Latest / Real Crime with Adam Shand / Inside Operation Afghan: Behind the Griffith Mafia | Peter Kos

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Inside Operation Afghan: Behind the Griffith Mafia | Peter Kos · Real Crime with Adam Shand

• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Apote production.
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: Welcome to Real Crime with Adam Shand, I'm your host
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Adam Shand. Operation Afghan was an undercover operation by Victoria
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Police in the mid nineteen nineties. The took down Antonio Romeo,
• 0:26
  Speaker 2: a rising member of the Calabrian mafia in Griffith, New
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: South Wales. Romeo did eight years jail for conspiring to
• 0:33
  Speaker 2: import cannabis. But if he thought he was going back
• 0:36
  Speaker 2: to business after his stretch, he was wrong.
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: In July two thousand and two, six weeks after getting
• 0:42
  Speaker 3: out of jail, Antonio Romeo was taken out by a
• 0:45
  Speaker 3: sniper from long range while pruning peach trees in his
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: family's orchard.
• 0:51
  Speaker 2: To understand why this happened, you have to delve into
• 0:54
  Speaker 2: the undercover operation that took down his empire, and that's
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: been told through a successful book, Infiltration, written by former
• 1:02
  Speaker 2: operation member Colin McLaren.
• 1:05
  Speaker 3: Former Detective Colin McLaren's bestseller Infiltration detailed how he posed
• 1:10
  Speaker 3: as art dealer Cole Goodwin to penetrate the Griffith mafia.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: My guest today, retired Detective Senior Sergeant Peter Coss, who
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: ran the operation, has written his own account of Operation Afghan,
• 1:23
  Speaker 2: McLaren and his pretend brother, under cover cop Damien Marritt,
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  Speaker 2: did an amazing job, but there were others involved. Let's
• 1:31
  Speaker 2: start by trying to understand what this operation was all
• 1:33
  Speaker 2: about and who the targets were. Peter Coss, Welcome to
• 1:37
  Speaker 2: the show. What was Operation Afghan all about? All?
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  Speaker 4: Operation Afghan was the next part of a series of
• 1:46
  Speaker 4: earlier operations. I was working at the Drug Squad and
• 1:50
  Speaker 4: the Drug Squad established a task force called the Rover
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  Speaker 4: Task Force, which was a joint task force between Victoria
• 1:56
  Speaker 4: Police and the National Crime Authority and we were all
• 1:59
  Speaker 4: made members of the National Crime Authory so we could
• 2:01
  Speaker 4: use their powers. And it was run separately from the
• 2:05
  Speaker 4: Drug Squad in a separate secure office, and our task
• 2:11
  Speaker 4: was to investigate it tea an organized crime and determine
• 2:15
  Speaker 4: the extent of it and that sort of thing. So
• 2:17
  Speaker 4: the NCAA had set up a number of or identified
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: a number of targets for investigation and we began on
• 2:26
  Speaker 4: those targets. An early operation we did was targeting the
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: Miroatore family, Alfonso Mauriture, Yes, Olfonso Mirotare and Vince Murrature.
• 2:36
  Speaker 4: And as a result of that operation and we were
• 2:39
  Speaker 4: starting at the bottom. We're looking at low level drug dealers.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: Here.
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  Speaker 4: We ran an undercover operation on Vince Mirature that led
• 2:47
  Speaker 4: us to his supplier of what he was, a low
• 2:51
  Speaker 4: level cannabis dealer, So it led us to his supply
• 2:55
  Speaker 4: who was dealing not in ounces and grams, that he
• 2:58
  Speaker 4: was dealing in like pounds and kilos. So once we'd
• 3:01
  Speaker 4: made that connection, we'd moved up the tree. We left
• 3:05
  Speaker 4: in slone and we started looking at this other bloke
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  Speaker 4: who I will call mister Valencia. Mister Valencia, we worked
• 3:12
  Speaker 4: on him for fairwhile, and these operations, these operations prior
• 3:16
  Speaker 4: to that, we came under the heading of our Operation Reactor.
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: So we then to come up with these names.
• 3:24
  Speaker 4: Yeah, well you know, you can choose your name sometimes
• 3:27
  Speaker 4: and other times they're given to you. Interestingly enough, the
• 3:30
  Speaker 4: Rover Task Force was called Rover because the National Crime
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  Speaker 4: Authority's name for investigating own organized crime was Operation Cerberus.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: The three headed dog.
• 3:42
  Speaker 4: Vadi's Yeah, so all our jobs were meant to be
• 3:46
  Speaker 4: named after dog. So we were the Rover Task Force,
• 3:49
  Speaker 4: hence Operation Afghan Lad on Afghan Dog. We worked on
• 3:53
  Speaker 4: mister Valencia for a while and mister Valencia. We established
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  Speaker 4: that he was being supplied his cannabis from his Italian
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  Speaker 4: friends in Griffith.
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  Speaker 2: In New South Wales. When did you first identify Antonio
• 4:08
  Speaker 2: Romeo as a suspect.
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  Speaker 4: We identified Tonio Romeo first as a suspect as a
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: result of our work on mister Valencia, and he was
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: identified around about the September October of nineteen ninety two.
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  Speaker 4: So there were three teams on the task force. Each
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  Speaker 4: team had a sergeant, a detective sergeant and a crew
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  Speaker 4: of three or four detectives, and our hierarchy about that
• 4:29
  Speaker 4: we had one senior sergeant. In the end, it started
• 4:31
  Speaker 4: with two book we had one senior sergeant and then
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  Speaker 4: we had a chief inspector, Rod Collins.
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  Speaker 2: Okay, let's set the scene here and where Romeo fits in.
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  Speaker 2: We're talking about the Griffith Mafia, the Calabrian Indra Guita
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  Speaker 2: as people call them, and they were the nucleus of
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  Speaker 2: people that I guess Donald McKay was complaining about in
• 4:49
  Speaker 2: the seventies, which possibly led to his abduction and murder
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  Speaker 2: in nineteen seventy seven. But we're now seeing a changing
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  Speaker 2: of the guard. The old Giovanni surgery Joe, who was
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: probably the nominal head of the group down there. He
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  Speaker 2: was now giving way to Antonio Romeo, who was from
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  Speaker 2: Platy and he married into the family.
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  Speaker 1: I believe that's right.
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  Speaker 4: So in Griffith at the time, because well prior to
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  Speaker 4: Colin arriving, I'd been to Griffith. I made contact with
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  Speaker 4: the analysts at the Griffith Police station, and also I
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  Speaker 4: made contact with the organized crime unit in Sydney. And
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  Speaker 4: there were four crime families operating or known to be
• 5:29
  Speaker 4: operating out of Griffith. One of them was headed by,
• 5:32
  Speaker 4: as you said, Giovanni Sergei, and he was becoming an
• 5:35
  Speaker 4: old man and his daughter Maria had married a guy
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  Speaker 4: called Antonio Romeo. So Antonio Romeo was the son in
• 5:43
  Speaker 4: law of old mister Sergi. Mister Sergei or Giovanni Sergei
• 5:47
  Speaker 4: had his own sons, but Romeo was the guy who
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: fit the bill as the guy to next in.
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  Speaker 1: Line to take over.
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  Speaker 2: Why do you think.
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  Speaker 4: I don't know exactly why, but he probably was the
• 6:00
  Speaker 4: sort of guy that had the smarts about him. Maybe
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  Speaker 4: maybe he was all that way incline then Sergey's own sons.
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  Speaker 2: And he'd also been born in Platy, that's right, and
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  Speaker 2: one would assume he had some connections back to the
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  Speaker 2: main headquarters of Indida Guita, the Callabria of mafia.
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  Speaker 1: That's right.
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  Speaker 4: So just by the way, on the at rover, we
• 6:21
  Speaker 4: never actually referred to them as mafia or in drink.
• 6:24
  Speaker 4: It was always attained organized crime. But those words pop
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: up quite often in Colin's book. With what I'm doing,
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: those words really appear.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Well.
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  Speaker 2: I think you're right, because when I read your book
• 6:35
  Speaker 2: and seen all the other material on this, I mean,
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  Speaker 2: you'd have to say that it's small m mafia rather
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: than big m because these are local entrepreneurial groups that
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: don't seem to have any day to day connection. It's
• 6:47
  Speaker 2: more like a franchise operation rather than the reconnection.
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  Speaker 4: Call it the poor man's version of the mafia, right
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  Speaker 4: in a sense, if we can put it that way.
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  Speaker 2: We've identified Romeo as the main suspect, and at this
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: time Victoria police and the NCAA was getting interested in
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: the Italian organized crime, as you call it, and you
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: were looking at the extent of the tentacles there. This
• 7:07
  Speaker 2: is also the post Mackay world as well.
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: That's right.
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  Speaker 2: What were you looking for in that investigation.
• 7:12
  Speaker 4: Well, we're looking for evidence of criminal activity. I suppose
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: it didn't matter what sort of criminal activity that was.
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: Whether it would be drug trafficking, which was their main
• 7:23
  Speaker 4: source of income, mainly trafficking in large quantities of cannabis,
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: but as the job moved on, they were definitely dealing
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: in cocaine as well. It could have identified other things
• 7:35
  Speaker 4: such as murders because leading up to this in Melbourne
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  Speaker 4: you had the fruit and vegetable market murders going on,
• 7:42
  Speaker 4: Mirrotare murtures. Alfonse had been well, he hadn't been shot yet.
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  Speaker 4: That was still come during that That happened while we
• 7:50
  Speaker 4: were investigating, but it had a number of murders going
• 7:53
  Speaker 4: back over a decade or two with the teams trying
• 7:56
  Speaker 4: to control the fruit and vegetable market at in footscrape.
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  Speaker 4: In other parts of the country you had things such
• 8:02
  Speaker 4: as the Donald mckaye incident, and there were other crimes
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  Speaker 4: being committed throughout Australia anyway.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think what was obvious in those days
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  Speaker 2: it was sort of quaint in a way because you're
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: looking back at the era when there was large outdoor
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  Speaker 2: crops of cannabis, being grown in the Griffith area and
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  Speaker 2: this was incredibly successful and financially lucrative for these four families.
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  Speaker 2: So you start to see the growth in the power
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  Speaker 2: of these families and the ability to act lawlessly, to
• 8:33
  Speaker 2: rub out competitors, to corrupt politicians. That was always talked
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  Speaker 2: that the Griffith Mafia had corrupted ol Grasby, for instance,
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  Speaker 2: the Ministry of Immigration and through that means had got
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: crooks into Australia. So the stakes were pretty high. There.
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  Speaker 2: You are Victoria Police drug squad, You've got virtually no
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  Speaker 2: resources and you think you're going to take on the
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  Speaker 2: Calabrian mafia. You had a bit of h bit of gumption.
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  Speaker 4: A bit of gumption, but it was sort of like
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: this is just another job.
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  Speaker 1: We took it on.
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  Speaker 4: It was something different, something special, and our resources were
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: increased slightly. We had our own dedicated team of dogs,
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  Speaker 4: dogs playing surviolence operatives, people who follow you around in cars,
• 9:14
  Speaker 4: on foot, that sort of thing. At the time, in
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: Victoria police didn't have the ability to intercept mobile telephone calls,
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  Speaker 4: so mobile phones were a new thing when the task
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  Speaker 4: force started. We were still all using pages. Mobile phones
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  Speaker 4: were something that you found in your car basically bolted
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  Speaker 4: down in the console area. They weren't the sort of
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  Speaker 4: thing you carried around on your person. But a year
• 9:39
  Speaker 4: or so down the track, when Afghan started, which was
• 9:42
  Speaker 4: around about January or February of ninety three, mobile phones
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  Speaker 4: started to come in and they were the big bricks
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  Speaker 4: that people used to carry around.
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  Speaker 1: You might recall those.
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  Speaker 4: But more importantly, Victoria Police didn't have the capacity to
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  Speaker 4: intercept mobile phones at that time. Our special operations could
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: intercept landlines, but not mobile phones, but the National Crime
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  Speaker 4: Authority could and they could do it through their Sydney office.
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  Speaker 4: So we actually had Tony Rameo's phone off which is
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: intercepted prior to McClaren actually arriving at the Task force,
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  Speaker 4: right yeah, and we had a couple of other phones
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  Speaker 4: off as well.
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  Speaker 2: Some backgrounds needed here because the picture you painted, the
• 10:29
  Speaker 2: resources and the technology and so forth. That it's a
• 10:32
  Speaker 2: wonder you caught any drug crooks at all. I mean,
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: and you did pretty well. But there was also a
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  Speaker 2: decision by Victoria Police to become a bit more entrepreneurial,
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: shall we say, in this era, and to do things
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  Speaker 2: you hadn't done before. For instance, Operation Chances had happened
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  Speaker 2: before this where you were delivering precursor chemicals into the
• 10:51
  Speaker 2: underworld through informers to now bust these clan labs as
• 10:56
  Speaker 2: they were called back in the day, because you had
• 10:58
  Speaker 2: an explosion of drugs in Melbourne at that time. So
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Victoria Police was now getting more entrepreneurial. I've got some
• 11:04
  Speaker 2: issues with some of the these methods. I have to
• 11:05
  Speaker 2: tell you where this discussion before, because I think it
• 11:08
  Speaker 2: does fall into the trapment in some ways.
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  Speaker 4: I think it depends how you look at it. Operation Chances.
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: That was a job that my crew ran in ninety one.
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: I actually put the broof of evidence together for that.
• 11:19
  Speaker 4: We ticked off about certainly in drug traffickers. Out of
• 11:22
  Speaker 4: that one look that started not so much providing chemicals
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: through informants. We knew that certain biking groups were buying
• 11:32
  Speaker 4: precursor chemicals directly from the chemical companies, and the chemical
• 11:36
  Speaker 4: companies were aware of it, and one of them contacted
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: our office and said, we've got a certain bloke buying chemicals.
• 11:44
  Speaker 4: We think he's probably making it fedamines. At the time,
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: if you bought a chemical which was a precursor for
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: making amphetamines, you had to sign an end user's certificate
• 11:54
  Speaker 4: saying to the company, I'm using this for lawful purposes.
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  Speaker 4: The Bikis didn't care what they signed, as long as
• 12:00
  Speaker 4: they got their chemicals. They would sign the bit of
• 12:02
  Speaker 4: paper and that was it. There was no account for it. Obviously,
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: legitimate businesses would sign them, and they could account for
• 12:08
  Speaker 4: it by making aspro and all sorts of things. So
• 12:12
  Speaker 4: when we found out about that, we thought, well, let's
• 12:14
  Speaker 4: go down to the factory. Next time they ring up
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  Speaker 4: and come in. Make sure you get them to come
• 12:18
  Speaker 4: in at a particular time. You tell us when that is,
• 12:21
  Speaker 4: and we'll see what happens. And you're hiding behind the
• 12:23
  Speaker 4: shelves there as they're coming in the Yeah.
• 12:26
  Speaker 1: So we would go down there, and we had a
• 12:28
  Speaker 1: guy in our.
• 12:29
  Speaker 4: Office whose nickname was Itchy, and Itchi was a bit
• 12:32
  Speaker 4: of a rough look consider character. He would act as
• 12:36
  Speaker 4: the storman. So we would hide in the storeroom where
• 12:39
  Speaker 4: all the shelves and the chemicals were kept. The bike
• 12:41
  Speaker 4: he would come into the storeroom and he would pay
• 12:44
  Speaker 4: the money over the counter to Ichi, and Ichi would
• 12:46
  Speaker 4: supply them with his chemicals. Then we would follow them
• 12:50
  Speaker 4: and try and find out what they were then doing
• 12:52
  Speaker 4: with those chemicals, trying to locate their mphedoma labs, and
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: that's the way we did it in Operation Chances. We
• 12:59
  Speaker 4: did that for a while, but then these chemical companies
• 13:03
  Speaker 4: are like in the outer Southeast, and we were located
• 13:06
  Speaker 4: in Russell Strait, so sometimes we get the call. By
• 13:09
  Speaker 4: the time we get down there, the crooks are coming
• 13:11
  Speaker 4: early and nicked off with the chemicals. So to control that,
• 13:16
  Speaker 4: we suggested to the two main chemical companies that were
• 13:20
  Speaker 4: supplying them, we can't control these deliveries or whatever. So
• 13:23
  Speaker 4: what we want you to do is you need to
• 13:25
  Speaker 4: tell these guys you can't buy them anymore from us
• 13:28
  Speaker 4: because the government's cracking down on the end user agreements
• 13:32
  Speaker 4: and that sort of thing.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: But you know a guy who's a broker.
• 13:35
  Speaker 4: You tell a bike is throughing this particular bloke, and
• 13:38
  Speaker 4: he'll be able to supply with whatever you like. So
• 13:41
  Speaker 4: the bloke they then started ringing was a guy in
• 13:43
  Speaker 4: our office called Wayne Strawn. He acted as our undercover.
• 13:49
  Speaker 4: Whenever they wanted chemicals, Rain would be interacting with them.
• 13:52
  Speaker 4: He would say, oh, look, they're after a bit of
• 13:54
  Speaker 4: me curate chloride. So we would then go and buy
• 13:56
  Speaker 4: mecurate chloride from the chemical company. We'd multiply the price
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: by three to make it look like it was a
• 14:02
  Speaker 4: black market sort of figure and would sell it to
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: him for that price. So, for the first time, probably
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: in the drug squad history, we were not only selling
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: chemicals to crooks, but we were making money. You found
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: the right business, We joined the right business now in
• 14:20
  Speaker 4: the hands of the right people, and which we were
• 14:23
  Speaker 4: honest and detectives and all the rest.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: It worked fine until well, that's some years later.
• 14:30
  Speaker 2: You know what I'm talking about.
• 14:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I know what you're talking about.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: That's Wayne Strawn.
• 14:33
  Speaker 4: That's Wayne Strawn. But when we ran that job with Wayne,
• 14:36
  Speaker 4: and Wayne did a brilliant job. Is he undercover on
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: that he was a very good undercover operative. We busted
• 14:42
  Speaker 4: two chemical labs and all the chemicals that we gave
• 14:46
  Speaker 4: them were either used to make amphetamines which we seized,
• 14:50
  Speaker 4: or they were at the labs when we busted them,
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: so nothing got out and into the community.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Don't get me wrong, I think it was highly effective
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: what you did very successful as well, But I think
• 15:00
  Speaker 2: there was an element of intolerable and Wayne Strawn fell
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: to that. He ended up doing his deals on the
• 15:05
  Speaker 2: side and was busted for that and got a very
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: long jail sentence, and you, I think, were shocked because
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: this guy was an absolute star.
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: Well, Wayne Strawn was the golden head boy basically of
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: the Drug Squad when I was. I was there from
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: ninety to ninety seven, and after we did Operation Chances,
• 15:23
  Speaker 4: I was shanghaid off onto the Raver Task Force because
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: we had done a fairly good jobs at our time.
• 15:29
  Speaker 4: Was sent to the Rover Task Force after I had
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: left at some stage in period in time, and I'm
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: not sure when they established the chemical desk at the
• 15:39
  Speaker 4: Drug Squad. By the time I finished on the Task
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: Force three years later, the chemical desk was running and
• 15:44
  Speaker 4: that was being operated by Wayinstrawn. I left in ninety seven,
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: and I believe Wayne's issues started sometime after that.
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: That's right, and tragic fall from grace. But like I say,
• 15:57
  Speaker 2: this was an era where Victoria Police was being innovative
• 16:00
  Speaker 2: and finding ways because the crooks had huge amounts of money,
• 16:03
  Speaker 2: they were bold and getting bold, and you had to
• 16:05
  Speaker 2: do something. So this was a proactive strategy and so
• 16:08
  Speaker 2: Chances And it's the chemical diversion death that came after
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: that I think had the hallmark of that. So when
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: it comes to Operation Afghan, that same spirits brought to
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: bear where you think we're going to go undercover here
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: and try to encourage these Griffith mafia to start to
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: do business with us so we can bust them. So
• 16:28
  Speaker 2: what were the objectives of that? Because you had McLaren
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: coming in posing as Cole Goodwin art dealer. He had
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: one of the dogs so called Judy. We won't go
• 16:39
  Speaker 2: to her surname, but and they went into Griffith. What
• 16:42
  Speaker 2: was their mission? But they didn't have a mission. Ah,
• 16:47
  Speaker 2: they didn't have a mission. Just going back a step.
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: Our mantra at the time was if it's legal, we'll
• 16:53
  Speaker 2: do it. If it's immoral, that's a matter of for
• 16:56
  Speaker 2: other people. How often was that line crossed in your
• 16:59
  Speaker 2: opinion where you felt this is immoral?
• 17:01
  Speaker 4: Well, the moral question was you shouldn't be supplying chemicals
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: to crooks to make them fetterment because well, you're not
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: necessarily encouraging them because they're going to get them from
• 17:14
  Speaker 4: someone else anyway. So that was our thinking that if
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: we don't sell it to them, which is morally wrong,
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: if we're trying to set them up, but they just
• 17:23
  Speaker 4: be getting it from someone else, So why not get
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: in there yourself and use that line of investigation to
• 17:32
  Speaker 4: bust their labs? Fair enough, and I think there was
• 17:35
  Speaker 4: nothing wrong with it. That might be a bit hard
• 17:38
  Speaker 4: for some people to believe that the way in which
• 17:40
  Speaker 4: we did it, it was very effective in identifying and
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: fedamine labs and locking up crooks, which is what we meant.
• 17:48
  Speaker 2: I think was many defense lawyers, crooks, and a few
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: civil libertarians had a problem with it. But I mean
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: the same spirit was brought into operation Afghanis and so
• 17:56
  Speaker 2: Cole Goodwin and he is offside Beyonce Judy posing as
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: an art dealer going into Griffith. Now they didn't have
• 18:02
  Speaker 2: a mission explain that, no, So we had a number
• 18:05
  Speaker 2: of things going on. Antonio Ramo and his cohorts. They
• 18:08
  Speaker 2: were attempting to set up a very large indoor cannabis
• 18:11
  Speaker 2: crop in the north of Melbourne. They were involved in
• 18:15
  Speaker 2: another cannabis crop that was on a farm. They were
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: involved in setting up another cannabis crop in a factory
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: in the north of Melbourne. And we were aware that
• 18:25
  Speaker 2: they were fixing horse racers and all sorts of things
• 18:28
  Speaker 2: were going on. So we wanted to catch them basically
• 18:31
  Speaker 2: doing what they were doing, and that was trafficking in cannabis.
• 18:35
  Speaker 4: I mean mister Valencia. When we busted him, he driven
• 18:39
  Speaker 4: to Griffith to buy fifty oranges and some puppies and
• 18:43
  Speaker 4: a couple of puppies.
• 18:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, oranges was clearly a code for cannabis. What was
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: the puppy code for?
• 18:48
  Speaker 4: Well, you'd be surprised. But after he brought his fifty oranges,
• 18:51
  Speaker 4: which was fifty pounds of cannabis, that's the level that
• 18:54
  Speaker 4: the Griffith bikes were dealing in. On his way back
• 18:57
  Speaker 4: home he picked up two puppies. When we intercepted him
• 19:00
  Speaker 4: on the highway, we were very keen to find out
• 19:03
  Speaker 4: what the two puppies were, and they were, in fact
• 19:05
  Speaker 4: us two dogs, two dogs, So I suppose we were
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: trying to catch them at what they were already doing,
• 19:13
  Speaker 4: which was trafficking in large amounts of cannabis. Everyone's got
• 19:17
  Speaker 4: their own opinion on whether cannabis is good, bad, or otherwise.
• 19:20
  Speaker 4: As a detective, as an investigator, as a law enforcement officer,
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: it's illegal. You can't traffick in it. So if it's illegal,
• 19:28
  Speaker 4: it's not up for me as a police officer say, oh, look,
• 19:31
  Speaker 4: it's only cannabis, don't worry about it. I'm there to
• 19:34
  Speaker 4: uphold the law and we don't make the law. The
• 19:36
  Speaker 4: government does.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: And I think public opinion was swinging that direction that
• 19:41
  Speaker 2: this is a victimless crime and so forth. But let's
• 19:43
  Speaker 2: look at the Italian organized crime operation. It's involved in
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: extortion and murder and race fixing, assault, all kinds of
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: things going on, and the cannabis money is the fuel
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: for all that.
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 19:56
  Speaker 4: And they were getting anywhere from three thousand and five
• 19:59
  Speaker 4: thousand dollars a pound, so you know, the fifty oranges
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: that mister Valencia bought was worth anywhere from one hundred
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: and fifty thousand to two hundred and fifty thousand dollars
• 20:09
  Speaker 4: depending on the quality of the cannabis. So that's the
• 20:12
  Speaker 4: sort of money we're talking about. Of course, that also
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: they're not paying any tax on that. There's no benefit
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: to society. The only society that it's benefiting is their
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: own little the honored society. Yeah, there aren't not a
• 20:26
  Speaker 4: little honest society.
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: But it's also Griffith was booming on the back of this,
• 20:30
  Speaker 2: wasn't it resolutely. I mean your hotel's, restaurants, developments, houses that,
• 20:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, the whole area was benefiting economically.
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, it was.
• 20:38
  Speaker 4: I mean you would drive to Griffith going up through
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: Country Victoria, across the river at Token Wall and you
• 20:43
  Speaker 4: go through those towns, it was like passing through an
• 20:46
  Speaker 4: old western town where you got the tumbleweeds coming down
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: the main street and half the shops they've got newspaper
• 20:53
  Speaker 4: stuck on the wind borders up there. Yeah, because like
• 20:55
  Speaker 4: those little towns weren't doing too well. Drive down the
• 20:59
  Speaker 4: main street of Banner Strait and it was like being
• 21:01
  Speaker 4: a like on straight.
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: It was.
• 21:02
  Speaker 4: The place was pumping because not only did they have
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: they were growing crops because of the irrigation. They had citrus,
• 21:11
  Speaker 4: they had other fruit trees, they had the grapes, a
• 21:13
  Speaker 4: lot of wine up there to Borutley's. If one crop
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: wasn't doing well, if the wheat on the outskirts of
• 21:18
  Speaker 4: town wasn't doing well, or the rice wasn't, then the
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: vines were growing or the citrus was going. But there
• 21:23
  Speaker 4: was always money in the town, including the other crop
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: that was being grown, and that was pumping a lot
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: of money into town too. Especially with building mansions, and
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: some people didn't seem to work too much, but they
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: always had plenty of money to splash around the place,
• 21:39
  Speaker 4: so there was a lot of money going around.
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: Good Let's get back to Cole Goodwin and his mission.
• 21:43
  Speaker 2: That wasn't quite a mission. How did it come about?
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So without really telling anyone, Cole took it upon
• 21:49
  Speaker 4: himself to go to Griffith. So he ostensibly wanted to
• 21:54
  Speaker 4: go to Griffith to have a bit of a look see,
• 21:56
  Speaker 4: because he was one of the sergeants on the task force.
• 21:59
  Speaker 4: Between the three sergeants they would run the jobs, and
• 22:03
  Speaker 4: he was very interested in the job that we had
• 22:05
  Speaker 4: with all these other things. So he decided to get
• 22:08
  Speaker 4: himself familiar with the place. He'd already been up to
• 22:10
  Speaker 4: Sydney to listen to the NCAA phones and look at
• 22:13
  Speaker 4: the set up there, and then he wanted to go
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: to Griffith and look at the set up there. So
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: he went to Griffith and he took duty with him
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: and Peter. They were both dogs. They had followed mister
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: Valencia to Griffith and they knew the location or whereabouts
• 22:27
  Speaker 4: of the farm where the cannabis had been picked up from.
• 22:31
  Speaker 4: They didn't know the exact farm location, but they sort
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: of knew the vicinity. So he wanted to go up
• 22:35
  Speaker 4: there and have a look himself, right, That's what he said.
• 22:39
  Speaker 4: That was the purpose of his trip. What he actually
• 22:42
  Speaker 4: did was he went up there with what he says
• 22:46
  Speaker 4: he made up on the spot that he was drinking
• 22:49
  Speaker 4: at the Workingman's cub or the ex Serviceman's Club, I
• 22:52
  Speaker 4: should say, after having a look around Griffith one night
• 22:56
  Speaker 4: and he saw these Italian people, et cetera, et cetera.
• 23:00
  Speaker 4: He got friendly with a lady there who was interacting
• 23:03
  Speaker 4: with them. You call her Pan called her Pam, so
• 23:06
  Speaker 4: she's not of a tea and heritage. They got talking
• 23:09
  Speaker 4: to Pam and at the end of that night, when
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: they were leaving the Exes which is the ex Serviceman's
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: Club he is known as the Exies, Pam basically identified
• 23:21
  Speaker 4: who these bikes were to McLaren and Judy and Peter,
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: and these bikes she identified was Romeo, his brother Rocco,
• 23:32
  Speaker 4: and he's what we would later call his.
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: First lieutenant, Rosario Trimbaldi.
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: He didn't speak to them, wasn't introduced to them, but
• 23:40
  Speaker 4: they sort of acknowledged him on the way out because
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: he was with Pam. It went on from there. They
• 23:46
  Speaker 4: went and had a few more drinks with Pam or Square,
• 23:49
  Speaker 4: and then they told Pam they'd come back in another
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: couple of weeks. At that time he told her that
• 23:54
  Speaker 4: he was an art dealer. These name was Cole Goodwin,
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: Judy was his girlfriend, and Peter was just a friend.
• 24:00
  Speaker 4: So he set it up then. So to my mind,
• 24:04
  Speaker 4: he either made that up on the spot or he
• 24:07
  Speaker 4: had a preconceived plan with all these names and identities.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: Already worked out.
• 24:14
  Speaker 4: But I can't tell you whether that's true or not,
• 24:16
  Speaker 4: because unlike most COVID sort of investigations, you do like
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: that he wasn't wearing a wire or there was no
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: recording of any of this interaction.
• 24:27
  Speaker 2: And normally this would be the way you do it.
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: You would have back up, because this is a dangerous moment.
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: You're bowling up to some very heavy organized crime figures
• 24:38
  Speaker 2: with a pretext. And I've got to tell you, when
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: I look at the alias and the whole thing, I mean,
• 24:43
  Speaker 2: they're supposed to be professionals. Why did they fall for this?
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: Because if someone came to me and said, oh, I'm
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: an art dealer, that and the other. I know it's
• 24:51
  Speaker 2: pre the Internet, but surely a couple of phone calls
• 24:53
  Speaker 2: to Melbourne or Candor or somewhere in the art world
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: would have established there ain't no Cole Goodwin and you're
• 24:59
  Speaker 2: probably talking to an undercover copper. So I mean, for
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: a start, they sound like they're pretty soft targets. Really yeah.
• 25:05
  Speaker 4: I mean, I've often said all crooks are dumb, and
• 25:09
  Speaker 4: there's the reason for that is because they don't think
• 25:12
  Speaker 4: of things like doing your due diligence like we it's
• 25:15
  Speaker 4: belted into us. You do your due diligence on people
• 25:18
  Speaker 4: that you've met and people you're working on and that
• 25:21
  Speaker 4: sort of thing. You need to know exactly who it is.
• 25:24
  Speaker 4: But these guys are crooks. I think one didn't have
• 25:26
  Speaker 4: that sort of background.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: Well apparently not, but I'm sure they got it after
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: this because I guess one of the key attractions to
• 25:32
  Speaker 2: them was that Cole Goodwin was offering them a way
• 25:35
  Speaker 2: to launder their money, which is the perennial problem for
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: the drug crook, actually getting rid of your cash. So
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: he was saying, I can do some funny business through
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: art sales and things where you can hide your money
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: and wash it. And this must have been tremendously appealing.
• 25:50
  Speaker 2: I mean, yes, they're not that smart, but I think
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: every crook has their unique selling point. So I think
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: the plan was well pitched as it were, But I
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: still have to question, and I think this is probably
• 26:01
  Speaker 2: something that contributed to Romeo's ultimate dem eyes that they've
• 26:06
  Speaker 2: been infiltrated so easily.
• 26:08
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and when it came to talking about because Cole
• 26:12
  Speaker 4: bought up the topic of you can use art to
• 26:16
  Speaker 4: hide money that sort of thing. He brought it up
• 26:19
  Speaker 4: in a very surreptitious sort of way. But it wasn't
• 26:22
  Speaker 4: at the first meeting or the second meeting, and probably
• 26:24
  Speaker 4: not at the third meeting. It was some further time
• 26:28
  Speaker 4: down the track that that was brought in. It was
• 26:31
  Speaker 4: just the first number of meetings that they had were
• 26:36
  Speaker 4: basically just dipping your toe in the water and just
• 26:39
  Speaker 4: getting to bump into them and know them a little bit,
• 26:42
  Speaker 4: just general conversation with them, but using PAM as a tool,
• 26:47
  Speaker 4: I suppose a reference really yeah, as a reference point
• 26:50
  Speaker 4: for them to get in and talk to them. And
• 26:53
  Speaker 4: then they just happened to turn up when the attens
• 26:56
  Speaker 4: were available to talk to.
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: Yeah, so they accept Cole and Judy into their circle.
• 27:01
  Speaker 2: It develops to the point where you need to set
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: up a Melbourne head quarters for Cole. How was that done?
• 27:08
  Speaker 4: He had gone ahead and taken himself out of the
• 27:12
  Speaker 4: office basically as an investigator, and he was now an
• 27:15
  Speaker 4: undercover operative. Right Generally, when if you're setting something up
• 27:19
  Speaker 4: like this, you would have a backstory already done. The
• 27:22
  Speaker 4: backstory wasn't done because we didn't know he was going
• 27:25
  Speaker 4: to go out and start this undercover part of the operation.
• 27:30
  Speaker 4: So what happened was we had to build a backstory.
• 27:33
  Speaker 4: We had to get him bank accounts, we had to
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: get him a driver's license, all sorts of things to
• 27:38
  Speaker 4: legitimize his persona as Cole Goodwin Art dealer. Having that,
• 27:42
  Speaker 4: we decided that he needed a house or some place
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: in Melbourne where he could bring his Italians friend to
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: because we knew they'd come to Melbourne all the time.
• 27:52
  Speaker 4: I mean we'd had the phones office some time at
• 27:54
  Speaker 4: this stage, probably well over six months. So Colin found
• 27:58
  Speaker 4: a place in East Melbourne and it's just a very
• 28:02
  Speaker 4: small one bedroom unit, nothing too flashy, and it took
• 28:05
  Speaker 4: us about three or four weeks to set that unit up.
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: So first thing we had to do was put furniture
• 28:11
  Speaker 4: in there. So we had to organize furniture. Fortunately we
• 28:15
  Speaker 4: had the NCAA financially backing us. If we were getting
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: furniture off the Victoria Police, they'd probably throw a few
• 28:21
  Speaker 4: deck chairs in there that they might buy a second hand.
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: But we had some fairly good looking furniture put in there.
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: Well, there were limits because you ended up putting some
• 28:29
  Speaker 2: of your unwanted wedding presents.
• 28:31
  Speaker 4: Into that, right, Yeah, So we all bought in stuff
• 28:34
  Speaker 4: from our own homes. I went with Colin to EA's
• 28:36
  Speaker 4: house in Hawthorne. He had got a number of paintings
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: and bits and paces out of there. We moved all
• 28:41
  Speaker 4: that into the unit. While we were doing that, we're
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: also putting in listening devices and video devices so it
• 28:48
  Speaker 4: could be turned off and turned on when we wanted
• 28:50
  Speaker 4: it to. So anyone who went into that unit we
• 28:53
  Speaker 4: recorded everything. Because being a one bedroom unit, the living
• 28:58
  Speaker 4: area in the kitchen were virtually the one sort of
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: room and it was just the bedroom elsewhere, So anytime
• 29:05
  Speaker 4: the crooks came or anyone came, they could be recorded.
• 29:08
  Speaker 4: But it was just a front, and we knew when
• 29:11
  Speaker 4: Colin would have to be there because we had the
• 29:14
  Speaker 4: phones off.
• 29:14
  Speaker 1: We knew exactly where the crooks were all the time.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: So now the infrastructure is all in place. You played
• 29:18
  Speaker 2: catch up, Cole, Goodwin and Duty are established and now
• 29:22
  Speaker 2: things are moving towards encouraging them to do business. Let's Cole,
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: what were the planned operations that came out of this. Now,
• 29:30
  Speaker 2: this rapport that had been.
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: Created well over a period of about five months, Colin
• 29:35
  Speaker 4: Judy had been engaging with them, going out for dinner
• 29:38
  Speaker 4: in Melbourne, bumping into them in Griffith, talking.
• 29:41
  Speaker 1: A little bit about this, little bit about that.
• 29:43
  Speaker 4: Then they got on to Cole's idea of how you
• 29:46
  Speaker 4: could make money out of investing in art. So Washington
• 29:48
  Speaker 4: laundering your money, laundering your money with most drug squad jobs,
• 29:52
  Speaker 4: you're in there within one or two meetings, you're talking
• 29:54
  Speaker 4: drugs with low level drug dealers, meetium level drug dealers,
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: that sort of thing, because that's what you're after with
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: these guys. You had to go slowly, slowly, because cold
• 30:05
  Speaker 4: and have a drug dealing background. He was an art dealer,
• 30:08
  Speaker 4: so he come up with this idea that he had
• 30:11
  Speaker 4: friends in the media, and these friends, you know like drugs.
• 30:16
  Speaker 1: They liked drugs.
• 30:17
  Speaker 4: So at one meeting in the December, they came back
• 30:21
  Speaker 4: after dinner, they went out to a restaurant called Lotchcacheatoria.
• 30:24
  Speaker 4: It was a very interesting group of people meeting there.
• 30:27
  Speaker 4: So that was Colin and Judy and the Griffith Targets
• 30:31
  Speaker 4: with their girlfriends. And then after that they went out
• 30:33
  Speaker 4: for drinks at a bar. And at that bar, Cole
• 30:37
  Speaker 4: mentioned his friends, you know, and he says, oh, you
• 30:39
  Speaker 4: know what they're like, you know, sex, drugs, rock and roll.
• 30:42
  Speaker 4: From that initial conversation, the talk of cocaine and drugs
• 30:47
  Speaker 4: came up, particularly cocaine, and straightaway Trimbali took the bait
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: and said, if you need cocaine, I can get you
• 30:56
  Speaker 4: as much as you like. Basically, from that point the
• 30:59
  Speaker 4: investigation turned from a friendly get together meeting up with
• 31:04
  Speaker 4: each other for dinner and whatever too. Basically, we're going
• 31:07
  Speaker 4: to be dealing in drugs from here on.
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: And to cut a long story short, Cole Goodwin ends
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: up buying one hundred and eighty thousand dollars worth of cocaine,
• 31:15
  Speaker 2: which is paid for out of the taxpayer's dollar. How On, earth.
• 31:20
  Speaker 2: Did anyone persuade Victoria Police and the NCAA to come
• 31:23
  Speaker 2: up with one hundred and eighty grand, which you may
• 31:26
  Speaker 2: not see again, to buy cocaine? I might I find
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: that astounding. There was a tone of the times I
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: guess it.
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: Was, I mean shock horror.
• 31:33
  Speaker 4: Normally, if you're buying anything for more than ten thousand dollars,
• 31:36
  Speaker 4: the department didn't want to part with it, so you'd
• 31:38
  Speaker 4: hand over the money and then you would bust them
• 31:40
  Speaker 4: in a buy bust sort of sting. At the time,
• 31:43
  Speaker 4: when we purchased the one killer of cocaine, which costs
• 31:47
  Speaker 4: hundred and eighty thousand dollars plus, we then had to
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: find another five thousand for the driver.
• 31:51
  Speaker 2: And I think the NCAA and the vic cops walked
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: at the five grand almost stross moves the whole thing.
• 31:57
  Speaker 4: Well, look, the total buy money which we had at
• 32:01
  Speaker 4: the drug squad for her annum at that time was
• 32:04
  Speaker 4: just over two hundred thousand dollars, So to say goodbye
• 32:06
  Speaker 4: one hundred and eighty thousand dollars, they weren't really too
• 32:08
  Speaker 4: happy about it, so they stamped up thirty thousand, and
• 32:12
  Speaker 4: the NCAA came up with the other hundred and fifty.
• 32:14
  Speaker 4: At the last minute, the crooks decided someone at the
• 32:17
  Speaker 4: courier that cocaine from Griffith down to Melbourne, and the
• 32:21
  Speaker 4: courier wanted five thousand dollars, which they put on us.
• 32:24
  Speaker 4: And for about two hours there was a lot of
• 32:27
  Speaker 4: hassle between our office and the nca office. Sister, who's
• 32:31
  Speaker 4: going to come up with the other five thousand dollars,
• 32:33
  Speaker 4: you know, But look it was over and done within
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: within a couple of hours. The NCAA came good and
• 32:38
  Speaker 4: we bought that. I photo copied every note at the
• 32:41
  Speaker 4: nca office. Our photo copier was so slow, so we
• 32:45
  Speaker 4: took the money over the NCAA office and they had
• 32:48
  Speaker 4: a photocopyer machine which is almost the size of like
• 32:51
  Speaker 4: a landing or landing craft, you know, like it was
• 32:54
  Speaker 4: just massive and in the blink of an eye it
• 32:56
  Speaker 4: was photo copying the cash as it flowed through. So
• 32:59
  Speaker 4: we photo copied all the serial numbers, none of which
• 33:02
  Speaker 4: actually were ever located ever found any cash that we
• 33:06
  Speaker 4: sees later on, none of them matched the money that
• 33:09
  Speaker 4: we purchased the cake for.
• 33:11
  Speaker 2: And you buy the coke and shock horror, it wasn't
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: quite as pure as had been advertised, was it?
• 33:17
  Speaker 1: No, it was still fairly pure.
• 33:19
  Speaker 4: I think he was saying, oh, you know, it's ninety
• 33:21
  Speaker 4: percent pure, under percent pure. I mean that's just them talking,
• 33:24
  Speaker 4: and I mean Rosario's way of identifying how pure cocaine
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: was was to Licky's finger, dip it in the powder
• 33:33
  Speaker 4: and see how long it took for his tongue to
• 33:36
  Speaker 4: go numb. Obviously, when we buy cocaine, you go, right, well,
• 33:39
  Speaker 4: I want a sample, we want to test it. A
• 33:43
  Speaker 4: sample was taken from the kilo and it was taken
• 33:46
  Speaker 4: to our person who tests it, which we use the
• 33:49
  Speaker 4: forensic labs for that. That went to forensic. They came
• 33:52
  Speaker 4: back and said, yeah, see me off percent pure. So
• 33:54
  Speaker 4: then then we went ahead and made the deal. Now,
• 33:56
  Speaker 4: the reason we let the money run on the cocaine
• 33:59
  Speaker 4: was Cole had already set up in discussion with importing
• 34:03
  Speaker 4: a ton of cannabis from pop New Guinea into Australia.
• 34:07
  Speaker 4: So buying the cocaine only identified two or three of
• 34:11
  Speaker 4: the crew. Organizing an importation on that scale would identify
• 34:15
  Speaker 4: a lot more of his crew. So we wanted the
• 34:17
  Speaker 4: cocaine to go and we were going to bust them
• 34:20
  Speaker 4: on importing the cannabis.
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: Right, fascinating this whole thing. Here are the Griffith mafia
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: living in grass castles down there, supposedly growing all the
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: marijuana and Victoria and Miss South Wales and suddenly the
• 34:34
  Speaker 2: kookiest plan of all time to import Papa New Guinea
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: and cannabis. Yeah it's a pretty unlikely and dumb, risk
• 34:42
  Speaker 2: laden thing to do.
• 34:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, it's interesting. I think maybe they'd been under pressure
• 34:47
  Speaker 4: with their outdoor crops. The Coliambly crop had been busted
• 34:50
  Speaker 4: a few years earlier, the Bungen door crop, which was
• 34:54
  Speaker 4: quite famous. The days of the really large outdoor crops
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: were coming to an end. There was more aerial surveillance
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: I know at the time because one of the guys
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: on the task force was condered to the New South
• 35:07
  Speaker 4: Wales's cannabis crop team. Each year during the season, the
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: growing season, they would send them up in a chopper
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: and they basically fly down the Murray on the New
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: South Wales side of the border and from up above
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: they could identify where the crops were. They would then
• 35:24
  Speaker 4: drop down in the helicopter and they wouldn't arrest anyone.
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: They would just basically destroy the crop, then they'd fly
• 35:31
  Speaker 4: up and they'd move on to the next one. So
• 35:33
  Speaker 4: there was a lot of pressure for them growing large
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: crops outdoors, so it was sort of coming to an end.
• 35:39
  Speaker 4: But the other thing was, if you're growing a crop outdoors,
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: it's subject.
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: To the elements.
• 35:44
  Speaker 4: You've got no control over the quality of your product.
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: That's why they were starting to look at growing crops indoors.
• 35:51
  Speaker 4: But in Papua New Guinea in the tropics, there no surveillance,
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: nothing like that. With the rainfall they had, the cannabis
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: was pretty damn special, so I think that's why they
• 36:02
  Speaker 4: were getting it from there.
• 36:03
  Speaker 2: I do remember going to Papua New Guinea in about
• 36:07
  Speaker 2: nineteen ninety eight and flying out to doing a famine,
• 36:10
  Speaker 2: bushfire and so forth, and flying out to the remote
• 36:12
  Speaker 2: areas there and coming to villages and there were huge
• 36:16
  Speaker 2: stands of marijuana. In fact, one of our crew was
• 36:19
  Speaker 2: just trying to bring back a whole bunch and we said,
• 36:21
  Speaker 2: you're not bringing that stuff and the army helicopter, thank
• 36:23
  Speaker 2: you very much.
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: Luck.
• 36:24
  Speaker 2: But it was a perfect growing environment, so this was
• 36:27
  Speaker 2: going to be the big deal. And for you guys,
• 36:30
  Speaker 2: this was a massive operation. There was what three or
• 36:33
  Speaker 2: four locations going on. There was going to be a
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: light plane meeting the cannabis courier on Horn Island near
• 36:41
  Speaker 2: Papua New Guinea and then flying that into Queensland. Just
• 36:44
  Speaker 2: take me through the operations. It was going to be.
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, to start with the idea of importing the cannabis.
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: That was something that was brought up by the Italians.
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: It's important to stress that because when it comes to
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: things like agent provocateur, if we had suggested it, then
• 37:02
  Speaker 4: even though I don't know if you can use agent
• 37:04
  Speaker 4: provocatur in Victoria, but you want to avoid that at
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: all costs, in other words, provoking something that happen right.
• 37:10
  Speaker 4: We didn't want to be setting them up. Yes, they
• 37:12
  Speaker 4: set themselves up right. So it was their idea and
• 37:16
  Speaker 4: it was their idea to get a plane. All we
• 37:18
  Speaker 4: did was facilitate their wishes. So the plane was who
• 37:23
  Speaker 4: was a person in the PNG Defense Forces who was
• 37:26
  Speaker 4: training at the Wagga Army facility or Air Force facility
• 37:29
  Speaker 4: at Wagga, and he knew a few people, and those
• 37:33
  Speaker 4: people knew the Italians. And when he was stealing in
• 37:36
  Speaker 4: cannabis Likecally, he was going this stuff is shit. You know,
• 37:39
  Speaker 4: there's much better stuff in pingj I can get you
• 37:41
  Speaker 4: as much as you like. One thing led to another
• 37:43
  Speaker 4: and they came up with the idea, well, let's import
• 37:45
  Speaker 4: this really good stuff from P and G. So the
• 37:48
  Speaker 4: p G guy's name was Harley. So the plane was
• 37:51
  Speaker 4: that Harley would scowl the hinterland and the high lands
• 37:55
  Speaker 4: and the laylands of PNG get as much as he
• 37:57
  Speaker 4: could together, and he would consolidate all that on an
• 38:01
  Speaker 4: island called Daku Island on the south coast of P
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: and G. He would then use his contacts. Initially it
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: was going to use his contacts in the army. Then
• 38:10
  Speaker 4: the flight to Horn Island and Horn Island is basically
• 38:14
  Speaker 4: just in airstrip which is used for people flying in
• 38:17
  Speaker 4: and out of Thursday Island. First Island is nearby and
• 38:20
  Speaker 4: that's basically the headquarters of the Torres Strait for Australia.
• 38:25
  Speaker 4: So you would fly into Horn Island and you would
• 38:27
  Speaker 4: get a bit across to Thurst Island, and the plan
• 38:31
  Speaker 4: was for the Italian Griffiths to fly up to Horn Island,
• 38:35
  Speaker 4: they would meet, do a swap and then fly back
• 38:39
  Speaker 4: and land somewhere in southern New South Wales, but they
• 38:41
  Speaker 4: would then meet it at the runway and take it
• 38:44
  Speaker 4: back to wherever they hide there the year. So the runway,
• 38:47
  Speaker 4: which was identified by Cole, was the airport at Kahuna.
• 38:52
  Speaker 4: First of all, they wanted to set it down on
• 38:55
  Speaker 4: a dirt airstrip that they would sort of make on
• 38:57
  Speaker 4: their farm or something like that seat of the pants
• 39:00
  Speaker 4: sort of stuff. But you can't land a light aircraft
• 39:03
  Speaker 4: with a ton of cannabis on on a dirt runway.
• 39:07
  Speaker 4: So one thing led to another as the plan developed.
• 39:11
  Speaker 4: The only real change was Harley was going to bring
• 39:13
  Speaker 4: it across in a boat. The only plan that really
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: a light plan that could take a ton was a
• 39:20
  Speaker 4: Cesna caravan. For love nor money, we couldn't hire one.
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: We couldn't find one anywhere in Australia. So the NCAA
• 39:26
  Speaker 4: was footing the bill for all this. So they come
• 39:29
  Speaker 4: up with a pipe Navajo chieftain that could take it
• 39:32
  Speaker 4: a load of up to seven hundred and fifty kilos
• 39:36
  Speaker 4: along with the three passengers, the pilot and two passengers
• 39:40
  Speaker 4: on board. As they were considering all the options, Rosario Trimbali,
• 39:44
  Speaker 4: who was sort of running this as Romeo's lieutenant he
• 39:49
  Speaker 4: came up the idea of doing a dummy run up
• 39:51
  Speaker 4: to Horn Island just to test it out, to make
• 39:53
  Speaker 4: sure that would work. So what happened there in say
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: March ninety four. By this time Colin's offsider Damien Marritt,
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: who was known as Colin's brother Ben, because Judy.
• 40:07
  Speaker 2: In a moment of sexist policing, has been sidelined now
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: as I got down to the pointing, and I think
• 40:13
  Speaker 2: she must have said, hang on, I was good enough
• 40:15
  Speaker 2: for the introductions and the rapport building thing, but now
• 40:17
  Speaker 2: when comes to the action, I'm getting sideline. How is
• 40:20
  Speaker 2: she feeling about that?
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: I'm not sure exactly how she felt about it. I
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: never spoke to about it, but that the problem for
• 40:26
  Speaker 4: Judy was you can claim sexism in most workplaces. The
• 40:31
  Speaker 4: drug dealers aren't structured like they're not and they won't
• 40:34
  Speaker 4: talk in front of the ladies. And that was made
• 40:36
  Speaker 4: quite clear by both Raemeo and Trimpoli.
• 40:39
  Speaker 2: And I think also Damian Merritt had an advantage. He'd
• 40:42
  Speaker 2: done some work with the Italians at Mildura correct, so
• 40:44
  Speaker 2: he was a good knock about and I think he's
• 40:46
  Speaker 2: still a good knock about. He's a product investigator these days,
• 40:48
  Speaker 2: and I do talk to him. So he comes in
• 40:50
  Speaker 2: and he's a useful foil for Cole as his brother Ben.
• 40:54
  Speaker 2: But even at that point they're not getting on that well.
• 40:56
  Speaker 2: And as we go down the years, the differences have
• 40:59
  Speaker 2: got quite wide. In their accounts, the mud get slung
• 41:02
  Speaker 2: back and forth.
• 41:03
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think reading the handwritten accounts they made
• 41:08
  Speaker 4: at the time their association, it was a bit like,
• 41:12
  Speaker 4: you know, trying to fit a square pig in a
• 41:15
  Speaker 4: round hole. They were different as far as in age went.
• 41:19
  Speaker 4: They had different ideas, tastes, and Merritt was a very
• 41:22
  Speaker 4: accomplished undercover operative. Cole was too, but Marrett specifically specialized
• 41:28
  Speaker 4: in drugs and his knowledge was probably a.
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: Bit more superior.
• 41:32
  Speaker 4: In my opinion, Let's face it, I could never be
• 41:36
  Speaker 4: an undercover operative, you know, I just don't have that
• 41:39
  Speaker 4: sort of talent. They both had big egos. One car
• 41:42
  Speaker 4: with two of them driving up and down to Griffith
• 41:44
  Speaker 4: in it for four hours or whatever it took. Must
• 41:48
  Speaker 4: have been difficult for both of them to maintain a
• 41:50
  Speaker 4: conversation other than talk about work, which, from what I understand,
• 41:55
  Speaker 4: Cole loved to talk about work and Damien wasn't that
• 41:59
  Speaker 4: interested in going over things time and time again. But yeah,
• 42:03
  Speaker 4: that's I suppose that's a matter of we'd have to
• 42:05
  Speaker 4: speak to them about. But quite clearly from what I read,
• 42:09
  Speaker 4: you could tell from their own writings that they weren't
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: too happy with each other at the time.
• 42:15
  Speaker 2: And to the extent where when the actual mission comes along,
• 42:20
  Speaker 2: rather than send Ben, who's the logical one to send
• 42:23
  Speaker 2: the underling, as it were, Cole decides he has to go.
• 42:27
  Speaker 2: And even the Italians question this, They say, Ah, you're
• 42:30
  Speaker 2: the boss, why are you going along doing the drudging work?
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: You know you should send Ben and call it to
• 42:35
  Speaker 2: come up with an excuse as to why he was
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: doing it. But I guess by this point, my goodness,
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: the amount of money you fellas have spent this is
• 42:40
  Speaker 2: like something out of Miami Vice. You know, one hundred
• 42:43
  Speaker 2: and eighty k on the coke, You've got the plane,
• 42:45
  Speaker 2: you've got the dry run, you've got all this stuff
• 42:47
  Speaker 2: going on. I mean, not a single person's been pinched
• 42:50
  Speaker 2: at this stage. Yeah, a high stakes moment. Take us
• 42:54
  Speaker 2: through that final phase of when it actually came together.
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Rosario. Initially the plan was for Rosario Trimboli to
• 43:02
  Speaker 4: go on the plane to Horn Island, and we could
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: only fit a pilot in two people because of the
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: amount of cannabis, the seven to fifty kilo, we'll try
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: to fit in there. So Rosario he worms his way
• 43:15
  Speaker 4: out of it, and he nominates his brother Dominic, to go.
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: So Dominic is the fall guy for them, but at
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: the very last minute he decides, no, I'm not going
• 43:25
  Speaker 4: to risk my brother. We're going to send a guy
• 43:27
  Speaker 4: called Lindsay. And he's not even Italian. So they sent
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: a guy called Lindsay Boram. He knew Harley, whereas the
• 43:34
  Speaker 4: Italians really didn't. They were introduced to Harley through someone else.
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: So Lindsay basically is their full guy. And Lindsay complains
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: about it to Colin on the way up, saying he's
• 43:44
  Speaker 4: taking all the risk. And as you said, Rosario questioned
• 43:49
  Speaker 4: Cole a number of times, you shouldn't be doing this.
• 43:52
  Speaker 4: You should send your brother Ben. But then Colin was
• 43:56
  Speaker 4: determined that he was going to go, and I suppose
• 43:59
  Speaker 4: as far as our office went, it was probably his call.
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: But it sort of went against the grain of being
• 44:06
  Speaker 4: the big time dealer as opposed to being the shitkicker
• 44:09
  Speaker 4: who has to go and pick up the.
• 44:11
  Speaker 2: Right And when Lindsay turns up, there's another complication. He's
• 44:14
  Speaker 2: a big bloke and wait, it's important on this trip
• 44:18
  Speaker 2: when you think we may have to offload some of
• 44:20
  Speaker 2: this cannabis to fit Lindsay's big bulk on the plane.
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: Yes, that's right. So Lindsay turned up. Not only was
• 44:25
  Speaker 4: he big, but he had a big bag of clothing
• 44:28
  Speaker 4: bits and pieces he was taking. So when him and
• 44:30
  Speaker 4: Colin were finally driven out to Melbourne Airport, he went
• 44:34
  Speaker 4: without all his gear. They were going to stay overnight
• 44:38
  Speaker 4: in cans and then overnight in Weeper before then picking
• 44:43
  Speaker 4: up the light aircraft.
• 44:44
  Speaker 2: So they get the light aircraft off, they go to
• 44:46
  Speaker 2: Horn Island under the cover of darkness, and the Griffith
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: Marfy is there waiting to in the south there to
• 44:52
  Speaker 2: pick up the pot. When it comes in plane lands,
• 44:56
  Speaker 2: where's Harley?
• 44:58
  Speaker 1: Where's Harley? Indeed Harley was meant to be there.
• 45:01
  Speaker 4: They arrived I think five minutes to five am, and
• 45:05
  Speaker 4: five m was the time for the meeting, and Harley
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: was meant to be coming in by boat with all
• 45:11
  Speaker 4: this cannabis. It's pitch black, I think Colin's got a torch.
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: They walk up and down the runway a bit, they
• 45:18
  Speaker 4: can't see anyone. They then use the aircraft they start
• 45:22
  Speaker 4: because all the lights on the aircraft were turned off
• 45:24
  Speaker 4: to save the battery, so then they got back on
• 45:27
  Speaker 4: the aircraft. They start the aircraft up and they used
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: the aircraft's lights to look around by maneuvering it up
• 45:32
  Speaker 4: and down the runway and Harley still can't be seen.
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: So they bring the plane back and they're sitting down.
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: They're a little bit dejected. Half an hour's gone past.
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: Lindsay's getting a bit worried, bit concerned, and he gets
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: the torch from Cole and he starts going to look
• 45:48
  Speaker 4: again and they.
• 45:49
  Speaker 2: Because the jungle is full of undercover I think they
• 45:53
  Speaker 2: were Queensland Special Operations Group.
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so the Queensland cert were there.
• 45:58
  Speaker 2: So the soldier cops.
• 45:59
  Speaker 4: Yeah, basically the equivalent of our SOG. There was a
• 46:02
  Speaker 4: number of them hidden in the jungle, keeping an eye
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: on Colin and the pilot of the plane, who was
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: also an undercover cop. They were there for security. Now,
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: some people think there might have been thousands there. There weren't.
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: There was only less than half a dozen.
• 46:17
  Speaker 2: But he don't spoil the story. The jungle is supposed
• 46:20
  Speaker 2: to be full of these guys. They're supposed to be
• 46:23
  Speaker 2: supposed to be. The jungle was full of other critics, though,
• 46:26
  Speaker 2: and some birds were disturbed in the in what was
• 46:30
  Speaker 2: becoming the gray dawn, and they thought, oh, someone must
• 46:33
  Speaker 2: have disturbed the birds. So Lindsay gets the torch and
• 46:37
  Speaker 2: he heads off towards the birds, and Cole's saying, oh,
• 46:40
  Speaker 2: don't go down there, don't look down there. Not that
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: Cole knew where these bikes were, but he knew they
• 46:44
  Speaker 2: were hidden. Eventually, what happened was Lindsay steps and one
• 46:49
  Speaker 2: of these bikes. He realizes something's moved, and he goes,
• 46:52
  Speaker 2: who's there, and these two ninjas jump up out of
• 46:56
  Speaker 2: the out of the grass, out of the jungle and
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: basically jump on him and say you're under arrest, and
• 47:02
  Speaker 2: they've arrested him. That's the end of that dream. But
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: Harley never turned up, and it turned out later on
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: he gives evidence that he never intended to turn up.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: That's right.
• 47:15
  Speaker 4: Well, I don't think he actually gave evidence, but the
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: information we got out of Halley because he was never
• 47:19
  Speaker 4: extradited to Australia National somewhere along the lines that information
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: has been obtained and that he never intended to do that.
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: I mean, if he had intended to do it, there
• 47:30
  Speaker 4: would have been a boatload of cannabis floating round somewhere.
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: But at the time Borham was arrested, there was no
• 47:38
  Speaker 4: sound of any motor or boat or anything else because
• 47:42
  Speaker 4: they decided to give it another hour into the daylight
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: for Harley to come. So they hung around for about
• 47:48
  Speaker 4: another hour before basically the thing was called off. So
• 47:52
  Speaker 4: Harley never delivered that. Harley's not that stupid either, because
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: he might have come across as a bit of a
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: daby sort of character. But he had been paid quite
• 48:04
  Speaker 4: handsomely in excess of three hundred and fifty thousand dollars
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: which was the down payment for the cannabis who was
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: meant to supply. And three to fifty thousand Australian dollars
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: is that'll get you through life in PNG quite comfortably.
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: And to do nothing.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: That's wrong for doing nothing.
• 48:22
  Speaker 2: So now it's your high wire, very expensive operation that's
• 48:25
  Speaker 2: gone from an importation to a conspiracy to import.
• 48:28
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: But you were still go go where were you at this.
• 48:32
  Speaker 4: Time while all that was happening, I was in a
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: motile room in Griffith. There was me and another bike
• 48:38
  Speaker 4: in our room, and that we had one of our
• 48:40
  Speaker 4: controllers in the other room, and there were a few
• 48:42
  Speaker 4: dogs cruising around Griffith keeping it on where our targets were.
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: So we get a phone call to say that Lindsay's
• 48:50
  Speaker 4: stepped on one of the snipers. And we also had
• 48:52
  Speaker 4: a huge number of people at Kahuna waiting down there
• 48:56
  Speaker 4: for the plane to come in, which wouldn't have come
• 48:58
  Speaker 4: until the afternoon, so it was quite clear that our
• 49:02
  Speaker 4: crooks and Griffith would know that nothing had happened. To
• 49:06
  Speaker 4: make sure that occurred, a couple of phone calls were
• 49:09
  Speaker 4: made from both Damien and Colin to Ross saying what's
• 49:14
  Speaker 4: going on, what's happened, and from Cole you know, Wally.
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: The boat never turned up, so we high tailed it
• 49:20
  Speaker 4: from there over to Miranda. In Miranda Worth the rest
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: of our people. We had probably over one hundred people
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: waiting to pounce on these people to arrest them, search
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: their houses and take them back to Griffith police station
• 49:37
  Speaker 4: and charge them. And we had the assistance of the
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: New South Wales Police NC operatives. We had people from everywhere.
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: It was just massive. So we make it to Norandra.
• 49:47
  Speaker 4: There's a massive briefing. The jobs changed. No one's going
• 49:50
  Speaker 4: to Kurna. In fact, the people at Kuna racing to Orandra.
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: They've got to get to Oranda before we head off
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: into Griffith, and they arrived just before we do that.
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: We rearrange all our rest teams and off we go
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: to arrest these guys in playing clothes. The plan was
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: to take cars drive from Miranda to Griffith, and we're
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: looking at probably about thirty or forty cars here, and
• 50:14
  Speaker 4: we're meant to leave at five minute intervals, so we
• 50:16
  Speaker 4: don't raise suspicion on the roads. What happens, of course,
• 50:20
  Speaker 4: everyone wants to get there straight up, and there was
• 50:22
  Speaker 4: this big congo line of cars on the road from
• 50:25
  Speaker 4: Laranda to Griffith. Everyone would have known about it. You
• 50:29
  Speaker 4: can't hide that sort of thing. It's not like it
• 50:31
  Speaker 4: was a bit like one of those American police shows
• 50:34
  Speaker 4: where you've got lines and lines of cars with flashing
• 50:36
  Speaker 4: lights coming up to arrest people at the house. So
• 50:39
  Speaker 4: we met up. I use my phone. By that stage,
• 50:41
  Speaker 4: we've got better mobile phones. I get onto the guy
• 50:45
  Speaker 4: who's running out dogs called Nico, and my target is
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: Tony Rameo. So we drive into Griffith, I catch up
• 50:53
  Speaker 4: with Nico. He then drives down to harm Would I
• 50:56
  Speaker 4: follow him where his dogs have got the Harmwood Catholic
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: clubs surrounded. It just happened to be a Sunday morning,
• 51:04
  Speaker 4: and it also just sappened that Antonio Ramia's daughter was
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: doing her confirmation ceremony.
• 51:10
  Speaker 2: This is something straight out of with Mafia film. I
• 51:13
  Speaker 2: can see this now though Mafia. Dine's all sitting there,
• 51:15
  Speaker 2: the confirmation's going on there for one of those classic moments. Yeah.
• 51:19
  Speaker 4: So the church service had finished and they had adjourned
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: to the Harnwood Catholic Club where it was like a
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: wedding reception. All the little girls in white pretty dresses,
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: all the little boys in little suits. They were all
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: sitting around these round tables feasting and celebrating the confirmation.
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: So when we arrive there, we walk up the steps
• 51:40
  Speaker 4: and walk into the foyer, we look like we've just
• 51:43
  Speaker 4: come out of the bush. I'm wearing my bloodstones jeans,
• 51:45
  Speaker 4: my army big army jacket, pretty much unkempt, sort of
• 51:49
  Speaker 4: looking sort of characters. So she sees up just about
• 51:53
  Speaker 4: dies as if like, what the hell is going on here?
• 51:57
  Speaker 4: So I was with a guy called Sully. He was
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: a sergeant in the New South Wales Police. He went
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: up to her to explain that we were here to
• 52:04
  Speaker 4: ad a few people who were in their reception room
• 52:08
  Speaker 4: and she didn't want a scene, so she wanted to
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: take everyone through the kitchen. So there was about six
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: of us there. So while he's dealing with her, I
• 52:16
  Speaker 4: just wander over to the two flapping doors and look
• 52:20
  Speaker 4: through the little glass panel to see what's going on
• 52:23
  Speaker 4: in there, and can I see him?
• 52:25
  Speaker 1: And there he is.
• 52:26
  Speaker 4: I can see Romeo sitting at the table with his
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: family and everyone's enjoying their reception and that sort of thing.
• 52:33
  Speaker 4: And when I turn back to say I can see him,
• 52:35
  Speaker 4: they're already heading off past the reception and they're going
• 52:38
  Speaker 4: to come in through the back door, so the door
• 52:41
  Speaker 4: from the kitchen that enters. They're going to go through
• 52:44
  Speaker 4: the kitchen and enter the reception room through the kitchen door.
• 52:47
  Speaker 4: I don't know why that's any less dramatic than just
• 52:52
  Speaker 4: swinging open the front doors. And you've worked on this
• 52:55
  Speaker 4: for two years. You're not coming through the back door.
• 52:58
  Speaker 4: You're making an entrance that definitely was not I hid
• 53:03
  Speaker 4: him in my sides and I wasn't going to let
• 53:04
  Speaker 4: him go. So I've seen them disappear, so I've said, nah,
• 53:09
  Speaker 4: I'm not doing that, gone through the swing doors.
• 53:12
  Speaker 1: I've walked straight up to Tony.
• 53:14
  Speaker 4: So he's I've walked halfway through the room and I
• 53:18
  Speaker 4: think at that time, no one's really noticed me yet,
• 53:21
  Speaker 4: you know, everyone's still enjoying themselves and whatever. In fact,
• 53:24
  Speaker 4: Tony Rameo hadn't seen me at all until I was
• 53:26
  Speaker 4: virtually standing next to him and I looked down him
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: and I said, are you Tony Romeo? And he's looking
• 53:32
  Speaker 4: at me. He goes yes. He had like a puzzled
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: look on his face. He's looked at me yes. And
• 53:36
  Speaker 4: I said, are you Tony Romeo?
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: Of what one?
• 53:38
  Speaker 4: What comes Avenue Griffith And he says, I said, stand up, mate,
• 53:41
  Speaker 4: you're under rest for drug trafficking. And I've grabbed him
• 53:43
  Speaker 4: under the arm and he sort of stood up as
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: if should I stand up or just sort of hesitating,
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: and I've sort of helped him up, and then I've
• 53:52
  Speaker 4: gone to get my handcuffs to handcuff his hands behind
• 53:54
  Speaker 4: his back, and I had no handcuffs because my handcuffs
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: were on a chieftain flying around somewhere in Northern Australia
• 54:03
  Speaker 4: because we'd planned them there as something for coal to
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: years if he needed to use handcuffs. So at that
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: time I've gone to get my handcuffs and not there.
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: I look around and Damien from offices running across. He's
• 54:15
  Speaker 4: come through the kitchen door. He's running across, which that
• 54:19
  Speaker 4: really grabbed everyone's attention, and he got his handcuffs out
• 54:22
  Speaker 4: and when we arrested him and was pretty straightforward.
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: This really was the moment that the Romeo organization was
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: brought down in understand So, I mean he only got
• 54:31
  Speaker 2: like I think it was eight years in prison, eight
• 54:33
  Speaker 2: years on the bottom, and there was varying sentences, not
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: massive sentences for the amount of effort that had gone in.
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: But the intel that you'd gathered on him and the
• 54:43
  Speaker 2: organization really was a game changer, and I think it
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: helped law enforcement for years. But in particular it highlighted
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: what Tony Romeo was doing in his private life, which
• 54:56
  Speaker 2: may have been the catalyst for his murder In two
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: thousand and two. That's your theory. What did you find
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: out about it?
• 55:04
  Speaker 4: Well, during the instigation, we knew that he was having
• 55:06
  Speaker 4: an affair with a waitress at a cafe called the
• 55:09
  Speaker 4: high View Cafe. He owned that in company with Rosario
• 55:13
  Speaker 4: Trimboli and rock Oromio, so the three of them owned
• 55:15
  Speaker 4: that and he had basically groomed her. She was only
• 55:18
  Speaker 4: just out of school, she was eighteen. He bought her
• 55:21
  Speaker 4: down to Melbourne and obviously they had some sort of
• 55:25
  Speaker 4: affair going on, but he was buying her jewelry, clothing.
• 55:29
  Speaker 4: He was giving her cash bonuses all the time. I mean,
• 55:32
  Speaker 4: this girl was earning like seven dollars an hour and
• 55:35
  Speaker 4: he'd be giving her five hundred dollars one thousand dollars.
• 55:38
  Speaker 4: It was big money at the time, but she'd come
• 55:40
  Speaker 4: up from a fairly poor family and for her that
• 55:43
  Speaker 4: helped the family pay the bills. He was also having
• 55:46
  Speaker 4: an affair with a lady on the Gold Coast, So
• 55:50
  Speaker 4: when we were doing the financial investigation into him, which
• 55:54
  Speaker 4: was conducted after his arrest, we found lots of moneytry
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: payments going towards her. He would fly her in and
• 56:02
  Speaker 4: out of Griffith when he want to meet up with her.
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: He was constantly holidaying with the family on the Gold Coast,
• 56:09
  Speaker 4: and I've got a feeling he wasn't at the beach
• 56:11
  Speaker 4: all the time. But we also found out that he
• 56:14
  Speaker 4: was having an affair with a lady whose name is Jennifer.
• 56:19
  Speaker 4: Jennifer was his sister in law. Now, Jennifer had had
• 56:24
  Speaker 4: an affair with a guy about a year earlier, a
• 56:27
  Speaker 4: guy called Rocco Barbara and old man mister Giovannie Sergei,
• 56:32
  Speaker 4: the head of the family. He found out, and he
• 56:36
  Speaker 4: wasn't really happy with Jennifer having an affair with mister Barbara.
• 56:40
  Speaker 4: So Jennifer didn't get into trouble herself because they're they're
• 56:45
  Speaker 4: not going to hurt her. But Rocco had an unfortunate
• 56:49
  Speaker 4: accident where he had his leg shot off with a shotgun.
• 56:56
  Speaker 2: And self inflicted opposed it, yes, but somehow from behind yes,
• 57:01
  Speaker 2: So do you shoot yourself from behind them the knee?
• 57:03
  Speaker 4: He shot himself from behind hind in the knee with
• 57:06
  Speaker 4: a shotgun and then called someone to take him to hospital,
• 57:10
  Speaker 4: where he then lost his leg. They had to amputate
• 57:13
  Speaker 4: what was left of it, but no one believed that story.
• 57:17
  Speaker 4: Everyone knew it was old man Surgery who wanted some
• 57:20
  Speaker 4: sort of revenge or saving a face for the family.
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: I think disrespect is what gets you kills his situation.
• 57:28
  Speaker 4: Yes, yes, you have to show respect. So during the
• 57:32
  Speaker 4: court hearings, let's call them and through the brief of evidence,
• 57:36
  Speaker 4: the family would have discovered that Romeo was also having
• 57:39
  Speaker 4: an affair with Jennifer. When he got out of jail
• 57:44
  Speaker 4: after serving his eight years, he did mention to someone
• 57:48
  Speaker 4: that he's going to have to be shot, but wasn't
• 57:52
  Speaker 4: concerned about it, as if like, oh, yeah, they probably
• 57:54
  Speaker 4: shoot me for having that affair. There must have been
• 57:57
  Speaker 4: something going on with that. But he was shot as
• 58:02
  Speaker 4: you described, he was shot actually was a peach tree,
• 58:04
  Speaker 4: was pre in peach tree, peach tree, and he was
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: shot once in the back in his back from a
• 58:12
  Speaker 4: distance and pretty much died straight away. He fell over
• 58:16
  Speaker 4: meaning a little bit and then yeah, he died.
• 58:19
  Speaker 2: So there were thirty witnesses all around him in typical
• 58:24
  Speaker 2: mafia style, no one saw a thing.
• 58:26
  Speaker 4: Almost almost. I think the guy right standing right next
• 58:29
  Speaker 4: to him had to admit he saw something, and what
• 58:32
  Speaker 4: he saw was he heard a shot and Romeo fell.
• 58:35
  Speaker 4: No one else heard anything though, and fair enough, they
• 58:38
  Speaker 4: don't want to get involved. But that really meant nothing.
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: You know, he wasn't going to get into trouble for saying, well,
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: I saw him shot and he fell down and there
• 58:48
  Speaker 4: was a noise from behind.
• 58:51
  Speaker 2: And you know, typically this is a professional hit, obviously,
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: And I guess they'd learned from the killing of Donald McKay,
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: which was by Jimmy Baisley, where there was evidence left behind.
• 59:01
  Speaker 2: There was drag marks to the vehicle and all kinds
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: of stuff, and eventually all roads led back to Baslely
• 59:06
  Speaker 2: via the person who'd hired him to kill mackay. Yeah,
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: nothing was being left to chance in this day. I
• 59:11
  Speaker 2: believe that there was an assassin flown in from overseas.
• 59:15
  Speaker 2: Is that your understanding?
• 59:17
  Speaker 4: No, that's been suggested. Look, it's possible. It's possible. I
• 59:24
  Speaker 4: couldn't say whether that's true or not. I would have
• 59:26
  Speaker 4: thought it'd just be someone locally that obviously they need
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: someone who can marksman of some sort.
• 59:32
  Speaker 2: There were very few clues in this case. I guess
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: the most important one was a vehicle that had been
• 59:37
  Speaker 2: stolen sometime before had been set on fire after the killing,
• 59:42
  Speaker 2: so one would suggest that that was the vehicle used
• 59:45
  Speaker 2: as a getaway.
• 59:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so the link was the day Romeo got out
• 59:48
  Speaker 1: of jail, was the day same day that car was stolen,
• 59:52
  Speaker 1: the day Romeo was shot with either that day or
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: the day after that car was found burnt out down
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: at there was another town further to the south.
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 4: Strong circumstantial link. Yeah, bit of a circumstantial link. So
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 4: whether it was actually the car taken by the crypt
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 4: to nick Off is another matter, but it is quite
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: possible someone was flowing in.
• 1:00:14
  Speaker 1: But who really knows.
• 1:00:16
  Speaker 2: All in all, this was a very high stakes operation
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: which came out pretty well in the end. I guess
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: you could say, but I think you would have like
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 2: slightly longer jail sentence of everyone. But yours will be
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 2: the third book, and there's many other accounts of this
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: as well. Thank you for sharing the story today.
• 1:00:31
  Speaker 1: Yeah, thanks, Adam, and I appreciate your time.
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 2: And Pete, I should add that Peter with the reason
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 2: I won a Walkley Award. That's the story for another day.
• 1:00:43
  Speaker 2: We won't going to that one, but I think it's
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 2: fantastic you've told this story. And Peter is looking for
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: a publisher for betray that's the current title. If anyone
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 2: wants to get involved and publish the book, let me know.
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: Adam Shanned writer at gmail dot com. Thank you once again, Peter,
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: this has been real Crime with Adam shann Thanks for listening.
• 1:01:10
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• 1:01:14
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