Deadline: Brighton locals go CSI in hunt to identify lady poo rider

A Bayside cyclist who left a driveway deposit is being hunted by local snoops keen to see the culprit in the messy case canned.

Brighton CSI is on the case as the hunt continues for a cyclist who defecated in a garden bed in the posh bayside suburb.

Locals have been looking for answers to the mystery of the poo-rider, who struck with ridiculous speed on October 21.

There has been much fevered speculation and online searching for the culprit who dropped her cycling tights, defiled a driveway then did a runner.

Somebody with too much time on their hands even posted to social media a forensic exhibit-style photo of the said stool, complete with a can beside it.

This was presumably to provide some kind of scale for those viewing.

It is unclear how that visual aid was going to help track the culprit but, in such a messy case, maybe there’s no such thing as a crap idea.

The crap and dash was captured on a home security system.

The cyclist makes her getaway.

One problem, of course, is ensuring that police and media coverage is accurate but within the bounds of taste. This has led to an explosive outpouring of crappy euphemisms.

The well-known Sydney phenomenon of motions floating in the ocean has led to the wonderful term “Bondi cigars”. Down south, the term “blind mullet” seems to have gone out of fashion but references to Werribee ducks still bob up like a cork in a sewage pond.

When Deadline worked as a garbo in the bayside suburbs in the 1970s, fellow garbologists referred to what the poo-jogger left behind as a “mocker”. In those quaint, far-off times, it was Brighton poodles and Afghan hounds that left the deposits, not actual Brighton ladies.

As to why the garbos called them “mockers”? Not because it rhymes with “shocker.” It’s because “mocker” is short for mockingbird, which rhymes with Richard the Third. Simple, really.

Victoria Police media says the investigation is ongoing and that, ahem, there’s nothing new on its log of the matter.

DOG DAY AFTERNOON

Talking of being in more merde than a Werribee duck, a prominent racing identity who has been in the news in various ways over the last year or so might not be out of the woods yet.

Despite his connection to a couple of the greatest horses currently racing in the world, not everything to do with love of animals is working out for him. He has allegedly hit a hurdle over some images on a device allegedly in his possession when he was passing through an airport.

According to legal documents which fell off the back of a horse float and have been passed on to Deadline by an interested bystander, the man’s lawyers are fighting hard to head off any charges linking their man with material allegedly involving animal cruelty — and bestiality.

STALKER TESTS WAY OUT OF TROUBLE

Covid has been the source of many a rort in the past 18 months.

Some crooks have been producing fake vaccination certificates for a few hundred bucks while others have been vacuuming up government benefits intended for the needy.

And for one stalker, the pandemic has provided a way to put off until tomorrow what you don’t want dealt with today.

This fellow, who lives in a country area not known for coronavirus infections, has been able to fend off justice for more than a year.

His trick has been, repeatedly, to get a Covid test he doesn’t need on the morning of an appearance.

He then calls the court and says he’s been told to isolate while waiting for the result.

An adjournment is automatically called and the stalker gets back to whatever he does best. A great result for him but not so wonderful for those he stalks.

STICK TO ARMCHAIRS, SHERLOCK

Cases which pose more questions than answers have always brought out the amateur detective in us all.

The family of little West Australian girl Cleo Smith found that out the hard way for 18 long, dark days as the four-year-old’s disappearance gripped Australia.

Nature abhors a vacuum and so do smartphone-toting armchair sleuths busting to explain to each other how a child can vanish without trace from a coastal campsite.

Cleo’s mum Ellie and stepfather Jake Gliddon were quickly judged by vicious online amateur detectives as having something to hide. Not many of those trolls are apologising for their foul slander now that she has been found safe and well.

Cleo Smith back home with her parents. Picture: Colin Murty

This judgmental behaviour is nothing new, nor confined to members of the public. Plenty of us watching the telly got it right on Borce Ristevski, Matthew Wales-King and John Sharpe.

But there are too many cases in which people are way off. Deadline recalls once being at a press conference where the consensus among reporters assembled was that the grieving family member was, in fact, the killer.

Even the lead detective shared this opinion. Which, as it turned out, was dead wrong.

A young mother was years ago the subject of widespread community suspicion about the deaths of her children. They were later found to have died accidentally.

The gold standard for wrong assumptions, of course, is the lynch mob persecution of Lindy Chamberlain, who was deemed to have not displayed the right pitch of maternal pain when she told the terrible truth: that a dingo had snatched her baby Azaria from a tent near Uluru.

The public and most (though not all) the media were led down the wrong path by Northern Territory police apparently intent on promoting the local tourism industry’s hip pocket view that Territory dingoes don’t take tourist babies. Much.

As one seasoned detective remarked last week, grief has all sorts of faces.

At least, back in the Chamberlain days, the public’s gratuitous, unsubstantiated, mostly stupid and routinely slanderous opinions were largely confined to the couch or tearoom.

Now, in a world of social media, awful accusations are aired to millions. As Cleo Smith’s family has discovered in the past month.

GENERAL ENFORCES PEACE IN WILD WEST

Grant McArthur is an award-winning medical reporter for the Herald Sun.

But last week he turned into a law and order action man in bizarre scenes outside a Williamstown supermarket.

McArthur was shocked to see a man, aged at least 60, being dragged from a car and slammed against the vehicle by a younger, well-dressed chap who had stepped from a Lexus.

Grant McArthur (right), with photographer Alex Coppel, wins awards and fights crime. Picture: Christian Gilles

Suspecting a carjacking, the writer, known as The General, stepped in to protect the older fellow but was told by Lexus Man that he was making an old-fashioned citizen’s arrest.

He was alleging that the bloke being restrained had been stalking his daughter and wanted to hold him until the police arrived.

An off-duty cop, who didn’t seem overly keen to get involved, then deputised McArthur to stay and maintain order — which he did for the next 20 minutes as claim and counterclaim flew.