Only by reference to what is known can one make sense of the unknown. – Lachlan Jarvis, director of Lyonswood Investigations When a client approaches a private investigator to conduct a period of surveillance, it’s not like hiring a plumber, getting a car serviced or having an accountant do your tax return. It is something […]

How the Modern Private Investigator Came to Be What comes to mind when ‘private investigator’ is mentioned? Is it the image of a guy in a dimly lit room, solving mysteries while puffing away on a cigarette in a beige trench coat? What if I told you that the private detective existed several decades before […]

In criminal trials or civil disputes it is sometimes necessary to prove the precise location of a person retrospectively. The purpose of such evidence-gathering could be to show that a person was or was not responsible for signing a contract, committing a crime, sending an email or engaging in some other alleged conduct. There are […]

White Supremacy in Christchurch   Preventing crime and terrorism is an imprecise science. Perhaps it could be better described as an art because there isn’t a direct correlation between the preventative measures and the outcomes. A society can do a really good job at preparing for attacks of the sort we saw in Christchurch and […]

Left-handed Writing in Forensic Handwriting Analysis Left handed people make up about 10% of the population. For hundreds of years scientists have been interested in what makes this proportion of the population write with their left hand. Some ancient civilizations actually thought that left handedness was a sign of the devil. In fact, a lot […]

Interview With a Professional Surveillance Private Investigator     1. You are a Private Investigator, what does that entail? There are many different fields a Private Investigator can work in. These include Factual Investigations, where you interview people or take statements for a variety of reasons, including injuries, home insurance (when a burglary has taken […]

Private Investigators Conduct Surveillance not Espionage   Private investigator-turned-journalist Jessicah Mendes recently penned an article for the ABC entitled “I was a private investigator, spying for insurance companies. Here’s what I found.” As an investigator myself, I was interested to read the article and learn from the corresponding Facebook comments section that I was, in […]

written by Derek Philipson The Federated Ship Painters and Dockers Union existed in Victoria from about 1900 until its demise in 1993. From the 1950s until to the late 1970s, many of Melbourne’s organised crime figures were allegedly members of or connected in some way to the Painters and Dockers. There were many “colourful characters” among […]