Jody Harris: Con Artist | Australian Crime Stories | S4E09

she was Australia's Catch Me If You Can con artist trying to Pinner in one spot was difficult Jody Harris was a master Identity Thief we've had ten thousand dollars stolen and I've just gone what she fooled her victims you're gonna stick with your real name now and she fooled the police when you've got a profile like that you're going to get a lot of hits Adam Shan reveals the amazing Chase to capture the queen of calm so you're literally minutes behind her as she's committing offenses minutes behind her and we expose her trail of Destruction I don't know it feels like a bloody nightmare that I don't know when it's gonna end [Music] March 8 2006 was a day that Leah jury will never forget that day she left Melbourne on a well-deserved vacation first a quick flight to Brisbane and then on to a luxury Cruise Line but this trip would not be the stuff of happy memories [Music] so that day I was going on a holiday I was in business class and my friend was in economy so we were all very happy and looking forward to our holiday [Music] as a flight attendant for 20 years and somebody was sitting next to you um yes so this person sitting beside me I was at the window from the moment I sat down she was watching me quite intently which I found quite strange work to fill out for the cruise which had all my name my details but the whole time sort of I could feel her eyes totally on me for the whole time and I just kept thinking what's this woman watching me for Leo was being watched by Jody Harris Australia's reigning queen of Kong Harris was on the Run wanted by police in three states in that period in 2006 she's really ramped it up she's she's on a spree and a Tri-State fraud spray but to understand Jody Harris we need to go back to 1989 when she was an 11 year old growing up in Brisbane a Jody story is one about a very difficult traumatic childhood her mother goes to jail when she's 11 years of age paris's mother is Debbie Kilroy now she's a high-profile lawyer social worker and public advocate for the rights of women in jail but back in 1989 she was living a very different life [Applause] just after seven this morning the Broncos Winger walked into CIB headquarters accompanied by his solicitor Debbie's second husband and Harris's stepfather is Joe Kilroy a Broncos League star who also wore the number five Jersey for Queensland in state of origin but Joe and Debbie were leading a double life they were dealing drugs from home and police caught them in an undercover sting although Kilroy dealt in the Lesser drugs of cannabis and hashish the prosecutor referred to him as an active seller on occasions assisting white Deborah in her drug-related activities Deborah Kilroy was sentenced to two years for the supply of heroin four years for trafficking and two years for possession of property namely sixteen hundred dollars from drug sales to be served concurrently [Music] Joe Kilroy was also sent to prison and eleven-year-old Jody she was sent to live with other family members one of whom allegedly abused her [Music] and so basically at that point in her life every every uh every solid foundation she has behind her has gone her life has changed irreparably she is engaged in a deep trauma so at 11 struggling to find identity she has none [Music] by the time she's 14 she's committing theft she was well known to police by the time she reached adulthood and her response to it is basically you know the third digit of her hand at Society she's telling everyone to get stuffed [Music] March 2006 now age 27 Jody Harris was on her way to Brisbane and was about to pull off a mid-air Heist we got chatting um and pretty much she started telling me her life story and what was that oh she told me her family owned um gambara Seafood in Brisbane that was the first lie and the next one soon followed I asked her what she did for a job and she said she worked for ANZ or one of the banks not psychology but it was something like that was like oh sounds like an interesting role as a flight attendant and someone you're dealing with people all the time I'm sure you've got what we call in technical terms a good [ __ ] detector yeah was it ringing not maybe not real like I was the story I didn't believe that she was lying by the end of this conversation you're feeling fairly comfortable with yeah fairly comfortable and then you decide you have to go to the bathroom I went to the bathroom but you've left your hand back did you think at any moment about your handbag when you're in the bathroom never do must say I never do especially traveling business class even economy I've seen it for years people leave their bags under the seat they go to the toilet they'll go for a walk and when I came back to my seat and it was just before landing and and I went to my back to get my lipstick I looked in my bag and I thought my bag doesn't look like I left it but it wasn't until about maybe five hours later I got to the cruise ship and I needed to show my photo ID and when I went to my wallet my license was gone [Music] Leah didn't join the dots straight away maybe she just misplaced her driver's license so she used her Qantas ID to board the ship we had no internet we had no way of my husband calling me or anything and it wasn't until we actually got off the cruise ship and we're back at like Shore in Brisbane and I've rang home my husband he said we've had ten thousand dollars stolen and I've just gone what and he's gone yeah we've had two lots of five thousand dollars taken two days in a row and I said we can't have where's it gone money had gone straight from Leah's bank account into Harris's designer handbag one lot in Brisbane on the day I arrived in Brisbane and one lot in Melbourne the next day I was hysterical pretty much from the from that moment on I was just like beside myself stressed out in my brain thinking what the hell's happened you know my husband's having a freak out we had no access to any money nothing couldn't even go to the hole in the wall and take out twenty dollars this continued for six months six months we had all our accounts at anz's Frozen coming up the queen of com crosses The Thin Blue Line she wants police this is Revenge it's March 2006 and Leah jury discovers that ten thousand dollars has been stolen from her family's bank account she flies back to Melbourne wondering who could have done this but before she reports this matter to police she goes along to her bank [Music] and then you're shown a photograph and soon as I was shown that photograph from the bank I knew exactly who it was I said that was that lady beside me on that flight this was Harris at work in 2006 convincing a bang teller that she was someone else in order to become Leah jury all she needed was a driver's license the entire Persona and training of a bank teller is to help the customer he's an inspector now but back in 2006 Paul Burton cello was a detective with Victoria Police he had the task of tracking down the elusive Jody Harris and got to know her ammo intimately so you know we had on footage a number of times where you know a bank teller turned the screen around to confirm oh is this the account you're talking about and they're talking to Jody Harris not Jill blogs and of course Jody she had an incredible memory an incredible eye for numbers you know sometimes we look at um computer screens and it just looks like the Matrix if you don't know what you're looking at however she was able to discern the important information or identify another account that she didn't know about previously and then go into a different bank and and use that was there a moment where you thought oh this person she's actually pretty good oh she was good in 2006 desperate Fitzgerald was an investigations manager with New South Wales police she was seeing the same pattern of criminal behavior from Harris as her police counterparts in Victoria she had a neck she had a knack of going into Banks she had a knack of you know standing over bank tellers and saying it was her in the documentation [Music] police in New South Wales and Victoria eventually formed a Joint Task Force to bring Jody Harris to Justice well it was a big operation um in relation to her getting around she would also just jump on a plane and go to Melbourne commit crime then come to Sydney or even go to Queensland and South Australia so trying to um Pinner in one spot was was difficult [Music] police could never be sure who they were dealing with at any given time Jody Harris was a Master of Disguise she traveled with a suitcase of wigs and outfits and in an instant she could flip from blonde to brunette the next day she's a redhead whatever it took to get what she wanted and always at someone else's expense she would wear different disguises wigs scarves I would say she was a good actress in very in very different roles that she played throughout her offending [Music] some believe there's a much deeper aspect to Jody Harris's offending she didn't like police may have begun when she was 11 years old seeing her mother Debbie being arrested on drug charges she would be aware that police have tried to pin offenses on her mother that were not attributable to her these offenses ultimately do not proceed through the courts so she has a very unhealthy dislike of police at this stage and I think as she develops into adulthood she she decides she's going to take a few down along the way in September 2001 Jody Harris walked into Melbourne's Fitzroy police station and flashed a fake badge claiming to be a visiting cop from New South Wales actually done the same thing three years earlier at the Roma Street headquarters of Queensland police while she loathed police she was also drawn to them she had a relationship with a 32 year old Victorian policeman when she was just 15. before she traveled to Melbourne to see him she sent him this photo she was able to convince him that she was 2021 and he believed that purportedly these are the people collectively who have put her mother away so this is Revenge he's very bright she picks things up and when she's having discussions with police she's talking to them she's gleaning information about procedures investigative procedures how they go about things she knows she can commit fraud to the value of about twenty thousand dollars and no one's going to pursue her even in those days a few months after Harris stole ten thousand dollars from Leah jury Leah was reimbursed by her bank the ANZ but she wasn't the only one watching when the money went back into her account we'd opened um a new account and changed the passwords and within two days of us having that account closed and a new account open the password got changed again and that was not by me she still had more access so she got another five thousand somewhere else a few days after that got put back so all up there's four transactions of five thousand dollars [Music] pointed that she could do that to somebody and to think she knew that I had a young family I mean Craig and I were fighting we had no money we were trying to pay a mortgage trying to pay bills and that's just been um it's been I don't know it feels like a bloody nightmare that I don't know when it's gonna end next will a real Jody Harris please stand up my exact words where you've got to be kidding I can't prove that I am who I am [Music] it's May 2006. Jody Harris is on a crime spree for months she's been flying up and down the East Coast picking off victims at random in Sydney Melbourne and Brisbane Victoria police were hot on her Trail they knew who they were looking for however they had no idea where Jody Harris was so they devised a clever plan they have no chance of making an arrest unless they're lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time so they get hold of a journalist at the herald sun and said let's make this a big story [Music] four million pairs of eyes and ears are better than my two and away we went the front page story and Moto Drew out many more Tales of Harris's criminal prowess steal from shop assistance she stole from a masseuse she stole from a gym attendant at a hotel in Melbourne she stole ID and bank cards and bought a dog leaving the dog up in Sydney thank you one of the most extraordinary cases was when a woman fell down in the street knocking her head knocking herself out and Jody walked up to the crowd gathered around her and just said leave it with me I'm a doctor then accompanied the woman in the back of an ambulance to hospital stealing her ID and and Bank out on the way and then delivering her into the hands of the hospital and just walking off and on a merry way to commit offenses on that occasion Harris relieved the injured woman of over ten thousand dollars that crime was reported but many other fraud victims don't come forward I had cases where people uh very prominent people in the community have been caught up in these schemes and they certainly don't want it out there that they have been suckered like this Tim Watson Monroe is a criminal psychologist and has assessed many con artists the sort of generic thing about them all is that they get excited about it they enjoy it they have a great belief in their own ability and uh very high Egos and that's what makes them so successful because they can convince others as to their Bona fides they come across as very confident I felt really stupid and people would say to me you know how did how did that happen to you and I'm like well I didn't really do anything to make it happen to me thanks to all the publicity from the first Herald Sun Splash Jody Harris was identified she'd become Australia's most Wanted con artist but instead of retreating into her shell she maintained a lavish lifestyle paying cash to stay in the best hotels and spending big on luxury goods [Music] with her background this is stuff that would be unattainable normally so this you know this is Louis Vuitton 24 karat gold jewelry Etc you know this is her way of saying I'm I'm entering into a world that I'm not supposed to go into and I'm going to help myself in a follow-up newspaper article the Herald's son gave Jody a new nickname that's how they describe Jody as they Catch Me If You Can con woman [Music] Leonardo DiCaprio's movie because she was so good at what she did every time I had a passenger come on the aircraft I was looking for her to see if she was going to board my plane to the point that um one day I actually was convinced she was in the on the aircraft he was in business class [Music] Alpha and this lady really really looked like her Leah alerted the captain who called the authorities the plane sat on the tarmac until the police arrived little did they know they were about to arrest the wrong woman three uniform police officers coming excuse me ma'am I looked up and they're standing there can we escort you off the plane get your luggage and I'm like okay they were convinced the police were convinced it was her my exact words were you've got to be kidding I'm I'm in trouble here I can't prove that I am who I am they said you're not going to believe it we were positive it was her he said until we did her fingerprints it wasn't her and I just went oh my God are you serious and I felt like a absolutely you know idiot and when I got out I burst into tears it was definitely a case of mistaken identity and regretfully this wasn't the person who we were looking for and this woman never flew Qantas again I'm joking I'm joking laughs meanwhile the real Jody Harris was feeling invincible she always seemed to be a step in front of the police but she wanted to keep them interested so she upped the stakes in the pursuit he's sitting in the office after the Hills Hunt Story Goes to press the phone rings no woman claiming to be JD Harris gets on the phone and I probably thought it was wind up from some of the people I was working with at the time burden Jello soon realized it wasn't a wind-up [Music] Khan was on the line it's the first thing that went through my head once I did work out it was her was that it was pretty Brazen and um you know there was a sense of taunting there that um you know um she she was free and we didn't have her in our custody coming up police make a shocking discovery one thing led to another and a neighbor said oh yeah I'm pretty sure she lives there with a police officer [Music] serial con artist Jody Harris brazenly called Paul Burton cello the Victorian policeman who was chasing her she teased him with clues about her location she suggested he try the trendy suburb of South yarra [Music] foreign challenges that you're always up for as an investigator [Music] she talked about being near a certain Street and certain intersection in South yarra we came up with a plan to go and door knock all the units in the vicinity of that area there's a lot of them one thing led to another and a neighbor of this particular unit they said oh yeah I'm pretty sure she lives there with a police officer Andrew Twining was a motorcycle cop an acting sergeant in Victoria Police Andrew twaining on a internet dating site where she'd established a fairly elaborate personality he's a young woman any virile Hot Blooded male would be all over there's the hints of bisexuality polite bondage and all this sort of stuff you know when you've got a profile like that you're going to get a lot of hits you're basically saying come and get me but not just anyone she wants police and one police officer who'd been in the force for almost two decades was Andrew twiney they establish a relationship and it was at least as far as he is concerned perfectly normal and natural it was a sexual relationship she used to visit their parents they'd go out for dinners [Music] Andrew's father himself a former fraud Squad Officer says Jody was a master con woman everything she told us was a lie she told us she was employed at virgin Airlines as a cabin supervisor and she's never worked for for them at all and she had the uniform she was often should just turn up in the uniform or she'd have the uniform in the cupboard at in in her apartment in Melbourne so it was credible you know I mean incredible enough anyway [Applause] Twining dated Harris for about three months but was oblivious to her double life he was overseas when news broke of her real identity and life as a con artist [Applause] the sense of betrayal that he must have felt must have been extreme I imagine yeah look you certainly felt sorry for the guy but you know from an investigation point of view really my first loyalty was to the victims and then obviously to bring her to Justice Jody Harris continued to sidestep the police but now they knew her real name they began closing in so of particular impact in this investigation with the financial institutions Car Hire companies Banks and Airlines [Music] we'd find a new identity that was being used circulated and that would then inform us was she here was she there we often got within you know a day or two of where she was [Music] came to within a few moments of catching her the one time I know that we were closest to catching her was in New South Wales where um Jody went into a bank she was recognized by the teller in the background they put the alert out to get police to come there [Music] Jody was nothing if not paranoid about any sort of delay that was occurring and she would just cut her losses and she did on this occasion she walked out of the bank and went across the road and the police car attending the bank stopped to let her cross in front of them foreign and then drove up went into the bank and they worked out oh that was the woman we just saw [Music] we knew she was in and around some of the shops but we kept on missing her so you're literally minutes behind her as she's committing offenses minutes behind her three states were frustrated by The elusive con artist but they did have a potential line to Harris through her relationship with Sergeant Andrew Twining in Victoria [Music] twining's bosses asked him to help entrap the queen of Khan and he was more than happy to oblige next the chase is on for the queen of Khan but will she slip the net again and we basically commandeered a taxi and said follow that car look at the movies like the movies Andrew Twining was away on a European cruise with his parents when police discovered his relationship with Jody Harris Twining agreed to assist the police in arresting her as soon as he returned to Melbourne the date for the sting was set July 6 2006. Andrew arranged to meet Harris in Sydney he got in his car and started the long drive up the Hume Highway foreign [Music] police tracked the car all the way from Melbourne and it was around about two o'clock in the morning when I got a phone call to say Andrew was on his way to meet um Jody so I contacted my boss and we scrambled we got staff out Twining told his superiors at Victoria Police that Harris was going to emerge from Scruffy Murphy's Irish pub in Sydney's CBD at 4am other people were out and about so we put various places at various points myself in the and the crime manager at the time were masquerading down the street as if we were a boyfriend and girlfriend so we didn't look out a place and um we're expecting her just to walk out Stakeout was in full swing at the appointed Rendezvous time of 4 AM but instead of emerging from the pub as they'd been informed Harris had a surprise in store for the New South Wales police she gets out of a um a taxi [Music] and she gets into Andrew's car my crime manager Grant Taylor and I were on foot and we basically commandeered a taxi and said follow that car like in the movies like the movies [Music] Brian Tyler was in the front I was in the back had the police radio and I was calling our other cars as to where we're going a couple minutes later she was pulled over and numb in Harris Street at ultimate I jumped out of the cab and she was placed under arrest The elusive Jody Harris finally in police custody how you feeling Jody when Harris was arrested this morning detectives also found credit cards licenses and a police ID the number of women allegedly fleeced is still unclear but in Melbourne alone police say there were more than 20 victims who lost hundreds of thousands of dollars Leah jury is with Darren Lenny who joins us now what was your reaction when you heard the news this morning my dad rang me at 20 past seven this morning and said they've got that woman and I yelled yay finally when she was arrested she very dirty on Andrew twine the penny dropped very very quickly the Twining had betrayed her [Music] six days after Jodie's arrested police conduct a search at the twinings premises and find a replica handgun what's he doing with a replica handgun and that's what he goes down for and It ultimately loses his job Andrew Twining has been suspended from Duty indefinitely after being charged with possessing an unregistered handgun prosecutors said they were in possession of a hundred or so pages of Love Letters between Twining and Harris the only way they caught her was the boyfriend so I feel sorry for the poor boyfriend because you know he lost his job foreign custody and you get a chance to talk to her what are your memories of that encounter well it quite starting with a graphic memory we eventually charged with 133 offenses when we arrested her she did have a bag full of credit cards each one of them she was able to Rattle off the numbers that she used which was extraordinary like most con artists Jody Harris was eager to show the police how clever she was she was angry too letting fly with a vile tirade against her interrogators police didn't care she could rent all she wanted for years Jody had led them on a merry Dance Now the cops were firmly in control what were your impressions of her as a person it's a fraudster to me she was clever and if she diverted those skills somewhere else she would have been very successful business person in her own right however she was a fraudster and that's all she was might have made a good undercover policeman maybe even I think she did that quite well next wearing a black T-shirt which read do in time Jody Harris looked relaxed as she sat in the dock Harris faces Justice [Music] this is National nine news with Peter hitchena alleged Catch Me If You Can Thief Jody Harris has appeared in court charged with stealing more than a hundred and sixty thousand dollars in cash property and airline tickets Harris's first appearance in court provoked massive media interest Damian good morning this case has really captured the Public's attention hasn't it of course it's created a lot of interest because police will allege there are a lot of victims apparently in Victoria alone there are at least 20 alleged victims and we now have at least three from the Sydney's Eastern suburbs who will obviously give evidence in this case you know would you say she had remorse really she shows very little remorse for her victims in in the initial stages because this is a person who's basically been running around without restraints for 15 years wearing a black T-shirt which read do in time Jody Harris looked relaxed as she sat in the dock she even laughed and smiled during the brief appearance in September 2006 Jody Harris admitted to stealing more than three hundred thousand dollars worth of cash and property in New South Wales Queensland and Victoria slowly it's starting to Dawn on her that she's looking at a nice old stretch in prison and she's starting to get a sense of where she is now and and what her prospects are stands for a sentence reduction Harris assisted in making a training video with the fraud Squad in Victoria [Music] the gaps in a banking system that allowed her to use multiple identities to steal hundreds of thousands of dollars the video was then used in banking and finance circles as an educational tool they enabled her to say to the court that she'd been assisting Victoria Police so certainly you know consistent with sort of Jodie's view of the world she helped herself but you know she helped us as well Harris was sentenced to four years jail in 2010 after serving her time she faced a Brisbane Court for her Queensland crimes where she received a suspended sentence she was accompanied by her mother Debbie Kilroy remember Debbie Kilroy went to jail over a drug matter but she goes on to become a lawyer and now she's held in very very high regard in judicial circles in Queensland [Music] Jody looks at her mother and says here's the way to break this cycle [Music] so Jody actually starts starting Curry studies and begins a master of arts Ten Years Later no more problems there's no evidence that Jody Harris has reoffended since her release from jail in 2010 so has she been rehabilitated crime historian Peter hoisted says yes she's come a very long way since the time as an 11 year old when the two most important people in her life were taken away from her she's offending probably a long time she's 14 to about the time she's 28. you know the media wanted to pump this up as a Catch Me If You Can Leonardo DiCaprio in drag sort of uh you know Fascination and and certainly that's the way a lot of people saw her but this is a story about Redemption this is a story about family reconnection this is a story about a person who had lost her way through really no fault of her own and then she has this big moment of Reckoning under a massive glare of media and then it stops the detective who led the investigation in Victoria is encouraged by Harris's progress if I could speak to her today I'd say congratulations on keeping out of our sphere of influence for the last 10 years and I hope that continues for a long time to come foreign [Music] yes you look at her mum you know she has turned her life around but I don't know whether Jody will [Music] but um yeah I just I mean I think people need to really be aware of you know where you're handing out your cards and just you know don't let those cards out of your sight I must say though I don't trust people like I used to and I go with my gut if my gut tells me something my god do I listen to it [Music] [Music]

Channel: Australian Crime

Views: 179,090

Keywords: Australia, Australian Crime, Australian crime documentary, Australian crime series, Gangs & Mobs, Psychology of Crime, Stalkers, child crime, con artists, crime, crime documentary, crime series, disappearances, family crime, murder, police, serial killer, true crime, true crime documentary, true crime series, Con, Long Con, Identity, Theft, Identity theft, true crime podcast, criminal cases, true crime stories, austrlalian con artist, Female crime, Female criminal, Caught, trial, case

Id: pBmVexkM9EU

Length: 44min 31sec (2671 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 27 2022