophies.
32:22There was always the option of throwing it in the bin, but he didn't.
32:29So the storage unit was the Aladdin's cave.
32:33Thanks.
32:35Yeah, so these are other property items that were found in the storage locker.
32:42Imitation firearm.
32:44We believe that was the firearm that was used in the offending in West Perth.
32:49There was a taser.
32:53These are cable ties that were found in there.
32:57Handcuffs.
33:00Large knife.
33:03Another knife.
33:04Knuckle dusters.
33:07This one was interesting.
33:09That's a ballistic vest.
33:11The community would have every right to feel a little frightened when they say
33:15these sort of items had been sitting in a storage locker in suburban Perth.
33:20And he had access to them.
33:23There was an Australian Federal Police shirt.
33:29There was a, what we refer to in policing as a rig belt with a holster.
33:35There was a blue light that you can put on the roof of a police car.
33:38There was some ammunition that was in there.
33:43If somebody wanted to appear as a police officer,
33:46he had all those things ready to go.
33:50He also had his old ID as a police officer as well,
33:53which had his photograph on there.
33:55There's an AFP identification in the name of Constable Adams,
34:02SN Adams.
34:03This is Stephen Michael Adams.
34:10When we went through the door and we did that initial search warrant,
34:13we weren't aware that Stephen Adams was an ex-Federal Police Officer.
34:17We found a beanie with an Australian Federal Police logo on it.
34:20We found a jacket with an Australian Federal Police logo and a jumper.
34:24Pete asked Mr Adams about those things at the time and he said that he bought them.
34:28So he wasn't willing to give us that information that he was a former police officer at that time.
34:37My colleagues and I held significant concerns regarding Adams' possession of an Australian Federal Police uniform.
34:45Considering these concerns, we undertook a thorough investigation into reports of individuals impersonating police officers.
34:52Adams' actions and the items in his possession heightened our apprehensions about his intentions.
34:59Anything that he would have needed to portray himself as a police officer in public, he had it sitting in
35:04that storage locker.
35:06There was a lot more to discover about Stephen Adams.
35:10When he finished school in Perth, he worked at a bank for a lengthy period.
35:15Then he moved to Canberra.
35:17That's where he worked for the Federal Police for about four years.
35:21He also worked for Australian Customs in the Northern Territory before returning to Perth.
35:28The storage unit yielded information on a smorgasbord of criminality.
35:34The storage facility that he'd rented, it had been placed in a different name.
35:38And it turned out that it was a neighbour of his from an apartment complex in Darwin, where he'd been
35:42working for customs.
35:44When this neighbour was out of the country, Adams has gone and broken into his house and caused damage.
35:51He sprayed barbecue sauce on this man's bed, made a mess of the place, cut cords to electrical appliances right
36:01up as short as they could go, including the refrigerator.
36:08And when he was interviewed, Adams said, yeah, he knew how hot it was in Darwin that time of year
36:12and the food in the fridge would spoil and make his apartment stink.
36:17He was just doing things because he wanted to annoy this guy.
36:22He put a small Scarface figurine in a microwave and melted it.
36:27He also got the guy's car and drove it 100 metres away from the house, as he said, just to
36:32annoy him.
36:33When we spoke to the neighbour, the thing that freaked him out the most was the figurine that was melted
36:38in the microwave.
36:41He found that, of all things, to be quite frightening. It was so unusual. Yeah.
36:47We also uncovered evidence of financial crimes committed by Stephen Adams.
36:52There was credit card frauds that he was getting up to.
36:56He was using some of the documentation from his employment to pursue credit card applications.
37:01And he was able to use credit cards to live a bit of a champagne lifestyle for a while.
37:06The skills that he learnt from working in the banking sector, he was able to use those skills.
37:11He sort of knew some of the ways that he could get away with things.
37:17Being in that Como area, he had identified some properties that were up for sale and residents weren't in there.
37:24And so using the knowledge that he had applied for credit cards,
37:28he gave the address of a place down the road from where he was living that nobody was at,
37:33and so he could check the mailbox and get that documentation there without having it sent to his own address.
37:43Matt and I interviewed Adams a number of times as we uncovered many layers of his offending.
37:50I've got to say, he was pretty helpful with the fraud matters.
37:55There was a lot of boasting, probably to show us how smart he was.
38:00OK, this envelope here contains customs stickers.
38:04And I suppose looking back on it, we fed that ego.
38:07He was digging himself further into a hole as far as we were concerned.
38:15He was somebody that, by his own admission, he had a compulsion to commit crimes.
38:22Most sex offenders will stay in the sex offence lane.
38:25Most financial crime will stay in the financial crime lane.
38:28It's not often that the two will intertwine, but in this case it did.
38:33We found stuff in books where he'd write down sort of these fantasy thoughts, if you like,
38:37about criminal acts that he might want to have done.
38:40In the notes that we found in that storage locker,
38:43one of them spoke to going in and robbing a brothel by spraying everybody with pepper spray.
38:51Maybe one day he would have done that had he not been caught.
38:56Throughout the interview process, Adams made no admissions about his sexual offending
39:00and wanted to make it very clear his partner had no knowledge of any of his offending.
39:05She believed a lot of what he was saying and didn't want to believe that he was a sex offender.
39:10I don't think she probed his version of events too much.
39:15She just wanted to believe that this person that she spent a number of years with
39:18couldn't have done these horrible things that he was being accused of.
39:22You can't blame her for that.
39:25She was a victim in all of this too.
39:27She was living with this man who was living a split life.
39:31He was very much the grey man. I mean, people just didn't picket of him.
39:36He was able to move around through his work, through his everyday life,
39:40without really sticking out.
39:42There was nothing really about him, in my opinion, that was remarkable.
39:45And that probably helped him.
39:50Now that Steven Adams' crimes had been exposed, and he was in custody,
39:55he was not going to be getting any help from us.
39:57He betrayed everyone around him, and it is considered likely he would have kept offending.
40:03Quite possibly on the same night he ran from police in Subiaco.
40:08Prosecutors would be requesting the court impose a lengthy term of imprisonment.
40:33We never really got an inkling that he was going to plead guilty to the sex offences, until he did.
40:39So that took everybody by surprise, because he'd been so adamant the whole way through that it wasn't him.
40:45Of course, behind closed doors with his psychologist,
40:49that's where he was making admissions to why he offended.
40:53Adams' legal counsel presented Justice Ralph Simmons with an array of mitigating circumstances,
40:58inclusive of a psychological report, to explain Adams' behaviour,
41:02and they presented an argument as to why Adams should be given a reduction in his sentence.
41:06They came up with some stuff about he was affected by viewing pornography in the workplace,
41:12and that added to his compulsion to commit the types of crime that he did.
41:18I'll reserve judgement on that particular line of defence.
41:22I don't know too much about those conversations that happened,
41:25that's between him and the court-appointed psychologists.
41:39In a pre-sentence hearing yesterday, defence lawyer Richard Lawson told the court,
41:44Adams blamed his offending on seduction rape,
41:47after being forced to watch pornography while he worked as a customs officer.
41:52Today, Justice Simmons told Adams he believed he was reinforced by his exposure to pornography,
41:58but that it did not reduce his culpability.
42:02Adams cried as Justice Simmons detailed the night he sexually assaulted a 19-year-old Finnish visitor in West Perth,
42:10with Justice Simmons describing him as an intense sex offender.
42:15Today, he was sentenced to ten years behind bars with a chance of parole after eight.
42:22Frank, Matt and I went to the sentencing.
42:25You got a decent whack of time for it.
42:28It's never enough, or you think it's never enough,
42:31but hopefully it's changed his ways and changed his life.
42:42I'm glad for the community of Western Australia that we were able to get in when we did,
42:45and ensure that justice was done in the correct manner.
42:54As much as we have technology,
42:56I don't think you'll ever replace that boots-on-the-ground policing approach.
43:01The fact that these guys were out on patrol,
43:04they saw something that didn't look right,
43:08and they responded to that thing that didn't look right.
43:13There was 100% a stroke of luck to it.
43:16How we found him, how we came across him.
43:20I definitely live by a quote that I heard when I first started in the police force,
43:24whereby crooks have to be lucky every day, we have to be lucky one day.
43:29I had something small change in terms of him being smart enough at the traffic stop
43:33to provide us with a driver's licence.
43:35If we work out that his registration was out,
43:38that would have been the end of it.
43:40Maybe giving him a ticket for that, maybe a summons,
43:43but that's probably all that would have happened.
43:47The most memorable part, I suppose, was that needle that I found.
43:52How that just made the hair on the back of my neck sort of stand up.
43:56Especially when I found out from the doctor what it actually was, yeah.
44:03That report that we put in for Detective Sergeant Glynn to access that
44:07and notice a motorbike, that was amazing.
44:12It's a fantastic result.
44:14And the thing I liked about it was just having competent people
44:17that were all invested in doing the same thing.
44:20It introduced me into a different way of policing.
44:24I enjoy that detail and the support from my teammates around me.
44:32When we catch up, which we do, probably not as regularly as I'd like,
44:36but we always do talk about this job and our memories of it.
44:39It meant something to us.
44:41Not to say that other jobs don't, but because we were working on this for so long,
44:45we lived and breathed it.
44:49I consider myself very lucky to have worked under Frank
44:52because he'd been with Sex Assault Squad from near to its inception,
44:56so he was not just a very good leader, a very good detective,
44:59he was a very good teacher as well.
45:01He held you to account when you didn't do things correctly,
45:04but he also celebrated when you did.
45:08Frank was just an amazing mentor.
45:13Frank was a fantastic guy.
45:15He reminds me very much of my dad.
45:18Very fond of him.
45:20I wish he was still with us.
45:24Yeah.
45:25He was a great guy.
45:44He was a great guy.
45:45He was a great guy.
45:53He was a great guy.
45:56I wish I could sit.
45:59He's a wonderful guy.
46:00You know, he went to the app with him.
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