KENNETH ASHWORTH, APM
Detective Inspector
"We won't rest until the case is solved." It is a pledge that Detective Inspector Ken Ashworth, of Victoria Police, has made many times. 
In 2014 Ashworth headed the Purana taskforce on organised crime when it helped NSW police follow new leads on the murder of Donald Mackay, a case which was 37 years old.
The same year, Ashworth's team followed up an "item of interest" found in the Yarra River, believed to be a weapon involved in the murder of a businessman in 1999.
Ashworth, who has been awarded the Australian Police Medal, has served 39 years with the Victorian constabulary, arresting and successfully prosecuting some of Australia's most notorious criminals.
He led the investigation into the Black Saturday bushfires that claimed 11 lives, identifying and prosecuting the person responsible for lighting the original fire.
Now heading the Trident taskforce, Ashworth showed his leadership capabilities back in 1998 when the force was rocked by the murders of Sergeant Gary Silk and Senior Constable Rodney Miller in Moorabbin. Hundreds of officers offered to help investigate the case.
Five years earlier the then-Detective Sergeant Ashworth, with the armed robbery squad, successfully applied for an X-ray of a suspect's hands. It was the first such application granted by a Victorian court and allowed police to determine if there were any metal fragments that indicated bullet wounds.
The suspect had been charged with armed robbery and murder of a security guard six years earlier.
Apart from crime-busting, Ashworth has proved a deft hand in the streamlining of the force, overseeing the merging of the Prahran and St Kilda police stations.
He has been heavily involved in building Victoria Police's joint investigative capability.