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Homicide detective to head Echuca criminal investigation unit

BARRY Gray has investigated some of Victoria’s most shocking killings.And the former Homicide Squad detective has helped put many murderers behind bars.Including the then 52-year-old Tai Shum Tang, who killed 23-year-old woman Van Nguyen and set her body alight in Cheltenham in 2008.His career has taken him across the state; solving some of the most complex and gruesome murders of which human beings are capable.Now, thanks to a tree change, Detective Sergeant Gray is the new cop on the block at Echuca police station — heading the Campaspe Criminal Investigation Unit.But he has big shoes to fill — replacing veteran cop Brendon Murphy; also a former detective with the Homicide Squad.“Brendon Murphy ran an extremely good ship and I knew there was a good work environment here,” Det. Sgt Gray said.“The beauty of this job is you can move around from place to place and do a variety of different things.”While the former Kerang police sergeant only started in the role last week, he is acutely aware of the region’s crime trends.“At the moment, we’re having issues with property crime, so burglaries and thefts, comparative to previous times. They’ve spiked,” he said.“But we’ve had some police from central Victoria joining Echuca police just before I got here who have done some fantastic work to arrest a number of people in relation to a number of those crimes and they’ve really cleared up a few issues that were starting to poke their head up before I got here which has been fantastic for me.”Targeting property crime will be one of the issues Team Gray will be working on during the next few months.“We will target people we identify as the main troublemakers,” he said.While residential and commercial burglaries are on the rise, farm thefts are also a major concern for police.“Farmers have stuff on their farms for a reason. And same as tradies, they need their tools and if they lose them or have someone come in and steal them it causes all kinds of inconvenience,” he said.“There’s all kinds of issues with farms and biosecurity. People going on and off farms without proper checks and balances or removing cattle or stock. That’s a massive issue.“We need to be on the ball with farm thefts and we need to engage with the community about this.”Although farm thefts may not be as thrilling as time in the Homicide Squad, he said it was just as important.“If you get your car broken into or stolen, that might be the most horrific crime for you and that’s the way I treat it,” he said.“We treat it as any other job. To other people and certainly with the murders, to any decent human being would be horrific.”Joining the force in 1997, Det. Sgt Gray started his career in Melbourne working in uniform.After being promoted to detective, he worked in Heidelberg until joining the Homicide Squad in 2006 where he worked for the next five years.The married father-of-four said it was a time he enjoyed, but it took a toll on family life.“I miss some of the jobs in Melbourne. Those police jobs you think ‘they’re the ones why I joined the police force to solve’,” he said.“We don’t have those kind of crimes up here, that Melbourne gets more frequently.“It was good. But better for a single person.“I’m not a single person and I wanted to stay married.“It’s a great working environment and really good jobs, but long, long hours and the investment into those kind of jobs is so demanding.“We dealt with any suspected murder in the state of Victoria or unexpected death. A lot of investigations we found were not a murder.“Killing someone and murdering someone is quite different. People can kill people. And a lot of times people kill people and it turns out not to be a murder.”That turned out to be the case in a gruesome killing his team was called to in Mooroopna in 2008.A teenage girl was accused of a murdering her stepfather and cutting him up into pieces and hiding the body parts.The teen was initially ordered to stand trial for the murder, but the director of public prosecutions dropped the charge after two days of sometimes harrowing evidence about the years of horrendous sexual slavery that preceded the killing.“The circumstances were quite tragic,” Det. Sgt Gray said.Three years later, the squad was called to a shooting death at a farmhouse near Kerang, where a 45-year-old man had shot and killed his daughter’s partner.“The person who pulled the trigger was acquitted in court because of self defence,” he said.But by and large, most of his cases were murders and “it was our job to put them in jail”.And that he did.Such as Tai Shum Tang who was jailed for 20 years after killing Van Nguyen and setting her body alight in a rubbish skip to conceal his crime.The local fire brigade had been called to the fire and unknowingly destroyed the crime scene, washing away most of the evidence.By the time Det. Sgt Gray and his team arrived, they no idea who the deceased was, how they had died or who was responsible.But they didn’t give up.Because Det. Sgt Gray said they had a responsibility to the victim’s family.“It’s just important to remember that these people have mothers and fathers and siblings – people out there who don’t know where their loved one is,” he previously told the Riv.Two years, a lot of hard work and a few lucky breaks later, the killer was put behind bars.While there are many elements to a homicide case, the victims’ families are often at the heart of it.“They’re the ones who know the victim’s last movements and who they’ve been spending time with,” Det. Sgt Gray said.“It’s unfortunate, but it’s much more common for people to be killed by someone they know. So that limits the pool of suspects for us quite dramatically.“While you can never rule out family, we never make assumptions unless there’s strong, factual, evidential suspicion.”Dealing with murders day in and day out has taught him one thing.“Don’t be surprised by what people are capable of,” he said.“Don’t be surprised what can happen on any day to any person.“You see the worst of the worst but sometimes you have to step back and look at the 99.9 per cent of the community who are just normal nice decent people. It’s a very small percentage of people who get involved in crime.”And in many cases, drugs are often linked.In those circumstances, Det. Sgt Gray said it was about reducing the supply of drugs and minimising the harm they cause.“There are a number of fantastic people in the community who are doing their best to get people away from drugs and there are some in the community who are trying to get people onto drugs and we need to stop that supply and look after the people,” he said.“Drug use is a horrific thing for a family to go through and we need to support families and people mixed up in that.“No doubt people’s health from long-term drug use can be devastating and can lead onto other health and crime issues.”While he’ll never be able to stop crime completely, it’s about making the community feel safe.“Unfortunately we’ll always have crime and we’ll always need police but it’s more every now and then you get to walk down the street and see someone smiling and they don’t know that you’re probably the reason they’ve got to smile but it’s a nice feeling,” he said.“People need to be able to feel happy and comfortable in the community and I think overwhelmingly that is the case here but I just want to make sure that stays the case.“I’d just like to walk down the street and see people smiling.“It’s not good every day, but most days you go home at the end of your shift thinking ‘I’ve made a difference’.”

Ivy Jensen

11 Sep 2019

Ivy Jensen

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Homicide detective to head Echuca criminal investigation unit