Doctor who helped
FROM REALITY TV CONSULTANT TO AUTHOR AND CRIMINAL PROFILER, BOB MONTGOMERY’S CAREER IN PSYCHOLOGY HAS BEEN ANYTHING BUT MUNDANE
FEW people have dived in Sydney Harbour for octopus to study, written a book about good sex or helped catch one of the country’s most infamous killers.
But Gold Coast psychologist Dr Bob Montgomery has done it all in one career.
The 74-year-old, who lives at Runaway Bay and specialises in clinical, health and forensic psychology, spoke to the Gold Coast Bulletin about developing university courses around the country and his work profiling criminals including Victorian serial rapist and murderer Raymond Edmunds.
The leading psychologist, who once treated contestants living in the Big Brother house, also condemned the practice of providing reports to courts to “excuse” offenders from their crimes and explained how a person’s upbringing impacts on the success of almost every area of life.
SUCCESSFUL SEX
ONE of the most frequently stolen books from libraries around Australia is called Successful Sex and was written by Dr Montgomery and his wife of 42 years, Dr Laurel Morris.
“Librarians tell us this. They say it’s one of the books that goes missing almost immediately,” Dr Montgomery said.
The 74-year-old, who is working on an updated copy of the title, said good sex was key to a happy relationship.
“Sexual problems are far more common than people believe and can be responsible for breaking up people’s marriages,” he said. “People think sex is good for a laugh. But helping people being sexually successful is important and what bites for me is the number of psychologists who don’t know how to do that.
“There hasn’t been an increased amount of real information and science-based information, and when you look at the crap that comes down the web it’s appalling. An awful number of people are being misled.”
Dr Montgomery has been married to fellow psychologist Dr Morris for more than four decades.
“You’ve got to practise what you preach,” he said. “We work together, ski together, dive together, cook together, go to the movies together, everything. “The single major cause of relationships breaking up is a lack of good times as a couple. That’s streets ahead of anything else.”
MR STINKY
IN the 1960s near Shepparton in Victoria, Garry Heywood, 18, and Abina Madill, 16, disappeared from a dance. They were later found dead. Madill had been raped.
Some 10 years later, women in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs were being raped in their homes.
In 1985, a man named Raymond Edmunds – dubbed “Mr Stinky’’ because each victim reported the attacker had an offensive body odour – was arrested for the crimes.
Edmunds pleaded guilty to two counts of murder, three of rape and two of attempted rape.
He was sentenced to two terms of life imprisonment in Victoria but remains a suspect in another murder and several rapes.
Dr Montgomery helped catch the killer, who had been at large in Victoria for some 20 years.
“He’s inside now but when he’s finished his term in prison and goes to be released, if the court want an expert witness for the review so they don’t let him out, I’ll be at the head of the queue,” he said. “He’ll do it again.
“He had murdered two teenagers in a lovers lane killing in rural Victoria. “He was raping women up and down Springfield Rd, which is a main road, so the geography tells you something.
“Part of a profile was from information like that, which shows that he either lives or works somewhere along that line.
“He stalked his victims. He only ever struck when the man of the house was away, so he was sitting outside and waiting.”
Few resisted the rapes because their children were being threatened.
“His modus operandi was to hold a knife to the child’s throat so mum would surrender to be raped,” he said.
“We did the profile and they caught him in Aubrey flashing.
“Like a lot of serial offenders, he developed his style and he started to wear gloves.
“He had left finger prints for some of his early crimes and when they nabbed him for flashing, finger prints were checked and all the alarm bells went off.”
Dr Montgomery still finds it hard not to become emotional recounting the story.
“I got a nice letter from the police commissioner saying ‘Thank you’. The CIB gave me a plaque which I have in my office,” he said through tears.
CRIME
DR Montgomery says people who have the compulsion to commit crime are not necessarily wired differently to the everyman.
“You find it rare that many people could tell you they have never ever done anything illegal, or that they regret or that they feel ashamed about now,” he said.
“(To say) how many people have done something because they have some psychological problem, it’s a weak excuse and it’s not really usually a good explanation.”
However, someone who has committed the most heinous serial crimes is “most likely a psychopath”, Dr Montgomery said.
“We are poor at predicting on ordinary information who will or won’t commits murders,” he said. “Is there truly evil in the world? Psychopathy does look like it has a strong biological basis.
“If we are in a situation where something terrible goes on, there will be a lot of physiological changes: your blood pressure will go up or your heart rate will go up.
“Psychopaths don’t. They
MY IQ IS ACTUALLY BEYOND MEASURE ... THAT’S A FLUKE, IT’S WHAT YOU DO WITH IT THAT COUNTS.
DR BOB MONTGOMERY