Speaker 1: This is Life and Crimes. I'm Andrew Ruhle. Today we've
Speaker 1: got a question and answer because some of our listeners
Speaker 1: have done us the favor of sending in some questions.
Speaker 1: I will attempt to answer them, but if I can't,
Speaker 1: I won't. Of course, the questions will be put to
Speaker 1: me by producer John Burton, who is not just a
Speaker 1: pretty face.
Speaker 2: First question, Andrew, and thanks to everyone who sent in
Speaker 2: questions comes from Jay and Jay asks. The Pentanil clan
Speaker 2: are an interesting study. I've found out through my reading
Speaker 2: recently that they were known to inform on one another
Speaker 2: as they were often in competition within the drug trade.
Speaker 2: Can you tell listeners any particular or interesting stories of
Speaker 2: the family that may not have been covered in the media.
Speaker 1: Big question. They certainly would inform on each other if
Speaker 1: it suited them, because they were vicious, they were selfish,
Speaker 1: They were drug dealers. They were most of them drug users,
Speaker 1: depending what drug they fancied. I suspect that all of
Speaker 1: them would have used cocaine and many of them would
Speaker 1: have used emphetamines. I'm not sure about the heroine angle.
Speaker 1: I think they probably reserved that for giving hot shots
Speaker 1: to the poor girls who worked in their brothels and
Speaker 1: massage parlos. But they were vicious, selfish, nasty, brutish people.
Speaker 1: Many of them were not full brothers and sisters to
Speaker 1: each other. Most of them had different fathers from each other,
Speaker 1: which is partly reflected by the numbers of names. There
Speaker 1: was Dennis, Bruce Allen and Peter Allen. Then there was
Speaker 1: the Petan Gills, and then there was a couple of
Speaker 1: other names sprinkled through it. And they were a bit
Speaker 1: of a licorice all sorts in that regard, but far
Speaker 1: more poisonous.
Speaker 2: Speaking of Melbourne crime families, Charlie asks during the Melbourne
Speaker 2: Gang War, Jason Moran and his family spent time in
Speaker 2: the UK. How did Jason Iran can get a visa
Speaker 2: to get to the UK.
Speaker 1: The question I'd like to ask is why didn't Jason
Speaker 1: Moran see fit to stay in the UK. To answer
Speaker 1: your question, he may not have had any very serious
Speaker 1: convictions at that point of his life. Jason Moran spent
Speaker 1: a fair bit of time he and his relatives in
Speaker 1: not being convicted. They had very good legal representation. His father,
Speaker 1: who raised him and also his biological father, was the
Speaker 1: late Lewis Moran, who was extremely well connected. Lewis Moran
Speaker 1: had a series of expert criminal lawyers in his corner,
Speaker 1: culminating in our friend of our program, the late Andrew Fraser.
Speaker 1: It's one year since Andrew Fraser died this week. Actually,
Speaker 1: and Andrew Fraser was a highly skilled and aggressive, combative
Speaker 1: criminal lawyer, and he looked after the Morne's interests very well.
Speaker 1: And I think you'll on if we go back that Jason,
Speaker 1: he would have had a lot of form, but he
Speaker 1: didn't have much form on the record. He hadn't been
Speaker 1: convicted of much, so clearly not enough to stop him
Speaker 1: going to the UK. He might have had more trouble
Speaker 1: going to the United States. That's the place that's pretty
Speaker 1: touchy about convictions. What I want to know, as I
Speaker 1: said before, is why didn't he stay there? All I
Speaker 1: had to do was keep him away for longer and
Speaker 1: let things cool off. But no, Jason had to come
Speaker 1: home to the center of the universe as Scott Vail,
Speaker 1: and within a matter of no time, the bad guys
Speaker 1: who wanted him dead made sure he was dead.
Speaker 2: And this is interesting because the episode that we just
Speaker 2: had go to weir about the surfer who grew up
Speaker 2: in a world of crime. Larry Blair, Larry Blair and
Speaker 2: his stepfather coming back to a life of crime having
Speaker 2: got out and gone into the inland.
Speaker 1: Absolutely the same thing. Baldy Blair couldn't stay away. If
Speaker 1: he'd lived in a cave or an underground house in
Speaker 1: kuuber Pety for a year, two years, I don't know,
Speaker 1: six months, even things might have changed. The bad guys
Speaker 1: might have moved on, you know, wanted to go to
Speaker 1: jail and want to get shot or whatever. But oh no,
Speaker 1: he's got to go back to Sydney and he's got
Speaker 1: to go back to the same pub where all his
Speaker 1: mates drink, because that's the center of the universe. He
Speaker 1: couldn't see himself even you know, moving from kuober pet
Speaker 1: to Darwin or kuober Peti to Perth doing something like that. No,
Speaker 1: he had to go back to Kujie, to the same
Speaker 1: pub where all those bad guys, his alleged mates who
Speaker 1: weren't really his mates, were drinking. And he just was
Speaker 1: a risk taker and that was the risk he took
Speaker 1: and he ended up getting his toes cut off or
Speaker 1: his belly burnt with a blowtorch and then been.
Speaker 2: Killed and now a question from Steve. There was particular
Speaker 2: period when being a fruiterer in Melbourne became very dangerous.
Speaker 2: Can you expound a little on why this potentially was?
Speaker 1: Well, migration mostly post war, but some of it back
Speaker 1: in the twenties meant that a lot of people came
Speaker 1: to Australia from the Mediterranean countries, but particularly from southern Italy,
Speaker 1: obviously Greeks as well and some Lebanese in one smaller group,
Speaker 1: and a lot of those people, regardless of what they
Speaker 1: did back in their home countries, took on small businesses
Speaker 1: that they could work hard and make a living, and
Speaker 1: being fruit among us was one of the things that
Speaker 1: they were at. They were good at growing stuff. Small
Speaker 1: farmers are peasant farmers, many of them from Collabria and
Speaker 1: Sicily and so on, and therefore being good at growing stuff,
Speaker 1: they then got involved in selling stuff and some of
Speaker 1: them moved on to buying the shops that sold the produce,
Speaker 1: and they pretty well infiltrated the Victoria marketers. It was
Speaker 1: wholesale market in those old days post war, in the
Speaker 1: late forties early fifties, there was a lot of Italian
Speaker 1: people at the markets and that's when we got the
Speaker 1: market murders, which were a very big deal in the
Speaker 1: early sixties. And I can remember a relative of my
Speaker 1: wife who'd fought as a rat to brook in the
Speaker 1: Australian forces at Toabrook in the Middle East, and he
Speaker 1: said that one of their old army mats was having
Speaker 1: problems with the Italians at the Victoria Market, and all
Speaker 1: the old aif Ex soldiers, who were probably in their
Speaker 1: forties by this stage, they went to the vic market
Speaker 1: and they tipped over all the Italian trestle tables full
Speaker 1: of fruit and vegetables and said, there'll be no more
Speaker 1: trouble will there And it wasn't. But what those guys
Speaker 1: did was basically prey on other Italians, the people that
Speaker 1: they could scare, and they knew that the rule of
Speaker 1: omitas complete silence, never speak to the authorities, would protect
Speaker 1: them because they could stand over fellow Italians, and those
Speaker 1: fellow Italians would never ever spill the beans to the authorities.
Speaker 1: And so there is the birth of the local version,
Speaker 1: the Australian version of the Italian mafia. That's how they
Speaker 1: grew up through the fruit markets, and then of course
Speaker 1: they expanded what's better than fruit and vegetables cannabis, which,
Speaker 1: of course when they grew it at Griffith and Shepperdon
Speaker 1: and at Mildura it was known locally as calibrazy corn.
Speaker 1: The Collabrians just to grow it, and that got them
Speaker 1: into drug money, and that got them into drug smuggling,
Speaker 1: drug trafficking, and so it grew.
Speaker 2: And now a question from Pat Pat asks, do you
Speaker 2: think any person will ever be convicted of the cath
Speaker 2: Bergmann and perhaps what the cas Bergman case in a
Speaker 2: might be.
Speaker 1: I remember that case well that talking about Italian mafia figures,
Speaker 1: one of the Victorian Italian mafia businesses was the Chop
Speaker 1: Chop tobacco up in the northeast now the northeast of Victoria,
Speaker 1: back in the bad old days was chocolate block with
Speaker 1: tobacco farms. In fact, Justice Michael Croucher, the judge who
Speaker 1: was in the Wongata case, he came from a tobacco
Speaker 1: farm up at Mertalford. Now Italian farmer's been good at
Speaker 1: growing stuff, started to grow tobacco. They would buy these
Speaker 1: farms in the fifties and sixties and seventies, and naturally
Speaker 1: they would get involved in growing some tobacco on the
Speaker 1: side and selling it as chop chop without attracting excise tax,
Speaker 1: and that would become an arm of organized crime selling
Speaker 1: chop chop. Now those families became well established and interlocking
Speaker 1: with each other, they, like all the other sort of
Speaker 1: Italian mafia families, would never give evidence against each other,
Speaker 1: they wouldn't cooperate with the police, etc. One would imagine
Speaker 1: that some families in the Northeast, in say the King
Speaker 1: Valley and those other valleys up there, would not only
Speaker 1: grow vines, wine grapes, but would grow tobacco. And it
Speaker 1: would appear that Kath Bergmann had married into one of
Speaker 1: these interesting families, one of these diverse and vibrant families.
Speaker 1: And they were so diverse and vibrant that Kath, who
Speaker 1: was a beautiful young girl I remember doing the story.
Speaker 1: She was gorgeous girl of nineteen or so, and she
Speaker 1: got pregnant to them like from down the road. And
Speaker 1: she got married, and she had a couple of kids,
Speaker 1: and eventually I think became a very unhappy wife on
Speaker 1: the farm up in the King Valley or whichever valley
Speaker 1: it was, And one day she split up with her
Speaker 1: husband and moved into a nearby town it was I
Speaker 1: think Wangarata one of those towns, and she vanished one day.
Speaker 1: She vanished. Now it seems clear that she was abducted
Speaker 1: from her home unit in whatever address it was in
Speaker 1: wang or whichever town it was up there and never
Speaker 1: seen again. And it is widely thought that someone close
Speaker 1: to her, perhaps related or you know, an intimate partner
Speaker 1: or former intimate partner or whatever, would be able to
Speaker 1: throw some light on that, if only they could see
Speaker 1: their way clear to help, but so far they haven't.
Speaker 1: Varlet Cath She's not coming back is a very sad case.
Speaker 2: A bit of a change of pace. Now a question
Speaker 2: from John Doe, and John asks, if that is his
Speaker 2: real name, how many police corruption stories do you hear
Speaker 2: about or have to sit on because there's just not
Speaker 2: really much evidence involved, and police corruption is one of
Speaker 2: those areas that is probably more touchy than others in
Speaker 2: crime reporting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I do think that
Speaker 1: in Australia, Victoria Police, relative to other police forces, I've
Speaker 1: got a pretty good record. That doesn't mean they've got
Speaker 1: a good record, but relative to Sydney, relative to Brisbane,
Speaker 1: relative to Perth, I think the Victoria police better than
Speaker 1: the others historically. In this sense. It has been said
Speaker 1: by wiser people than me that in Sydney you couldn't
Speaker 1: get to the top of the tree unless you were corrupt,
Speaker 1: and probably true in Brisbane where we had so Terrence Lewis,
Speaker 1: you'll recall in Melbourne you would not get past being
Speaker 1: say a senior sergeant or maybe an inspector if you
Speaker 1: were corrupt. It was contained at a particular level. That
Speaker 1: doesn't mean there was no corruption, and it doesn't mean
Speaker 1: it wasn't pervasive, but it didn't go to the Chief
Speaker 1: Commissioner's office and it didn't go to the Premier's office
Speaker 1: in Victoria. In New South Wales it certainly did. To
Speaker 1: answer you a question more specifically, clearly, there's always been
Speaker 1: some element of some corruption at various levels of the
Speaker 1: police force. Obviously, you know, if you're in a place
Speaker 1: like St Kilda or Footscray in the past, out in
Speaker 1: the West Paran around there where there's nightlife, where there's restaurants, pubs, clubs, drugs,
Speaker 1: drugs assale, those are the areas where they draw. People
Speaker 1: come there from other suburbs and from the country to
Speaker 1: those places. They flock there. They spend money there on
Speaker 1: often illegal pursuits, drugs and brothels, that sort of stuff
Speaker 1: a prostitution and it attracts the clients of the prostitutes
Speaker 1: and the drug dealers, and it attracts prostitutes and drug dealers.
Speaker 1: So you've got this whole goat's head soup of potential corruption.
Speaker 1: And it was said to me earlier today by someone
Speaker 1: quoting a Some Kilda police sergeant who'd worked there a
Speaker 1: long time. He said, nothing happened crime wise in St Kilda,
Speaker 1: nothing happened crime wise without the knowledge or the active
Speaker 1: participation of certain police. That doesn't mean all the police,
Speaker 1: but certain police were in on the giggle. Now that
Speaker 1: wasn't always about money. It didn't mean that was always
Speaker 1: about cash and brown paper bags. They would have some
Speaker 1: pet crooks doing things because the pet crooks give them
Speaker 1: information about other crooks, and so their tame crooks would
Speaker 1: dub in other guys that were more dangerous. Let's say,
Speaker 1: so police would cultivate crook A in order to lock
Speaker 1: up crooked B, C and D. This is a pretty
Speaker 1: untidy looking arrangement, and of course it is a bit
Speaker 1: untidy because it would soon be tempting for police to
Speaker 1: clip the ticket on the way past. If we're going
Speaker 1: to pay informers with the slush fund they had to
Speaker 1: pay informers, surely they would take a bit of that
Speaker 1: fromselves because they're working over time whatever. It becomes very messy.
Speaker 1: You've got police dealing with large amounts of cash, and
Speaker 1: so when they put the arm on a crook who's
Speaker 1: got a whatd of cash that would choke a race horse,
Speaker 1: the crook is going to say, listen, you keep half
Speaker 1: of that and give me the other half and let
Speaker 1: me go. And sometimes the police are going to do
Speaker 1: that because what's the odds, you know, we're only going
Speaker 1: to pick him up next week. Anyway, they even had
Speaker 1: a word for it. We used to find them. We'd
Speaker 1: find them, we'd take their money. Now a lot of
Speaker 1: those guys just didn't regard that as particularly criminal, because
Speaker 1: they'd still catch crooks and lock them up. But they'd
Speaker 1: find a few along the way and take their cash
Speaker 1: and use it as play money. Sometimes they use it
Speaker 1: for holidays, for a bit of a slush fund for
Speaker 1: interstate trips. I reckon a lot of them, probably, you know.
Speaker 1: I used to dress very well and punt on horses.
Speaker 1: I can remember police that used to race a horse
Speaker 1: or two, probably able to pay for training fees in cash.
Speaker 1: You'd think we won't go down that line.
Speaker 2: Lastly, and I should say, we've had a lot of
Speaker 2: questions and several people suggesting topics for shows which we
Speaker 2: may look at in the future. But lastly, if I
Speaker 2: can be slightly indulgent and ask a question myself, and
Speaker 2: that is one that is ripped from the headlines. Yes,
Speaker 2: and this headline is that a couple of days ago,
Speaker 2: or probably a few days ago. By the time this
Speaker 2: episode comes out, a local Victorian bloke has come forth
Speaker 2: with a theory or two about.
Speaker 1: The I don't tell me mister Krule, the.
Speaker 2: Identity of mister Krule, and his thesis, if I may
Speaker 2: is he suggests that mister Craule never existed in the
Speaker 2: chilling series of abductions, rapes and murders across Melbourne with
Speaker 2: the work of multiple offenders in the nineteen eighties and
Speaker 2: early nineteen nineties. Now, we've talked about mister Crule a
Speaker 2: fair bit on this show, a lot of it. What's
Speaker 2: your thought about this theory?
Speaker 1: Now, this is the this is the truck driver from Grovedale,
Speaker 1: I think, And there's nothing wrong with Gravedale, and there's
Speaker 1: nothing wrong with truck drivers. Without them, where would we
Speaker 1: get our goods from John? But whether he's a good
Speaker 1: arm jess sleuth, I don't know, but I have to
Speaker 1: say that he's one of many people. And I'm talking
Speaker 1: thousands of armchair sluths across the world, not just in Victoria,
Speaker 1: not just Grovedale, not just Bendigo, not just Mildura, but
Speaker 1: of right across the anglosphere. And I have been besieged
Speaker 1: with really interesting and ornate, complex theories about mister Krule
Speaker 1: from people in Ohio and California and all sorts of places.
Speaker 1: And the interesting thing about all of them is this,
Speaker 1: if you are keen enough on a particular theory, you
Speaker 1: will always find circumstantial evidence to support it, and you
Speaker 1: gently push to one side circumstantial evidence that doesn't support it.
Speaker 1: And so none of these theories are necessarily crackpot theories.
Speaker 1: But that doesn't mean they're right. They can't all be right,
Speaker 1: because if you've got one hundred armchair sluths such as
Speaker 1: our mate from Grovedale, if you've got a hundred of
Speaker 1: those guys, You've probably got a about eighty eight different theories.
Speaker 1: Now they can't all be right, you know, because one
Speaker 1: guy thinks you did it and one guy thinks I
Speaker 1: did it. The guy in America that got in touch
Speaker 1: with me sent me massive amount of information which was
Speaker 1: very interesting that he gleaned on the Internet, which is frightening,
Speaker 1: you know, this open source that you can find anything.
Speaker 1: And he built a theory which wasn't crazy, but didn't
Speaker 1: have sort of fantasies in it didn't have little green men,
Speaker 1: no magic. It was all sort of facts, carefully chosen
Speaker 1: facts to sity theory. And he postulated that a really
Speaker 1: well known Melbourne journalist one I know, well, this is
Speaker 1: a man who's been very well known in Melbourne journalism
Speaker 1: for fifty years. This person, this arms in America, postulated
Speaker 1: that this Melbourne journalist was mister cruel and that he'd
Speaker 1: obtained gun a pistol from his own father. And this
Speaker 1: guy had all this evidence to that effect, and he'd
Speaker 1: followed this journalist's life from suburb to suburb. And even
Speaker 1: when this journalist went to Japan, you know, the crimes
Speaker 1: dropped off here and in Japan there was a similar
Speaker 1: crime in you know, blah blah, whichever prefecture, and it
Speaker 1: was wonderful, and of course it was nonsense. So draw
Speaker 1: your own conclusions. There are a lot of people with
Speaker 1: a lot of theories, and they can't all be right,
Speaker 1: and I suspect that none of them are.
Speaker 2: It's just funny that the sort of the bigger the
Speaker 2: web is the more ways that you can navigate, choose
Speaker 2: your own adventure.
Speaker 1: Choose your own adventure that is perfect, and they do.
Speaker 1: And look, it might be that they're all a little
Speaker 1: bit right. I believe that probably come and chan that
Speaker 1: there's a fair chance she was not a mister cruel victim.
Speaker 1: The evidence against it seems to me to be nearly
Speaker 1: as strong as the evidence for it. Police are divided
Speaker 1: on this, as we've said on this podcast many times,
Speaker 1: please are divided over it. So what would we know.
Speaker 1: So anybody out there that thinks that there's a common
Speaker 1: check offender and another offender or offenders, they may well
Speaker 1: be right. It's a matter of who it is that's
Speaker 1: the tricky bit.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much to everyone that has written in
Speaker 2: to us. If you would like to ask a question,
Speaker 2: you can email us at Life and Crimes at News
Speaker 2: dot com dot Au. Life and Crimes at News dot
Speaker 2: com dot you, which we will link in the description
Speaker 2: of this episode, and ask Andrew a question hopefully we
Speaker 2: might read it.
Speaker 1: We will and John, thanks for asking those questions. They're
Speaker 1: always diverting. Thank you, Andrew, thanks for listening. Life and
Speaker 1: Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun product action for True
Speaker 1: crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns,
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