Latest / Real Crime with Adam Shand / Live At The Stanley Pub - Part 1

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Live At The Stanley Pub - Part 1 · Real Crime with Adam Shand

0:05
Speaker 1: A Poche Production. Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shand.
0:16
Speaker 1: I'm your host, Adam Shand. Something different today. I took
0:20
Speaker 1: the podcast on the road recently to northeast Victoria at
0:23
Speaker 1: the invitation of my friend Sally Wright, who runs the
0:26
Speaker 1: fabulous Stanley Pub in the historic village, which is just
0:30
Speaker 1: a short drive from Beechworth. We're in the heart of
0:33
Speaker 1: Ned Kelly country, but Ned didn't get a single mention. Instead,
0:37
Speaker 1: I brought along my own bank robber, Daniel Saunders, who
0:40
Speaker 1: you'll know from the Podshape production, The Glitch. Dan took
0:43
Speaker 1: $ 1. 6 million from the ATMs of the National Australia Bank.
0:48
Speaker 1: You'll hear from Dan in the second episode later this week.
0:51
Speaker 1: But for now, sit back and imagine a country pub
0:54
Speaker 1: with a roaring log fire, a bar full of true
0:57
Speaker 1: crime fans and an ageing crime reporter in a hat.
1:02
Speaker 1: Thank you, Hillary.
1:03
Speaker 2: Thank you. Welcome to the Stanley Pub.
1:08
Speaker 1: I should let you know we're making a podcast tonight,
1:11
Speaker 1: Real Crime with Adam Shand, live from the Stanley Pub.
1:15
Speaker 2: So it's great to see you all here tonight. People
1:17
Speaker 2: have come from far afield, from Wodonga, from Melbourne, Wangaratta.
1:23
Speaker 2: Where's the furthest? Ocean Grove. Ocean Grove. Thank you very much.
1:30
Speaker 2: I appreciate that. Adelaide. You came all the way from Adelaide.
1:33
Speaker 2: That is fantastic. Thank you so much. Thank you so much.
1:37
Speaker 2: And I've got a couple of friends here.
1:39
Speaker 1: We've got a couple of ex-police officers here as well
1:42
Speaker 1: who've come from Bright.
1:43
Speaker 2: Rocket Rod Porter and Marielle Porter. Thank you for coming
1:46
Speaker 2: from Bright. In fact, he's got his own story actually.
1:50
Speaker 1: Rod was the handle of a chopper read when he
1:54
Speaker 1: was informing to the police.
1:56
Speaker 2: You can ask him that later if you want.
1:59
Speaker 1: But actually remind me later because I've got a Chopper
2:01
Speaker 1: Reads story to finish off my segment.
2:04
Speaker 2: My part in his most successful heist.
2:08
Speaker 1: So don't let me stop without telling that story to Cranko.
2:12
Speaker 1: But we're hearing from Daniel Saunders later, and he's almost alone,
2:16
Speaker 1: having started his, can I call it a life of crime?
2:19
Speaker 2: A life of misadventure in Wangaratta. It's your show, Adam.
2:23
Speaker 2: You can call it whatever you want. Well, I can't.
2:24
Speaker 2: That's called a life of crime. It's the most unlikely
2:27
Speaker 2: back robber you'll ever meet.
2:29
Speaker 1: But I should start by telling you where my life
2:33
Speaker 1: of crime so-called began. It was in a McDonald's in
2:39
Speaker 1: Collins Street, Melbourne, one Sunday in early 2004, sitting across
2:46
Speaker 1: the table from Carl Williams and Roberta Williams, who decided
2:51
Speaker 1: they wanted to tell me how they'd not killed anybody.
2:56
Speaker 2: But how I came to be there probably began... 10 years.
3:00
Speaker 1: Earlier in a street in South Africa, in Johannesburg, in
3:04
Speaker 1: a township, Alexandra. And I think of this often and
3:10
Speaker 1: it kind of haunts me in the sense that I
3:13
Speaker 1: really shouldn't be here because that day I went into
3:18
Speaker 1: a township with a camera crew and we were bailed
3:22
Speaker 1: out by gunmen and they wanted to rob us and
3:25
Speaker 1: they realized we had a camera And life was exceedingly cheap,
3:30
Speaker 1: still is in the townships of South Africa. And if
3:35
Speaker 1: anybody's ever had a gun pointed at their head, anybody
3:38
Speaker 1: here had that?
3:40
Speaker 2: Yes, there's one. You know what it's like.
3:43
Speaker 1: And you discover there are little muscles that you didn't
3:46
Speaker 1: know you had before which activate.
3:50
Speaker 2: And our sound recordist.
3:53
Speaker 1: Saved our lives that day, jumped in front of the gunman,
3:57
Speaker 1: He was a local man, a Zulu man, who explained
3:59
Speaker 1: there would be big shit.
4:01
Speaker 2: If they shot us. They were very keen to shoot
4:03
Speaker 2: us just because it was a loose end. So he
4:08
Speaker 2: saved our lives.
4:10
Speaker 1: And from that point on, I was a little bit unhinged.
4:14
Speaker 1: I had a kind of survivor guilt and I felt
4:18
Speaker 1: myself invincible again. And a series of stupid things happened.
4:24
Speaker 1: I was freelancing in Africa at the time. I'd actually
4:26
Speaker 1: been there the year before and met Nelson Mandela.
4:30
Speaker 2: And I was fired with the spirit of what was
4:33
Speaker 2: going to happen in South Africa.
4:34
Speaker 1: And I was then married to a girl from Zimbabwe
4:37
Speaker 1: who was living in Melbourne. And I got back from
4:40
Speaker 1: meeting Mandela on the day that he was inaugurated in
4:43
Speaker 1: April 1994.
4:45
Speaker 2: I said to my then wife, put your job, we're
4:47
Speaker 2: going to Africa.
4:48
Speaker 1: It's gonna be fun, it's gonna be amazing things happening,
4:51
Speaker 1: historic things happening, let's go. I thought of all that
4:55
Speaker 1: a year later when I quit my secure job in
4:58
Speaker 1: Sydney as it was at the time to come to
5:00
Speaker 1: Africa to be staring.
5:02
Speaker 2: Down the barrel of a nine millimeter pistol.
5:06
Speaker 1: And as I say, I felt kind of invincible and
5:11
Speaker 1: took on ridiculous risks after that.
5:14
Speaker 2: Blew up my marriage, a lot of terrible things happened.
5:18
Speaker 1: I came back to Australia and I realized that I
5:22
Speaker 1: was addicted to risk. I was working then for Channel
5:27
Speaker 1: 9 when I got back from Africa doing mundane things and.
5:32
Speaker 2: I realized I was ruined having had these experiences in Africa.
5:35
Speaker 1: I needed something more exciting, more gripping, more existential, something
5:41
Speaker 1: where I could feel my heartbeat in a sense.
5:46
Speaker 2: And at that time, In Melbourne, the gangland war was raging.
5:52
Speaker 2: And as you may recall, there were bodies.
5:56
Speaker 1: Falling left, right and centre from about 1998 through to
6:02
Speaker 1: 2010 when Carl Anthony Williams was finally dispatched.
6:07
Speaker 2: And I came into the.
6:08
Speaker 1: Picture in mid-2003 when I foolishly said to Channel 9
6:14
Speaker 1: and the Bulletin magazine, that I would unravel the gangland
6:19
Speaker 1: war for their audiences.
6:21
Speaker 2: And I had no business telling them I wouldn't do that.
6:23
Speaker 2: No business whatsoever. And I had no contacts.
6:27
Speaker 1: Back in the day in Melbourne, probably still actually, your
6:30
Speaker 1: so-called crime reporters are really police reporters.
6:34
Speaker 2: They stay very.
6:35
Speaker 1: Close to their police contacts and get convenient feeds so
6:39
Speaker 1: they can do most of their reporting from the office.
6:43
Speaker 2: And the only risk they have is wearing out the
6:45
Speaker 2: seat of their pants on their office chair.
6:47
Speaker 1: I didn't have that luxury, so I went into the
6:52
Speaker 1: wild and spoke to as many crooks and as many
6:56
Speaker 1: people I could to get.
6:58
Speaker 2: Close to the players in the gangland war.
7:01
Speaker 1: The key moment was when I met Nicola Gobbo, who
7:04
Speaker 1: would later become Lawyer X, and she was then Carl.
7:08
Speaker 2: Williams' barrister. And I said, I see all the Melbourne
7:13
Speaker 2: press is talking all.
7:15
Speaker 1: About Carl, basically through the police, telling their story. And
7:22
Speaker 1: back then it was very difficult to know who were
7:26
Speaker 1: the good guys and who were the bad guys. Victoria
7:29
Speaker 1: Police had gone through a pretty sketchy period where the
7:34
Speaker 1: drug squad had become.
7:36
Speaker 3: Involved with the underworld by delivering chemicals to various villains
7:41
Speaker 3: and then trying to work out where they were producing
7:46
Speaker 3: methamphetamine and busting those labs.
7:51
Speaker 2: But what happened was that some of them became enmeshed
7:55
Speaker 2: with the crooks, particularly the Moran crew.
7:58
Speaker 1: And so there'd been a huge clean-out, and a lot
8:03
Speaker 1: of the drug matters charges were stalled while the problems
8:10
Speaker 1: with the officers were sorted out So a lot of
8:12
Speaker 1: crooks got bail.
8:13
Speaker 2: Tony Mockbill, Carl Williams, a whole bunch of them got
8:16
Speaker 2: out on bail and they.
8:18
Speaker 1: Got back full on into the business. So it was
8:21
Speaker 1: a bit hard to know who the crooks were and
8:24
Speaker 1: who were the good guys. So my view was I
8:28
Speaker 1: would speak to everybody.
8:30
Speaker 2: That was my ploy. And I went through Nicola Gobbo.
8:32
Speaker 1: And she said, oh, well, I can send you a
8:35
Speaker 1: letter to Carl and see what he says. And I
8:38
Speaker 1: held no hope that this would do any good. And anyway,
8:44
Speaker 1: early January 2004, I was in despair.
8:49
Speaker 2: I had nothing in the can.
8:51
Speaker 1: My deadline was approaching, and I was lying in the
8:54
Speaker 1: little blow-up pool in the back garden of the house
8:57
Speaker 1: I was renting in Melbourne at the time, and the
8:59
Speaker 1: phone rang, and I just let it ring to message.
9:02
Speaker 2: I was that much in despair and depression.
9:05
Speaker 1: I went to the phone a bit later and checked
9:07
Speaker 1: it out, and it was a message from Carl Williams.
9:10
Speaker 2: But he didn't leave a number. For God's sake, leave
9:13
Speaker 2: a number. Anyway, he called back. We organised the meeting at.
9:20
Speaker 1: The McDonald's in Collins Street, and I thought, this is
9:24
Speaker 1: a different kind of gangster. In fact, when I met him,
9:28
Speaker 1: I was struck by the fact that he wasn't a
9:30
Speaker 1: gangster at all. It's more like if Shane Warner had
9:33
Speaker 1: become a serial killer. Something like that, you know? It's
9:37
Speaker 1: most unprepossessing. I think I found Roberta Williams a lot
9:41
Speaker 1: more scary.
9:43
Speaker 2: And I just couldn't tally.
9:47
Speaker 1: These people with what they'd been doing because through that
9:53
Speaker 1: year of 2003 into 2004, there was a murder almost
9:57
Speaker 1: every month.
9:58
Speaker 2: These were public slayings.
10:01
Speaker 1: On city streets, we saw people like Nick Radev, Nick
10:07
Speaker 1: the Russian, he was actually a Bulgarian, I don't know
10:09
Speaker 1: why they called him.
10:09
Speaker 2: Nick the Russian, but he'd been murdered by Carl's killers.
10:15
Speaker 1: We saw Jason Moran and Pasquale Barbaro killed at the
10:20
Speaker 1: Cross Keys Reserve while the Moran's kids were in the
10:25
Speaker 1: back seat and they saw their father and Pasquale Barbaro's
10:30
Speaker 1: brains splattered all over the inside of the vehicle. Went
10:35
Speaker 1: on from there, Willie Thompson, Michael Marshall, Hussam Zayat, Mark Malia,
10:42
Speaker 1: a whole string of people were being murdered, culminating with
10:48
Speaker 1: the murder in December 2003 of Graham the Munster Kinebrae.
10:54
Speaker 1: who was one of the most well-connected, most powerful of
10:59
Speaker 1: them all, more or less retired, but no one was safe.
11:03
Speaker 1: And I'd gone to the Munster's funeral, and as the
11:10
Speaker 1: coffin was being brought out of the church, I saw
11:13
Speaker 1: one of the pallbearers was an old friend of mine
11:16
Speaker 1: from Sydney.
11:17
Speaker 2: I'd grown up in Sydney. And I thought, what are
11:20
Speaker 2: you doing here? He said, what are you doing here?
11:22
Speaker 1: It turned out he'd been an apprentice safecracker with Graham
11:26
Speaker 1: Kinebra and had worked with him extensively. And so he
11:33
Speaker 1: told me in the background of this that Graham Kinebra
11:36
Speaker 1: had been planning to have Carl Williams.
11:39
Speaker 2: Roberta Williams, George Williams all murdered.
11:43
Speaker 1: That was the only way to stop this war before
11:46
Speaker 1: the whole Carlton crew was decimated.
11:49
Speaker 2: So that really... fired me up to meet Carl Williams.
11:54
Speaker 1: So I met him there on that January morning in 2004.
11:59
Speaker 1: And this began a dialogue with Carl that lasted all
12:04
Speaker 1: the way to his.
12:05
Speaker 2: Death in 2010. And there were times where my bosses
12:12
Speaker 2: would say, you're getting too close. And I'd say, well,
12:16
Speaker 2: you're too far away.
12:18
Speaker 1: I needed to be up close and personal to understand
12:21
Speaker 1: what was really going on and to understand the story
12:26
Speaker 1: of why this bloodletting was happening.
12:29
Speaker 2: And little by little, Carl told me the stories and I.
12:34
Speaker 1: Would piece it together with other contacts and to understand
12:38
Speaker 1: why these things were happening. And it all came back
12:42
Speaker 1: to a bunch of people who were friends working together,
12:46
Speaker 1: making money, supplying drugs with an insatiable appetite for drugs
12:50
Speaker 1: in Melbourne at the time. We were the party drugs
12:52
Speaker 1: capital of the world.
12:53
Speaker 2: I think we still are. And they all fell out.
12:57
Speaker 1: And the key moment had happened when they were all
12:59
Speaker 1: working in a drug lab in Brunswick that Tony Mockwell
13:03
Speaker 1: had set up, and they had secured what was gold
13:07
Speaker 1: in the underworld back in those days, pseudorephedrine, which was
13:10
Speaker 1: the major ingredient of amphetamine.
13:13
Speaker 2: And they were working together to some extent.
13:17
Speaker 1: Until there was a fire in the drug lab, and
13:23
Speaker 1: Mockbell and Williams decided that there was an opportunity here,
13:26
Speaker 1: that they would say that all the pseudo was destroyed,
13:31
Speaker 1: but it wasn't.
13:33
Speaker 2: They'd taken it out earlier.
13:35
Speaker 1: And so soon after that, their drugs began to appear
13:39
Speaker 1: on the street, much cheaper, much more plentiful, and the
13:45
Speaker 1: seeds of mistrust were.
13:47
Speaker 2: Sewn at that time. And it went on and on.
13:50
Speaker 1: There was a pill press that was in dispute between
13:54
Speaker 1: the Morans and the Williams crew. And Williams had refused
14:00
Speaker 1: to return it to the Morans. And he had it
14:03
Speaker 1: set up in a little flat out towards Essendon Way.
14:10
Speaker 1: And one day the police came knocking at the door.
14:14
Speaker 1: And they heard this whirring sound, this pill press operating
14:20
Speaker 1: in the upstairs of this unit, and they were busted.
14:25
Speaker 1: That was part of the real fallout between the Morans,
14:29
Speaker 1: because Carl believed that this was a set-up from the Morans,
14:34
Speaker 1: thinking that it was a payback for stealing their pseudo-effigy
14:39
Speaker 1: and so forth. And what had really happened was that
14:41
Speaker 1: this was owned by another guy called Barry Armstrong who
14:44
Speaker 1: had a warrant outstanding and the Broadmeadows CI had gone
14:49
Speaker 1: to find this individual and they had what they call
14:51
Speaker 1: a Tats Lotto moment where looking for this character on a.
14:54
Speaker 2: Warrant, they found the pill press.
14:58
Speaker 1: That was the antecedent to the shooting of Carl Williams
15:04
Speaker 1: in 1999 on his birthday where.
15:09
Speaker 2: Mark Moran and Jason Moran agree to meet Carl at
15:13
Speaker 2: Gladstone Park to have a discussion, so-called, about this pill press.
15:19
Speaker 1: When they get there, there's no discussion. Mark Moran orders
15:25
Speaker 1: his brother to beat Carl, knocks him down.
15:28
Speaker 2: With a bat. Then Jason pulls out his.
15:31
Speaker 1: 22 pistol and Mark says, shoot him in the head,
15:36
Speaker 1: shoot him in the head. But Jason, who was a
15:38
Speaker 1: gangster through and through, apparently didn't have the bottle for
15:42
Speaker 1: it and decided to shoot Carl.
15:44
Speaker 2: Williams in the stomach instead. That was a.
15:47
Speaker 1: Fatal error, absolutely fatal error, because Carl figured, well, who
15:52
Speaker 1: was my real enemy?
15:54
Speaker 2: Was it the man who shot me or the man
15:57
Speaker 2: who ordered his brother to shoot me in the head?
16:00
Speaker 1: So that signed Mark Moran's death warrant in 2000. And
16:07
Speaker 1: for the next two or three years, Carl was hunting Jason,
16:12
Speaker 1: who was swearing he was going to swear up against
16:15
Speaker 1: Carl Williams. So into this background I come in 2004,
16:22
Speaker 1: and it was impossible to swear what was going on
16:26
Speaker 1: with this amiable, chubby, slightly androgynous man, Carl Williams.
16:33
Speaker 2: It was so bizarre. And you could see he was
16:36
Speaker 2: just a kind of businessman.
16:38
Speaker 1: He saw the drug business as a simple matter of
16:42
Speaker 1: supply and demand.
16:45
Speaker 2: And if you had to kill a few people on
16:47
Speaker 2: the way through, then that was just part of business.
16:52
Speaker 1: And Carl's big failure was that he was getting high
16:55
Speaker 1: on his own supply, smoking his ice pipe at night,
16:59
Speaker 1: getting paranoid.
17:00
Speaker 2: He had plenty of money. And at that time, there
17:04
Speaker 2: was a willing crew.
17:06
Speaker 1: Of people who were gonna kill people for money. People like,
17:12
Speaker 1: who was already a veteran crook, armed robber, and a
17:17
Speaker 1: man with a lot of dash. And Carl Williams, out
17:22
Speaker 1: of his fear, was offering big money for murders.
17:26
Speaker 2: 100,000, 150,000. The trick was, He was paying down payments.
17:33
Speaker 2: He wasn't paying the lot.
17:35
Speaker 1: And he also had Andrew Benjy Veneman, who was probably
17:40
Speaker 1: the most savage, scary individual of all. He'd already survived
17:46
Speaker 1: a bloodletting out in sunshine years earlier. He'd begun out
17:52
Speaker 1: of sunshine with his mates who'd been at school with
17:55
Speaker 1: people like Paul Kalapalaitis, Dino.
17:58
Speaker 2: Dibra, Mark Malia. Johnny Orcello.
18:02
Speaker 1: And these guys had been working mainly for Paul Kalapalaitis,
18:06
Speaker 1: who was a big wheel in Sunshine at the time.
18:09
Speaker 1: And little by little, they all fell out with each
18:12
Speaker 1: other to the point where Benji had killed Kalapalaitis. He'd
18:18
Speaker 1: been part of the crew that killed Dino Dibra in 2000.
18:22
Speaker 1: And so he'd survived that civil war.
18:25
Speaker 2: If you like, in Sunshine.
18:27
Speaker 1: And he was that La Porcella Restaurant in 2002, then
18:34
Speaker 1: working for Mick Gatto. And Tony Mockbell had a problem
18:39
Speaker 1: with a couple of guys from Perth who'd come to
18:42
Speaker 1: Melbourne to sort this out, and there was a mediation
18:46
Speaker 1: held at La Porcella Restaurant.
18:49
Speaker 2: And Mick Gatto was supposed to.
18:52
Speaker 1: Mediate this peacefully, but when the meeting began, The two
18:57
Speaker 1: guys from Perth tore into Tony Mockbell and nearly killed him,
19:01
Speaker 1: kicked the shit out of him. In fact, the only
19:03
Speaker 1: reason he wasn't killed when they were kicking him was
19:04
Speaker 1: they were wearing sand chips, apparently.
19:07
Speaker 2: So always bring steel-capped boots if you want to get
19:10
Speaker 2: the job done.
19:12
Speaker 1: So Benji was dispatched with Mockbell to take Mockbell to
19:17
Speaker 1: a doctor to get him patched up. And on the
19:19
Speaker 1: way there, Mockbell says to Benji, why are you working
19:23
Speaker 1: for the Carlton crew? You should be working with Carl Williams.
19:27
Speaker 1: Come on over to the new crew, the boys from
19:30
Speaker 1: the western suburbs. So Benji switches sides at that time.
19:35
Speaker 1: But it wasn't as simple as that, actually, because what
19:37
Speaker 1: was happening in this period was like three-dimensional chess.
19:41
Speaker 2: Everybody was still.
19:44
Speaker 1: Talking to their enemies, talking to their new friends, plotting
19:48
Speaker 1: against each other.
19:50
Speaker 2: It was absolutely toxic and poisonous.
19:53
Speaker 1: And to make it worse, the were a few corrupt
19:56
Speaker 1: police in there who were either working both sides or
20:03
Speaker 1: inciting things. And then you also had police who were
20:06
Speaker 1: really just saying, well, this is really just a self-cleaning oven.
20:12
Speaker 1: We'll just stand back and turn the heat up as
20:14
Speaker 1: high as we can. All these fellows are getting burnt
20:16
Speaker 1: to ash, which is almost what happened. So into this
20:20
Speaker 1: I step. I sometimes wonder the sense of all this.
20:26
Speaker 1: And as I said before, I was.
20:28
Speaker 2: Addicted to the risk of this.
20:30
Speaker 1: And the more it got dangerous, the more I liked it,
20:33
Speaker 1: the more I went after the story.
20:37
Speaker 2: And I was aided and abetted in this process.
20:41
Speaker 1: Pursuit by a former police officer called Brian Francis Murphy,
20:46
Speaker 1: who'd been a legend in Victoria Police from the 50s
20:48
Speaker 1: through to the 80s, and he was one of the
20:51
Speaker 1: toughest men I ever met. And he knew all the
20:53
Speaker 1: Carlton crew, and he was introducing me to Gatto and
20:56
Speaker 1: Mario Condello and all these sorts of people, and egging
20:58
Speaker 1: me on, egging me on.
21:00
Speaker 2: I didn't need much egging on. And there were times
21:04
Speaker 2: when I'd get.
21:05
Speaker 1: Phone calls in the middle of the night, because I
21:07
Speaker 1: got so deep into this, talking to people day and night,
21:10
Speaker 1: And people began to become leery of me. What was
21:13
Speaker 1: he doing? So I'd get these calls in the middle
21:15
Speaker 1: of the night. Ah, you dog, we're going to come
21:18
Speaker 1: and fucking get you. What do you think you're doing?
21:21
Speaker 1: And so I called Murphy one day and I said, mate,
21:25
Speaker 1: I'm a bit concerned about these calls I'm getting. He said, mate,
21:28
Speaker 1: the ones who ring you are not the ones you
21:31
Speaker 1: should worry about. That wasn't very consoling at all.
21:38
Speaker 2: So things went on.
21:40
Speaker 1: And I was now publishing material about Carl Williams while
21:44
Speaker 1: he was still on the run killing people.
21:48
Speaker 2: The murders continued into.
21:51
Speaker 1: 2004 and I published a couple of documentaries and stories
21:55
Speaker 1: in the Bulletin magazine and I was starting to get,
21:59
Speaker 1: I guess, a little bit scared, a little bit of
22:03
Speaker 1: PTSD setting in. So I thought, well, let me take
22:05
Speaker 1: a couple of weeks off and I go up the
22:06
Speaker 1: coast with some friends.
22:09
Speaker 2: And... debrief a bit. I went to this little beach
22:13
Speaker 2: near Tathra, south coast, New South Wales. No phone reception.
22:18
Speaker 2: Enjoying myself.
22:19
Speaker 1: Nice soft breezes of into March 2004.
22:23
Speaker 2: Sunny. Lovely.
22:25
Speaker 1: Lovely.
22:25
Speaker 2: It's just a side note, but there's excellent oysters in Tathra.
22:29
Speaker 2: I don't know if anyone's ever had oysters in Tathra. Yeah.
22:32
Speaker 2: They're premium oysters in Tathra. Delightful. Thank you. Yeah. I
22:37
Speaker 2: remember that.
22:39
Speaker 1: Anyway, so The crew went off to get some drinks
22:42
Speaker 1: and things and came back and someone just dropped a paper,
22:45
Speaker 1: Herald Sun, in front of me and the headline.
22:47
Speaker 2: Was, Benji's been murdered. Benji's been whacked. So I thought, oh,
22:53
Speaker 2: here we go, here we go, here we go again.
22:55
Speaker 1: So I jumped into my car and got up to
22:58
Speaker 1: where there was phone reception. I had about 55 messages
23:01
Speaker 1: from a murderer and Carl and all these people, police,
23:04
Speaker 1: all kinds of things going on. So I rushed back
23:07
Speaker 1: to Melbourne and now it was on again and Within days.
23:11
Speaker 2: Lewis Moran, the Moran clan.
23:14
Speaker 1: Patriarch, was murdered at the Brunswick Club, and Bertie Routh,
23:17
Speaker 1: his off-sider, was almost murdered as well.
23:20
Speaker 2: And it just went crazy.
23:23
Speaker 1: And all this time I'm talking to Carl, and he's
23:27
Speaker 1: not telling me what he's going to do, but he's
23:28
Speaker 1: giving me broad hints. At this time, Mick Gatto was
23:32
Speaker 1: on remand, charged with the murder of Benji.
23:35
Speaker 2: What had happened was that.
23:38
Speaker 1: Benji had gone to La Porcella for a meeting, double
23:40
Speaker 1: parked a Mercedes outside La Porcella and had run inside
23:46
Speaker 1: apparently with a 9mm pistol in the waistband of his tracksuit.
23:51
Speaker 1: I knew for a fact that Benji never wore underwear.
23:54
Speaker 1: So to put a 9mm pistol in a tracksuit when
23:58
Speaker 1: there's nothing to hold it there is quite a feat.
24:00
Speaker 1: So I'm not 100% sure he went in there armed.
24:05
Speaker 1: But the jury was told that he did.
24:08
Speaker 2: So mix on remand there for the murder of Benji.
24:14
Speaker 1: And at this time Mario Condello, Mario Rocco Condello had
24:18
Speaker 1: taken over the Carlton crew. And he was tasked with
24:22
Speaker 1: finding a way to stop Carl Williams. And so I
24:25
Speaker 1: began for my sins to talk to Condello as well.
24:29
Speaker 1: And I found myself the meat in the sandwich between
24:31
Speaker 1: Williams and Condello. I was passing messages back and forth
24:37
Speaker 1: between them. And it was getting more and more hairy
24:41
Speaker 1: to the point.
24:41
Speaker 2: Where in.
24:45
Speaker 1: May 2004, Williams sent his assassins to kill Condello at
24:53
Speaker 1: North Road in Brighton. And Condello was tipped off, I think,
24:57
Speaker 1: and wasn't at the house. and his assassins were captured, and.
25:03
Speaker 2: Also Carl was then arrested as well.
25:07
Speaker 1: That wasn't an end of it, because by 2006, Condello
25:11
Speaker 1: was also murdered, so Carl could still operate out of jail.
25:17
Speaker 2: What was happening then was, I.
25:20
Speaker 1: Said a bit earlier, that Carl hadn't been paying his assassins,
25:25
Speaker 1: so they'd been rounded up.
25:26
Speaker 2: There was.
25:28
Speaker 2: And a couple of others were caught for the murder
25:30
Speaker 2: of Michael Marshall and they soon realised that Williams.
25:37
Speaker 1: Was abandoning them, getting his own lawyer, separating himself from
25:41
Speaker 1: them and they hadn't been paid as well.
25:45
Speaker 2: A tip to future gang bosses, make sure you pay
25:48
Speaker 2: your hitmen. Make sure you pay your hitmen.
25:52
Speaker 1: So they all turned evidence against Williams and Williams He
25:57
Speaker 1: was facing a lot of jail. 35 years is what
26:02
Speaker 1: he got in the end. And he saw an opportunity
26:06
Speaker 1: to assist.
26:07
Speaker 2: Police to lighten the load.
26:08
Speaker 1: And, of course, this came in the form of the
26:12
Speaker 1: murder in May 2004 of Terry Hodgson and his wife, Christine,
26:17
Speaker 1: who were informers. And they, in 2002, with a police officer,
26:22
Speaker 1: David Michel, they had... robbed a house on actually Grand
26:29
Speaker 1: Final Day. They'd robbed a house in East Oakley that
26:32
Speaker 1: was a drug house for Tony Mockbell and Carl Williams.
26:36
Speaker 1: Another police officer, Paul Dale, who wasn't there, he was
26:39
Speaker 1: on the drug squad, was implicated in this and they
26:45
Speaker 1: were all charged with the robbery of this drug house
26:49
Speaker 1: and various offences to do with that. Hodson was now
26:54
Speaker 1: a marked man Pretty soon, a fellow called Rodney Earl
26:58
Speaker 1: Collins was dispatched to Hodson's home in Kew, and he
27:04
Speaker 1: murdered Hodson and his wife, Christine.
27:09
Speaker 2: And Collins is one of the nastiest individuals that.
27:13
Speaker 1: I never met him, but to hear of his exploits
27:17
Speaker 1: was chilling. He'd murdered another couple back in 1987, some
27:20
Speaker 1: drug dealers, Dorothy and Ramon.
27:25
Speaker 1: I'm forgetting the name, Abby, Abby. And he'd shot the
27:30
Speaker 1: husband and decided to kill the wife because she was collateral.
27:35
Speaker 1: He did the same thing with the Hotsons.
27:37
Speaker 2: Nasty, nasty crook.
27:39
Speaker 1: And Williams saw a big opportunity here. He could say, well,
27:45
Speaker 1: the police.
27:46
Speaker 2: Were involved in the robbery and the drugs. Maybe they've
27:50
Speaker 2: got a motive to kill the Hotsons.
27:54
Speaker 1: And he could then turn evidence against them and maybe
27:58
Speaker 1: lighten his load of years that he would face.
28:03
Speaker 2: That's what they did. And I have no idea whether
28:07
Speaker 2: Paul Dale was involved or not. I don't think he was, frankly.
28:10
Speaker 1: But he was a convenient patsy because the first call
28:14
Speaker 1: that David Michel had made when arrested over the robbery
28:18
Speaker 1: was to his boss, Paul Dale. So it created a
28:22
Speaker 1: plausible connection between the crooks, between the cops, I should say.
28:27
Speaker 1: And so Williams now saw his opportunity. And as things
28:33
Speaker 1: went on, I remember taking Roberta Williams, this is back
28:38
Speaker 1: in 2009.
28:39
Speaker 2: I took her for an interview with Eddie McGuire in
28:42
Speaker 2: a Triple M. And Roberta, on the way out, said
28:44
Speaker 2: to me, she wouldn't believe it.
28:46
Speaker 1: The state is going to pay for my daughter's school
28:50
Speaker 1: fees and they're going to pay her my father-in-law George's
28:54
Speaker 1: tax bill if Carl gives evidence against Paul Dale. You see,
29:01
Speaker 1: Victoria Police had been under pressure to solve the.
29:06
Speaker 2: Possible connection between the police force and the crooks in
29:10
Speaker 2: the gangland war, and here was the opportunity. Carl Williams
29:12
Speaker 2: was offering that up.
29:14
Speaker 1: So I thought to myself, Carl's in Acacia unit of
29:20
Speaker 1: Barwon Prison, very dangerous place, very dangerous place.
29:24
Speaker 2: And if people think you're informing, then it might not
29:27
Speaker 2: go well for you.
29:28
Speaker 1: He was in a unit, a Keisha unit, with Tommy Ivanovic,
29:34
Speaker 1: who had been his loyal soldier for some time, and
29:39
Speaker 1: Matthew Johnson, who was a relatively new friend.
29:43
Speaker 2: He'd been part of the prison of War gang in.
29:47
Speaker 1: Pentridge, actually, when it was still open, and was a
29:51
Speaker 1: very influential character in Barwon as well.
29:55
Speaker 2: And I wrestled with this. Should I write this story?
30:00
Speaker 2: Should I write this story? What will happen?
30:04
Speaker 1: When people inside know that Carl Williams is informing on them.
30:09
Speaker 2: Because no situations where there's any doubt, there's no doubt.
30:15
Speaker 1: And people would assume if you're telling tales on one person,
30:20
Speaker 1: you'll tell tales on everyone. So one of the very
30:24
Speaker 1: few times in my career that I said, I'm not
30:28
Speaker 1: gonna write this story. I don't wanna be the one.
30:32
Speaker 1: who sets the dogs on Carl Williams. A few weeks pass.
30:38
Speaker 1: On a Saturday, early April 2010, I get a call
30:43
Speaker 1: from George Williams.
30:45
Speaker 2: He's got Carl on the other line.
30:47
Speaker 1: He got a question for me. And George put the
30:51
Speaker 1: phones together so I could talk to Carl. I actually
30:54
Speaker 1: had been talking to Carl through the phone system at Barwon,
30:58
Speaker 1: but they'd stop every different way that I was trying
31:00
Speaker 1: to do it.
31:01
Speaker 2: They'd prevented me speaking on the phone.
31:03
Speaker 1: Then I would go to his mother's house and she
31:06
Speaker 1: would call him and I would write questions on a
31:08
Speaker 1: whiteboard and I would communicate. Even that was stopped because
31:12
Speaker 1: they realised what I was doing. I was coming up
31:15
Speaker 1: with all these yarns.
31:16
Speaker 2: And so I get this call from Carl and he
31:21
Speaker 2: says to me, the Harold Sons called me. They're going to.
31:24
Speaker 1: Write the story about paying Dad's taxes and paying Dakota's
31:28
Speaker 1: school fees.
31:29
Speaker 2: Do you think they're going to run the story? I said,
31:32
Speaker 2: I reckon they will. It's a pretty good story. He says, okay.
31:38
Speaker 2: I said, well, how do you think it's going to
31:40
Speaker 2: go for you? He said, well, I'm fine. I'm okay.
31:43
Speaker 2: Tommy's good. I said, what about Matthew Johnson? He said, ah,
31:47
Speaker 2: good as gold. I remember he said, good as gold,
31:50
Speaker 2: good as gold. Love Matty.
31:51
Speaker 1: We're giving money to his family. We're putting money in
31:55
Speaker 1: his prison canteen.
31:56
Speaker 2: He's sweet. I said, fine. A couple of days later,
32:01
Speaker 2: as we all know, Carl.
32:04
Speaker 1: Is sitting there in the mess area of the Acacia unit,
32:07
Speaker 1: reading the Herald Sun.
32:09
Speaker 2: Matthew Johnson looms up behind him with.
32:12
Speaker 1: The stem of the bike seat, with the stationary bike,
32:17
Speaker 1: and smashes him to death.
32:18
Speaker 2: I was thinking, thank fuck that wasn't my story. A
32:25
Speaker 2: few days later, I had a call from associates of.
32:29
Speaker 1: Matthew Johnson who had somehow managed to get the autopsy
32:33
Speaker 1: pictures of Carl, including x-rays of his skull. It looked
32:38
Speaker 1: like a mosaic from some ancient Roman excavation. It was shocking,
32:45
Speaker 1: you know. And they wanted to sell it to me.
32:47
Speaker 1: I thought, how callous are you people? Absolutely callous. And
32:54
Speaker 1: so that was the end of Carl, but the.
32:58
Speaker 1: There was so much more to clean up. There were
33:00
Speaker 1: still dozens of hit men going through the system.
33:04
Speaker 2: There were corrupt police that Victoria Police was after.
33:07
Speaker 1: There were some informers like Nicola Gobbo.
33:12
Speaker 2: They were now going after Tony Mockbell and things like that.
33:16
Speaker 1: And I started to get some leaks out of a
33:18
Speaker 1: particular task force where a fella called.
33:22
Speaker 2: * * * was one of the most notorious liars
33:25
Speaker 2: and murderers Victoria's ever produced. He was... telling all.
33:28
Speaker 1: Kinds of stories to this task force about things that
33:31
Speaker 1: he had done or hadn't done or put other people
33:35
Speaker 1: up for.
33:36
Speaker 2: And it was all rubbish.
33:38
Speaker 1: And it was causing great dramas and inconvenience and so forth.
33:43
Speaker 1: And so one of the officers in that team began
33:47
Speaker 1: to leak to me about this.
33:48
Speaker 2: And I kept publishing these stories. And they kept asking me,
33:53
Speaker 2: who is your source? Who is your source? I wouldn't
33:55
Speaker 2: tell them.
33:56
Speaker 1: I got dragged into what they call the Victorian State Examiners,
34:00
Speaker 1: the star chamber.
34:01
Speaker 2: Where you have to answer questions. If you don't, they'll
34:05
Speaker 2: put you in jail. I said, I'm not answering your questions.
34:08
Speaker 2: I can't.
34:08
Speaker 1: Because as soon as I answer your question and give
34:12
Speaker 1: up my source, I'm finished.
34:14
Speaker 2: No one will speak to me ever again.
34:16
Speaker 1: And they threatened to put me in jail and they didn't.
34:19
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I got in way too deep. And.
34:25
Speaker 1: So I guess I tried to get a bit of
34:27
Speaker 1: distance between myself and all these events for a while.
34:30
Speaker 2: And I went and.
34:30
Speaker 1: Covered the most glorious, the most fun part of my
34:34
Speaker 1: whole career. There was a crew in Sydney and Melbourne
34:37
Speaker 1: in the 60s who went to Britain called the Kangaroo Gang.
34:40
Speaker 1: And they were shoplifters, just good old-fashioned shoplifters.
34:44
Speaker 2: And so I went on their trail.
34:47
Speaker 1: And there were a few of them left who connected
34:50
Speaker 1: me with old police in Britain and.
34:54
Speaker 2: a few of the old fencers who were.
34:55
Speaker 1: Still around, and I had the best time of all
34:58
Speaker 1: time talking to these old shoplifters and hearing their stories
35:03
Speaker 1: and just a bit of good old-fashioned thieving, you know.
35:07
Speaker 1: It was much better than all the murder and mayhem
35:09
Speaker 1: that I'd been experiencing for the previous maybe 10 years.
35:12
Speaker 2: And there was so many great stories from that era,
35:16
Speaker 2: but there was one where... these.
35:18
Speaker 1: Shoplifters and their accomplices, mainly females, they'd go into all
35:21
Speaker 1: the West End shops and they.
35:23
Speaker 2: Would, it was called mob-handed.
35:25
Speaker 1: Thieving, where you would come in there separated as a
35:29
Speaker 1: crew and the women would create distractions while the men
35:34
Speaker 1: would go into the cabinets and steal everything, steal everything
35:38
Speaker 1: in the store. And they got so good at it,
35:40
Speaker 1: they decided to have a competition to see who could
35:43
Speaker 1: get the best booty in one day.
35:45
Speaker 2: And They all came back with furs and.
35:49
Speaker 1: Watches and diamonds and the whole thing. And the leaders,
35:52
Speaker 1: a fellow called Arthur Delaney and a guy called the Fibber,
35:55
Speaker 1: Jack Warren, were laid back.
35:58
Speaker 2: And they turn up finally in this great big removal van.
36:03
Speaker 2: And people say, what are you doing? And they come
36:06
Speaker 2: out in the beautiful livery of the removal company. And
36:11
Speaker 2: they said, we only had to steal the uniforms they
36:16
Speaker 2: gave us the truck.
36:19
Speaker 1: Yeah so this this and this this was a very
36:23
Speaker 1: hectic period for me it was one association after another
36:28
Speaker 1: with crooks and coughs and it did take its toll
36:32
Speaker 1: on me it really did and I think I think
36:35
Speaker 1: more and more about those those.
36:37
Speaker 2: The near misses.
36:40
Speaker 1: The places I've been where people were later murdered, the
36:44
Speaker 1: houses I'd been, where I discovered later on that they
36:49
Speaker 1: were bugged. And there were times when I was dragged
36:52
Speaker 1: into the Australian Crime Commission on a couple of occasions,
36:55
Speaker 1: and I would hear my phone calls played back to
36:58
Speaker 1: me with various crooks. And I realised I was way,
37:03
Speaker 1: way in too deep. And so I guess I pulled
37:08
Speaker 1: back from all that gangland stuff. And in recent years,
37:11
Speaker 1: I've tried to look at unsolved crimes across Melbourne. The
37:14
Speaker 1: latest podcast I've been doing is about Mr. Cruel in Victoria,
37:19
Speaker 1: which people I think are pretty familiar with, which was
37:20
Speaker 1: a terrible spree of abductions of young girls starting about 1985,
37:27
Speaker 1: going through to the abduction and murder of Carmen Chan.
37:32
Speaker 2: And the Spectrum Task Force that.
37:34
Speaker 1: Was created by Victoria Police tried valiantly to solve these crimes.
37:40
Speaker 2: But the problem was, and.
37:43
Speaker 1: I'm sure you've seen the profiles of Mr. Cruel, the
37:46
Speaker 1: balaclava face, the man who struck mercilessly, jumping into people's
37:53
Speaker 1: homes and taking young girls away, sexually assaulting them and
37:57
Speaker 1: then returning them.
37:59
Speaker 2: And then finally, poor.
38:00
Speaker 1: Carmen Chan in 1991, she never came back.
38:03
Speaker 2: And the city was in absolute uproar.
38:06
Speaker 1: And the FBI came out and they created a profile
38:09
Speaker 1: of Mr. Cruel, putting together various aspects of these offences
38:14
Speaker 1: going back to 1985.
38:17
Speaker 2: The problem was Mr. Cruel never existed. Never existed.
38:23
Speaker 1: I had one of the task force members again leak me.
38:30
Speaker 2: The whole file effectively. Don't tell anyone. Don't tell anyone.
38:34
Speaker 2: The whole files.
38:36
Speaker 1: And you saw in each of the cases, there was
38:39
Speaker 1: vastly different descriptions, different methods.
38:44
Speaker 2: And there was.
38:45
Speaker 1: This idea that he was this forensic genius who never
38:51
Speaker 1: made mistakes, who never left biological material behind, no DNA,
38:57
Speaker 1: nothing to compare.
38:58
Speaker 2: It wasn't true. It simply wasn't true.
39:03
Speaker 1: In several occasions, there was biological material left behind, at
39:07
Speaker 1: least two occasions.
39:08
Speaker 2: There were times when he didn't use a condom, left
39:11
Speaker 2: ropes behind.
39:13
Speaker 1: But unfortunately, unfortunately, the evidence was cold by the time
39:19
Speaker 1: the task force got to it.
39:21
Speaker 2: They started in 1991.
39:22
Speaker 1: These things have been happening back in 1985. And what
39:25
Speaker 1: you saw in Victoria, I'm sure there are people of
39:28
Speaker 1: the age group here tonight who actually can relate to
39:32
Speaker 1: what was happening The abduction of young girls and sexual
39:36
Speaker 1: assault was regarded more as a matter of social welfare
39:42
Speaker 1: rather than crime. There wasn't a rape squad. The first
39:47
Speaker 1: rape case solved with DNA was 1989. So.
39:52
Speaker 2: If you were an offender.
39:54
Speaker 1: Of this nature in this pre-CCTV era, this time when
40:01
Speaker 1: police didn't have the expertise, didn't know how to deal
40:03
Speaker 1: with victims, didn't know how really to investigate these things,
40:07
Speaker 1: and the idea was that as long as the girls
40:08
Speaker 1: were brought back, everything.
40:10
Speaker 2: Was okay, more or less.
40:12
Speaker 1: Of course, until Carmen Chan was murdered and they found
40:17
Speaker 1: her skeletal remains a year later.
40:21
Speaker 2: In Thomastown.
40:23
Speaker 1: And they went right back to 1985, the very first
40:26
Speaker 1: girl who was supposedly taken by Mr.
40:28
Speaker 2: Cruel, who I managed to speak to. And when.
40:34
Speaker 1: Carmen was taken, they went to her and they said,
40:38
Speaker 1: tell us what he said to you. And she said, well,
40:43
Speaker 1: he said, my freedom is more important than your life.
40:47
Speaker 1: So if you see my face, I'll have to kill you.
40:51
Speaker 1: So this was extrapolated all the way forward.
40:55
Speaker 2: To Carmen when she didn't come back.
40:57
Speaker 1: The assumption was, well, Carmen must have seen his face,
41:02
Speaker 1: therefore he shot.
41:04
Speaker 2: Her three times in the head.
41:07
Speaker 1: Neglecting the fact that there were other motives, other theories
41:14
Speaker 1: put forth by detectives in the Spectrum Task Force, But
41:19
Speaker 1: the overwhelming drive was to catch Mr Cruel. He was
41:23
Speaker 1: now the Gotham City villain when really what she had
41:28
Speaker 1: was several offenders. And there was DNA from the case
41:34
Speaker 1: in 1985. I'll call her Anthea, who I spoke to.
41:36
Speaker 1: There was DNA from that case. And there was also
41:41
Speaker 1: DNA from a case in 1988, Sharon Wills, So they
41:48
Speaker 1: had two separate samples of DNA, and they expected those
41:55
Speaker 1: samples would match, which would confirm their case theory that
41:58
Speaker 1: you had one individual who was operating in a whole
42:01
Speaker 1: period of time, even beyond there, and Carmen must have
42:05
Speaker 1: been his final victim.
42:08
Speaker 2: The DNA didn't match. It didn't match. So the whole
42:14
Speaker 2: investigation collapsed at that point. The whole thing collapsed.
42:18
Speaker 1: So these days, there's probably only two or three different
42:25
Speaker 1: cases that.
42:26
Speaker 2: Can be matched.
42:27
Speaker 1: And all the other women who are now in their
42:31
Speaker 1: 40s and 50s, they'll never get any justice. And I've
42:36
Speaker 1: gone back to Victoria Police to say, well, you had
42:38
Speaker 1: DNA in two cases back then.
42:40
Speaker 2: What's happened to it? Because, of course, these days we
42:43
Speaker 2: can identify offenders through DNA.
42:47
Speaker 1: And there's no reason why those cases, if the DNA
42:51
Speaker 1: can be found, can be solved. And we can finally
42:54
Speaker 1: put to rest this idea of a Mr. Cruel, a
42:58
Speaker 1: Gotham City-style villain.
43:01
Speaker 2: And so that.
43:02
Speaker 1: Brings me to today, pretty much, what I'm doing these days.
43:07
Speaker 2: I forgot, I was going to tell you about Chopper Reed.
43:11
Speaker 1: In 2013, when Mark Chopper Reed was on his deathbed,
43:15
Speaker 1: more or less, He called me and he said, Adam,
43:18
Speaker 1: I need to make some money.
43:22
Speaker 2: For the family. I've left nothing behind. I've got two kids.
43:26
Speaker 2: I've got a wife. I need to make some money
43:27
Speaker 2: for the media. I said, what have you got, Mark?
43:29
Speaker 2: He said, I'm going to talk about four murders. I said, what?
43:32
Speaker 2: Four murders? You only killed one person, Sammy the Turk,
43:35
Speaker 2: on the 12th of June, 1987. He said, shut up.
43:38
Speaker 2: I killed four people.
43:40
Speaker 1: Take it to Channel 9. Give me some money for
43:43
Speaker 1: the interview. I said, how much do you want?
43:46
Speaker 2: He said... Quarter of a million. I said, you're dreaming.
43:50
Speaker 2: You won't get that. They'll know you're lying. You didn't
43:52
Speaker 2: kill those other three. Couldn't. Couldn't have happened. Couldn't have happened.
43:57
Speaker 2: He claimed he'd killed Desmond Costello, who was a painter
43:59
Speaker 2: and docker, when he was like about 17.
44:01
Speaker 1: And he claimed he'd then killed a bikey that he'd
44:04
Speaker 1: shot in the stomach in Tasmania.
44:06
Speaker 2: Also a lie.
44:07
Speaker 1: And he claimed that he'd also killed, I'm forgetting the
44:11
Speaker 1: third one.
44:12
Speaker 2: Anyway, there were four. And I went to Channel 9.
44:16
Speaker 1: With this cockamamie story, 60 minutes. I said, he wants
44:21
Speaker 1: a quarter of a million dollars for four murders. They said,
44:24
Speaker 1: where do we sign?
44:25
Speaker 2: I said, are you joking? And we'll pay the money?
44:28
Speaker 2: I said, you're kidding. I said, you might want to
44:30
Speaker 2: check these, you know. You might want to check these.
44:33
Speaker 1: So they contracted me to check these murders, right?
44:37
Speaker 2: And the first one was.
44:39
Speaker 1: A fellow called Reginald Isaacs who was a pedophile and
44:43
Speaker 1: who was in Pentridge Prison, in D Division in Pentridge Prison.
44:47
Speaker 2: And he had killed a little boy in a horrible crime,
44:52
Speaker 2: horrible crime.
44:54
Speaker 1: And Chopper claimed that he and his mate, Mad Charlie Heglagi,
44:59
Speaker 1: had got into the cell, left open by a screw,
45:05
Speaker 1: and bashed him to death, jumped on his head, punched him,
45:08
Speaker 1: all kinds of things. And finally, as a token gesture,
45:11
Speaker 1: hung him behind the door from a bed sheet. I
45:16
Speaker 1: went and got the coroner's file and I could see
45:18
Speaker 1: that Isaacs had indeed hung himself.
45:21
Speaker 2: There was no marks on him. There was no bruises.
45:23
Speaker 2: There was nothing. He'd hung himself flat out.
45:26
Speaker 1: When I checked even further, Mark wasn't in the division
45:29
Speaker 1: at the time and he wasn't even in the jail.
45:33
Speaker 1: So it was clearly rubbish. I went back to 60
45:36
Speaker 1: Minutes and said, it's bullshit. I should check the next
45:42
Speaker 1: one because I'm going to prove the others.
45:44
Speaker 2: Are bullshit as well. They said, that's enough checking. I said, what?
45:48
Speaker 2: And they paid him the money. And he gave the
45:50
Speaker 2: interview a couple of weeks before he died. You probably
45:52
Speaker 2: remember it. It was the highest rating 60 minutes of
45:55
Speaker 2: the year. And everyone was happy. Everyone was happy.
46:01
Speaker 1: And I thought, this is why true crime is not
46:03
Speaker 1: so true anymore. But interestingly, within all that bullshit, there
46:08
Speaker 1: was one true confession that he had killed Sammy the
46:11
Speaker 1: Turk on the 12th of June, 1987. He'd got off
46:15
Speaker 1: on self-defence, but I think as Rod Porter.
46:17
Speaker 2: Will tell you, it was cold-blooded murder.
46:20
Speaker 1: And inside Mark's psychopathic, kind of self-aggrandising attitude, there was
46:29
Speaker 1: a hint of truth that he'd murdered this Sammy the
46:34
Speaker 1: Turk and robbed him of several thousand dollars and gotten
46:39
Speaker 1: away with it, more or less.
46:40
Speaker 2: And so in his dying breath, he decided.
46:44
Speaker 1: to Fessa and tell this story within the 60 minutes rubbish.
46:49
Speaker 2: And a couple of weeks later, he was dead.
46:51
Speaker 1: And so, but those other murders still remain unsolved and
46:57
Speaker 1: they will never be solved because Mark Reed simply did
47:00
Speaker 1: not do them. When we come back next time, you'll
47:05
Speaker 1: hear from Daniel Saunders, whose story has been immortalised in
47:09
Speaker 1: the Glitch podcast, also produced by Podshape, the best true
47:13
Speaker 1: crime house on the planet. In the meantime, if you
47:16
Speaker 1: have a crime to report, please call Crime Stoppers on 1-800-333-000.
47:21
Speaker 1: Or you can email me at adamshandwriter at gmail.com. And
47:26
Speaker 1: you can also contact me if you'd like me to
47:28
Speaker 1: come to your town to tell more true crime stories.
47:30
Speaker 2: I've got a million.
47:32
Speaker 1: And you can also join the Real Crime community by
47:35
Speaker 1: following and subscribing to my page on Facebook.
47:38
Speaker 2: The link is in the show notes.
47:40
Speaker 1: This has been Adam Shand on the road for real crime.
47:42
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening to this episode and
47:50
Speaker 2: supporting this story.
47:51
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47:54
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47:57
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48:01
Speaker 2: More than 10 million Australians listen to podcasts each week.
48:05
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48:08
Speaker 1: there's a link to reach out in the show notes
48:10
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