WEBVTT - BONUS EPISODE: Q and A - Mr Cruel questions, crooked cops and crooks that won't stay away 0:00:01.480 --> 0:00:04.320 This is Life and Crimes. I'm Andrew Ruhle. Today we've 0:00:04.360 --> 0:00:07.840 got a question and answer because some of our listeners 0:00:07.960 --> 0:00:11.039 have done us the favor of sending in some questions. 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:13.520 I will attempt to answer them, but if I can't, 0:00:14.120 --> 0:00:17.159 I won't. Of course, the questions will be put to 0:00:17.200 --> 0:00:20.560 me by producer John Burton, who is not just a 0:00:20.560 --> 0:00:21.200 pretty face. 0:00:21.640 --> 0:00:24.360 First question, Andrew, and thanks to everyone who sent in 0:00:24.440 --> 0:00:28.800 questions comes from Jay and Jay asks. The Pentanil clan 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:31.800 are an interesting study. I've found out through my reading 0:00:31.840 --> 0:00:34.880 recently that they were known to inform on one another 0:00:35.280 --> 0:00:38.400 as they were often in competition within the drug trade. 0:00:39.040 --> 0:00:42.920 Can you tell listeners any particular or interesting stories of 0:00:42.960 --> 0:00:46.040 the family that may not have been covered in the media. 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:49.800 Big question. They certainly would inform on each other if 0:00:49.840 --> 0:00:53.680 it suited them, because they were vicious, they were selfish, 0:00:54.320 --> 0:00:58.120 They were drug dealers. They were most of them drug users, 0:00:58.160 --> 0:01:02.720 depending what drug they fancied. I suspect that all of 0:01:02.720 --> 0:01:05.720 them would have used cocaine and many of them would 0:01:05.720 --> 0:01:09.600 have used emphetamines. I'm not sure about the heroine angle. 0:01:09.640 --> 0:01:12.399 I think they probably reserved that for giving hot shots 0:01:12.480 --> 0:01:16.280 to the poor girls who worked in their brothels and 0:01:16.319 --> 0:01:22.399 massage parlos. But they were vicious, selfish, nasty, brutish people. 0:01:23.200 --> 0:01:26.560 Many of them were not full brothers and sisters to 0:01:26.640 --> 0:01:29.720 each other. Most of them had different fathers from each other, 0:01:29.880 --> 0:01:33.360 which is partly reflected by the numbers of names. There 0:01:33.440 --> 0:01:36.480 was Dennis, Bruce Allen and Peter Allen. Then there was 0:01:36.480 --> 0:01:39.160 the Petan Gills, and then there was a couple of 0:01:39.200 --> 0:01:42.240 other names sprinkled through it. And they were a bit 0:01:42.280 --> 0:01:45.600 of a licorice all sorts in that regard, but far 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:46.440 more poisonous. 0:01:46.760 --> 0:01:52.960 Speaking of Melbourne crime families, Charlie asks during the Melbourne 0:01:53.040 --> 0:01:56.920 Gang War, Jason Moran and his family spent time in 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:01.320 the UK. How did Jason Iran can get a visa 0:02:01.880 --> 0:02:02.920 to get to the UK. 0:02:03.680 --> 0:02:06.120 The question I'd like to ask is why didn't Jason 0:02:06.120 --> 0:02:10.280 Moran see fit to stay in the UK. To answer 0:02:10.280 --> 0:02:14.440 your question, he may not have had any very serious 0:02:14.800 --> 0:02:19.040 convictions at that point of his life. Jason Moran spent 0:02:19.120 --> 0:02:21.880 a fair bit of time he and his relatives in 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:28.640 not being convicted. They had very good legal representation. His father, 0:02:28.680 --> 0:02:31.280 who raised him and also his biological father, was the 0:02:31.360 --> 0:02:35.480 late Lewis Moran, who was extremely well connected. Lewis Moran 0:02:35.840 --> 0:02:39.960 had a series of expert criminal lawyers in his corner, 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:44.359 culminating in our friend of our program, the late Andrew Fraser. 0:02:44.520 --> 0:02:47.480 It's one year since Andrew Fraser died this week. Actually, 0:02:48.240 --> 0:02:53.600 and Andrew Fraser was a highly skilled and aggressive, combative 0:02:54.000 --> 0:02:57.639 criminal lawyer, and he looked after the Morne's interests very well. 0:02:58.520 --> 0:03:02.160 And I think you'll on if we go back that Jason, 0:03:02.680 --> 0:03:04.960 he would have had a lot of form, but he 0:03:05.000 --> 0:03:07.200 didn't have much form on the record. He hadn't been 0:03:07.240 --> 0:03:10.680 convicted of much, so clearly not enough to stop him 0:03:10.720 --> 0:03:13.160 going to the UK. He might have had more trouble 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:16.200 going to the United States. That's the place that's pretty 0:03:16.280 --> 0:03:19.680 touchy about convictions. What I want to know, as I 0:03:19.720 --> 0:03:23.200 said before, is why didn't he stay there? All I 0:03:23.280 --> 0:03:26.440 had to do was keep him away for longer and 0:03:26.520 --> 0:03:30.880 let things cool off. But no, Jason had to come 0:03:30.919 --> 0:03:34.800 home to the center of the universe as Scott Vail, 0:03:35.320 --> 0:03:39.480 and within a matter of no time, the bad guys 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:42.640 who wanted him dead made sure he was dead. 0:03:43.360 --> 0:03:45.720 And this is interesting because the episode that we just 0:03:45.800 --> 0:03:49.360 had go to weir about the surfer who grew up 0:03:49.440 --> 0:03:52.880 in a world of crime. Larry Blair, Larry Blair and 0:03:52.960 --> 0:03:56.080 his stepfather coming back to a life of crime having 0:03:56.120 --> 0:03:58.360 got out and gone into the inland. 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:02.520 Absolutely the same thing. Baldy Blair couldn't stay away. If 0:04:02.560 --> 0:04:05.560 he'd lived in a cave or an underground house in 0:04:05.680 --> 0:04:08.960 kuuber Pety for a year, two years, I don't know, 0:04:09.080 --> 0:04:12.680 six months, even things might have changed. The bad guys 0:04:12.760 --> 0:04:14.600 might have moved on, you know, wanted to go to 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:17.240 jail and want to get shot or whatever. But oh no, 0:04:17.680 --> 0:04:20.400 he's got to go back to Sydney and he's got 0:04:20.400 --> 0:04:21.960 to go back to the same pub where all his 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:26.120 mates drink, because that's the center of the universe. He 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:29.520 couldn't see himself even you know, moving from kuober pet 0:04:29.680 --> 0:04:35.080 to Darwin or kuober Peti to Perth doing something like that. No, 0:04:35.360 --> 0:04:39.200 he had to go back to Kujie, to the same 0:04:39.240 --> 0:04:43.479 pub where all those bad guys, his alleged mates who 0:04:43.680 --> 0:04:47.720 weren't really his mates, were drinking. And he just was 0:04:47.760 --> 0:04:50.440 a risk taker and that was the risk he took 0:04:51.120 --> 0:04:53.279 and he ended up getting his toes cut off or 0:04:53.320 --> 0:04:56.679 his belly burnt with a blowtorch and then been. 0:04:56.600 --> 0:05:00.520 Killed and now a question from Steve. There was particular 0:05:00.600 --> 0:05:05.280 period when being a fruiterer in Melbourne became very dangerous. 0:05:05.600 --> 0:05:09.599 Can you expound a little on why this potentially was? 0:05:10.240 --> 0:05:13.840 Well, migration mostly post war, but some of it back 0:05:13.880 --> 0:05:16.640 in the twenties meant that a lot of people came 0:05:16.680 --> 0:05:21.839 to Australia from the Mediterranean countries, but particularly from southern Italy, 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:27.839 obviously Greeks as well and some Lebanese in one smaller group, 0:05:28.560 --> 0:05:30.839 and a lot of those people, regardless of what they 0:05:30.880 --> 0:05:34.839 did back in their home countries, took on small businesses 0:05:34.880 --> 0:05:37.720 that they could work hard and make a living, and 0:05:38.440 --> 0:05:41.039 being fruit among us was one of the things that 0:05:41.080 --> 0:05:43.080 they were at. They were good at growing stuff. Small 0:05:43.160 --> 0:05:46.040 farmers are peasant farmers, many of them from Collabria and 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:50.719 Sicily and so on, and therefore being good at growing stuff, 0:05:50.720 --> 0:05:53.919 they then got involved in selling stuff and some of 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:58.240 them moved on to buying the shops that sold the produce, 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:03.200 and they pretty well infiltrated the Victoria marketers. It was 0:06:03.279 --> 0:06:06.400 wholesale market in those old days post war, in the 0:06:06.480 --> 0:06:10.360 late forties early fifties, there was a lot of Italian 0:06:10.600 --> 0:06:13.280 people at the markets and that's when we got the 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.279 market murders, which were a very big deal in the 0:06:16.279 --> 0:06:19.400 early sixties. And I can remember a relative of my 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:22.560 wife who'd fought as a rat to brook in the 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:27.599 Australian forces at Toabrook in the Middle East, and he 0:06:27.680 --> 0:06:30.400 said that one of their old army mats was having 0:06:30.440 --> 0:06:34.360 problems with the Italians at the Victoria Market, and all 0:06:34.400 --> 0:06:37.560 the old aif Ex soldiers, who were probably in their 0:06:37.600 --> 0:06:41.279 forties by this stage, they went to the vic market 0:06:41.320 --> 0:06:45.160 and they tipped over all the Italian trestle tables full 0:06:45.200 --> 0:06:47.400 of fruit and vegetables and said, there'll be no more 0:06:47.440 --> 0:06:50.679 trouble will there And it wasn't. But what those guys 0:06:50.680 --> 0:06:54.920 did was basically prey on other Italians, the people that 0:06:54.960 --> 0:06:59.279 they could scare, and they knew that the rule of 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:03.919 omitas complete silence, never speak to the authorities, would protect 0:07:03.920 --> 0:07:07.160 them because they could stand over fellow Italians, and those 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:13.280 fellow Italians would never ever spill the beans to the authorities. 0:07:13.800 --> 0:07:19.280 And so there is the birth of the local version, 0:07:19.320 --> 0:07:23.960 the Australian version of the Italian mafia. That's how they 0:07:24.000 --> 0:07:27.960 grew up through the fruit markets, and then of course 0:07:28.480 --> 0:07:34.280 they expanded what's better than fruit and vegetables cannabis, which, 0:07:34.400 --> 0:07:38.680 of course when they grew it at Griffith and Shepperdon 0:07:38.720 --> 0:07:42.680 and at Mildura it was known locally as calibrazy corn. 0:07:43.960 --> 0:07:46.680 The Collabrians just to grow it, and that got them 0:07:46.680 --> 0:07:50.160 into drug money, and that got them into drug smuggling, 0:07:50.240 --> 0:07:52.760 drug trafficking, and so it grew. 0:07:53.040 --> 0:07:56.360 And now a question from Pat Pat asks, do you 0:07:56.360 --> 0:07:59.080 think any person will ever be convicted of the cath 0:07:59.240 --> 0:08:03.880 Bergmann and perhaps what the cas Bergman case in a 0:08:04.800 --> 0:08:05.120 might be. 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:09.400 I remember that case well that talking about Italian mafia figures, 0:08:09.640 --> 0:08:15.320 one of the Victorian Italian mafia businesses was the Chop 0:08:15.360 --> 0:08:18.480 Chop tobacco up in the northeast now the northeast of Victoria, 0:08:18.640 --> 0:08:21.120 back in the bad old days was chocolate block with 0:08:21.160 --> 0:08:27.160 tobacco farms. In fact, Justice Michael Croucher, the judge who 0:08:27.480 --> 0:08:31.480 was in the Wongata case, he came from a tobacco 0:08:31.600 --> 0:08:36.000 farm up at Mertalford. Now Italian farmer's been good at 0:08:36.120 --> 0:08:39.960 growing stuff, started to grow tobacco. They would buy these 0:08:40.040 --> 0:08:45.120 farms in the fifties and sixties and seventies, and naturally 0:08:45.120 --> 0:08:48.640 they would get involved in growing some tobacco on the 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:53.680 side and selling it as chop chop without attracting excise tax, 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:59.480 and that would become an arm of organized crime selling 0:08:59.520 --> 0:09:06.040 chop chop. Now those families became well established and interlocking 0:09:06.080 --> 0:09:09.320 with each other, they, like all the other sort of 0:09:09.320 --> 0:09:14.200 Italian mafia families, would never give evidence against each other, 0:09:14.280 --> 0:09:18.760 they wouldn't cooperate with the police, etc. One would imagine 0:09:18.800 --> 0:09:22.120 that some families in the Northeast, in say the King 0:09:22.240 --> 0:09:25.640 Valley and those other valleys up there, would not only 0:09:25.679 --> 0:09:30.960 grow vines, wine grapes, but would grow tobacco. And it 0:09:31.000 --> 0:09:34.840 would appear that Kath Bergmann had married into one of 0:09:34.880 --> 0:09:39.920 these interesting families, one of these diverse and vibrant families. 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:43.679 And they were so diverse and vibrant that Kath, who 0:09:43.720 --> 0:09:46.640 was a beautiful young girl I remember doing the story. 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:50.280 She was gorgeous girl of nineteen or so, and she 0:09:50.360 --> 0:09:53.120 got pregnant to them like from down the road. And 0:09:53.200 --> 0:09:55.520 she got married, and she had a couple of kids, 0:09:56.360 --> 0:10:01.199 and eventually I think became a very unhappy wife on 0:10:01.240 --> 0:10:03.920 the farm up in the King Valley or whichever valley 0:10:03.960 --> 0:10:09.600 it was, And one day she split up with her 0:10:09.640 --> 0:10:12.960 husband and moved into a nearby town it was I 0:10:12.960 --> 0:10:19.280 think Wangarata one of those towns, and she vanished one day. 0:10:19.400 --> 0:10:22.720 She vanished. Now it seems clear that she was abducted 0:10:23.000 --> 0:10:26.120 from her home unit in whatever address it was in 0:10:27.000 --> 0:10:29.520 wang or whichever town it was up there and never 0:10:29.559 --> 0:10:35.960 seen again. And it is widely thought that someone close 0:10:36.000 --> 0:10:40.360 to her, perhaps related or you know, an intimate partner 0:10:40.600 --> 0:10:45.400 or former intimate partner or whatever, would be able to 0:10:45.640 --> 0:10:48.560 throw some light on that, if only they could see 0:10:48.559 --> 0:10:53.360 their way clear to help, but so far they haven't. 0:10:54.720 --> 0:11:00.040 Varlet Cath She's not coming back is a very sad case. 0:11:00.440 --> 0:11:02.280 A bit of a change of pace. Now a question 0:11:02.360 --> 0:11:05.600 from John Doe, and John asks, if that is his 0:11:05.640 --> 0:11:09.720 real name, how many police corruption stories do you hear 0:11:09.760 --> 0:11:14.280 about or have to sit on because there's just not 0:11:14.800 --> 0:11:19.080 really much evidence involved, and police corruption is one of 0:11:19.080 --> 0:11:22.800 those areas that is probably more touchy than others in 0:11:23.360 --> 0:11:24.079 crime reporting. 0:11:24.240 --> 0:11:27.640 Yeah, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. I do think that 0:11:27.760 --> 0:11:32.840 in Australia, Victoria Police, relative to other police forces, I've 0:11:32.840 --> 0:11:34.800 got a pretty good record. That doesn't mean they've got 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:39.400 a good record, but relative to Sydney, relative to Brisbane, 0:11:39.480 --> 0:11:44.960 relative to Perth, I think the Victoria police better than 0:11:45.000 --> 0:11:49.240 the others historically. In this sense. It has been said 0:11:49.240 --> 0:11:52.960 by wiser people than me that in Sydney you couldn't 0:11:53.000 --> 0:11:55.720 get to the top of the tree unless you were corrupt, 0:11:56.280 --> 0:12:00.360 and probably true in Brisbane where we had so Terrence Lewis, 0:12:00.400 --> 0:12:05.760 you'll recall in Melbourne you would not get past being 0:12:05.800 --> 0:12:08.640 say a senior sergeant or maybe an inspector if you 0:12:08.679 --> 0:12:12.360 were corrupt. It was contained at a particular level. That 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:15.160 doesn't mean there was no corruption, and it doesn't mean 0:12:15.200 --> 0:12:18.960 it wasn't pervasive, but it didn't go to the Chief 0:12:19.000 --> 0:12:21.880 Commissioner's office and it didn't go to the Premier's office 0:12:22.160 --> 0:12:27.679 in Victoria. In New South Wales it certainly did. To 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:31.200 answer you a question more specifically, clearly, there's always been 0:12:31.320 --> 0:12:34.800 some element of some corruption at various levels of the 0:12:34.800 --> 0:12:38.240 police force. Obviously, you know, if you're in a place 0:12:38.320 --> 0:12:42.120 like St Kilda or Footscray in the past, out in 0:12:42.160 --> 0:12:51.400 the West Paran around there where there's nightlife, where there's restaurants, pubs, clubs, drugs, 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:56.239 drugs assale, those are the areas where they draw. People 0:12:56.360 --> 0:12:59.920 come there from other suburbs and from the country to 0:13:00.080 --> 0:13:03.280 those places. They flock there. They spend money there on 0:13:03.880 --> 0:13:08.320 often illegal pursuits, drugs and brothels, that sort of stuff 0:13:08.360 --> 0:13:13.040 a prostitution and it attracts the clients of the prostitutes 0:13:13.080 --> 0:13:16.440 and the drug dealers, and it attracts prostitutes and drug dealers. 0:13:16.480 --> 0:13:21.640 So you've got this whole goat's head soup of potential corruption. 0:13:22.520 --> 0:13:26.360 And it was said to me earlier today by someone 0:13:26.480 --> 0:13:30.640 quoting a Some Kilda police sergeant who'd worked there a 0:13:30.640 --> 0:13:35.760 long time. He said, nothing happened crime wise in St Kilda, 0:13:35.920 --> 0:13:41.320 nothing happened crime wise without the knowledge or the active 0:13:41.360 --> 0:13:45.400 participation of certain police. That doesn't mean all the police, 0:13:45.960 --> 0:13:49.440 but certain police were in on the giggle. Now that 0:13:49.559 --> 0:13:52.920 wasn't always about money. It didn't mean that was always 0:13:52.960 --> 0:13:56.880 about cash and brown paper bags. They would have some 0:13:57.120 --> 0:14:00.439 pet crooks doing things because the pet crooks give them 0:14:00.440 --> 0:14:04.320 information about other crooks, and so their tame crooks would 0:14:04.400 --> 0:14:07.480 dub in other guys that were more dangerous. Let's say, 0:14:07.720 --> 0:14:11.040 so police would cultivate crook A in order to lock 0:14:11.120 --> 0:14:15.600 up crooked B, C and D. This is a pretty 0:14:15.679 --> 0:14:18.240 untidy looking arrangement, and of course it is a bit 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:23.280 untidy because it would soon be tempting for police to 0:14:23.560 --> 0:14:25.920 clip the ticket on the way past. If we're going 0:14:25.960 --> 0:14:28.840 to pay informers with the slush fund they had to 0:14:28.840 --> 0:14:31.640 pay informers, surely they would take a bit of that 0:14:31.680 --> 0:14:36.480 fromselves because they're working over time whatever. It becomes very messy. 0:14:36.880 --> 0:14:39.720 You've got police dealing with large amounts of cash, and 0:14:39.760 --> 0:14:42.840 so when they put the arm on a crook who's 0:14:42.880 --> 0:14:46.080 got a whatd of cash that would choke a race horse, 0:14:46.240 --> 0:14:48.800 the crook is going to say, listen, you keep half 0:14:48.800 --> 0:14:50.160 of that and give me the other half and let 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:53.360 me go. And sometimes the police are going to do 0:14:53.440 --> 0:14:56.960 that because what's the odds, you know, we're only going 0:14:57.000 --> 0:14:59.400 to pick him up next week. Anyway, they even had 0:14:59.400 --> 0:15:02.080 a word for it. We used to find them. We'd 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:05.160 find them, we'd take their money. Now a lot of 0:15:05.160 --> 0:15:10.400 those guys just didn't regard that as particularly criminal, because 0:15:10.840 --> 0:15:14.280 they'd still catch crooks and lock them up. But they'd 0:15:14.360 --> 0:15:16.760 find a few along the way and take their cash 0:15:16.800 --> 0:15:19.600 and use it as play money. Sometimes they use it 0:15:19.640 --> 0:15:23.480 for holidays, for a bit of a slush fund for 0:15:23.960 --> 0:15:28.160 interstate trips. I reckon a lot of them, probably, you know. 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:31.600 I used to dress very well and punt on horses. 0:15:32.520 --> 0:15:35.560 I can remember police that used to race a horse 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:40.360 or two, probably able to pay for training fees in cash. 0:15:40.560 --> 0:15:43.160 You'd think we won't go down that line. 0:15:44.080 --> 0:15:46.160 Lastly, and I should say, we've had a lot of 0:15:46.200 --> 0:15:51.080 questions and several people suggesting topics for shows which we 0:15:51.160 --> 0:15:54.120 may look at in the future. But lastly, if I 0:15:54.200 --> 0:15:57.160 can be slightly indulgent and ask a question myself, and 0:15:57.200 --> 0:16:00.360 that is one that is ripped from the headlines. Yes, 0:16:00.520 --> 0:16:02.600 and this headline is that a couple of days ago, 0:16:02.880 --> 0:16:05.320 or probably a few days ago. By the time this 0:16:05.400 --> 0:16:10.040 episode comes out, a local Victorian bloke has come forth 0:16:10.120 --> 0:16:13.400 with a theory or two about. 0:16:13.120 --> 0:16:15.400 The I don't tell me mister Krule, the. 0:16:15.320 --> 0:16:20.040 Identity of mister Krule, and his thesis, if I may 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:24.440 is he suggests that mister Craule never existed in the 0:16:24.600 --> 0:16:28.920 chilling series of abductions, rapes and murders across Melbourne with 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:32.520 the work of multiple offenders in the nineteen eighties and 0:16:32.560 --> 0:16:36.120 early nineteen nineties. Now, we've talked about mister Crule a 0:16:36.200 --> 0:16:39.080 fair bit on this show, a lot of it. What's 0:16:39.120 --> 0:16:40.600 your thought about this theory? 0:16:40.960 --> 0:16:43.800 Now, this is the this is the truck driver from Grovedale, 0:16:43.960 --> 0:16:46.600 I think, And there's nothing wrong with Gravedale, and there's 0:16:46.640 --> 0:16:49.920 nothing wrong with truck drivers. Without them, where would we 0:16:49.960 --> 0:16:54.040 get our goods from John? But whether he's a good 0:16:54.200 --> 0:16:56.720 arm jess sleuth, I don't know, but I have to 0:16:56.760 --> 0:17:00.520 say that he's one of many people. And I'm talking 0:17:00.760 --> 0:17:05.080 thousands of armchair sluths across the world, not just in Victoria, 0:17:05.200 --> 0:17:10.040 not just Grovedale, not just Bendigo, not just Mildura, but 0:17:10.240 --> 0:17:14.240 of right across the anglosphere. And I have been besieged 0:17:14.359 --> 0:17:20.399 with really interesting and ornate, complex theories about mister Krule 0:17:20.720 --> 0:17:24.160 from people in Ohio and California and all sorts of places. 0:17:24.840 --> 0:17:27.800 And the interesting thing about all of them is this, 0:17:28.680 --> 0:17:31.960 if you are keen enough on a particular theory, you 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:35.960 will always find circumstantial evidence to support it, and you 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:40.320 gently push to one side circumstantial evidence that doesn't support it. 0:17:40.800 --> 0:17:45.680 And so none of these theories are necessarily crackpot theories. 0:17:46.840 --> 0:17:51.160 But that doesn't mean they're right. They can't all be right, 0:17:51.520 --> 0:17:54.960 because if you've got one hundred armchair sluths such as 0:17:54.960 --> 0:17:57.840 our mate from Grovedale, if you've got a hundred of 0:17:57.880 --> 0:18:02.240 those guys, You've probably got a about eighty eight different theories. 0:18:02.600 --> 0:18:06.239 Now they can't all be right, you know, because one 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:08.520 guy thinks you did it and one guy thinks I 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:10.840 did it. The guy in America that got in touch 0:18:10.880 --> 0:18:14.199 with me sent me massive amount of information which was 0:18:15.080 --> 0:18:18.200 very interesting that he gleaned on the Internet, which is frightening, 0:18:18.400 --> 0:18:20.760 you know, this open source that you can find anything. 0:18:21.440 --> 0:18:28.159 And he built a theory which wasn't crazy, but didn't 0:18:28.160 --> 0:18:31.160 have sort of fantasies in it didn't have little green men, 0:18:32.040 --> 0:18:35.479 no magic. It was all sort of facts, carefully chosen 0:18:35.520 --> 0:18:39.560 facts to sity theory. And he postulated that a really 0:18:39.640 --> 0:18:44.520 well known Melbourne journalist one I know, well, this is 0:18:45.160 --> 0:18:47.879 a man who's been very well known in Melbourne journalism 0:18:48.000 --> 0:18:54.960 for fifty years. This person, this arms in America, postulated 0:18:55.000 --> 0:18:59.240 that this Melbourne journalist was mister cruel and that he'd 0:18:59.280 --> 0:19:03.000 obtained gun a pistol from his own father. And this 0:19:03.040 --> 0:19:06.040 guy had all this evidence to that effect, and he'd 0:19:06.080 --> 0:19:10.760 followed this journalist's life from suburb to suburb. And even 0:19:10.840 --> 0:19:14.880 when this journalist went to Japan, you know, the crimes 0:19:14.960 --> 0:19:18.280 dropped off here and in Japan there was a similar 0:19:18.320 --> 0:19:23.600 crime in you know, blah blah, whichever prefecture, and it 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:30.040 was wonderful, and of course it was nonsense. So draw 0:19:30.080 --> 0:19:33.240 your own conclusions. There are a lot of people with 0:19:33.320 --> 0:19:36.680 a lot of theories, and they can't all be right, 0:19:36.760 --> 0:19:39.080 and I suspect that none of them are. 0:19:39.720 --> 0:19:42.000 It's just funny that the sort of the bigger the 0:19:42.040 --> 0:19:47.240 web is the more ways that you can navigate, choose 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:47.920 your own adventure. 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:50.800 Choose your own adventure that is perfect, and they do. 0:19:51.480 --> 0:19:54.800 And look, it might be that they're all a little 0:19:54.800 --> 0:19:59.280 bit right. I believe that probably come and chan that 0:19:59.320 --> 0:20:03.600 there's a fair chance she was not a mister cruel victim. 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:07.000 The evidence against it seems to me to be nearly 0:20:07.040 --> 0:20:09.879 as strong as the evidence for it. Police are divided 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:13.440 on this, as we've said on this podcast many times, 0:20:13.560 --> 0:20:16.480 please are divided over it. So what would we know. 0:20:16.720 --> 0:20:19.040 So anybody out there that thinks that there's a common 0:20:19.160 --> 0:20:22.880 check offender and another offender or offenders, they may well 0:20:22.920 --> 0:20:26.600 be right. It's a matter of who it is that's 0:20:26.640 --> 0:20:27.199 the tricky bit. 0:20:27.880 --> 0:20:30.679 Thank you very much to everyone that has written in 0:20:30.880 --> 0:20:33.760 to us. If you would like to ask a question, 0:20:34.480 --> 0:20:38.720 you can email us at Life and Crimes at News 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:41.200 dot com dot Au. Life and Crimes at News dot 0:20:41.200 --> 0:20:43.600 com dot you, which we will link in the description 0:20:44.000 --> 0:20:47.800 of this episode, and ask Andrew a question hopefully we 0:20:47.880 --> 0:20:48.480 might read it. 0:20:49.440 --> 0:20:52.159 We will and John, thanks for asking those questions. They're 0:20:52.200 --> 0:20:58.119 always diverting. Thank you, Andrew, thanks for listening. Life and 0:20:58.160 --> 0:21:01.240 Crimes is a Sunday Herald Sun product action for True 0:21:01.240 --> 0:21:06.160 crime Australia. Our producer is Johnty Burton. For my columns, 0:21:06.200 --> 0:21:10.760 features and more, go to Heroldsun dot com dot au 0:21:11.240 --> 0:21:16.440 forward slash Andrew rule one word. 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