Dennis O’Toole on how he gained the trust of suspected killer Dean Waters

In the second episode of the I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin, former homicide detective Dennis O’Toole reveals how he broke protocol when dealing with murder suspect Dean Waters — and it started with giving him his personal phone number. LISTEN NOW

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Smart cops know how to keep a professional distance: stay neutral, don’t get emotionally involved, don’t become a part of the story.

Except if you want to solve a murder, in which case none of that is true.

Homicide detectives must find ways through the most difficult cases, when evidence is scant and the best witness – the victim – is unavailable for obvious reasons.

That’s why Dennis O’Toole – one of NSW’s most accomplished homicide investigators – broke a cardinal rule by giving suspected killer Dean Waters his home phone number and saying: “Call me any time.”

Former NSW homicide detectives Gary Jubelin and Dennis O'Toole feature in episode two of podcast I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin. Picture: Liam Driver

O’Toole tells the story in today’s episode of I Catch Killers with Gary Jubelin, Australia’s number one podcast.

Waters – a champion boxer – was a suspect in the 1988 murder of Allan Hall, a horsebreaker who was the de facto partner of Waters’ stepmother.

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Detectives knew who was really behind the killing: Dean’s violent and controlling father Cec Waters, a boxing trainer, who they suspected of offering his own ex-wife as payment for a debt to Hall, and then turning on the horsebreaker and killing him out of pure spite and jealousy.

But a judge had refused to commit Dean and Cec for trial on the basis of a lack of evidence, and the detectives were left with the unsolved crime and deep concern that a guilty man had got away with murder.

Former champion boxer Dean Waters with his father Cec.

Dean Waters with his lawyer.

O’Toole and a younger detective, Paul Jacob, had delved deep into what seemed like the most dysfunctional family in Australia: Dean and his brothers Guy and Troy had told horrific stories of Cec’s abuse through their childhoods and adult lives, including of their sister.

“The daughter – I’m shaking my head at this – she told me how she came second at school in a mile race … Cec took her home and belted her with a rubber hose for running second,” O’Toole recalls.

O’Toole persisted pushing the case with his understudy, Jacob.

“We reached out to Dean and said ‘I want to talk about Allan Hall’. He wouldn’t look me in the eye’,” O’Toole says.

“Jacob said: ‘He did it.’ He wouldn’t admit it. He wouldn’t look me in the eye.

“I gave Dean my silent home phone number and said: ‘You ring me any time’. I never did that with anyone else. Probably quite a few police will say tut tut.”

Damon Cooper leaving Silverwater Jail with his children Rhys and Amanda after serving 12 years in prison.

O’Toole’s instinct was right. His home phone rang shortly afterwards and Dean’s solicitor said his client had something to say.

It was a full confession: Dean had shot Hall, on the orders of Cec, with an accomplice – Dean’s friend Damon Cooper.

The two younger men went to trial for the murder of Allan Hall and the detectives ran the trial in the fervent hope the jury would understand what they knew: Cec was the real killer.

I Catch Killers by Gary Jubelin out in September. Pre order now

The brothers gave evidence of their horrendous lives under Cec’s despotic hand: psychosexual abuse and every other imaginable type of cruelty.

Dean Waters’ lawyers ran a defence of diminished responsibility and he was acquitted.

Damon Cooper was convicted of the lesser charge of manslaughter, spent 12 years in prison and has spoken publicly of his enduring bitterness about being caught up in Dean’s confession.

Waters tried to visit Cooper in jail, but Cooper refused to see him.

Cec died in 1997, before his son’s trial.

“You’d be hard pressed to convince people what an evil bugger he was,” O’Toole says.

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Originally published as Dennis O’Toole on how he gained the trust of suspected killer Dean Waters