When police quizzed forensic psychologist Helen Paterson about the crimes of a serial arsonist, she had a lightbulb moment that illuminated her career.
Now arguably Australia's leading researcher on domestic violence memory, she was then a Canadian exchange student living in a cheap Sydney apartment.
There was a firebug residing in her building who kept setting it alight and during repeated questioning from police, "I gathered that the questions they were asking were not the questions I was learning about in academia that they should be asking".
