Esther McKay - Forensic Investigator

Esther Mckay served seventeen years in the New South Wales Police Force, attaining the rank of Detective (technical) Senior Constable. She worked in the area of Forensic Services for fifteen years, attaining expert status in crime-scene examination and vehicle identification. She also worked in Training and Research, as well as Document Examination. She has a Diploma of Applied Science in Forensic Investigation (NSW Police), and was awarded the National Medal for service in 2001 and the Ethical and Diligent Police Service medal with fifteen-year clasp in 2008.

She was discharged from the force in 2001 with post-traumatic stress disorder as a direct result of her forensic work. Her best-selling autobiography, Crime Scene: True Stories from the Life of a Forensic Investigator, was published by Penguin in 2005.

She works actively in supporting traumatised serving and former police and is the President of the Police Post Trauma Support Group. She was awarded the Pride of Australia Medal in 2007 for Community Spirit for her work with traumatised police, and regularly speaks to various groups and schools about her life experience, writing and former forensic work. Esther is patron of the Australian Missing Persons Register and has been an Australia Day Ambassador since 2007. She lives in the Southern Highlands with her husband and two children.

MICHAEL JOSEPH
an imprint of
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MICHAEL JOSEPH

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First published by Penguin Group (Australia), 2009

Copyright Esther Mckay 2009

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penguin.com.au

ISBN: 978-1-74-228647-1

You have either bought this book, or you have taken it off a bookshelf, probably because, like me, you are fascinated by police work. This is an appetite you share with millions of Australians who every week tune their television in to police and crime dramas. Many of these involve forensic investigation. It seems that these fictionalised cases are mostly solved by what seems to be access to unlimited manpower, infinite resources and scientific techniques (some of which havent been invented yet). The reality is somewhat different and this book is blunt and confronting in its reality.

Esther and I met through a mutual friend, Greg Chilvers of the NSW Police Association. Our immediate connection stemmed from the work I do with police as a psychotherapist and the fact that Esther had her own psychological legacy from years of working in the often brutally confronting field of forensics. Like Geoff Bernasconi, the subject of this book, Esther herself had years of being involved in investigations that exposed her to heinous crimes. These tragedies illustrated the ability some humans have to inflict intolerable cruelty on others. As a result of those experiences she wrote her first book, Crime Scene. Following publication of that book, Esther tried to find ways to assist others who, like her, had become damaged by operational police work.

We corresponded and discussed my own work, and we found several matters we sensed we could collaborate on. At the time, Esther was developing a trauma support group for both serving and retired officers, especially those who suffered post-traumatic stress disorder. In just three years Esther has been able to start six support groups throughout New South Wales. Her work has been recognised by awards and certainly affirmation, the most obvious of which came when former Commissioner, and much respected police officer, Ken Maroney agreed to be patron of these support groups.

I have taken this diversion from the normal content of writing a foreword because, as I indicated earlier, this book is not just another story; it springs deeply from Esthers passion for caring and compassion. Its transparent that as a forensic investigator she aimed to find answers for the dead. Esther now tries to help find answers for the living, a pursuit that has proved integral to how she herself became healed.

Television especially is the world of fiction, yet behind our fascination is, as always, a starker, at times even more compelling reality. Forensic Investigator is a book about Geoff Bernasconi, a man committed to but also damaged by the work he was dedicated to. This is a powerful story as told and written by Esther Mckay. While its a story about a colleague, its also a story that reflects the exceptional calibre and compassion of the author, herself an ex-forensic investigator.

For more than two decades I have been working with police, and clearly this book is an outstanding achievement that adds to our understanding of those who serve us. Forensic Investigator demonstrates the commitment and dedication of just one officer, but clearly shows that this work is not without its emotional, psychological and physical cost to all who work in this field.

Almost anyone can write a book; few can tell a story. Esther gives a moving account of what forensic investigation is about. Yet this is also a book and a story that is highly relevant to police, their administrators, families of police and certainly those whose lives have been touched by traumatic incidents the human cost and currency of day-to-day policing.

If you expect this book to be about the tragic, even gruesome events and the reality of what forensic investigations are about, you will not be disappointed. The stories, as I said at the beginning of this foreword, are real, brutal and confronting. Forensic Investigator, through the life of this exceptional man Geoff Bernasconi, not only reveals the ugliness of many terrible and tragic events, but the ability of humans to show compassion. Forensic Investigator goes beyond just the factual events and clearly emphasises the psychological cost to our police officers and everyone involved in their lives.

Forensic Investigator bravely directs criticism at administrators who fail to serve and protect their own. It would be easy for police agencies to say that things have changed, but what Esther McKay has achieved in Forensic Investigator is to show that the issues of welfare are not just about yesterday, but remain relevant today and undoubtedly will continue to do so into tomorrow.

Roger F. Peters PhD

Newcastle, New South Wales

Winter 2008