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Scattered Episode 33: Death Notifications – Interview with Dave Sweet
Dave Sweet is a retired detective from a large western Canadian police service who now works as a consultant in Calgary, conducting workshops, training, writing books, and hosting a podcast. He retired in October 2023 after spending 14.5 years investigating murders and suspicious deaths. Most of our conversation is focused on death notifications and communicating with the next of kin.
In this episode we talk about:
You can contact Dave Sweet through his website: https://www.unconventionalclassroom.ca/
Transcript
Yvonne Kjorlien: All right, we’ll see how it goes. So why don’t you start by telling me who you are and what you’re currently doing.
Dave Sweet: So my name’s Dave Sweet, and I am a Detective from a large western Canadian police service and, currently, I am working as a consultant in Calgary. Do a lot of workshops, training, write books. I’ve my own podcast. So I’m sort of a jack of all trades, as it stands right now. Not seeing I yeah.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Your own podcast. How did I miss that? I’m gonna have to go stalk, and look you up! What?
Dave Sweet: Yeah. Yeah.
Yvonne Kjorlien: So, how long have you been retired now?
Dave Sweet: I actually just retired last year in October so it’s been, I’m just coming up on my one year anniversary of that, but I’m still a young man, so I feel like I can’t be too idle. I haven’t earned that yet.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Right. Thank you again for agreeing to speak with me. I’ve been trying to find somebody or some way to address talking with the next of kin and working with them regarding their either potentially or actual dead relatives. And I’ve always felt very iffy about approaching families to talk about that sort of thing because it’s icky to go and say, “Do you want to talk about how you’re feeling?” because I just find that very insensitive. So, thank you for coming on and agreeing to talk about this very touchy, sensitive subject.
Dave Sweet: Sure. And I recognize it as sensitive as well, but also I think hopefully we’ll be some valuable information for people out there, just in terms of when they’re dealing with their own crisis and tragedy into the future. We’ll all have one at some point in time. So learning a little bit about other families or how other people have approached that may help somebody listening have a better idea on how they might approach their own.
Yvonne Kjorlien: So let’s go back into your past a little bit and if you can maybe sketch out, maybe some situations in where you’ve had to deal with families and talk to them about their next of kin or, either a potential to deceased or somebody who’s actually deceased.
Dave Sweet: Sure. Yeah, of course. So my background really, I spent the last 14 and a half years of my life investigating murders, suspicious deaths. And, obviously, as a result of that, had the opportunity to speak many different families along the way and including having the opportunity to be the first person to advise them when a loved one had died. Often in tragic circumstances and situations. And something, I think came to learn early on, well, there’s a few things I came to learn early on when it came to notifying somebody that I loved one had passed, was one, make sure that when you went to do the notification that you had some facts, some information that you’d be able to pass on to them. Because there’s going to be an immediate need on their end and to understand kind of what has happened. And although you may not be able to know, you may not have all of the information available, you should be able to at least explain a little bit around the circumstance. The second, was to keep it truthful and honest, always. Never to sort of sugar coat an issue, but to, instead, be deliberate in the words and the message that you were giving. And that kind of leads into the next part, which was be direct in your message, specifically. And what I mean by that is that you can find yourself in a really awkward spot, if delivering the news of someone’s sudden loss, you used words like “they’ve gone to a better place” or “they’re no longer here with us.” Those types of phrases or messages often are followed with some really sort of uncomfortable questions, like “What do you mean? Where did they go?” And then would you still have to get to the place where you probably didn’t really want to be in the first place, which is being just completely direct and honest with them. And so I found early on learning from others, really watch them do it themselves that delivery could be done compassionately, but it should be always done directly. And so, you almost created a script, I guess, of sorts, that I used almost every time. We’ve all had this experience, I think where we have, we’re looking at the clock and we’re thinking, “Geez, my loved one isn’t home yet. And it’s weird that I haven’t heard from them,” and if a few hours go by, doubt starts to creep into our minds: “Where are they? What could be happening?” And undoubtedly, at some point in time, some of us, our thoughts might even switch to, “I hope they’re okay,” and “What would it be like if a police officer was to pull up to my home right now?” And we start to kind of pay a little bit more attention to the doorbell, the phone ring, the front of the street, our driveway, as we wait to see our loved one home and hope that everything is gonna be okay.
From my experience, often the delivery of bad news, it was already somewhat expected from families. And so, one thing I came to learn was, early on, was is that if somebody hadn’t, they woke up in the morning and their son or daughter wasn’t home yet, they began to worry. By 11 o’clock and they haven’t been able to reach them, they begun to really worry. So, by the time you show up at the house at one o’clock in the afternoon, their worst fear’s coming true, but I think they’ve actually already gone through a process where they began to sort of rehearse what that is going to look like. And so something I came to learn is is honor whatever that rehearsal is supposed to look like for them. They’ve kind of already decided how they would want the delivery of tragic news given to them. “What would happen if the police officer knocked on the door? Would I let him in? What I make him tea? What I want to know at the door? What would my reaction be to the news it in the first place?” And I think as an investigator, when we walk up to a door and knock on it, we have to recognize that somebody’s has already began to go through that rehearsal. And so really, they’re going to tell you how they want the news delivered. So, I’ll give you an example of it.
Years ago, I’ve done a notification, a young man had –a young father, actually — had gone out with a group of friends and they were enjoying the night. He left his wife and his kidlets at home and in the course of the night, they had found themselves at the house party, I guess. And while they were at the house party, there was an altercation, and in that altercation, he was actually fatally stabbed. And so, our unit was called out. We learned who he was and learn where he lived and learned a little bit about us his history and his life. I was tasked with another officer of going to the home and notifying, his wife of his death.
And I remember we pulled up that morning, it was about 11 o’clock, and she was doing exactly what I just described. She’d been kind of keeping an eye on the front street, waiting to see who was gonna show up and, oh my God, that looks like a couple detectives and a detective car that’s just pulled up in front of my house. And I remember as we’re walking up the front steps, to the home, she comes right out of the house and she stops right on the front step. And I introduced myself. She goes, “I know exactly who you are.” And she goes, “I know why you’re here. Does it have to do with my husband?” And I said, “Yes, can we come in?” And she said, “Absolutely not. You cannot come in.” And I said, “Okay.” She goes, she said, “Is he dead?” And I said, “Yes, he’s dead.” And I said, “Are you sure you don’t want us to come in?” And she goes, “You can’t come in. My son is having his birthday this morning and we have a whole bunch of kids over to the house.”
Yvonne Kjorlien: Wow.
Dave Sweet: “And we are not going to come in and ruin that for him today.” So, she had a short conversation with us out there on the stoop, and then asked us to leave, which we did, and asked us to come back the next day, and we would do the actual delivery of the news to everyone in the home including the children. That’s exactly what we did. But she had already scripted out, this is how she wanted this to be done, for that particular, for her family, she felt that was the right decision to be made.
And so that’s what I mean by people have kind of already scripted it by the time, we’ve even gotten there. And so you have to be very, you have to kind of improvise off of what they’re telling you they need from you at that moment in time. Because, again I say, in a lot of cases, by the time we’ve shown up, some time’s gone by, worry is already set in, and then we’re just the confirmation of what they think me have happened, which is that their loved one has died. And so that was just sort of the things I took away from the notification process when it came to families.
And, depending on how the notification went, those first few words out of an officer’s mouth, out of my mouth, we’re gonna put a family on one of two directions. One, they were not going to be able to get past the sort of trauma of that initial notification experience, or the notification itself could be the catalyst to already putting people on a path where they are going to get … not past it, but be able to put them on a path where you give them a greater chance of being able to heal from the horrible news that they’re already to hear. You can imagine, it could go one of two ways. If the officer that shows up there’s aloof, doesn’t know a lot, stumbles over the victim’s name, doesn’t use direct language, leaves things innocuous, in terms of what is actually occurred. How difficult that will be for the family going forward? They’re going to play that whole scenario over in their mind. It just adds to the trauma.
Versus, you have an officer that shows up at the door and they’re professional. They’re clear in their message. They’re compassionate, and they follow the script that that person wants them to follow. You put them on a much closer path to healing early on. And so, the notification process is a huge part of what, I won’t say, my daily duties, but certainly my weekly duties, while I spent that time in Homicide.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Were you given any guidance or training and how to do a notification?
Dave Sweet: Over the years, they started to put together a course — courses I guess — that would help prepare officers on how to do it. But, no, in those early years, no. It was sort of all based around experience and the experience of watching other officers do it. It’s actually interesting because the script that I used was one that was taught to me when I was just a little baby police officer in uniform, and it was the same script that my officer coach used that I then adopted, and then just kind of built on over time with experience.
Now, not every notification, of course, goes well. You can do all of your best, but people go through notifications in different ways. Some are just completely grief stricken and they can’t get the words out. Others kind of almost go into a shock. And can’t get the words out, but are really avoid of emotion. And then other people become extremely volatile and emotional, and can demand you that you leave or get out of my house, or throw a shoe at you, or take a swing at you. These of all things that have happened, not just necessarily to me, but to other members that I had worked with over the years. And, yeah, every notification was a little bit different, but again, it always came back to sort of recognizing people’s needs and that every victim and every victim family is a little bit different as well.
Yvonne Kjorlien: So if watching TV and the detective says, the person on the receiving end of the notification didn’t react the way that they thought that they should react, and, the storyline says that that’s indicative of something, that’s probably not quite accurate then?
Dave Sweet: Sure. I would agree with that. I would agree that it probably not too accurate because we have, as people, so many different individual responses to something so traumatic that I don’t think you can look at one response and say that qualifies as being more genuine or honest than another response. Like I said, I remember once going to a home of a woman, who’s barely twenty-something. Sun had been killed at a house party in sort of a beating and stabbing. And when we went to the home, she was so sweet. She was so kind, and she brought us in and she wanted to make tea first. And so sat on the couch and sort of made some small talk with her. She prepared the tea and then sat down. We delivered the news and she just stared straight ahead. She just absorbed it, but said nothing and was completely, really void of, I would say, any emotion.
I remember putting my hand out — I don’t offer into somebody else’s hand, but I would always kind of leave my hands open, just so that if somebody wanted to they could hold it, but I let them kind of come into my space versus me going into their space. But she took the opportunity to grab my hand. I remember just kind of holding my hand and cupping that and just kind of staring straight off into the universe and she just held it probably for 10-15 minutes. She cry, she didn’t do anything. She just held it.
And I would say that that was a really unusual reaction. But I would also say that it’s a reaction of grief, no differently than a person who falls to the floor, begins to wail, which also sometimes happened.
Culturally, people are different as well, in terms of the way they react. Some cultures, wailing and being very, very open about their grief, is more commonplace in sort of shutting in like she did, right? And so you have to be prepared for that as well. Yeah.
Yvonne Kjorlien: It sounds like empathy and, like you say, improvisation are two key elements when you go to notify somebody. Do you find that there are, perhaps, some people that are better suited to deliver notification than others, because they have more empathy or improv skills?
Dave Sweet: I do, actually. I do feel that way. Yeah, in anything, it’s a skill set that some people are really, really great at some aspect of police work. And then others are better at a different aspect, like notifications. I think the ones that are skilled at delivering difficult news ones that are not afraid to use that, again, kind of direct language, find a way to be able to use it in such a way that still comes across as compassionate and empathetic. And one thing that I often speak about is one of the greatest a-ha moments I ever had as a police officer was learning the difference between sympathy and empathy and how uniquely different those two things are. [Brene] Brown. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with her but she,…
Yvonne Kjorlien: Yeah.
Dave Sweet: She really has this thing nailed, this concept nailed. She talks about sympathy as being a real disconnecting or separating action. While empathy is very connecting action.
In her analogies that I’ve seen her do in the past, one of them is that, if you have a friend that’s… you’re walking down the street and you come across a friend who’s fallen in a hole, a sympathetic person will walk to the edge of that hole look down and say, “My goodness. I’m so sorry to see that you fall down the hole. Do you need any help?” And, because you’re practicing sympathy, the friend that’s fallen in the hole’s likely gonna say, “No, I’m okay. I’ll figure it out,” because you’ve kind of disconnected, in that display of “I am sorry.” Which are sort of the three words to a sympathetic reaction to somebody else’s tragedy, “I am sorry”, but they’re the three most common words that we use. “My condolences”, “I’m sincerely sorry”, “I am sorry” –these are all forms of sympathy.
The empathetic person, in that same situation, is walking down the street and they come across their friend who has fallen down the hole, the first thing they will do is acknowledge that their friend is fallen down the whole, they might say something like, “you must be so scared. I see you fall down that hole right now. You look cold. Give me one minute. I’ll be right back.” They leave the edge of the hole, come back with the ladder. Stick it at the end of the edge of the hole, climb down, and then help that person up and then they climb up with them. Right. That’s empathy and empathy that it’s about getting into the hole with somebody to kind of move through that with them. It requires vulnerability and that’s why it’s so connecting. Because there will be an exchange there. I’m going to come into the same hole as you. I’m gonna make myself vulnerable so I can be with you and then we’re going to climb out of this together. That is very connecting.
And so, how does this all matter when it comes to things like notification? I think when we can practice more empathetic responses, and try and stay away from, “I’m so sorry for your loss,” and instead, “I don’t know what you must be going through right now. But if I can do anything for you, call a friend, call a family member, sit here and hold your hand, you’re my priority right now. And I don’t want to leave you until I know you’re going to be okay.” That’s different than saying, “I’m sorry for your loss.” And so that skill set, it takes time to hone it and it takes time to sharpen it, but once you’re able to start to use empathy, whether it’s a notification or any other interaction in your life, it’s a game changer when it comes to relationships.
You could save a marriage once you figure out empathy is different than sympathy, and so you could save your marriage. I’m sorry…
Yvonne Kjorlien: Here we go. Marriage advice on this podcast. I never thought I’d hear it.
Dave Sweet: Yeah. “I’m sorry to hear that the baby was crying all day” versus “I can’t imagine. I know how frustrating is for the baby to cry. When I get home today, I’m going to give you the much needed to break you need. And I’m gonna take little Johnny with me and we’re gonna go for a walk.” That’s different than saying, “I’m sorry. The baby was so colicky today.” You know what I mean? So we can start to practice that and we can do that in all aspects of her life. You don’t have to be doing it in a tragic situation to create that connecting response.
Yvonne Kjorlien: So, that’s notification for a deceased. How does that differ for a missing person when there isn’t kind of that ending. How do you deal with that?
Dave Sweet: I think everybody would have again that sort of a different view on that and, I mean, I respect all of them, I think every, for myself, if I was… So typically we don’t do the notification on the missing person because it’s usually the family member that you would notify [who] has reported that individual missing in the first place.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Mm-hmm
Dave Sweet: So the notification, like they’re the ones notifying us at this individual’s missing. But there is going to be a process that it’s going to still occur where, over the course of a period of time, that individual isn’t just going to be missing, but that they’re — in some instances, not on all, but in some instances — evidence starts being collected in the course of that investigation which starts to lead to a more ominous result of why they may have gone missing.
That’s when, I won’t call so much a notification, but it requires a lot of communication with the missing person’s family to get them to start to realize that this may not have the fairy tale happy ending. And that just requires, again, a lot of empathy, a lot of listening, and a lot of inquiry where you will start to message that things may not be quite so well.
It might start with, “in a case like Bob’s, sometimes we start to collect evidence and sometimes in the course of collecting evidence, we start to become more and more concerned about Bob’s wellbeing. I feel that specifically as it relates to Bob, at this point in time, we are starting to collect some evidence that is causing me some concern.” Right. We won’t actually know until we find Bob what happened to Bob, but you can start to sort of layout that messaging. “What think happened to Bob? You’re his mom. What do you think happened to Bob?”
Yvonne Kjorlien: Mmm.
Dave Sweet: “I think Bob might be gone. You know, a mother always knows these things.” “You might be right, you may not be wrong. How are we going to prepare for if that’s a possibility into the future? Do you need family to start to come be around and support you. We’re gonna work our very best to try and figure out what happened to Bob. And we’re figure out where Bob might be, but in the interm, do you have a support system around you?” Right? “On the chance that your intuition as a mother isn’t wrong. And that we do find Bob deceased…” So that’s kind of where it changes a little bit. I think it’s a little bit more of putting a person — again, it’s a lot of it’s messaging — but putting a person on a path where they start to identify what the conclusion could potentially be, just through how you explain things. It’d be completely irresponsible for an investigator to come in and promise somebody something like, “I promise we’re gonna find Bob.”
Yvonne Kjorlien: Right. Yeah.
Dave Sweet: That would be something that would be terribly damaging to the family because I don’t think, in any of these scenarios, I don’t think it’s our job to destroy hope, but I also don’t think it’s our job to create false hopes either. I think it’s our job to be very realistic and always kind of keep people mindful that all possibilities exist until the investigation’s completed or until Bob is found.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Do you think that there is such a thing as closure?
Dave Sweet: Closure? I guess it depends on what way. If what was important in a missing person’s case, for example, was that the discovery of their loved ones remains and those remains are discovered? Then I guess, from that perspective, there’s some closure, if that’s what was the most important thing. If a family feels that closure comes by way of just some sort of form of justice, I would say the jury’s out on that. I’ve found very few families in my career who felt like a sentence imposed against an offender, that’s done something horrific to their loved one, was the just and fair decision or fair result. Very few families go, “You know what? They got it right on that. Yeah, he only deserved 15 years for the murder of my daughter.” It doesn’t usually happen that way.
I always used to remind families, though, that the decision that occurs in a courtroom and then the sentence that follows, it’s sort of a cruel reality but sentence isn’t for the victim or the victim’s family. The sentence is for, is imposed for the offender and for the community that that offender will one day likely return to. And so, no sentence imposed will be probably good enough.
I remember I used to have this conversation with families before a sentencing. I’d say, “a number is a number and it doesn’t represent the love or the life lived of the person you’ve lost. If the decision is made that the sentence reflects 10, it’s a 10-year sentence, you will wonder why it wasn’t 15. If the judge came back and said it was 15, you would wonder why it wasn’t 25. The judge came back and said life forever and ever and ever, and you’d want to know why it wasn’t death. If the judge had stab wounds. Like, they took my own.” Where does it stop?
And so, families that can resist that, sort of going through that process, usually do a little bit better on the other end when they can separate out the process to the loss. When they equate the loss to, say a number, I think they have the tendency to stay angrier for longer, which is totally a natural response. But those that can find the strength not to do that, I think they actually, in the end, probably do a little bit better, just based on my own experience, in terms of being able to — not close it off, but to — switch the focus of the loss onto something maybe a little bit more positive, like a legacy for example. A foundation, an organization, a scholarship in their loved one’s name. Yeah.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Yeah, the reason I asked is that there’s always, I think, this expectation that once you’ve found your missing person and either they’re alive or they’re dead, you found the remains, that ending provides closure or going to trial, the person being found, guilty gives closure. There’s always some perceived endpoint that is going to give me this miraculous closure. This fabled thing. And I’ve heard some families say that, “You know what? No, I never did feel the closure.” You get all those endpoints and there’s still no closure.
Dave Sweet: I actually understand that perspective because, even as an investigator, you’ve put all these hours, months, maybe years into an investigation, into a case. To hear the proverbial gavel drop and the determination of guilt come through, you’d think inside you would be rejoicing, but you’re not. You find that experience very anti-climactic. You knew it was gonna be that way, but it didn’t make you feel the way you thought it was gonna make you feel. Once you get to that point, and the gavel drops, you think inside you’d feel, “YES! All my hard work has got us to this point.” But it never felt that way for me, anyways. I didn’t look at it and cheer out loud or any of those things. And it just felt a decision was made, but it was never quite as joyful or as exciting as what you thought it might be, I guess.
And I think for families, yeah, I don’t think, especially when it comes to missing — if a person’s gone missing, let’s just say it takes a year before there remains are found, and by the time they’re found, it’s not intact remains. Let’s say they were found in the woods or wherever, and they’re not impact anymore, there’ll still not be closure. There’ll be closure on the fact that we can now prove positively say, through the skillful expertise of our anthropologists and people like that, we’ll be able to say, “Yes, we know who this individual is, but there wasn’t enough information left behind with their remains to tell us exactly what happened to them.” And so, yeah, you’ve discovered that their fate, their fate being that they died. But there may never be enough information available to tell you how they died or if somebody was involved in it.
So yeah, you get a closure on one end: you’re no longer looking for them in a crowd. Sometimes people they do that when they’ve lost somebody is missing. They can spend years looking in crowds for them. And I had a friend that talked a little bit about that with me from a personal experience, where, after her father had passed away, she couldn’t believe that he had died. She used to look for him all the time in the crowds, hoping that he’d be there. And she never saw him, of course, but I think that experience is probably tenfold for somebody that’s has a loved one that’s gone missing.
And so, now, we found them, but there’s still a lot of things that need to be explained. So you’ve closed off one thing, but then you’re on to the next thing. And then once we get to the next thing, which is maybe we identify that we do know how they died, and we know who’s responsible for their death, then will the court case provide us closure? It may or not. Does a guilty verdict or a guilty plea give a family closure? Maybe. Some families. But maybe it’s the sentence is the next thing you move on to. That’s what I say by, I don’t know there’s ever a complete closure on any of these things. Yeah.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Yeah. Yeah. It’s sounds like a bit of a roller coaster of expectations, unfulfilled expectations.
Dave Sweet: Yeah, it such a great way of saying it, and then I agree with you. I think it probably is for a lot of families.
Yvonne Kjorlien: The remains that you brought up, when remains are not intact and they’ve maybe been out the woods for a bit or in the water, and the investigation has done as much as it can with the remains to figure out who the individual is, what happened to them, etc, and you’re now ready to turn them over, release them to the family. In your experience, how do people deal with not having an intact relative?
Dave Sweet: Mm-hmm. You know, honestly, we almost start to venture a little bit out of my wheelhouse. I feel like that would be.. unless somebody actually expressed it to me, and I guess a couple families have over the years.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Do you ever get anybody that says you should have tried more, you should have looked more, you should have done more?
Dave Sweet: I mean I’ve never had it to… the short answer is, I don’t know that I’ve had that happen in one of my investigations, but I’ve seen happen to other investigators. Where we’ve recovered partial remains, there’s been a great effort to try and recover the rest of the remains but we’re unsuccessful. Maybe they’ve gone to a landfill, or something like that. So, we were able to recover some but not all. I mean, that obviously leaves people with a terrible sense that the body has not been returned to them intact. And they might become frustrated with the police.
I actually saw this play out, we just saw this play out not that long ago, I think in Manitoba, I don’t know if it was in Winnipeg but they’re,…
Yvonne Kjorlien: All right. Yeah.
Dave Sweet: and you feel for those families. And I understand their grief on… well, how can I even say I understand their grief? I’ve heard their perspective before. I’ve never been in the situation where I can understand their grief, but I’ve heard their perspective and it’s certainly shared and a natural perspective. But I’ve also looked at it on the other side of it and realize how — it doesn’t mean that you don’t try — but how daunting a task that would have been with such a low probability of result.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Right.
Dave Sweet: And, I have been part of cases similar to that, where we recovered some of the remains but weren’t able to recover all of them, despite everyone’s best efforts at some point sometimes you just have to say that it’s just not going to happen. Right? Landfills are a great example of that, just because the vastness of the landfill you don’t think that they’re that big until you’re out there standing on a pile of garbage. That’s, however, many feet deep and,…
Yvonne Kjorlien: It’s the depth. Yeah.
Dave Sweet: it’s the depth and kilometers around. Like you don’t.. there’s not necessarily a way of knowing exactly where garbage was deposited or dropped. So this becomes very much the proverbial needle in a haystack. And I do think that we have to try. But I also recognize that it’s extremely limited at some point, and some time also have to know when to fold them. Yeah, and that would be a conversation to have with the family. Yeah.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Yeah, again that roller coaster ride of expectations.
Dave Sweet: That’s right. Yeah. But I think, depending on how it’s approached from the beginning, it could potentially help a little bit with people understanding that, right? Like, if it was just, again, it comes back to that messaging and making sure people, the expectations are outlined early and I’m not saying that they’re not in these cases, but I do think that expectations and managing them are very, very important parts, especially in those early days of any investigation. Yeah.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Right. Let’s finish on a happier note.
Dave Sweet: This wasn’t happy? This is strange, sure.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Tell me about your podcast, Dave.
Dave Sweet: Sure, yeah. So just was something that I wanted to do. I kind of alluded to it earlier when I was talking about families and they’re like, their need to or I think that’s something families can do when they’re going through tragedies and things is to kind of look outside of the things that aren’t in their control – like sentences and that — and to start to focus more on legacy. And so, one of the things I thought would be important, for myself anyway, is to have just a little podcast that would capture my thoughts, and my voice, and my face, so that one day, a great grandchild that I may never know, maybe able to watch it and say, “You know, the way he thinks or the way he says certain things,” or “I’ve got his nose” or “I’ve got his hands”. That they’d be able to find some familiarity. So the podcast is really sort of a continued effort on my part to leave a bit of a legacy on this earth because I certainly know that tomorrow is not promised to any of us.
And so, my podcast is called The Ride Along. And it’s a feel-good true crime podcast. It’s very much themed in around even some of the things we talked about today. It’s sort of falls that seem kind of theme where hopefully it doesn’t leave people with too much of a heaviness, and maybe some validation on what we can do to live better lives and learn a little bit about what happens when tragedy’s our teacher, and how we can respond to that and take positive takeaways from it. So that’s what’s it’s called The Ride Along, it’s with me and my co-host, Nicole McKay. And you can find it on Apple and Spotify and YouTube, as well.
Yvonne Kjorlien: And you’ve also got a website. Isn’t that correct?
Dave Sweet: I do. So, my website is, it can be found at http://www.unconventionalclassroom.ca, and there you can learn a little bit about some of the workshops and training opportunities I provide. As well, there’s also the other services that I give as well.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Fabulous. Thank you very much, Dave. This ha been enlightening, insightful. It’s everything that I wanted to talk about with yeah, regards to this topic but without the ‘ick’ I was really trying to avoid. All this sensitivity but with none of the ick. So thank you.
Dave Sweet: And I hope it helps somebody out there. And somebody’s going through a tough time. Like, there are people that are out there that will help, you just need to reach out to them. And hopefully you have a supportive friend in your life or a supportive family member, but if you don’t, victim services, most police agencies across this country have them. And there’re also great ways of being able to help you through your grief, loss. Hopefully no money is there and is ever part of this exclusive horrible club that a few families every year have to become part of, but if you are, just know there are people out there that will help you. Yeah.
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By Yvonne KjorlienDave Sweet is a retired detective from a large western Canadian police service who now works as a consultant in Calgary, conducting workshops, training, writing books, and hosting a podcast. He retired in October 2023 after spending 14.5 years investigating murders and suspicious deaths. Most of our conversation is focused on death notifications and communicating with the next of kin.
In this episode we talk about:
You can contact Dave Sweet through his website: https://www.unconventionalclassroom.ca/
Transcript
Yvonne Kjorlien: All right, we’ll see how it goes. So why don’t you start by telling me who you are and what you’re currently doing.
Dave Sweet: So my name’s Dave Sweet, and I am a Detective from a large western Canadian police service and, currently, I am working as a consultant in Calgary. Do a lot of workshops, training, write books. I’ve my own podcast. So I’m sort of a jack of all trades, as it stands right now. Not seeing I yeah.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Your own podcast. How did I miss that? I’m gonna have to go stalk, and look you up! What?
Dave Sweet: Yeah. Yeah.
Yvonne Kjorlien: So, how long have you been retired now?
Dave Sweet: I actually just retired last year in October so it’s been, I’m just coming up on my one year anniversary of that, but I’m still a young man, so I feel like I can’t be too idle. I haven’t earned that yet.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Right. Thank you again for agreeing to speak with me. I’ve been trying to find somebody or some way to address talking with the next of kin and working with them regarding their either potentially or actual dead relatives. And I’ve always felt very iffy about approaching families to talk about that sort of thing because it’s icky to go and say, “Do you want to talk about how you’re feeling?” because I just find that very insensitive. So, thank you for coming on and agreeing to talk about this very touchy, sensitive subject.
Dave Sweet: Sure. And I recognize it as sensitive as well, but also I think hopefully we’ll be some valuable information for people out there, just in terms of when they’re dealing with their own crisis and tragedy into the future. We’ll all have one at some point in time. So learning a little bit about other families or how other people have approached that may help somebody listening have a better idea on how they might approach their own.
Yvonne Kjorlien: So let’s go back into your past a little bit and if you can maybe sketch out, maybe some situations in where you’ve had to deal with families and talk to them about their next of kin or, either a potential to deceased or somebody who’s actually deceased.
Dave Sweet: Sure. Yeah, of course. So my background really, I spent the last 14 and a half years of my life investigating murders, suspicious deaths. And, obviously, as a result of that, had the opportunity to speak many different families along the way and including having the opportunity to be the first person to advise them when a loved one had died. Often in tragic circumstances and situations. And something, I think came to learn early on, well, there’s a few things I came to learn early on when it came to notifying somebody that I loved one had passed, was one, make sure that when you went to do the notification that you had some facts, some information that you’d be able to pass on to them. Because there’s going to be an immediate need on their end and to understand kind of what has happened. And although you may not be able to know, you may not have all of the information available, you should be able to at least explain a little bit around the circumstance. The second, was to keep it truthful and honest, always. Never to sort of sugar coat an issue, but to, instead, be deliberate in the words and the message that you were giving. And that kind of leads into the next part, which was be direct in your message, specifically. And what I mean by that is that you can find yourself in a really awkward spot, if delivering the news of someone’s sudden loss, you used words like “they’ve gone to a better place” or “they’re no longer here with us.” Those types of phrases or messages often are followed with some really sort of uncomfortable questions, like “What do you mean? Where did they go?” And then would you still have to get to the place where you probably didn’t really want to be in the first place, which is being just completely direct and honest with them. And so I found early on learning from others, really watch them do it themselves that delivery could be done compassionately, but it should be always done directly. And so, you almost created a script, I guess, of sorts, that I used almost every time. We’ve all had this experience, I think where we have, we’re looking at the clock and we’re thinking, “Geez, my loved one isn’t home yet. And it’s weird that I haven’t heard from them,” and if a few hours go by, doubt starts to creep into our minds: “Where are they? What could be happening?” And undoubtedly, at some point in time, some of us, our thoughts might even switch to, “I hope they’re okay,” and “What would it be like if a police officer was to pull up to my home right now?” And we start to kind of pay a little bit more attention to the doorbell, the phone ring, the front of the street, our driveway, as we wait to see our loved one home and hope that everything is gonna be okay.
From my experience, often the delivery of bad news, it was already somewhat expected from families. And so, one thing I came to learn was, early on, was is that if somebody hadn’t, they woke up in the morning and their son or daughter wasn’t home yet, they began to worry. By 11 o’clock and they haven’t been able to reach them, they begun to really worry. So, by the time you show up at the house at one o’clock in the afternoon, their worst fear’s coming true, but I think they’ve actually already gone through a process where they began to sort of rehearse what that is going to look like. And so something I came to learn is is honor whatever that rehearsal is supposed to look like for them. They’ve kind of already decided how they would want the delivery of tragic news given to them. “What would happen if the police officer knocked on the door? Would I let him in? What I make him tea? What I want to know at the door? What would my reaction be to the news it in the first place?” And I think as an investigator, when we walk up to a door and knock on it, we have to recognize that somebody’s has already began to go through that rehearsal. And so really, they’re going to tell you how they want the news delivered. So, I’ll give you an example of it.
Years ago, I’ve done a notification, a young man had –a young father, actually — had gone out with a group of friends and they were enjoying the night. He left his wife and his kidlets at home and in the course of the night, they had found themselves at the house party, I guess. And while they were at the house party, there was an altercation, and in that altercation, he was actually fatally stabbed. And so, our unit was called out. We learned who he was and learn where he lived and learned a little bit about us his history and his life. I was tasked with another officer of going to the home and notifying, his wife of his death.
And I remember we pulled up that morning, it was about 11 o’clock, and she was doing exactly what I just described. She’d been kind of keeping an eye on the front street, waiting to see who was gonna show up and, oh my God, that looks like a couple detectives and a detective car that’s just pulled up in front of my house. And I remember as we’re walking up the front steps, to the home, she comes right out of the house and she stops right on the front step. And I introduced myself. She goes, “I know exactly who you are.” And she goes, “I know why you’re here. Does it have to do with my husband?” And I said, “Yes, can we come in?” And she said, “Absolutely not. You cannot come in.” And I said, “Okay.” She goes, she said, “Is he dead?” And I said, “Yes, he’s dead.” And I said, “Are you sure you don’t want us to come in?” And she goes, “You can’t come in. My son is having his birthday this morning and we have a whole bunch of kids over to the house.”
Yvonne Kjorlien: Wow.
Dave Sweet: “And we are not going to come in and ruin that for him today.” So, she had a short conversation with us out there on the stoop, and then asked us to leave, which we did, and asked us to come back the next day, and we would do the actual delivery of the news to everyone in the home including the children. That’s exactly what we did. But she had already scripted out, this is how she wanted this to be done, for that particular, for her family, she felt that was the right decision to be made.
And so that’s what I mean by people have kind of already scripted it by the time, we’ve even gotten there. And so you have to be very, you have to kind of improvise off of what they’re telling you they need from you at that moment in time. Because, again I say, in a lot of cases, by the time we’ve shown up, some time’s gone by, worry is already set in, and then we’re just the confirmation of what they think me have happened, which is that their loved one has died. And so that was just sort of the things I took away from the notification process when it came to families.
And, depending on how the notification went, those first few words out of an officer’s mouth, out of my mouth, we’re gonna put a family on one of two directions. One, they were not going to be able to get past the sort of trauma of that initial notification experience, or the notification itself could be the catalyst to already putting people on a path where they are going to get … not past it, but be able to put them on a path where you give them a greater chance of being able to heal from the horrible news that they’re already to hear. You can imagine, it could go one of two ways. If the officer that shows up there’s aloof, doesn’t know a lot, stumbles over the victim’s name, doesn’t use direct language, leaves things innocuous, in terms of what is actually occurred. How difficult that will be for the family going forward? They’re going to play that whole scenario over in their mind. It just adds to the trauma.
Versus, you have an officer that shows up at the door and they’re professional. They’re clear in their message. They’re compassionate, and they follow the script that that person wants them to follow. You put them on a much closer path to healing early on. And so, the notification process is a huge part of what, I won’t say, my daily duties, but certainly my weekly duties, while I spent that time in Homicide.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Were you given any guidance or training and how to do a notification?
Dave Sweet: Over the years, they started to put together a course — courses I guess — that would help prepare officers on how to do it. But, no, in those early years, no. It was sort of all based around experience and the experience of watching other officers do it. It’s actually interesting because the script that I used was one that was taught to me when I was just a little baby police officer in uniform, and it was the same script that my officer coach used that I then adopted, and then just kind of built on over time with experience.
Now, not every notification, of course, goes well. You can do all of your best, but people go through notifications in different ways. Some are just completely grief stricken and they can’t get the words out. Others kind of almost go into a shock. And can’t get the words out, but are really avoid of emotion. And then other people become extremely volatile and emotional, and can demand you that you leave or get out of my house, or throw a shoe at you, or take a swing at you. These of all things that have happened, not just necessarily to me, but to other members that I had worked with over the years. And, yeah, every notification was a little bit different, but again, it always came back to sort of recognizing people’s needs and that every victim and every victim family is a little bit different as well.
Yvonne Kjorlien: So if watching TV and the detective says, the person on the receiving end of the notification didn’t react the way that they thought that they should react, and, the storyline says that that’s indicative of something, that’s probably not quite accurate then?
Dave Sweet: Sure. I would agree with that. I would agree that it probably not too accurate because we have, as people, so many different individual responses to something so traumatic that I don’t think you can look at one response and say that qualifies as being more genuine or honest than another response. Like I said, I remember once going to a home of a woman, who’s barely twenty-something. Sun had been killed at a house party in sort of a beating and stabbing. And when we went to the home, she was so sweet. She was so kind, and she brought us in and she wanted to make tea first. And so sat on the couch and sort of made some small talk with her. She prepared the tea and then sat down. We delivered the news and she just stared straight ahead. She just absorbed it, but said nothing and was completely, really void of, I would say, any emotion.
I remember putting my hand out — I don’t offer into somebody else’s hand, but I would always kind of leave my hands open, just so that if somebody wanted to they could hold it, but I let them kind of come into my space versus me going into their space. But she took the opportunity to grab my hand. I remember just kind of holding my hand and cupping that and just kind of staring straight off into the universe and she just held it probably for 10-15 minutes. She cry, she didn’t do anything. She just held it.
And I would say that that was a really unusual reaction. But I would also say that it’s a reaction of grief, no differently than a person who falls to the floor, begins to wail, which also sometimes happened.
Culturally, people are different as well, in terms of the way they react. Some cultures, wailing and being very, very open about their grief, is more commonplace in sort of shutting in like she did, right? And so you have to be prepared for that as well. Yeah.
Yvonne Kjorlien: It sounds like empathy and, like you say, improvisation are two key elements when you go to notify somebody. Do you find that there are, perhaps, some people that are better suited to deliver notification than others, because they have more empathy or improv skills?
Dave Sweet: I do, actually. I do feel that way. Yeah, in anything, it’s a skill set that some people are really, really great at some aspect of police work. And then others are better at a different aspect, like notifications. I think the ones that are skilled at delivering difficult news ones that are not afraid to use that, again, kind of direct language, find a way to be able to use it in such a way that still comes across as compassionate and empathetic. And one thing that I often speak about is one of the greatest a-ha moments I ever had as a police officer was learning the difference between sympathy and empathy and how uniquely different those two things are. [Brene] Brown. I’m not sure if you’re familiar with her but she,…
Yvonne Kjorlien: Yeah.
Dave Sweet: She really has this thing nailed, this concept nailed. She talks about sympathy as being a real disconnecting or separating action. While empathy is very connecting action.
In her analogies that I’ve seen her do in the past, one of them is that, if you have a friend that’s… you’re walking down the street and you come across a friend who’s fallen in a hole, a sympathetic person will walk to the edge of that hole look down and say, “My goodness. I’m so sorry to see that you fall down the hole. Do you need any help?” And, because you’re practicing sympathy, the friend that’s fallen in the hole’s likely gonna say, “No, I’m okay. I’ll figure it out,” because you’ve kind of disconnected, in that display of “I am sorry.” Which are sort of the three words to a sympathetic reaction to somebody else’s tragedy, “I am sorry”, but they’re the three most common words that we use. “My condolences”, “I’m sincerely sorry”, “I am sorry” –these are all forms of sympathy.
The empathetic person, in that same situation, is walking down the street and they come across their friend who has fallen down the hole, the first thing they will do is acknowledge that their friend is fallen down the whole, they might say something like, “you must be so scared. I see you fall down that hole right now. You look cold. Give me one minute. I’ll be right back.” They leave the edge of the hole, come back with the ladder. Stick it at the end of the edge of the hole, climb down, and then help that person up and then they climb up with them. Right. That’s empathy and empathy that it’s about getting into the hole with somebody to kind of move through that with them. It requires vulnerability and that’s why it’s so connecting. Because there will be an exchange there. I’m going to come into the same hole as you. I’m gonna make myself vulnerable so I can be with you and then we’re going to climb out of this together. That is very connecting.
And so, how does this all matter when it comes to things like notification? I think when we can practice more empathetic responses, and try and stay away from, “I’m so sorry for your loss,” and instead, “I don’t know what you must be going through right now. But if I can do anything for you, call a friend, call a family member, sit here and hold your hand, you’re my priority right now. And I don’t want to leave you until I know you’re going to be okay.” That’s different than saying, “I’m sorry for your loss.” And so that skill set, it takes time to hone it and it takes time to sharpen it, but once you’re able to start to use empathy, whether it’s a notification or any other interaction in your life, it’s a game changer when it comes to relationships.
You could save a marriage once you figure out empathy is different than sympathy, and so you could save your marriage. I’m sorry…
Yvonne Kjorlien: Here we go. Marriage advice on this podcast. I never thought I’d hear it.
Dave Sweet: Yeah. “I’m sorry to hear that the baby was crying all day” versus “I can’t imagine. I know how frustrating is for the baby to cry. When I get home today, I’m going to give you the much needed to break you need. And I’m gonna take little Johnny with me and we’re gonna go for a walk.” That’s different than saying, “I’m sorry. The baby was so colicky today.” You know what I mean? So we can start to practice that and we can do that in all aspects of her life. You don’t have to be doing it in a tragic situation to create that connecting response.
Yvonne Kjorlien: So, that’s notification for a deceased. How does that differ for a missing person when there isn’t kind of that ending. How do you deal with that?
Dave Sweet: I think everybody would have again that sort of a different view on that and, I mean, I respect all of them, I think every, for myself, if I was… So typically we don’t do the notification on the missing person because it’s usually the family member that you would notify [who] has reported that individual missing in the first place.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Mm-hmm
Dave Sweet: So the notification, like they’re the ones notifying us at this individual’s missing. But there is going to be a process that it’s going to still occur where, over the course of a period of time, that individual isn’t just going to be missing, but that they’re — in some instances, not on all, but in some instances — evidence starts being collected in the course of that investigation which starts to lead to a more ominous result of why they may have gone missing.
That’s when, I won’t call so much a notification, but it requires a lot of communication with the missing person’s family to get them to start to realize that this may not have the fairy tale happy ending. And that just requires, again, a lot of empathy, a lot of listening, and a lot of inquiry where you will start to message that things may not be quite so well.
It might start with, “in a case like Bob’s, sometimes we start to collect evidence and sometimes in the course of collecting evidence, we start to become more and more concerned about Bob’s wellbeing. I feel that specifically as it relates to Bob, at this point in time, we are starting to collect some evidence that is causing me some concern.” Right. We won’t actually know until we find Bob what happened to Bob, but you can start to sort of layout that messaging. “What think happened to Bob? You’re his mom. What do you think happened to Bob?”
Yvonne Kjorlien: Mmm.
Dave Sweet: “I think Bob might be gone. You know, a mother always knows these things.” “You might be right, you may not be wrong. How are we going to prepare for if that’s a possibility into the future? Do you need family to start to come be around and support you. We’re gonna work our very best to try and figure out what happened to Bob. And we’re figure out where Bob might be, but in the interm, do you have a support system around you?” Right? “On the chance that your intuition as a mother isn’t wrong. And that we do find Bob deceased…” So that’s kind of where it changes a little bit. I think it’s a little bit more of putting a person — again, it’s a lot of it’s messaging — but putting a person on a path where they start to identify what the conclusion could potentially be, just through how you explain things. It’d be completely irresponsible for an investigator to come in and promise somebody something like, “I promise we’re gonna find Bob.”
Yvonne Kjorlien: Right. Yeah.
Dave Sweet: That would be something that would be terribly damaging to the family because I don’t think, in any of these scenarios, I don’t think it’s our job to destroy hope, but I also don’t think it’s our job to create false hopes either. I think it’s our job to be very realistic and always kind of keep people mindful that all possibilities exist until the investigation’s completed or until Bob is found.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Do you think that there is such a thing as closure?
Dave Sweet: Closure? I guess it depends on what way. If what was important in a missing person’s case, for example, was that the discovery of their loved ones remains and those remains are discovered? Then I guess, from that perspective, there’s some closure, if that’s what was the most important thing. If a family feels that closure comes by way of just some sort of form of justice, I would say the jury’s out on that. I’ve found very few families in my career who felt like a sentence imposed against an offender, that’s done something horrific to their loved one, was the just and fair decision or fair result. Very few families go, “You know what? They got it right on that. Yeah, he only deserved 15 years for the murder of my daughter.” It doesn’t usually happen that way.
I always used to remind families, though, that the decision that occurs in a courtroom and then the sentence that follows, it’s sort of a cruel reality but sentence isn’t for the victim or the victim’s family. The sentence is for, is imposed for the offender and for the community that that offender will one day likely return to. And so, no sentence imposed will be probably good enough.
I remember I used to have this conversation with families before a sentencing. I’d say, “a number is a number and it doesn’t represent the love or the life lived of the person you’ve lost. If the decision is made that the sentence reflects 10, it’s a 10-year sentence, you will wonder why it wasn’t 15. If the judge came back and said it was 15, you would wonder why it wasn’t 25. The judge came back and said life forever and ever and ever, and you’d want to know why it wasn’t death. If the judge had stab wounds. Like, they took my own.” Where does it stop?
And so, families that can resist that, sort of going through that process, usually do a little bit better on the other end when they can separate out the process to the loss. When they equate the loss to, say a number, I think they have the tendency to stay angrier for longer, which is totally a natural response. But those that can find the strength not to do that, I think they actually, in the end, probably do a little bit better, just based on my own experience, in terms of being able to — not close it off, but to — switch the focus of the loss onto something maybe a little bit more positive, like a legacy for example. A foundation, an organization, a scholarship in their loved one’s name. Yeah.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Yeah, the reason I asked is that there’s always, I think, this expectation that once you’ve found your missing person and either they’re alive or they’re dead, you found the remains, that ending provides closure or going to trial, the person being found, guilty gives closure. There’s always some perceived endpoint that is going to give me this miraculous closure. This fabled thing. And I’ve heard some families say that, “You know what? No, I never did feel the closure.” You get all those endpoints and there’s still no closure.
Dave Sweet: I actually understand that perspective because, even as an investigator, you’ve put all these hours, months, maybe years into an investigation, into a case. To hear the proverbial gavel drop and the determination of guilt come through, you’d think inside you would be rejoicing, but you’re not. You find that experience very anti-climactic. You knew it was gonna be that way, but it didn’t make you feel the way you thought it was gonna make you feel. Once you get to that point, and the gavel drops, you think inside you’d feel, “YES! All my hard work has got us to this point.” But it never felt that way for me, anyways. I didn’t look at it and cheer out loud or any of those things. And it just felt a decision was made, but it was never quite as joyful or as exciting as what you thought it might be, I guess.
And I think for families, yeah, I don’t think, especially when it comes to missing — if a person’s gone missing, let’s just say it takes a year before there remains are found, and by the time they’re found, it’s not intact remains. Let’s say they were found in the woods or wherever, and they’re not impact anymore, there’ll still not be closure. There’ll be closure on the fact that we can now prove positively say, through the skillful expertise of our anthropologists and people like that, we’ll be able to say, “Yes, we know who this individual is, but there wasn’t enough information left behind with their remains to tell us exactly what happened to them.” And so, yeah, you’ve discovered that their fate, their fate being that they died. But there may never be enough information available to tell you how they died or if somebody was involved in it.
So yeah, you get a closure on one end: you’re no longer looking for them in a crowd. Sometimes people they do that when they’ve lost somebody is missing. They can spend years looking in crowds for them. And I had a friend that talked a little bit about that with me from a personal experience, where, after her father had passed away, she couldn’t believe that he had died. She used to look for him all the time in the crowds, hoping that he’d be there. And she never saw him, of course, but I think that experience is probably tenfold for somebody that’s has a loved one that’s gone missing.
And so, now, we found them, but there’s still a lot of things that need to be explained. So you’ve closed off one thing, but then you’re on to the next thing. And then once we get to the next thing, which is maybe we identify that we do know how they died, and we know who’s responsible for their death, then will the court case provide us closure? It may or not. Does a guilty verdict or a guilty plea give a family closure? Maybe. Some families. But maybe it’s the sentence is the next thing you move on to. That’s what I say by, I don’t know there’s ever a complete closure on any of these things. Yeah.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Yeah. Yeah. It’s sounds like a bit of a roller coaster of expectations, unfulfilled expectations.
Dave Sweet: Yeah, it such a great way of saying it, and then I agree with you. I think it probably is for a lot of families.
Yvonne Kjorlien: The remains that you brought up, when remains are not intact and they’ve maybe been out the woods for a bit or in the water, and the investigation has done as much as it can with the remains to figure out who the individual is, what happened to them, etc, and you’re now ready to turn them over, release them to the family. In your experience, how do people deal with not having an intact relative?
Dave Sweet: Mm-hmm. You know, honestly, we almost start to venture a little bit out of my wheelhouse. I feel like that would be.. unless somebody actually expressed it to me, and I guess a couple families have over the years.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Do you ever get anybody that says you should have tried more, you should have looked more, you should have done more?
Dave Sweet: I mean I’ve never had it to… the short answer is, I don’t know that I’ve had that happen in one of my investigations, but I’ve seen happen to other investigators. Where we’ve recovered partial remains, there’s been a great effort to try and recover the rest of the remains but we’re unsuccessful. Maybe they’ve gone to a landfill, or something like that. So, we were able to recover some but not all. I mean, that obviously leaves people with a terrible sense that the body has not been returned to them intact. And they might become frustrated with the police.
I actually saw this play out, we just saw this play out not that long ago, I think in Manitoba, I don’t know if it was in Winnipeg but they’re,…
Yvonne Kjorlien: All right. Yeah.
Dave Sweet: and you feel for those families. And I understand their grief on… well, how can I even say I understand their grief? I’ve heard their perspective before. I’ve never been in the situation where I can understand their grief, but I’ve heard their perspective and it’s certainly shared and a natural perspective. But I’ve also looked at it on the other side of it and realize how — it doesn’t mean that you don’t try — but how daunting a task that would have been with such a low probability of result.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Right.
Dave Sweet: And, I have been part of cases similar to that, where we recovered some of the remains but weren’t able to recover all of them, despite everyone’s best efforts at some point sometimes you just have to say that it’s just not going to happen. Right? Landfills are a great example of that, just because the vastness of the landfill you don’t think that they’re that big until you’re out there standing on a pile of garbage. That’s, however, many feet deep and,…
Yvonne Kjorlien: It’s the depth. Yeah.
Dave Sweet: it’s the depth and kilometers around. Like you don’t.. there’s not necessarily a way of knowing exactly where garbage was deposited or dropped. So this becomes very much the proverbial needle in a haystack. And I do think that we have to try. But I also recognize that it’s extremely limited at some point, and some time also have to know when to fold them. Yeah, and that would be a conversation to have with the family. Yeah.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Yeah, again that roller coaster ride of expectations.
Dave Sweet: That’s right. Yeah. But I think, depending on how it’s approached from the beginning, it could potentially help a little bit with people understanding that, right? Like, if it was just, again, it comes back to that messaging and making sure people, the expectations are outlined early and I’m not saying that they’re not in these cases, but I do think that expectations and managing them are very, very important parts, especially in those early days of any investigation. Yeah.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Right. Let’s finish on a happier note.
Dave Sweet: This wasn’t happy? This is strange, sure.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Tell me about your podcast, Dave.
Dave Sweet: Sure, yeah. So just was something that I wanted to do. I kind of alluded to it earlier when I was talking about families and they’re like, their need to or I think that’s something families can do when they’re going through tragedies and things is to kind of look outside of the things that aren’t in their control – like sentences and that — and to start to focus more on legacy. And so, one of the things I thought would be important, for myself anyway, is to have just a little podcast that would capture my thoughts, and my voice, and my face, so that one day, a great grandchild that I may never know, maybe able to watch it and say, “You know, the way he thinks or the way he says certain things,” or “I’ve got his nose” or “I’ve got his hands”. That they’d be able to find some familiarity. So the podcast is really sort of a continued effort on my part to leave a bit of a legacy on this earth because I certainly know that tomorrow is not promised to any of us.
And so, my podcast is called The Ride Along. And it’s a feel-good true crime podcast. It’s very much themed in around even some of the things we talked about today. It’s sort of falls that seem kind of theme where hopefully it doesn’t leave people with too much of a heaviness, and maybe some validation on what we can do to live better lives and learn a little bit about what happens when tragedy’s our teacher, and how we can respond to that and take positive takeaways from it. So that’s what’s it’s called The Ride Along, it’s with me and my co-host, Nicole McKay. And you can find it on Apple and Spotify and YouTube, as well.
Yvonne Kjorlien: And you’ve also got a website. Isn’t that correct?
Dave Sweet: I do. So, my website is, it can be found at http://www.unconventionalclassroom.ca, and there you can learn a little bit about some of the workshops and training opportunities I provide. As well, there’s also the other services that I give as well.
Yvonne Kjorlien: Fabulous. Thank you very much, Dave. This ha been enlightening, insightful. It’s everything that I wanted to talk about with yeah, regards to this topic but without the ‘ick’ I was really trying to avoid. All this sensitivity but with none of the ick. So thank you.
Dave Sweet: And I hope it helps somebody out there. And somebody’s going through a tough time. Like, there are people that are out there that will help, you just need to reach out to them. And hopefully you have a supportive friend in your life or a supportive family member, but if you don’t, victim services, most police agencies across this country have them. And there’re also great ways of being able to help you through your grief, loss. Hopefully no money is there and is ever part of this exclusive horrible club that a few families every year have to become part of, but if you are, just know there are people out there that will help you. Yeah.
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