Casting his mind back over more than three and a half decades as a police officer, Detective Superintendent Joe Doueihi can’t say exactly how many murder investigations he’s been involved in. Sitting behind his desk in NSW Police’s Parramatta headquarters, he estimates it’s in the hundreds. The figure isn’t what’s important to him, however. It’s the people, the victims, it represents. That’s what he can conjure clearly in his mind. “I remember every homicide I’ve been to,” Doueihi says. He remembers the high-profile cases he’s worked – such as the murder of 18-year-old Lyndsay van Blanken, strangled to death by her ex-boyfriend and stuffed in a cricket bag beneath a Queens Park apartment building in November 2003 – as clearly as the murders that didn’t make the headlines. There are significant cases that have left an “indelible impression” on him, but he prefers not to discuss them in detail or dwell on them. Instead, he is focused on the task at hand: succeeding in one of the most coveted roles in NSW Police. On Monday, Doueihi, one of the state’s most experienced detectives, will take over as homicide squad commander from outgoing boss Danny Doherty, who retired last week after 40 years with NSW Police.