 We're going to do something a little bit different. A couple of weeks ago, we did the interrogation of Colonel Russell Williams. And we were so taken by the interrogator, he did such a great job. We were flabbergasted. We decided we want to talk to him. So we sort of put the word out, we want to get a hold of him. And Greg got a hold of him on LinkedIn. And they talked back and forth. And now he's going to be our guest this week. So we're going to get to talk to him. Jim Smith, Master Interrogator. The Canadians in the Blazers. Yeah, what is it? Yeah, what is it? What is it with at least we don't wear ties anymore? At least we've given that up. I just took my tie off. I thought, oh, exactly. There you go. So, Jim, tell us about what do you think about all this? Getting you have geeks like us getting a hold of you. Go tell us about you. We know how does that be? Is it been pretty weird being internet famous from doing this? Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's been it's been interesting. I mean, it's opened up a lot of opportunities in terms of law enforcement training. We've been we've been all over the world talking about not just this case, but interview strategies in general. So, you know, even with even with all the COVID issues, we're still working with the European Union right now with their policing mission in the Ukraine. So we're teaching Ukraine officers over Skype, so which is interesting. I mean, you got all the translation issues. But but yeah, it's it's been a little bit weird. But I mean, this this case happened 10 years ago. So gradually you kind of get used to it. So yeah. Yeah. So, Jim, what I'd like to know is your background. How did you get to there? What training? And, you know, we all get here from different ways and we'd love to hear your story. OK, so I started as a police officer back in 1989. And after a bit of time as a uniform patrol officer, my first sort of investigator role was actually in a child sexual assault unit where we were focused on child sex assault cases. So I think that's really where I wanted to focus on honing my interview skills, because when you think about a case like that, a lot of them are, you know, the child comes forward to a teacher or somebody they know and they talk about something that happened to them could be months or years ago. So really what we're left with is we have a child telling us something happened to them and we have no other evidence other than their statement. So it became very critical in our view and our unit's view to focus on giving that interview of the suspect our best effort, obviously, and making sure that we conduct the interview in a way that it's going to be admissible. And hopefully we get the guy to tell us the truth so we can avoid this kid to happen to be in court. Testifying. So as a unit, we're really focused on our interview skills that way. And then after that, I developed an interest in the whole behavioral aspect of interviewing. And I ended up going into a behavioral sciences section within our organization. So we were closely with the FBI and a number of state police agencies. And I went through a certification process and then became a criminal profiler. And 2006, I completed our forensic polygraph examiner's course at the Canadian Police College in Ottawa. And so I kind of took those two skill sets and put them together and then focused on high-end, high-stakes interviews for lack of a better term, travel back and forth across the country, assisting mostly violent crime investigations with difficult interviews. And that's what I spent most of my time doing. And in the last 10 or so years, I've moved into more managing investigations and managing people. So right now, I look after a region, basically central Ontario, but 1,000 officers, criminal investigators and a number of different support teams. Well, yeah. Well, thanks for everything you're doing for starters. But yeah, all of that behavior stuff is what we all have a passion for. Chase, I know you're chomping at the bit to ask about specific training. Yeah. So, Jim, what was the specific methodology, I guess, for lack of a better term that you went through? Well, I got to tell you, my first real training, like a lot of police officers in my generation, was the re-technique. So that was my first real exposure back in the late 80s, early 90s, and then going on along those lines. And I'm sure you're all familiar with the re-technique. It's probably the most well-known interview technique out there. But we've certainly developed over the years. You look at when that technique was created and built, 70s, 80s, when really that technique was only really known and talked to law enforcement. So, there was no real awareness out in the general public about what was going on with that technique. But now you look at 2021 and you can watch crime documentaries and listen to podcasts 24 hours a day. So there's a real awareness about what the police do and how they do it. And so people are a lot more sophisticated now, I think, in terms of what to expect from a police interview. So the example I always use is, my first course that I took, they taught me, if somebody was making denials, I should put my hand up, almost right into their face, and that'll stop the denials. But you quickly learn that it doesn't just stop the denials, it stops the whole conversation. And the whole point of the interview is to keep people talking. Whether they're telling us the truth or not is often besides the point. We want that information flow and that conversation to happen. So there's certainly a lot of things that I learned 20, 25 years ago that I would never teach officers today. The reality is, in Canada, I think it's the same as in states, if we're going to interview somebody that we suspect of a crime, it has to be on video. There's no real excuse anymore for us going to a judge and saying, hey, I talked to this guy about something and he confessed. And well, where's the video? Well, he just told me off video. It doesn't fly anymore in Canada. And I don't think it flies in a lot of places anymore. So everything we do now is on video and available to be scrutinized and picked over by juries and judges and defense lawyers. So we're really focused on training officers to conduct an interview in the fairest way possible so that anybody watching can say, that officer was doing a fair job and giving the person a fair opportunity to have their say versus trying to control them and trying to control the interview with some of the techniques that we may have been taught 20 years ago. Yeah, I remember that hand technique. It was hand up and say, John, I know that's really important to you. And I promise we're going to get to that. But before we do, I'm going to keep going. It destroys your board. This is all your opportunities. And that does work. It does work with certain people and with certain officers. But sometimes what happens is you, you know, an officer takes the course and they just go in and they use the technique in a different way they were trained. And now that's an important statement that gets played in court and and then the technique gets attacked, right? I'm sure it's been attacked. It's like it has in Canada. So for sure. Yeah, big time. Scott, what is the way that Scott, what's the way that you do the denial handling? What I just always go, come on, man, hang on. I do sometimes when I say hang on, but it's more of a wave away than a stop, you know, not this, it's more of a wave than, you know, hang on, man, and then go for you can't see what hang on and then go from there. Yeah, I don't get stand, right? Yeah. Yeah, I never got to the I never did the whole stop thing. But that's the way they I don't think they're still doing it that way now, though. I think they've they've changed at this point. I believe I could be wrong because it just doesn't make any sense that I haven't been there in a while. But I've still got all the old books where they do say to do that. But I'm sure maybe they've changed that by now. I would assume, you know, yeah, I think they have refined things a bit too. So it's, but there's, you know, there's different methods out there. I mean, this this interview is a perfect example when this was in the media, you know, after his guilty plea, there was a lot of different articles and people contacting us because I'm sure you're familiar with you heard about the peace method. It's very popular in Britain, actually, it kind of started there and it's been brought to Canada and a lot of places in Europe. But it's it's it sort of bills itself as the anti read technique. But when when the Williams interview was in the media, we were reading articles that said, this is a perfect example of the peace method. And then a similar article would say, this is a perfect example to read technique. And I'm sure we all know those of us have been doing this for a long time. Is it, you know, we never walk into a room saying, okay, today I'm going to use this technique, because really exactly your direction where you're going to go is dictated by what that person is doing in the room. Yeah, it's like a surgeon. You never know what you're going to find once you once you get down in there. Now, I would say the intelligence because in intelligence interrogation, often we use something called source directed interview, which means you have no idea where you're going. You listen to what they say, you pick up on their source leads, and you follow it. And I watched you do that with him very effectively here, whether you call it that or something else, you picked up on his and followed his words and used what I would call approaches from my sharp intelligence background and beautifully. So nice job on all that. Always look at the read technique. I always explain it like it's, it's like a muscle car. You can put whatever wheels you want on it. And with your with your themes, you can, you can paint flames on the side and be dragging down the beach with chains, you know, have a picture made of that, whatever you want to do, you can, if you look at it like that, you can soup it up. You can keep it really calm. You can make it look real mousy, or you can make it really loud and put all that one of the Greg's in the car, really junk, you put on the top that sucks in air and makes it do everything, flames coming out the side. So that's that's why I see it. I like it because you can, you can use it anywhere. But as long as you use your, you don't just go, I personally don't just use a strict go right down the, you know, one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, you know, because you change things change in there. Like yours did, you know, yours as you approach, things would go over here and you'd scooch it back over this way. God, it was beautiful, man. You did such a great job with that. It's really, God, that was impressive. It really was because this guy is now, did you realize that he'd been trained in resistance to interrogation? Because that's what Greg used to do. And I expect he would have been more of the challenges we had. And I think, I think you guys might have been under the impression we had a whole background on him, but we didn't. The challenge was that we first became aware of him on the Thursday night. And that was one week after Jessica Lloyd went missing. And the evidence from that crime, we knew that Jessica had walked out of her house with the offender under her own power. So there was a, there was a real concern that she may be still alive somewhere. We knew probably she wasn't just from our experience with violent crime, but we were still treating it as a fairly exigent investigation because of that. So when we found out about him on the Thursday night, we were actually already engaged with military investigators because of his first homicide he committed a few months earlier with Marie-France Comal, who was a corporal on his base. So they were assisting us with that investigation. They were great people, good investigators, but our case manager who was managing all this, Chris Nicholas, I think made a good call because his concern was we can ask these guys to go find out about Colonel Williams. But we knew his rank was so high. We just didn't know what information that would trigger. We thought, this guy is so high up that if people start asking questions and gathering information for us, he's going to become aware that something's happening. So the decision was made, we're just not going to go there. We're just going to assume that, you know, because of his rank, he's had some training along those lines, but we we actually didn't have a detailed background on him at the time of this interview. So when you did a great job of, I say we know all, we know all means stop short. That's an intelligence interrogation approach where we allude to what we know based on the security clearance. And then he made the mistake of saying that out loud about security clearance. Now you can allude to that. I did a great job of that. And in all my years of teaching, I would say it takes a lot of smarts not to just say the wrong one more piece of information and go from we know all to we don't know. So that was beautiful to watch. And Mark, we're interior ganking on here and I'm sure you got a question for John. Yeah, so, you know, as you well know, there was a lot of rank around Williams, not only within the forces, but the fact that, you know, the Trenton base is the start of the highway of heroes, essentially. And that's where the Canadian forces start to celebrate, you know, the unfortunate soldiers coming back who have made it all the way home. Essentially. So there's huge cultural deference around that base and him especially. And so when you talk about difficult interviews, there must have been that difficulty of status, which he immediately plays at the start of that. Did anything really surprise you about what happened with him? Was it surprised because he goes from this high status to somebody, you know, shaking your hand at the end for helping him out of this mess by confessing? What surprised you along that route? Well, I mean, after the portions that you guys watched, obviously he confesses. And one of the things that he did was he still viewed himself as a very respectable person, a proud military person. So once he said, I did it, he was an open book. We probably interviewed him for more than 40 hours over the next couple of weeks and months about a variety of issues. And so he made that commitment to me that he would tell us everything. And even once, I think it was about two days later at the behest of his wife, he retained a very accomplished lawyer in Ottawa. And you can imagine the lawyers going to tell him, as they all do, keep your mouth shut, moving forward. And what he told the lawyer, we believe, or he inferred to be anyway, was that I'll take your advice because you're my lawyer, but I've also made a commitment to the police to cooperate. So he would consult his lawyer. His lawyer would obviously tell him, stop talking. But he would come and talk to us anyway, because he wanted to be that person who kept this commitment. So I found that interesting that even after getting some very strong legal counsel, he continued to speak with us because he wanted to make sure, one, he wanted to make sure that this was over with as soon as possible. He played guilty to all of his charges as soon as he could. And he wanted to protect the military and he wanted to protect his wife as much as he possibly could. So he still saw himself as a man of honour, even though he'd done these terrible things. So I'm curious about that, because what do you think it is about the character or mindset of somebody that goes from that high status right at the start to by the very end, shaking you by the hand and thanking you for being part of this process of admitting to these crimes. And then I guess having more responsibility towards talking to you than maybe even his own lawyer. I find it hard to square what's happening there. So give us some insight into that. Well, I mean, I think that issue was he believes he's somebody who keeps his promises, right? So he promised me he would keep talking to me. He promised his lawyer, he would consult with him before deciding whether to talk to us again. So in his mind, he's keeping his promise to his lawyer. His lawyer is telling him, don't do it. He's saying, I get what you're saying, but I have to keep the promise to the police. So that's kind of his mindset. He took the legal advice, but he continued to speak with us. And I think really a lot of it was obviously the media attention was huge. Every time an article came out or TV news covered something about the case, it was another embarrassment to him and it was another embarrassment to his wife in the military. And I think he was trying his best to just get it over with. I'm not sure how much you guys know about the evidence that was discovered after this interview, but it was very dammy evidence, photographs and videos. There was really no way for him to get out from under what he had done. And from that point on, he was just trying to get it over with and get it out of the media spotlight. I think you did a great and beautiful job of, yes, there's a camera right there and then never mentioning it again. I always am amused and amazed that you can have people feel like it's an intimate sitting and there's cameras and everything everywhere. Do you want to talk for a minute about that? Because I think that's a beautiful one. Yeah, I mean, we obviously let people know that things are being recorded, but then we leave it alone after that. And I found over the years, even when cameras are pretty good now, they're pretty small, but years ago that camera was front and center in the room, right? It was hard to avoid. We used to have ones that you would actually wheel in on those big carts, you know, like the TVs, even watching school kind of thing. So it's right there in the room. But I mean, you guys hit on some of the things that he was going through, like anybody in his situation would be going through. He's so focused on what do I do? How do I handle this next question? How do I manage and keep all my lies straight to convince this person I'm not worth looking at? That camera becomes, I think, within a couple of minutes. People just forget about it. They're just so focused on the person they're trying to convince. They're not responsible for this. So let me ask you this. In your folder, when you came in with your notebook and the folder, we're showing those pictures, what all is in the folder? Not much. Not much. Really? You stacked it? There was a pad of paper. I mean, it was designed to look stacked to make him think that we had a lot. It was a good investigation and we were definitely moving towards him with or without this interview. He would have been caught and convicted. This interview was just really part of it that sped things up a lot for us, obviously. But the investigators were all over this thing. And the forensics were, they were all coming. They just weren't there yet. So we definitely had a lot of information to play with. And as you guys know, on a big case like this, I'm the face on the camera, but there was, I believe, a half-dozen, six or seven really experienced investigators on the other side of that camera, two of them that do the same job I do, another criminal profiler at the lead investigators there. And they're running through ideas and coming up with themes. And so to me, that gives me a lot of confidence. You're not there on your own. You're not trying to come up with ideas on your own all the time. You can step out of the room and they've got 10 things that they want you to hit on. So you can go back in there knowing you have a good hour or two of material if you need it. So that's huge for me. Chase, now that we talked that Jim brought up themes as well, why don't you explain what a theme is for the panelists watching this? So a theme has some essential stuff in there. And I categorize it into four things. We minimize, rationalize, project, and socialize. And maybe as a fifth thing, emphasize the truth. So those are kind of the five key elements we have for most interrogations. It doesn't matter what system you're looking at. We wanted to minimize the seriousness of the crime, project the blame. And that's as an interrogator, especially Jim, it didn't happen in the Williams interrogation. But that's one of those things as an interrogator where you're talking to people who've done some really bad stuff. And you may have to temporarily blame the victim to get that person to agree with you or to get on that person's side and say, well, she shouldn't have been wearing that. She wanted sexual attention or she wanted whatever. And it is nauseating, especially when you're first starting out as an interrogator to say things like that. And then we're projecting like you're not responsible for this. You have a moral compass problem or you weren't in your right state of mind. You had 35 beers or all that kind of stuff. Then we're socializing it and say, how are people going to see this? I think your friends are going to understand. Your family is going to see you as an honest person, whatever this person is looking for and emphasizing the truth. And we're developing that report, maintaining rapport and saying, my only job here is to figure out either A, why this happened or I need to get the reason that this instance occurred. So that's what a theme would be. But it's kind of a monologue. And in interrogation schools, you'll hear the theme described as a monologue. But in reality, there's interruptions all throughout a theme because somebody's jumping in, somebody's chopping in there, and there's more denials coming in. But a theme is basically a monologue with some interspersed dialogue. And if you build a story around that theme, the theme is basically a story with all those things put in there. So coming back, dialing back a little bit, what are you going to say, Greg? Yeah, I have a question for you, Jim. So I always teach people that a good interrogator looks like a swan floating nicely on the water, but underneath the water, their feet are paddling like hell. We all have been there where you get to a point where you go down a wrong path and you're like, oh, I hope he didn't catch it. Did you have one of those or more than one of those in your interrogation with him? You know, I think we're all our own worst critics. You know, as a police officer, you generally what will happen is, you know, just I'm sure most people are aware of this, but you'll take an interview like this and then two years later, you're getting ready for the trial. And you're watching that same interview. And now you have two more years experience under your belt. And you're watching that. Oh, why did I say that? Why did I put it that way? I mean, I tell people when I teach, I think I make a mistake about every five minutes on average in an interview. And the things that I pick up on, but maybe other people wouldn't, but or an area I start to go towards, but I realize it's premature or it's just not clicking the way I wanted it to. So you have to back off and divert to something else. But yeah, certainly with with him, you know, we had to be very careful because we didn't we didn't know a lot. We knew he had some kind of connection to all four of the victims that we were primarily concerned with. We knew he had the right make and model of tires on his truck, but thousands of people had those make and model of tires on his truck. So I was when I walked in the room with him, I was probably 50 50 on whether he was our guy or not. We've all been investigations like this, where, you know, things are looking really good. This looks like the right person, we're moving in the right direction. And then they say, Hey, last week, when that girl went missing, I was on the other side of the country. And here's all the evidence that proves it. And you're back to square one. So you just weren't sure you're 50 50 going in. Yeah. And I think maybe that calm me down a little bit, because you're thinking, you know, it's, it's one thing when they say, okay, this is definitely the guy and you got to get him to tell us that a lot of pressure, right? But when you're starting that sort of exploratory interview, let's just find out what he has to say. Then you can go a little slower, you can, you can, you don't feel as much pressure. But certainly when he started to make comments, you know, Jessica went missing the Thursday night previous. And he says to me, you know, about 20 minutes in, I think that that's Friday, the next day, he's at home with a stomach flu. So he's got no alibi. So things like that are starting to build where you're realizing, okay, this guy's not giving us anything to clear him right now. And most of what he's saying is starting to build towards us believing he's, he's probably the person responsible. So, so when did, when did it hit you? When did you say, okay, this is it. I got him. I got your ask. Okay. Oh, when I knew we had the right guy. Yeah. Where in the interview was that? Oh, I'd say probably the most glaring part was when we put the two, the footwear comparison in front of him. And when I said your boots went to the back of her house. And here's a girl in the military who I've now basically said, I believe you abducted a girl. If he was innocent, he should have been jumping out of his chair saying, how dare you accuse me of this? I came in to help you find this girl. And this is what you're, this is what you're saying to me. You know, he has that level of life experience and confidence that he'd be comfortable saying that to me. You know, some people, when they're talking to a detective, they may not have that level of confidence or self-esteem, but he certainly did. And for him to just look at that and say nothing. So those were real prints, Jim? Yep. Yep. He walked, he walked through some snow. It was February, so he walked through some snow. Now, when I say to him, these are identical, I think most people would look at those two because we basically just took the shoe off his foot maybe 15 minutes before that confrontation and, you know, put it on a photocopier. We didn't have anything more sophisticated than that available to us at the moment. And we just eyeballed it ourselves. But, but he knew he was, he knew those were the boots. And, you know, it's one of those things when you think about how people think, I had called him at two o'clock in the afternoon, he walks into the police station at three. He's got about a 25 minute drive from his house to the police station. So he had about 35 minutes once he hung up the phone to figure out what the heck he was going to do. And so his mind is racing. He's got to deal with this interview. He's got to convince me that I'm not, he's not worth looking at. And he just simply didn't think about the footwear he was putting on his feet. So in my world, I would call that giving him homework, right? You give him homework to work on on his way on the drive. Yeah. Yeah. No, he was spinning, right? And, you know, of course, he saw how he walked in the room, right? He's trying to be Mr. Helpful. I, you know, I just want to help the police find this girl because her disappearance was a very high profile. And he wants to set an example for all his troops that he's doing the right thing. And so, you know, that was an advantage for us with him is that quite often people say, well, why did he even come in and talk to you in the first place? Well, he's a colonel of a base. He's commanding 3000 people. And when the police ask him to help, he's got to set an example and say, yeah, we should be helping in this case. So he's really got no way to convince me that he's not going to come in, you know, whereas we deal with other people sometimes, you know, gang members, things like that, who never talk to the police. It's a lot easier for them to say, talk to my lawyer. Yeah. But he's got to look like that upstanding citizen who just wants to help, right? So, if he's being Mr. Helpful, who are you being generally in an interview? Oh, it depends on who I'm sitting across from. For him, I think, you know, it was helpful for us. I think you saw with the interview is I'm one of, and I didn't really say how many other people, but I wanted him to believe that I'm just following up on a task. He's on my list of things to do, and I'm giving him a call because his names come on my list. And if he could meet up with me, I got some questions for him. And, you know, he basically said, sure, I'll do whatever I can to help. And so, yeah, I certainly generally don't put myself out there as the major decision maker or the lead investigator. I'm just somebody who's collecting information. And I'm going to pass information on to the decision makers, and they're going to come back and send me back to deliver the message they want me to deliver. So you're kind of a light bureaucrat of some sort, just collecting a little bit of info. Nobody particularly important, essentially. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. I think that, you know, it sets people at ease, like even an innocent person. I find they're more comfortable believing that they're just speaking to a peripheral investigator on a case versus a lead investigator, because, you know, we do deal with innocent people quite often, and we're trying to set everybody at ease, not just Russell Williams, because we think he's responsible, but, you know, we need the innocent people to talk to us too, because quite often that they're willing to talk to us, even if their lawyers told them not to, the information they give us allows us to clear them and move on to somebody else. But you say this is situation dependent. So if you're not being kind of the pleasant bureaucrat who's just kind of getting through the day, what are the other situations you end up in that you maybe have to take a different role, and what would that role look like? Well, there's some videos out there, maybe a little bit more assertive. And they're dictated by the attitude of the person we're dealing with, right, and the level of crime we're dealing with. I think it was Scott was talking on the show that I watched there about the guys who want to grab that pad of paper and just get rid of it, because they just hate the fact that it's there. So we've been in those situations too. I've been one that I use for training where it's actually a laptop computer, where I'm playing an interview of a witness who's pointed the finger at a gang member for a murder, and he doesn't want to listen to it. So he just throws a computer off the desk, and I put it back on the desk, and it keeps playing. He throws it off the desk again. I put it back on the desk, the screen breaks, but you can still hear the voice. And it's sort of his last sort of tantrum to try and get me to just give up and leave. And it's a good trading radio for us, because it shows investigators that if you can work through that seemingly strong wall that this person's putting up, this particular guy, he has that tantrum. But he realizes that once he realizes that I'm not going anywhere, he puts his head down on the table, and 20, 25 minutes later, he's starting to tell the story and pinning on somebody else, which is what we want to do, keep talking. That's what I call the Cesar Milan approach. He's just stay there and stay consistent the entire time, and you get it. And Cesar Milan had a quote, which I think is one of the best ever. He said, humans are the only creatures on earth that will follow an unstable leader, which really shows how powerful stability is, especially environments like that. And I have a quick assigned question for you, Jim, that I think our subscribers, which we refer to as panelists. So for the panelists watching this, have you had an unusual encounter where somebody recognized you from the internet, like out in public or something? It's like, oh, hey, you're that guy. Yeah, a few of them. I'm a pretty non-descript looking guy. So I usually get away with not being recognized. But usually it's police officers that were recognized me because they've seen the videos, they've seen the training. But yeah, I can't think of one where just somebody's come up to me out of nowhere. But you know, I've got two young sons, well, they're not young anymore, they're in their 20s. And they both thought a lot of world traveling. And one guy talked about being in a bar in Chile and telling him from Canada. And the guy starts talking about watching the video of Russell Williams. And so that was kind of cool for him. He's going, well, that was my dad on that video. Of course, the guy didn't believe him. Have you ever walked into an interview room and the person there has gone, hang on, it's you. All right. I did it. I'll cut to the chase. Has that ever happened? You know, I don't think it's ever been that clean. But certainly the year or two after this, all the media hype around this case, I had other investigators say, well, you can talk to me or you can talk to the guy that interviewed Russell Williams. And it had a positive effect. It worked the way I wanted it to work. So yeah. Darth Vader suit. Jim, how do you think being an interrogator has helped you the most with your kids, like raising kids as they were growing up? Oh, man, I've always said that they're the only two that can probably get away with line to be in. I can't figure it out. But you know, they're good guys. And they've been, they were really exposed to all of this. You know, when they were only 12, 13 years old, this was all happening and out in the media. And so, you know, they would go to high school law class and be watching this video with their classmates. So it certainly impacted them. And they've always kind of played me about maybe they would have had more friends come over to the house if I wasn't their dad. You're sort of the Justin Bieber of interrogation. That's what it looks like. Millions of views, fans. Both the Canadian. What I always find funny is that people think that you're going to be hard. It's going to be hard. Like you said, you can scream and yell and do all that. And then when you're not at home, especially when you meet new people, they're always afraid you're going to be doing this to them. How do you deal with that? Because I'm sure especially with your level of popularness at this point or renown that anybody you meet is going to be going, that's that guy. How are you doing? My friends are my friends, right? I mean, my neighbors. And so we joke a lot about it, right? If only people really knew what you were really like, because, you know, they talk to people and they say that they know me or they're my neighbor and what they know who I really am. And so it hasn't really affected my personal life that much. But yeah, it is a bit odd as a police officer to have your work out there in the public realm like that. In Canada, anyway, this was one of the first cases where a judge approved the release of this type of evidence to the public realm. So, you know, there was obviously a lot of media interest and so these clips that you see on YouTube were the same clips that were played in the sentencing hearing. And as a result of it being played in open court, the judge ruled that they're now public property and they can be given to the media and put out there. So it wasn't something we even expected to happen, because it was one of the first cases where there was enough interest that it got released. So yeah, it was odd to go from somebody who you're just kind of doing your thing and working away like tens of thousands of other police officers in the country. And then all of a sudden you're all over the front page and on new shows and over and over again. So that's, it's been hard to get used to. So here's an opportunity for us, Jim, to get some feedback, because you know, we're able to take that footage. We're able to do our analysis of it, make a show out of it. But when you watched our analysis, was there anything there that you kind of went, hang on? What is that English guy talking about? Is nonsense? Is there anything that we really got wrong? You can pick on me, because I'm asking the question. We don't have any idea about it. What did we get wrong if anything there? Nothing really significant, guys. I mean, I know you're obviously looking at it and trying to surmise what's happening. I think you had a lot of things that were going on in his mind, his body language was bang on. I got to tell you though, my conduct in that room, I think a lot of it is subconscious. When you've been doing it so long, you don't say, okay, now I'm going to roll closer to him. I'm going to back up. You don't have those conscious thoughts. You're just sort of doing it because it just feels right at the time. And I got to tell you, like I was three o'clock in the afternoon on Super Bowl Sunday when this interview started, but I was exhausted when the interview started, because I'd been called on the Friday morning, even stopped on the Thursday night. Obviously, the alarm bells went off. The major case manager said, we got to look at this guy, but they had been already going for a whole week looking for Jessica. So they're already exhausted. Now they've got me there. Now we're working through all the issues about how do we best approach this? So three long days, and when you're looking for somebody who you're worried is maybe still alive somewhere, even when you put your head down for a few minutes, you're not doing anything close to getting meaningful sleep. So when I offered him that coffee at the beginning of the interview, I really needed that coffee. But yeah, I didn't see anything you guys said that really set me off as far as, oh, they're way off base there. And really, I mean, that's primarily why I decided to reach out to you because I thought that you guys are doing a good service and you obviously have a lot of skill and knowledge yourselves. And I thought it'd be great to have a conversation with you. So I just want to follow up on that because it's interesting for me. You're saying it's hard to get sleep when you've got that pressure of there's somebody out there that you could still help discover. Just give me some insight into that because again, we're just analyzing a film that's over. You're living that moment. What is that kind of pressure like? And what does it do to you in the room? What are you having to handle in the room knowing that there's that pressure out there? Well, I guess you kind of get used to that kind of pressure. I mean, that's really what my job was at the time. I was almost 10 years into doing this kind of work. So most of the time when I'm going into a room, it's because I'm dealing with somebody who they just haven't been successful with yet. I mean, in this case, it was our first interview with him. They knew right off the bat that this is going to be a challenging interview. But quite often I'm called into interview people or my colleagues are called into people that have been interviewed two or three times already. And they just haven't gotten anywhere. And they don't have any other significant evidence to help them move their investigation forward. So there's quite often a lot of pressure on us to come through with something meaningful out of the interview. It doesn't always have to be a confession. But at least let's get this person talking so they can give us some information that we can go out and investigate and decide if it's true or not. So yeah, there's pressure there. But go back to what I said a couple of minutes ago, that pressure is really relieved by the fact that I know I have two, three, four, sometimes people that are just as highly trained as I am out there to come in and take the reins if I run out of things to say. And that happens quite often. There's times where I went from beginning to end with this guy. But there's times where I'm a few hours in and whatever's happening, the relationship's not building the way we think it should. We're just not making the headway we think we should. And it's time to come out and regroup and try another angle. When you as you're going through there, I said, this guy looks like an accountant. He looks like he's getting ready to hear taxes. You go, that did you or did that? I didn't mean to point you out of that as a respectful thing because you went in and it was like, you did not look aggressive at all with this guy. Who's somebody who can, you know, obviously, you know, he's ready for a war. He can, you know, he kills people for a hobby. So it's one of those things where you, or I hope you weren't offended by that because I didn't mean that to be mean. I mean, no, no, no, no, no, not at all. I mean, that's the goal, right? To keep him in the room. Yeah, exactly. Our job. I love the fact you went in with an approach, meaning in your mind how you're going to be in that whole demeanor and keeping that demeanor and, you know, giving him pressure. And I think I'd ask you to talk a little bit about when you run out of things to say to him, where did you hit? Because we could see a couple of times where you were just like, man, this guy needs, we could tell you right on the edge and you could feel it. What were those cues for you to tell you? I need just a little more pressure. Well, I mean, the, obviously, I think for all of us, we can understand how difficult it is to let those silences happen, right? You know, we, when we hire police officers, we hire people that we expect to do a number of different things. You know, one of the things we expect to do is to run into dangerous situations that everybody else is running away from. So you're looking for that type of personality in somebody. And when you, I'm a good example of it. It took me a long time to not feel those awkward silences when they happen. But again, when they're happening, you know, I'm trying to think of the next thing to say to him that's going to cause him to consider, you know, talking further to me. But I'm also not wanting to say the wrong thing. And I don't want to interrupt what his thought process is. And so it's tough for, you know, I think for most police officers to allow those silences to happen and to give him the time to think and mull over what his next step is or what he should be doing is difficult. So, yeah, there is definitely times during those silences where I'm like, should I say this thing now that I want to say, or should I just let it go a little bit longer? So it's their judgment calls, right? You're trying to figure out, you know, what's actually resonating with him. And, you know, the nice thing about this particular person and his approach to me was he just came out and said it at some point, you know, I'm concerned about my wife and I'm concerned about the reputation of military. So he just laid them out. These are the things that I'm worried about. And all I had to do was try and figure out how to help him mitigate those concerns and let him know that we were going to work with him on those issues. And I think- I like that you said that. I like that you said, what are we going to do, Russ? Yeah. And as a team, from a team perspective, I think that really maybe, I think that was one of the things that might have helped him start moving. I think so, yeah. Letting him know that I'm there to get him through this. And, you know, as much as we want to make sure he's convicted and held responsible for the horrible things he did, that is part of our role is to help him work through that process of telling us what happened. So, yeah, it is. You know, I would never want to think that I'm part of a team with Russell Williams. But when you're in those interviews, you are working together to try and get that information out there as succinctly as you can. Was there any point at all you thought this guy's a psychopath? How did you approach that with him from a person, from his personality type, from that perspective going in? Did you think he was a psychopath? Did you think he was just a malignant narcissist? Did you think he, what did you think when you were going in there? What was on your mind? We thought he probably wasn't a full-blown psychopath. He definitely has psychopathic traits to do what he did. So, we knew he had a side to him that wasn't purely selfish and psychopathic, that there was other issues going on there. And that's why I think the approach where you see on the video talking to him about, you don't want to be the next Bernardo. And I think Mark explained to everybody who pulled Bernardo was to Canada. Everybody knows who he is. He is a pure sadistic psychopath. And that's what I wanted to make him aware of. I wasn't seeing him that way. We had an awareness that as bad as what he had done was, we knew he could have done worse. And he had opportunities to do more horrible things that he chose not to. So, I think letting him know that we had that awareness kind of continued to build that rapport that we were giving him a fair, you know, a fair shake that we weren't trying to make him even worse than he was. Excellent. Who's next? Well, I'm kind of interested in where you see yourself going now because, you know, here you are with us. We're not looking for a fifth member right now. But, you know, who knows? Who knows in the future? We'll let you know. This isn't an interview of any sort, but we'll let you know. But, you know, you've got an incredible history, an incredible renown now. I don't know when you plan on retiring and what your world is at the moment, but where do you see yourself going? I'm just fascinated with that. Well, I do plan on retiring, actually. I'm probably going to retire in the fall. But I love teaching. I mean, the days that go fastest for me, you know, I do a lot of teaching to police officers now. And when you talk to police officers about what they want to learn more about, it's how do I communicate with people? How do I get that conversation going so I can get information to find out what happened, no matter what it is. It could be a shoplifting, a stolen car, whatever they're looking at. So, when we sit in a classroom and talk to police officers about the things we're talking about today, they can't get enough. And we end those days and they're saying, when can we come back and do this again? Because it's their bread and butter. That's what they do every day, trying to get people to talk to them and give them reliable, truthful information. So, it's pretty gratifying. So, that's an amazing thing for Canada. And I guess you'll travel elsewhere as well. You've got an audience in front of you now. What would be your number one thing for getting somebody to talk to you? Just, you know, for the general watcher out there, the panelist out there, what's the number one thing for getting somebody to talk? Just respect. I mean, and showing genuine respect, right? No matter what you want them to talk to you about, everybody wants to be respected, right? And when it comes to my line of work, when you're dealing with people, you know, whether it's a victim, a witness, a suspect, you know, the suspects know, they've watched, you know, all the TV shows out there. They know what a stereotypical police interrogation looks like. So, you know, I've got tons of examples where people are just so surprised about how the interview actually went. You know, we talk about a case where, you know, it sort of died in the wall, hardcore street gang member that we believe was involved in a homicide and wasn't a coffee that time. It was, he was hungry. So, we got him a big Mac from McDonald's. And, you know, that's how we started off the conversation. And that was a very difficult interview. It went on for a long, long time, much different than Russell Williams. And, you know, eventually he does give us information and does admit his involvement. And I always like to debrief him right after, you know, once they've got it off their chest and they've told us the truth, that I like to go into that conversation. You know, what made you decide to tell us this today? What about our interaction here? Did you decide to talk to us? And, you know, that guy, when I asked him that question, he said, nobody's ever bought me a big Mac before. And he's been interviewed by the police. Beautiful. You know, some simple things, you know, it's just just trying to treat them like they're, you know, no matter what they've done that they still have, you know, a right to be treated with respect. And, you know, even when we're dealing with people that have committed crimes like Williams has, at the time we're dealing with them, they're not convicted yet. They're still, you know, relatively free people. I mean, obviously, we're going to arrest them and he's not going to be free anymore. But, you know, we try and portray that as much as we can. That's funny. It's rather like you get a very high net promoter score, which is when somebody says, would you recommend me to a friend? It's like, would you, would you recommend Jim Smith to other perpetrators that you know, they're like, yeah, 10 out of 10. Jim's the guy, you know, you get a, you get coffee, you get, you get, you get a big mac. It's a great experience. Everybody should have it. Greg, is there a book in your future? Because I'd love to have one on my shelf back there. Me too. I don't know. I don't know. I, you know, I think one of the things we talk about now is that, you know, when you look at technology that people have access to now that they can communicate with, I mean, back when I started in policing, you know, we didn't even have cell phones, right? We, so the, you, we were hiring people that were used to communicating face to face and having difficult conversations face to face. And now we're seeing more and more people in society in general that if they want to have words with somebody, if they're upset with somebody, they'll text them, you know, they'll email them. They'll, they'll, they'll choose that, that less personal conversation. So when we hire them as police officers, they may not have that life experience that allows them to be comfortable having those face to face difficult conversations. So we're really putting an emphasis on, you know, seeing those people and realizing that they may not have that life skill to the level that, you know, somebody their age may have had 20 years ago. You know, you add COVID into the mix. And just the fact that everybody's staying apart from each other, right? You lose that ability to have those, you know, you know, more intimate conversations. And so we're, we're focusing on those issues to try and see how we can overcome that, because there's really no way you can interrogate somebody, you know, by a text message, you have to sit down with them face to face. And if they're not used to doing that, it can be challenging. Yeah. And Jim, I will tell you that it's not just police work. It's corporate America. It's you name it. It's the same problem because altercation is not a comfortable space for people that capability. So I think there's certainly room for a book in that today. Yeah, I've certainly got clients at the moment who you can, who I'm saying to them, you, you, you have employees now who have never had a face to face conversation with anybody else in the organization, never been face to face with the customer. And some of them have, have never even been face to face with anybody yet that come straight from, you know, straight into their first job and no experience of being in the same location as somebody on in a professional manner. So I can, I can totally see what the force is up against there in terms of getting in the right material, essentially. Yeah. Yeah. And we're hiring a lot of smart people. They have all those other skills, but they just haven't had that exposure to, you know, and then as soon as they're a police officer, that's, that's, like I said, that's their majority of their time is speaking to people face to face and often difficult circumstances, right? It's, and they're, they're right into the fire. So Jason's disappeared somewhere. I'm not sure. Not sure. He'll be knocking on the door to try and come back in. But listen, seriously, thanks for being here with us. We really do appreciate man. We were so excited. We could hardly stand it. And we're, and so we really hope you'll come back and talk to us again. Well, I really had a great time guys. Appreciate it. Thank you. Do you think you'd want to be, you think you would be a guest panelist on here with us one time and do what we do with us? Oh yeah. That'd be good. Well, that's your call. I guess it would depend on what we're talking about. And yeah, I'm open to that for sure. You could pick what we talked about if you wanted to. You know, if it came down to it, well, well, whatever it is, we'll do it. I always say we cover, we cover murderers, politicians and other liars. So All right. Well, sounds good. Yeah. Well, we'll stay in touch for sure. Let me know what you're working on and maybe we can do something again. Okay. Thanks so much, man. Wonderful. All right guys. You guys take care. Thanks Jim.